Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there (and people like me who are semi-moms but resist the label).
This morning, Jason and I slept in (how delicious was THAT?!?), then we headed over to our friend’s house, Dave and Laurie’s, to pick some fresh, baby Red Russian kale. Or so I thought. In exchange for helping Laurie to “weed” her flower patch, I got to take all those “weeds” home with me. And said “weeds” were said KALE! In addition, she uprooted a rhubarb plant, a lovage plant, TONS of young oregano starts, baby angelica starts, lemon balm, lemon mint, orange mint and a horseradish plant! All payment for taking her excess kale out! And it only took me 5 minutes to help her. Plus, we just bought a Sungold cherry tomato plant yesterday, and a friend gave us what we thought were 2 strawberry plants. Turns out they were FOUR!
So Jason and I had our work cut out for us. I planted or transplanted everything except the tomato plant while he mowed and weed-whacked the yard with Dave’s mower and weed-whacker. A sweet little boy in our neighborhood named Cody came over and showed Jahn how to uproot dandelion plants. The kid has been watching his dad, who manages the park we live in, and I tell you what, I’ve never seen a kid so little (I think he’s 5 or 6) who is so handy with a shovel! I kept telling Jahn to watch Cody dig, because he knew exactly how to do it. Went all the way around the plant, clockwise, over and over and over again, until it came right out, root and all. We are so lucky to have so dang many dandelion plants in our yard and the surrounding fields that we have more than we can possibly eat, even if we ate just those, so we placed the uprooted ones from our rock path around the apple tree, mixed in with the grass clippings. Jay said that when he had orange trees in Florida, they always put grass clippings around the base of the trees, and it was the very best compost. Said it made for the sweetest, juiciest oranges ever. Had other Floridians wondering why their fruit was so perfect! Well, fertilize well and you get a strong plant with delectable fruit that can protect itself from pests and the like.
We also found some surprise dog “treats” in the yard (as in, some neighbor dog made a deposit in the middle of the lawn), but Jay just threw them in with Cody’s dandelions and the grass clippings. I planted everything we got from Laurie in little planter boxes except for the kale. Then I planted the strawberries. Most of these will probably get permanent homes in the actual earth, but we only moved in in February, so we haven’t decided exactly where to do our Lasagna Gardening, yet.
Last, I planted the baby kale in the cinder blocks that go along the edge of the right side of the house (the back lawn is along the left side) and Cody, the handier-with-a-spade-than-me little guy, went through and weeded all the little plots of dirt and turned over the soil for me first, and I didn’t even have to ask him to! He had a little metal shovel that Dave and Laurie gave Jahn, but Jahn was more interested in reading Calvin and Hobbes while sunning himself on the deck, so I figured, “Well, each can do what they like. At least they aren’t fighting over who gets to use the shovel!” So all I had to do, literally, was turn a bit of fertilizer into the earth with a large spoon, transplant my little kale babies, then water them! Got a whole nice row going, too. Hopefully next year they will keep us in green smoothies all season long and we won’t have to buy many greens! We fed Cody an apple, and he tried mango for the first time. Liked it quite well. I told him that since he worked so hard, when our apple tree starts bearing fruit, he can come over and get some apples.
Oh! I almost forgot! The very BEST news of the day!!! There is a huge raspberry farm right outside our backyard (I’ll take pics soon — and they let us pick all we want for free!) and I think they have their own honey beehives, because yesterday I saw 4 bees visiting our little apple tree (which is LADEN with blossoms) and today, there were SIX! All at once!!! With all the issues these poor little guys have been having, and with all the work that Jay and I are planning on putting into growing our own food, I gotta tell you, I have literally NEVER been so happy to see bees in my entire life! I almost started crying!! Jahn and Cody got scared, but I showed them how the bees were so busy they didn’t care about us. I walked up and put my hand literally an inch away from 2 of them, and when they didn’t sting me, the boys were convinced that bees might not be so bad after all, and were more willing to listen to the good aspects of bees. Eventually, they were standing in front of the tree, watching the bees do their work and cheering them on, dancing and chanting in unison, “Poll-in-ATE! Poll-in-ATE!” Pretty freakin’ cute!
So after all that gardening fun, poor Cody was sad to see us go, but we had to. We went to my brother-in-law’s house to discuss cookbook layout (just wait til you see them! He is a PRO!) and mull over logo ideas. Things are rolling along smashingly in the design department, so we didn’t have to chat long. Then it was all of us (my Jason, me, Jahn, my sister Beccy, her Jason, and their son, Ben) off to my mom and dad’s house to celebrate Mother’s Day.
We went to my mom’s house today and we gave her 2 tulips from our flower patch (they had mostly finished blooming already), an apple-spice cake that I made (pretty much my happy accident cake from a few days ago with marinated, minced apples in it), and some iris bulbs (purple, her favorite). She also got a DVD about Alaska from my brother and his wife (my mom grew up in Sitka), a white geranium plant from my sister, her hubby and son, oh! And a little crescent moon shaped crystal to hang in her window, also from my brother and his wife. Jahn made me a very sweet little watercolor painting at school and it was accompanied by a letter that said the he loved me and was grateful that I make him raw treats. It was very, very sweet. It made me cry, then Jay cried, then everybody was crying, and Jahn rolled his eyes, and said, “Oh, brother!” Funny kid.
We all had dinner there, and we were served a veritable feast of fruit salad (oranges, red grapes, bananas, watermelon, mango and something else — I think another melon), green salad (with all kinds of great stuff in it — radishes, red peppers, cucumbers, iceberg and Romaine lettuces, some baby kale that I brought from Laurie’s garden, oregano (also from Laurie’s garden) shredded carrots, celery, raw walnuts … and I think there were a few more things, but I don’t remember what they were). I brought our raw dressing, nutritional yeast and flaxmeal for us to top the salads with. There was also roasted chicken and 2 kinds of potato salad, but we didn’t partake of those (I’m the only raw foodist on my side of the family). It was a great meal, and Jay and I were very excited that we all were so full afterward. That was our first time eating nothing but raw around other people in a very long time. We finished off most of the apple-spice cake, and everyone agreed, it was very reminiscent of the filling in apple newtons — like fig newtons, but spicier and apple-ier.
We didn’t really have any breakfast, just our 2 litres of water in the morning. Strange how satisfying it is when you’re hydrated. Your artificial hunger alarms just don’t go off the way they do when you eat cooked. So we weren’t even hungry until about 4 p.m.! Ok, we sampled a few greens in Laurie’s garden, but that was just 3 or 4 little leaves, pea shoots and the like. I can’t believe how little we eat now! If you’d told me even a month ago that I’d be this happy raw, I’d probably have slapped you. Ok, maybe not that. But I would’ve definitely recommended counseling. 😉
I did have a bit of chocolate before we left, but just one bite of ganache – just so I could say I’ve been doing the raw cacao for 30 days with every meal. But we’re down to one meal a day, and one or very occasionally 2 snacks (a handful of berries, a half a mango, a handful of sprouted nuts, etc.), so I’m having a hard time being hungry enough to eat any cacao at all. There’s a surprising twist! Not hungry enough to eat CHOCOLATE??? But there you have it. I’d heard of other raw foodists experiencing this lack of hunger, and being able to work really hard for hours on end with no food, but until you experience it for yourself, it just doesn’t seem believable. I think that’s because there are so many social, psychological and emotional things tied in with cooked food.
But that’s a subject for another day and another post. I’m off to pack and go on my little silent mini vacation. I’ll still post while I’m gone, though. No talking needed for that. Cheerio!
30 Days of Chocolate! 