Food, Lots of Yummy Food

Another topic I have not talked about much is food, we have lots of wonderful food here. People take turns cooking dinners and lunches (and cleaning up afterwards) and there are a bunch of good cooks, plus the ingredients are high quality, almost all organic, as much as possible local and in season. Sometimes plain meals are made and sometimes leftovers and creative reuses of food, and sometimes amazing beautiful fancy food is created.

I made a special harvest dinner last night of all food grown here, except the salad dressings and tamari and salt but that was collected by folks here at the beach. We had boiled wheat berries (they were really good), beets, carrots, cucumbers, goat cheese with chives, steamed broccoli and dark greens, new potatoes, sauteed zucchini, onions and garlic, and tomatillo, onion, cilantro salsa, and I may be forgetting stuff. I got lots of compliments on how good it was, I think all the really fresh ingredients was the key, most picked that day some the day before, the wheat a month or so ago.

When I first got here most of the vegetables were being bought, the late rains meant the garden had to go in late, and even without that late spring there are not that many things ready to harvest. Now most of the vegetables we eat are from here. We had amazing large delicious heads of broccoli for a while, I only got a picture after the largest ones were picked. Recently the deer broke into the garden and ate a bed of lettuce right before it was big enough to harvest so we have been having to buy lettuce from a farm in town. The deer also ate the strawberry plants in the shady side garden. We are also growing a bunch of food to store for later when the garden is not producing so much.

Jim has been making bread adding whey from goat cheese making, which makes it rise higher. I made vegan bread a few times and cinnamon buns back when it was cool, we had a bread and tea gathering. As for goat cheese we made a very successful batch last week, getting almost a gallon of milk a day it is made quite often, mostly chevre, but some queso fresco, and Jim may make feta soon.

Twice groups of us have driven down to a friend's house to pick black berries, the first time Michael and I made jam with help from Aria and Lyn, we made 21 pints, then last night Sara and Lyn made 32 pints. They also made pickles. Starting soon we will be canning tomatoes, and making apple sauce, as well as continuing to make pickles and other preserves.

The onion harvest has been great, we have only picked one variety so far, and a few red onions when we want to cook with them, but they are all so big and beautiful. They seem to grow really well here, as does garlic, which we finally finished braiding, there is lots of that too.














Tuesday and this morning we harvested potatoes. The yield on the shady side was not so good although the fingerling bed Steph and Jim dug up was quite productive. On the sunny side we harvested four bins of red potatoes out of one long bed.

I have been saving up photos on this topic for quite a while now, so many of them are of food that was not all in season at the same time. When Ron visited the first time he commented on how silly he had been to worry that I might not be getting enough good food. It made me realize I had not talked about food so I started collecting pictures then.

I have to say it is great to only have to cook once or twice a week (except breakfast) and still get great meals.

Entertainment Two

I totally forgot to include the pictures of the dress up dance party we had about a month ago, it was a going away party for Diana who was a work trade here for two months. I had been saving up some having fun pictures but somehow forgot to put these ones in the right folder. For the party Aria brought down a bunch of dress up cloths from a stash in the kids loft and we all dressed up and a few people took turns playing CDs. It was fun.

I thought I would also add a picture of Diana playing piano.