Day 113 Five Star Garden

After today, our garden is now closed for planting, all spaces are full, no more vacancy. We have even spilled out into the space around the outside of the garden gate. We have about a gillion tomato plants, Cayenne peppers, Purple Tiger peppers, Serranos, Habeneros, banana peppers, yellow squash, patty pan squash, zucchini, cucumbers, lima beans, pie pumpkins, and cantaloupes. We are eating good this summer! Once again, my mom and I will be in the salsa canning business, although sadly, unless our luck changes, it will be made sans ghost peppers. Today, the very same people who were sold out last week were sold out again this week! What does a girl have to do to get a mouth blistering, medical/military grade pepper around here? A lady told me today that the OSU extension office has a pepper, which they are not selling and only using for medicinal purposes and requires protective equipment to handle. Hmmm, this sounds like the elusive ghost chili to me. My mother is relieved to say the least, she's really afraid that it will crawl out of the garden and attack her sensitive stomach in the middle of the night, come on mom, it's good for you! A pepper a day keeps the stroke away...I'm pretty sure, in any case there will be plenty of other peppers for magical sweat inducing salsa. Bring on the slugs and the garden gnomes we came to play.
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Day 106 Holy Ghost Chili Of A Funnel Cake

Wow, today was a labyrinth of fast food land mines and soda pop pit falls. My entire day was a corner to corner street fair of greasy carnival goodness and temptations a plenty. The Herb fest was about herbs and plants, yes, but it was also an excuse for vendors to trot out funnel cakes and blooming onions, left and right. I was good, I ducked my head into my chin and swam headlong into the fray of greasy aromas and sugared chins. I didn't even buy a water, first of all, the only options for bathrooms were porta-johns so I didn't want to drink anything for fear of germ exposure and second, the water was like 5.00! I gave myself a limit of spending money and came away with four cayenne pepper plants, a tiger pepper, a curry plant, one lavender plant, and two strawberry plants. I know this sounds like a light load, but next weekend is the second herb fest and I plan to find some additional peppers then. I searched and searched for a Ghost pepper, but the one vendor who had them, was sold out. I WANT A GHOST CHILI if I have to travel to Pakistan to get it, (she screamed, stomping her feet) Kind of like "I want an OompaLoompa now Daddy!" If I don't get one, I may just start to scream and never stop.
I've already planted my regular peppers, they are safely tucked into their dirt beds and my mom will find a place for the others tomorrow, also she found some sugar pie pumpkin seeds and will plant those as well. Everything else has it's place and now we wait for our little sprouts, can't wait!
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Day 101 The Sneaky Garden Pumpkin

Today, I was surprised at work, with a homemade 100 day mile marker cake! It was delicious, I ate it for breakfast and for lunch....and for snack. I left it on my desk for fear that I would finish it for dinner and that's just unacceptable. After the cake, someone else gave me some really fancy sweet and spicy trail mix, it was a great day all around, gastronomically speaking. After all of the snack activity, I just had a grilled cheese with pickles for dinner and a glass of milk, sometimes less is more. So, this weekend is the weekend I've been waiting for, the Sand Springs Herb Festival! The herb fest has herbs of course, but also anything and everything you could ever wish to plant in a garden. The dirt is ready, now we need plants, we are, against my wishes, going simple this year. My mom says we will plant tomatoes, peppers, squash, and cucumbers, how boring is that? I of course get my choice of peppers, so I'm going to research and find the hottest pepper available in this area and also, I'm planting pie pumpkins for fall recipes. I'm going to plant pumpkins, even if I have to sneak them into the ground. By the time my mom finds them, it will be too late, muuhaha! I'm so disappointed, I wanted spinach and eggplant, and watermelons! At least we don't have to waste space on carrots, that would be a terrible move and just plain garden sacrilege.
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Day 91 Blueberries, Greens, And Beans

Today, I needed strength, I needed energy, I needed beans. I ate black beans and rice last night, I ate them this morning and I made a burrito out of them for lunch. I'm like full of beans from my toes on up. I zoomed through my day like a gas powered weed eater, not gonna lie. I'm so stuffed, I probably won't be hungry for the rest of the weekend. This afternoon, after a fabulous meeting with my CEASE crew, I took care of the blueberry bushes, I planted a few weeks ago. The plant lady said NO fertilizer! She said it kind of snarly and half yelled that blueberries hate fertilizer, we were a little ashamed at our lack of fruit bush knowledge as we handed over the money. They only like organic material or compost, so I spread a little vegetable compost on them and they seemed to smile; I think they like living in my mom's yard, I'm pretty sure we save them from a dysfunctional garden. Tomorrow, I'm going to make collard greens, I bought them last weekend and still haven't cooked them, I hope it's not too late. I'm not quite sure how to make them, I'm assuming that I start with a big pot and some water? Seems easy enough, place in pot and boil, I can do that. I'm sure my first attempt at greens will be somewhat of an adventure so here's to good food, good ideas, and a great weekend, I can only hope for a decent meal and or a great story.
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Day 86 Steal This Vegetable

Sunday is usually the day when my Grandmother makes me lunch, today, I made lunch for her, my aunt, and my cousin, because she wasn't feeling well. Grandmother sent me to the store with instructions to bring back stuff to make lunch, along with her credit card. I expected to come out with a few things, under 15.00, but apparently grocery prices have gone up since last week! I bought bread, tabbouleh, bean salad, chicken salad for my Grandmother, ham for my aunt, brownies for the kid, and milk, which came to 35.00! I am going to eat slowly and frugally until gas prices go back down or until the farmer's market starts up again, which could mean cheap eats for a very long time. My food plan for the next few days at least revolves around the black beans I have soaking right now. I bought tortillas, cheese, and .49 avocados for burrito lunches this week. I'm thinking about joining a vegetable co-op this summer, as everything is local and will not have heavy transportation costs added in, of course what my mom grows in her garden will be free aside from the manual labor of harvesting it, I don't mind slinging dirt for my dinner. I think, also I'm going to plant some things on my back porch in pots. Maybe some tomatoes or something, if people steal them, they steal them, in fact, maybe I'll put a sign on them, encouraging people to take them, everyone deserves a good tomato!
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Day 78 My Dirt, My Sandwich What Else Do I Need?

Well, my car has been hospitalized and probably won't make it, we may have to pull the plug on Monday. Luckily, my mom came by today to take me to the grocery store for a few essentials. I can't say that I'm really hungry, earlier, I picked all of the raisins and M&M's out of the trail mix and I ate some tortilla cheese wrap thingies. That may not sound like much, but it all took place AFTER the grilled PB&J. So, anyway, I'm not making dinner tonight, I'm all comfort fooded out. Any other night, pre-challenge, would have been way worse, Mazzio's would have been at the door hours ago and I would have been feeding dollars into the soda machine in my backyard for the soothing fizz of brown sugar water. At the moment, the world spins out of control but I can at least control this and I'm not spending money I may need to bury my car next week.
On the gardening front, my mom's dirt patch is all tilled up and ready for planting, tomorrow, I'm going to make a list of everything we're going to put in. We always start with snap peas in May, which we usually mostly eat off of the vine for fun and maybe make a couple of pots with the rest. This year, in the interest of not being wasteful with the food we grow, I'll have to come up with some recipes that use snap peas, maybe some stir fry dishes, with curry ooooooh yeah! Gonna make those peas work for us. I'm really going to push for pie pumpkins too, I love them stuffed and baked in the fall, soooo good with Gruyere cheese. Anyway, these are the things I control, dinner and planting, maybe tomorrow, I will be able to add something else.
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Day 74 BBQ Slug Anyone?

Before I get to my dilemma, I have to tell a story, it's a true story. Lots of people all over the world eat grubs, I am not yet one of those people, nor do I intend to become one anytime soon. I do wonder though if there may be something to grub eating? My mom and dad burned off their garden last week to prepare for plowing and in the process stirred up a whole army of grubs scratching for survival. My parent's Border collie immediately went for the "cooked" grubs, while their Jack Russell went for the raw ones. Today, while planting blueberry bushes, my mom pointed out a lone survivor to the Jack Russell and he ate it like a bacon treat. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing, maybe grubs are better than Tofu, who knows!
So, on to my dilemma, on Thursday, I have to take some of my work kids to an adventure retreat type thing, way out in the sticks. This place, the Canebreak is a really swanky place, with an excellent restaurant. The restaurant will be serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's free, it's all day, and I don't know what I should do. It's not fast food, but I have sworn off all restaurant food, thus my dilemma. Do I take my own food, alter my rule, or what? My instinct is to take my own food, but then, I will have no place to store anything, as we will be outdoors all day. I'm so confused, I don't want to break my stride, but I don't want to be ridiculous either. I need some help in deciding, ideas are welcome.
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