When you are sick of cooking...

When I was a working professional, with a hungry family, I had to be very organized and prepared for days when cooking was out of the question.
Did I pick up food at the take=out places? Yes.
Did I have choices? Yes.

The point is we always have choices. It is just how much energy we are willing to expend to prepare healthy meals.  Even now when I'm retired and have lots of time, I get sick of cooking and planning meals for us two.  I get tired of the same foods; and I get tired of my responsibilities.

So, I do as my ancestors did. I forage.  In the refrigerator. In the freezer. In the pantry. In the garden. Even here on this deck.  Let's do this together, forage on this deck.
Notice lettuces, strawberries, possible tomatoes.
A salad is born.

A can of sardines, or tuna, layered with a slice of cucumber or pickle, on toasted points or saltines, and we  now have a complete meal.  Frozen bananas whirled in the blender with milk or coconut milk, a dash of lavender or almond extract, and dessert is born.
The trick is to think like a hungry paleo woman, foraging,  tasting roots and canes and fruit and adding these to the larder.

Yesterday, I picked some spinach and tender shoots of fava beans to saute and serve with canned beans.
I learned from Jamie Oliver that fava beans leaves are edible! Who knew?
What have you created in your foraging mood?

Ready or not, sunny or not...

I can't wait for some dry days, when I can get these seedlings out of the house, and into bigger pots, outdoors, preferably with a bit of sun. I can't wait to put seeds into paper cups and paper cups into bigger pots, and then bigger pots into the soil.

An explanation:
When I have some special seeds I've saved or bought, seeds that might not be available in starter packages at the local nursery, I begin them in paper cups,  filled with seed starter soil and provided with a couple of drainage holes at the bottom.

In a couple of weeks, some of these tiny starters will be ready to transplant to bigger pots.  Instead of transplanting, I score off the bottom of the cups so they fall off, and plop the entire thing, in a bigger pot.  This way the seedlings are not disturbed at all. 

Two or three healthy plants per cup are all I save.

When I can separate the plants, I will then transplant outdoors, a month or two from today. 
The process is long and I might end up with just half a dozen plants total.

Growing your own is most rewarding. 
You start with seeds from a place like Territorial, an organic seed supplier, and use products that are organic all the way.

Now, big seeds, fava, peas, beans, radishes, squash, they can go directly in the garden.
What if you didn't have a plot of land?
If you have a place to plop a pot, go ahead, grow some herbs for your kitchen.  Select those you like to cook with and put them all in one pot.  The more you pinch them, and use them up, the more they will grow, and will delay going to seed.  In the end, if they do go to seed, don't despair.  Collect the seeds, and do what I do, start them in paper cups for next season.

Happy Growing.

Note: The plants in the picture are poppies,papaveri,  from Franchi Sementi, an organic product from Bergamo, Italy.
I found these in my local nursery, and couldn't resist getting a piece of home in my Northwest Garden.  They did well last year, btw.

What makes home-grown so good?

Pea tendrils, late summer in Oregon.
I had waited for months for these. I could stop at the tendrils, added them to my salad bowl. But, I waited for the pods to develop and fill up, praying that the weather and slugs would cooperate.

I had to wait until Mid October for the pods to become plump and juicy.
Our summer was cool and wet and most of the vegetables suffered.

Growing your own is so unpredictable:  the soil has to be nourished, there is need for  rain or irrigation during dry spells, a need for adequate sunshine, a need for few pests, uninvited crows, slugs, deer. If it's too windy or too wet, the bees may not arrive and linger to do their job.

After months of hit and miss, we have a harvest, a bowl of peas more precious than anything Green Giant could produce for my freezer. 

Familiar and yet special, these babies will be cherished.

I'm surprised they made it up to the house. I'm surprised at myself for resisting them as I picked and piled them in the bowl.  These are the best, tenderest peas I have ever tasted. Boiled gently in little water for a few minutes, then buttered and served with a spoon, they were eaten before anything else was assembled for lunch.

Green perfection!