A Garden, a Geek, and a Giveaway

Right now I'm sitting at a clean dining table, listening to Nina Simone, avoiding a sink full of dirty dishes, and contemplating what vegetables to serve with my favorite Hot Links from Coffee Pot Ranch.  Soon, the table will be filthy, the children will change my music, and there will be more dirty dishes in the sink.

What better way to fill the time in between with a blog post?  Writing certainly beats washing dishes.

I climbed up on the roof early Saturday morning to take this picture.



Our green, green garden.  Or at least what I could capture of it with a fixed lens from the peak of our roof.  The tomatoes are full of green fruit, as are the zucchini and pepper plants.  About a half dozen eggplants will be ripe for picking this weekend, at which time I'll be paleofying my sister-in-law's Macedonian salad recipe.    The sprawling cucumber vines are just beginning to pump out cucumbers.  As long as I get one a day for my "not gatorade", I'm happy, but before long, I'll be pickling.

I let my rainbow chard go to seed and I'm anxiously awaiting the stalks to dry out and reseed on their own.  This morning while we were watering, George  pointed out some little volunteer sprouts mixed in with my yellow bell peppers.  I took a nibble, and to my pleasant surprise, it's arugula!  Have I ever told you I could live on arugula?

A neighbor recently asked us how much of our own food we grow.  Sadly, George and I had to admit, "Not nearly enough."  Far from enough to call our garden sustainable.  It's more of a hobby/science project at this point, but we're constantly learning and revising our gardening goals.  At least every meal we eat contains some homegrown ingredients, but one day we hope to grow most of our own food.  Now if I can just figure out how to keep pigs without my neighbors finding out . . .

Enough with the garden, and on to the geek.  I've been geeking out on podcasts and lectures lately, and I thought I'd share two.  Watch them, and you'll know me a little better.  Or at least you'll better know why I avoid sugar and grain, and also how much I love biochemistry.



(What? You don't have an hour and a half to watch a video about sugar? Take tiny spoonfuls. It took me a week to get through the whole thing.)


(Thank you, Dawn, for sharing this video! At 37 minutes, it only took me two days to watch.)

Do you want to hear another geeky thing I did last weekend, besides climbing up on my roof in my pajamas to take garden pictures?  I drove down to Costco in Sacramento to meet Sarah Fragoso of Everyday Paleo.  She was there signing books, and I was so very nervous that I barely said more than "Hello" and "Thank you".  I intended to say something like, "I enjoy your blog and have made many of your recipes," or, "I'm a paleo/crossfit/food blogger too!", and, "Can you believe Costco is promoting Paleo?"

But no.  In typical geek fashion, I clammed up and blew my chances at an actual conversation, or as much of a conversation as one can expect to have at a book signing at Costco.  Let me just say, Sarah is glowing.  She is the perfect role model for Paleo living.  And despite my lame behavior, I'm glad I went and got my book signed.

OK.  I must confess, I did something else rather geeky.  I gave Sarah a piece of my art.  Sadly, I didn't have a chance to explain it, so I'll show and tell here.



It's my food pyramid.  The real food pyramid.  A visual representation of my ideal diet.  Meat and veggies.  It's also a play on the folksy country decor of my youth.  I've been working on different variations of this theme for months, and I really like this version.  The original is a paper cut/photo collage (photos from various seed catalogs, animal outlines from various charcuterie resources).

I have a copy to giveaway, so leave a comment and I'll select a winner at random, to be announced Friday, July 6 (or the next time I find myself avoiding dirty dishes to blog about food).

May the fourth find you feeling free and full!