Ideas for food in May

In May I plan to live entirely off of my garden and my pantry with a few exceptions - I'll buy a little bit of fresh produce and eggs, some butter, and some flour. So I need to have a pretty good plan about what I'll make. Considering how much food I have, it shouldn't be too difficult, so here goes:

Eastern European pea soup (whole pea soup)
Split pea soup
All kinds of pasta with both pesto and tomato sauces (and capers)
Zucchini soup
Frozen meals
Tortellini
Canned soup
Tamales
Couscous
Asparagus! Oh, how I love asparagus...

Wow, that's a lot of options!

A few favorite recipes

So I've been promising recipes, and I've been extremely lazy about it, so here goes:

Butter bean, asparagus, and shallot salad

Some canned butter beans
Fresh asparagus, 1 bunch
Shallots (1 or 2 cloves)
salt
olive oil
balsamic vinegar

Wash the asparagus and trim the ends if you so desire. Steam for about 10 minutes, depending on how thick the spears are. Cut into 1-inch long pieces and chill. Open the can of beans and rinse well. Peel and slice the shallots into very thin slices. Mix the asparagus, butter beans, and shallots together in a bowl. Add salt, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar to taste, and voila! Salad without lettuce, yum!

Black bean quesadillas

These are delicious and low-calorie to boot

For one serving:
2 small corn tortillas (I prefer blue corn)
2 ounces monterey jack cheese
1/4 cup canned black beans
a small amount of butter for cooking (or oil, if you so desire)
Some tomatillo sauce

Melt some butter in a pan, and place one tortilla in the pan, on medium heat. Crumble or slice half the cheese and add to the tortilla. Add half the black beans. When the cheese starts to get gooey, fold the tortilla in half. Flip frequently to avoid burning, until the cheese is entirely melted. Cook the second tortilla in the same way. Add some tomatillo sauce. (To make tomatillo sauce, de-paper the tomatillos and wash thoroughly. Boil for 10 minutes, then drain. Mix by hand or in a blender or food processor. And that's it!)

The emerging spring garden

So I’m in my second month of saving money by shopping only once a month. I’ve also decided to eat out less. Much, much less. I’ve broken down once and gone out to eat, spending $10.50 for lunch at a great Japanese restaurant. But I only spent about $50 on groceries so far, and I’m not expecting to spend much more, except on a few veggies from the market. I’ll be planting my garden at the end of this month and beginning of the next, so I’m planning to only spend about $20 on food next month. I think I can do it, considering how full my pantry is right now. I have to do better at saying no to going out, especially when I have so much food at home.

In my garden I’m planning to plant 5 heirloom tomatoes, 18 sauce tomatoes, 1 tomatillo, 2-3 squash, 2-3 eggplant, 1 or 2 cucumbers, bunches of green beans, and 24 peppers. I doubt I’ll do melon this year, as my melons were not very successful last year. Right now I have beets, carrots, onions, shallots, leeks, cabbage and lettuce growing, all of which I’m really excited about, but especially the beets and shallots. Yum! I think I also have some volunteer garlic, but I won’t really know until it’s time to harvest. I had a few cloves of garlic that started sprouting in my fridge, so I planted them in the little planter outside my living room window. Stacey warned me that they probably won’t form bulbs (I don’t know why), so I’ll just use them as green garlic, an ingredient that I almost never use, but that I’d like to use.

At the moment, my garden is doing fantastically. My beets and carrots are growing quickly, the onions and shallots look great, and I have tons of lettuce. It's really fantastic! The two things that didn't do well are spinach and cabbage, and I'm not sure why.

Everyday life?

Wow, my everyday life seems to boil down to diet, exercise, and cats. How boring! I have plenty of other stuff going on in my life, and I feel like I should make a distinct effort to mention it...

First, I'm studying Italian. It has been extremely slow going, which is frustrating. I would love to be able to actually spend some time in Italy studying, or just living and learning. Unfortunately, here in America we believe strongly in debt, and my student loans prevent me from doing anything really cool for the next 2o years or so. That being said, I'm currently taking a conversational Italian class at the nearby Italian Cultural Society.

Second, I rock climb. I've probably mentioned this before, and while it does (kind of) fit into the category of exercise, it's also tons of fun. And yesterday I got my butt kicked by a 5.10C/D, which is kind of embarassing.

Third, I love to cook! I've been making black bean quesadillas with blue corn tortillas and homemade (and homegrown) tomatillo sauce this week, and they have been fabulous! I'm planning quiche for Easter dinner (which I've also mentioned) and I'm hoping to experiment a bit more in the coming months as I grow more vegetables (my beets look great! And my shallots!)

That leads me into my fourth topic, which is gardening. I love my garden. I wish I had more time to spend there, which makes me think I need to reassess my priorities a bit. I'm planning to plant all sorts of thing in the next few months, and I can't wait to get started. This storm we're having is definitely putting a damper on those plans, though.

OK, that's pretty good for now. Litter boxes are calling me!

More April Food

More reminders for my feeble brain:

Week of April 6th: Artichokes and homemade mayo for lunch, black bean quesadillas for dinner
Week of April 13th: Potatoes and cottage cheese, leftover quiche
Week of April 20th: Black bean soup, salads?
Week of April 27th: Pot pie? bean and veggie soup?

As you can see, the end of the month is a bit hazy. The next co-op sale should be the 1st of May, and I'm hoping to buy as little as possible that day, as my pantry is getting quite full, despite my attempts to only shop once a month. I don't know if I can handle that many beans towards the end of the month, so I might have to go for some roasted asparagus at some point. Or I can steal some leek recipes from mia sorella. Yum! I love leeks!

A Great Weekend

This weekend has turned out (so far) to be far better than I originally anticipated. Yesterday, I joined a few friends for a hike in Plumas National Forest. It was an 8-mile hike, somewhat strenuous, but perfect for me. I had been looking forward to getting outside, but also dreading all the work that I was leaving behind at home. But getting out into nature did wonders for my spirit, and it was a gorgeous day as well.

Last night, I went out with a good friend who was in town, and we saw a cover band playing live music. The music was upbeat, the perfect thing to keep me awake after a day of vigorous exercise. I really need to go out and listen to live music more often.

Today, I set up my garden watering system, but I didn't really have time to weed very much, since it was getting quite hot. That will have to wait for another day, perhaps tuesday (although it may rain on tuesday, so maybe thursday instead...

No no poo

So I have recently tried going without shampoo (also known as "no poo") in an effort to have healthier hair. It's been a few weeks, and so far things aren't going very well. For one thing, my hair has been EXTREMELY oily and kind of gross-looking. So I've been wearing it up a lot, which isn't too much of a problem for me. The other big problem is that my skin condition is getting worse, which is definitely not a goal. I have sebhorrhea, a rather unpleasant condition that is exacerbated by stress, which I definitely have a lot of these days. As it turns out, sebhorrhea is also caused by excess oils.

The idea behind going no poo is that after you stop artificially stripping your hair of its natural oils and the rehydrating with conditioner, your hair will eventually return to it's natural (and supposedly more attractive and healthy) state. This would be all well and good if my skin condition wasn't caused by excess oil, and so I'm afraid I may have to go back to shampooing in order to save myself from looking like an adolescent with acne. Sigh.

In other news, I finally found some motivation to get stuff done today, mostly because I took a half hour nap after I got home. I'm beginning to think that I'm one of those people that does well on a weird schedule. I enjoy getting up in the morning (not as early as I do for work, but 7 or 8 is fine with me) and getting stuff done in the early quiet. I seem to need a nap in the afternoon, and then I'm pretty awake in the evening and often get more and more awake until I reach a wall, at which point I crash. The crash often happens very quickly. I'm not sure how to use this information to keep myself happier and well-rested...

OK, off to sort some papers before bed.