Do I have to eat my words?

I believe I mentioned my whole wheat bread recipe is fool-proof.

Well, this fool forgot to put the stirring paddle in the bread pan. So, after the two hour stir, rise, bake cycle… I was rewarded with this when I opened the top of the bread machine:

Oops!

Oh, on a side note: I’ve since tried the recipe with RED wheat instead of WHITE wheat. It was still tasty but was not nearly as beautiful and light. So, I’ll be sticking with the white wheat!

Welcome to the Jungle

The view from our sliding glass door:

The morning glory who ate our fence:

Our “large tomato” plants:

Our “small tomato” plant, who is fraternizing with the squash in the middle of the patio…

… and has taken over the trellis and ironically enough, found the tomato cages stacked in the corner. It seems to like them after all! Oh, and there’s our in-the-ground basil plant sharing the space as well.

Our biggest pot o’ basil:

And… the fruits of our labors.

Irresponsible Gardening

Well, I would have to call our first attempt at growing veggies a success. Thanks to Scott’s optimism and perseverance, we produced more tomatoes than the evil squirrel could eat.

We’ve been “in basil” for months now, using it liberally in pastas and bruschetta. I feel so decadent using handfuls of it because it’s so expensive at the store! Our small “gardener’s delight” tomatoes have been producing 6-12 beautiful tomatoes a day. This is enough for Scott to munch on them whenever he wants (I’m not a huge raw tomato fan) and I get to grind ‘em up with balsamic vinegar to put on my salads.

Our bigger tomatoes were a source of frustration, but the squirrel is now fat and happy and we’ve had plenty to eat ourselves as well. Today we were even able to give a tomato to our friends. True, it was just one tomato but the fact that we had grown more than we could eat ourselves was very satisfying.

Our crookneck squashes grew one at a time during the beginning of the summer, but the plant has since decided it’s more important to look impressive than to actually produce anything useful. My current theory is that we gushed too much over the first small squash and we gave the plant a bit of an ego trip. Next year, we’ll have to teach our squash that one good growth does not an excellent squash plant make.

These photos are from the middle of July and the plants have literally tripled in size since then. Our backyard now looks like a jungle and if I hadn’t started blogging at 9pm, I would run out and take a picture right now. I would call it “The Day the Plants Conquered the World… Beginning with the Bean’s Backyard”. No longer can you pass through our backyard without leaping and dodging and a good bit of luck. It began with Scott’s soft heart: “Cage our tomato plant? Honey, it’s had such a hard life… let’s give it a little breathing room”. Then came the Morning Glory with its seductive purple flowers. What’s not to love? Never mind that it’s wound itself around our back gate to the point where we have to plead our case before it will permit us to pass.

Scott and I, proud parents of the jungle just look out our back door and sigh. We grew something! Yes, we will be the kind of parents whose crazy kids run amok while the parents look on proudly. (Kidding…)

As if that’s not enough, the squash on one side of our yard is now fraternizing with the tomatoes from the other side of the yard. They rendezvous in the middle of the patio despite our consistent warnings that squash and tomatoes can never be more than just friends. We predict things will only end in tears, as the fall is quickly approaching. Summer love can be so cruel.

Another healthy recipe - Dirty rice and beans

There’s a bit of a hubbub over at my work about “whole plant foods” and quite a few SmugMug customers started asking questions about why my family (and many co-workers) made the diet changes we did.

It led to several healthy recipes being posted, including one I just ate for lunch, the dirty rice and beans: SmugMug gallery .

Here’s the post I wrote that explains how I made the recipe (it’s a bit different): dgrin post.

If you want the whole story and all the Q&A that’s been going on, you can start at the beginning: http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=66086 .

But, here are the highlights for me:

My co-worker started eating whole plant foods in January (a big change for him) and loves every bit of ‘em. He’s lost 50 lbs and counting, feels great, and this post has a lot of meal and snack ideas that work for him: here .

My dad’s philosophy, in a nut-shell: here .

My philosophy, in a (bit wordier) nut-shell: here.