Crystal Madrilejos

We’re taking a leap and have decided to try creating a sustainable food source for our family by raising our own fish. This spring we will be populating Andrew’s parents pond with a combination of Large Mouth Bass, Blue Gill, Red Ear Sunfish, & White Amur. White Amur or Grass Carp is not for eating, but for keeping the plant growth under control – sometimes people use chemicals to keep their plant growth in check, but we definitely don’t want any chemicals in our pond since this is one of the reasons we want to raise our own food – to avoid chemicals!

It’s that time of year again! We had a little break from garden planning during the holiday, but now the seed catalogs are out and the mad dash has begun to be ready to hit the ground running once the weather starts to warm up. I know, I know it’s still January and we have many cold days still to endure before the ground is even close to ready. But it sneaks up on us every year! We always miss those cool early days that are perfect for greens, lettuce and spinach and I am determined to get as much growing time as possible this year. We got smart after last growing season and started prepping the garden in the Fall before it turned cold, but more on that later since that’s a bigger post. Super excited to share all the new garden plans.

But for now, here’s a list of what we’re planning on growing (all our seeds are from High Mowing Organic Seeds this year):

Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans – We’ve done bush and pole beans in the past, but I prefer the pole varieties. Not only am I sucker for any plants that climb (space savers and they are beautiful to look at) but I like the fact that we don’t have to harvest all at once. You get just the right amount of beans over a longer period of time.

Danvers 126 Carrots – Another fun veggie for the kids to harvest. Root veggies are Andrew’s favorite to harvest. Again, it’s like finding treasure!

San Marzano Paste Tomato – We aren’t fans of huge tomatoes. They are too watery and seedy and aren’t that great for making pizza sauce either. Which is the main reason we grow them. San Marzano’s are the best for sauces and such because they have a lot of pulp (aka, the good stuff.)

We haven’t done flowers much in the past. In previous years, we just didn’t want to expend any more time or energy tending to things that we couldn’t eat. But this year, we’ve finally branched out. No pun intended.

Every year we do something different to stake up our tomato plants. These things get seriously unruly. I think the first year we planted a TON of pea tomatoes (never again) and we didn’t even try to stake those. When harvest time came, it was a total mess. Andrew describes the experience as sounding like you were stepping on bubble wrap. Just tiny little pea tomatoes everywhere popping underfoot. Til this day, we still have volunteer tomatoes popping up all over the garden from those little guys.

This year has been a good year for the tomatoes. Even the New York Times is talking about what a great year tomatoes are having. Apparently we aren’t the only ones enjoying this phenomenon.

For us personally, I think it also has to do with the fact that we weren’t overly ambitious in the garden this year. Yes, a lot of stuff just downright failed. But I didn’t feel overwhelmed with a huge garden and its never ending to-do list. The tomatoes were growing like crazy and the only thing on my list was to stake them up. Easy-peasy.

In a couple hours over the weekend, I was able to fashion this bad boy out of some sticks that we had lying around the yard, some wood tomato stakes from some previous year’s experiment, and some string. It’s totally got that “a face only a mother could love” look to it, but it works nicely and it’s sturdy.

Image by Molly | Orangette via Design is Mine

I’m on day 64 of 90 in P90X. I missed my workout yesterday, ugh. Yeah, I know it sucks. That just means I’ll be working out on Sunday instead.

Tonight is Chest, Shoulders and Triceps PLUS Ab Ripper. This workout kicks my ass so hard. I can’t do push-ups to save my life and this workout is pretty much all push-ups. It’s so dumb. I complain throughout the whole thing every time. Ab Ripper sucks too, but I’ve actually seen improvement in my performance during that workout so I don’t hate it as much.

So, I know I talk about the workouts a lot but I don’t think I’ve elaborated much on the diet. This part sucks too (but not as much as I thought it would). Basically, for the first 30 days you eat a ton of protein and veggies with a little bit of fruit, a tiny amount of carbs, and no sugar. For the next 30 days it’s basically the same, but with a little less protein and a little more carbs. I was pretty strict for the first month, but I’ve relaxed a little now that I’m further along in the program. I still limit carbs and sugar, but I’m not a freak about it.

If you’re wondering, I eat the same thing almost every day with the exception of dinner. And weekends can be a crap shoot but here is what I eat most days, if you care to know such things:

Breakfast:
2 Turkey Sausages
1 Egg
1 Whole wheat bagel – OR – 1 cup of oatmeal with a banana and berries
1 cup of Tea with skim milk, no sugar

Morning Snack:
1 small/medium Apple – OR- Banana

Lunch:
Salad with Chicken and Balsamic Vinaigrette

Afternoon Snack:
Cheese or Yogurt

I drink water unless I want a special treat, then I drink flavored seltzer water. Dinner is usually whatever Andrew feels like making. He’s good about taking my diet into consideration, plus Q eats what we eat so it’s usually something pretty healthy. We try to be conscientious about what we feed Q. We keep processed foods and sweets out of his diet as much as possible, so I started thinking this would be a good rule to live by: “Don’t eat anything I wouldn’t feed to my son.”

I think it’s important to enjoy eating even if I’m trying to lose weight. So I treat myself , but only on occasion. Anyone else have any tips for staying healthy AND happy?

-c.

We’ve been making Q’s food at home because:
1.) We can rest assured knowing exactly goes into his food and
2.) It’s cheaper. One jar of baby food can cost upwards of $1.00 for one serving jar. You can get a week’s worth of sweet potatoes for the same amount if you make it yourself (or even less if you grow it yourself).

We were lucky to have gotten the Beaba BabyCook and a Beaba portion freezing container as gifts for our baby shower. It makes cooking convenient, but I can imagine that it would be just as easy to do without the fancy gear. All you would need is a steaming basket, a hand blender, and ice cube trays. It also makes feeding time prep easy since you can just heat up a couple cubes as you need them.

Here are green beans from the garden for Q.

Yum!
-c.

Corn!

The corn this year was deceiving and somewhat disappointing. All appeared well, but it wasn’t sweet and the texture wasn’t ideal. I think it just got too hot this year.

-c.

Green beans!

–c.

Yellow peppers!

-c.

Edamame!

-c.

We’ve been having a few days of fall-like temperatures around here, and it hit me how fast this summer went. The garden is still doing its thing and we still have green beans, soy beans, butternut squash, carrots and potatoes to harvest. There are some straggler tomatoes and peppers out there but those are about done. We’re thinking of trying to grow lettuce indoors during the winter. Anyone have any luck doing this?

Here are some photos of this year’s bounty:

-c.