Food
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Going Veg
About a year and a half ago, before we went on the AT I tried a week of going vegetarian while Chris was on a business trip. It was really easy for me then, I was able to cook what I wanted and try new recipes. I haven’t tried this again until the last two weeks. We’re back in Beaumont for our job for about two months and I got the idea to try going vegetarian again. I thought it would be easy but we eat out most of the time and it is really hard! Vegetarian options are either making something meatless or eating lots of salads and pasta.…
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Edible in the garden
Since planting a lot of the vegetables in early March (mom planted some in February, too) here’s a follow-up on how things are going. Right now the garden in the backyard is great but at the plot—not so much! We’re not sure what the culprit is, too many coffee grounds, too much water, who knows, but everything is fairly stunted. The onions are just now starting to bulb whereas my brother’s plot has well bulbing onions. The potatoes withered and are basically dead, something ate the tops of the okra, and whereas everything else is alive and doing ok, they aren’t growing and seem to be stunted. It’s very strange.…
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Gayle’s Garden
After a year without a garden Chris and I now have two. Kinda. Our parents are kindly letting us help them with their garden, but I think they are rather enjoying the free labor. Ok, I suppose it is our due since we are enjoying room and board at each of their homes, but at least it is a pleasurable form of labor. Of course all of it is just making me wish I had an acre or two to plant a gigantic kitchen garden, build a greenhouse to grow all of the tropicals we used to, and to grow all sorts of interesting natives and bulbs. Until then we…
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Published!!!
This whole thing fell to luck, really. I happened to check my email in Orlando when we were on the Florida Trail and see an email from a woman who said she was with Woman’s Day magazine. Apparently she’d found a photo of a tomato of mine from a few years ago and wanted permission to use it in a special issue called Woman’s Day Garden and Outdoor Living. I was a bit suspicious so I did some Googling and found out that she was completely legit. I figured she might need a full res photo or something so I emailed her back and gave her my number since I…
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The Best Bread Ever.
Before we left on the Florida Trail I found this recipe for no knead bread on Alicia Paulson’s blog. I tried it for the first time the other night and wow, it is awesome! Want bread for dinner? Totally possible. Oh, this stuff is so good! Here’s my take on it tonight: Check the bread at 35 minutes and see if it is still sticky in the middle. If it is, add another 10 minutes. According to Zoe, “This is good bread!”. If a two year old likes it, you’ll like it!
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Candied Apples
My sister in law has been doing creative things with Zoe on Tuesday evenings when my brother is in class. This week’s creative thing happened to be making candied apples. We peeled off each wrapper from the caramels after several of us asked if there wasn’t a block of caramel or something along those lines in the store. Isn’t there something easier??? To make candied apples, first you have to don your silly hat, in this case the bag from the apples. Then you’ve gotta get together all the things to put on top of the caramel, with a little extra oomph by sticking out your tongue like my mom.…
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Blue Cake for Woe (Zoe)
Since we missed Zoe’s birthday by a week and her birthday party, too, Chris and I wanted to do something for her. Yesterday I made the cake. I ended up using a simple white cake recipe and made cream cheese frosting (8oz cream cheese, 1/2 stick butter, 4c powdered sugar for one batch, double for more) and made a two layer cake. This is my first time making a cake from scratch. I’m no cake decorator, but I had a lot of fun making it! It turned out very moist, too! I went a little crazy with the dye! The face on the left is what you get when you…
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The Hiker Diet
Trail Magic at Katahdin Iron Works Road, 100 Mile Wilderness, Maine Now that we are several days post hike we’ve had to really think about what we are eating. When you aren’t burning 5,000 calories a day it is impossible to continue eating like you were. Or, you could, but you’d balloon up in no time! So, I thought I’d give a run down of what a typical thru-hiker eats. Breakfast: Pretty much everyone starts off with oatmeal. It’s warm and easy to make, but it takes time to boil water. In the beginning this is great because you start off later in the morning. Eventually you move on to…
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Christmas
Christmas day started off a little bit on the wrong foot. A door was left open or didn’t get closed entirely when Chris left to do an early morning photographic expedition down at Everglades National Park, and three of the cats at Marc and Eliana’s escaped. We only knew about it when one of the cats, Desi, ended up in a fight with a neighborhood stray. I thought he was fighting with another cat in the living room until Eliana knocked on the bedroom door and got me out of bed to look for the third cat, Timber, that they couldn’t find. It was a long day of walking the…