Twenty Five Bones

I am 25!

Today signals the passing of a generation and the beginning of a new generation.

I call it Generation try-not-to-start-acting-like-an-old-person.

Now I want to explain, that by "Old Person" I am not talking about age! I am talking about those people who lose all memory of what it is like to be a kid. I think once you turn 25, you're at risk!

(Before you are twenty five there is no risk because you are a kid! Everyone knows it! Your parents still let you do laundry at their house, shit, you may even still live at home! But once you cross that 25 mark, I think generationally you are in a whole new file folder. The "Get your shit together" file, or The " You should know this already" file. Luckily I have already had files for years, labelled "Credit card, Student loan, utility bills", etc. so I am a little bit ahead of the game!)

I've been using this term "Old People" for a while now, and I do find that people get offended by it, but it can only be offensive if it is misunderstood, or if that person already thinks that they are an "Old Person" and doesn't like the idea of my talking about them in a negative way. Which makes sense, but I won't stop using the term, because in my mind, it makes sense.

Old people are the ones who don't crack a smile when a little kid pulls an orange out of the pile in the produce section, only to send all the other oranges cascading into the isle. Its a lesson in gravity and geometry, and the world is teaching it!

Old people are just people who have lost their child like wonder, and I think the world could use more people with child-like wonder, and less impatient old people.

Stay young at heart!

The path of a vegetarian

Sometimes it's hard to be a Vegetarian. "What in Gods name is that?" is a frequent comment in my workplace lunch room. "Sorry but God didn't make this, it's tofu, so suck it up princess!" would be a great come back to that small minded comment, but I hold back and let them know "It's tofu"

There are generational divides where I work, and everywhere else, between people raised to eat whatever they were fortunate enough to have, people who have always had an endless supply of food, and people who have chosen carefully what they put into their bodies.

If the list of heated topics to steer clear from is "Sex, Religion and Politics" you would think I'd be in the clear to bring up the latest BEEF RECALL headline in the news, or TAINTED MILK SCARE headline, but you would be wrong.

Talking about Food having a negative effect on the world is incredibly heated!

Why is it so heated you ask?

Bottom line...

Most People just don't like to think about it and I put it in their face.

They like living in a world where everything is OK. There are too many other things to worry about, bills, gas prices.... Maybe the only thing that keeps them sane is that box of Hamburger helper they can eat with a smile.

Food, to so many people, is VOID when it comes to the Environment. Food production isn't ruining the environment, how crazy is that! No, food is good and pure and it nurtures you... it is the essence of all that is good in the world.

Yes and No

Food is my life. I will admit it. I think about it as much as I breath. I spend hundreds of dollars a month keeping my fridge stocked and my belly full. But I pride myself in the CHOICES I make towards both the food I eat and the food I serve to my friends.

Forget diets and fads, I am not even talking about food in a sense of Calories. That is a topic for another huge post, I am simply talking about Food in a sense of being environmentally conscious.

Food production across the world, is having a detrimental effect on all aspects of the environment. We are even changing the genetic make-up of plants to suit our mouth-stuffing needs. Even with all the food we are making, it still isn't reaching all the hungry mouths before it rots in the warehouses of the Big Food Industry. So its not like we can brag that food production is keeping the world well fed, it isn't! The environmental downfall is not worth it, so Industrialized Food production has no excuses to back up its devastation.

All the true farmers, who listen to their plants and know how to work the land hand-in-hand with the environment are going to all disappear. Leaving Monsanto and oil to feed us. We must support the organic farmers and local farmers, the small food production companies who don't sacrifice the environment to squeeze out a few more crackers.

It's all about choice! In a world where everyone is supposed to be accepting of people 'choices', making a choice to not eat meat and dairy is like lighting off a bomb at the lunch table. You are a terrorist, you are wrong, wrong, wrong! No one has a problem making fun of you for it, telling you how much you don't know... oh the list goes on.

I think almost all of my friends are meat eaters, as was I just a few months ago, until I felt a turn inside me. On my long path to being as light on the earth as I can, I am gradually feeling things I never felt before, like pain inside my heart when I think of animals being bread and farmed for me to eat. It just stopped feeling right, so I stopped buying into it.

I am not sickened by my friends bacon on their breakfast sandwich, it smells good. I am not angry with myself for liking the smell of bacon, what would that do? Nothing. I am simply choosing not to eat it.

Those who ride a bike to work for environmental reasons, are they persecuted by the car drivers? Do they think the bicycler believes they are better than everyone else? Doesn't that seem ridiculous? Then why is it such common practice to look on a vegetarians meal and furl your eyebrows with disdain.

I don't preach my choices, I have just simply made them. I feel good about my choice. My vegetarian lifestyle requires me to learn more about what my body needs to work strong and stay healthy. I nourish my body and soul with the choices I make.

Choice is the one thing you make on your own.

Summer

Coltrane

Every day when I get home from work,this little guy is meowing behind the door, having no patience for my jingling keys to fit into the lock and release him into the garden he has been watching all day.

Coltrane loves the courtyard. He is an indoor cat, only because of the positioning of our apartment building between too many roads and apartment buildings. So after screwing a couple BBQ grates to the fence, blocking off all the escape routes (that's ghetto, i know) we can let Coltrane roam freely in the courtyard.

He knows where his little Cat Nip plant is, and he monitors its progress daily. By that, I mean, I feed him a leaf and he repeatedly tries to get the rest!

Yucca plant

This is a Yucca plant my neighbour pulled out of his front flower bed, and handed over the fence to me, to add some vegetation to my patio area. It didn't look so good, but I watered it daily with hope that it would pull itself alive again. Again nature proved its strength and after cleaning up the dead spikes and giving it some fresh soil, it has begun to sprout new spikes, and has become one of my favourite parts of the patio. It was a lesson for me, to never give up on a plant, because it may surprise me.

Scarlett Runner Bean

This one bloom is about 6 feet off the ground, just enough to keep it out of the hungry mouths of carpenter ants. Which was the fate of the last few blooms. I started this plant from seeds in my living room, while the frost was still fresh outside. So I feel a great connection to how fantastic it has become. Plus, look at that colour!

Zucchini Flower

This is the first time I have ever grown a squash plant and I think I might have 10 next summer! I love these blooms! Not only to look at, but I have heard that it is very delicious to batter and fry them! This summer I only have 4 plants, and am looking forward to eating zucchini until I start looking like one, so I don't want to pick any blooms for frying.

What June passes on to July

June has been an amazing month for gardens. It has rained nearly every day giving life an easy start to the growing season. I have only had to fill my watering can a 'bakers dozen' times this entire month. Which is helpful because I fill up the watering can in my kitchen sink!

Herbs

Rain Rain thank you for all the herbs! Parsley and Dill made some pretty cool arrangements for my living room table, and Steve thought it made the place smell good!

So, I didn't know that Mint was a runner plant... Now I have lots of mint. Wow, mint, who knew?

The Berries deserve a Sift!

These strawberries are deserving of a fluffy waffle so I will give it to them.

The middle of June always means fresh STRAWBERRIES. When I was younger strawberries signaled the end of school, the beginning of long warm days, sleeping in past 9am and spending every minute outside.

Now that I am older, when my teeth plunge through a fresh Ontario strawberry, I remember those days in the strawberry patch, early, before the sun came up, eating as many strawberries as I packed into little pints with my Mom. I remember the diligent task it was to wash and remove the tops, boiling, jarring... for an entire year of fresh strawberry jam.

I bought these from a local farm, who pick their own berries every morning. I bumped into quite a few people I knew, all of us, patiently waiting in line to take our berries home. Mmmm and a little fresh maple sugar candy!

Beautiful strawberries like this and it being Sunday and all.... this means WAFFLES!

If you have noticed that waffles are a reoccurring item, its true. We eat them almost every weekend, because I can pack so much fiber into them, and they are so 'toppable'!


When mixing dry ingredients for anything you are making. You ALWAYS need to SIFT! I can't give enough praise to sifting. It is the best way to integrate the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, spices etc. It takes 8 seconds to sift, and boom! You have made a huge step towards a fluffy baked item. Sifting not only mixes the dry ingredients , it adds air and a lightness to the ingredients that can only be achieved through sifting. Even if you buy a prepackaged pancake mix, or cake mix, or anything. The ingredients have compacted while sitting on the grocery store shelf, so you need to SIFT those too!

That being said. Once you pour in your wet ingredients you want to maintain the light 'airyness' of the batter by FOLDING the ingredients with your spoon.


To fold, swoop your spoon down into the batter from one side to the other, running the spoon along the bottom, then dump the batter remaining on your spoon onto the top of the batter. Then take the spoon out, turn the bowl a bit and repeat. YES it takes longer and it seems silly to be so gentle to something you are going to bake at three hundred and fifty degrees or pour onto a scalding hot waffle iron, but DUDE it is super importanto!

With the combination of sifting and folding you will be blown away with the rise you will get out of your treats.

Exception: For cookies, I sift the ingredients but then I mix the cookie batter with my hands. I'm just crazy like that.

If you are watching your sugar intake or are a diabetic. I recommend substituting Agave Nectar for Maple syrup, or using a 50:50 ratio. Agave Nectar is a low glycemic sugar substitute that is 4 times sweeter than table sugar. You can mix it in with recipes as a great natural sweetener!

Waffle or Pancake Mix

1 cup Whole Spelt Flour
3 tbsp Flax seed, ground
1/4 cup Xylitol
1 1/2 tsp Baking powder
1/8 tsp Salt
1/2 cup Almond milk
1/3 cup Apple sauce or pured banana
3 tbsp Olive Oil
2 Eggs
Cinnamon, to taste

• In a large bowl, SIFT the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon together
  
• In a medium sized bowl, mix all remaining ingredients together.
• Add wet to dry and fold ingredients together until just combined.

If making waffles in a circular Belgian waffle maker, this recipe should make about 3 waffles

ENJOY!

Life all around

The first bloom of a pepper plant.

I joined a Community Garden when Spring first hit. I felt a need inside me to grow plants, to feel seeds and soil and water in my hands. I think the winter hurt my soul! I know that's harsh, but that WAS a harsh winter, and my first real winter in the city on a side street with no 4 x Wheel drive!

The Community Garden was great, but I didn't truly realize the distance I would have to drive to get to it. The positive environmental factors of gardening were outweighed by the negative environmental factors of driving my car.

So, with a spark of enthusiasm I loaded up with soil and planters and plants and damnit I made my own garden!

Coltrane enjoys it too!

A few tomato, pepper and zucchini plants make up the bulk of the veggies. I also have some sweet and savory herbs to compliment my food all summer long. Scarlett runner beans are training their way up twine against the fence and a few flowers have mixed into the garden as well.

The 'Courtyard' as it is called, at our apartment, was completely forgotten by everyone before we moved in. A rickety old back deck and over grown weeds camouflaged the back area of its potential beauty. We jumped on the area and claimed it as our own. Hours of weeding and arranging and loving the space has really made it what it is today.

I feel very lucky to have this space. We just rent an apartment on the ground floor with no balcony or anything. So the fact that we have this secret little space all to ourselves is such a gift.

Bird house Gourd sprout

Squirrels + Cayenne = plants are safe

City Squirrels are limited to small patches of vegetation, so my garden was quickly a HOT SPOT! No neon sign required to advertise my fresh soil... it was dug up every afternoon without missing a beat. But! A little sprinkle of cayenne pepper over the soil and they have not touched it since. You do have to sprinkle more after it rains but its an inexpensive and natural way to keep them at bay.

When the tomato's and peppers start to arrive I will have to try a solution of hot sauce, dish soap and water in a spray bottle. Spraying this on the fruit is said to be a good way to keep the squirrels from stealing what isn't theirs.

I should say here, that Squirrles have a very good sense of smell, and do not like to experiment with spices! So if your going on a date with one stick to the produce isle and skip the shawarma hut!

I am also going to get a small bird bath, to offer the squirrels some water, because it is said that they steal tomatoes because they are thirsty.

Either way, I have my own garden. What should I name it?