Another Adventure

Today, I really tried to cram too much in. But it was all fun, and I couldn't resist.

This morning, my husband had his rock-moving gig. It ended up being a LOT more work than we originally anticipated. The short version: At 7:30 a.m., he set out optimistically. 5 hours later, he came back, red and sweaty, and said his heart was racing and he felt dizzy. He thought he could push himself to finish the last little bit, but he was just too overheated. Luckily, he had the sense to stop when he did, or he might have ended up with heat stroke. Turns out that what looked like a thin layer of rock was really a thick layer of rock, mixed with mulch, on top of a plastic sheet, with more rock underneath. Poor guy! He made $50, though, and now will make more finishing the job and painting a garage on the property.

While he was gone, I headed out to the local Food Pantry. We donate much of the produce we raise in the Community Garden there. I also collect donations from the other Farmer's Market vendors after the market on Saturday and take them in. I have to keep track of who donates what and weigh everything and get a receipt. So it takes a bit of time. The community garden donated 1 1/2 lbs. of radishes. Yay!

Then I went downtown to a little family-owned bakery/ lunch spot to sell some lettuce and herbs. The proprietor there is a really interesting lady. She and her family are "vegetarians." (I use the quotes because she eats fish.) She said something really neat..., "I believe that the fresher the food, the more life it has in it, the healthier it is." Made me wonder if she doesn't eat a lot of raw food herself? She told me that she makes her own vegetarian stocks for all her soups, instead of using prepackaged chicken stock. I'll have to pass that along to my "cooked vegetarian" friends. She also talked about the struggle to educate her customers, but also be successful in business by giving them what they want--like meat and storebought bread.

The neatest thing she mentioned is that she is planning to go to a local park and harvest all of the mulberries there. She bought $7.50 worth of my lettuce and took some samples of my partner's herbs. She will definitely be buying fresh basil and cilantro, but wants to experiment with some others.

After that little adventure, we all packed up the car and drove 40 minutes to visit my parents and go swimming and play tennis at the country club where my mom works. My family is... let's say, unique. So, it was a relatively painless visit considering. Unfortunately, the pool closed 30 minutes after we got there because of a swim meet that no one knew about. But we had fun walking around the golf course, playing tennis, etc. The highlight of the kids' day was to see some great big bullfrogs down by the pond on the golf course. My 2 year-old would chase them until they would jump into the pond with a big PLOP.

Today's Food

10 a.m. About 10 C. watermelon

1 p.m. While preparing food--a bit of bok choy, some of the tomato herb soup that I made for "lunch"

3 p.m. (lunch) A lot of bok choy with lime juice, some Four Seasons and leaf lettuces, Tomato Herb soup with roma tomatoes, yellow pepper, lime juice, fresh chives and dill blended (not so great, unfortunately--the tomatoes needed to be riper), 2 large bananas

7 p.m. Banana ice cream made with 4 medium bananas and a bit of Chinese 5-spice powder

Total: About 1300 calories