Wildly Affordable Organic... and more!

So, if you haven't gathered I am becoming pretty crunchy in my early middle age.  Anyway, I wanted to share my most recent kick along with some other things going in our little family.

I read a book which is pretty cool called 'Wildly Affordable Organic:

During this book the author, Linda Watson, talks about her adventure taking the food stamps challenge.  Food stamps allow you about $1/meal.  So, she wanted to eat healthy organic food for $1/meal.  Pretty lofty goal.  The day she was going to start the challenge she also started working again as it might be easier for someone without a job but a more realistic challenge would be doing it whilst working full time!  Anyway, she includes seasonal eating plans, tips and advice on how to eat great food and buy cheap organic healthy food.  I quite enjoyed her book and got it from the library, I think I may be purchasing it.

It inspired me to do a few things.  First was to try my hand at making yogurt, which by the way is not something I likely to do again, or at least not very often.  It took me two attempts.  During the first one it failed because I was using a heating pad to keep the yogurt warm while the cultures worked their magic, but it apparently  had an automatic shut off - lame (probably not for regular use but lame for yogurt making at least).  The second attempt using a crockpot to keep it warm worked.

 It only yielded about 2 cups of yogurt, I was thinking it would be at least enough for 8 servings, but nope.  It turned out nicely, think and good, but another thing was I don't really love yogurt that much.  Now, I do like it sometimes, but just every once in a while.  I wanted to make if for the challenge of it mainly, I love a good kitchen challenge every once in a while.

Next it has inspired me to get back into bread making.  I love making bread, but sometimes find it a bit tedious.  But in the book she has a fabulous recipe for bread.  It is called a whisk bread as it requires  no kneeding.  Also the dough keeps in the fridge for one to two weeks depending on which recipe you use.  So, my thinking is I can totally switch to homemade bread, yummy and easy!  That got me to invest in a bag of organic wheat berries, as a friend of mine has a wheat grinder.  My first bread that is made from fresh ground wheat is rising!

Then, as I have been searching lately for a farmers market to get some good deals on yummy in season food (which is key to eating organic on a budget, the further food has to travel, the more expense it is).  Anyway, there are a few farm shops here and there but in our neighborhood they are all meat shops, with beef  and pork that are grown on the farm that they sell them on.  So we have great access to farm fresh eggs, and meats, not so much with the produce around here, close enough to make me think I would be willing to actually drive to pick it up.  We are also get fresh milk from a milk man who brings it from a farm about 10 miles away, sweet!  Lately though, we have been drinking even more milk than that so have to stock up on store bought milk, soy milk (vanilla silk, yum), and sometimes even Drew's latest find of bag milk in a jug.

So I found a company that will deliver organic British grown produce to my door.  So it is in season and great quality.  (I am assuming the quality thing, but my first delivery is on Friday, so I am exciting, but will see shortly.  It is only a delivery once a week and in our house we eat a LOT (usually about 9 servings a day) of fruit and veggies and buy them twice a week at least.

Finally, this weekend we have done some planting of our own.  I had wanted to have a garden for while, but something kind of small scale.  Well, on Friday I was at a friends house and noticed a table where they were selling plants and cheap!  I bought 3 strawberry plants, 3 bean plants, and one thyme plant for 3 pounds total!  Awesome.  So we bought a nice container this weekend and planted them.

Drew also bought some carrot seeds, tomatoes, and cucumbers.  So we shall see how it goes.  I  think whenever we settle down and get a place of our own we will be purchasing some fruit trees, Drew really wanted to get some, but I am not so sure they would even produce anything before we move, so we, will have to leave that for another time.  I think the nice weather we had this weekend really sparked this off.  This afternoon if the sun stays out Anna, Lizzie and I will head outside to plant a couple more things!