As I've been thinking about what I eat for dinner this past week, it hit me that I don't like to cook for myself...it's just not as satisfying. Also, as I've been getting little update emails from the husband this last week, it was a bit satisfying to hear that he hasn't been thrilled with the food that has been in front of him this past week, his comment that he realized that he really misses my cooking and that I've spoiled him a bit, has been bouncing around in my head quite happily. I've also made a point of going for regular walks while I've been alone, and even before that when I began my online job, all with the purpose of slimming down and getting into better shape.
So with my mind on these things, I came across this interesting exerpt on another blog today:
Wanna lose weight? COOK FOOD YOURSELF.
"[Harvard economist David] Cutler and his colleagues ...surveyed cooking patterns across several cultures and found that obesity rates are inversely correlated with the amount of time spent on food preparation. The more time a nation devotes to food preparation at home, the lower its rate of obesity. In fact, the amount of time spent cooking predicts obesity rates more reliably than female participation in the labor force or income. Other research supports the idea that cooking is a better predictor of a healthful diet than social class: a 1992 study in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that poor women who routinely cooked were more likely to eat a more healthful diet than well-to-do women who did not. So cooking matters — a lot. Which when you think about it, should come as no surprise. When we let corporations do the cooking, they’re bound to go heavy on sugar, fat and salt; these are three tastes we’re hard-wired to like, which happen to be dirt cheap to add and do a good job masking the shortcomings of processed food. And if you make special-occasion foods cheap and easy enough to eat every day, we will eat them every day. The time and work involved in cooking, as well as the delay in gratification built into the process, served as an important check on our appetite. Now that check is gone, and we’re struggling to deal with the consequences." --Michael Pollan, "Out of the Kitchen, on to the Couch" New York Times Magazine, July 29, 2009.
So cooking for yourself matters...this past week that I've been alone has put that into even better perspective. Saturday and Sunday night's dinners have been semi-failures in the cooking realm, I'll share more on that a little later in the week. But, Sunday morning I did get a baking bug and whipped up two loaves of fresh bread, two loaves of pumpkin bread, and a batch of oat cookies that are sweetened only with bananna and dark chocolate chunks. I have to admit that the time in the kitchen was calming and almost theraputic. I felt the least lonely that I've been in the past week while I was measuring ingredients, turning on the mixer, preparing a pan, kneeding dough, turning on the oven, cleaning flour off of the countertops...even the smell of wonderful things baking in the oven changed how I was feeling.
Just as there is something to be said about growing your food yourself, or in the case of our eggs, raising your food yourself, there is equal value in the time spent preparing a meal that nourishes you. I've struggled in my relationship with food for a long time, knowing how to properly portion amounts onto my plate, knowing when I'm hungry vs. when I'm just bored, or stressed, or sad. My weight as an adult has reflected that struggle.
I am a classic "yo-yo-er", and while I'm not sure that's even a word, I am sure that when I am preparing healthy meals from ingredients I trust, for just myself or to share with others, I have a tendency to slow down and appreciate what is going in. Working from home has helped with this...as a teacher in a traditional brick and mortar building, I was overwhelmed by the pressure to eat a meal and enjoy the company of my colleagues whom I didn't spend time with at any other point in the day, all within a matter of 30 minutes. The bells ringing in a school building are unforgiving...you must move when you hear them, your students are waiting, your administrators may be watching...I don't miss that.
In the last year, I've felt like I've been on a path back to having a healthy relationship with meal times. While I really don't like the experience of "cooking for one" again, I think this past week has made me more sharply aware that I need to continue on that path. I am not at a point where I feel like I've "got it", there are always going to be new challenges...for instance, there is a history of diabetes in mine and the husband's family.
So as I continue to gain understanding, I will periodically continue to share what I've learned. Not because it makes for fascinating reading, I'm not so vain as to think this post is that fantastic, but because I want to mark my journey. I want to pay attention to my relationship with food, and remain conscious of my choices.
So back to that one little pumpkin from last year...I think I killed it with love. I checked on it daily and even put a paper plate under it like I'd read somewhere to keep it from sitting in wet dirt and rotting. Well, that little pumpkin was discovered detached and withered looking one day. 
It made me sad, I didn't like to think about it and I didn't want to talk about it when the husband brought it up, he knew I was excited about it, I'd made him check it out any time he was anywhere near my garden. 
Fortunately, this year I've got lots of pumpkins, they are growing wonderfully. Why is this? It's got to be that they like growing in the designer soil in the raised bed. I've also given them a natural fertilizer called "Bio-Fish", twice, once when I put the starts in the ground and again right before I watered recently. My plans for those pumpkins? Pie and decoration. We may even carve a few this year - if the s-son is in the mood, he's turning 13 later this month, so it can be tough to predict what he's still into and what he's outgrown. 
By the way, the two little pumpkins in the picture below were vine rejects, they were detached when I found them, believe it or not, they were actually further along in their growth when I found them than my one little pathetic pumpkin from last year.
I've got more squash right now than I am prepared to deal with. I'll confess that I've been taking the bigger zucchini, splitting it open and giving it to my chickens. I figure if they eat it then I eventually do benefit from growing it. The bigger zucchini doesn't taste as good to me as it does when it's small - of course it's my fault that so much has grown big because I didn't get out early enough to pick it. I do love the odd things that can sometimes happen when growing vegetables. Like these conjoined crookness squash - love them! They are currently taking up space on my coutertop because I like to look at them.
Another oddity, the two zucchini's below were grown from seeds that came from the same pack.
I suppose it's not a long stretch that I'd be such a geek when it comes to pumpkins and squash, I am the lady who regularly takes pictures of her chickens and their eggs. Honestly though, when I look at the gorgeous golden stripes of the crookneck squash in the picture below, I'm kind of amazed that I started the seed that grew into the vine that set the flower that was polinated by a bee and then grew into that squash. I'm okay with being a gardening geek, I can own that.
I was on the look out this summer for when the raspberries would show up at the farm stands. While out in the La Conner area about two weeks ago I found a stand selling half flats for just $6, so I bought two. The berries sat in our extra 'fridge for about a week, partially due to procrastination, but mostly due to work obligations and the short get-a-way trip the husband and I took to Victoria. I did finally get around to turning those lovely berries into sauce and canning it. I ended up with 11 half pint jars of sauce and one partial jar that I refrigerated instead of canning. 
I had a jar from last summer open, and decided to do a side by side taste test. It reminded me of a part-time job I used to have at a winery when I lived in California, in our staff meetings, we sometimes did side-by-side tastings of the same wine but different vintages. So I'm going to give it my best "wine-speak" review, here goes: The 2009 vintage raspberry sauce was tart and short to start, it was reminiscent of meyer lemons and jasmine. It's finish was smooth, sweet, and light. The 2010 vintage raspberry sauce is sweet and more full bodied from start to finish, it reminds me of honey, and nectarines with the slight spice of nutmeg. Neither sauce had strong tannins, even though the seeds were left in the sauce (I like them and don't strain them out). The 2009 is a developed sauce whose flavors have had time to mingle, the 2010, though young, drinks well now and will only continue to improve.Now, don't you think I need to be a dessert sauce sommelier and get paid lots of money to tell people what they are tasting and what it would be good with? New career direction maybe? Naw, I'll just stick with spending my days in a classroom teaching math and in my free time I'll enjoy my homemade raspberry sauce.
Speaking of which, only a few more days until I'm back to work full-time. I think having an untraditional year this last school year has made me feel a bit anxious about going back to full-time brick and mortar work. I'm excited and looking forward to the year, I just don't always adjust to change as gracefully as I could. I need to work on that.
I also learned a lesson in applying fertilizers. I overdid it a bit, when I put the starts in the ground I added a side dressing of "Bio-Fish" fertilizer which is made by a company called Down to Earth. It's a great fertilizer, but in moderation. I burned the plants a bit by using too much. 
May has flown by much quicker than I can get my mind around...sometimes it seems like time is moving much too quickly. Though I'm a bit overwhelmed to be so close to June, I am excited to have summer right around the corner. In this corner of the Pacific Northwest everyone always says that summer actually starts on July 5th. This year I'm especially excited about the fresh berries I'm going to be picking in my garden. The blueberry plant above is new this year, but it's already looking like it is going to be one of my favorites, it is chalk full of berries that are getting more purplish blue in color everyday. 
Also, my strawberry beds are looking gorgeous. I have to admit that it was super annoying to have my chickens invade the strawberry bed at the end of the season last fall, they picked over it with their maurrading little beaks. I remember thinking that they were probably ruining the plants. Since then they've been moved and no longer have access to my strawberry plants or any of the raised beds in my garden for that matter. But, I think the um, fertilizing that they did while they were invading last fall was actually a good thing. I can't believe how healthy, huge and green those plants look! The berries we have are June bearing and ever-bearing varieties, so there should be lots of strawberries to enjoy!
I also spent sometime in the orchard, driving stakes into the ground so I could train down the branches of our fruit trees. I went to a seminar about orchard maintenance about a year ago at a local Country Living Expo. The gentleman who taught the seminar is an expert with fruit trees and he explained that branches that are horizontal product more fruit than branches which grow vertically. It has to do with the way that the tree sends sap into it's limbs and blossoms. It is easiest to train the branches to grow horizontally when the tree is young and the branches have not yet hardened. The trees in our orchard are young, so we are focusing more on training them than on pruning. It was a great workshop, I'm hoping to take it again this winter.
So Saturday we went to a local nursery and picked out five new fruit trees: 
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