Of bread, beets, potatoes and other organic delights

We've hit a new plateau in the attempt to grow/ make/ control what we eat, so Himself and I are feeling a little smug right now.

Firstly, though, we had to get our basic tools organized. After weeks and months of searching, we managed to get a nearly new breadmaker and a nearly new fridge in the same week.

It never rains but it pours nearly new appliances.

The nearly new breadmaker came from Himself's boss, who had bought it for his wife for Christmas. So it was never used. Which is almost new. I arrived home from work one day and there it was on the dining room table, complete with recipe book.

The fridge came from a neighbour up the road and was a little trickier. We had to find a dolly, wheel it up the road, strap the enormous fridge to it, wheel it back down the road (which is being dug up by Dexter Construction right now) and then haul it up two flights of stairs to our apartment.

Gnugh....!

Suffice it to say Himself was on the heavy end and I was on the balance it so it won't fall on my head end.

Himself's arms are still sore from hauling a fridge up the stairs (almost) by himself.

But ah, bliss, lovely newish clean fridge.

Secondly, we started harvesting the garden.

This year is UN Year of the Potato. As an Irishwoman, potatoes are incredibly important to me. Potatoes are what you eat with your dinner. Some days I do rice, but really, if there's no potatoes in my dinner, then I haven't really eaten.

But the potatoes you get in the supermarket are crap. Soapy, soggy, too small, wrong species. It offends me to have to buy them, like a heroin junkie forced to rob for crappy junk (well maybe not that life-destroying, but you get my drift).

So I planted my own this year.

They grew. The stalks died. I waited. Himself adopted his doom and gloom tone and said they'd never work. It rained. It was hot. Flashbacks of my famine folk memories started to assert themselves, but I forced myself. I waited some more.

Monday I dug them up.

Lovely, purple, large piles of potatoes.

WHAT I GREW BY MYSELF.

Words cannot express how smug I felt on Monday evening, arriving back from my tiny urban garden patch with a bucket of potatoes.

And that was just three plants.

Also, the beets are getting big and are really good.
The beans are being harvested (but I have to figure out what to do with them as I don't do beans normally).
The carrots are still growing, but they're looking good.
The garlic has started to grow, finally, so that will be ready for next year.
And our tomatos are finally putting out like healthy well-fed tomato plants should.

The other night, we had a tomato and mozzarella salad, with our own basil in the vinaigrette, stir-fried beef with vegetables from our garden, Lyse' garden and Ms. Maggie Beach's garden, and a rhubarb crumble made with rhubarb from a friend in Cape Breton.

And potatoes of course.

A big shout out to all the potato people in the world in this, their SPECIAL year.

May you finally figure out how to end the blight in your lives!!

Last night, I remembered to buy yeast and made my own bread for the first time in my life.

The Queen Mum used to make bread.

(She used to grow vegetables as well, and recycle everything. In the seventies and eighties, when you did that kind of stuff because there was a RECESSION. Not because it is a lifestyle branding choice.)

Anyhow, I started with the basic white loaf, and put the breadmaker on 'nice smell wafting into the bedroom at six am this morning).

At six am this morning I woke up and sniffed.

OHMYGOD!!

Nice smell wafting into the bedroom.

After Himself got up and put on the organic (caressed gently by a yak somewhere in the mountains before being lovingly cradled into a bag by an upwardly mobile coffee farmer co-operative member with happy, educated, clothed kids who don't know what it was like when mama and pappa were young) coffee beans, the smell coming from the kitchen was better than the best French boulangerie.

It made me remember my first ever (not for Queen Dad) job, back in 1984, when I managed the till in Griffin's Bakery, Main St, Birr.

There's nothing like sitting in bed feeling smug about your ability to produce your own food while drinking coffee and eating warm bread and jam.

Nothing.

Now, how do I go about opening my own coffee plantation??