you say tomato, I say delicious!: 100% organic, 95% local tomato sauce

Hello, August! In the land of food, August is the month of tomatoes. For the first time in my life, I have a ridiculously bountiful collection of tomato plants in my garden, which means my countertops are constantly full of the juicy, red beauties.

perfect summer soup: roasted beet borscht

Beets, oh, beets. With superpowers like blood cleansing, how have they been the underdog for so long?   Beets have a starring role in our household and I'm finding some great new ways to experiment with them like ... beet croutons! Get outta town (thanks, Eleonora, for the suggestion :)).

the elixir of youth: kombucha!

The fountain of youth. People have been searching for it for centuries. Does it really exist? Who knows. So while we wait for someone to locate the fountain, we can settle for what I call the elixir of youth, more commonly known as kombucha. 

Homemade raspberry, mango and strawberry kombucha

planting, watering, and composting ... oh, my!

A lot has happened garden-wise since my last post. Just wait until you see some of the photos! M and I have probably spent 25 hours over the past few weeks developing our green thumbs (and sore backs, bruised knees) tilling, weeding, building beds, mulching, spreading soil and planting. It's no surprise I have developed a newfound respect for famers, especially the ones that adhere to organic farming methods, and I'm wearing my cuts and bruises like badges of farmer-girl honor.

And now that most of the hard manual labor is over, I've been basking in the excitement of literally growing my own food.

Rows and rows of veggies

the foundation of eating good food: planting a garden!

A lot has happened since my last post: Spring has sprung in lovely Howard County, M and I joined a CSA (Gorman Farm in HoCo), we also joined a community garden and have ourselves a 20 x 25 plot for the next few seasons. I've also made it over halfway through the spring semester in grad school -- hallelujah!

Happy cucumber seedlings

vegan musings

Well, my friends, I have survived a month-long vegan diet. In doing so, I learned several things:

1. I'm a better cook than I originally thought.
2. It's really time consuming to cook something from scratch every day.
3. Blogging takes longer than the 10 minutes per post I thought it would.
4. Eating vegetables gives me a different kind of energy, one that's impossible to get from animals.
5. Cooking is therapeutic, cleaning up is not.
6. Most importantly, sticking to a vegan diet sparked an internal debate about the ethics of eating animals (and animal products).

day 30!!! lentil salad and mashed sweet potatoes

It's the very last day of my vegan challenge. It's also the day before I run a very long distance -- 16 miles. So in preparing to fuel my body with glycogen, I wanted to make something carb-heavy without feeling heavy after consumption. 

The result: lentil salad and mashed sweet 'taters. Mmm.