bee creative

eating local: pancakes, pizza, and mint ice cream

Pancakes:

At the beginning of the summer there are strawberries, and then I usually can pick all the raspberries I want to eat or preserve, and then blueberries.  By the end of August I have to buy berries again (saving what's in the freezer for winter).  I really savor these, knowing that the season will be over soon...

I'm still experimenting with not eating much wheat and less dairy.  It's been fun trying new foods or using foods in new ways.    The pancakes were made with oat flour (Washington flour), an egg from Chattanooga, almond milk that I made and baking powder. 

Pizza

I've been experimenting with pizza crusts too.  Topped with homemade roasted vegetable sauce, zucchini, onions,peppers, roasted corn and homemade ricotta type cheese. 

I make a farm style cheese about every other week.  I'm not very exact about it.  Just bring what milk I have to an almost boil and then start adding vinegar a tablespoon or so at a time until it curdles.  I then strain the curds from the whey.  Sometimes I press the curds into a jar to mold it, other times I take a fork and stir it up a bit.  Sometimes it gets stringy while I'm cooking it so I knead it a bit after I strain the whey off;  that makes it mozzarella-like. It's really easy, really....

I like that it's not quite exact.

 Mint ice cream

Although this batch of ice cream was made with a bit of sugar, I've been experimenting with sweetening with agave, honey and brown rice syrup.  All seem to work well in ice cream. If I'd made this with honey I would be able to say it was 100% local.  For flavoring I steeped the cream/milk mixture with mint from the garden.  I'll be making more. 

The chocolate sauce is made with agave and cocoa powder and is definitely going to be made again too.  I found the recipe in Raw Energy by Stephanie Tourles.

Now it's dinner time...time to go play in the kitchen some more!  Some kind of salad  I think. 

red and yellow: fabric and garden

Didn't expect this. Cotton dyed with elderberry leaves in an aluminum pot.  Solar heat only.

Last year my results were brown. 

The difference would be the aluminum. 

Hope it's color fast.

First tomatoes harvested. 

They were bitter sweet. 

blue eggs...blue skies?

My mother found some local wool for me from a new source.

Seems that it would be perfect for a project suggested by a friend (thanks Sherry!).

The idea is to "knit a stripe in colors to match the sky" every day for a year.  (Leafcutter Designs)

I'm going to tweak the idea a bit by spinning yarn that is a mix of the colors I see in the sky at some point during the first hour after dawn.  It just seemed more meaningful to me to choose a time of day.  That and on any given day we can have everything!  Started this on Monday so I'm at day three. 

I did start with one stripe of hand spun that someone else did, but I'm going to try to do the rest myself with local wool. 

And then:

Arranged in a nine patch for Jude. 

For the last three days I've collected three eggs.  All the chickens are laying now.  The ones to the left are from Chattanooga and should be blue/green.  Not quite yet.

Does anyone know if Ameraucana chicken eggs become more blue as the chickens get older? 

The other thing that is fun about this is the difference in size.  Chattanooga has been laying for about a week and her eggs are tiny.  Rosemary has been laying for a month.  Her eggs started out small too but are already getting larger.  They are in the middle.  Jitterbugs eggs are on the far right.  She is two years old. 

One more nine patch.  Blackberries arranged on top of wool dyed with elderberry leaves. 

I rolled it up and tossed it back in the dye bath with the elderberry leaves. 

 

 

 

looking closer: inspiration

 

It was foggy this morning...just a touch of autumn in the air. 

 

Noticed between the boards that make up the walkway across my garden. 

a silk thread

 

P.S.  The wool is some yarn I carded and spun last year. 

first feather

Yesterday I was out and about with Mom and Dad.  For lunch we pulled over by the side of the road to eat some sandwiches Mom had brought along.  We had a greeter:

 

Dad said he was the sentry quail.  Good thing we weren't planning on going down to the beach.

I've been working on a feather for Jude's Magic Feather Project.

My first feather is a phoenix  feather ( I love  "32 Flavors" by Ani DiFranco in which she refers to a phoenix).  The base is the first cloth that I tried batik with plant dyes.   I used a cork to make wax moons and onion skins for the plant dye. 

The color is quite a bit paler then when first dyed as it took a fair amount of heat to remove the wax.

Beginning again...continuing. 

 

 

postcard: sunshine

The paint color really was named "sunshine."  I used it for a dark corner in my living room. 

postcard: the color of water

 

 

Part of making for me is research.  Part of the layers.

What does determine the color of the ocean? 

weekend postcard

It is later than I thought it was and I should be alseep.  So very quickly...a bit of a round up.

I created a tutorial for how I'm making the postcards for Clare and anyone else who would like to try it.  If you do make one and  you post to your blog, please let me know so I can see what you have done.  I am assuming that anyone trying it this way is a bit familiar with Photoshop Elements. 

Making:

Been working a lot on my green sweater.  I've realized that it is the color of tomato leaves. 

I've also been turning small sewing projects into pillows.  A fun use for small things.

Jude is always inspiring.  I love her black and white stitching and wanted to try something similar.  In the spirit of working with what I have I used white wool and a bit that I dyed with indigo.  This would make it crewel embroidery. It may end up as a little pillow too.  Or maybe a patch?

Cooking:

I've tried several new recipes that are wheat free.  One of my favorites so far is a cracker recipe.  

If you try it, and I really recommend that you do, the quinoa flakes can be replaced with rolled oats.  Also I added less olive oil.  Just enough to make it a dough.   

Gardening:

Working in the garden a lot.  I may regret it, but I have a patch of Himalayan blackberries in the back corner.  This fall I'll try to pull them out again. For now, I'll let them be and harvest the berries. 

 Planting a few things for fall/winter:  kale, Swiss Chard, peas, cabbage, broccoli, and lettuce.  I'll add some spinach soon too. 

Now is a great time to be thinking about next year's garden layout too. 

Stopping:

 

 So much to do...but now it's time to sleep. 

 

 

 

postcard: blueberries

Blueberries are well worth growing if you have space and the right climate.  The bowl that I picked today would have cost me ten dollars at the farmer's market.  I've picked that much 3 or 4 times already this summer off of 3 blueberry bushes. 

It did take awhile for the blueberry bushes to become this productive.  Part of it was reaching the right age.  The other factor was that I finally figured out how to give them enough water.  One spring while I was expanding the vegetable beds I started piling sod in front of the blueberries.  I realized that it would create a type of swale that would catch water so I left the sod in place.  A year later I had more blueberries than I'd ever had before.