Spring

This weekend’s weather made it feel as if spring has finally arrived. This made me extremely happy.

I spent as much of Saturday outside as possible. I was outside almost straight from 8-4 then 6-7. I couldn’t get enough of the weather! This led me to walking most of my errands and I walked a total of 9-10 miles. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much of a tan.

I started out the day by heading to Cafe Tola on Southport and Addison. I had walked by a week or two ago and they had some delicious looking donuts in the front window(they also make fresh empanadas daily). Getting there before 8 gave me the pick of the batch and I got a maple bacon and a red velvet cake donut for Brian and a big cup of strong coffee for myself.  The sun was so warm that the frosting melted a little on the way home.

I tried a bite of each, both delicious, but too sweet for my taste. I recreated my restaurant leftovers of salmon with a bacon potato hash into breakfast. How? By adding and egg, of course. Savory. My preferred breakfast.

With a protein packed breakfast, I was fueled for my walk to Home Depot to pick out some plants for my garden plot.

Still not having enough of the fresh air, I stopped on my walk to Lincoln Square to have some tacos at La Amistad. Sitting outside to eat them, of course.

I went on another walk to pick up a few things at Whole Foods to make food for the week. I threw together these “bowls” of quinoa cooked in vegetable broth, black beans, roasted sweet potato, steamed sesame kale and baked tofu. That made 5 of the 10 lunches for Brian and I to eat this week. These came together in less than one hour.

Sunday, Brian and I got up and ran the Ravenswood 5k. I really loved the route this year and was happy with my time. We had a small miscommunication about breakfast, though. When registering for the race, you could buy a ticket for a pancake breakfast to support the local food pantry. Brian bought one. I didn’t. Wah wah. Fortunately, the pancakes were prepackaged, so he could take them to go. It was probably a good thing, as I was surprisingly not hungry after the race. I had coffee and a bite of a cinnamon roll, but didn’t eat the banana or mini bagel they were handing out.

After coming home and relaxing for a few hours, I was hungry and made myself a mega lunch. I had a broccoli potato patty, two eggs, my mini bagel(toasted with butter), blueberries and an apple with mango ginger Stilton cheese. I put a little cheese on half the bagel and then a slice of apple on top of that. Heavenly. Absolutely delightful. I rarely eat cheese anymore. Or most diary for that matter. I try to make it a rule that if I am going to eat cheese, it has to be good cheese. This was GOOD cheese.

I spent the rest of the afternoon going for walk, checking on my garden plot and making up food for the week. I started a batch of cold brew iced coffee on Saturday and was able to drain it off and jar it yesterday. Just the refreshing beverage I need to have on hand with temps in the 80s tomorrow!

I have been trying to move to a more natural skin care routine. One of the hardest things from me to move away from is my inexpensive but very loved drugstore body lotion. I have tried straight coconut oil before and didn’t love it. I ran across a recipe for whipped coconut oil body butter last week and decided to whip(pun intended) up a batch this weekend. It is absolutely delightful. I can’t wait to share this recipe. A little goes a long way and it really lasts all day.

Multitasking while I was making the body butter, I cooked up some more food to round out our lunches and some dinner for the week. Look at that well stocked fridge.

I’ve had a few people inquire lately about meal plans. Hoping to get to a post soon about how I try to do meal plans. Have a great week everyone and get out and enjoy some fresh air!

Weekend warrior and the garden monster

It’s already Thursday and I’m just getting to my weekend wrap up post? Where has the week gone?

It was a low-key weekend. On Saturday I went to the local farmer’s market and bought nothing. It was a sad turnout of 6 tents and only one had fresh produce and not much of it. Bummer. I did try a new local coffee place. It might be my favorite for iced coffee. It’s the only one that I know of in the area that makes the extra effort to make iced coffee cubes to put in your iced coffee so it doesn’t become diluted as they melt. Their name is well deserved. Happy with iced coffee in my hand, I accidentally wandered into Anthropologie. It was a good day…for my bank account. I left with only a silicone whisk that was on sale for $4.99. The coral dress was very tempting but I had to remind myself that I own more than enough dresses. The woes of a logical adult.

Later Saturday, we had a birthday party that was full of fun, BBQ, beers and some very delicious homemade pies.

We really took advantage of the cooler temperatures on Sunday and went for two long bike rides and spent some time up at the garden.

I finally got my beverage holder, named Norman, attached to Lynn Abbey. It’s a hollowed out coconut shell.

After getting an email from the head of the community garden plots last week in regards to my excessively large plant that was taking over 2 of my neighbors plots, I decided it was time to trim the monstrosity back. Armed with Betty Crocker kitchen scissors and gloves, the beast was trimmed back to half of its size, sacrificing some of the squash that had started forming. It had also grown through the fence and was growing onto the tennis court in two different places.

The good news is that now the plant has started producing, we think we finally know what it is. We originally thought it was a zucchini, but then it got too big. We decided it must be a pumpkin. Well, the initial fruit resemble acorn squash. If that’s true, we are going to have a lot of them. Even after we cut the plant back. Hopefully trimming it back won’t encourage it to grow even more. Brian was a real trooper in helping me out in taming the beast.

Week highlights

It’s been a wacky week here at Spatoola. I woke up not feeling well on Monday and got worse as the day progressed. I ended up leaving work at noon and spent a solid 10 hours on the couch until I moved to my bed. Intermittently spooning chicken wonton soup in my mouth from a local noodle shop.

I woke up feeling slightly better on Tuesday and returned to work. Unfortunately I missed a group work night at the community garden. With the heat, rain and illness I didn’t make it up to my garden until last night.

In the past week, my zucchini plant has tripled in size. It now takes up the back third of my plot and has suffocated my pea plants. It is well out of the boundaries of my plot and is starting to climb the fence of the tennis court!

My mystery plant that I bought unmarked on clearance has revealed itself to be a jalapeño pepper plant.

And my multicolored pepper plant has some good starts. I wonder which color this one will turn?

After work tonight I headed to the local farmers market. I had myself a very farmers market dinner. I love fresh, local food. So much more flavorful than produce at the grocery store. Oh, and some ripe tomatoes from my garden.

And in other exciting news…Whole Foods now has $3 wine! Feeling the pressure from Trader Joe’s?

Now onto one more day of work and a very exciting weekend. It’s the Big Ten 5k/10k which my parents are coming in town for. We will be representing in our Iowa dry fit shirts. On Iowa, Go Hawks!

First harvest

After being gone for few days, I was concerned to see the state of my garden. Fortunately, it looked like someone had watered it for me while I was away. Even better, a few of my tomatoes had ripened.
The goods:

Garden update

Well, my community garden plot is a bit behind since it got started so late, but it’s not all doom and gloom.

I do have a few tomatoes started:

One strawberry…that I might have eaten immediately after this picture.

It looks like I’ll soon have some zucchini, too.

And a very nice plot neighbor, who shared mustard greens, kale, arugula and sorrel with me.

I had no idea what sorrel was, but it was very unique and tasty. My plot neighbor told me that the taste comes from oxalic acid which help with calcium absorption. What she didn’t tell me is that it is only safe in small quantities and fatal in large quantities. Good think I didn’t eat too much of it.

For dinner I had sautéed mustard greens with garlic, an arugula salad topped with an egg and a tomato…thanks to a kind plot neighbor.

Yum! I love summer! And nice people!

Easy veggie wrap

The fridge is pretty bare around here now that Brian is gone most of the week for work and I have been detoxing all week. When it came to make lunch yesterday, we didn’t have many options. Fortunately, my lettuce is doing well and we had enough things to make some veggie wraps for lunch.

I started with brown rice wraps and spread some roasted red pepper hummus on them.

Then added some lettuce that I grew!

Cucumber slices:

Added a few cherry tomatoes:

And some tofu cooked in coconut oil:

Wrap it up and enjoy with carrots, sugar snap peas and slaw. Yum!

Garden plot

I got some awesome news mid week that I got a garden plot at the community garden. News only days after I had given up hope and planted some of my plants in pots.

So today, Brian and I carried my flats of plants to the garden and dug in.

We used hand tools to loosen up the soil, then got to planting. Here is the final product. My plants are definitely small and way behind where they should be, but that’s ok with me. I’m just happy to have space to plant.

I have a few tomato plants, 3 Brussles sprouts, 1 bell pepper plant, kale, lots of fennel, beets, yellow squash, zucchini, watermelon, peas and a wild strawberry plant.

We were also lucky that we got a plot that gets a lot of good sunlight. Some of the others were very shaded.

Summer goals

I feel like I have been a lazy bum lately. My laziness has inspired me to set some goals.

When I first started making the list, all the goals seemed to be geared toward all of the foods I wanted to make and eat this summer. After looking over the list, I would have to run a marathon every week to not weigh 400 pounds by the end of the summer. Time to rework the goals.

Guidelines: To complete goals by Sept 21, 2012(the last calendar day of summer).

1) My first goal is to complete 3 half marathons this summer. Notice I didn’t say run 3 half marathons this summer. I actually have a half marathon in 2 weeks. Unfortunately, I have fallen off the training wagon. If I was able to run the whole thing, I would be really amazed with myself. I don’t think I will be able to. I would like to be able to run the 2nd and 3rd half marathons of the summer, though.

2) I want to be able to do a chin-up. Yes, like old school gym class, hang from a bar and pull myself up. I have always had horrible upper body/arm strength. I want to focus on getting Michelle Obama arms this summer. Have you seen her arms? Perfectly toned. Ok, maybe they won’t look like that by the end of the summer but I would like them to be closer to that than they are now.

3) I want to eat breakfast by the lake at least once. Yep, I live in this great city on this huge lake and I don’t take advantage of it nearly enough.

4) I want to make 3 crafts off of my Pinterest boards. I have pinned several things, but don’t think I have made anything that I have pinned yet. What’s the friggin’ point?

5) I want to do a 3 day green juice cleanse. Maybe it will last longer than 3 days, who knows, but that would be the starting point. I think they can be a good way to reset your system.

6) I want to have a dinner party at our house. Brian and I live in a pretty big place(for living in the city) and we never have people over. I love to cook but never really cook for other people. I need to do it.

7) Providing my plants produce, or even if they don’t…I would like to can/freeze a few things to have quality produce for the winter.

What are your goals for the summer? Don’t have any? Think about setting some. It gives you a little more purpose and helps get things you want to do checked off the list.

Basil down! Basil down!

This is what I came home to yesterday…

In high school some other students and I volunteered for a bike race called the Snake Alley Criterium in my home town. We were assigned the job of corner marshal. The only job we had was to wave our arms up and down and yell “Biker down! Biker down!” if a biker fell. Not hard, right?

Well, guess who got the fastest corner on the race and got to use her arm waving skills? Yep, me. I just remember this guy skidded out so bad that he made a nice large hole in the butt of his spandex and had a big hunk of freshly skinned butt cheek hanging out. How does this story come into play?

When I saw that my basil had blown out of the window sill and landed on the ground, I had the urge to yell, “Basil down! Basil down!” I could have. No one was home to hear me. But I didn’t. I did have a nice little chuckle to myself thinking about that day as a clueless high school and that poor man’s bloody bum.

I made a good effort to replant them as their roots looked intact. Hope fully they can get right back up, just like that biker that day.

Pots and plants

In the beginning of March we had a week of amazingly warm and sunny weather. The beautiful weather had me itching to get my potted garden going. Instead of just buying plants and potting them this year, I decided to start my own plants from seed. Look at the beauties in April:

In April I applied to be part of a community garden in hopes of getting a plot to plant all my fruits and vegetables. I found out that there were a lot more applicants than last year and I was 2nd on the waiting list. I haven’t heard anything since and the lady with park district isn’t returning my emails of inquiry. A very frustrating situation.

So, the plants that I started so long ago are outgrowing their containers and even some are starting to die. I decided yesterday that I need to bite the bullet and plant what I really want in pots in the back yard again and hope for the best. Last years plants did not produce much, so I am not holding my breath for this year to be any better.

Zucchini:

Kale:

Cherry tomato:

Brussels sprouts:

Heirloom tomato:

And some peas(with velcro tape):

And a peapod!

I did get the most awesome product this year though. It is a roll of velcro that helps stake plants up. Highly recommended.

Here’s hoping I have a bountiful harvest. And if not, I enjoy taking care of my plants.