It's going to be 98F. What to do?1. Coffee and a small bowl of hand-ground grains, cooked with honey, on the patio with Beloved, who's having yogurt and some of last year's blackberries.
2. Let out the poultry and check their water. Gather duck eggs.
3. See Beloved off to work.
4.. Start the soaker hoses.
5.. Pick some favas and peas to shell in the shade later when it's hotter.
6.. Gather outer leaves from cabbages, kale, bok choi, beets, chard, turnips, spinach, collards, cauliflower -- pretty much whatever people will turn up their nose at for having holes in it, or is about to bolt. Debug.
7. Spread leaves in dehydrator. In two days they will be ready to strip and crumble to make a fabulously nutritious and attractive additive to soups, stews, pastas, breads, and salads. Pretty much anything. Year round.8. Gather hen eggs. Lunch of salad with hard-boiled eggs and new potatoes.
9. Shell beans and peas in the shade with a light green drink of mint with whatever, whizzed and strained and cooled.
10. Get around to the dishes in the cool of the house -- 68F while it's already 93F outside, thanks to shades on the outside of windows, insulation, white roof and walls -- and think about what to fix for dinner. Maybe salad tossed with grilled tofu and sunflower seeds, with homebrewed Hefeweizen?
Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit. -- Thoreau
Can you explain what you're doing with the outer leaves a bit more thoroughly? This interests me and I've never heard of it before! :-)
ReplyDeleteHere is a post with some more details. And here is one on construction of one of the dehydrators; we have two. Might be better designed with hinges, though.
ReplyDeleteBasically, dry the leaves until they are like onionskin paper. Grasp a dried leaf by the midrib over a cardboard box. Drag it through your other hand, pulling away leaf matter from veins. Crush leaf matter in box, fishing out the bits that are like sticks (veins that got away). When all the flakes are as small as you like, wait a day to be sure it's really dry, and put up in a gallon jar or whatever works for you.
Use just like basil flakes. Wider range of nutrients, a bit more bland. Sprinkled on diced potatoes and such, makes it look just like the pictures in Better Homes and Supermarkets, but maybe better for you! And the cost is zilch!