The Garden

I like to garden. Actually, I really like the idea of gardening, but I like even more the reality of eating food that I grew and know how it was handled. When we arrived here in May, I brought with me a ton of garden starts that may brother had been nurturing in his yard in Eugene since February or March. The starts survived the trip down here, but took a lot of attention those first 5 or 6 weeks because of the freezing temperatures at night. I had to take them in and out of the cookhouse every night and lost a few even in that process.

Finally, about the second week of June, Brian hauled in a bunch of dirt to our "yard", and I put the starts in the ground. (photo) They were doing great until June 16th, when it froze over night and snowed all day the next day. We thought we had lost a lot of them, but the damage wasn't as bad after all. After the last several weeks of hot weather and consistent watering, three of the tomato plants and one of the peppers came back. Additionally, my mom brought me 5 good

sized tomato plants last weekend, and the garden looks happy.

Now we have growing: black beans, onions, cilantro, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, watermelon, beets, corn, broccoli, and a few carrots. We've been eating the lettuce for a few weeks, but yesterday we had broccoli out of the garden too. I've never grown watermelon before, so I'm excited to see how it will do. The corn, although it looks great, and makes any garden look authentic in my book, may never make it to the table. Our growing season is only about 60-75 days, and the corn needs a little more than that. I'm still hoping though, and in the meantime it sure looks pretty. If we're lucky, we'll have enough ingredients to at least make and can some of our own salsa. One of the big challenges has been to protect the growing garden from the many critters of the desert with a mish mash of fencing and chicken wire.....but so far it seems to be holding its own.

A little side note on kitchen activities.....last week I made a big batch of peanut butter balls. If any of you know Brian, you know he loves peanut butter. These snacks are easy to make, super healthy, and at least at our house, disappear quick. Brian shared a few with some of the other guys here, and they were quite the hit. Some of you have asked for the recipe before so here's my best guess at what I put in them. ( I don't really measure, so sorry if my approximations are off).

4 cups peanut butter (or 1 32 oz jar)

1/2 cup honey

1 1/2 tsp salt

**stir top 3 ingredients together well

Add:

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

1/3 c raw sunflower seeds (can use roasted)

1/3 c raw pumpkin seeds (can use roasted)

1/4 c flax seed meal

1/4 c wheat germ

Stir all that up really good---it makes a gooey dough, stickier than cookie dough.

This is the messy part now-roll the "dough" into small balls about 3/4" across, then roll each ball in sesame seeds. The sesame seeds coat the peanut butter so you can eat them without getting your hands all gooey. Then your done....no cooking.

You can substitute any of the dry ingredients with what you have around....I've also used in the past bran buds cereal, chopped almonds, and chopped cashews. We tried it once with dried cranberries but Brian didn't like that as well. You can also try chocolate chips (the mini ones might be good) or raisins. They keep best in the fridge, but are fine at room temperature too.

If you try the recipe and like them, don't thank me....I got the idea from our friend Stephanie when we were in Honduras last fall.....she added cocoa powder I think, and some other things she had around. Its a great energy boost and feels good to eat ( but if you're on a diet, watch out, these are not low calorie items!)