Lesson Learned

One of the things that I am trying to learn how to do is vegetable container gardening.  We don't have a real garden area, and no way to keep the critters out of the veggies if we planted them in the ground.  Instead, I've been using mostly found containers to grow various veggies.

Being a novice, I decided to try radishes.  I figured that they were notoriously easy and fast growing, so I'd get a quick reward for sticking with something.

Wrong.  

Today I was supposed to harvest my first "crop."  The radishes didn't develop!  I had beautiful tops, but zero radishes.  I turned to my personal horticulturalist, Google, for answers.

It was too hot.  I misjudged the radish's ability to withstand the blistering temperatures of a foothill spring.  It got all the way up into the 80s.  *sigh*

So no radishes yet.  And nothing else for another couple of months.  So there won't be a quick reward for my efforts.  But now I know better, and I'll make sure to pay closer attention to when I need to plant my crops.

DIY Bread

About two months ago I decided to give that Dukan Diet a whirl.

That. Got. Pricey.

But I felt so much better on it.  

I've since gone off of that diet, but I still want to incorporate some of the elements of it in my regular every day real life diet.

1.  Yogurt.  I really like yogurt.  And cottage cheese.  Does the cottage cheese part make me kind of a freak?  Hmmm....

2.  Whole grains.

The problem is any kind of dairy is pricey, especially the cultured kind, and if you want to save money on the breads and pastas you have to trade in on the fiber and nutrition.  My solution is to try to do it myself.

I've been making my own whole wheat bread for a few months now.  I had bought a bread machine at a thrift store for $10 and it did its job until I inherited my mother's fancier schmancier bread machine (and her flour and gluten).  I gave the other machine to a friend.  Right now my favorite bread to make is a whole grain mix. Here's what I tend to do:

1.  1 1/2 cups water

2.  3 tablespoons applesauce

3.  3 tablespoons honey (or brown sugar, or granulated sugar, depending on what I have on hand - just something to sweeten it a little)

4.  1 teaspoon salt

5.  2 cups bread flour (or all-purpose flour - if I use all-purpose I add a little gluten)

6.  1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

7.  1/2 cup old-fashioned oatmeal

8.  1/2 cup whole grains

9.  1 packet of yeast (2 1/4 tsp)

I add the ingredients, in that order, and set my machine to the rapid bake cycle.  2 hours and 17 minutes later I have bread.

It's a hit with my husband (who usually prefers the 99 cent cheapo loafs) and with my 15 month old (remember - no honey before 12 months!).  It makes a nice, tall, easily sliceable loaf that's good for sandwiches, french toast, or just eating by itself.  Once the ingredients are bought and I've made several loaves (usually one per week) it comes out to only slightly more expensive than the one-dollar stuff you find on the bottom rack in the bread department.  It's heavier than what you usually see in the store, so I like to make my sandwiches open-faced.

But my favorite part is that I have more control over the ingredients than if I buy from the store.  I can make sure that everything that goes in is single-ingredient (e.g. the ingredient list for the unsweetened applesauce: apples.).

Tonight I tried my hand at making yogurt.  a 16 ounce container in the store usually costs me $3-4 dollars depending on if it's on sale.  A 16 ounce container of milk + 4 ounces of starter would make me...slightly more than 16 ounces of yogurt at less than half the cost.  We'll see tomorrow whether the taste measures up to the cost savings, ingredient control, and labor...