Life, Loaf and the Blues

OK, that is a horrible pun on one of my favorite Etta James CDs (hope Etta is feeling better! I still want to see her in person).

LOAF:
Anywho, just wanted to share one of my favorite but as yet untested by me websites.
It's the Magical Loaf Studio. It's run by the blogger and now book author at Vegan Lunchbox.

I've had the studio generate a garbanzo-sesame seed-quinoa loaf recipe for me. It's almost the same as the garbazo quinoa stew I made a couple of weeks ago which was delicious. Basically a loaf will only be slightly thicker than one of my stews so how could it go wrong.

For those who don't like veggies (you know who you are...we'll use your code name here: Schmangela), this is a great website. If you go back in the blog to a year or so ago, she was packing lunches for her little boy so they are creative and veggie-resistant tested. Those recipes and blog posts got her a book deal or two. Really, if you are trying to cook veggies or be non-dairy, the vegans are the place to look. They know their veggies and generally know how to cook them.

I'll let you know how the loaf turns out.

Other thrifty/simple projects I've got going:

-- learning to make my own malt. I read it on line and think I can do it. They say it works well to feed the yeast (including sourdough) in bread. Better than sugar. And it has to be cheaper than the local organic (and delicious) honey I've been getting.

-- rehabed one of the worm beds and got about 2 gallons of fully processed worm castings. That means it's pretty well straight poo. No discernible remnants of the paper or food scraps that went into the bed. This is a bit late to be changing the bedding and kind of hard on the worms because it gets too acidic from their wee and is too dense for them to move about nicely. I feel a bit bad for the worms, and yet, it is extremely good plant starting compound.

-- planning the garden. The 4foot square will be expanded this year. It will be at least the 4foot square plus all the containers I have. I might add another 4foot square. I had a long super boring meeting on Thursday and used the time to plan out the plants I need and what I'm going to try to start in the house (tomatoes and peppers). Probably will fail again with the starts but I learned quite a bit from my spindly starts last year. The best place to get them going would be in the bedroom window but I'd have to rearrange and find somewhere else for the nice furniture and that isn't going to happen.

And much much more.
(the meeting is the "blues"bit)

LIFE:
OMG! Dolly Freed totally called me at my house...well, trailer. She's got a sinus infection but will still be on the show tomorrow. I hope she doesn't do damage to herself with just a 20 minute interview. We'll go easy on her. She sounds just like she did in the old videos.
For those who don't know her: She wrote "Possum Living" when she was 18 in 1978. It's about being self-sufficient in the suburbs and going your own way rather than being part of the rat race. She went on (after having only a 7th grade formal education) to college and grad school and NASA...seriously. Then stopped all that nonsense to get back in the world she liked better and be an environmental educator. She's a hoot and a half and should be a great interview tomorrow.
For more info on her:
http://possumliving.net/
She's great. I think we'd be bff's if we lived in the same area. She lives very frugally so that she can do what she wants. Has virtually no interest in knickknacks or worrying about what the neighbors think and of course she likes nature. My favorite little anecdote about her right now is when her mother came to live with her and her family for a bit. Her mom brought decorative pillows and tchotchkes so to retaliate, Dolly put bats in her mom's bedroom. And when her son asked why his friend's parents were paying for college while Dolly and the Mr. were not paying for his college, she told her son that his friend's parents must love their kids more.

If you have a few minutes at 2:10ish pm tomorrow, tune in online to www.radiofreemoscow.com to hear the interview...unless Dolly's sinus infection gets the best of her. Let's hope it doesn't.