I Grew Free Potatoes!

 And it kind of worked!!  

In April I came across free potatoes and carrots at a thrift store in the region.  Some were pretty edible.  But, I figured if they were at all edible in April, probably store well or overwinter in the ground well so I planted some.

3 Carrots in the wee greenhouse...2 of them are putting out flowers for seed (carrots are bienniels..so the seed saver book tells me)

Maybe 10 potatoes with eyes in the ground on April 8.

The gophers or something have been murdering the potato plants and I'm low on veg at the house yesterday so I dug one or 2 plants (hard to tell when the little b*st*rd gopher things eat the tops off!) and got 2-3 lbs of nice red potatoes.  I left a few tiny ones in the ground.   

I had some for lunch today with the goat meat we canned at work a while back.  This had loco-lime spice mix on it, that was a gift...and DELICIOUS!!

My July experiment is cooking from ingredients everything I eat.  Whole raw fruit or veg is allowed...which will help with an all day meeting I need to go to  (and one person's bday dinner has been booked for this month since December so that would be a meal where I make an exception).
Getting free potatoes and having meat that I prepared in the past really helps.   

I got enough greens out of the garden for salad and topped it with some service berries I picked over the weekend and soaked in vinegar, finished it with a vinaigrette that I made.

Over all, a very "local" lunch and dinner.  Breakfast was eggs from a friend's hens so also very local.  Spices for the most part are from elsewhere.  Herbs mostly out of my garden.

Last time I tried to grow potatoes, I got less out of the ground than I put in...sort of like this years corn "crop" (is it a crop if the harvest weighs less than the seeds you planted?)  (perhaps an "anti-crop")