Organic Granny

Sweet Potatoes from California on the Left & my son's Homegrown 'Radiance' Sweet Potatoes to the Right! When I buy sweet potatoes-- the ones with the orange flesh-- I generally call them 'yams' and they generally come from California.  (My son was very serious about their being sweet potatoes-- here is information about the difference between a sweet potato and a yam ). Sweet potatoes figure in a lot of Southern U.S. cookery, and have made their way into Canada over the years of my adulthood.  I do believe that you could buy them in a can (yuck) when I was a child, but that was about it.  In Northern Saskatchewan, where potatoes were always white. I remember eating them caked with brown sugar.  The taste of the sweet potato was unfamiliar and not as comforting as the good old "Irish" or white potato I grew up with, so the sweet potato with the addition of brown sugar just seemed... disgusting. This beautiful orange flesh makes me call this a

This roast recipe is adapted from a recipe in the March 1998 issue of Veggie Life magazine when vegan cookery was really in its infancy in North America.  You might be able to find these 'classic' magazines in a local thrift shop like I did.  They are gold! INGREDIENTS:  T=Tablespoon  C=8 oz Cup  Pound=16 oz  g=Gram 1 medium organic Onion , finely chopped 1 T. Extra Virgin Olive Oil ( or use water or broth) 3 cloves organic Garlic , minced 1/2 C. chopped Walnuts 1/4 C. organic  Rolled Oats (Gluten Free, if you eat that way) 1/4 pound (115 g) Shitake Mushrooms , sliced thin 2 C. organic  Vegetable Stock or Water (I use the vegan stock from Costco) 1 T. organic Soy Sauce 3 T. Dijon-style Mustard 3 T. organic Ketchup 2 T. Red Wine, Balsamic  or Apple Cider Vinegar (what you have) Salt and Pepper (to taste) 350 g organic  Firm Tofu , crumbled small (a regular size block of firm tofu) 3 T. organic Starch ( Arrowroot, Tapioca or  organic Corn Starch

Delicious Roasted Plum Jam I am very grateful to live in a place of bountiful fruit. In our yard we have grapes, thornless blackberries, a golden plum tree, hazelnuts, saskatoon berries, blueberries, apples, green figs, and quince. We have an Italian plum tree that has not yet been very forthcoming, but that's okay, because this year two friends gifted us with lovely dark blue, plump, little prune plums. Another friend sent over some sweet, delicious pears from her tree. We are blessed with delicious fruit and generous friends! So, what to do with all these plums?  It is true that I love fresh fruit.  I blame my un-fruited childhood in rural Saskatchewan.  Yes, we did have berries of many kinds, wild and garden-grown, but we did not, or at least on our farm, have any large tree fruits... crabapples don't count.  But here I am with a surfeit of fruit in my twilight years.  And I am adverse to all the work involved in making "preserves" in the traditional w

My current number one beef with the dollar stores might also be shared with a bunch of Pinterest and assorted website promoters: those neat little plastic organizers (containers, baskets, etc.) look good for about a year, and then they... disintegrate!  They have a much shorter life than the shopping bags we get from the grocery stores! Maybe they are made of corn starch or rice starch or ??  In any case, perhaps we should be putting them in our compost bins?? (I'm joking) I guess you do get what you pay for?  Who knew? I have begun to replace the plastic storage/organizational containers with wire baskets, also from the dollar stores.  I also use large pretty dishes and trays in our main bathroom (yes, made from glass, pottery, ceramics) that I purchased at my favourite thrift store (" Too Good To Be Threw " in Courtenay, BC-- the prices are reasonable and the profits go to support programs for women and children escaping abuse).  The work to bring down the cl

Healthy Aging: An Oxymoron? A Healthy Brain Workout A while ago, a friend who was doing some at-home care-giving for her husband who had a terminal illness, called to invite me to go with her to a "workshop about brain health" that she read about in our local paper. Like many "boomers"-- that is, people born in the 1940s to early 1960s demographic-- I am interested in layman's "brain science" where it relates to my being able to make some practical lifestyle adjustments to extend the life span of my brain's health, and, I hope, forego dementia and Alzheimer's disease. I said "yes" to her offer. When we arrived I was surprised to find that the workshop was being presented by the local chapter of the British Columbia Alzheimer Society. I have older relatives diagnosed with Alzheimer's and thought that perhaps this would be a way to learn about how to avoid getting that dreadful aging disease. The brochures laid neatly out on one

Ripe Green Figs from the first (breba) crop of the summer When we first moved to Vancouver Island (November 2005), my husband was in awe of the neighbour's wonderful fig trees.  So we planted our own.  One of the two we planted withered and died (cursed?    Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, "May you never bear fruit again!" Immediately the tree withered. When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. "How did the fig tree wither so quickly?" they asked. Jesus replied, "Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." Matthew 21:18–22  The Holy Bible In time, however-- maybe about s

Another hot day it would seem, although, you know how weather works... We are grateful to live in this dry, hot time WITHOUT wild fires nearby. We are grateful for the bounty of our small, disorganized gardens in the backyard: purple pole beans (that cook green), thornless blackberries (if you struggle while picking regular blackberries in thorny bushes, you would so appreciate these thornless ones!), red tumbler tomatoes (thanks to Ed's dear friend Alberto), and the yearly crop of small golden plums from a tree wedged between a fence and a shed. So grateful! If you are grateful for your good fortune and would like to see how that gratitude works in your life, you can find some great suggestions for GRATITUDE PROJECTS here for you and your family.