a conscious EVOLUTION

Friday, June 17, 2016

Thursday, June 16, 2016

EAT for life.

Food.

We all need food. It provides us with nutrition, comfort, pleasure… sustenance to live another day. The process of making it can be a particular, complicated and beautiful art form. Multi-layers of flavour may stir emotions or memory, even arousal. Industries thrive on our necessity to: eat daily.

Whether you love to cook or truly despise it, feeding yourself is essential. Food is indispensable to us as human beings.

Here at fire tower, I have become preoccupied with it. More specifically, the creation process. While sharing eats with friends and family always provides a special ingredient to cooking (and I do miss this), being alone has offered the freedom and inspiration to experiment.

My grocery delivery comes by only once per month, so creatively using produce to leave very little waste, has been an important theme. Planning healthy meals for a month feels like a survival skill at this job. I have thoroughly enjoyed creating stocks, soups, stews, curries, pasta’s, chili’s and casseroles that make ample use of the vegetables in my fridge and the dried goods in my cupboard.

Fermenting has been another delicious solution. A hibiscus rose-hip Kombucha, sweetened with wildflower honey, has turned out perfectly. My homemade Kimchi and Sauerkraut were also successful and much easier to make than anticipated.

I’ve sprouted my own sprouts (which is extremely easy but requires a small level of commitment), made yogurt, energy balls, biscuits and attempted sourdough bread. The whole-wheat starter worked well but the actual loaf was awkward and doughy - all the more reason to try again.

Growing a garden has been a helpful addition to my kitchen. I have wasabi greens, salad greens, spinach, swiss chard, kale, multiple herbs, strawberries, peppers, tomatoes, beans, peas, radishes, carrots, onions and scallions! It is amazing what you can grow in a container. Plus, there are dandelions galore scattered about my site.

And, today I struck foodie gold. While walking to my weather station I realized with utter delight, that the wild strawberries have begun to ripen. In my ‘backyard’ I have a hill absolutely covered with these tiny, scrumptious berries. I stopped to enjoy some of natures bounty, picking and eating one-by-one. My dogs decided they were keen to learn too and soon, all three of us were snacking appreciatively.

What a delicious blessing.