Monday, May 4, 2009

Of Food and Nature

Yes, I've been painting, but today my mind has been mostly on food and the garden. Today was the delivery day for our organic produce, plus, last weekend we received a whole lot of organic nuts, seeds, rice and dried cranberries. One of our wonderful neighbors is organizing organic bulk orders from local coops for quite a few families and it's been wonderful! The food is of such great quality and the prices are very low! So, yesterday, I made a tasty wheatberry salad I saw at the blog Beauty that Moves, which you can find here. It was simply delicious!!
In the afternoon Daniel was out in our backyard planting some flowers in window boxes under the old windows the previous owners left on the fence. I can't wait until the flowers grow a little and fill in. I'll take another picture then!
Do you notice how it looks like fall in our yard?
Every year, we are fascinated by this. A lot of live oaks grow in this area (and our back yard), and they only shed their old leaves when the new ones start growing in the spring. So, in the spring we are constantly raking leaves (What am I saying?! Daniel is constantly raking leaves!). Also, when people burn their dead leaves in their yards, it smells to us of fall and the coming winter and makes us dream of apple cider and morning frost. Somehow all of this doesn't go with temperatures in the 80's! I wonder if we'll ever get used to that...

This morning when I was watering our vegetables, I had to take a picture of our jasmine in full bloom. Just by keeping that little window open, our whole downstairs smells of jasmine - wonderful!!
I also noticed this beautiful spiderweb while watering (click on it to see more detail). I don't know about you, but there are some things I will always be awestruck by, and the perfection of spiderwebs is one of those things!
And finally this afternoon I found my way back to food and made a batch of muffins loosely based on the great recipe I found here at a great blog called 30 Bucks a Week, although I had to make quite a few changes. I didn't have dates, so I used all dried cranberries, I used lemon zest instead of tangerine zest, I added some vanilla extract, and used ricotta cheese I had in the fridge instead of yogurt. Still, they turned out beautifully and taste delicious!!
Off I go to my little studio so I'll have more art to post very soon!!

11 comments:

  1. Cute idea to put window boxes under the "windows." All the food sounds yummy.

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  2. Your garden will be beautiful. Warm weather is still slow to come so we can't plant just yet. I am going to make the wheat berry salad it looks so good and the muffins do as well.
    You must be a little gourmet cook.

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  3. Raina said...
    I can smell the jasmine flowers and I love the spiderweb. It speaks to my imagination. Both the wheatberry salad and the muffins look yammie. I'm getting hungry:-) Silke, you are taking full adventage of all your senses on your creative journey. Wonderful!

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  4. What a great salad recipe, I will have to try it. We are big on salads and always try to add as many things as possible to them so this recipe is perfect for us.

    Around here, early in the morning when there is frost or dew in the fields we can see thousands of spider webs in great detail. Your right they are and amazing creation to behold.

    Mike

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  5. hi Silke...
    found you thru my heartwing...
    what a gorgeous blog...
    can we journey with you :)
    mona & the girls

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  6. OH The salad I wish I could get may self to eat healthier and we even have a f trader Joes and sunflower market etc. It should make it that much easier. Hey Girl. Your garden looks like my sisters. I bet it is so easy to garden there with all that moisture. Remember in Albq. how hard it was . I just marvel when I get mine to do anything in Santa fe.certain things l just have no luck with.

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  7. The muffins look (and sound) great!

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  8. I love the flower boxes! What a cute idea with the old windows-- talk about recycling! Your post about veggies reminded me that I need to go to the farmer's market this weekend!

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  9. You're such an inspiring blogger to me...I love reading your posts...your food looks scrumptious!
    Have a lovely day,
    Char.

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  10. Hi Sweetie! I have to try this salad! And your muffin changes sound just scrumptous!
    I envy you living in Savannah!
    Hugz, SuZi

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  11. Thank you all for your great comments! I love that you all let me know that you've visited...

    Julie, I do remember how hard the soil was in Albuquerque - pure clay. We planted a gorgeous xeric garden and I remember having to use the pick axe to make the hole for the first little plant!

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