Day 7 - Grow Zucchini, End World Hunger

I seriously think that zucchini can end world hunger.  It is such a prolific vegetable and it can be used in so many ways.  It's one of those things you grow and are excited about at first, but then it keeps producing and producing and you don't know what the heck to do with it.  Even your friends and neighbors don't want any more and start avoiding you.

It's nice to get free vegetables from people, but it comes with an obligation.  You have to take it home and wash it, prepare it and eat it.  And if you don't, you feel guilty about wasting it.

Since my zucchini was stockpiling on me, I decided to take out my food dehydrator and make some zucchini chips.  I'm lucky to have one of these, but I haven't used it in awhile.  Truthfully, I'd rather dry vegetables outside using solar power instead of electricity, but I live on a busy street and it's too dusty outside.

All you have to do is slice veggies thin, around 1/8 inch and lay them on a drying tray.  I filled up the whole dehydrator with about 6 large zucchini.  It takes about 8 to 12 hours to dry depending on how thinly they were sliced.

For my husband, I made a tray of zucchini chips seasoned with garlic powder and pepper, and another tray seasoned with white cheese powder.

This is the finished product.  I have to admit, these things taste like paper when they are dry.  They need to have some kind of dip to go with them.  I'll have to think about that.  Meanwhile, I have a lot of zucchini chips.

I made a trip down to my brother's house to pick up some fruit.  He's got some young dwarf apple trees and some blueberries bushes. 

He has an interesting apple tree.  It was labeled as a "combination tree".  Each branch has a different variety of apple growing on it.

I didn't notice these blueberries the last time I was there, and I'm happy to have these for my oatmeal.

And then I noticed he has a lime tree.  These will be great for salsa when my tomatoes finally ripen. 

My shining moment today was the salad I had for dinner.  I decided to make a salad with the oranges, apples and avocados I had.  I added a hard boiled egg for protein and made a surprisingly refreshing dressing with lemon juice, a bit of olive oil, and a pinch of sugar, salt and pepper.  Really delicious combination so I named it "Egg Harvest Salad".  This salad cost 19 cents!

Day 7

Breakfast

Milton's Squaw Bread with Peanut Butter and Banana Slices

Lunch

Chicken Red Bean Soup

(This soup is a leftover portion from previous days.  I've already accounted for the cost of it, so today it's free!)

Loquats

Dinner

Egg Harvest Salad

Dessert

Baked apple

Calories:  1033

Cost:  59 cents (because soup cost was already accounted for in previous days)

Weight:  xxx - 3.5 pounds

Day 2 - A Sleepy Day

I was sleepy all day today.  I don't know if it has anything to do with what I'm eating or not because I've been going to sleep really late.  I was expecting my energy level to fall in the first few days because I'm eating less carbs, but I can't say my energy was low, I just felt sleepy.  So of course I took a long nap and now I feel better.

This morning I cooked up a pot of oatmeal and had it with 1/2 cup soy milk and the strawberries I picked yesterday.  It was delicious even though I didn't add any additional sweetener.  I am using a vanilla flavored soy milk and that has enough sugar in it already.  The serving size is generous, and I realized I miscalculated the cost.  It's actually only 8 cents a serving, not 16 cents, so suddenly I have some extra money.

By mid morning, I could feel my blood sugar falling.  This seems to happen to me when I eat oatmeal.  People say it's supposed to stick to your ribs, but it doesn't seem to work like that for me.  I needed to have a snack so I had a hard boiled egg, an orange and an apple.  I hasn't hungry, but was eating to bring my blood sugar back up and also I think I was eating because I felt so sleepy and was hoping it would wake me up.

Overall, I don't feel hungry at all.  I don't have any cravings for anything and am eating just to make sure I have enough calories for the day.

For lunch, I had a half cup of rice with 1/4 avocado.  I just mixed them together and ate them like that.  I was planning to have a fried egg with it, but since I had the hard boiled egg earlier, I didn't feel like having another.

For dinner I cooked up a chicken pasta stir fry with 1/2 cup brown rice.  It's made with chicken breast meat (cut from the whole chicken), onions, spaghetti noodles and whatever veggies I have on hand.  Today it was green beans, daikon, broccoli and zucchini. I just used a bit of soy sauce for flavoring.  I made enough for 2 days so I don't have to cook again tomorrow.  If I was hungrier I would have added more veggies.  

And yes, I am cooking my husband's meals separately.  For breakfast he had Portuguese sausage, white rice and eggs over-easy.  For dinner he had Chicken Maison, but I served it with fried potatoes and boiled green beans.

I was at garden #2 today and I can't wait for the tomatoes to ripen.  It looks like they are another 7 to 10 days away.  I want to put them in the soup and eat them with the burritos I'm having later.  I might be able to make some salsa too if those peppers hurry up.

DAY 2

Breakfast

Oatmeal

Soy Milk

Strawberries

Snack

hard boiled egg

orange

apple

Lunch

1/2 cup brown rice

1/4 avocado

Dinner

Chicken Pasta Stir Fry

Brown Rice

Calories:  1170

Cost: 81 cents

  

Bread Failure

Yesterday I decided to bake a loaf of bread from scratch as an experiment to compare it in cost and flavor to store bought bread. 

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I failed.  Okay, so I need more work in the bread baking area.  I wanted to make bread that would be easy and cost effective, so I choose french bread.  It only requires yeast, salt, flour and water.  I decided, however, that I wanted to make it healthier and substituted whole wheat flour instead of white flour.  I don't know what the difference is, but my loaf came out kind of flat and bad tasting.  It was really salty too.  I couldn't eat it and even if I was starving, I don't think I'd want to eat it. Yeah, it was that bad.

I estimate that a loaf of homemade bread with those ingredients would cost less than a dollar for sure if you were buying the yeast and flour in bulk.  And, I'm sure that even though it took hours to make, in reality if I knew what I was doing it would only take about 30 minutes of actual work. 

I will try again.

But not today. 

Probably not tomorrow either.

I need to get over the shock of my failure.

For now I plan on looking for a loaf of bread marked down at the discount bread store.