Our First Organic Garden in Phoenix

So rather than focusing on a specific recipe today, I'm going to share a little bit about our garden. When we started eating more whole plant-based foods, and buying more organic, we realized it made sense to try to start growing some of our own food. Rich has always had a green thumb and a passion for gardening. I may not have green thumbs (yet), but I do love growing things, and much of that probably came from my parents. I used to hate having to help cover plants in the winter, or carry them into the sun porch. My dad spent a lot of his spare time building flower beds, trellises, etc. and gardening to his heart's content. It's a gorgeous backyard! My mom still keeps it up as much as she can, but it's a lot of work for one person!

My dad, who was an architect, actually built the fence around the backyard, the brick patio from the back doors all the way out to the fish pond, and a wooden "stage" and gate from the main yard to the back portion where the garage is. He and my brother even built a tree house way up in a huge elm tree outside my second story bedroom window! It was a great house and yard to grow up in! This photo shows the patio with the oak tree we planted after my parents bought the house in '72. You can see the grapevines over the trellis at the end of the garage and the plants at the edge of the fish pond, which is just out of sight behind the patio table. The fence line in the background follows the driveway which curves along the side of the house around to the back, where the garage was detached, facing sideways, as it had actually been an old two story carriage house from when the house was built in the 20's! Again, a super-cool house for a kid to grow up in!  I had many adventures in this backyard!

So back to our desert climate organic garden. My husband doesn't do things in a small way. I jokingly call it the Williams Botanical Gardens. We had 7 cubic tons of quality organic soil delivered, which we tediously transported into a 25 foot long garden bed and 21 above ground kiwi crates from Sprouts! We've started composting, and the City of Phoenix sells cutoff versions of curbside trash bins (like at the top of our driveway in the picture to the right) for $5.

Rich built a double-decker structure out of the crates to create a space for hanging plants, along with shade for the plants underneath. We took a couple of classes and planted watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, tomatoes, swiss chard, jalapenos, serranos, mint, basil, Thai basil, rosemary, and more!  We waited a little late to plant in the Spring - it was already warming up - so we didn't have great production, but we did get to enjoy a few things. Not everything made it, though.

So this time, Rich really did his homework, consulted the local experts' planting calendars, and we figured out what we really wanted to grow. He even found better, natural ways to fend off pests - such as those evil green tomato worms that can singlehandedly strip plants of all their leaves in the blink of an eye! One of the reasons I haven't posted in the last few days is that we've been racing the clock to get everything planted and drip lines run. Rich got the first batch of seeds, plugs, and plants into the ground by himself, but I've been helping this time around with everything from planting the seeds to measuring, cutting, and hooking up the drip lines. It's a labor of love!

The list this time around includes bok choy (top left), sugar snap peas (bottom right), parsnips, carrots, radishes, bell peppers, arugula, Texas sweet onions, pearl onions, tomatoes, arugula, butter lettuce, spinach, and Swiss chard... sorry, my writing was just hilariously interrupted by the 10 pm edition of Jr. vs. Sr. Citrus Wars from a local high school! Maybe I'll describe it tomorrow to give you the full effect!  Anyway, the seeds Rich planted a few weeks ago are doing amazingly well and I can't wait to watch what I planted grow! Stay tuned...! :)

Surviving Weekends on an Elimination Diet

OK, I'm really looking for help here! How in the [beep] do you get through the weekend without all the usual go-to foods and beverages? As desperate as I might sound (and feel at times), the weekend wasn't too bad. I'm quickly finding that skipping foods every other day (not eating the same thing two days in a row) isn't as easy as it might sound. I'm a busy girl. I appreciate the convenience of leftovers. So tomatoes, garlic, and onion are very likely going to end up in my stomach two days in a row. How does my stomach know 24 hours from 48 hours anyway? And what constitutes skipping a day. If I go 25 hours in between foods, that's more than a day, right? (sigh...)

Say Cheese!

So actually the hardest thing has been the cheese. I really want cheese. Stinky, creamy, yummy cheese. The stinkier, the better. In fact, my husband makes a dirty martini with blue cheese and olives that he calls a dirty boot. It's awesome. But I did buy some Daiya shredded soy cheese, the mozzarella style, and it's not bad. I'm hearing more and more about how soy isn't good for people with Thyroid issues, or maybe it's just those with Hashimoto's, so I'll have to dig into that some more. However, at the moment, it's the only form of cheese I can have that's reminiscent of the normal stuff. I'm absolutely dying to experiment with a gluten free pizza. I know there are many recipes and options out there. I aslo bought some Tofutti "Better than Cream Cheese" and it, plus the Daiya, were great on a baked potato!

I think the best thing about getting my mindset right with regards to this dietary lifestyle change - because let's face it, it's not just a "diet" - is that I don't spend so much time looking at a lot of the junk in the grocery store. I'm starting to have this mental dialogue running that just "knows" that stuff is bad for me and doesn't care about it, doesn't even want to look at it. Some of it is tempting, probably out of old habits, but for the most part it's like I'm on a mission in the store. Get in, grab what I came for, and get out! Although, it has been fun wandering some of the aisles, looking for things that I can add to my menu.

Gluten Free Vodka

So if you're like me and you like an adult beverage or two to unwind on the weekend, there are definitely options. There are many potato-based vodkas out there, and Tito's, based out of Austin, Texas is great! It's getting amazing reviews (and I can vouch for how smooth it is) and the Tito's web site is very clear about being gluten free. I've even seen Tito's advertised in Southwest Airline's Spirit magazine. A little lime or lemon, a little cranberry juice, or a little gluten free Bloody Mary mix, and you're all set. I'm also a huge fan of the hard apple ciders, like Angry Orchard, Crispin, Ace, and Woodchuck. Each of them are clear on their web sites about being gluten free.

Gluten Free at Big Lots? Sweet!

My best find of the week, thanks to my mother in Texas, is that Big Lots carries a smorgasbord of Bob's Red Mill brand flours and mixes! We're talking good prices, expiration dates that were NOT in the next 6 months, and lots of variety!  This is really cool, because if you've shopped for gluten free products for very long, you know that things cost quite a bit more than your normal processed I would never have even looked there! I came home with more of the gluten free and rice free brownie mix and cornbread mix that I made earlier this week. I also bought a package of cinnamon raisin bread mix, which I figure will do in a pinch this week if I'm craving breads or sweets. I'll post an update with how that turns out.

This afternoon was spent planting another round of seeds with my husband in our fairly new organic garden. He's really gotten into it and I think we're going to have a much better harvest than our 1st attempt at the beginning of the year. The seeds are taking nicely, and many of the plugs (tiny transplants) are doing OK so far. Maybe I'll post on the garden periodically to show it's progress. It's amazing to realize how much I've learned in such a short time, considering I was juicing kale and other things that aren't good for people with thyroid issues. For more on that, the Livestrong web site has a pretty good write-up on how the brassica family of plants suppresses the thyroid gland. Cooking them cuts the goitrogenic properties down quite a bit, so we're still planting kale and bok choy. I just won't be eating large quantities of them raw.

Well, my brain is tapped for the day. Heading out for some more ALCAT blood work in the morning. 'Til next time!