I'm happy to say that the past week had been a productive one. I finished grading before the weekend, so I had a lot of time to do things at home.
The weekend was hot and humid, so I didn't do much work in the garden. I was so excited to see several tomatoes. I keep a small plastic box near the sink to collect vegetable scraps. When I add these to the compost bin, I wash the box and pour water on to nearby potted plants. A tomato seed must have found its way to one of these pots and sprouted. I planted it in a bigger pot though I didn't expect it to grow well and produce tomatoes.
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| Tomatoes. |
Cardamoms are also flowering. This is the first time I saw cardamom flowers, so I'm waiting to see when I can harvest pods.
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| Cardamom flowers. |
In the kitchen I made potato & leek soup, mushroom risotto (for the first time!), baked turkey wings, pasta with mixed vegetables, sautéed spinach & mushrooms, and tomato & octopus salad. I wanted to make Bless's mackerel curry, but there was only one brand of canned mackerel at the store and it was a product of China. I don't buy farmed seafood from Asia, because I have read that they can contain antibiotic residues. I bought a can of wild caught Alaskan salmon, and I'll make the gravy like Bless does and add salmon.
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| Baked turkey wings. |
I made two pillows for Cathedral window pillow covers. Pillows are quite small compared to the larger ones I already have on the sofa. But I thought it was still better than keeping them in the closet.
Spring break is just a week away, so I'm looking forward to try several new recipes, read more books and do some mending because I've been postponing it for a while.
I've been reading The Smartest Retirement Book You'll Ever Read by Daniel R. Solin. A forum friend sent me The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict, and I'm keeping it for the spring break. 😊
Insurance & tax portion of my monthly mortgage payment went up by $83. That's $83 I have to cut from another expense category or from savings. I was able to save some money this week by buying recycled ink cartridges (50% less than the brand name ones), and picking up 5 loaves of gluten free bread for free (~ $40) at the grocery store because they were close to the expiry date printed on the label. I froze 4 loaves.
The college wants to offer a new online course and I was asked if I could create it. I developed the face to face version of the same course a couple of years ago, so I said I would do this one as well. I will receive a small stipend once it's done, and I can teach the online class in summer and earn a bit more money. I've never taught a fully online course, so this will be a new experience, and a challenge. That's something else I have on my spring break to-do list. I decided I would at least make the course syllabus during the break.
Do you check where your seafood come from?
Do you check where your seafood come from?
Results of this week's to-do list:
1)
2) Mend clothes.
3)
4)
Next week's to-do list:
1) Paperwork.
2) Mend clothes.
3) Wash dinning room window.
4) Transplant basil.
5) Do yoga.
6) Sleep 7 hours.
Nil
Those pillows look great! Yes I am always concerned about the source of my food -and try to buy sustainable and organic if the funds allow.
ReplyDeleteThanks earthmotherwithin.
DeleteI also try to buy organic produce as much as possible. They are more expensive, but I think it's better to spend money on organic food than on medication down the road. :)
Hi Nil, I don't really eat seafood. Sometimes I buy tuna on sale. No, I haven't checked where it's from; I probably should. I do buy grass fed meat and organic chicken. Congratulations on the online course. Extra income is always a plus. That was a great deal that you got on the bread!
ReplyDeleteI love seafood, but it's hard to find US products. Sometimes I see on the label "caught in USA, packaged in China". I think it's hilarious. Catch here, send somewhere thousand miles away to pack it , bring it back to sell in the US. It must be cheaper than doing everything here.
DeleteYay! Volunteer tomatoes and free bread! You can't go wrong with that! Your pillows look good on the sofa! I have never seen cardamom flowers, either! What fun!
ReplyDeleteYou had a very productive weekend! Well done!
Yes, the canned mackerel I buy is a product of China. I am afraid I don't pay a lot of attention to where the food is produced. Maybe I should?
I think you should check the origin of food, especially seafood, Bless.
DeleteAfter having an allergic reaction to store bought shrimp, I'm very careful when buying seafood. And I've read how some countries farm fish, and the stories are not pretty at all.
lovely pillows there. Yes i try to keep a careful eye on where produce comes from. it's not always easy to buy local and regional and fresh, is it? :) cheers sherry
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading and commenting, Sherry.
DeleteYes, it's not easy to always buy local/regional produce. I try to buy organic produce as much as possible, and grow greens & herbs at home. Still sometimes it's not very affordable.
Wow you are busy, love the cushion covers. $83 is a large monthly increase.
ReplyDeleteThanks Deb.
DeleteYes, I have to find ways to save money or earn more. Bills never go down, do they? :)
I long for spring break! Farmed seafood/fish is very susceptible to infections due to the densely populated farming pods (not sure that is the correct name). I doubt that you'd find any farmed product that is completely free of antibiotic residues. We try not to buy any farmed seafood, it is well labelled in the shops but we are not big fish eaters, mostly smoked haddock and sometimes tuna. Mackarel is very common here, locally fished. You'd love it :-) I went mackerel fishing once and have not been able to eat it since. There were just too many fish on the boat...
ReplyDeleteI am the lead of a fully online course and one that has a blended component (one week laboratory work, which is impossible to teach online). It is fun but setting up a new course or module is very time intensive. We use interactive recorded lectures, which take forever to make..... happy to help you out if you need some tips, although of course we work in different education systems.
As always, your food sounds delicious.
Have a lovely week. x
Oh, I'd love to find fresh mackerels. :)
DeleteOnce I taught two hybrid courses. Students watched recorded lectures (they were supposed to, but most didn't) and came to class once a week to do exercises. It was so time consuming to make those videos.
This new course does have a lab component, but it's going to be a fully online course. I have to write labs so that students can use easily available everyday objects like a scale, a ruler, a clock etc. Not an easy task. :) Thank you for the offer of help Christina, I'm sure I'll have questions once I start . A colleague of mine gave me access to her online course, so I can see her course format.
Nil, I also check where my tuna and salmon comes from. I just love those pillows. I have never grown cardamon. You are adventurous :-)
ReplyDeleteHehee I was given a bunch of cardamom plants and I stuck them in ground and in several pots. And they started growing. :)
DeleteYou've been busy and productive as usual......your cushions look great, how exciting to have unplannned tomatoes and congrats on the course. I haven't seen a cardamom plant before, look forward to seeing the flower. I don't eat fish...or animals.....but I think you're wise to check labels and buy as local as possible.
ReplyDeleteThank you Nanette.
DeleteI'm excited to see cardamom flowers. :)
Were you able to find katuk (Sauropus androgynous) ? Mine stopped growing in winter and just now new leaves are coming up.
I ordered a plant from a local nursery, who said they'd notify me when the plants we're ready. I haven't heard anything so thanks for the reminder, I'll give them a call and find out what's happening. Great yours is sprouting again.
DeleteThe pillows are pretty! Yes, we check where our seafood comes from. And your green tomatoes look so perfect. You are quite the gardener, Nil.
ReplyDeleteI like low maintenance gardening, Priscilla. :) I normally stick things in pots and wait them to grow. So it's a bonus when plants appear voluntarily. :)
DeleteThe cathedral pillows are beautiful, Nil. How neat that you have volunteer tomatoes. I love it when that happens. My daughter's great grandfather could scrap a tomato into some dirt and have tomatoes in no time at all, he had a true green thumb.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that some people bury the whole tomato to get seedlings. I've never done that.
DeleteI hope these tomatoes will grow well. Just the other evening I saw lubber grasshoppers are back, so I have to protect plants from them. They destroy everything. :(
Wow, look at those tomatoes, from a random seed!!!!! You are so lucky. Or you really have a 'green thumb.' :-)
ReplyDeleteMe too, no fish from China. No food from China, period. Or Thiland. I had to look, to find tuna in a can, which was really a product of the US, via US ships, etc.
Whether it's P.C. or not, I don't want produce from Mexico either. I search, 'till I find grown in the US. It brings to mind, the old way, of eating in season. Back "in the day," people did not eat lettuce, when it wasn't growing, where they live. Etc. Today, we have become so used to having everything, all year round.... Enough! Off my soap box! ,-)))))
Good for you, with preparing the on-line course. And with reading about preparing for retirement. You are so wise, and so determined, to get where you want to get. Really, so very wise!
It's very happy-making, for an older person like me. :-) Both of us had a similar attitude... We did not splurge, and did save, and did do what was necessary. We did not have the attitude, that we "were entitled" to have every "toy" we wanted. ---- Sadly, not all then, did that. And not all now, do that. Good for you!!!!!!
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Haha I think I was just lucky :)
DeleteEating in season is the best way to go. It's amazing what we see if we care to read labels. I try my best to find US made stuff and things with minimum number of ingredients. I sometimes buy products made in certain European countries because they have stricter consumer protection laws and manufacturers have to follow higher standards.
I really like the way your pillows look on the sofa and they are too pretty to be stored away.
ReplyDeleteI look at volunteer tomatoes as totally free food. Did you plant the cardamom intentionally of is that a volunteer also. I would love to try my hand growing some.
A member of a local gardening group gave me a bunch of cardamom plants, Anne. They are very easy to grow. It took about a year to have buds, and I'm not sure how long it will take to give cardamom pods.
DeleteIf you lived close by I'd give you several plants. :)
The pillows look great on your stripped sofa. Your tomato story reminded me of when my parents bought a brand new house in the late 1960's and had to put in a full yard. In those days you could get sludge from the sewer dump at the Mexican border beach to use as part of the fertilizer base when planting grass seed. The sludge obviously must have also contained human waste residue (in addition to lovely decomposing seaweed, fish, and kelp) because all over my father's carefully seeded lawn popped up cherry tomato plants and bell pepper plants-seeds of which all of which pass through the human tract intact. We still use a rude term to describe cherry tomatoes in our family. Feel free to delete if too offensive :) .
ReplyDeleteHeheee I'm not sure if I'd eat those tomatoes and bell peppers. Ugh
DeleteOn the other hand, unless it's organic, who knows what farmers use to grow vegetables. There's reason once in a while we hear about lettuce etc recalls due to E. coli outbreaks.
That's a nice volunteer tomato! Good luck with the online class. I've taught some all online classes and I'm not a fan, especially for science classes because of the labs (oh and the cheating... Quizlet! They will take down stuff, but they aren't very quick about it, so you have to constant change questions to make sure they're not posted). We found some pretty good simulation labs, but it's still not the same as hands on activities. We also tried lab kits they could do at home, but the cost was really high for students. However, it is nice to have online classes in the summer for some extra money without having to go to campus.
ReplyDeleteI'm still trying to figure out how to do the lab portion. I want them to do hands on activities, so I have to create labs with easily available things. This is a very introductory level course for non science majors, so labs should be very simple.
DeleteI have to think about cheating ... (sigh) . We will offer it for one semester and see how it goes. Hybrid classes stopped after 2 semesters because students preferred face to face classes.
Yes, Nil, I do check where food products are from. We don’t eat canned fush, except for tuna fish. But, I do check all food labels and will not buy any from China or some other places. Nice surprise to get unexpected tomatoes and hope they tyrn out well. Hope you have a good and relaxing spring break. Bummer about the added costs.
ReplyDeleteI buy canned seafood like squids, sardine etc, but it's getting harder and harder to find products made here.
DeleteI'm looking forward to spring break, and my to-do list for the break is getting longer. :)
So nice your spring break is coming. And those tomatoes...you are richly blessed. I plan on growing some in a pot on my deck (where deer can't get to). Cardamom...very interesting! I know that is expensive to buy as a spice. I love it in bread and cake recipes, especially with cherries. I discovered our Walmart has shrimp from the U.S. Gulf coast so I am happy. I usually buy wild Alaskan salmon from Costco. Andrea
ReplyDeleteI've never used cardamom in bread and cake recipes. I will try it next time. Thanks for the tip, Andrea. :)
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