Sprouts!

On a recent trip to the nursery, we bought a Thompson and Morgan Sprouter. They were out of alfalfa seeds, so we opted for lentils, as they also had the shortest sprouting time of what was left. About four days later we enjoyed delicious sprouts. I threw them in a salad and Jennifer had them on an egg salad sandwich. We're currently thinking of other uses for them. We hope to grow some more, but we have been lax about cleaning the sprouter since the first batch.

Vegan Banana Bread

I'm not one for eating fresh fruit out of season. I'm not sure why. Maybe it is a biological reason. But I just don't find plums from Chile in January/February to be as nice as plums from 150 miles away in July/August. So usually during the winter and early spring I eat a lot of dried fruit. That often consists of a few packages of Trader Joe's Chile Spiced Mango, and assorted packages of dried apricots, cherries and prunes. This year I've been trying to eat more Pineapple and bananas during the winter in an effort to eat "fresh" fruit. Only I like my bananas to be yellow, and not look so much like a cheetah. When a handful got this way in the fruit bowl, I convinced Jennifer to make some banana bread.

She started with this recipe and modified it from there. For starters, the recipe calls for honey, so is not technically vegan. (Although it does say to swap for agave nectar if you want it vegan.) What I know she did different was swapped in some flax meal for some of the flour. She also added brewer's yeast to the mix as well. The quarter cup of oil was coconut oil. Jennifer added some vegan chocolate chips to the mix before putting it in the oven as well.

We both decided to have some hot out of the oven and emptied half of the 8x8 pan it was made in. Although I found it to be more of a muffin like product, the "bread" was delicious! The treat didn't even last 24 hours in the house before we polished it off. I have already purchased more honey and speckled bananas to recreate this wonderful (and fairly healthy) dish.

Garden Report

Got a lot of stuff planted earlier in the week when the weather was a bit drier than it is today. Not that planting today would be a bad thing, but I'm a little sick and it just wouldn't be healthy for me to try and plant today.


Some volunteer potatoes growing in the lower left corner there. I'm not entirely sure, but I may have some volunteer pistachio trees as well. I left them in to see what they are and what they become. If they truly are pistachio trees, I may try to transplant one into the house.

I'm concentrating more on the onions this year as many veggies we experiment with either don't grow, or we do not really use them. I'm trying spinach again, although it does not seem to be flourishing (and will probably bolt as soon as summer comes.) We are also going to grow collards, but we'll see how they do. I am trying out the tomatoes near the trees this year to see if they will still grow over there. Hard to believe only about six weeks to harvesting those garlic bulbs!