Radish harvest

Yum!  One of the first harvests from seed planted this spring - radishes!  Love having loads of veggies that kids can just nibble fresh right out of the garden, with dirt still clinging onto them. 

By the way, did you know dirt makes you smarter? Here are some articles that describe why we should be not only eating a little more dirt clinging to our veggies, but also spending time outside with our hands in the soil breathing in fresh air (and soil bacteria).  Dirt makes us smarter, happier, healthier...research shows there is beneficial bacteria in the soil that lowers depression, diversifies our gut bacteria to make us healthier and happier.

From This Book Was A Tree, why dirt makes you smarter...
Can dirt make us smarter?
And another article here on why dirt makes us smarter...

Wood-fired baking!

Each week during the summer months we have a CSA (community supported agriculture) food pick-up here.  Our friend, Angie from Fertile Ground CSA, brings her gorgeous organic produce and her members pick up their bounty.  We offer fresh bread and baked goods, made in our wood-fired oven.  It allows us the joy of baking for a crowd each week, with freedom to experiment and try new recipes out, as well as many favourite repeats that members ask for.  The favourite breads include: Superseed Bread; Walnut-Raisin; and Potato-Roasted Garlic-Rosemary Bread; and treats such as Vegan Pesto Rolls; Gluten-free Brownies (made with quinoa); White-Chocolate Roasted Almond Cookies; and Whole Wheat Sticky Buns.  All our baking is made with organic flour, organic seeds, and healthful whole ingredients (including basil, zucchini, beets and other veggies as they come into season), with our grains mainly sourced from the local organic flour mill at Oak Manor Farms.  Best of all, we get to bake in our outdoor wood-fired cob oven.  We love so many elements of this oven - it was made by us with the help of family; is made of natural materials; it's fun to play around with the wood-firing learning to heat the oven just right for long enough baking time; we often eat a garden-fresh lunch while baking; and we get to be outdoors while we work.  Here are some photos of this week's baking day.

Wild spring edibles

What abundance we have growing wild around us!  We hosted our annual Wild Spring Edibles workshop today, and even though it's just the beginning of the season with wild greens only starting to peek up, our facilitator managed to find a wide assortment of delicious nutritious wild greens, roots and flowers already available.  She covered all aspects of wild edibles - including: ethical harvesting, traditional approaches, plant spirit medicine, phtyo-nutrients and medicinal values of wild foods, drying and storing, how to prepare wild foods for eating, juicing, safe quantities to consume, and of course (probably most important) proper identification.  We sampled an array of prepared foods such as burdock root tea, pine needle tea, garlic mustard pesto, purslane pesto, garlic mustard root "horseradish", fresh dandelion greens, rosehip jam, and fresh violet blossoms.  Then we had a walk around the Little City Farm property to identify these plants, plus a few others such as nettles, wood sorrel, mallow, evening primrose, wild ginger, wild grape, and ramps (wild garlic).  We are re-inspired to enjoy the bounty around us, to help build attentiveness and appreciation for these plants and bring greater health for our bodies.

Here are some photos of the spring wild edibles here at Little City Farm, with their names below.

Evening Primrose root and leaf

Large burdock root (centre)

Top evening primrose root, middle burdock root, bottom dock root

Stinging nettle greens

Garlic mustard greens

Ramps (wild garlic)

Wild ginger (just opening the leaves)

Violet blossoms and leaves

Young burdock leaves (harvest for the root)

Dandelion greens

Clover leaves

Evening primrose leaves

Wood sorrel leaves

Wild rose buds (harvest the rosehips)

Wild carrot greens (harvest for greens and young roots

Lacto-fermenting workshop

We held our annual lacto-fermenting workshop a short while back.  This is a great workshop to do in the spring or fall, as it is such a great reminder of the simplicity of preserving (and enhancing!) the nutrition of foods through the lacto-fermenting process.  We brought in Jackie McMillan again as our facilitator to guide participants through the basic understandings of the health benefits of lacto-ferments, and how to prepare these delicious foods at home.  Jackie is a local whole foods educator and wild food enthusiast.  As part of the workshop we were treated to all manner of lacto-fermented pickles she had prepared in advance (dilly beans, whole cloves of pickled garlic and ginger root, cabbage kimchi, beet kvass, and more) and then prepared a root vegetable kimchi together using rejuvelac, a salt water brine, and all kinds of great seasonal root veggies that we can still source from local farms at this time of year (daikon radish, beet, turnip, carrot, onion, garlic, red and green cabbage)...

Spelt Banana Bread

We're always on the look-out for healthy snacks, including wheat and sugar free options whenever possible.  We are having fun going through Molly Katzen's kids cookbooks with our almost-5 year old, who loves helping in the kitchen.  The recipes are simple, healthful and vegetarian - three things that are surprisingly hard to find in a kids cookbook!  The books include step-by-step pictures so kids can follow the recipe even if they are not fully reading yet.  We see how kitchen projects can build confidence for children - reading, measuring, numbers, cooperation as well as independence, learning to following something from start to finish to get delicious results - not to mention creativity, as each recipe gets adapted based on what we decide want to add or change.  Needless to say, we love working together in the kitchen as a family and try to do a little of that every day. 

Here is a new favourite recipe for a banana bread that is sugar-free.  It's great for breakfast or mid-day snacks, and has lots of stages for kids to help (mashing bananas, beating eggs, mixing dry, mixing wet, etc):

Spelt Banana Bread

Ingredients:

2 cups whole spelt flour (or other flour you wish to use)
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnut
1/2 cup chocolate chips, optional (this makes the bread a little sweeter)

4 bananas, mashed
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup milk or milk substitute (or even yogurt)
1/2 cup applesauce, pearsauce, applebutter, plumbutter (whatever you have)
1 tsp pure vanilla

Method:
1) Preheat oven to 350F.  Oil large loaf pan.
2) Mix dry ingredients in a bowl.  Mix wet ingredients in another bowl.  Combine wet with dry.
3) Stir just to combine, do not over-mix at this stage.
4) Bake aprox. 55 minutes until knife inserted comes out clean.  Let cool before cutting.