Smoke sausage, whole wheat linguine, tomato-garlic sauce, and lima beans with corn.

Sir fried pork with cumin/saffron/turmeric fried rice and assorted vegetables.

Shrimp, assorted veggies, and pasta with garlic Alfredo sauce. I totally broke the sauce last night, but it still tasted great.

Lemon pepper chicken, whole wheat penne with an butter, garlic, and balsamic vinegar sauce (topped with freshly grated Parmesan), and a garden salad (the lettuce actually being from my garden).

Mmm … mmm … good!

Watch this, and then join me in being appalled:

I wouldn’t expect a room of six-year-old kids to all know how to identify all manner of fresh vegetables, because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have known what an artichoke was had you shown me one at that age, but I would expect them to know a tomato from a potato … at the very, very least. Why the hell would a six-year-old human not know a tomato or potato on sight?! This can’t be blamed on the schools either. Nope, these kids haven’t been in school long enough yet to blame the schools for their utter lack of knowledge about the foods we all eat.

The blame for this falls squarely on the shoulders of the parents. I’m not saying everyone has to start cooking every meal at home from scratch, but if your child can’t identify a potato or tomato as soon as they see one by the age of six, you are failing as a parent.

Well, tonight we will be eating the last of the first tomatoes! Decided to take a photo before I plucked it off its plant. Oddly shaped, but I know it’s going to be good!

Last Saturday, our farmer friends informed us the farmers market was moving to the Barton Creek Mall parking lot. No complaints from us, seeing as that location is both closer to our home (only by a little) and far easier to access. I’d figured something would be changing at some point, as I’d heard previously that the stadium was getting grumpy about the farmers market taking up space in their parking lot.

But there seems to be more to the story than just a farmers market moving. Apparently, it’s splitting into two markets: one moving to Barton Creek and one moving to some field somewhere.

None of the in-fighting or whatever is going on will change much for us. We’ll be going to the new Barton Creek Farmers Market, because that’s where our farmers are moving. I think this move will be a good thing, and not just an improvement in our personal convenience. More and better parking, easier access, and it’s now on a popular and busy bus route. Additionally, what does one find in a mall parking lot? Consumers with money to spend. There are bound to be some who stop by to see what’s going on, and maybe that will lead to a few more people eating local and organic goods and a few more dollars in local farmers’ pockets.

But we won’t be going to the new location today. We’d already decided to skip this week to give everyone a chance to sort out the details at the new location, and … it’s raining cats and dogs out there right now. Besides, we are still well-stocked on meats and the new season’s veggies aren’t really being brought to market in large quantities yet, so instead, I’ll likely be heading to the grocery store at some point today for some non-organic and likely not local fruits and veggies. Hate to do it, but we’ve got to have fresh fruits and veggies, even if that means kiwis from Italy and bananas from wherever the hell it is our bananas come from these days. Do you read the tiny labels on your fruits and veggies? If not, you’d be amazed where they come from.

Last night’s dinner was stir fried pork cutlets and fried rice. This is a photo of Lin’s plate, as I am still doing the quasi-vegetarian thing (and am happy about it).

We had a fabulously healthy meal for dinner last night. Boiled shrimp and a huge pile of fresh veggies, some from our garden!

Yes, we finally got to eat the first tomato of the year, the one that has been on that plant all winter, and it was good. Sweet with a bit of acid, and the skin wasn’t tough at all. Just wish it had been larger! I saved what seeds there were, and there weren’t many. As soon as they finish fermenting, I will be getting them going in starter pots. I hope some of them are viable.

Also, the last of the broccoli and radishes were in last night’s dinner, as well as the last of the first crop of lettuce. The first lettuce to come up is already going to seed, and as soon as it does, I am simply going to stick some in the ground again. It’s really good lettuce.

There is so much to be said about eating food you have grown yourself. Always brings a smile to my face when something on our dinner plate is something I had a hand in bringing to the table through my own efforts. I am looking forward to the spring growing season with my usual high levels of optimism. Sure, last year was awful, but THIS YEAR, my garden is going to rock!^†

This week I start making the tough decisions about what gets pulled out of the garden and what gets a chance to stay. I have to get some stuff in the ground this week, or my garden won’t be rocking at all. And tomorrow, I will be making the pilgrimage back to the feed store for a couple of plants. Not too many, as I have all manner of seeds stockpiled, but a few. No idea what. I’ll just have to see what he has. Last year I planned the hell out of everything, and nothing worked as planned. This year I am going much more freeform and just sticking stuff in the ground and enjoying myself.

Well, that’s what I am saying now, because I am too lazy to do all that planning and charting and record keeping. I might find not having a rock-hard plan is more annoying to me than having a plan that goes astray along the way. We’ll just have to see.

1. † That is one of the addiction factors in gardening, you know. You always know your next garden is going to be better than your last one, because it just has to be, right? LOL! [↩]

Shrimp, olive, tomato, scallion, mushroom, artichoke, and mozzarella on a crisp whole wheat crust with an artichoke, garlic, and basil pesto sauce.

I think it's the best pizza I have ever made ... or had!

Austin can’t claim taco primacy. That category is too broad, encompassing too many variations in style. When it comes to breakfast tacos, however, Austin trumps all other American cities.
–Tacos in the Morning? That’s the Routine in Austin

This morning, I went out for breakfast. I never go out for breakfast, at least not alone, but I was super hungry and didn’t feel like cooking. Naturally, I went for a breakfast taco. They are quite plentiful, popular, and inexpensive in Austin.

I didn’t go to our usual place –thankfully not mentioned in the NYT article (it’s busy enough over there as is). Instead, I just drove over to Lamar and picked out the taco truck with the longest line of people waiting to be served. That may sound counter-intuitive, if one wants a quick breakfast, but there is a wide range of quality out there in taco truck land, and the one with the most people is always going to be the one with the biggest, best, and most economical tacos.

My favorite blend of breakfast taco flavors? Egg, cheese, potato, bacon, and a touch of hot sauce.

My appetite has gone missing.

The first day, I thought it was just some sort of stomach bug. I’d been a little queasy throughout the day, and that queasiness got worse when I began making dinner. Then it really got bad after I ate said dinner. I popped some antacids in my mouth and thought nothing much of it. I didn’t feel completely awful, and my body is pretty efficient at getting rid of stomach bugs.

The next day I did feel better, but I wasn’t at all hungry, even though I’d not eaten much in the previous 24 hours and should have been very, very hungry. I figured it was still just a virus of some sort and it would work itself out. We had Popeye’s Chicken that night, and I ate it but with less gusto than I normally would dig into crispy fried chicken. I felt a little queasy afterward, so a couple more antacids were taken, and I continued to not think much of it.

But the odd queasiness while cooking or eating and the lack of any desire to eat any of the food I was serving has continued. I wasn’t even terribly interested in the turkey and avocado sandwich I made the day I baked the bread, and for me to not be able to finish one little sandwich with two of my favorite foods on it after days of not eating well made me realize something other than a stomach bug might be responsible.

I’ve been watching what I am eating, when I am eating it, and what the result is. I have added some new spices to my cooking lately, and it is always possible for me to find some new thing that causes me some odd little allergic reaction. I am allergic to a great many things, and there are likely a great many more things out there I haven’t been exposed to yet that I’d have to avoid if I knew about them. So I cut out the new spices and just started eating the most basic things I ever make with only the most basic of ingredients that I know I have no allergic reaction to at all.

No change. Still get queasy while cooking and eating, and I have no appetite for anything much beyond bread, butter, peanut butter, jelly, and fresh (not cooked) veggies and fruit.

Last night I decided to make some round steak slow-cooked in cream of mushroom soup with pasta and steamed cauliflower. This is one of my favorite meals. It’s one of the few meals that leads me to piling my plate high and stuffing myself like a glutton. I forced down as much as I could, and then I put the rest in the fridge for today’s lunch.

I just tried to eat those leftovers –perfectly fine leftovers with nothing at all wrong with them– and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t! The smell of the meat made me feel sick to my stomach, so I tossed it in the trash and sat down to eat the pasta and gravy. I love pasta and gravy, but today I didn’t love it at all. I took another bite or two, and my body informed me it simply wasn’t going to cooperate. I was not to eat this pasta and gravy. So I tossed it in the trash as well and made myself a peanut butter sandwich, which seemed to go down easily.

The conclusions I have come to after some days of considering this problem are that I either have caught some sort of stomach bug that only effects a person’s ability to eat meat (seems unlikely) or that I am once again sick of eating meat (has happened before in the past). The solution? I think I’ll go back to a vegetarian diet for a while and see what happens. I have to do something, because I am beginning to lose weight, and I don’t have any weight to lose. It’s still entirely possible I’ve caught some virus and this will all sort out in another few days, but even so, cutting the meat out of my diet for a while isn’t going to hurt anything and might help.

It’s really sad, because the meat we get is so good, and I know it’s tasty and ethical and healthy, but my body just doesn’t seem to want it. I do try to listen to my body when it starts screaming as loudly about something as it has been the last week. Alas, this means far more kitchen work for me, because I can’t exactly force a vegetarian diet on my unwillingly husband. Oh, I mean I could do that, but it’s likely to lead to much complaining and unhappiness. He is, after all, a meat and potatoes kind of guy, and I much prefer him with a happy stomach.

So now to remake the shopping list to account for all those raw food/vegetarian/fruitarian meals I’ll be needing in the next week in addition to the usual stuff. I’ll be suffering through tonight with grilled cheese sandwiches and whatever I make for dessert while Lin eats the big pot of stew I planned for tonight. Tomorrow, I start eating what my body seems to be craving, and I guess we shall see what becomes of that. Hopefully, it will improve the situation, because I desperately need to start consuming more calories soon. Five pounds lost in one week is just too much for someone who doesn’t have any spare pounds at all to lose. Seriously, weight loss for me is usually a crisis situation and leads to even worse health results. I’ve got to fix this problem fast.