Day 2

I'm almost at the end of Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal Vegetable, Miracle. She and her family undertake a year of local food, not quite as strict as I'm trying to be, but a year is a long time! At the end of the year she writes:

"....in India it's sometimes considered a purification ritual to go home and spend a year eating everything from one place - ideally, even to grow it yourself. I liked this name for what we had done: a purification ritual, to cultivate health and gratitude..."

Above is a picture of the rosehips on the rose in our front yard. They sure are beautiful!

Last night we grilled carne asada, some vegetables, and had them with the cranberry beans, cheese, and pico de gallo (tomato, onion, and Serrano pepper.) Since he's not taking the local challenge, Johnny added sour cream from Oregon and lime juice from Mexico to his meal. I was a little jealous, but it still all tasted really good. The beans were surprisingly creamy. I'm used to using beans from a can, and I could really taste the difference! We had watermelon for desert - a small dry farmed Crimson Sweet from Blue Lake - it was so sweet it was really hard to believe that it was truly all natural sugar!

As we sat outside eating, we roasted 3 big bell peppers, 1 red, 1 yellow, and one orange, on the grill. Once they had cooled I put them in a plastic bag in the fridge. I also took the herbs (except the spearmint, which wasn't quite dry yet) that had been drying on the porch and put them in glass jars for tea.

The yogurt was done around bed time, so I drained off the whey and put it in the fridge. The sour cream was still showing no signs of coagulation, so I left it out in the hopes that it would do something over night.

This morning for breakfast I had peppermint lemon balm tea with a few plums and scrambled eggs with a half a green bell pepper and cheese.

At 10AM, the sour cream was still not really thick at, but it tasted a little sour. I think I got it too hot and killed some of the culture when I was trying to regulate the oven temperature by turning it on and off. I decided to use it in the salad dressing I was planning anyway. Hopefully it won't kill me!

I made the salad dressing in our food processor. The roasted bell peppers from last night, 2 grilled Serranos that we also cooked last night, the sourish cream, basil, some red wine, and salt. This is as good as I could get without oil and vinegar! It actually tastes pretty good, sweet and spicy with a bit of a tang from the cream and the wine. Here's a picture of the finished product.

We'll see if I still like it after finishing the whole jar!

The rosehips and spearmint are back on the porch drying, and it's time for lunch!