Sunday, July 23, 2006

Garden again, and eating locally

This little scarlet flax flower is compliments of Canadian Tire, free with purchase. While I had absolutely no expectation that they'd grow, if someone's going to give me free seeds, I'll probably find a place to plant them. :)


I haven't the foggiest what flower is - do you? It certainly doesn't belong to the tag that's behind it.


Close-up of the lavendar. It's such a pretty plant, and smells so good. I've heard you can cook with it, but that seems so strange to me.


I've been trying to join Pocket Farm's One Local Summer challenge, but I'm having the darnedest time finding the local meat suppliers. And we're not vegetarians.

Today's brunch was french toast and sausages. Only the bread was reliably local. The eggs, milk, cinnamon and sausages were all bought at the big chain grocery store so who knows where they came from? It's kind of frustrating.

But I did just find this set of pages for Eating Locally in Waterloo Region, so stay tuned. All it takes is a little more effort, right?

It's possible that I'm overthinking this too much. We got some steaks from a nice store just around the corner and they said the butcher is over in Guelph, but they didn't know where the cow came from. Probably not that far away but still... if I don't know, how can I claim it's local?

And of course, I am being my usual nitpicky self - I want to do a 100km radius just because we use the metric system up here in Canada and I can't even think in miles anymore. Given that y'all are using 100 mile radius in the USA, I'm making it even harder on myself. If we do the math, 100 km is approximately 62.14 miles. See why I don't want to remember some odd number?

It shouldn't be that hard, I'm smack in the middle of Foodland Ontario.

Fussy, fussy girl....

Karen

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those lovely yellow flowers are oenathra or Evening Primrose. They tend to bloom in the evening which is why I used to plant them, it used to be the only time I saw my garden. I adore them, but they only seem to last a year or two for me and then don't come up again.
They come in other colours as well.

Craftygrrrl said...

I have quite a few recipes that call for Lavender, mainly short breads and scones but there is a guy in Kensington Market who sells organic ice cream and has Lavender Blueberry...it is quite tasty...

Diana said...

I have 3 evening primrose (the yellow you have, a pale pink with varigated leaves and a white). All came back this year (planted last year. I adore them.

cyndy said...

Evening primrose are great...I love to stand in front of them in the twilight, you can actually watch them open and within minutes the moths come to pollinate them! (ps..watch out -some night pollinaters are moths of the cutworm) The root is biennial..and they like sandy soil and sun. If you grow them from seed, make sure it is stratified, and transplant them in the fall of the first year to get them to flower.

Anonymous said...

You have an amazing garden. I wanna do a blog too! Thanks for posting on the MI thread. It will be fun to check in periodically. LC (Pookie II)