Processed food is scary

Forgive me, but I watched Food, Inc this weekend and it's got me all up in arms.

First- let me say this: I still cook with processed food. I still feed my family sugar. In fact, several nights a week I find myself bribing my two year old with a dessert to get her to eat her vegetables.

But ya'll, the food industry has some really shady practices. First they make us fat, and then they sell us things that are supposed to make us thin.

This was a really interesting article I read in The Guardian this week - Why our food is making us fat.

Processed food is scary.

The Remains of the Day

Here lie the remains of the squash

Today Lola and I gardened.

I've been meaning to prune my wild squash for the last few days. Last week, I staked and tied them but over the last few days it has become apparent that I really needed to clean out some of the leaves so they would stop smothering their neighbors.

But...I kept putting it off.  It was always too hot when I had time and evenings are generally a hot mess of dinner, bath, and 2 hour long bedtime stories.

So this afternoon, when I got a weather update that informed me that it was going to rain this afternoon and would continue raining for the next few days, I rushed out into the garden with Lola in tow. I tasked Lola with picking basil leaves for a garlic scape pesto for dinner and got out my trusty shears. 10 minutes later I was left with this sad pile for the compost heap.

On putting your child on a leash

When I was a kid, on the rare occasion my mom took all 5 of us anywhere she would pull out "The Leash"

It was a long telephone cord-ish rope that had little handcuffs spaced every few feet.  We had to walk in tandem and try not to run into other people or each other. For 5 unruly kids this was never easy. Or possible. There were many instances of us getting hopelessly tangled up together and a few successful escape attempts by my little brother. I don't know how he weaseled out of those handcuffs but he certainly was good at it. This is the same brother that managed to drive the car on two separate occasions while sneaking away from our parents all before the age of 5. Both occasions resulted in accidents- once a streetlight and once another car in a parking lot.  If any kid ever needed a good leash, that one did.

Peach Cobbler

The good peaches have begun to show up at the stores. I've bought them two or three times this season thus far and have been very lucky. I always look for one with just a little bit of give and I haven't been disappointed. No mealiness has been encountered- only lush, sweet, juicy loveliness.

Spinach bread - or how much I love my bread machine

I love bread, but unfortunately my stomach can't handle too many carbs at the moment and bread tends to upset it. However, if it's a particularly hearty bread I can have a few nibbles.

Although, I can't eat much of the bread myself, I still love baking it. Occasionally, I'll hand make baguettes, but mostly I experiment with my bread machine. I love the anticipation as the smell of bread fills the house, grabbing a nibble here and there, and watching my family enjoy the fresh baked bread.