Real Food Community

I love food... don't we all?

I especially love to learn about good food, most importantly whole foods and now I've come across a fantastic new group of blogs known as the Real Food Community. These bloggers are passionate about sharing about traditional foods.

Like the saying by Michael Pollan ~ "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." Sadly there are way to many foods that our grandmothers would never recognize today and I think that we need to move back to those unprocessed, recognizable foods and ingredients of yesteryear and stop being tricked by misleading claims found on so much of the packaging found in supermarkets today.

Needless to say I am really looking forward to digging further into some of these new blogs and the best place to find them so I'm told is to start scoping out the Real Food linkups that happen each week. They're loaded with oodles of great articles.

Fight Back Fridays @ Food Renegade

Real Food Wednesdays @ The Kitchen Kop

Wholesome Whole Foods @ Health Food Lover

Others that were recommended as must read blogs are:

Nourishing Days
A Moderate Life
Kitchen Stewardship

This is going to be great! I am really looking forward to all of the new recipes to *grin*. Actually now that I mention recipes I found another blogger through the above link ups that loves Kohlrabi as much as I do and now I have 2 new recipes to try out :)

If you know of more Real Food bloggers that I should check out leave me a comment I'd love to know.

~ Rosina

Kohlrabi Fries ~ Recipe

I don't know why I've never tried growing Kohlrabi in my garden, I eat it all the time! It's sort of alien looking with it's white bulbous bottoms and leggy appendages growing out of it all over the place but it is fabulous eaten raw, grated in salads and now as fries :)

I know you're probably thinking how in the world did I figure I could turn that into fries *grin*. Everyone these days seems to be roasting sweet potatoes or yams, cauliflower and who knows what else in order to replace the good ol' potato and I thought why not Kohlrabi?! LOL.

It's a member of the cabbage family and personally I think that when eaten raw it tastes sort of spicy like a radish and we love radishes so they are a huge hit here plus they pack a wallop of vitamins in each crispy bite.

To prepare your kohlrabi for roasting you treat it like a turnip. Cut off all of the leaves, slice off the top and the root ends so it balances nice and flat on your cutting board and slice off all of the outer skin. Don't be to skimpy when peeling as it can be a little woody under that tough skin if you don't peel enough off.

Next you just slice it into roughly 1/2 to 3/4 inch sections and then across each of those sections just as if you were cutting up potatoes for french fries. No different at all.

Toss with a little olive oil, salt & pepper and roast them on a greased pan at 400 degrees fahrenheit for about 40 minutes or until they are tender and golden brown just like mine in the above picture.

YUM!! When my father was a young boy in Austria they grew these by the truckload on the farm and they would eat them raw all the time so it was a great treat to bring some for him at lunch time :)

Trust me, you've got to try these at least once. If you bake yours a different way let me know. I would love to know! P.S. Check out the Wholesome Whole Foods weekly link roundup for more great recipes and articles :)

~ Rosina

Island Hopping

It's been go go go around here and yesterday we did a little island hopping and took a trip on the ferry over to Quadra Island to visit my cousin and her family :)

It's a short journey, only about 15 minutes before we docked again in Quathiaski Cove and then across the island to where they have a lovely home along the ocean. We were meeting up with another of my cousins and her family that are visiting us from France right now for an afternoon all together :)

I hadn't been here since they moved so it was so much fun to tour around their property and see her gardens, home and animals.

Everything was growing so well in the warm weather. Look at all that lovely lettuce!! Their climate is quite a few degrees warmer than ours and you can definitely see it in the growth difference.

I'm totally smitten with her little greenhouse and I've put it on hubby's 'to do' list for next spring *grin*. Just look at it packed with tomatoes, tomatillos and hot pepper plants. Just lovely :)

The kids had so much fun wandering and playing. L is exactly the same age as her cousin, only 1 day apart, and they played just as if they had spent every day together since birth *grin*. M was the youngest so he spent a lot of time following us, following the dog and playing with the girls when they let him and he wasn't too rough :)

As we finished looking through the gardens we started making our way to the water and along the way we came across the giant stump that my cousin's husband is turning into a hot tub. Isn't it cool?! It's absolutely giant and I think he came across it when he was beach combing a few years back but inside....

you can see how he has carved out seats for sitting in and he plans to pour a concrete slab to place it on and it is going to be a 'salt water' hot tub :) Love it!

Oh how I love being by the ocean. If I could combine our acreage with ocean side living I would do it in a heartbeat! This is looking out towards Kanish Bay and behind the little island is the Johnstone Strait. I could watch hubby go by in his tug with his log tows if I sat here all the time :)

We finally caught up with the boys down at the bay.

K was having some fun seeing if he could catch a fish. Earlier that day his older cousins had been down there baiting their hooks with clams and they had caught a good sized one but he didn't have any luck :(

It could have been due to the fact that there were only teeny tiny little ones floating around *grin*. It was a whole school of them and they were clustering around the side of the dock.

What a fabulous day. I only wish that we were able to stay longer or visit more often. I haven't had a chance to catch up with my cuz on Quadra in quite some time and I always enjoy it when I get a chance to see what she is doing. We do so many similar things with canning and homestead stuff plus she homeschools her daughter just like I do with my three. With so little family here it would be great to be able to see each other more often :)

~ Rosina

Gold River

I've been totally absent again for a couple of days but I promise I'm not ignoring you all *grin*. We hitched up the trailer to head off camping along the Gold River on Friday morning and meet up with hubby's family. There's only one word to describe the weather.... SCORCHING!!

We knew the forecast was for the high 20's low 30's but when we arrived on Friday it had actually clouded over and even sprinkled a little. I had teased everyone that I had done the rain dance before leaving home because I really didn't want to get caught in the dead heat! No such luck. By Saturday the sun was back in full force and it was a sweltering 34 degrees in the shade and I heard someone say that the humidex made it more like the 40's. UGH, I so can't do heat :(

The kids seemed to fair okay in the heat and we tried to keep them extra hydrated with water. Their poor little bodies were so sweaty that the dust just stuck to them instantly as soon as they left the camper *grin*. K had fun playing with his cousins as my SIL's youngest is only 4 days older than him :) So they played in the tent, drew board games with crazy rules and wandered around the campsite.

My little princess stripped every huckleberry bush in site and even tried her hand at making huckleberry juice by smooshing them up and putting them in her drink bottle *grin*.

Where we camped it isn't far to the harbor where fishing boats and tugs can be found tied up...

and they have a fair sized dryland sort and booming ground as well :) I always love to see the machines working with the logs. It reminds me of the haydays here when logging was the driving force of our community. My dad was a heavy duty mechanic and fixed the old off road logging trucks and machinery and one of his friends would take me out in the logging trucks every summer. What a blast!! Some of the roads that we took were so narrow that it felt like you had no road to drive on, and then there was the thrill of spinning around in some of the log loaders that clung to the mountainsides like spiders *grin*. There definitely was never a dull moment out in the bush!

Air Nootka also operates out of harbor and the kids got to see one take off while we were there :) Now if only it hadn't been quite so hot it would have been a perfect trip LOL.

I was so happy to finally make it home to the cold and windy north. As I type this the sky has partially clouded over and the wind is screaming in through the windows so hard that it's making everything on the counters and fridge fly all over the place. I am not going to complain because that icy cool wind feels FABULOUS! *grin*.

Hope you all had a great weekend to :)

~ Rosina

Beating the Heat

The mercury continues to rise around here as the heat wave continues so we had to come up with ways to beat the heat. Not to hard for me as I don't mind staying inside and sewing. I cut out a new dress for L and got the bodice all pinned up and sewn. I just love the turquoise and pink mixed together :)

The kids on the other hand headed out right after breakfast to play in the cool morning air and filled the kiddie pool up with cold water from the well. Oh my goodness was that water cold!! Just a couple of dips in and out and they were all shaking and shivering. Definitely beat the heat for them LOL.

It was like a day at the beach except there was grass instead of sand *grin*.

~ Rosina

Heat Wave

Oh my word... we are in the middle of our first heat wave of the summer season. It was a blistering 31 degrees today which is a total body shock when you've rocketed there from something like 15 degrees the day before *grin*. I know some of you are thinking wimpy, wimpy, wimpy but I'm a cold weather girl and must say I just melt when it gets this hot :)

We spent most of the day indoors trying to keep cool and the forecast is for a couple more days of this until we might get a little bit of cooler weather again. It will give me some time to work on some of my sewing projects *grin*. I've actually been thinking of digging out all of my christmas fabrics that I want to turn into fabric bags for the holiday season. Last year I started making things to stock the shop with in October and it just wasn't early enough so perhaps starting in July will do the trick this year!

I've got my eye on a few vintage hand crank sewing machines on eBay to right now :) My mom has an older treddle singer sewing machine that is in a large cabinet and we've been playing around with it a bit but I thought it would be a lot of fun to just have a table top model that I could pack with when we go camping and L and I could do little quilting projects together without the need for electricity. There always seems to be a lull in the days while camping when she has run out of bugs to follow or trails to explore and I know she would just love to sew with me :)

Ahh, I think I can finally feel the heat subsiding a bit as the sun has completely slipped away now and the darkness is enveloping our home. Hope you all aren't getting to roasted by the sun to :)

~ Rosina

Haying

The days seem to be slipping past us in a blur these days!
The fields are growing like crazy so we have started to cut some of them with our ancient Massey Ferguson tractor.

It's definitely not state of the art and in fact there isn't anything about it that is even from this century! *grin*. I picked up the sickle mower a couple of years ago when one of the old time farmers here was selling off some parts and with a little tlc we got it back up to snuff.

Essentially it's like a giant bar of scissors. Each of the teeth has as a smaller triangular section that slides on the bar from side to side through the larger triangle and as the grass gets caught up in it they slice it off clean. It moves at lightning speed once it is engaged and they have been known to take off fingers in the blink of an eye so to be quite honest it scares me just a little when I'm nearby as it's running.

It does a fine job cutting and takes down nice big swatches of grass at a time.

I wouldn't let anyone get real close to the field while the mower was working so my spectators had to watch from afar as I backed them up as it got closer to us :)

I just love the smell that fills the air after the fields are cut. It's not the same as when you cut your lawn it has this amazingly sweet scent that I just don't know how to describe. If only I had smell-o-vision so I could share it with you *grin*.

All done for the day and taking her back to the shed. You've got to love the old girl.... over 50 years old and still takes a licking and keeps on ticking :)

~ Rosina

Market Day

I hope you all are enjoying your weekend as much as we are!
Today was market day so we loaded up into the car and headed down island for the day :) First stop was at an old favorite. This farm used to be a nursery and produce stand but it closed quite a few years ago and has just recently been revived again. I always love driving down long winding driveways to hidden farmyards and it just happened that we got a HUGE head of organic leaf lettuce for only $2 for taking the time to check out what was happening at the end of this dirt lane *grin*.

A couple of hours after leaving home we finally arrived at the Comox Valley Farmer's Market and I just love it there. It's bursting with the most fantastic vendors selling breads, jams, plants, vegetables, herbs, honey, meats and much more, plus there is live entertainment always. You can literally spend the entire morning there! I purchased tomatoes, red peppers, kolrabi, cucumbers and a really big pumpkin plant to put in our garden :)

Next we headed into the town of Comox and wandered down and about the streets. I felt a bit like a tourist today as I snapped photos of different scenery *grin*. One of our favorite places to stop when we are there is at Benino Gelato.

They have the most amazing flavors of gelato which if you haven't had it before is an Italian version of ice cream that is sooo good :) Passion fruit was my flavor of the day and as M licked away at his bubblegum flavored cone we headed towards the marina.

Such a beautiful and warm day to enjoy our cones and the views of the ocean and mountains :) We really didn't have any particular destination in mind as we wandered and eventually ended up at the park that is right down at the marina.

Play jeeps, monkey bars, swings and slides... what more could a little boy ask for *grin*.

After all that monkeying around we decided to treat ourselves to a really nice lunch in the dining room at the Crown Isle resort. It's actually really reasonably priced for being able to enjoy the view from under the glass domed rooftop and eat at tables covered with linens. Pretty swank I must say *grin*.

My little man enjoyed his fancy cone of fries as I munched away on a walnut sourdough panini filled with an incredible cranberry chutney, brie, pancetta & chicken breast. Mmmm, it was definitely a lip smacking day. Good thing we did a whole lot of walking around town today *grin*.

How about you, what are your weekend plans?

~ Rosina

Happy Canada Day

Happy Canada Day!!!

We headed down to the village this morning just before lunch to take in the sights and sounds of the Canada Day parade :)

The kids love to see all of the fire engines, police cars and ambulances that are all decorated up and blaring their horns *grin*.

They even tossed candy this year which got all of the children around into a frenzy of collecting :) I ran into an old friend which was nice and we got to catch up on what was happening in each others lives and we even enjoyed a hotdog which is a real treat as I very rarely buy them and wouldn't you know it only one of my three actually ate one LOL.

After the parade was over we headed home for lunch as I had made a special Canada Day cake (up in the first photo) which was so yummy and strawberry spritzer drinks to go along with it. Isn't the little strawberry garnish so cute :) Seems like every day is a party around here these days *grin*.

Hope you all had a wonderful day celebrating and to my American friends I wish you all a happy Fourth of July this weekend!!

~ Rosina