Lunch, Day 1

Applesauce, salad consisting of lettuce, carrots, and wine-pickled radishes with a apricot-wine dressing, green beans, and veggie patties (as made by Sharon.)

I added a few soybeans to my plate. My wife only ate a few bites of her food, I can see her interest is waning. I am going to have to work extra-hard to keep her into it! I made her an egg, which had a double-yoke.

Lunch time

I have officially chosen my cheat item: sea salt.
For lunch, I got a little experimental. I cut up about 1/3 of the summer squash, 3 small plums, and a handful of blackberries and threw them in the wok together with a splash of water and cooked them until the squash was tender. The flavor is excellent, but it's a little on the tart side since I traded away all my sweet blackberries last night and haven't gone to pick more... plus the plums were tart too.
I added a side of spinach with sliced cucumbers and sea salt.

Breakfast, Day 1

Breakfast today consisted of;

sliced apples

black walnuts

sweet blackberries

potato corn cakes

Potato Corn Cakes:

1/2 cup cornmeal

1 baby potato

1 clove garlic

1 leaf basil

water

Shred potato, add to cornmeal with water. Mix to a dough-like consistency, add chopped garlic and basil. Cook in a skillet until brown on each side.

The cakes were lacking something, it certainly wasn't garlic flavor.

Day One Breakfast

With no oil or butter, this challenge will put my calphalon nonstick cookware to the test!
This morning's breakfast (Katelynn and I had breakfast together... Todd was already off to work) was scrambled eggs with fresh tomatoes and applesauce.
I can't believe how different the eggs taste... YUM!

Day 1 Breakfast & Lunch

For breakfast:
Sprouted buckwheat (dried in the oven) cooked in apple juice (left over from mom's applesauce), stevia and dried mulberries.
Very chewy - aren't you supposed to chew your food 100x anyway before swallowing it?

For lunch:
Veggie patties - made from sprouted chic peas, sprouted brocolli, corn meal, eggs, foraged wild garlic, chives and basil. I cooked it last night in the walnut oil Mark gave me a few months ago.

Roasted veggies - I made this yesterday with the rest of the walnut oil - turnips, beets, carrots, green beans, spinach, potato. I was going to use this as a base for soup but it looked too good to boil. Besides, we obtained a goose neck as a trade from Mark so I used that along with turnip greens and beet greens to make broth.

Market Day

The challenge week kickoff was today-- we have family dinner on Thursday nights normally, and had agreed to have a market day after dinner tonight in order to bring our extras/items for trade in order to give ourselves an opportunity to have a little of everything.
In attendance were Sharon, Therese, Todd, Katelynn, Myself, and of course our fearless leader, Mark. :o) Our friend Jeff was also present, and although he is not participating in the challenge, he benefited greatly from attending as he was the sole beneficiary of the cleaning out of the fridge from all non-challenge foods.
Everyone left with a sense of satisfaction... Sharon was already busy cooking up meals for the week, and even made veggie patties for everyone from items we all donated.
The trading went as follows:
Mark traded with me (Todd and Katelynn are included with "me")--about .5 lbs. of his walnuts for 2 cloves of garlic and 1/2 of my dried stevia
Mark traded with Therese/Sharon-- about .4 lbs. of his walnuts for .55 lbs. of their potatoes
Therese/Sharon traded with Mark-- their largest turnip for equal weight of his corn meal (1 lb.)
Therese/Sharon traded with me-- .5 lbs of their smallish turnips for .45 lbs of my carrots
Mark traded with me-- 8 of my apples and two of my potatoes for his supply of chicory root
Mark traded with Therese/Sharon-- his cayenne peppers for a baggie of each marjoram and thyme
Therese/Sharon traded with me-- two containers of their apple sauce for my giant zucchini
Mark traded with Therese/Sharon-- 1.2 lbs of their apples sauce for .5lbs of his green beans and .5 lbs of his spinach
Mark traded with me-- .5 lbs of his green beans for .25 lbs dried apricots
Therese/Sharon traded with me-- 1 bag of their clover flowers for 1 bag of my dried apricots
Mark traded with me-- .4 lbs of his spinach for 1 pint of sweet blackberries
Therese/Sharon traded with me-- 1 large turnip for 4 of my small beets
Therese/Sharon traded with Mark-- 4 of their plums and 1 of their peppers for one of his cabbages
Mark traded with me-- one of his cabbages for one of my kohlrabi
Mark traded with me-- 1 lb of his soybeans for 8 of my carrots
Mark traded with me-- one of his summer squash for my apricot fruit leather
Mark traded with Therese/Sharon-- his goose neck for a bunch of their chard, a bowl of their clover flowers, and a couple of their pea pods
Therese/Sharon traded with me-- the remainder of my stevia for a bag of their linden flowers
Therese/Sharon traded with Mark-- 1 container of their apple sauce for 1 bottle of his wine
Mark traded with me-- one of his bottles of wine for one of my jars of apricots
Mark traded with me-- 1/2 a container of his corn meal for 7 of my beets
Therese/Sharon traded with Mark-- a small bag of their linden flowers plus a cucumber for 1 lb of his soybeans.

I must have missed a trade when I was logging them, because I know that Therese and Sharon wound up with one of Mark's summer squashes as well... but I don't have it written down, so I'm not sure what the trade was for... though I think their tomato was involved.

All-in-all, it seems we will have plenty to eat for the week, so concerned friends don't fret!
PLUS, we still all have more growing... and are still planning foraging trips throughout the week!
Stay tuned...

Coffers

Here it is - 7+ months of food accrued for this project. I am going in to market day with;

Dent Corn 9.00lbs

Cooked Mulberries 4.50lbs

Apricot Sauce (pitcher) 3.25lbs

Dried Soybeans 3.40lbs

1/2 Canada Goose 2.75lbs

Yellow Summer Squash 1.95lbs

Black Walnut Meats 1.60lbs

Cabbage 1.40lbs

Bunch Lettuce .80lbs

Frozen Spinach .75lbs

Goose Neck .75lbs

Cucumbers .60lbs

Basswood Greens .50lbs

Ground Meat .50lbs

Frozen Green Beans .35lbs

Fresh Green Beans .30lbs

Goose Fat .10lbs

Radishes .10lbs

Baby Potatoes .10lbs

Apricots .10lbs

Oregano .10lbs

Wild Carrots .05lbs

Roasted Chicory Root .05lbs

Salted Squirrel Meat .05lbs

Mulberry Wine 5-12oz bottles

Salted Preserves 3-16oz jars

Soy Nuts 2/3rds 16oz jar

Apricot Syrup 1-8oz bottle

Mulberry Syrup 1-2oz bottle

6 Small Dried Cayenne Peppers

Burdock Root

Basil

So I'll start with somewhere in the neighborhood of 35-40lbs of food. Several foods (corn, soybeans) expand greatly when cooked so I don't think there will be any threat of starvation. Our meat supply is not very big so I'm hoping to get along with some soups or stews to stretch it out through the week. I'll be bringing mostly the high-volume foods with me to the market tonight (corn, soybeans, etc.) but if any of you see something you'd like to have I'm open to the possibilities.