For those of you waiting with baited breath to hear about the broccoli-fortified meatballs, I am sorry to say that I have nothing to report. I think my first experiment with the broccoli would have gone fine if I had actually made meatballs and dropped them into sauce to simmer. But instead for some reason I decided to make meatloaf. And it turned out fine, and nobody noticed anything, but it happened to be one of those nights where we never quite sat down together for a family meal, and my daughter wasn’t in a meat-eating mood, and what with one thing and another, I ended up eating that meatloaf myself, and what I didn’t eat was given to the dogs.
For what it’s worth – they loved it.
My next experiment went awry because I used some tromboncino squash that I already had defrosted instead of the milder flavored broccoli. This time I made meatballs and once again did not serve them with sauce and spaghetti. The squash was detected immediately.
So I have ceased all ground-beef-related experiments, for the time being, and have decided to be content with the fact that my mac & cheese is now regularly packing a half-head-of-cauliflower punch.
C’est la vie.
I read an interesting book yesterday called Restoring Harmony by Joelle Anthony (2010). It’s a young adult novel that I found on a dystopian novels reading list, and it interested me because the tag line was “After the crash of 2031, people return to agrarian life.” I would definitely classify this as a gritty book, and I found an interview with the author in which it turns out that she’s kind of a gritty girl, too. I had a little trouble getting into the book at first, but once I did, I couldn’t put it down. It was also very inspiring, garden-wise. This is because in a world without oil, and shortages of just about everything, the characters in this novel feed themselves almost entirely out of thier garden. So if you’re looking for some garden motivation, or are just of an apocalyptic state of mind – check it out. It’s actually a very light and upbeat story. And though it seems odd to say about something that’s been classified as a “dystopian” post-apocalyptic tale, I would almost have to call this story wholesome.
I have been sent three different seed catalogues this year and have yet to snuggle down in front of the fire to check them out, but I’ll be doing that soon. I have a lot of seeds already, so I may only order seed potatoes, but we’ll see what catches my wandering eye…
