Let's grow it!

This last weekend I was lucky enough to spend a whole day with my two best friends, Jamie and Felicia.  It was mostly to celebrate Jamie's birthday, but also because we so rarely get to spend an entire day together.  One of the best things about having things in common is we can have a day that includes shopping, doughnuts, Thai food, cake and movies and we are all happy (Anyone notice how much food was involved?).  It was a great day!

Every time we get together we have an unintentional tradition - someone always goes home with at least one book we've borrowed from someone else.  Usually it is coobooks, we all have an obsession with cookbooks - some more than others - but we exchange every type of book.  This weekend I went home with this book:

I am obsessed with this book!  I am already a quarter of the way through and I told Eric last night that I was going to buy it.  I have not been able to set up a garden since we moved into our new house, but I used to have one.  I loved being able to use veggies I grew myself in our meals.  When I first started telling Eric about wanting to grow our own veggies (around 6 years ago), he was fine with it but not interested in helping.  Over the last two years he has really started looking at what we eat - which is great but can be hard when a ton of your favorite foods have caramel color in them and you have to change every shopping habit you have overnight.  We have slowly started cutting things out of our diet and have now gotten rid of almost all processed foods, most of our junk food, high fructose corn syrup, caramel & artificial colors,  partially hydrogenated oils, ect...What it boils down to is I look at labels - a lot!  I would estimate that 80-90% of our food is all natural or organic.  I just don't want to give up Funyuns!  I try to be realistic when I am shopping - sometimes buying all organic veggies and fruits is out of my price range, but regular chips and 'better for you' chips are about the same price.  I have also started making and freezing a ton of different things that we used to buy - like chicken tenders and fries.  (Although I do still buy curly fries that are all natural - my homemade ones just aren't the same yet).

  

So anyways, back to the book...Not only has Eric started looking at what we are buying, he wants to grow and make more things to avoid the chemicals used.  Over the last year we have discussed rain water barrels and watering systems, compost options, and a largish vegetable and fruit garden.  That is why I am so excited about this book - It has a lot of great tips about how to set things up, what to grow and how, plus lots of things I haven't even gotten to read about yet.  I can definitely say that I will not be raising chickens or pigs in my backyard, but figuring out how to grow and save enough produce for year round use is definitely on my how-to list!!!  What's funny is I know I should buy two books because my mom will want one as well - only she would totally raise chickens and pigs if she had the space!  I got my love of gardening from my mom - as well as a lot of the other crafts I like to do (she is a very creative person).  Although gardening  was a latent love - when I was growing up I did not like it at all - I can say it is in my top 3 favorite things to do (except the weeding part)!!  

Too bad I have to wait until next year for my actual garden, but planters are definitely being used this year.  Now I just have to figure out what I want to grow - strawberries, tomatoes, peppers and lettuce are already on the list.  I wonder how much room I have...