Sunday, August 28, 2011

Tomatoes and temptation

This year I decided to grow a garden (which I've talked about a few times)... mostly because I had to in order to make the most of my new lifestyle. It wasn't anything exciting (or even worth documenting) but we have gotten some food from it, which was really the whole point.

Regardless, we have eaten some lettuce from it, although the lettuce did the worst - we are pretty certain it's because our cat chose that spot in the garden as his outdoor littler box. Blah. We have gotten lots of tomatoes and a good amount of cucumbers. We were pleasantly surprised to get anything from this last minute, make shift garden... but now we are sold on growing our own food. Next year we will develop our garden more and tend to it better and prepare for it much earlier.... so watch out!

But when we had to prepare yesterday for a potential storm blowing through our yard with high winds, we decided it was best to pick whatever tomatoes were big enough to blow off. We left the cucumbers assuming they would be fine, but I am watching our little stream make it's way slowly up the hill towards our garden... I think it will be fine but we still have a whole day of rain left. If it gets close, we will go pick those as well.


Here are all of the tomatoes we could find to pick.

My goal is to make some ketchup with these babies. Ketchup is one of those things that is hard to find in glass jars, but when we have found it, it is unsweetened (yuck) or really spicy (kids aren't into lots of spice).


So look forward to my ketchup making feedback... sometime later this week if I have the energy.





And on a total side note, I just wanted to add a little moment that I had a few days ago when I had to pick up a prescription for these gross antibiotics that I had to go on (for Lyme - that's why I might not have much energy for the ketchup making). When I was in the store waiting for the prescription to be filled, I was walking around the store looking at everything they sold. I used to shop at this store every now and then even just 4 or 5 months ago... but now I realize that there is NOTHING that I could (would want to) buy there now. Everything is in packaging or made with resources that I don't want to support. I stopped for a minute in front of a flip flop sale display. I had a half a second where I thought how easy and cheap it would be to buy a pair instead of combing second hand stores for a new (used) pair for my partner (who broke his beloved flip flops), but then I stopped myself. This is exactly why people have been coming to me and asking how I can do what I am doing, saying that's it's really difficult: it's called temptation. I get it guys, I really do. And all I can say is this: be confident in your buying decisions and try not to feel guilty about what you feel you need to do for yourself and your family.

After that, I walked out of the store and down the street to a friend's shop who sells second hand items to clear my mind. And when I went back to finally get my prescription, I felt confident again that I could ignore all of the deals wrapped in plastic all around me.

Oh, and as for the prescription, I was able to ask them to kindly leave all paperwork and bags, etc. out of the transaction. They had no problem just handing me the little plastic bottle as is. Who would have known I could avoid all that other waste? It's all a part of the learning process.

Too bad I couldn't avoid the plastic bottle and prescription itself... oh well.


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