African violets

I got interested in African Violets after reading a novel where the woman faked her death to escape her abusive husband.  In preparation, she took a single leaf from each of her beloved plants, wrapped them into a plastic bag, and took with her.  The author must've loved them herself because quite a bit of description went into the how to of propagation. 

I can't think of the title,  later it was made into a movie starring Julia Roberts.

 I started each of these plants from a single leaf/stem that rooted in water.  My sister-in-law was kind enough to allow me to break off little starters from the plants in her south facing bathroom.  They rooted after several weeks in a narrow topped tiny vase. The leaves rot if they get wet, so I was careful not to let them touch water.

The red leafed plant is a begonia.  Flowers are small and delicate pink.

It is underplanted with an African Violet. 

 I don't know the names of any of the varieties. some have rounded leave, some are a bit oblong or have slightly ruffled edges.

Dumpster dived plates and pots.  The cute blue ceramic "watering can" is a favorite. 

Love the purple flower.  Will start saving and soaking eggshells.  

I read someplace that the calcium will increase the blooms.

Upper right shows 2 single, rooted leaves.  It takes a while to start a new little cluster.  One time I got tired of looking at a raggedy big leaf, stared to break off the "bad" parts of it, and discovered a little cluster of baby leaves growing under it.  Pretty hardy overall. 

These are all in a south facing window.

Mint! Also started from a small stem segment that rooted in water.

The other summer I had such good luck with rooting basil stems and increasing the number of plants.  The new plants kept the neighborhood thieves very happy I'm sure.

Book Review: Raw and Beyond: How Omega-3 Nutrition Is Transforming the Raw Food Paradigm

I love the kinds of cookbooks that are big, full of sensuous pictures of food and the beautiful places they come from.  Besides the physical beauty, I love reading and making new to me recipes that are creative and delicious.  Even more than beauty, I love sincerity and love that comes through in collections of handclipped recipes from newspapers kept in an overflowing shoebox, hand lettered or scrawled recipes in a spiral notebook kept by my mother. This is why was I was very excited to receive for review a relatively slim (157 pages), soft cover, cookbook with exactly one 4-color photograph of raw, whole fruits and vegetables on the front cover. The content was a loving evolution of ideas and collaboration of 3 authors. A small book with a long title, black and white text, but the content was juicy:  Raw and Beyond: How Omega-3 Nutrition Is Transforming the Raw Food Paradigm: 100 Delicious Recipes for Sustaining a High-Raw Diet by Victoria Boutenko, Elaina Love, and Chad Sarno.  http://www.amazon.com/Raw-Beyond-Nutrition-Transforming-Paradigm/dp/1583943579/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331947230&sr=1-1

The beginning of the book, Part One, contains each author's personal history, evolution, and lessons learned regarding raw foods. I found the table of omega-3/omega-6 content of particular foods fascinating and surprising in Ms. Boutenko's section.  It shook up my perceptions of foods, like nuts, I thought of as no holds barred healthful. I also found her description of greens as a leafy green parts of plants you can fold around your finger as poetic.  A few years ago I attended a talk by her that made me view lambsquarters and purslane as desirable rather than weedy.  Page 80 contains a Wild Weeds soup that has my mouth watering and in entire body aching for spring. 

Part Two contains the recipes, divided into the categories of Appetizers, Antipasti, and Finger Foods; Salads; Dressings; Soups; Bread, Crackers, and Chips; Entrees; Desserts; Drinks.  Each recipe is label Raw or Cooked.   There is a helpful index in back.  While most of the ingredients are fresh fruits and vegetables and greens, I think that a listing of the more unusual ingredients and mail order places to source them would have been helpful to include.  I imagine outside a big city health food or store supermarket dulse flakes, miso, hemp seeds, nutritional yeast, probiotic powder, cumin powder, flaxseed oil, tamari, chia seeds, golden and brown flaxseeds, mizuna, and Irish Moss Paste. Also specialty items like blenders (more commonly found in kitchens) or food dehydrators (less common) are called for in some recipes. On the other hand, sourcing is probably a few clicks away.

While some of the recipes are more complex, there are certainly recipes with few ingredients that can be found in regular grocery stores and maybe even in the home garden. We actually have all the ingredients in our cupboards for Black Forest Carob Brownies on page 124.  I look forward to the cocoa/dried cherry combination.

I warmly recommend this book to anyone with a sense of cooking adventure, anyone looking to incorporate more raw and/or lightly cooked healthy foods into their diet, or anyone taking steps toward a vegetarian lifestyle.


Disclosure: Victoria Boutenko sent me a copy of Raw and Beyond for an honest review.

Art run over by cars, found, bought, given

The other blowy, gusty day I found 2 photographs about a block apart, both run over by cars.  Tire treads were on the back side of each. 

One seems to be a birthday car for a 1-year old.  I like how the "1" is accidentally backwards.  I wiped the back of the construction paper with a damp paper towel to remove most of dirt. I posted it on a "wall" of my cube at work.

The another one has a workbook open and the heading on the left reads "Magical Numbers."  I washed it with soap and water and left it out to dry.

This one of a couple is from a couple of years ago, found in pretty yellow autumn leaves on the sidewalk.  Kind of smutty expressions.

Mini altar in cellophane purchased at garage sale.  Surrounded by some postcards from outsider art shows at the Intuit Museum and religious cards.

A nice man asked me for money and gave me this framed drawing after I handed him a few dollars. He gave me this over 20 years ago at a big downtown cathedral, another time he gave me another pencil drawing of some commuters waiting for a bus, can't find that one.