Today Eliza and I picked up a couple of gorgeous bell peppers; a basket of pretty Gala apples; a cucumber; four delectable, super juicy Asian pears; a basket of figs, which happen to be one of my all-time favorites; a jar of honey; and two tamales for Erik’s dinner. I returned home very pleased with my purchases.

So tomorrow I will tear into those figs for sure, and do something with the peppers, even if I just slice them up for snacking. The apples and pears will keep Eliza busy on our morning jogs for a few days at least, and the cucumber might make its way into a fresh cucumber salad. Even though we did not frolic in the sprinklers, all in all I’d say it was a successful trip.

My primary motivation for starting the heap is to create some rich compost to use in my up-and-coming veggie garden. My secondary motivation is to try to cut back on our household waste. My tertiary motivation is to balance the karmic scales after deciding today that I just can’t do the cloth diaper thing.

My next project will be buying and setting up a rain barrel to harvest some of the rain we’ve been getting this summer. The water I harvest will be used to irrigate The Garden. Also, if there is some sort of nuclear holocaust that I, and few others, survive, I will be glad to have potable water. I like to think ahead.

After staring at my newly sprouting vegetables (which are coming along spectacularly, thank you) and wondering halfheartedly if I could harvest them yet, I decided it was time to hotfoot it to Wheatsville for some sorely needed provisions.

Among many other things, such as milk, cheese, and Rockstar Bagels (the best in Austin, btw), I got carrots, apples, bananas, a small head of green cabbage, a green pepper, and a few sweet potatoes (one of my faves). So of course for dinner tonight I whipped up a veggie extravaganza. Because Erik was not going to be dining with me, I opted to use some of the cabbage (one of Erik’s least faves). I made an Asian-style slaw, with cabbage, carrots, apple, and a tangy dressing made with rice vinegar, peanut butter, sesame oil, and a bunch of other ingredients. It was–or, rather, is–quite tasty. I tried to make just enough for myself, but totally overestimated how much cabbage one gal can eat. Suffice it to say, I have a big old bowl of slaw in my fridge for tomorrow.

Every Saturday for quite a while, my dad experimented with different bread making techniques and ingredients. Often I got to help punch or knead the dough into shape.  Sometimes the results were, uh, “chewy,” but most of the time they were delicious. And my mom used the bread he made each weekend for my pb&js all week. There’s a certain indescribable feeling of pride you get as a kid when you had a hand in making the food you eat (a phenomenon I suspect will rub off on Eliza when our garden starts producing).

My dad finished school, I grew up, and the weekend bread making stopped. But in the past year I’ve rekindled my relationship with The Dough. The yeasted arts can be intimidating, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be asking yourself why you didn’t start making your own bread sooner.

Once you find a recipe you like and that works for you, the only real obstacle to having fresh bread all the time is, well, time. I think that’s what intimidates people. You need a good four hours of rising, plus around an hour of baking, to make a good loaf, so if you don’t get to planning that loaf early enough in the day you won’t have any bread to sop up your dinner juices. It is possible to let your dough rise in the refrigerator over night, but I’ve never had success with that technique. I prefer to just do a little ahead-thinking and start before lunch.

A few months ago I made Mark Bittman’s brioche recipe. It was heavenly, but I ended up inhaling the two loaves in just a couple of days. I won’t make that again unless there is a specific need for it. My thighs and my cholesterol can’t handle it.

My current favorite bread recipe is Bittman’s Fast French Bread. It is, indeed, fast, and it only has four ingredients. Bittman is a fan of using a food processor instead of kneading the dough, which makes the process ultra easy (providing you have a food processor). You dump the flour, yeast, and salt in the processor, get it whizzing, then add in a cup of water. After about a minute you have dough.

Let the dough rise for a couple of hours, then shape it into a boule (my personal favorite, but you can do any shape your little heart desires) and let it rise again. When your dough is all puffy and full, bake it up until it’s done. Then, eat it.

If you ever find yourself with leftover rice and no leftover red beans or General Tso’s chicken to go with it, make yourself some rice pudding. It is seriously easy to make and the variations are endless. The last time I made it, to Erik’s dismay, I decided to jazz it up with cardamom, coconut milk, and shredded coconut. Erik HATES coconut. So this time I decided to go with plain old cinnamon-and-vanilla rice pudding.

But I thought I’d custard-ize my puddin’. What that means is, I combined my two cups of leftover rice (from an attempt at rice and refried beans the other night that was, well, meh) with two cups of milk, two eggs, half a cup of brown sugar, and some vanilla and cinnamon, dumped it all in a casserole dish, and baked it at 350 for about 45 minutes. The result was really quite ugly. The top looked all brown and carmellized, but the inside was sort of gray and mealy. But guess what? It tastes really really good. Eliza and I ate almost half of it ourselves (and, yes, that is a lie I tell myself to keep from admitting that I ate half of it myself).

But send me my Certificate of Insanity, because what sort of crazy person would choose to bake custard when it’s 100 degrees outside? Me, that’s who. For some odd reason, the warm, sweet, eggy custard was exactly the type of dessert-y comfort I needed today. And now I have one less tub of leftovers in the fridge.

So I try, way too hard. And sometimes I fail. I have burned pork chops, under-roasted a chicken in 100-degree weather, and attempted to make chocolate salted caramels without ever having success in the candy arts.

And the photography on these food blogs! My God! How is a plain-Jane blogger with an iPhone supposed to keep up with their professional food photography?

This was last night’s dinner:

It is delicious, inexpensive, and the whole family likes it. And, yes, those are sliced hot dog pieces you see in there. Though, to be honest, they are fancy shmancy turkey dogs because regular hot dogs skeeve me out on many, many levels.

My point is this: I really enjoy pushing myself creatively when it comes to food. I enjoy treating our tight budget as a challenge rather than as a downer. And I like using ingredients that are totally new to me, and to use them in new ways. That being said, with a toddler, a tiny budget, and no dishwasher, some nights there’s nothing better than mac and cheese. With or without hot dog bits.

I opted to start my vegetables indoors because it’s effing hot out right now, and crouching in the dirt under the blazing Texas sun in August just doesn’t appeal to me. I hope that by the time my seedlings are ready to be transplanted the weather will have cooled just a bit.

It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat in Austin without hitting a CSA (community-supported agriculture). I love the idea of them, though I’ve never subscribed to one. To me they embody the best parts of communal food: supporting small local farms, eating ultra fresh yummy produce, and being ever-so-gently prodded into using ingredients that you may never have tried otherwise. It’s really a win-win situation. I have never subscribed because that up-front cost–sometimes as much as $650–always stings just a little too much. So, I’m starting my own personal one-family CSA. The up-front cost is minimal, and I get to grow exactly what I want.

And who knows? Maybe this time next year I’ll be running my own CSA.

1.95 All purpose flour (2.47 lbs)
1.99 Half and half (1 pint)
1.98 Yogurt (2)
1.33 Bananas
3.71 Chocolate chips (.93 lbs)
1.47 Coconut date rolls
1.16 Green lentils (.73 lbs)
1.47 Apples (2)
.87 Russet potatoes (2)

TOTAL
Spent $15.93
Left $19.66 (including $5.59 left from last week)

All coops are different; some offer a flat percentage discount to members in exchange for a few hours’ work in the store each month. Some offer the same discount, but in exchange for a membership fee, either yearly or lifetime. The Wheatsville Coop, as far as I can tell, offers a lifetime membership for only $70 (great deal!), but their discount is only on certain items (not-so-great deal). For example, of all the stuff I bought the other day, none of it would have been discounted had I been a member. So, unless you just happen to buy the same items they decide are discount-worthy, you’re really not benefiting in any way from being a member (besides, of course, the general satisfaction you may or may not get from supporting a local business, et cetera, et cetera).

In addition, the selection of products, as I’m sure you can imagine, is limited. I had to get half and half, and only had the option of getting a pint for 1.99 or a quart for significantly more. Compare that to HEB, where I can get a quart of half and half for under 1.50. Of course, it’s HEB brand half and half, and thus of unknown origin, probably chock full of hormones.

Which brings me to my current quandary: What is my objective here? Is it to purchase organic, whole foods on a limited budget, or to simply find ways to feed my family on said limited budget? If I shop at a place like Wheatsville, I’m going to spend more money on staples each week, but I’ll be somewhat reassured that I’m not piling chemicals into our bodies. But if I shop at HEB or, to a limited extent, Central Market, I can get a whole lot more for my $30, including meat for Erik, but would have to kind of turn a blind eye to the content of my food. My conscience feels better after having shopped at Wheatsville this week, but I had to forgo a bunch of crucial items because they would have eaten up too large a chunk of my budget for the week. So I still have to go to HEB anyway.