Friday 8 June 2007

Bread, ladybugs and weed soup.


When my husband I and got married almost 15 years ago he figured he was marrying a fairly normal kind of gal, little did he know that I would turn out to be a no-cable T.V, homeschooling, vegetarian, grow your own veggies, don't buy new stuff, recycle fanatic woman who would drag him along with me. He has weathered these changes fairly well, he is a very easy-going kind of guy. Last night we were having dinner and he was guessing what was in the soup (which he had already said was very good), after a few guesses I went ahead and told him, "It's garlic, potato and lamb's quarter."
"So.....weeds." says he.
"No, lamb's quarters." I reply
"Basically we are having weed soup then." he responds.
"But it's good, isn't it." I laugh.

After reading the excellent book Ladybug Garden, E decided he must have some ladybugs to eat the aphids on his currant bush. We finally got him some yesterday and put them out in the evening. We made sure there was water sprinkled around for them to eat and placed them in several areas of the garden where they would be sure to find aphids to munch. We have been keeping an eye on them and watching their progress. Fun!!

And for a treat this morning, we made some bread with a recipe from Canadian Living's Bread & Pizza book, all the recipes I have tried from this book have turned out great. Now it is time to get out of the kitchen and back into the garden.

7 comments:

Andrea said...

hehe, our husbands could probably have a great talk.... "and then she started peeing in a jar!...." "Well, we eat weeds on a regular basis!..."

Anonymous said...

I want some of that bread. My homemade bread doesn't look THAT perfect!

Nicola said...

I agree with Anne, that bread looks SO good. So why are lamb's quarters called lamb's quarters?

Heather said...

Anne - I sent you the bread recipe. It is really good.

Andrea - My husband loves to have someone to commiserate with about how crazy his/their wife is. When I read your post about the compost and pee I thought about what S would say and realized that it wouldn't even faze him. ;-) Poor...I mean lucky fellows they are to have us to bring them round to such enlightened ways of thinking, heh?

Nicola- not sure why the name - if I had to guess I would say that maybe because it grows well in nitrogen rich soil it might have grown well in the lambs' quarters (or their poop pile anyway) and so the name?

Katherine said...

Yum! That soup and homemade bread looks delish!
Had to laugh at S calling it weed soup - he seems to take all things in stride and with humour.
Will want to hear all about how the ladybugs work. I have aphids on my roses and have resorted to spraying some essential oils on them to get them to leave.

ipsa said...

That bread does look amazing! Heather, could you send me the recipe, too?

And the soup looks lovely, too. Ipse would love to eat something like that - he's into eating weeds (dandelion greens... why not lambs quarters?).

Where do you get the ladybugs? I'd love to figure that out. Thanks!

Heather said...

The ladybugs are from our local gardening center - they are a fundraiser for SOKS (science opportunities for kids), they also sell them at the local farmers market or Art Knapp. I bet you could find them near you. Will send the bread recipe. The soup is just sauted garlic (lots) add broth and cubed potatoes, simmer til tender then add lambs quarters at last minute - I added some parsley too.