Last week, we had a plague sweep through the house. My husband and daughter seemed to only get the lightest version of it, while my son had a good 12 hours of being sick and I was literally knocked off my butt for a good 3 days. In the middle of that, we had to help our daughter put together an enormous school project about fossil insects (which is fine, but she left ALL her notes at school the night before the project was due, leaving us to totally wing it from memory as we put together the big poster board). We also had a little head lice scare, which lead me to do countless loads of laundry in scalding hot water while treating my daughter's head with Cetaphil and a hairdryer while swooning about with a 102 temperature. It sucked, people. And I'm fully aware of my whining. I'm done now.
At the end of the plague week, our son, age 4, asked me for a banana at bedtime. Even though we started eating truly local June 1st, I stopped buying tropical fruit over a year ago. I explained to him that we didn't have any bananas. He said, "But we haven't had any bananas in such a long, long time!"
I made him a jam sandwich and put him to bed.
The next day he asked for bananas again. And then again, and again. Such a strange request! My midwife partner pointed out that perhaps he needed potassium after being so sick and was asking for what his body was craving. Good point.
So later in the day, after dropping my daughter off at a friend's house (they had the plague the previous week), I surprised little E by taking him to Kroger's and buying 5 yellow bananas. You would have thought I bought a box of Ben & Jerry's and gave him a spoon to dig in. Woo hoo! Mama can show a kid a good time! He ate two bananas and I had one, sitting in the car of Kroger's parking lot. It felt like an exciting date of sorts. Here's to potassium and secret bananas...
In other news, I "harvested" my ahem, 5 sweet potato plants since we've had some chilly nights lately. They were beautiful and well-formed and had a gorgeous red skin on them. I also found a few left-over wee carrots and potatoes to dig up. After everything was pulled up, I realized I had a big enough harvest for...that night's dinner. So we had roasted sweet potatoes, onions, carrots and a few white potatoes, all from our garden along with (our) chicken and salsa verde (also from our garden). It was a delicious meal and it was so pleasing to eat such visually lovely food.
6 comments:
Those sweet potatoes look great. Good job. I am about to harvest mine this week. I suspect a frost will come upon us soon.
I just bumped into your blog. I look forward to reading more
Thanks! And welcome!
Everything looks so yummy, and glad you enjoyed the bananas too. Sometimes we do need to give in and go with what our bodies are craving. :-) Cool blog BTW!
Yum, sweet potato's!! Where they hard to grow? Do you start them from seed or like a potato? I've never done them, but am interested in it next year :)
I think the banana begging, was very cute. Glad he enjoyed his treat!
Erica,
I ordered "slips" from Johnny's Selected Seeds.(Slips are little pieces of greenish-white shoots-they're supposed to grow better.) There were a dozen, I believe, but because they were shipped over Memorial Day weekend, I think they spent too much time drying out in the post office! Only 5 were viable.
Since we're in Michigan, we don't get the lovely, long summers like they do down south, where the sweet potatoes have longer time to grow and do really well as a result. 5 plants made enough for dinner for us!
I haven't harvested my sweet potatoes yet -- you can check out their life-cycle from planting to the present at www.foursquaresociety.blogspot.com. But I got mine thru Pinetree Garden Seeds -- a heirloom variety called White Triumphs. Can't wait to hear more about growing wheat!!!
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