Today is for the Irish!

There was nothing Greek on my menu today except for a container of Greek yogurt!  I don't have any Irish heritage, but I love to celebrate St. Patrick's Day so there was corned beef and all the boiled vegetables on the side - potatoes, cabbage, carrots, and onion.  It was so good!  Then my husband made a pineapple upside down cake for me with the cake batter colored green!  It was an early birthday celebration.  I hope everyone had a wonderful day!
I didn't bake anything for St. Patrick's Day this year, but my standard thing to make is green cupcakes.  I put green food coloring in the cake batter, use white icing, and add a few green sprinkles.  It just doesn't seem like St. Patrick's Day without those cupcakes, but a body can only handle so many calories!

It has been time to work in the garden.  My plants are growing really well with all this warm, sunny weather. I already started taking some out of their winter sowing jugs and replanting them in the ground.  My tomato seeds seemed to take a long time to sprout, but about half of them have sprouted now.  I just wish I knew how to get rid of the vole that keeps eating my plant roots.  It sure was nice to have an outdoor cat when we had one!

Plant Tales

Winter Sowing

I have been busy winter sowing and I am having great success.  My only issue now is that I am almost out of milk jugs.  If you don't winter sow, you will not make the connection between the two.  I'll take a few pictures and post them soon and then you can see my set up.  I have over 90 jugs planted so far and want to get above 100 so I guess we'd better drink lots of milk in the weeks ahead!  It further complicates things that the milk jugs must allow sunlight to reach the seeds and many jugs now  are white instead of clear.  Next on the confusion list is which grocery store to shop at that has clear milk jugs...

Plant Tales

You may think my plant tale is about winter sowing, but "Plant Tales" is a new column I am writing for the Lexington County Master Gardener's Volunteers' newsletter, The Green Sheet.  I love to write so I expect this to be lots of fun.  My first "tale" was about Queen Anne's Pocket Melon; I'm still pondering what the next one topic will be!

ipad2 Apps and the Palmetto Trail Challenge

I realize that I have not posted anything here for a very long time.  Time flew by and I have not tried many Greek recipes since I posted last, but I am eating primarily healthy food and lots of Greek style yogurt - love that!  Like many people, after the holidays came diet time for me.  We got the wonderful gift of an ipad2 for Christmas and I found an app called Lose it which has been helpful in tracking what I eat and my exercise.  I must admit though that with all the entries you have to make and look up the calories that go with the quantity consumed, I don't log every day.  One interesting feature is that you can scan the bar code and the ipad2 will list the product and the calories.  That works for my container of yogurt, but I don't eat many things that are straight out of a container so more often than not I am looking up and entering calorie amounts.
The other thing that has just started for me on Monday is that I signed up to walk and bicycle the distance of the Palmetto Trail during the Palmetto Trail Challenge.  You can sign up for this with a partner regardless of where you live, so if you are interested in having an excuse to exercise more, take a look at:  http://www.palmettoconservation.org/PTChallenge.asp  My walking team is "Two Left Feet, Two Right Feet" and my bicycle team is "Wheels Around the Block."  Talk about not needing to be in South Carolina in order to participate - my walking  partner is in California and my bicycling partner is in Alabama!  Wish us luck.

Wonderful Food and Upcoming Plant Sale

What you are looking at is one of the signs one of our quilters made for the dining tables while we were on our quilting retreat this past weekend.  This one is "Runs with Scissors."  We also had signs labeled WiiQuilt, Piecemakers, and Dances with Wools.  She was just as creative with the other ones that she made.  

The quilting retreat is in North Carolina.  The camp supplies the food for us and it is absolutely wonderful.  We talk about the food almost as much as we do about the quilting!  They cook using fresh vegetables, have lots of fresh fruit available, and bake the most wonderful bread.  Many of the vegetables were oven roasted - as is shown in Greek style cookbooks.  Here at home, now that we are starting to experience some fall weather, I will be more interested in using my oven.  It does not get a lot of use here in the summer!

As for the upcoming plant sale, I am a Master Gardener here in Lexington, South Carolina.  On Saturday we will have our annual plant sale.  If you are in this area, please stop by to check out the plants.  I may buy a few myself because my garden certainly had a rough year with all the heat and drought that we experienced.  Fall is a wonderful time to garden!

Columbia Cooks - Greek Revival Style!

Yesterday was my first time attending a class by Columbia Cooks.  This is a program through the University of South Carolina Cancer Prevention and Control Program.  The class was Healthy Mediterranean Cooking and was taught by the "first lady" of the University of South Carolina, Patricia Moore-Pastides.   The Greek Revival Style in my heading relates to her cookbook Greek Revival Cooking for Life.

The class was a great learning experience and lots of fun!  There was even a lovely "floral arrangement" in the room with all sorts of vegetables and herbs included.  It made the room smell so good  As we went around the room and introduced ourselves it was apparent most of us did not fit the mold of being a "chef."  Some were learning to cook and some simply hoped to learn how to cook in a healthier way. .  

We prepared:

Sauteed Dates with Almonds
Roasted Beet and Arugula Salad
Spinach and Dill Pie
Braised Cauliflower with Slowly Sauteed Onions
Black-Eyed Peas and Swiss Chard
Seared Shrimp with Red Pepper Flakes and Basil
Spiced Walnut Cake

and I'm sure a few more recipes that I don't recall.  My friend and I prepared the Braised Cauliflower with Slowly Sauteed Onions.  It includes oregano and sage so the flavor was as delightful as the aroma.  At the end of the class we enjoyed all the dishes and our plates were heaped with delicious food.  Everyone certainly put their best efforts into cooking.  You would have thought each of us was a professional chef!

The program is also very conscious of environmental and health issues.  The food was locally grown and healthy, we did not use any disposable dinnerware, we used cloth towels, and we had a compost bin for waste as we chopped and peeled our vegetables.

I'll be checking out more of the classes that they have on their list once my schedule looks a little bit lighter.

Greek Festival Failure

I'm sure the Greek Festival was a big success, but I wasn't there.  I fell on Saturday and broke my pelvis so very little happened over the weekend other than my visit to the emergency room.  However, today I found out that my friend and I will be in the Mediterranean Cooking Class that is being held next week.  This should be so much fun!  I already warned the coordinator that if they normally stand throughout the 2 hour class I won't be able to do that and will need to sit part of the time.  Here I am planning on taking a class and I haven't been farther than across the street to the mailbox all week, but I think I can, I think I can, actually I'm sure I can!

Greek Festival - Maybe; Recycling - Yes

The Greek Festival is going on in Columbia, SC, this weekend and I had really hoped to attend.  I'm not too certain we will get there because our dog has been very sick.  Maybe we will make it though...

Because this blog is not only about Greek food but also about healthy eating and gardening, I will mention to you about a new group we are starting up on GardenWeb under the Exchange Forum - Round Robin groups.  It is called Friends of the Earth: Simple Swaps.  Part of the emphasis about this group is recycling (especially as it relates to gardens) so as we come up with ideas and swap creatively, I will pass along some of the ideas. Obviously with some of the swaps, we will swap seeds.  It's unfortunate so few people save seeds from their plants to use the next year.  In fact, many seeds are hardy enough to survive for several years.  If you don't know what part of the flower head or fruit is the actual seed, you can find information online about how to identify, save, and store seeds.
The gardener in all of us says that if this year was not a good year for gardening, we look forward to next year!