A little bit of Spring...hangover...

So this past fall, I was a little reluctant to let the garden harvest go. We had a pretty successful crop and a good variety of vegetables. And, who can pass up fresh basil or homemade pesto, right?

We started pulling our plants in for the winter by repotting one of our four basil plants into a planter, moving our planter of parsley indoors along with the newly repotted basil. Lastly, we decided to begin growing our own ginger. This winter I have been pleasantly surprised to see that we have been able to keep a steady supply of fresh basil, ginger and parsley without needing to add those ingredients to the weekly grocery list!

One challenge this new venture has presented is the increase in gnats in the house. They were everywhere, but hovering more so around our planters. Wanting to avoid using chemicals on our edible plants I turned to the internet for a more natural solution...cinnamon. By sprinkling cinnamon onto the dirt of your plant, it helps reduce the number of gnats. For our plants it was a significant change. We haven't had to resort to the use of chamomile, but I'll try that if the gnats stage a come back.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

...he's going to want a glass of milk..

In my case if you give me a really good grain free recipe, I'm going to want to plant the stuff to make it. Case in point: golden beets. I have never heard of them and am assuming that they would be very difficult and/or expensive to find. But I must try this recipe. As much as this grain-free foodie has been enjoying her experimentation with spaghetti squash and developing a grain-free gnocchi recipe, a grain-free version of rice noodles is hard to come by without loosing the right texture.

Which got me reminiscing about last year's garden and all of the wonderful summer produce that we got from it.

Basil...

Zucchini...

And green beans...

So what is in store this spring? I have mapped our our garden plan for this spring and based it on what items we use regularly within a grain-free diet: onion, mint, cherry tomatoes, golden beets (are new this year), lettuce, squash (spaghetti, butternut, zucchini and eggplant), peppers, and I am excited to venture into the world of edible flowers - nasturtium, specifically.