Once again, we made it from Sunday through Friday without the car, but it made an appearance again on Saturday. I think that habit will be hard to break as long as we are commuter gardeners, but it does make me think crazy thoughts like, “Do we need to own a car at all? For as seldom as we use it, couldn’t we just rent a car once a week?” Perhaps . . . .
Saturday was full of gardening and food preservation. I canned pear preserves (to be discussed in a future post) and prepped more fresh basil for freezing. We will be enjoying lots of pesto in the coming months — no complaints here!
Sunday dawned rainy, great for all the little seeds we planted yesterday, not so great for biking to church. I resolved to bike in spite of the rain and ended up staying relatively dry, due to convenient breaks in the rain that corresponded with my travels (and due to my fenders). In the afternoon, we needed to run an errand that involved exchanging a long handle of a tool with interchangeable heads. When I say “run” an errand, I do mean literally. The store is 1.25 miles from our apartment, but we weren’t sure how to safely and securely attach a seven foot pole to a bike. I was highly opposed to driving, so I suggested walking, which became running (well, jogging actually) to save time. No doubt we looked highly ridiculous, running through residential neighborhoods carrying a seven foot long red pole.
Mission complete, we returned to begin a cooking/baking extravaganza, including roasted beets*, vegetable pot pie, and apple pie**. This was our first time making the vegetable pot pie with all local vegetables: potatoes*, butternut squash*, carrots*, green beans*, sunchokes**, and onions**. We love this pot pie recipe, but before you are fooled into thinking that this is a super healthy dish, in the interest of full disclosure, this recipe has 3 sticks of butter in the crust and filling. Three sticks in a recipe that’s meant to serve four people! We stretched it into six servings — this means I consumed a half stick of butter in one meal. Oops! Maybe we’ll go with even smaller serving sizes in the future.
Her Green Life 
