Day 27 & 28 – 100-mile diet : Quiet days and quiet teas.

Good morning.

The last few days have been mellow ones as far as the diet goes. After Saturday’s roller-coaster, we decided to think of other things. When you’ve been thinking about food non stop for going on a month, you feel the need to simply relax and concentrate elsewhere.

So Sunday (Day 27), we went and planted our bulbs. We had bought a few more varieties, in addition to having dug up our now triple and quadruple sized bulbs from last year, so we proceeded to fill an entire corner of our perennial plot with varied tulips, lilies and alliums.

While we were there, we also decided to pick our chamomile and lavender. Both make soothing teas and there is just nothing like fresh flower herbal teas.

We got home and cut them to dry. This should keep us in 100-mile bedtime teas for the remainder of our challenge.

Yesterday (Day 28) was Canadian Thanksgiving and I had off, but my husband did not. So I decided to turn back to food preparation again and made 6 jars of maple-apple sauce and was able to make my first sourdough bread!

Now, it’s not the fluffiest thing ever. But it did rise. So I’ve started another starter (the first one was small and was completely taken up by the loaf) and plan on making a few more loaves this week. This time, I’ll let them rise longer. The recipe I was using said to let them rise until it doubled, which I thought it had, but maybe not. Other recipes I’ve found say to let them rise for up to 12 hours. So I’m thinking I may try that next.

Do any of you make sourdough bread? What is your favorite recipe?

In the evening, a very wonderful friend of ours had us over for dessert : Local cheese, fresh raspberries and maple syrup. We brought lavender to make tea and sat and talked for a while. I will have to be honest that the challenge has left us feeling a bit isolated. Having friends invite us over for something as simple as tea and berries has become the higlights of our social life. Not wanting to impose our challenge on people, the alternative is to have them over and it's not always possible. We should really try and be better about it. Cutting ourselves off will only make it harder. Something more to think about I guess.