Homegrown Food | The Survival Gardener

Since I don’t have any good garden pictures today, and am right near the generational cutoff date between Millenial and Gen X, I will embrace my Millenial cohort and post a picture of food.

This is a shot of yesterday’s lunch.

The purple sweet potato is a new variety we tried out this year. I am unsure where we got the first root to plant – probably from Ever’man’s Market in Pensacola – but it turned out to be a very nice, well-flavored, dense and productive variety.

The pickles (and the dill) were from our gardens and were live-fermented by Rachel. The sausages are nitrite-free beef and are from a local farm.

Soon we’ll have some more cool-season greens again. Right now we’re usually easting scrambled eggs with sweet potato greens for breakfast, but that will switch to brassicas in another month or two.

We’re working towards producing all of our own food. Our budget is tightening as the economy gets weirder and we’re working to grow much more of what we eat and stick to simple fare that will save us money while providing higher nutrient density.

This isn’t to say we don’t visit the Chinese All-You-Can-Eat Buffet on occasion, because we do. Thus far, we have been unable to grow our own Sesame Chicken, Fry Shrimp, Baked Seafood Cheese Casserole or Jello cubes, but we’re working on it.

Most of the time we eat at home, and most of the time about half of what is on the table comes from the gardens.

We produce lots of food on only about a quarter acre of garden space. As the food forest grows and the production of fruits and nuts from both there and in the Grocery Row Gardens increases, we will eventually have most of our meals coming from the ground instead of the grocery store. We’d like to do more experiments with making homemade flour from our yams and cassava, which could replace pasta completely. Though Rachel and I don’t eat wheat, we do enjoy some rice noodles sometimes – and all the kids love pasta.

Especially with General Tsao Chicken.

Actually, we have a few roosters and some sugarcane we could juice. I wonder…

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