LtoR: Standard Zinnias, Giant Marigolds, Marigolds, Dwarf Zinneas.
Last night the temperature dropped even lower than the night before, so we have had a second night of frost. Luckily we had harvested all the plants that are vulnerable to frost, and covered the plants that although vulnerable, might just produce a bit more if kept alive.
A neighbour just offered us the last of their tomatoes, that were still on the plants when the frost hit. We will take them, but they cannot be canned, so I will make a tomato sauce to freeze, and take a tub of it over for the neighbour to enjoy.
Slowly but surely we are conquering the harvesting/preserving chaos. Jar management has moved from filling empty jars, to cleaning and storing newly emptied jars, the balance has shifted in the space of two days. The jars move back forth from full jar storage, to empty jar storage, back again to full jar storage, and on and on it goes.
Our blue box only gets put out for collection every other month or so. We buy little in the way of commercially canned food, bottles or cans of beverages, and recycle plastic bags when practical. Most kitchen waste goes to our compost bins. Viable vegetable scraps go into the freezer to make vegetable stock, the depleted scraps then go into our compost bins. Our property tax includes garbage bag stickers, many more than we would use in a year, but not nearly enough for most households.
Our time of year for experimenting with new recipes is during the winter months.
Attila is already thinking about a new curry recipe, as we have been enjoying our Cod Curry, and have been unable to find reasonably priced cod lately. The store where we had been buying it sells surplus from the restaurant industry, so we got a great deal on cod, and bought some for the freezer, but it will not last forever. Now we need to get creative.
I am thinking about developing a recipe for a mayonnaise substitute that has no saturated fat, and is low sodium and low sugar. I have some ideas, thinking of yogurt based recipes, but they will need to be made in very small quantities for taste testing.
I have a natural sweet tooth. Reducing added sugar has been almost as difficult as reducing sodium, almost. Luckily sugar substitutes are acceptable to me, where sodium substitutes are not acceptable to me. My preference is pure liquid stevia, and to some extent pure liquid monk fruit. Luckily my taste buds do not pick up the aftertaste with liquid stevia. My issue with monk fruit is that it is very expensive, and one has to use quite a bit more of it to match the sweetness provided by stevia.
Still, I only use a few drops of stevia in my morning coffee, my breakfast yogurt, and in baking Chocolate Zucchini Muffins.
So far the only scientific issue with stevia, that I have found, tested stevia with added maltodextrine which affected the gut microbiome. Maltodextrine alone does have a negative effect on the gut microbiome, so the results do not necessarily implicate stevia. I will continue to use stevia sparingly until further high quality research has been undertaken.
As for sugar, it enters my diet through two dates in the morning yogurt, 1/4 tsp of molasses and 2 tsp of chocolate chips in each Chocolate Zucchini Muffin, and through fresh fruit such as strawberries, grapes, and Gala apples, which are eaten raw. It isn’t a lot of sugar, but it is more than I am supposed to have. I know though, were I to give up these few sweetened foods I would soon find my dietary restrictions unbearable, and would begin to make unwise choices. I know my limitations, and feel that I have done a decent job of balancing restrictions with reality.
Worldly
Weather
15°C
Date: 7:00 PM EDT Friday 10 October 2025
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 102.2 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 15.4°C
Dew point: 4.1°C
Humidity: 47%
Wind: SSE 26 km/h
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself.”
Rita Mae Brown
Venus Envy
Maggie, who wants to be the person who lives the longest but is miserable the whole time? Life is all about balance-which includes fruit and chocolate.
Wendy, exactly!!
Balance does include fruit and chocolate!!
Actually cocoa is good for us, it is the sugar and fats that go into the recipes that are bad for our health.
I use a little sugar, and low cholesterol, low saturated fats in my muffins, in addition to whole grains, seeds, zuchinni or apple, and I love these muffins. Every morning I feel as if I have had a treat for breakfast, a great feeling to have with a meal that includes just a little too much sugar (but not a lot) and limited highly processed vegetable sweeteners.
Maggie, fats aren’t bad for your health. As a matter of fact, the body needs fats to build cell membranes and to make our hormones. But yes, too much fat is unhealthy and there are fats that are more healthy than others. DH and I try to stay away from animal fats and mostly use healthy olive oil and olive oil based mayonnaise.
Love your flowers! We actually have cat mint, veronica, and heuchera re-blooming, and even my Siberian iris is growing new leaves after having been cut back.
That is right Teri, fats are not bad for your health, we need healthy fats every day.
Too much fat can be bad for your health.
The wrong kind of fat can be bad for your health.
Note I use “can be” and not “is”.
For those with familial lipid issues, cholesterol and saturated fats are not good for health. For those with high cholesterol and triglycerides due to lifestyle, cholesterol and saturated fats are not good for health.
There people who suffer no ill consequence from eating a diet heavy with cholesterol and saturated fats, a simple blood test will let you know if you are one of them.
For those who are obese, or seriously overweight, too much fat in the diet can be bad for your health in that is is high in calories.
After all of my efforts to limit fat in my diet, eating only healthy fats with the exception of the milk fat in 1% milk, eggs used in my muffins, and a trace amount of animal fat in the 3 ounce sausage patties we make here… after all my efforts, my fat consumption is daily a bit over what my body needs.
Our fat of choice is olive oil. I use canola oil for baking.
It seems gardens have rebounded after such a dry summer. Your flowers sound beautiful!
Thanks for the explanation, Maggie. This is the comment I was responding to: “Actually cocoa is good for us, it is the sugar and fats that go into the recipes that are bad for our health.”
Teri, ah yes.
The recipes I have in hundreds of my cookbooks all call for saturated fats, and lots of it. When I look at chocolate items in the grocery store, they are high in saturated fats. So I based my original comment on that.
You are correct, it isn’t necessarily so, the astute shopper or baker can use fats wisely with chocolate!