All Categories

Today is my 60th Anniversary!

7/4/2017

It was 60 years ago today — July 4, 1957 — that my family and I arrived in Palmer, AK. in our old school bus, painted white. This was the “RV” that brought us over the long, long road from Louisiana.

There were six of us at the time. My parents, John and Lucille, and my 9 year old sister, Cynthia, my 8 year old brother, Morton, my little 5 year old brother, Charles, and me — 6 years old.

My mother, Lucille, and her 4 children.

This was a fun trip for the kids because we had the run of the bus to play in. We left the seats in the bus and had 3 beds on top of the seats. Boxes were stuck into the nooks and crannies under the seats. But this left little tunnels that made for great adventure under the seats.

I’m sure the trip was more grueling for my parents! So they were relieved to have finally arrived in Alaska.

Fresh clean Alaskan water.

Arriving on July 4th, my mother was determined to find a store where we could buy watermelon. “You can’t have the 4th of July without watermelon!” I imagine Palmer was the first town they found with much of a grocery store after crossing the border from Canada into Alaska.

People always ask what brought us to Alaska. The military? Some other job?

No — it was actually my mother’s idea. One evening while my dad was at work, she saw a program on TV showcasing the beauty of the Matanuska Valley. When my dad got home, she told him, “Let’s move to Alaska! I don’t want my kids to grow up not seeing snow.” Two months later, we were on the road. And about 6 weeks later, we rolled into Palmer, looking for watermelon!

We definitely got to see snow!

I’ve lived in Alaska most of the past 60 years, with a few years in northern New York, 4 years in North Carolina, and a year in California. Every place I’ve lived has had it’s own kind of beauty, but when I came back to visit my mother in 1991, I knew I wanted to live here again. So I did what my parents had done in 1957 — packed up my things and moved to Alaska. But of course, for me, it wasn’t like moving to a completely unknown place with 4 kids under 10!

I’ve shared some photos of the garden by the lake where I now live. My parents bought this property in 1961. We came here to swim and have picnics on the large raft we built. But there was no house until my mother decided to have one built in 1986.

She had the amazing foresight to include an apartment “for the gardener” in the house. As it turns out, I moved into the apartment in 1995 when she began having symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. So I was able to care for her until she moved into the next world in 2011.

Charlie joined me when we married in 1997 and we have now moved upstairs into the main house, even though we continue to be “the gardeners.” We now share the apartment with visitors from around the world who find us on AirBNB.com. In fact, it was one of our guests who brought this 60th anniversary to my attention 2 days ago when we were chatting about how long I’d lived in Alaska.

So if you’d like to enjoy a night or weekend in our vegan B&B, walk barefoot in the gardens, and paddle around the lake, we would welcome you at Lakeside Gardens.
I hope your 4th of July was complete with watermelon today!

7 Comments

It's Rhubarb Time!

6/16/2017

2 Comments

As you can see — I have a LOT of rhubarb.

If you have some rhubarb in your yard, you know how amazingly fast it grows. Around the first of May, all we see are little red nubs sticking out of the ground. And in about a month, it’s at least 2 feet tall.

Everyone who visits in the summer asks, “What do you do with ALL THAT RHUBARB?!”

Well, first of all, I love looking at it — I think it’s beautiful! So I have no intention of harvesting all of it.

I also love the tangy taste of it -- so I definitely want to eat some of it.

But there is a problem with rhubarb. It’s so sour you can’t really eat it without sweetening it. I used to make rhubarb pie,rhubarb jam, rhubarb sauce, and rhubarb crisp — all with TONS of sugar to make it tangy rather than downright sour.

However, as I’ve improved my diet over the years, I’ve become more and more reluctant to consume the empty calories of processed sugar.

But hold on — it's not hopeless! We just need to use a naturally sweet, whole-food sweetener to avoid the empty calories of processed sugar.

So once again — dates to the rescue!

It has taken a bit of experimenting, but I’ve come up with some pretty tasty recipes. The easiest of all is rhubarb “jam” with only 2 ingredients, or 3 if you count the water.

Rhubarb "Jam"
(Yield: about 2 cups)

2 cups rhubarb stalks, cut into about 1/2” pieces
1/4 cup water
1 cup dates or date pieces (10 Medjool)

Instructions:

Soak dates in water, just to cover, for about 10 minutes
Simmer rhubarb in water for a few minutes. It will begin to fall apart and make rhubarb sauce.
Drain dates and put in blender or food processor with rhubarb sauce
Process until as smooth as you like.

Enjoy this “jam” on toast, or add more water to make it a sweet/tangy topping for pancakes or waffles.

I recommend storing this ”jam” in small jars and keeping some in the freezer until ready to use. It will keep in the frig for about a week.

Note: Rhubarb leaves cannot be eaten, unfortunately. They are very high in oxalic acid and contain some other compounds which make the leaves toxic to eat. But touching the leaves doesn’t hurt you, and it is safe to compost the leaves.

I’ll include some other recipes for rhubarb in my upcoming cookbook, which we hope to have out in the fall.

Let me know in the comments below if you’ve discovered some other healthy ways to eat rhubarb — without using processed sugar. (Click the "Comments" text below to leave a comment.)

2 Comments

<<Previous

Today is my 60th Anniversary!

It's Rhubarb Time!

Our Medical Nightmare

Don’t Wait for Your Doctor!

Our Most Overlooked Gift

Conscious Gift Giving

Is It Hard To Be Vegan?

Cookie Dough Treats

Why "Control" Diabetes if you can Reverse It?

They've Got us Outnumbered!!

Author

Categories

Archives