I swear that the food gods are looking down upon me and simply having the time of their life thinking up ways to torture me more with food each passing day…You will see what I mean in a moment.
Yellow Cherry Plum Smoothie
The day started off well with my usual morning smoothie, this time using the yellow cherry plums:
Cinnamon Banana Oatmeal
It continued on a positive note when my nieces had liked the cinnamon banana oatmeal enough that they asked for me to make it again — this time I made sure that there was plenty for both me and the girls.
Apple
After finding the apple tree, I was on the lookout for more apple trees on my morning walk. The searching paid off when I came across a red apple tree:
I picked one apple to see if it was ripe and compare the taste to the other apple I found:
As with most days these last couple of weeks, I was on the go so I made myself a peanut butter sandwich and decided to take the apple that I picked to eat as well. I was driving along’ munching on the apple (which actually tasted really good and I was already planning in my mind to head back there to pick more) not really paying attention when I looked down and saw a larva squirming out of the center of the apple.
As soon as I saw it and it registered that I probably had eaten at least a few of his compatriots, I jumped hard enough that I am surprised the car airbags didn’t deploy. This is not a good thing to do when you are driving a car on a public road because not only does it make you look insane (I don’t even want to think what anyone who saw me driving in the car was thinking as I jumped around in my seat spitting out apple in all directions), it’s also pretty darn dangerous (luckily I managed to get to the side of the road without hitting any other cars) While there have been a number of readers that have mentioned that I should get more protein from time to time, this is not exactly how I would like to go about doing it in the future…
Spanish Rice
In the evening, I decided to try and make an easy Spanish rice dish. I took the leftover long grain brown rice that I had, and mixed it with salsa. Then I topped it with a fried egg on time.
For how simple it was to make, it actually turned out to be pretty tasty (then again, how can you go wrong when you have salsa?)
This is the current list of food I still have
This is the current list of what I have purchased:
Goal: 100 days eating on $1 a day
Current Money Spent: $76.11
Money Left to Spend: $23.89 ($0.85 must be spent at CVS)
Retail Value of Everything Purchased: $1473.94
The Beginning ::: Day 98: Garden Rivals
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Well.a little extra protein doesn’t hurt, although in this country we are not big on eating bugs. Maybe take a small knife to cut up your forage apples to make sure no surprises lurk inside. And I have to admit I did laugh at your adventure, but I know it wasn’t funny at the time. Glad you made it to the side of the road ok.
Jeffrey,
The apple was most likely from an organic tree, not a treated tree. Twice as healthy for you since it supported the larva. Look at it that way. In the old days man lived closer to nature, and the women would have trimmed around the bad parts, sliced the apples for drying, and put the rest along with the larva rich protein cores out for their chickens and pigs and goats and other livestock to eat. The good parts of the apple would have still been used and saved or cooked.
In an earlier blog you were brave to eat the fruit that was thrown at you from the furry tree residents. Most of our kids now show fear at fruit that is marked naturally by nature. They refuse to eat anything but perfect or preprocessed fruits and veggies. My daughter brought us oranges from her boyfriends trees and they were blemished, not dyed and much more sweet and delicious than the perfect navels we usually pick up at the supermarkets here. I love that you are including you nieces in fresh fruit treats that you make. Don’t forget to make extra and make them some homemade freezer pops. They could help you make them. If you decide to go on with this blog for a year, try your hand at drying some fruit. We have available so much that goes to waste in the harvest time and fruit chips are great in trail mix,oatmeal, cereal, and your frozen fruit drinks, as well and muffins, pancakes, waffles, cookies, cobblers and pies. You would like fried pies, and can do them in the oven with the kids to help. You can even use mixes and canned or frozen breads for the dough. And you can do meat and veggie pies the same way. Lovely times with the children. I think your cooking skills are getting better.
I like the way your mind works. You see more on your walks than many observe in a week. Thanks for sharing with us.
Wow Jeff I almost screamed just looking at the picture. I would most def. cut all apples first to check them.
Thank you. I will be itchy for the next couple of hours. I knew I should’ve skipped this one, but couldnt’ help myself 🙁
I died laughing when I imagined you spitting out chunks of apple all over your car. That’s exactly what I would have done! I know it wasn’t funny for you though. 😀
I appreciate pictures, though I’m not sure a pic of rice right after larvae is a good combo. No offense.
Totally agree with Malik. There is just no way I would have been able to eat rice that night. I know I won’t be eating it tonight after reading that. I have the squirmies! Ick!
If it makes you feel better, know that you’re not alone. When I was a child, I’d eaten multiple mini-york patties only to have it pointed out to me later that they were infested with bugs. I now RARELY eat them, and always break them in half and examine first. Experiences like that just last a lifetime it seems.
This post made me laugh till I cried. Your descriptions of your encounters with nature are hilarious!
i have an old compost pile with some huge grubs in them. they might taste like lobster for all i know. shrimp are just sea bugs when you think about it.
i think you should collect a pile and fry em up. if it smells good enough
you might not even get to eat them.:)
The larvae picture reminds me of my childhood in S. California. My dad never sprayed our apple trees and they had worms every year. I learned quickly to always cut them carefully because I didn’t want to see the bug. Good news is there is only one larva per apple so you didn’t eat any Jeffrey.
Aah! That is so yucky! I wanted to spit just reading this post. Good luck with future apples.
I would have jumped, too! Your experience reminds me of the Bad Apple game: http://www.miniclip.com/games/bad-apple/en/
It’s a coddling moth larva, (eggs are laid near the surface, and the larva eats into the core of the apple). The damage is easy to identify once you know what you are looking for – google “coddling moth damage”. Check for brown colored sawdust like stuff on the surface of the apple.
It also doesn’t mean the tree hasn’t been treated, because the sprays have to be timed right to kill the larva when they are near the surface. Once they get farther into the apple, sprays don’t kill them. Although, it is likely that the tree wasn’t sprayed, and if that is the case, most of the apples will be damaged.
Coddling moth is the only insect that eats into the apple.
Reminds me of what my dad always used to say when we ate the apples from our backyard tree:
What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?
Finding half a worm in your apple!
At least you didn’t taste the worms if you ate them 🙂