Today our our order came in from Nuts Online. I found the website while doing a search for unsweetened dried fruit. We ordered cranberries that are just dried cranberries, nothing added, bananas that are just dried bananas, nothing added, unsweetened coconut (that unfortunately does have a preservative added), and raw cocoa beans (thought they’d be interesting to play around with since chocolate doesn’t fit into my rules for the month). It wasn’t cheap, the items cost me about $30 and then another $10 to ship them, but I’ll let you know as I use them if the money was worth it. We tried everything immediately of course. I had to force Seth to stop eating the bananas. They are sweeter than banana chips, and a softer texture. I think I prefer regular banana chips, but Seth thought these were delicious. Elise and Will liked the cranberries, which are definitely tart, but fun to eat. I’ll add some of them along with the coconut to our granola.

We didn’t really make anything today. We spent the morning at a friend’s farm (which is why Seth is dirty and has a scraped nose in the previous picture). For supper we’ll be at my parents’ farm. But I have started using my whole white wheat flour in cookies, pancakes and tortillas. I think it has a great flavor and texture. Yesterday I also made my first official batch of chicken broth. The chicken was salvaged from the bones and will be used in another meal and the broth was used to make artichoke potato soup for supper last night. I learned how to retrieve an artichoke heart from a fresh artichoke, but I don’t know if it was worth the effort as I could hardly taste them in the soup. Perhaps I needed more artichokes? I also made some whole kernel bread to go with the soup. It had whole kernels of rye and wheat in it and served with raw local honey it was a big hit with both the kids and John. John said it was a bread with a lot of character. He took the last of the loaf to guys’ night, and since I haven’t seen sign of it since, I assume it was finished off there.