Sunblock in the Winter: protection from no sun at all

Ok, it's not super timely, but I want to tell you guys about the sunblock I'm using right now. I try to wear sunscreen every day, despite the constant clouds and rain around here. Right now I am using the simplest, easiest sunscreen. It is just zinc oxide powder in water. I put in in a little spray bottle. I put a couple teaspoons of zinc oxide powder per bottle and then fill it with water. You can mess around with this formula, add essential oils for scent or use rosewater as the base instead of water. Too much oil makes it clumpy though, so be careful. I rub a little drop of almond oil or rosehip oil into my skin after the sunscreen.

Zinc

This sunscreen is white and it sort of beads up on your face. If you let it dry without blending it a little, you will have strange white sunblock spots. Rub it in well, put your moisturiser over top to help it blend. It isn't the same as commercial sunscreen that goes on totally invisible. I think this is a worthwhile tradeoff for a totally safe sunblock without any toxic or irritating ingredients. It's also incredibly cheap, especially compared to the really well made, nontoxic, natural sunblocks. They are expensive. If the whiteness of the sunscreen really bothers you, you can add a little bit of a crumbled up mineral bronzer powder to take the edge off the white tone so you aren't so washed out by the sunblock.

Note: compounding pharmacies will usually sell you zinc oxide powder cheaply. If they give you a hard time, tell them you have an allergy to commercial sunblocks. It always works.

Lentil soup shepherd's pie

My sister made me this dish a couple weeks ago when I had dinner with her and I was surprised how much I loved it. Not that I should ever be surprised by how much I like stuff she feeds me; she is a fantastic cook and she constantly makes dishes I would never think to make and then I love them. Just like this one. I have made it a couple times since then. It has that perfect comfort food, wintery casserole heartiness but it is still really healthy and packed with vegetables. Perfect fall hibernation food.

Gleaned panzanella

M and D pick berries

Last weekend I went foraging around the city with a few friends. It's amazing how much food is hanging around if you look for it. We gathered acorns, apples and blackberries growing wild at the beach and the last of the raspberries and tomatoes from a friend's garden. Everywhere we went there was that perfect, dappled, fall sort of light that is so pretty you can't quite believe it's real.

S with blackberries

I got a lot of tomatoes from my friend's garden-big chunky, variegated, red-brown and rust coloured-and quite a lot of tiny, pea sized cherry tomatoes from my best tomato plant from the summer. I wanted to make them the center of a salad. 

Everything else in the recipe is just a suggestion. Panzanella is one of the many brilliant Italian ways of making frugal home economics delicious. They do brillant things with stale bread and you should never throw out bread just because it has gone stale. Panzanella is an improvisation, a showcase of leftovers, of whatever vegetables are around and bits of cheese and maybe a crumble of pancetta or nuts. 

Panzanella

1 stale baguette or crusty loaf
as many good tomatoes as you can get your hands on
1 cup shelled edamame or peas, boiled in salted water until tender
2 cups arugula
1/2 english cucumber, sliced
1/2 cup crumbed feta
1 large bunch parsley
2 cloves garlic
olive oil
lemon juice
red wine vinegar


Roughly tear bread and toss with tomatoes, cucumber, edamame, arugula and feta. Drizzle oil and lemon and vinegar over to coat. Finely chop parsley and garlic into a paste and toss that into everything. The bread should be soft and slightly mush into everything and soak up the salad dressing. If the bread is still  a bit hard, add a little more dressing let it sit for a minute to soak it all up. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Celery Reborn

I read recently that you can regrow celery from the bottom of a bunch of celery. I love any way I can grow food inexpensively or for free. I also read that you can keep doing this over and over, possibly indefinitely. This may be the best thing I have ever heard. Celery is now infinite. Maybe.

I cut the base off the last bunch of celery I bought and set it into a saucer of water, cut side up, for a couple days. I looked into the center of the tightly coiled celery stalks and there was a few small, pale leaves coiled up, new celery already underway. After a couple days sitting in water, these leaves started to grow above the cut stalks.

Then I stuck the celery into one of my pots on our balcony. The leaves are growing more quickly, they seem to enjoy this little burst of heat we are having. I cut this celery base about a week ago and it has been in the soil for maybe four days. It hasn't got any root growth that I can see on the bottom, but it's new leaves look really healthy.

When it gets a few new stalks growing up a bit, I am going to plant it in my front yard garden bed and burry the older, dead parts so just the new growth is showing.