Day 3: Indulging too soon

Weight: 204.9

Only three days in and I'm already making up the rules as I go along, and using up my lifelines. In the morning I feasted again on my first (weekly) loaf of bread I made in a dutch oven, thanks to a recipe from a former colleague from Colorado. This uses only three cups of flour a week, plus yeast and a little salt--but nothing else added--and it makes a great loaf.

Breakfast: As you can imagine, I overloaded my hot delicious bread with blackberry jam (got 12 pints left approximately) and the butter made by shaking cream in a mason jar for a while. It was as good a breakfast as my fish were for dinner last night.

Lunch. Now I'm getting back to basics. Amaranth was my staple for lunch. I got it from the backyard and then bagged it. Amaranth is very nutritious, has some protein, and grows in all sorts of inhospitable places. The leaves became a hearty addition to the dandelion, clover, mint, and now rose petals.

Snack: this is where I think the diet isn't going to be that helpful. I'm eating a lot of sugars via blackberries and now a dozen plums I brought to work. These plums come over from the neighbor's tree and I gather them in my yard. I'm not sure what that many plums are going to do for/to me.

Foraging: I realize I can't do this by simply grazing off of random backyard plants. My garden isn't very mature yet. Some green tomatoes and small zucchini exist. Lettuce is almost ready and carrots are there begging to be eaten but I haven't unearthed them yet. So for now I must go forage. I took the kids and dear wife with me out to Forest Park, north of Mukilteo, in south Everett. This isn't the wilds of the temperate rain forest, just a nice set of trails and trees. I collected a slew of mushroom species to compare with the book: 100 Edible Mushrooms. I couldn't get an ID on a single one. And as the book says: "when in doubt, throw it out". But it was fun to study and display the specimens on my hearth for a while. So this forage was rather a bust. It didn't have to be; I later learned that I had passed by two entirely edible berries. I'll be back, if only to get some wine going soon.

Dinner: I ate the rest of the bread with jam and butter. The loaves are the size of the bread bowls for clam chowder. I wish I had some clam chowder, come to think of it.

Please note that on each of these days I would stop for blackberries too and from work.

Note also that while chatting with my wife on the back deck, I heard a frog chirp. I hadn't heard a frog in my back yard before. I wonder if my hunger made my sense of hearing sharper. I contemplated catching it for food, but there was no flashlight handy.