I am rarely home alone. My husband and I both work from our shared apartment. Last week, he was traveling for work, so I spent three days on my own schedule: cleaning the balcony garden, cooking, and visiting the chicken our eggs come from.

While it is freeing in a way to have that much flexibility, I was also lacking the structure of a regular work day. Still, I got a lot done.

I finally harvested the first batch of radishes. They’d been left too long but were still delicious. I decided to let two of them go to seed, so I can replenish the stock. The new baby radishes are already sprouted, so I’ll have a fresh supply in a few weeks.

I’d been meaning to check on every plant individually for two weeks but had not had a weather window that worked for me yet. Finally, I could take all my plants inside, inspect them all, trim what needed trimming, clean the balcony, and move everything back outside.

All my plants are getting large, so there is little room left on the balcony.

I am working on getting a tiny piece of land two minutes from our home. Until then, it will be a bit squeezed here. But that’s okay.

Pepper and went for a long walk through the woods. The weather has been pretty moody this last week (and still is), so we didn’t get many chances for long walks. When the rain stops, the birds start singing, and the world seems okay. The forest turns into a playground and I could spend hours just roaming.

When my husband got back, there was quite a bit of sourdough discard in the jar, so I decided to make another batch of sourdough pancakes, and show you how I make them.

Sourdough is a living culture, so the tiny microbe friends in the dough need food regularly. I feed my starter every day, so I have a lot of what other people call discard. In the past, we’ve made pizza crusts and crackers from the discard–both delicious! But recently, we’ve been enjoying sourdough pancakes because they are so simple.

The batter is really just the discard. I pour it straight from the jar into the pan with a bit a fat (or a lot if I don’t pay attention). On medium-low heat, I let them sit until they lift from the pan. And then I flip them, and bake until done.

What makes them extra delicious is adding stuff into the batter. Mushrooms, onions, green onions, sun-dried tomatoes, or a sweet version with berries. All delicious.

I harvested these berries in what will hopefully soon be my garden. One of my neighbors has multiple allotments on the same premises and showed me around. I got to visit the chicken our eggs come from. I even bought one of the chicken (well, a dead one) to give my husband a chance to eat some home-cooked meat.

We don’t buy grocery-store meat. That means, we rarely ever have meat at home. This chicken was the first meat we bought since moving into this apartment last fall.

I don’t like labeling myself as vegan. It isn’t that black or white, in my opinion. I eat a mostly plant-based diet with foods made from scratch in my own kitchen. There are occasionally eggs in my diet, and sometimes I try meat others order. I chose a diet that felt in line with my environment and body, one that causes the least amount of harm to the environment while still nourishing me and my family.

It took forever to take the chicken apart, especially as there were still quite a few feathers on it. It took even longer to clean the kitchen well enough that I didn’t feel like there was chicken blood all over it.

I’m glad the next animal to enter my kitchen dead will be around Christmas. I even asked my neighbor to help him butcher the animals then. I want to know every part of the process, and that means coming to term with how the animals die.

There is a disconnect between what we eat and where it comes from, something I’ve slowly been trying to work my way through. Growing my own food, foraging, visiting the places where my produce and this chicken came from, are all part of getting in touch with what feeds me and my family.

So long, and thanks for watching!