I did this for my tomatoes: The roof serves both to: 1. Avoid overwatering or unplanned watering from heavy / long rains, and 2. Protect from strong sun, the recently planted seedlings / companion plants You could make a SIMPLE covered structure to avoid overwatering from rain. Also be sure to hoe often the soil. I use: â Fiskars Garden Hoe â Union Tools V-Blade Garden Hoe â Nejiri Gama Hoe â CobraHead Weeder and Cultivator As of spraying I would recommend: â Garden Safe Insecticidal Soap Insect Killer â Safer 3-in-1 Garden SprayGoogle I also like Safer Garden Dust. All three products are OMRI listed.

BF and I try to eat lots of fresh vegetables. It does help to clean them all up on the weekends. Also I very often make a pot of beans (if you can eat those) and brown rice and then freeze them. I also make stews in the crockpot which I then parcel out into reheatable containers that I can pop into my lunchbox. Same with casseroles like enchiladas, etc. Dips like spinach and hummus are great on whole grain wasa bread, which is one of the things I can eat. Here's a great low fat spinach dip. I also make the regular recipe and sub half tofu for the mayo and sour cream, then just add a dab of lowfat mayo and lowfat sour cream for flavor. Lowfat spinach artichoke dip I can of white beans--butter beans go well, as do cannelini. 1/2 10 oz. package of frozen chopped spinach, or about 1-2 cups from a bag, which is how we buy it. Could use 5 oz. fresh, just steam and dice. 1 jar of marinated artichokes, chopped. 1/2 large red pepper diced or one canned roasted red pepper diced. 3 chopped scallions or 1/4 cup finely chopped red onion couple cloves garlic to taste, or the equivalent garlic powder 1 tsp. italian seasoning and/or some fresh basil dash of lemon juice couple TBLSP parmesean cheese and a dab of neufatchel if you can eat either of those. Go easy, since this is where the fat comes in. Salt and pepper to taste. Not needed if you use the parmesean and canned beans. Combine spinach and beans in the food processor. Spoon out of the processor and add the other ingredients. This should meld for at least 30 min. before eating. Yesterday I made the easiest chili I have ever made in my life, and it was great. Throw it in the Crockpot Chili Ingredients to throw in: 1 chopped onion (red or white) 1 can beans of choice--black or kidney are my favorites 1 cup Morningstar Farms fake meat crumbles, (or 1/2 lb. crumbled cooked lowfat meat of choice) 1 cup frozen corn 1 diced zuchinni 1/2 diced green pepper 1 can Hunts diced tomatoes with spicy red pepper. I had never had these before, they were GREAT. You could use the fire roasted diced tomatoes, or the ones that come with jalepenos. If you can't get any of these, improvise with regular diced tomatoes and canned peppers. 1 14.5 oz can tomato sauce plus some water for rinsing out the can 2-3 cloves garlic 1/2 tsp. cumin 1/2 tsp. oregano 1/2 tsp. commercial chili powder 1/2 tsp. ancho chili pepper 1/2 tsp. hot or mild paprika or a mix Adjust hotness to your taste with cayenne. This version was hot enough for us as is. Throw all this in the crockpot and simmer for about 2 hours on high and 1-2 hours on low. Lowfat and tasty! I served it with baked tortilla chips and a dab of guac which I make by mixing avocado and salsa.

Thanks Rita Re alternate cooking weeks: some things you do for maintaining marital harmony :) because our grocery shopping, meal palnning, our cooking styles and our clean up routines are so opposite to each other.. in fact that's true for a lot of how we both think and work... so different .... reminds me when we were at Sedona many years ago and got our auras read(it's the new age method where they read the energy you generate as colors ). And our aura reader was amazed that DH and I were Married because our auras were so contrasting, none of our colors matched..except this teeny tiny bit of green ..and she claimed that's what made us click in the cosmic sense. We both had a good laugh about it afterwards anyways back on the kitchen : our current kitchen is one cook\one eat space. Wonder if our cookin schedules will change with our new kitchen ....

Thanks, Aphaea, that photo was taken in my northern home. I had that piece custom framed with a black linen matt, gold fillet & gold frame. The framing was more than the print. When I moved to Florida, it didn't work in the Florida house and I ended up placing it on consignment in a shop.