April Food Co-op and Unbaked Oatmeal Fudge

Unbaked Oatmeal Fudge is what Jessica made for a recent cooking assignment. The recipe is cocoa, sugar, milk, butter, vanilla and quick oats. There are variations with peanut butter or coconut but this variation is the one that we like the best.

Info on the food co-op can be found at www.foodco-op.net. Here's the Standard Food Co-op order for April at a cost of $23 : 1 4-lb. whole roasting chicken, 1 pkg. lean ground beef, 1 pkg. lean pork cubes, 1 pkg. lean Salisbury steaks, 1 1-lb. box strawberries, 7 bananas, 5 oranges, 1 5-lb bag red potatoes, 1 loaf Stone Ground's Artisan Wheat Loaf, 1 16-oz pkg. rice, 1 head broccoli, 3 cucumbers, 1 head of red leaf lettuce and 4 tomatoes. They ran out of tomatoes since we barely squeaked in to get our order this month-I was moving books and got distracted. (Those of you who like reading will relate and know what I mean as one just starts thumbing through the books. I can't just replace them on the new shelf-I feel like I must get reacquainted with each book first before it can go in the new spot. )

Here's the tamales we bought for $5.

The half share was $14 and consisted of: 1 pkg. lean Salisbury steaks, 1 pkg. lean pork cubes, 1 5-lb. bag red potatoes, 4 oranges, 1 head broccoli, 1 head red leaf lettuce, 6 bananas, 4 tomatoes, 1 l-lb box strawberries, 1 loaf Stone Ground's Artisan Wheat Loaf, and 1 pkg. 16-oz rice.

The harvest share was $14 and consisted of: 1 5-lb. bag red potatoes, 8 oranges, 1 head of broccoli, 4 cucumbers, 1 head red leaf lettuce, 1 head cauliflower, 10 bananas, 6 tomatoes, 2 l-lb boxes strawberries, 1 loaf Stone Ground's Artisan Wheat Loaf and 1 16-oz bag rice.

Strawberry Boxes in the Garden

Now that I've decided where I want the boxes (Dave did have a little bit of say but he wanted me to choose the spots for the strawberries) we put down weed shield since we have a pretty bad morning glory week problem and I wanted no chance of the morning glory coming up through the new garden boxes.

We started out filling the box about a third full of compost.


And here's the main ingredient: compost (available by the truck load from our local landfill for a mere $30 per load (approximately 3 cubic feet) and it's pretty good compost for the price.


After we put down the weed blocker we moved on to compiling the various components of fill. We used mostly equal amounts of peat moss, perlite and compost with some small additions of steer manure and sand.

After the first layer of compost we added in other "ingredients" until the box was almost full.

Here's a picture of the 3 back boxes in various stages of development-weed shield to the back, partially filled in the middle and completed box in the foreground. Using these boxes we've planted numerous strawberry plants-some June bearing and some everbearing.