Garlic and Winter whining

The garlic was planted on Sunday--I photos, but they are not very interesting, so I will spare you. I also took down most of my garden since fall is apparently here. I garden on the rooftop outside my window (I live in a second story apartment) so everything I do is in containers. You need to mulch garlic to convince it to survive the winter. I am hoping that by tucking my garlic boxes within the protective confines of a fort built by my big tomato boxes this will help insulate them. We'll see. If I had a porch that got sun but no heat, I'd try that, but I don't have such a thing.

I didn't have time to truck out to Abma's today so I had to hit the Stop N Shop. I think I have successfully weaned myself off the prepackaged vegetation, but it is frustrating not knowing where stuff comes from...so I spent time looking at labels on the milk and whatnot and picking out things that were at least distributed close by. I suspect this doesn't mean much.

I am beginning to think that winter was not such a great time to get more serious about local feeding. I had all summer, and while I did do some, I didn't do enough. I started to hit my freezer today to help solve the issue, and once my chicken stock thaws (I make stock whenever I make a whole chicken, and this one was definitely a Purdue) I'll be making a soup of roasted garlic and eggplant....the garlic was locally grown, and the eggplant is from my own garden, so that will be better.

I think I will aim for one meal a week that is mostly local for the winter, and try not to stress out over it in the meanwhile. I can get off the supermarket habit when the alternatives are available again...and next summer I will get boatloads of strawberries to enjoy now!