Things I learned this week

I thought I’d start a weekly series on things I learned throughout the week.  If you are so inclined, feel free to share what you’ve learned or what has been reinforced for you this week. 

What have I learned this week?

• How to make hair bows for little girls.  My friend Allison did a demonstration for the senior group at our church.
• That freezing corn is the preferred method of food preservation.  The ladies at the senior group at our church said that it isn’t as sweet when canned in a pressure canner. 
• What lambs quarters look like.  I know a lot about vegetables and flowers, but only a little about edible plants in the wild.  I saw that our CSA farmer Adrienne was selling them this morning, and I asked her to show them to me.  I now feel pretty confident that I could pick them out in the wild.  She also gave me a tutorial on edible sumac vs poisonous sumac, but I think I’ll still want to see the difference first hand before trying to make a drink out of the berries.  (Edible sumac makes a drink that tastes very similar to lemonade.  Lambs quarters can be used interchangeably with spinach.")  One of the reasons I love going to the farmers market is that the many farmers are such a wealth of information.