It is here that our journey begins: on our little rooftop with a few small containers of seeds and sprouts. Follow our progress and sample the (hopefully) tasty treats we create with ingredients from our rooftop container garden.

These seeds were started a tad late due to the unseasonably cool spring we experienced here along the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. A few late frosts kept our fingers out of the soil, but these seeds were happy to oblige us in our experimental garden.

Now, if you’re a professional gardener/farmer, this set-up may send shivers down your spine. Rest assured that these puny containers (dishpans, actually) are only being used to sprout the seeds. We do intend to, and in fact must very soon, transplant these little green darlings into larger pots with more soil.

This project is full of firsts for us; our first serious vegetable patch (i.e. we intend to actually harvest a substantial amount of food from this garden), our first organic garden, and our first container garden (on a rooftop no less!) Wish us luck!

We’ve been making boxed brownies for various family events and found that using the recommended additional ingredients (or its substitute) equals very oily brownies. Yes, we cheat and use the mix. Homemade brownie recipes don’t include hydrogenated oil – which I’m certain takes all the credit for the paper thin, flaky top I love! (Hence, the ‘naughty’ name.)

I thought I’d share what we found works well and save you the trouble of wasted time and brownies. You should note that we prefer chewy brownies, not cake-like, so you may need to alter these further to suit your taste.

We love making these for skeptics and watching their reaction when we tell them that they’re boxed brownies gone vegan. ;-)

We’ve been experimenting with less ‘peanutty’ peanut sauces…happily, this evening we figured one out that pleased both of our palates. We had it over brown rice and steamed broccoli. Yum!