Fresh green stir fry with peanut sauce

June means garlic scapes - and other early garden harvests. Today, my frying pan saw THREE vegetables directly from my back yard!

Yes, plants really came up with those! They look almost too uniform to be natural. Healthy and happy garlic bulbs send out a single scape each year at this time. They're tender, and slightly less intense than the bulbs. The plant doesn't need them for reproduction, and removing them sends more nutrients down to the bulb, which will be harvested in a few weeks.

I've got over 100 garlics this year, and most are producing a scape, so this is our second meal that included them, and we'll have at least a couple more. If you're lucky, you can sometimes find scapes at produce shops at this time of year. If you're luckier, you can snip them right off your plants while your frying pan is heating up, like I did!

On the way inside, I noticed some pea pods are getting nice and full. I grabbed a handful off the plants, which are nearly taller than I am now. They'll produce daily now until the weather gets too hot and dry. They're very tender and sweet.

I also pulled a shallot from the patch I've grown from seed since last year. Shallots are basically smaller and more intense onions.

10 minutes in a hot pan with some mushrooms and broccoli from the market, then some homemade peanut sauce, and a bed of steamed basmati.

Diet/nutrition ramble

My wife @MediKatie and I try to eat well, and this would be about the most healthy meal we ever eat. We also eat a lot of pizza, fries, pasta, wraps, pancakes, toast, cookies, and other stuff that can be considered "junk food". I do not portion control at all, eating several times a day, never going hungry. But I'm 5'10" and 155lb, so I'm anything but overweight, despite eating this way for several years (and no, I am not into daily cardio exercises).

I'm not saying it's a miracle diet or anything, and there's a little effort and sacrifice involved. But if you're wondering:

• we make everything ourselves, from scratch, from fresh local ingredients
• no meat or dairy
• no gluten

What works for one person doesn't work for everybody, but my experience with nutrition has shown me that I personally don't require other animals - or wheat, barley, and rye - to stay healthy. But try and find any processed foods that don't contain one or both of those food categories! Making my own food from scratch brings down cost, raises the level of nutrition, and allows me to eat really well while avoiding animal products and gluten.

Oh, and you know how ice cream has gone way downhill in recent years? Unless you live near a real country dairy, it's like sugary frozen foam with chemical flavour. And let's be honest, eating the breastmilk of other mammals is a bit weird. Only 30% of the human population is lactose tolerant after infancy, look it up. Most of us haven't yet evolved the right enzymes to digest it as adults, because we've only been drinking the breastmilk of our farm animals for a few thousand years. Many, like the Chinese, are still almost completely intolerant to lactose. But there's a solution to all this, and it's an incredible secret you'll thank me for telling you.

Coconut ice cream! Or more accurately stated, iced coconut cream. It's ice cream made from the cream of coconuts instead of the cream of cows. It has a faint coconut taste, but is mainly just really creamy and delicious. I'm an ice cream fanatic and expert, trust me. I've eaten more ice cream in my career than just about anyone! And hands down, coconut makes the best. Sure, it's in the "vegan" section... but you eat apples, potato chips, and dark chocolate, don't you? That's all "vegan" too. All vegan means is no animal products. So look past that label, and even if you aren't vegan, try coconut ice cream. Please, even if you just do it for yourself. Unless you hate coconut, it's going to be the best ice cream you've had, or right up there with the very best. I would even say that humans should have made ice cream from coconut cream right off the bat. We would probably never have (or rarely have) ventured into making it from the cream of beasts.

Don't feel like I'm telling you what to do, judging you for doing things different than I do, etc. But please, take my advice on the coconut ice cream. I'm not kidding, it's worth raving over. Mint chip would be my favourite, but classic chocolate is pretty incredible!

And if you want to grow yourself some scapes... Separate an organic garlic bulb from the shop into the cloves, and plant them root-side-down into a few inches of soil in October. Snip the scapes in June, and pull the bulbs out to dry in July! (Exact timing may vary depending on your latitude.)

I'm looking forward to FOUR ingredients coming directly out of my garden, and into a meal. The green beans should be ready in a couple weeks!

Grow (and eat) in peace.
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