I guess I never sprouted mustard. Soaking created cups of mucilaginous muck. I almost tossed the whole mess.

I'm right there with you... Around here it's called my "make work program". What you call spring fever or cabin fever, I call winter survival food :-). It's the only real "fresh" food in our diet until I can start harvesting cool season greens - which I can't even plant for at least another month and a half. But on the other hand, once the garden is in full swing, it's too warm indoors for many of these winter crops, so work shifts to outdoors.

FYI - Choose Oriental Mustard Seed, instead of common mustard seed. It is a yellow seed and is the only non-mucilaginous mustard seed, and I think you'll like the results. You can order them from sproutpeople.org.

I'm making cabbage Rejuvelac later this week. Last week I made it with rye. And one good thing leads to another. Now I have the spent rye dehydrated to use.

Are you doing wheatgrass (or other grass) and juicing it?

-Grainlady

Spring fever here too! We are in a serious melt situation, most of the 14 inches of snow from last week is now gone... soggy mess everywhere.

And I am craving local asparagus! Wil have to wait a bit on that though :-)

Alexa

Alexa - didn't I read somewhere that you are originally from here - I mean Maine. So you can imagine my cabin fever. Fresh asparagus daylily shoots anything fresh and green...

Grainlady - Thank you for your knowledge as always. I have grown sprouts before and started sprouting beans and lentils last year. Makes cooking them so much faster.

Microgreens are new to me. I went to the HF store for some sprouting seed - the lady I talked to grows a lot of microgreens. She loves her buckwheat. And chia sprouts.

I do not juice. I hope to seriously seriously splurge on a vitamix soon. Maybe then.

You don't have to be from Maine to have cabin fever. Chicago weather s*cks right now. Thirty two inches of snow since 1/1 and polar vortex, round II this week. This morning started with -1F and now it is -4F, dropping to -18F overnight. Windchill has us at -25 to -40. All schools are closed and they keep warning to stay indoors.

And I got the gas bill for the beginning of the month, triple what it was last January. Gave me a sleepless night.

I have cooked, baked and cleaned. Even made up an excuse to go out for just one item. Walking the pooch is out of the question too and he is bored too. Starting any seeds or even bring the geraniums out of their boxes is not an option, the basement is just too cold right now. The potted herbs on the windowsill had to be moved away.

Yup, I have a bad case of cabin fever. Maybe I will brave it and go to a movie and the paint store tomorrow. Kitchen walls need to be redone.

Hang in there, we are one day closer to spring.

Peppi, if it helps at all, I got my gas bill today too. After the initial shock wore off and I stopped hyperventilating, I thought briefly about reducing the heat. Since it stays at 50F, I left it there, but my furnace is running on pretty much a constant basis. I can hardly wait for next month's bill. (sigh)

Nope, no spring fever here. I've been getting outside regularly, thanks, like every single day, LOL.

Here we've had 40 inches of snow so far in January, right now it's -5F and it's projected to be a high of 3F tomorrow. Like Peppi, we are being warned not to go outside and the schools were closed today, and will be again tomorrow. Those 30 MPH winds she has are here too, and the blowing is creating white out/blizzard conditions, too dangerous to send a bunch of kids out in a school bus in our largely rural area.

The water source to my stock tank is frozen and it appears will remain so until spring finally comes. We're hauling water daily in 50 gallon barrels and bailing the water into the tank with buckets. It's low tech and a pain, but it works, and it's not the worst job I've ever had.

So, I haven't been cooking, baking or sprouting seeds, I've been standing in the back of a pick-up with wind chills of 25 below zero, bailing buckets of water. After that I haul some pig feed and more water down to the pig pen, feed the chickens, make sure everyone has enough straw for bedding and are warm and comfortable. Then I go back home and take a hot shower until I'm warm again. Elery is not enjoying farming right now.

Yes, spring will come. Eventually. And I'm still happier now than I am when it's 90!

Annie

This post was edited by annie1992 on Mon, Jan 27, 14 at 21:53

I'm in Chicago also and cannot wait for the weather to warm up. I am sick of having to clear the snow everyday, sick of having to chase the dog and literally carry her to the grass because she hates the cold, and sick of being slow at work because of the weather. I am also sick of walking into stores and having the first couple of feet into the store be covered with dirty slush. On the plus side I am actually taking a day off of work tomorrow because of the weather, and Chris took off of work early tonight because his job was also dead. We actually got to eat dinner together tonight at a somewhat normal hour and not 10:30 at night .

The talk of gas bills reminded me I had yet to pay mine this month and it was due in two days. As I made my payment I decided to check the amount last year at this time, and it was double. I guess I should be expecting my next one to be triple. I feel very fortunate though, with this house, we have been living here only 1 1/2 years and when we purchased it was a complete wreck, and everything had to be redone. On the plus side we got it cheap enough that we could afford to redo everything and therefore I have new windows, doors, insulation, etc which I think really helps with our energy costs.

Annie - I can only guess how tough it is to be outside working in this weather, and having to do extra work because of the frozen water supply. Here's hoping the cold weather is almost behind us and spring will come sooner than expected.

I may start tomato seeds this weekend.

Started sweet potato slips already.

dcarch

I'm starting my onion seeds this weekend. Peppers and eggplant in a couple of weeks, and tomatoes in about a month. Usually, we have about 200 seedlings growing. I need to see something green rather than mud-brown, grey or white. At least my lemon and lime trees are blooming (and have not-quite-ripe fruit on them) and I've managed to keep parsley, cilantro and rosemary indoors, alive and edible.

And, yeah, I just had my propane tank filled. Sticker shock. Have to get fuel oil soon, too. I've started searching in the couch for loose change to pay for that.

Thank goodness my two mutts love the snow, but they do get cold so fast. They get bored inside, so we're inventing new games to keep them from bouncing off the walls.

Real spring fever here! I was in Orlando this a.m. About 11 am, the temperature was 81. Lovely!!!! Got home and it was 70--that's fine too. We are looking at rain tomorrow, tomorrow night, and Wednesday. Oh, my daylilies are looking good and expect scapes to start in about a 3 weeks.

Stay warm all!

Have had cabin fever for past few weeks here in NJ. MUCH MUCH colder than typical weather. Have been a total SLUG for past few weekends.

I haven't started any seedlings here either, I don't do that until at least March as I can't plant outside until the end of May. They outgrow pots and I repot them, then they outgrow pots and we do it over again, LOL. So, I've learned to not do it until at least mid-March.

I just checked the weather and it's supposed to be all the way up to 23F on Saturday!

Annie