Wow, I promised a drawing of the garden didn’t I. I believe I got distracted by something shiny. Yes, shiny. At the moment I don’t know where it is so you don’t get that. Sorry.
Instead, I’m happy to say that my wonderful husband installed a gate on the arbor in our back yard thus containing now giant puppy to the non-working area of our yard. Working as in this is where we store things and use for edibles and the cultivation thereof. Non-working as in the was pretty at one point and will likely become a destroyed dog run.
This means I can now seriously begin thinking about my edibles garden and prepare the early stuff. I’m going to refurbish my greenhouse (that the dog destroyed) and use it to grow an early crop of spinach and lettuce. I’m desperate for a good salad and my little cold-frame greenhouse should offer enough protection from the elements.
I am also looking into seed starting options for some of the early crops. My lighting situation is a little questionable so I’ll do my best.
January is over and the gardening season can now begin.
Welcome to a new planting season. Wait? What? Isn’t it January? I’m wondering if you have your seeds ordered yet? I ordered mine last August for fear of my previous encounter with late arriving seeds.
With any luck the 2010 Sprouting Off garden will be bigger and better than ever. Trick is, we have little money to build the garden with. In addition, a portion of our garden space might be unusable this year with the addition of a new member of our family. In December we were gifted (a wanted) 8 week old Boxer-Mastiff puppy. She is now 3 months old and thinks the raised beds in the back are her personal play area. We have plans to add a gate to our back arbor, but that may not happen in time for the first planting.
In any case the garden must go in and we must do it on the tightest budget possible. Instead of putting in the whole garden all at once we are doing it piece by piece. Hopefully at the beginning of March we can add all of the gravel paths and then just fill in around them as the season gets started. Next week I’ll share the drawing of what the side garden will look like. In the mean time, I’ll share my list of seeds for 2010. Some are the same as last year and some are new to us this year.
Lettuce:
Buttercrunch
Flame
Salad Bowl
Tango
Yugoslavian Red Buttercrunch
Giant Thick Leafed Spinach
Winter Squash:
Sweet Potato
Cheyenne Bush Pumpkin
Rouge Vif d’ Etampes Pumpkin
Amish Pie Pumpkin
Summer Squash:
Straita de Italia
Yellow Crookneck
Giant Musselburg Leek
Early Snowball Cauliflower
Arugula
Yellow Sweet Spanish Onion
Melitopolski Watermelon
Golden Acre Cabbage
American Purple Top Rutabaga
Hollow Crown Parsnip
Cucumbers:
Lemon
Mexican Sour Gherkin
Boston Pickling
Beets:
Ruby Queen
Bull’s Blood
Cilantro
These are just the seeds I’ve ordered. This does not include the lettuce, broccoli, pumpkins, squash, peas, beans, corn or carrots I already have. Nor does it include the few plants I will buy like tomatoes and peppers. In addition, we will be adding a few perennial items to the mix. We have a few, but some need replacing. We will add horseradish, artichokes, raspberries and asparagus and replace strawberries and blueberries. Next year we may add a few fruit trees if the budget will allow. Those will hopefully take the place of the raised beds in the back.
In a nutshell it is an ambitious goal for the season. I know it will keep us busy and full of good food.
Happy Thanksgiving!
We have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. At the current moment we have reached our $3000 (gross sales) goal. With about $650 more in sales we could be close to having $3000 in profit! That would men we could almost double what was sent to Baby Home #2 last year (that was $1700).
There are only 2 more days to order truffles and caramels. We will take orders until midnight on November 27th. If you haven’t placed your order yet do so quickly. If you have placed your order thank you very much. The Baby Home is very excited to make the childrens’ Christmas a little extra special.
If you have tried to order and the system won’t complete the payment portion please contact us. We are aware of some problems with being able to complete some credit card transactions. The system is secure it is just an issue with Paypal (we always have at least 1 glitch with them every year). We will make sure you can arrange payment so you can get your order. We don’t want anyone to miss out on the deliciousness.
As always, if your waistline won’t allow candy please consider making a donation to Sweet Hope. There is a donate button on the ordering page of our website. Donations are welcome all year long.
Thank you to everyone for doing your part to spread the word. We can’t do this without you.
In the hustle and bustle of life I completely forgot to let you in on a little side gig that I do. Not that Sprouting Off isn’t yet another side gig, but this one is important.
In 2006 my husband and I sold and made chocolate truffles and caramels to raise money to bring our son home from Russia. After our son was home we were repeatedly asked to make the candy again and we did… and did and did. That one little fundraiser turned into a very large production that consumes the better part of 3 months for me. Which would also explain my significant lack of posting about gardens and garden related topics.
Every year we sell chocolate truffles and caramels and we give the money away. We’ve given it to other families adopting children and last year we gave it away to our son’s former orphanage. This year we are doing the same thing. Only this year, we are making more varieties of truffles and caramels in the hopes of sending even more money.
Check out the website for Sweet Hope. It explains the whole story much better than I can throw together in one blog post. If you go to the ordering page (since you are going to order, right?) and click on the photos of the candy, they get bigger. I hold no responsibility for any drool that may end up on your computer screen, desk or keyboard.
100% of the profits from the sale of Sweet Hope candy goes directly to Baby Home #2 in Khabarovsk, Russia. The candy comes gift boxed and makes great Christmas gifts. All orders ship on December 16th, just in time for Christmas. You (or your loved ones) get candy, and a child gets a Christmas.
When I became a parent I was very excited to enter the world of mommyhood. Children mean built-in friendships don’t they? I was dismayed to find the world of moms often catty and unappealing. I am a very shy person by nature. However, my family would argue that point to the death. The truth, is I’m resistant to change and meeting new people qualifies as change. Every time we are asked over for a play date I fret. Will I open my mouth and make a fool of myself? What if my child behaves badly or has one of his signature meltdowns. Small stuff, but fret nonetheless. You would think that with over 2 years of preschool under my belt that I would fret less. Not so much.
This afternoon we attended a playdate at a preschool classmate’s home. We’ve been trying to set this up for weeks, but well… I get distracted by shiny objects and it just hasn’t worked, until today.
I must say I had a lovely time and got to know what I hope will become a new friend. Someone quirky like me (in a good way) and easy to talk to. My son had a wonderful time and behaved himself nicely (despite the one near catastrophe).
Oh wait… this isn’t the mommy blog is it? Darn it. Bet you thought I got confused there for a minute. I’m getting to the point. Keep your pants on.
I mentioned to the other mom about my chocolate “business.” I went to pull out a business card (which I totally left at home) and while I was rummaging in my bag she handed me a business card. It just so happens that this mother owns Trails of Crumbs Bakery. Even better, she writes a blog too. Honestly, what mom doesn’t write a blog these days. I assure you, this is not a mommy blog. It is a blog loaded with recipes and photos of delicious baked goods. Check it out. You can have a little piece of Tacoma delivered right to your door.
What does this have to do with gardening? Nothing. I just like cookies.
The Tuesday Night Supper feature has obviously taken a few weeks off. The busy and a mysterious illness has befallen all members of this house and last night we ate frozen pizza. It wasn’t even my wonderful throw it together in 30 minutes pizza.
Gardening has also taken a backseat in our lives. The Autumn rains have started and the weather forecast shows some kind of sky wetness for at least the next 7-10 days. I am currently trying to devise a plan to tie my lightbox around my neck and find a very long extension cord. Gardening has been so bad that when I got to take the garbage out I keeps seeing one little orange pepper staring back begging me to pick it. However, I’m usually in my slippers and the grass is often wet. There it sits.
The one thing I do enjoy about this time of year are the birds. For some odd reason we get a hoard of small birds every October. The cacophony of sound is very Hitchcock-esque. It reminds me of the days when we first purchased our house and I spend all day stripping wallpaper, painting cabinets and ripping out caret. I had no radio or TV. I sang to myself and listened to the birds.
As the health of the writing contingent for Sprouting Off continues to improve we will once again be bringing you useful (or not so useful) information on how to prepare for next year’s garden. We will be welcoming a feature writer who will contribute stories about sustainable eating. Mom is actually going to retire so hopefully she will find a few moments now and again to update you on how her gardening adventure went this year (just ask her about radishes). I’ll bring you a few book reviews and some entertaining bits found in a few vintage garden books.
Stick with us. We’ll make it worth your while.
The first time I was offered fish tacos I thought my Grandfather was joking. I had just finished my junior year in highschool and my grandparents took one of my brothers, my oldest cousin and me on a trip to their winter home in San Felipe, Mexico. My cousin and I spent our days sitting by the pool and seeing how much baby oil we could slather on ourselves before we burned to a crisp. At the pool there was a little cantina that served drinks and the occasional taco. Growing up I didn’t have much of an adventurous palette when it came to food. To us tacos were served in hard, often stale, shells with shredded iceberg lettuce and orange cheese. Based on the restaurants in the US, Mexican food is not my favorite. So when my grandfather asked if we wanted to try the fish tacos I thought he had lost his mind. Lynn and I didn’t want to be rude so we gave them a try.
The tacos were like none I’d ever had before. They were small fillets of whitefish, lightly breaded, and served on a soft corn tortilla with a little bit of fresh salsa. It was heaven. I came home from that trip in love with Mexican food only to find out that real Mexican food was nowhere to be found.
Years later I took a group of high school students to Tijuana to build a house. As part of the trip the organization took us to a roadside taco stand for lunch. It was our “authentic Mexican meal.” A week in Mexico and we only ate cafeteria food. That one afternoon at the taco stand brought back the memories of my previous experience sitting by the pool with my cousin and I remembered how much I loved true Mexican cuisine. Back in the US I was left with greasy cheese laden enchiladas and stale taco shells.
Recently my husband and I had happy hour at a local Mexican restaurant. Then again at another. Both of these establishments seeks to put an end to congealed cheese and cheesy mariachi music. Masa and Matador serve up Mexican food as it is supposed to be cooked. With my re-found love of Mexican food I set off to create a dinner for my family that was worthy of eating.
Fish Tacos with corn salsa and avocado cream
2 tilapia fillets (or other flaky white fish)
Salt, pepper, cumin to taste
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly oil a baking pan. Season the fish with the salt, pepper and cumin. I like more cumin so I put more on. Bake the fish about 15 – 20 minutes or until cooked through. (we had to bake the fish because our grill is currently out of commission)
Corn Salsa
1 cob of corn (cut the kernels off)
1 can black beans
1 medium tomato diced
1/2 sweet onion diced
2 cloves garlic minced
Handful chopped cilantro
Juice of 1 lime
salt, pepper and cumin to taste
oil
Heat oil in a pan over medium high heat. Saute onions and garlic until fragrant. Add corn and black beans. Cook 2-3 minutes. Add Cilantro and lime juice. Cook 2-3 minutes more. Season with salt, pepper and cumin. You can add chili powder or peppers if you like it a little spicy. Remove from heat and stir in tomatoes.
Avocado Cream
I make this and put it in a squeeze bottle in the fridge and serve it on everything
2 avocados
2 cloves garlic
handful chopped cilantro
1/2 c. cream
2 T. butter (I never said the cream was healthy)
Salt to taste
Puree the avocados, garlic and cilantro in a food processor. Heat butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add avocado puree and heat through. Add cream and combine. Season.
To assemble the final dish: heat soft corn tortillas in the oven (wrap a stack of them in foil and throw them in the oven while the fish is cooking). Flake fish apart and put on tortilla. Top with salsa and cream. You may want to double the tortillas since the salsa can get a little messy.
It’s that time of year again. Fruit fly time. Produce from the garden and the market is in abundance on kitchen counters and those pesky little bugs are well… bugging everyone. The presence of fruit flies seems to be popping up all over the internet.
We aren’t without our fair share of them here. We just don’t have the multitudes that others do. Sure, every bowl in our house is filled with some kind of fruit or veg. Heck, I even had buckets of berries on the kitchen floor. Oh they loved those.
There is no sure fire way to rid your home of fruit flies, other than get rid of all of the food sitting out, but there are some things you can do to lessen the population.
1) make sure your counters and sinks are clean. This even goes so far as to say keep the drains clean too. If you don’t have a disposal don’t try to shove food bits down your drain. If you do have a disposal run it frequently to get rid of all of the food bits.
2) inspect the produce you have sitting out daily. Any soft spots or mold is like throwing out the welcome mat for fruit flies. I go through the tomato basket and bowls every day to pick out the bad ones.
3) set out vinegar traps. Pour a small amount of apple cider vinegar (or beer or red wine) into a glass and cover it with plastic wrap. Poke a few holes in the wrap with a toothpick and set the traps near any produce you may have sitting out. The flies will fly in, but can’t get out. Just make sure to put out new traps every few days.
4) you could get a little gett-o and hang yellow sticky traps around the house, but they are unsightly and who wants to watch a twitching fruit fly on a sticky trap.
5) if all of that doesn’t cure your fruit fly infestation you may have a different matter on your hands. Fungus gnats. Fungus gnats are totally different than fruit flies. They feed on the organic matter of moist potting soil. Odds are if you have little flies flitting about your houseplants you have fungus gnats. The best way to cure those is to let your houseplants dry a little between waterings.
The good news is that once the soft produce clears from your kitchen the flies should go too.
This time of year is spent canning, freezing and generally preserving the harvest we’ve worked so hard to create. I also scout out deals on produce at the local markets to fill in what I don’t grow. Apples are a prime example of this. We will head down to Portland, OR for our annual trip to Portland Nursery’s apple tasting and come home with hoards of apples that will need to be made into applesauce.
Another bit of fruit I happen to have an excess of is Black Currants. Somehow I got talked into planting a Black Currant bush in our garden despite having no clue what to do with the actual currants. The first year we had a small little crop that the birds ate. The next year I got a slightly larger crop that I picked and then let go bad in the refrigerator. Last year I grew quite a decent crop and made sure to rescue the harvest before the birds had their fill. I managed to freeze that batch. This year was much the same, only my yield was huge. Well, if you consider 1 lb. 10 oz. huge. After all, it is one small currant bush.
I carefully picked off all of the stems and flower end bits and froze the berries on a sheet pan so they didn’t stick together. I did the same with the Blueberries we gathered from Blueberry Park.
Yesterday I had grand intentions of making a grand batch of mixed berry jam with the blueberries, black currants, strawberries (from the freezer) and the blackberries my son and I picked. Sadly, I didn’t get to the blackberries before the fruit flies and mold did. That left me with one less berry. I didn’t think that strawberry/blueberry/black currant jam sounded all that delightful (not that adding blackberries would have made much of a difference) so I scrapped the strawberries. They are now thawing in the fridge and hopefully I can get back up the hill to get a fresh batch of blackberries.
I did some looking for what to do with blueberries and black currants and oddly enough it was mentioned that they can make a nice jam if mixed together. Might as well.
My pantry is in a state of disarray and I’m short on a few things. Sugar happens to be one of them. I only had about 1/2 of the sugar I needed, but somehow it worked out.
Blueberry Black Currant Jam
(These are the weights I had to work with)
2 lbs. Black Currants
3 lbs. Blueberries
1 1/2 lbs. sugar
little over 8 ounces of water
1 whole cinnamon stick
Combine the water, sugar and cinnamon stick in a large pot. Heat over medium heat to dissolve the sugar. Add berries (fresh or previously frozen). Cook fruit down until it is syrupy. I let mine go about 2 hours. Remove cinnamon stick and mash the remaining whole fruit. I put the mixture through a foley mill with the largest size screed on. Transfer the mixture back into the pot to keep warm.
Sterilize 12-13 4oz. jars. I do this by washing them thoroughly in hot soapy water and then placing them open side down in a skillet of simmering water for 10-15 minutes. Bring a small pan of water to a boil and then turn it off. Put the clean lids in the pan. Heat a large canning pot of water to a rolling boil. Remove the jars from the skillet and dry with a clean towel. Fill the jars with the hot jam mixture. Leave about 1/4″ of head space and run a small spatula around in the jar to remove any air. Clean the rim of the jar with a clean wash cloth and place a lid and ring on each jar. I can fit about 6 jars in my canning pot so I only do 6 at a time. Put the jars in the boiling water (using a jar lifter) and process for 10 minutes. Remove jars from boiling water and place on a towel on the counter to cool. The jars have sealed correctly if the lids get sucked in.
I happened to only do 12 jars and had enough left over to fill another 9 ounce jar. I could have processed that one too, but I just put it in the refrigerator to enjoy now. The jam is not super thick, but more like a fruit preserve spread. It tastes delicious on toast.
I totally forgot about this week’s Tuesday night supper. In fact, I don’t even know what we are having for dinner tonight and it is 3:30 in the afternoon. My child’s behavior is preventing me from venturing much further than my mailbox. Odds are I’ll ask my husband to pick something up on his way home.
There are some nights that we are able to just throw a bunch of stuff into a pan and call it supper. Most of the time that involves some sort of chicken and veg combination. The other night this was the plan. However, when we defrosted the chicken that had been in our freezer is smelled a little off. The meat supply in the house was getting slim and there wasn’t anything that could be defrosted quickly and it was getting late. My husband already had fried rice on the stove so we had to find something that would go with that. No meat, a drawer full of veg that needed to be eaten, a can of black beans and a pan of fried rice, I’d call that dinner. Here’s what resulted*:
Mexican Vegetarian Stir-fry
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 ear of corn (kernels cut off)
1/2 cup frozen peas
1 cup broccoli florets
1 cup green beans
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 small tomatoes, diced
cumin
chili powder (optional)
season salt
salt & pepper to taste
olive oil (or oil of your choice)
1/4 cup chicken stock
Prepare whatever you are going to put this stir-fry on first. In our case it was fried rice (recipe below).
Prepare vegetables and put in one big bowl. Heat oil in a large saute pan or wok over medium high heat. Add garlic and cook until just fragrant (don’t burn it). Add vegetables and stir fry, about 2-3 minutes. Add spices to your liking. I prefer a hefty dose of cumin and less salt. Add chicken stock and cook vegetables until they just soften. Don’t over cook them or it will be all mush.
Serve over rice.
—————————–
Fried Rice
It sounds strange that a woman on a mission to rid her home of processed foods would allow such a thing as granular chicken bouillon into the house, but hey, I like it.
1 cup short grain Cal-rose rice (don’t use long grain)
garlic powder
granular chicken bouillon (or option 2)
1 3/4 cup water
1 1/2 T butter
(option 2)
1 3/4 cup chicken broth
salt to taste
Heat butter in a skillet over medium high heat. Add rice. Add a sprinkling of garlic powder and cook rice until opaque. I don’t know exactly how much garlic powder to use since I just sprinkle it on. Probably 1/2 – 1 teaspoon. Add 1 heaping spoonful (regular dinner spoon – no soup spoon) of granular bouillon, don’t stir it in. Add water and cover until the sizzling stops (about 10 seconds). Remove pan lid and stir in bouillon. If you are using the chicken broth skip the bouillon step and just add the broth instead of water. Reduce heat to low and cook covered about 15 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir rice after about 5 minutes in to prevent sticking.
This dish should be slightly salty.
salt
Recent Comments