sylke

A few plants went in the ground on Mother's Day three days ago, even though it's a bit too cold this week for them to properly thrive. Mostly I needed to cling to some sense of normalcy. All the tomatoes, the two jalapenos, and two of the squash plants. I wasn't sure the third would even fit in the spot for them anyway, squash plants get enormous.

Monday morning, I saw that something had eaten the top off of one of my heirloom tomato plants, and I don't have any more seeds for those things to grow more, so I really hope it can recover and grow from a sucker offshoot or something. But topping a plant is generally a great way to stunt its growth. I was worried about groundhogs but eh, it was still chilly, wasn't gonna do anything just yet about it.

This morning, I check on the plants and there are deer hoofprints in the squash bed. This is bad because I'm in no way set up to protect things from deer. They haven't been much of a problem in the past, but with the renovations done to our front yard, we don't have a wall of hedges or a wooden fence anymore, plus there's a pond with waterfall that probably sounds super interesting. And we live across from a major park, so they're just hopping across the street to come check out my garden. I'm gonna have to order some deer repellent and hope it gets them out of the habit. This isn't the first time they've snacked up here (the tomato top was probably eaten by deer, in hindsight). I lost a whole crop of grapes to a deer last year, which was after the hedges were removed and while the door to the fence was being left propped open.

I contacted the seller for the ghost pepper seeds and he's sending me fresh ones, in theory. It was all of about $3 so if I never get them, eh, w/e, but I was looking forward to super-hots this year. (Might have been the one thing the damned deer didn't eat.) I also ordered additional carrots since it looked like something (chipmunk? Squirrel?) had been digging through the carrot planting and I wasn't positive it'd come up, but it looks like tiny little whispery threads are coming up after all. I'll give it another week and then put the additional carrot seeds down to fill in where there are any gaps.

This coming weekend is supposed to be in the 70's, so I'll do my big tilling and planting then. More peas and beans, not quite time for the corn, the tomatillos, zucchini, cucamelon... I'll have to organize this week and figure out when things are supposed to go in.

I transplanted the three heirloom sprouts and two of the cherry tomatoes yesterday. I'd moved them out from under the grow light a few days earlier since they were getting so tall, I couldn't get the light down low enough for the shorter plants without scorching the leaves of the big plants. Fortunately I have a south-facing window to give them plenty of light. I just need to remember to keep going in there to water them and rotate them. The replacement cherry tomato and jalapeno have sprouted, and the older jalapeno is on the windowsill now, but still in its initial pot. I hope the transplant succeeds, the seedlings are still quite delicate and looked bedraggled after the transplant. This morning they've perked up, though.

Since yesterday was nice and warm, I put a few things in the ground. A handful of purple pole beans by the wooden arch (which is starting to deteriorate), some Alaska peas in a strip near where the mulberry tree was, and a full packet of carrot seeds in two rows in the top half of the strawberry box (which has maybe one or two struggling little plants in the bottom half of it left and that's it). I sowed the carrot seeds a little heavily, but they're from 2016 and I'm not confident at how well they'll germinate. It's going to be colder this week, no frost, but the

The arugula is growing happily. The lettuce is pathetic, the kale is doing fine but not gangbuster.

I also started three more plants. After inspiration from a friend on FB serving them pickled, I ordered seeds for pattypan squash. I don't know that I've ever really had it before, but it's supposed to be very versatile. It's an heirloom variety, "Scallop Early White Bush", that is touted as "an ancient variety very much prized by native North American Indians", so I have hopes it'll grow well in our native climate. Three pots of those going, planned to put in the other half of the lower strawberry box. Might just be able to fit two of them there, not sure how big these things get and I think it's only an 8' long box.

2 of the 3 cherry tomatoes are up, at least one sprout in all of the heirloom tomato pots, and a hint of green stem over on one of the jalapenos right now that wasn't there two hours ago. There's some sort of weird bubbling going on in the base water where I'm sub-irrigating, not sure what's going on there, maybe a yeast since the water's kept at like 100 degrees from the heat mat underneath it. Only having one light means the seedlings on the edges do this bending-reaching thing so I keep turning it through the day. But having tiny green sprouts appear makes me happy in a time when so much of the world is a dumpster fire.

This year will hopefully be more of a garden-tending year. Last year, things did indeed just get out of hand late in the summer due to travel and whatnot.

So, here's the current state of things:
I've decided to keep the cherry instead of replacing it with a potato box. Last year it finally was producing enough cherries to be worthwhile, but they were kind of heavy on maggot infestation. I've got some spinosad (spin-OH-sid) spray to use when the flies start coming out to lay eggs. It's a better pesticide to use than others because of the lower impact on pollinators (aka honeybees). Also getting "yellow sticky traps" which is literally what they're called and what they are, and they're used to tell when the flies are emerging and therefore when to start spraying.

The house-grape has been cut back severely and is starting over from scratch. It got so overgrown it was reaching past the AC compressor, it just needed to start fresh, and I've got two T-bar posts set up, ready for a couple wires to be strung between them as a trellis. The garage-grape still has a few vines through it, and I'm gonna be setting up a trellis there as well instead of the bamboo fency-thing that's there now. Hoping to get at least some grapes off it because last fall I made some pretty phenomenal green grape jam from them. Hilda *raved* about it every time she had some.

I wish I'd known that tree was a mulberry before I started pruning it viciously. I still am glad those branches are out of the way of my blackberry canes, but I might have made different decisions of what to prune. The blackberry bushes didn't fare so hot last year and I only have a few canes this year for fruiting. But it's all cleared out over there now, so I can be more conscientious about the new canes, supporting them, and keeping them from getting long and unwieldy.

The strawberry boxes are doing pretty well right now and just starting to flower. I'm gonna need to start sprinkling the fox-urine granules soon because last year we got bupkiss for fruit, likely because it was all stolen by critters. I've let the daughter-plants that took root under the blackberries and mulberry tree stay so we have a better chance at more strawberries, but the daughters on th other side, those got ripped out to make room for more veggies.

My asparagus suffered a huge hit over the winter. I had 18 plants last year, now I have 4 that sent up shoots this year. This was supposed to be my first real harvest year, too, so that's been kind of disheartening. I've ordered more crowns off Amazon, and I'll re-plant when they get here in a couple weeks with all the mounding and fertilizer and whatnot.

I have three types of fertilizer on hand currently. A 5-1-1 fish oil for lots of nitrogen, a 9-4-12 Miracle-Gro that's advertised for fruits and vegetables, and a 3-4-4 organic by Espoma for herbs and vegetables. I need to do some research on how much, which goes on what, all that. Nitrogen promotes leaves, but too many leaves and you don't get enough energy put into making fruit. But corn and potatoes need hella nitrogen. So spray the fish oil into the soil before planting the corn, and use the espoma on everything getting transplanted, till it into the ground, all that good stuff.

The kiwi vine is growing super slowly, which is OK because it's supposed to become gigantic eventually and I'll have to choose whether to cut it down or to take out the wooden arch in the garden as the vine becomes too big for it. I put in two cauliflower plants that I bought from Jake a couple days ago, those are a lot happier since they'd become rootbound in the pot. Also, this was a year I did a lot from seed in an attempt to start indoors.

Current plants:
Ones I bought from Jake:
2 cauliflower, Snowball, in the ground
1 Black Krim tomato
1 Brandywine tomato
1 Indigo Rose tomato
2 dinosaur kale
2 King of the North red bell pepper
2 Cocozelle squash (like zucchini, to-be-delivered)
1 Black Beauty eggplant

Ones I grew from seed:
4 Andrea-Tomatoes (keep 2 in pots away from planting to preserve seed-line and not cross-fertilize)
3 curly-kale (very spindly, maybe 4?)
3 cucamelon
3 cucumber
2 Trinidad Scorpion (keep in pots)
2 cauliflower (fading or dead)
12 purple tomatillos
dill (in the herb planter)
basil (planted by the boys at the museum, moving to the planter soon)

To be sown directly:
corn-edamame-pumpkin in far strip
watermelon under the black walnut
seed potatoes
purple pole beans

5/15 update:
The purple pole beans went in today, and I sprayed the cherry tree. The asparagus crowns arrived over the weekend, and the non-Andrea tomatoes, the cauliflower I bought, all the peppers, one cuke, all the cucamelon, all the kale (4 curly, 2 dino), that's all in the ground and got a bit of fertilizer on planting.
Still todo: tomatillos (asap, they're super leggy), the Andrea tomatoes, find a place for the other cukes, get the Cocozelles from Jake and plant them, and get Paul to till the back 40 so I can plant the three sisters. And maybe build that potato tower finally. Try to layer: cardboard, 3" topsoil, seed potatoes, another 3" topsoil. Then when the plants are 6" high, layer in compost, then hay (to keep it loose), then topsoil. And nail on another layer of boards.

So, last time I did this I wrote down most everything and I'm glad I did, because I totally had to refer to it several times today. I continue to be a Disciple Of Keller when it comes to cooking fowl. I mean, look at this bird:


My timing was mostly just as I planned, and the husband and inlaws took care of clean up and putting away leftovers. Overall, 10/10, would cook again. Menu was turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, skillet green beans, butternut squash soup, and Parker House rolls. Butter in *everything*. Gratuitous photo of the spread, minus the cranberry sauce which I forgot to put out at first but was remembered before anyone ate more than a couple bites:


Recipes used are replicated here in case they get removed from the sites I got them from. Turkey, cranberry sauce, and rolls were the same as last year, except I added zest from two clementines and some microplaned fresh ginger root (maybe half an inch to an inch of a small root) to the cranberry sauce. I think it helped brighten things up. The rolls I had to let sit an extra 20 minutesokay maybe an extra hour for their second rise because the turkey wasn't out of the oven yet, but they didn't seem negatively affected. The sweet potato casserole was in the toaster oven and got too brown on top but was cooked just fine otherwise. Maybe a tad cool in the middle. Cover with foil for the first 10-15 minutes next time and let it cook a full half hour if doing in the toaster oven.

( Turkey )
( Butternut Squash Soup )
( Sweet Potato Casserole )
( Skillet Green Beans )

( Timing for everything )

I don't do a ton of cooking through the year. Since Tiffany moved in with us, she loves to cook for people, and she cooks many evenings during the week. When the big holidays come around, though, I like to take over the kitchen and have at. This year came out pretty fantastic. Chopping most of the veggies and doing the cranberry sauce the day before was a brilliant idea, and both the pies were made the day before, not by me. My MIL made a lovely custardy pumpkin pie that's not your typical back-of-the-can recipe, and my husband made a pecan pie from pecans grown on his uncle's farm. This is ridiculously long and doesn't even include recipes for either pie, the gravy, or the potatoes. So, cut tags galore!

*******************

( Turkey )

*******************

( The family dish: Oyster Dressing )

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( In which Carson makes homemade yeast rolls for the first time )

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( Other sides )

Overall, total success. Delicious, the toddler ate a bunch, everyone *raved* about the turkey, and we have so, so many leftovers of delicious things. I don't really want to know how many pounds of butter went into that dinner.

I always forget to write down the quiche proportions since Nathan's recipe is for one 9" deep dish and I can never find deep dish pie crusts in the freezer section anymore. So, here's what I did last night:

2 cups lump crab meat
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
2 oz Grueyere, shredded
2 oz Edam, shredded
10 eggs
5 T flour
5 T milk
2 t kosher salt
Pepper
1 tsp sage
1/2 tsp rosemary
1 1/2 tsp parsley
2 frozen pie crusts

Bake frozen crusts at 325 for 15 minutes. It may bubble, you can use dry beans or uncooked rice to keep it flat but I totally forgot and it ended up fine anyway.

Sautée onion in veg oil over med-high heat until translucent and slightly caramelized. Divide onion into both crusts, put 1 cp crab per crust, and add cheeses. You may want even more cheese than listed.

Blend flour and milk into a liquidy paste. Add eggs and all seasoning. That should be enough to fill both crusts.

Bake at 325 for 50 minutes until firm.

Copy and pasted from Smitten Kitchen's Ratatouille's Ratatouille, posting just so I have a record of what worked and what didn't. I should've taken pictures of the vegetables before slicing and of how much I had left over...




Pretty Fan-shaped Ratatouille

1 onion, finely chopped
4ish garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
2 cup tomato puree
2 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 baby eggplants
1 medium zucchini
2 medium yellow squash (probably just need one, I had leftovers)
1 orange bell pepper
Dried thyme (because I didn't have fresh
Salt and pepper
Few tablespoons soft goat cheese, for serving

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Pour tomato puree into bottom of an oval baking dish. I used my big round orange dish. Drop the sliced garlic cloves and chopped onion into the sauce, stir in one tablespoon of the olive oil and season the sauce generously with salt and pepper.

Trim the ends off the eggplant, zucchini and yellow squash. As carefully as you can, trim the ends off the orange pepper and remove the core, leaving the edges intact, like a tube.

On a mandoline, adjustable-blade slicer or with a very sharp knife, cut the eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and red pepper into very thin slices, approximately 1/16-inch thick. For my own future reference, on my mandoline, I used "thin slices" for everything but the eggplant, and went up to "medium slices" for the eggplant. The "Very Thin Slices" were actually a bit *too* thin, almost paper-thin. (If I was smart, I'd have some link to amazon stuff giving me a kickback, but I'm not, and I don't, and that's just a straight-up link to the page.)

Atop the tomato sauce, arrange slices of prepared vegetables concentrically from the outer edge to the inside of the baking dish, overlapping so just a smidgen of each flat surface is visible, alternating vegetables. You may have a handful leftover that do not fit. Or, if you're like me, you have an entire bowl full of leftovers and are considering making it again tonight.

Drizzle the remaining olive oil (tablespoon and change) over the vegetables and season them generously with salt and pepper. Sprinkle liberally with dried thyme.

Cover dish with a piece of parchment paper cut to fit inside. It helped to basically trace the bottom of the dish and cut a bit of extra.

Bake for approximately 55 minutes, until vegetables have released their liquid and are clearly cooked, but with some structure left so they are not totally limp. They should not be brown at the edges, and you should see that the tomato sauce is bubbling up around them.

Serve with a dab of soft goat cheese on top, alone, or with some crusty French bread, atop polenta, couscous, or your choice of grain. I used an herbed goat cheese that was faboo and served over couscous. I'd like to try the next batch over quinoa to put some protein into the meal.

Now I just need some sort of meat or cream sauce or a half pound of cheese to go with it so my husband doesn't just think of it as a side dish.

From tdj via skreidle: Need a less stressful career? (check out his summaries)

Obviously the person writing the original article has never actually experienced any of those careers. Since when is desktop support or nursing considered a "zen" career?

Since the article was sponsored by an online college, aha. Hey look, they have a culinary school, a beauty school, a technical institute, what a coinkidink. They've even got an "Auto-diesel" college. I'm surprised that auto mechanic wasn't on the list of zen careers. C'mon, there's even a book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

I was feeling grumpy and bitter and sad and frustrated. And I came to Livejournal to write some heavily filtered rant post. Instead, Wil Wheaton's blog had this vid embedded in it. And since I'm totally all fangirl over Wil Wheaton, this was full of awesome and win. Even better, I'm not so bitter and frustrated now. Thank you, Wil Wheaton, for sharing this vid.

(Incidentally, this alone may've made PAX cooler than BlizzCon. Must make time in next year's schedule for both...)