Today's Episode, in which We Melt the Stove

Yes, I know it has been a long time since I posted. I have been battling illness again; first Boxer and then Mia Madre brought to the household various chest cold type illnesses and I got nailed. Such is life. We have also been busy preserving the harvest (tm).

First, I did a lot of dehydrating of green beans, yellow beans, carrots, and sweet peppers of various extractions. The hot peppers are strung up, as I very much learned never to dehydrate them on my dehydrator a couple of years, when I did so and suffered from the self-induced equivalent of pepper spray to the face for over a week from the volatile oils released into the air.

We also canned. And canned. And canned some more. Our primary focus of canning was maters and salsa. We had three bushels of maters, most of which we got from a local organic farmer who specializes in heirlooms. Mia madre also brought her maters for the making of her salsa.

Here is Boxer washing the maters so that I could scald them.


And here is mia madre skinning and cutting the maters, and getting in a quick taste. Yum!


And here is the finished result of our first batch of yellow mater salsa, made with our homegrown hot lemon peppers. Which are really hot. Like go to the hospital hot.


We also made lots and lots of jam: forest fruits (mixed wild blueberries and raspberries), raspberry, and blueberry. We ended up doing a batch of salsa for mia madre and were going to do apple butter and pickled beets, too. Only one major problem though.

We melted the stove.

When we started doing major canned maters, apparently everything just got too hot (hell, you gotta vigrously boil that stuff for at least 20 mins). The electronics that control the oven and everything appear to have melted. We got the dreaded F11 code, which means a short. And yeah, we can reset it, but it keeps going off and the buttons all work intermittently, and we were afraid to even try to turn on the oven in case it exploded. Unfortunately, it would have cost more to fix it than it would to get a new stove. And so we have ordered a new stove, which was supposed to be delivered today, but Sears called at the end of our delivery time window to inform us that they actually don't have it. Bastards.

So, our basement is filled with goodness and we anxiously await the new stove. And we all hope that all illness will go away soon!

Roundup

Just a couple of quick pictures today, because my throat is a bit sore and I have to save my energy for some other stuff.

Despite pepper thieves, we have had a fairly decent harvest... this is from mid-August, and right now some of our spaghetti squash and maters are pretty much ready....


And this is life in our household...

August Updates

Well, Dear Readers all know that work in August is kicking my ass, so I won't go into that here. But there have been other happenings as well....

Pele spent most of the month of August, since Kali was allowed to come out of quarantine and socialize, doing this:


But more recently there has been some moves towards, at the very least, tolerance, as evidenced by this:


Still not a lot of friendship while fully conscious, but they actually both slept with us in the bed last night, albeit as far apart as possible.

The garden has also been going gonzo. I had to give away cucumbers, because we had so many. But there has been a lot of garden sadness, too. A damn rabbit ate several of our spaghetti squash and I will now count us lucky if we get four squash from the plant that ate New York. Our maters are at least three weeks behind schedule. If they ever turn, we will have a lot, but we were talking today about if we wanted to buy some at the farm stand in order to make sure we had at least a few bags of sauce in the freezer.

The greater unhappiness has been related to our gorgeous, heavily loaded pepper plants:


Notice anything? Or rather, notice that there is nothing on the plant?

The plants have been loaded, but not quite ripe. Boxer has been wanting to pick them for a couple of weeks, and I was all, "No, no, they aren't ripe yet!" I came home last night and saw with joy that they were ready. So we were planning on picking some today and having baked stuffed peppers this week, with quinoa and sweet onion and maybe fresh sage. I was particularly looking forward to eating the yellow ones with the blush color. My, they looked tasty.

We came out this morning to go and do our grocery shopping and discovered that, during the night, someone had stripped two pepper plants completely bare.

Now these are not the first plant and vegetable thefts we have had. I had two poppies stolen this spring, and sometimes a few cukes would be off the front, particularly those overhanging the sidewalk. But this was two whole plants, at least two dozen peppers completely gone. Inside the fence, at least ten feet from the sidewalk. Including all the blush stuffing peppers, and the red giants, which had not even started to turn red yet.

So, after we got home from our running this morning, we went out and picked everything, even if it hadn't really turned color yet. Why leave them for someone else? And then we went in back, and it appears that someone has also been taking some zukes, which I would actually thank them for, if they hadn't ripped the plants out of the ground. And we were very short on beans, even though I noticed that a bumper crop was coming and and would like be ready for today.

This development has made me very sad. I mean, if someone is truly hungry, I can understand it, just ask and I will give! But the stealing in the dead of night? It also makes me feel unsafe; like I cannot safely leave my house to go anywhere without fear of someone stealing all of my stuff - inside or out. And it makes me feel used, because someone has obviously been watching for these peppers to get ripe so they could come and pluck them.

It makes me wonder if we should have a garden at all. I mean, why put in $400-$500 worth of plants and all if someone is just going to steal everything? We could join a CSA for that amount. Yeah, it might mean less produce than we would get growing our own, but if someone is going to steal it all, we might end up with more from the CSA anyway. Or do we have to grow stuff that none of the neighbors would enjoy? I could try putting everything in the back, but the front is sunnier. I had even thought about moving all the maters to the front, but I won't do that if they are going to get stripped...


What's a sad gardener to do? Damn Pepper Thieves!

Post 200 - Garden Update

So, on this, the occasion of my 200th post, I am providing a mid-July garden update!

Things are beautiful. Huge. Green. Tons of blossoms. But I am also not seeing a lot of fruit setting, and what fruit is setting, especially on my kheera cukes and squash are dropping early. The drop I am attributing to the tremendous amount of damn rain we have had, but I am worried that I don't have enough pollinating insects. Next year, I may need to buy some bees.....


The front garden - there are extreme amounts of peppers and the snow peas have also been prolific.

The spaghetti squash plant that ate New York has relocated to my garden.

Welcome to the jungle.... the tomato jungle!


The first summer squash of the summer - a crookneck variety... it is bumpy and ugly but tasty good.... as is what can be made from this fantastic produce - a quinoa and snow pea salad, dressed with a homemade lemon and olive oil dressing:

Garden Update

In the previous garden update, I featured pictures from the end of May and the beginning of June. Here is my garden as of July 1.

First, the front and the snow peas!


My first pepper, called a Great Stuff .....

My bicolor sage plant ....

My front woodland flower bed, comprised of wild lupines, columbines, and violas....


Now the back... as you can see things have gone berzerk. Here is my lettuce patch made up of deer tongue (left side) and Yugoslavian fire lettuce ......

My mix of mystery summer squash ....


Remember my little radishes? Not so little now! I ate the first one the other day. It was spicy.


I already have small maters and a million blossoms....

How Does Your Garden Grow

Dear Readers, you might remember me talking about putting in a garden this summer. Well, things are progressing nicely. And I promised you a post on how I got it all started and regular updates. So here is the first in what is likely to be many posts.

I began my gardening by removing sod. Boy, was my sod healthy... several inches of roots. I started by taking it off by shovel. Hahahahahahhahahahahahhahaha. Yeah, that went over gangbusters..... taking way too long and too hard of work. So I then rented a manual sod cutter, which looks a little like a hand plow. What a wonderful thing. It removed 200 sq feet of sod in the same amount of time it took me to remove 20 sq feet with a shovel.



The next weekend, a coworker and I rented a tiller and tilled up my little plot. I then had about 250 total square feet of garden space, some in the front and some in the back. Next year, I hope to take up even more in the front and do some additional planting.

Once the ground was tilled, I planted. Pickle cukes, cantalope, noodle beans, violetta beans, spaghetti squash, Italian flat green beans, radishes, zucchini and summer squash, mater plants, shallots, leeks, okra, eggplant, parsnips, carrots, two types of lettuce, swiss chard, and spinach in back. Snow peas andIndian cukes as well as herbs and pepper plants (hot and sweet) in front. I had very mixed results.


Below are very early radish seedlings. I picked my first radish yesterday. It was spicy!


Everything in front has gone gangbusters. my snow peas are trellised up the fence and are about 2 feet tall! I have flowers on the peppers!

In back, none of the beans came up. The carrots and parsnips were spotty as was the okra. The leeks came up not at all, and neither did the spinach. I think it was too wet. So I waited and replanted, and adopted some orphan mater plants to put in the bare patches where I could replant. And I got fresh seed, so I can do a fall planting of chard, spinach, kale, and napa cabbage.

Right now, there are lots and lots of weeds and little maple saplings that need to be removed. I guess that will be our weekend project. But no matter what, I think we are going to have a lot
of really good veggies to eat this year.

Such Excitement!!!

Today was a day of great excitement. It began with a tire blowout.

Now, I knew my tires were on the way out and had stopped in yesterday to price them and get them ordered. But we figured I would be good until today, when I would take the car in. Well, on the way, boom! The really bad one went. Ah joy ah fun. Luckily, my insurance covers towing, so off to the tire shop we went and I now have four shiny new tires.

I decided to work at home this afternoon so that the water meter guy, who was supposed to come yesterday but didn't, could come and see why my inner and outer water meters were not registering the same. Turns out I am being overly cautious. They only charge by the thousand gallon usage, and I was worried about a difference of 350 gallons. Either way, he said it was good that I had called and that if I don't see the thousands column turn over on both the inner and the outer at the same time, I will need to get a new meter. Which is $118.



But the real excitement was the weather. We had tremendously exciting weather. Wind, rain, hail, possible tornado. With more arriving sometime this evening. I came home and had two lilac trees snapped, a huge limb off my giant maple, and there is another large branch from the neighbor's willow balancing nimbly on the power lines behind my house. So I called ComEd, and once they get done dealing with all the lines that are actually down and sparking (of which there were many in the area including at a high school), they will be out here removing the branch from my power lines.

All and all, I really didn't have much damage at my place.... mostly mess. I was a tiny bit sad about the lilacs but they broke in a place that opened up a lot of son to the far back of the lot, which may change my ideas for what to plant that there.

My garden seems have survived pretty well. Lots of maple pods and leaves on it, which I will have to remove by hand as I can't rake yet as my seeds aren't all out. But the seeds are a popping. My peas, lettuce, radishes, and shallots are already up. I suspect most everything else, if the weather stays warm, will be up in the next week. I am about to plant my peppers and tomatoes, although I am very sad about my tomato plants from Burpee, many of which were damaged in shipping or are incredibly tiny. Makes me wonder how they will do this year and I might have to go and buy a couple extra just to be sure I get some maters this year. Of course, I am also a firm believer that you can never have too many maters! I will do a post on the garden and its creation, with pictures, soon! I promise.

Thank You, and Catching Up

Thank you everyone for your kind words and support. It's true that we all mourn the loss of a loved one alone, especially late at night, but you certainly can't get through it without the support of loved ones.

The sadness comes and goes. I will go for long lengths of time and then, at unexpected moments, wham! I will just start bawling. I stopped at the pet store to get Pele a new toy and they had kitten adoptions and I burst out bawling right in the middle of the store. I had a really hard time when I picked up his ashes. And then again, when I put them in a nice cedar box, courtesy of my aunt via a gift to mia madre.

Pele is still depressed. She actually got out of the house the other day, looking for Leo. And she is acting out - lots of plant destruction and dish destruction and under the feet attempted destruction. Plus, she isn't feeling well right now either. Her allergies are as bad as I have ever seen them - lots of sneezing and snot and even eye booger unhappiness. We may be going into the vet to find out how much children's benadryl I can safely give her. And I feel her pain because my allergies are terrible right now too.

Life is slowly getting back to normal. Work is overwhelming and I really need some veg time. I am crispy toast. I did take half a day off for Memorial Day weekend, but that was all spent in the car, so I don't know that it truly counts as relaxation.

I went north for the holiday. I worked at home Friday morning and left at midday. Everything got off to a slow start as I got almost to the Wisconsin border and realized I had forgotten the one thing I needed to bring with me on the kitchen table and had to turn around and go back to get it. But I was still there by 6 pm. It was a wildlife weekend - six bears, a million deer, turkeys, a coyote, one dead albino peacock (don't ask), and Ted Nugent's summer home. I also found a place where I might be able to harvest my own wild rice, if I can find a flat-bottom boat in the fall. I received some very old stained glass windows that I will clean and paint and recaulk and then hang as decoration as well as a gorgeous butcher block. I went to the family rock piles and got several dozen large rocks, so I can start to build flower beds. I made a wild asparagus frittata on Monday morning, and then I drove home.

And when I got home I discovered that someone had dug up my two orange Icelandic poppies. Just those two. None of the other plants were distrubed. Not even the $50 in forest perennials I had sitting in the back because I hadn't had a chance to plant them yet. And I have only one thing to say about the theft of the Icelandic poppies.

Doodz! Heroin. UR doing it wrong.


Wild Asparagus Frittata

olive oil
1 cup wild asparagus, chopped
3 green onions, chopped
1 small zuchinni, sliced
1/4 cup yellow bell pepper, diced
8 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cheese
1 T Sunny Paris seasoning (from Penzy's)
salt and pepper to taste

Use a cast iron or other oven safe pan for this recipe. It also helps if you have a family member who has incredible skills for hunting the wiley asparagus. Store bought asparagus is good, but wild asparagus is great.

Pre-heat oven to 350.

On the stove top, put about a tablespoon of olive oil in the bottom of the cast iron fry pan and toss in your veggies over medium heat. Let them cook until they are just starting to get soft. In the meantime, crack eggs into a bowl and add the milk. Stir to mix and add some freshly cracked pepper.

Once the veggies are starting to get soft, add in the Sunny Paris seasoning and some salt. Then pour in the egg and milk mixture. Add half of the cheese and give the mixture a good stir. Then, turn the heat on the stove top to low and let the egg mixture cook very slowly. Leave it alone. Don't stir!

When it is close to set, sprinkle the remaining cheese on top and stick in the oven for about 15 minutes, or until a butter knife stuck in it comes out clean.

Note: I used colby cheese for this recipe, as it was that or pepper jack and I hate pepper jack. I actually think this would be best with a sharp cheddar or a mild nutty swiss, instead.

Dammit

So the person who was going to start my seeds has had a minor meltdown and now wants me to buy my own seed starting kit, start the seeds, and then bring them over once they are a certain size to bask under the grow lights.

Which seems totally stupid to me. Especially as I was going to share my seeds with him, if Burpee ever sends them to me.

And now I have two choices: send back all the seeds I bought and order plants or buy my own seed starting kit and try to figure out where to put it that the cats won't destroy it and start seeds. Forget the whole bringing them over to under the grow lights. That is an extra step I won't pursue.

And why do I get this feeling that this is the universe sending me some sort of a damn message about trust and responsibility?

*grumbles*

Advice on Gardening

Little Merry Sunshine asked for some gardening advice in comments on my last post and I thought I would go ahead and just make a post of it.

First off, I will say that while not a newby, I have not often gardened all by my lonesome. I have normally gardened with mia madre, Garden Goddess, who can make things grow simply by looking in their direction. When I was growing up, we relied on our garden for much of our food - in addition to gleaning, wild food gathering, and hunting, fishing, and bunny raising, as well as an occassional Little Red (aka the pig).

But like LMS, I need to stretch my budget, and gardening can hopefully help with that this year.

So, here is my advice to beginning gardeners, who maybe just want to do a few basic items.

Easy things to grow that you can plant fairly early in the spring are lettuce, spinach, swiss chard - early greens. You will be able to eat those within 30 days of planting, and the nice thing is that you can often do a second planting in order to get a second crop in the fall. With many lettuces, you can also just cut them instead of pulling them out by the root and they will keep growing, just like hair.

I use a French intensive method for greens, which means I don't plant in rows. Rather, I mix the seeds with a little potting soil and spread that in a specific area - so they grow in patches rather than rows.

If you wait until the soil is consistently about 65 degrees, another easy crop to grow for the beginner is green beans. Make a little row by mounding some soil in a hump and then poke in a green bean seed ever 3-5 inches or so. With 45 days, green beans. Voila! Keep picking your beans and you will get multiple crops. Also, plant your green beans near your tomatos as some bugs that like tomatos don't like green beans and will stay away. Snow peas are also easy.... plant them in a little hump again, but give them a trellis they can climb on. And soon you will have a tasty addition for stir fry.

Peppers are also easy, if you get them as plants from the greenhouse. 3 plants will produce more than enough for one person. I personally do not like bell peppers of any color, so I tend to get an Italian style frying pepper, like a marconi or a godfather. I find them more versitile. To plant a pepper plant, dig a good sized hole that will come at least 1 inch up the stem of the plant. Before putting the plant in the ground, put a twist of aluminum foil around the stem. This will prevent cutworms from snipping your gorgeous plant in two once you plant it.

Zuchinni and summer squash are also easy to grow. Just pick which variety looks interesting to you and build a mound of dirt about a foot in diameter and plant five seeds in it in a star pattern. The ditty goes - one for the blackbird and one for the crow and three to grow. This will give you a gazillion zuchinni.

Cukes are grown just like zukes, but be careful that they are no where near each other in your garden space. Otherwise you will get a weird hybrid known as a cuzuke, which is nasty and has happened to me before. When selecting a cuke, you can go two ways: a pickling cuke or a burpless. Pickling cukes need to be picked small or their skins get bitter. They also have minor thorns. Burpless take longer but don't get bitter.

Tomatoes are also easy. But as much as I adore heirloom varieties they can be difficult to grow. Many of them have a far longer required growing season than we have here in the north. So, for the beginner I highly recommend a cherry type tomato, a Roma style tomato like an Amish Paste, and an Early Girl variety. Look to see that they will produce fruit no later than 70 days past planting from seedlings. Otherwise, you won't get maters until September.

In September, go ahead and do a second round of greens - kale, spinach, chard, etc. Also plant garlic at this time. It is so easy. Just plant it in the fall and in the spring it will come up. You can eat the little green shoots... they are called scapes. Then, in mid summer you can dig up the bulbs, and voila! Garlic. Softnecks are better for immediate eating. Hardnecks are better for long storage (check out The Garlic Store online for planting stock later in the summer).

I am growing the following in the garden this summer: Muskmelon (a variety that claims to be ready for harvest in 68 days - we will see); miniture spaghetti squash, red noodle beans, poona kheera cukes, deer tongue lettuce, parsnips (this is a crop I can leave in the ground during winter, if I mulch it well), cilantro, dill, a varity of basil, nasturtium (edible flower), eggplant, red lettuce, carrots, swiss chard, napa cabbage, radishes, cutting celery (the plant is bread to just grow leaves and not stalks), Italian flat green beans, snow peas, summer squash mix (three types), cosmos (for the pretty), morning glories (also for pretty), orange mama paste tomato, tangerine mama paste tomato, Italian ice cherry tomato, honeybunch cherry tomato, razzle dazzle, tomato, red lightning tomatoe, chocolate cherry tomatoes, ruby red sweet corn, hot lemon peppers (I hope - something on my order is backordered and I am afraid it might be this), violas, double feature cukes, Italian frying peppers, Ancho chilis, Lakota winter squash, okra and leeks. And maybe bok choi and spinach, for a fall planting. In fall, I will also be planting shallots and garlic, so that I can start harvesting them in early spring.

Mia madre is going to grow the following at her house for family sharing : sweet potatoes, swedish peanut potatoes, and daisy gold potatoes.

Some thing I would never attempt to grow here - watermelons, many of the longer season melons and winter squashes, anything that is a more common food in the south than it is in the north, anything requiring a growing season longer than 80 days - unless it is something specifically designed to be a late fall crop, like pumpkins.

The Season for All Growing Things

Today, please enjoy these beautiful pictures:

First, the faun that was outside the front door of my office.

Secondly, my herb garden. It's a start!

Third, my beautiful roses.

And finally, Pele not giving a shit. Again.