Tag: Gardening

Gardening Meals!
Gardening · Recipe Roundup

Gardening Meals!

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I love having a garden! I inherited some of that from both Grandpas and it was encouraged and fostered by my Mom. My Grandpa Ollie was a missionary Papua New Guinea who helped with agriculture. My Grandpa Ed was a fabulous gardener and I remember seeing his garden as a kid. I have very fond memories of gardening with Mom in the summer. Mmm… tomatoes fresh from the garden, pea pods off the vine, crunchy carrots, and raspberries! Now I have both garden plants and some very pretty flowers that I do absolutely nothing with. It’s a nice balance. The featured picture is our hydrangeas by our front door.

I have started to get some produce from the garden! I was getting worried, but went out to check and found some cherry tomatoes! I also have peppers to use in pico.

We’re talking about putting in another garden bed for next year, which I think will house the things with vines. I’ve gotten only two tiny baby zucchini this year from my plant. It doesn’t like being in a pot apparently.

Speaking of baby zukes, I had both of them sautéed in olive oil with some Sandwich Sprinkle with the rest of my garden haul tonight for dinner. We also had steak and mashed redskin potatoes.

It was delicious! I could have cooked the steak a tiny bit less, but I was distracted by apple recipes. I suddenly have a surplus, which will be turned into crockpot applesauce tomorrow.

I have officially used the Sandwich Sprinkle on a sandwich! I’ll give you a minute to absorb that information. 🙂 I even took a picture of it to prove it. It did add a bit of zing to the sandwich. I definitely need a bigger jar of it though!

I had fruit salad along with it. I’m a fruit monster in the summer and wanted all the fruit!

We had pizzas made with fancy things too. I used a pizza dough recipe that didn’t require a long rise time from The Kitchn. https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-pizza-dough-recipe-221367

It did rise for a couple of hours at least. The Husband had mushroom and ham with fresh mozzarella. I had a lovely Margherita Pizza with fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, and fresh mozzarella. The recipe was also from The Kitchn. https://www.thekitchn.com/easy-recipe-classic-margherita-pizza-recipes-from-the-kitchn-174103

They were both lovely! The crust for mine was baked on an upside down cookie sheet, which made it super crunchy. The Husband’s was also nice and crispy, but I used the pizza stone instead.

Here’s some pictures of the rest of the garden as well. Herbs, tomatoes, radishes, and carrots.

Oh! We have strawberries!

I’m excitedly waiting for them to turn red so we can get them before the squirrels! We don’t always have good luck with that. Things are growing pretty well. I have to re-stake some tomato plants. They’re falling over with the weight of the tomatoes. Next year, I will get some cages and will hopefully be better prepared.

For now though, I will leave you with this very relaxing picture of Fancy. I hope your night is as lovely as her nap was. Good night!

Future Food- Garden Update
Gardening · Life Posts

Future Food- Garden Update

LSieh2 Comments

We have had so much rain lately that the garden is growing pretty much every time you look away from it. I also haven’t had to water it very much at all, but finally remembered to today. We are using the herbs pretty regularly. Tomorrow for our Game Night, we are using some of the basil for lemonade. 🙂

I have massive amounts of all herbs that I think I will start freezing to encourage new herb growth. I’m always a little afraid to harvest them because I might run out, which is, of course, silly. Here are the latest pictures:

The basil box. My purple basil is coming back nicely.

Parsley, rosemary, lemon myrtle, and oregano. I used the rosemary on the lamb rack this week already.

The Sages are growing well. I have plans to use a bunch of the herbs in butter for a big chicken dinner on Sunday. You can see the thyme in the picture as well. The lemon thyme has tiny purple flowers on it that are also edible.

I want to try drying the lemon myrtle, lemon thyme, and pineapple sage for tea mixes. Maybe Sunday will be an herb drying day!

The tomatoes are growing very well. I’m pretty sure one of the second batch of seeds I planted is growing, which is nice. The poor little yellow tomato plant on the end isn’t growing very well. I think the bigger plants are stealing all the nutrients. I gave it some tomato food and some crunched up egg shells. Hopefully that will help. The bigger yellow tomato is doing very well.

My beans and pepper bed is looking well. I have radishes, bok choy, rainbow chard, and carrots coming up as well. It sorely needs a weeding though, but I’m not entirely sure what is a weed and what’s not.

I saved the best news for last! (Although I’m sure I’ll get a phone call from my Dad saying otherwise.) The zucchini plant has five baby zukes on it! I couldn’t get a picture of all of them, but I’m super excited. I’m going to be harvesting these as smaller ones so that I can maybe get some more production this year. It seems to really like the pot, so I will plan on continuing to grow them this way.

I hope you enjoyed seeing our garden! I’m very excited to see that even though I kill houseplants, I can keep a garden alive at least. Maybe there’s hope for the houseplants yet! On that note, I should probably go check the one I have managed to keep alive!

Have a lovely night!

Gardening Update
Canning and Preserving · Gardening · Life Posts

Gardening Update

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Hello! It’s supposed to rain here all week, so I had to hurry up and get the rest of the garden planted yesterday. The Husband pulled a bunch of dead wood out of the backyard jungle and it looks like we did nothing once again. The three yard waste bags and 3 full yard waste cans belay that notion though.

We haven’t found any other morels in the yard, but we have pretty flowers popping up.

As usual, I have no idea what they are. 😁

I do, however, know what plants I actually planted! I’ll start with the herbs.

Flat Leaf Parsley- I need to chop this back so it grows more evenly.

Garden Sage and Pineapple Sage-

The pineapple sage can be used in teas and is sweeter than the regular sage.

Greek Oregano and Lemon Balm-

Lemon balm for tea and you can make a tea with oregano too, I think. We used the oregano last night to marinate rib eyes and it was delicious.

Three kinds of basil. I just couldn’t stop myself, so we have Purple Basil, Sweet Basil, and Cinnamon Basil.

I’m excited for pesto and for caprese salad. Also, Basil Lemonade!

We also have two kinds of thyme- German Thyme and Lemon Thyme.

Lemon thyme will go in my tea mixes and the German thyme will be for cooking.

We have three containers of strawberries. The ones that I planted in a stacking container haven’t sprouted yet, so no pictures of that. The other two were ones that survived the winter and I separated.

Eventually we would like to have berry bushes in big containers near the garage, but we have a few stumps to dig out first and we’re going to put gravel down too.

The tomato plants all have trellises now out of twine, but it was starting to sprinkle after I had finished them, so imagine them all with twine.

I couldn’t find Mr. Stripey or the Indigo Rose tomatoes this year, which was a bummer. I do have a Yellow Canary Cherry tomato, a Lemon Boy hybrid, a Mountain something or other, 2 Romas, a Cherokee Purple, a Juliet grape, and a Husky Red Cherry tomato. I did buy one of the super fancy tomatoes, the San Marzano tomato plant. I seem to be missing a few, but I think I might have duplicated the cherry tomatoes too. I’m hoping the twine will help keep them in check. A couple of the plants have flowers already!

The second garden bed doesn’t look super exciting yet.

I planted bush beans in the spot with the trellis, and replanted carrots along the back. There’s also Swiss chard and bok choy along the sides. Radishes along the other edge. For peppers I have a purple bell, poblano, serrano, and jalepenos. I’m thinking of trying more pepper seeds in the ground, ut if it keeps raining, I may just have to go with this. Even though there should be a good amount of stuff geowing soon, I still feel like I could be planting more. Next year, I’m starting the seeds later so they don’t die. Also, I will be using bigger plastic pots to help keep them stable longer.

I also have a zucchini and two rhubarb plants in pots. The rhubarb hasn’t grown yet, but the zucchini looks nice and healthy.

The hydrangeas in the front have blooms. I don’t know if I’m supposed to pluck them to make them grow more leaves or not, but they seem healthy.

My flamingo flock is also coming along nicely. 😂

I bought this one at a city garage sale yesterday. It was made out of pvc pipe and affixed to a paver stone. I still haven’t named it yet, but the artist made sure to tell me that I could name it whatever I wanted. He also said that because it moves a little in the wind, it might work as a pest deterrent in the garden. I’ll try anything cor the squirrels, so it might be my backyard flamingo.

This year a bunch of the local cities are holding rummage sales in parking garages or other city areas and it’s very convenient. It’s a weird mix of vendors and items, but worked out for us yesterday. We found two Wii games, the flamingo, and I got some Lego pieces for work. There’s a couple more coming up, so we might go see what we can find. 🙂

Fancy has been excited about the warmer weather. She likes it when our windows are open and she can smell all the things happening. She’s also helpful when we are messing with sticks. This is her, after the kids across the street went back inside.

I’ve started my canning prep list and am going to try to start having at least one canning/freezer prep day every couple of weeks. The mason jars are taking over the house again. I have a few recipes that I can make whenever; Jasmine Tea jelly for my FIL for Father’s Day, pickled red onions, and pomegranate jelly. I will probably try to do some of these this Friday. I don’t think I have much else planned.

For now though, I need to start getting ready for work. Have a great day!

Gardening, Here We Come
Gardening · Life Posts

Gardening, Here We Come

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The Husband said I had to write about our gardening adventures because “we did a lot and it still hurts, so everyone has to know!” He’s got a way with words, that one… We did honestly do a lot though and I’m excited to get such an early start. I just have to keep an eye out for frost advisories.

I experimented with starting from seeds this year. A few more of them need to go in the garden still, but it poured so hard today that I had to dry off Fancy when she had to go outside. We did put in some plants and the Husband told me about the bulb planter that we had that I didn’t know we had. It cuts a neat little hole out of the soil! It was very helpful. I was covered in dirt, so didn’t get a picture of it, but it’s a cool tool.

We had pepper, tomato, carrot, onion, cabbage, broccoli and watermelon seeds that sprouted. They were a little sad looking when I put them in the soil, so I’m hoping that they will perk back up. Otherwise, I will need to plant some more and try again.

The seeds we are using are from a seed vault that I convinced the Husband I needed back in our last appointment when my prepper anxiety was at it’s peak. (We also ended up with a 12 inch cast iron Dutch oven…) I hadn’t wanted to use them until I had a real garden and they were sealed up super tight. Apparently they will keep for a rather long time if I refrigerate them. They were from the Patriot Seed Company.

There are a lot more seeds than I can use and some that I know we won’t eat, so I’m trying to figure out what to do with them. If you want a packet of cauliflower seeds, let me know!

So the can itself was sealed with a piece of heavy duty electrical tape and then the seeds were double sealed in a resealable foil packet and vacuum packed in an even smaller foil pack. They included all the info you needed to plant them too.

We’ll see how they do. I planted only two of them. I wasn’t sure how much cabbage we would eat.

Another proactive thing I did this year was to cage the spots where I want the tomatoes to grow. I only have twine on one of them so far, due to the rain, but the plants are still pretty short, so I have a little bit of time. Here is a picture of the tomato spots ready to be caged. Hopefully that will help keep them in check this year.

I have a couple of pepper plants planted at the corner, I think. We have sprinklers in both middles, as last year our soaker hoses seemed to not be working well. Here is the pepper and other veggie bed.

All the places with sticks or stakes have something planted there. I’m just waiting to see what grows. The carrots are along the back, onions are along the side, and broccoli and cabbage are along the front. I’m planning on planting peas or beans where the little cage is and trying zucchini staked vertically in a pot. I also have rhubarb to grow in a large pot and a bunch of strawberries, some of which are from last year. They survived the winter and I bought another pack of the roots.

My herbs will go into a cinder block pyramid by the garage, but the space isn’t cleared yet. We’re also planning to have berry boxes by the garage, to keep them out of the yard, but those will be a multi-year project before they grow viable fruit. This Saturday we are planning on tackling those areas. Luckily, we have our massage the next day, so will be hopefully less stiff for Monday. I will also remember to put on sunscreen, so will hopefully not have weird sunburn marks again.

Speaking of general yard work, after our garden work on Saturday, we tackled the front of the house which had gotten to be a disaster. We do have birds nesting in one of our window boxes, so although we took down two of them, we couldn’t get that one down yet. The birds freak out if we get too close. The part we did work on was the part to the right of this picture.

We’ve also chopped down the wisteria (we think?) by the front door as it kept trying to trap us in the house and brought a ridiculous number of beetles with it. That thing was hideous. We tore out all the daisies, which look half dead for most of the year, the terrible asparagus plants (actually yuca?,) and the random big purple bush thing. It felt lovely to rip it all out and start again. We planted two hydrangeas to match the ones we already had. Here’s some in progress pictures:

Ugh! I hated those plants with a passion. There was a layer of landscape fabric and what looked like lava rocks and a plastic layer under all the dirt. The fabric stuck to the roots, but we left the plastic down. I may have done a happy dance when we finally got rid of those terrible plants. Now it looks a little pathetic, but hopefully the hydrangeas will grow quickly.

I don’t have a picture of the jungle we’re tackling next week, but will make sure to grab before pictures. I’m excited to get things cleaned up. Last year, we didn’t have time or energy enough to start on things. This year, we’re planning small, specific chunks of time and projects and that seems to be working better. Maybe in 5 or so years, the yard will be what we want it to be. 🙂

For now though, I should probably go to bed, so I have some energy left for my long day tomorrow. Wednesdays are not my favorite days. Have a lovely night!

Simple Sundays · Uncategorized

Simple Sunday- Gardening

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“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” – Martin Luther

“To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“If a tree dies, plant another in its place.” – Carolus Linnaeus

“A weed is but an unloved flower. ” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.” -Luther Burbank

Not So Simple Sunday- Canning Edition
Canning and Preserving · Gardening · Recipe Roundup

Not So Simple Sunday- Canning Edition

LSiehLeave a comment

I have canned all the things! Well, not quite all, I still have a list. I was determined to make a few things for our party this weekend, so those definitely got done, along with some others. I’ll add the jams to the Recipe Roundup, but the savory ones will get their own post. I had lots of extra time this week, so ended up making lots of new recipes as well. Seeing my low numbers for recipes last review didn’t hurt either.

I’ll start with the jams. 🙂 Several of the canned things have garden or local produce.

Pineapple Sage Preserves from Southern Living Little Jars, Big Flavors. The sage was garden grown.

I have another jar in the fridge, as there wasn’t quite enough headspace to safely can it. It’s delicious! I’m hoping the sage come out more as it sits. It will be going in a cake for our Big Summer Blowout Party. The book includes a vanilla bean layer cake with this in the middle which I think will be wonderful and summery.

When I bought the pineapple, the apricots from the farmer’s market looked good as well, so I made Apricot Riesling Jam from Simple Recipes. https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/apricot_riesling_jam/

This one is a very lovely orange color and has just a hint of the wine. I’m looking forward to this on toast. I think it would be lovely on ice cream.

I’ve made this one before, but it’s been a few years. I love it because it does taste exactly like strawberry lemonade. It uses Myer lemons, which are slightly sweeter than regular lemons.

This batch turned very dark red and I forgot to mash up the strawberries, as I had them in the freezer first. They are from last year and I had forgotten that I had them. There’s still a bag and a half left for my next strawberry jam endeavor. I have an Instant Pot freezer jam recipe and a strawberry basil that both want to be made.

There are more delicious jams and jellies on my list, but I need to regroup and figure out what I need. I ran out of single rings, but have tons of new lids. I may have to start storing them without the rings.

On to the recipes!

The Husband got special cookies for picking up the puppers from the dog sitter and letting me stay home. Chocolate Chips and M&Ms!

These were from the cookbook 101 Things To Do With Chocolate by Stephanie Ashcraft.

He liked these, but he likes the chewy ones better.

I got bored with breakfast this week and couldn’t sleep on top of it, so I made strawberry doughnuts. They were supposed to be mini muffins, but I couldn’t find the mini muffin tins.

These are from the Pillsbury: Best Muffins and Quick Breads. 

I was hosting craft night the same day, so I made meringues  with leftover egg whites from ice cream. These are super crumbly, but they taste okay.

The ice cream is Amaretto Ice Cream from The Cookie Writer. 

https://thecookiewriter.com/amaretto-ice-cream/

I had it with leftover peaches and it was delicious! The amaretto is very light, but you can definitely still taste it. There’s only two tablespoons in the whole recipe, but it doesn’t get cooked out, so bear that in mind.

We used the new Food Network magazine already. It’s the September issue. The Hoisin Meatballs were good.

I thought they needed more seasoning in the meatballs themselves, but the Husband thought they were just fine. We used Udon noodles, mushrooms, and carrots as the substitutions. It was nice to find another use for ground beef.

We had Macaroni and Many Cheeses from the 2014 Food and Wine.

We had to have it because of the name. 🙂 I had Gouda, triple cheddar, and a Monterey jack mix. It was quite soupy at first, but firmed up over time. It had parmesan cheese crusted on top. It was pretty tasty.

We had grilled steak for dinner on our anniversary, after going to the shooting range and going to the chocolate factory for a tour. We weren’t allowed to take pictures at the factory.

Mashed potatoes and grilled zucchini completed the meal. The Husband is an excellent grill master, so everything was great. We had  fun chocolate from the factory for dessert. I had a peanut butter block and he had cookies and cream clusters.

The range trip was fun, but both of our pistols broke towards the end. My back sight fell off my revolver and Eric’s 22 was not having it at all. They definitely both need to be cleaned and we have the name of a good gunsmith. It was a little disappointing but the rest of the day was fun. 🙂

We had Margarita Shrimp for Saturday. We intended to grill, but had an unexpected rain shower, so they were broiled instead. They were from A Farm Girl’s Dabble. 

https://www.afarmgirlsdabbles.com/grilled-margarita-shrimp-kebabs-recipe/

They were still tasty. We paired them with cilantro rice from Five Heart Home. https://www.fivehearthome.com/cilantro-lime-rice-recipe/

We used jasmine rice and it was delicious. This rice will definitely be staying in the recipe collection for a nice side dish. The Husband approves as well, which is surprising, as he doesn’t like a lot of Mexican based dishes. This one is lightly flavored though. It heats up great as it has butter and olive oil in it to keep it soft instead of dried out.

We had it tonight as a side with Tequilla Lime Chicken and pico with the leftovers from salsa making.

The purple plate was awarded for my enormous amounts of canning completed this weekend.

Those are just the jams!

The featured picture is the second set of zucchini and the others as well. I used the peppers in the salsa and the zucchini in squash pickles.

So there’s the update so far. I’ll have a savory canning post shortly. I figured it would be too long, considering how many pickles I made. 🙂

It’s been so much fun to use things from the garden while canning. I’ve tried to use local produce as well, as much as I can. Somehow I don’t think I can find Michigan pineapples…

Stay tuned for more canning! Sewing too, hopefully, but I have been a little busy. 🙂 Have a great night!

Monthly Review
Gardening · Monthly Review · Sewing

Monthly Review

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Hello again! This month has been a strange month with getting sick, a blown tire, and many, many social events. We sometimes look at each other and say “did we really plan this much?!” It’s nice to see friends and do fun things, but I am grateful for the chance to just relax tomorrow. I do have some sewing and maybe even some canning plans.

Fancy was with the dogsitter this weekend, as we went to the Toledo Zoo with some friends. We got periodic dog pictures and she looked very content. This was the look I got all week from Fancy when I tried to go sew in the basement.

I made sure to walk her a bunch this week and tried to get some longer walks in. We went for two walks a mile or more and this was her face then.

Then, of course, this was her when we got home.

Silly dog. 🙂

I wore new shorts to the Toledo Zoo this weekend and since we had gone with my sewing friend, she was wearing shorts, a tank top, and a hat she had made herself! The shorts and tank had jungle animals and the hat had sea creatures, so she matched the environment very well. Here is a picture of my shorts fabric. They are very wrinkled from wearing them and are in the wash, so I don’t have a better one yet. (This was taken before we dropped Fancy off on Friday, hence the tiny dog paw in the corner.)

They are Bermuda length and a very light cotton I got at the fabulous discount store. I have about a yard left and need to decide if I want a tank top out of it, or a little cotton skirt. They have a blue cotton lycra yoga style waistband and were extremely comfortable for walking around all day in the 80-90 degree heat.

Here are a couple of other pictures from the zoo. Notice that there don’t appear to be any penguins or flamingos missing… 😉

It was a very fun day and I’m glad we could go. I have never been to that zoo and the Husband had been when he was small, but not recently.

Now for the review part of the post.

I did finish two things from the UFO box; a bag for my friend and the blue floral shirt.

The owl cardigan is done too and I wear it a lot, but it’s hard to take a picture of it, since the owl is on the back. I didn’t finish the blue striped skirt and don’t quite have enough material for the star tank top, but am working on what to do. I think I’ll pair it with a plain black back and go with that.

When I pulled out the blue stripes, I wasn’t sure that I wanted it to be a skirt. I realized I didn’t have a lot of colors to pair with it and now am conflicted. The picture makes it look like a darker blue, but it’s actually very bright. It is also more see through than I realized, so I might have to line it.

I’m still thinking about what else I could make with it if it’s not going to be a skirt.

I did make 8 pairs of the Linen Loungers, plugging a huge hole in my wardrobe. I have consistently worn a pair of them at some point during the day every day this week. There were two that I didn’t blog about, both sleep shorts. One has sharks, made at the beginning of Shark Week, and the other pair has yoga frogs. 🙂

So overall from this one pattern, I made two pairs of shark shorts, the yoga frogs, the plaid Bermudas, purple linen shorts with fancy pockets, the grey/teal/purple with lace, Minion sleep shorts, and flamingos. Whew. That’s a lot of shorts! It’s been so hot lately though that if I’m at home, they are all I want to wear. I had no sleep shorts too, just had been wearing my normal bike shorts, which then caused problems when I had no clean shorts to wear under skirts or dresses. It’s nice to have fun sleep shorts! The Husband can shake his head all he wants, but he also likes his Minion shorts I made him last month, so he really doesn’t mind.

I made two other items specifically for Shark Week this year, a shirt and a pair of every day shorts. Here is my shark week wardrobe! I enjoyed wearing them all and surprisingly, no one really commented! My fashion sense must be either pretty cool, or pretty weird, so no one really wants to say anything. 🙂

I kept thinking I had made more things this month, but I think I was remembering mending some things and doing some organization. Only 11 things got made. My brain seems to want to make 20 every month, but I had to tell it to chill out. 11 is fine. 🙂

The garden is growing well, although I did have some blossom end rot again. We’re trying to be very consistent with watering and it’s been rainy the last little while, so I’m hoping that helps. Here’s some garden pictures. These tomatoes are still orange on the bottom.

There was a bee in the zucchini blossom.

The peppers look about the same still. I’m going to harvest some peppers to use for salsa for our Big Summer Blowout Party. Hopefully I’ll have a few tomatoes to throw in it too!

Foodwise, it was a very blah month. I didn’t make a lot of new recipes. I was better about getting pictures, even if I though it wasn’t a new or exciting recipe. We did eat a lot of garden lettuce and still have some to eat up this week. When I went through my blog posts, I think I must have missed a recipe post, because I didn’t have much going on. Both the Husband and I seem to be in a food funk. Normally it’s only one or the other, so it’s enough tougher when it’s both. We’ve also been out with friends for a lot of the weekends, which tends to be when I do a lot more new cooking.

I made 14 recipes total… That’s so low! Out of those recipes, 6 were new recipes. Luckily, all of the new ones were hits. I only had one miss, the manacotti which didn’t cook.

The Husband’s favorite was the Turkey Parm.

I did use a new recipe from Voracious by Cara Nicolleti- The Olive Oil and Yogurt Cake.

It was pretty good and I ate it for breakfast. It had less sugar and was almost on the edge of savory rather than sweet. It had citrus in it, but you could definitely taste the olive oil. The Husband didn’t eat any. The olive oil weirded him out. I ate it with cream when I wanted sweet and yogurt when I wanted breakfast. It was pretty dense, with a crispy outside and tender inside. The citrus didn’t come through very much.

This post is getting super long, so I won’t type out the whole recipe, but if you want it, I can do it at a later time, or you could visit your local library! 🙂

Overall, I think my sewing is growing by leaps and bounds, but my cooking has fallen by the wayside. I think I’m a little burned out and don’t really want to plan things. It’s very confusing. I think I might go through my cookbooks and see which ones I haven’t used yet and decide if they should really be on my shelf if I don’t get excited to use them. This coming week is fully booked and I think I have mostly late evenings, so I’m going to see when and what I can prep ahead.

Goals for the month:

Food:

  • Go through cookbooks and weed them out.
  • Meal Plan consistently.
  • Try 1-2 new dishes (main, side, dessert). I keep getting stuck on just having dinner new and I can do other things to count towards this goal.
  • Use garden produce and herbs.

Sewing: 

  • Work on October Bellydance costume.
  • Sew/Finish one UFO.
  • Catalog fabric.
  • Go through craft books and weed them out.

Garden:

  • Keep things alive.
  • Use produce and herbs.
  • Develop canning list and plan.

Wow! That post got a lot longer than I thought it would. Thanks for sticking with me! I hope you enjoyed the pictures from the zoo!

Recipe Roundup
Gardening · Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup

LSiehLeave a comment

I’m sitting on the couch, watching sharks of course, with a dog who is quite certain that she needs pets on her head to help her sleep. 🙂 It makes typing quite difficult. The Husband got me a fancy keyboard for my IPad that’s bluetooth enabled, so the typing part isn’t as bad, but the constant nose nudges under my hands do make it more difficult. Dropping my IPad face down without the cover on the screen didn’t really help the other screen issues I was having. It’s kind of interesting to watch the spiderweb cracks spread across the screen. :\

We just came back from what was about a 3 mile walk on the river. That’s where the featured picture comes from. It was just sunny enough that I wore my shark shorts and a tank top, but there was a nice breeze, so it was a very pleasant, shady walk. Fancy is snoring away. We’re hoping to have her mind less that we’re in and out all weekend.

I have not made any new recipes this week! We had delicious food, but we hadn’t meal planned, so we didn’t really have new ones.

I had grilled cheese one night with chips and veggies. Probably an apple or something too, but I don’t remember.

We had Taco Salad with garden lettuce and fritos on top.

It was delicious! I used my taco meat recipe which is a pound of ground beef, half a jar of salsa, about a tsp or so of ground cumin, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. I also used chili powder this time, but not all the time. It was a little spicy from the salsa and we had pepper jack cheese too.

We also had Shepherd’s Pie with ground lamb and garlic mashed potatoes. No recipe, just cooked up a pound of lamb, threw in some Worcestershire sauce, chicken broth, salt, and pepper. I used half a bag of frozen veggies and cooked off some of the liquid. The potatoes were smaller yellow potatoes, mashed with cream, butter, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

Bake it for 20 or so minutes at 400 until the potatoes get a little brown. We had this on a cooler day that had been pretty grey and rainy. A garden lettuce salad went with it.

I made blueberry muffins too, but ate them all! I remembered to take pictures of our waffles this morning that we had with maple syrup made by our friends in their own sugar shack. It was delicious! I don’t typically like maple syrup because I find it too sweet. This is slightly thinner and has a smoky taste. It’s sweet, but not sickly sweet.

MMMMMMM! I enjoyed breakfast very much. We have bottle for my parents too, but it’s going to be hard to keep it for them until we see them. They’ll have to be very nice to us! I think we’ll get two bottles next year, if we can.

The garden is still growing very well. I was a little concerned because we’ve had some really hot days and have a soaker hose in only one of the beds. The tomatoes are so big, it will be tricky to thread the hoses in there.

Speaking of tomatoes, we have a tomato that is orange! Which means soon I can eat a garden tomato!

It might be a Roma, or an Early Girl. These four are definitely on one of the Early Girl plants. 🙂

And Mr. Stripey has a tomato started, as well as blossoms.

No stripes yet, but they will come. I’m so excited to start using the tomatoes. The hot peppers are growing well. They look about the same, so no pictures. The red peppers may be fighting a losing battle with the giant zucchini plant.

This is the view from the front of the garden. You cannot see the back, but the plant now covers the entire box… Maybe next year, I’ll see if there’s a smaller variety. 🙂

We still have some lettuce growing and the marigolds are hiding, but still there.

Well, I should probably go do some meal planning for the week. Have a good day!

 

Recipe Roundup and Gardening
Gardening · Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup and Gardening

LSieh2 Comments

I was so mixed up on all my days this week and spent all of yesterday making cheesecakes for Battle Cheesecake. So this is a little belated recipe post and a garden update. I will post the party pics and recipes tomorrow, I think. We all had a lot of fun!

The garden is growing very well! We had the lettuce from it in a salad with meatballs after the cheesecake tonight. Everyone liked it and there’s so much left. We may deliver some to my in-laws, as they weren’t able to plant a garden this year.

These are the three buttercrunch. We had romaine as well, but I forgot a picture. It was a proud moment to share our homegrown produce. I’m looking forward to sharing more.

We have peppers of both the hot and sweet variety starting. This is the small Thai chilies.

The spicy peppers both have actual peppers on the vines and the sweets have just flowers. The sweets are getting kind of taken over by the zucchini plant, but they are fighting the good fight.

I believe this is the Jalefuego pepper. The dragon cayenne is harder to take pictures of, as the peppers are still small.

Here’s the mutant zucchini, you can see some pepper plants coming through the leaves.

I have no idea how many squash we are going to get, if we get as many as the flowers, I may be looking for recruits to take them. After I make lots of zucchini things, of course. I’ve read that you can shred it and freeze it too, so I might do that.

The herbs are going well for the most part. I’ve accidentally murdered a few, but they seem to be hardy and coming back.

And, of course, the tomatoes continue to expand. Mr. Stripey is doing well.

Almost all the plants have tomatoes started.

They are growing a little close to each other, so it’s hard to tell sometimes which plant is which.

It will be fun when they start turning colors. I’ll know for sure then.

So now that we’ve seen the food growing, here’s what we ate!

Turkey cutlets looked good at Trader Joe’s, so I made Turkey Parmesan on Sunday. No recipe, just breaded the cutlets with seasoned panko and fried them up. Regular homemade marinara and fettuccine.

I made this after we had walked around the zoo for the photo safari for multiple hours, so didn’t use fresh herbs. They had been a little wilted too. It was good anyway though. It was fun to try something new. The Husband was very complimentary and wants to have it again.

We had sandwiches a couple of the nights. The Husband got the sandwich maker back from his parents’ house and was very excited. It’s a Betty Crocker “Stuff and Munch.” It makes little sandwich pockets and is his favorite way to eat sandwiches.

This was a pastrami provolone sandwich. It was pretty good.

We also had manicotti, but I don’t have a picture, as I was at work.

http://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/easy-manicotti-56784

It says that you don’t have to cook the noodles, but it’s a lie. Cook them at least halfway. The Husband left it in for over an hour after checking it and it finally got soft. It tasted okay.

The cheesecakes were my other new recipes this week, but that will be in the party post.

I hope you’re enjoying seeing the garden. I know I’m very excited that it’s going so well. Have a great night and stay tuned for my party post for Battle Cheesecake!