Tag: peppers

Musings
Canning and Preserving · Crafty · Gardening

Musings

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I’ve been doing some thinking on how the blog has changed in the past few months and especially at the amount of change since I started this project. I started it as a way to keep myself accountable for using my recipes and craft books and so far it’s definitely done that. 

I think though, I may have outgrown that strict model. I am still more likely to pull out a cookbook or to find a Pinterest recipe when I want to try something new, but I am finding it very limiting for some types of recipes, such as baking.  

The blog has definitely helped inspire me to sew more too! I am much more adventurous and willing to try new things, as well as finding a ton of new inspiration. I even wrote a short piece with a picture for a huge site, Sewcialists. A year ago, I was still not putting pictures of myself on the blog at all! Now there’s a picture of me with messy hair, wearing bellydance pants!

Don’t worry, I’m not planning on going anywhere, but you may start to see different content. Maybe some original recipes, maybe some tutorials or sewing tips. Possibly even some dog treat recipes! 

I’m also experimenting with the new editor, which is still in the Beta stage. Supposedly, it shows me all my pictures how they appear when loaded, but that’s not true… I was only recently logging into the blog on my desk top and saw that the pictures taken with my phone held a certain way loaded sideways. For the record, they look the right side up when viewed on my phone or IPad. Technology and I do not get along. So be patient please, I will fix them as soon as I can. In the meantime, maybe just use it as a way to stretch your neck? 🙂

I have gotten so far off my posting schedule with all the crazy going on here, that I figured tonight would be a great time to just admit it and start over. Fancy, our adventurous pup, got sprayed by a skunk last week, and we’ve spent most of the weekend attempting to make her smell less disgusting. She’s super stressed, as she doesn’t understand why she isn’t allowed in the bedroom, or why we don’t want her cuddling with us. Poor thing. Hopefully the shampoo and other things will help and she can be a snuggly dog again soon. 

Other things are going well though. The garden is booming! We have peppers galore. I think I may have to can some more salsa this Friday and use these tiny, but super hot peppers in it. We may not be able to eat it, but it will be delicious!

We also have Jalapenos and cayenne peppers growing. 

I will also use these in salsa. 🙂 We even have red bell peppers popping in. I think once I cut back the zucchini enough, they were finally able to grow and get the nutrients they needed. 

I am very excited. I thought the red peppers were going to be a wash this year. I had such lovely plans for roasted red peppers in the freezer. 

The herbs are growing well, except the bee balm. I killed that one by accident. The lemon thyme is growing back slowly. Everything else is good, but I forgot pictures. 

The tomatoes are, of course, growing like crazy! I honestly didn’t expect them to grow this well, but here we are. The Husband had to buy 6 foot stakes for me, as the plants kept falling down! The tomatoes got too heavy. I froze some green tomato salsa using the ones that fell down while being staked. 

It was meant to be canned, but I didn’t have enough head space to safely can it. I haven’t tasted it yet either.  We have two other jars of salsa opened that I should eat first. It smelled good though and I canned it before work!

Mr. Stripey has yellow tomatoes! They were all in weird places to get pictures of though. I’m so excited! I hope they are lovely. My Indigo rose tomatoes are getting huge! They are supposed to be cherry tomato sized, but they seem to enjoy being in the soil much better than pots. They are in the back. The front ones are a bush cherry tomato.

I’ve also made some delicious plum cardamom jam, which I may have to make a second batch of. I might be selfish and keep it all for me. I guess the Husband can have some too… Maybe… If he’s nice to me. It was from Southern Living: Little Jars, Big Flavors. Here it is on a chocolate chip poppy seed muffin. 

I could eat this directly from the jar with a spoon. Maybe I’ll get some more plums for Friday too. 

I have also been crafting for our Harry Potter party. I want to make it fit in with my fall decor so I can use it again. I’m a fan of multi season and purpose decorations. 

These were jars and vases from the basement that I used mirror spray paint on to make faux Mercury Glass. You know, the old glass that’s kind of streaky and wonderful? 

How cool are these? Here’s what some of them look like with LED candles in them. 

They are so pretty! I’m going to try some with colored glass items as well. For our party, we need lots of different glass vases, bottles, and vessels. These items will work through out the year too. It’s been fun to find new  uses for things. 

I’ll have to catch you all up on my sewing too, but that will come at another time. I should probably get to bed so I can finish more projects before work tomorrow. Have a great night!

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!

Recipe Roundup and Concert Pictures
Gardening · Life Posts · Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup and Concert Pictures

LSiehLeave a comment

My week got all thrown off by a concert and being still sick. I did go to the doc yesterday and don’t have bronchitis, just really severe asthma flares. I have a stronger version of my meds, so hopefully that will help me kick this. In the meantime, I have been trying to get through it.

We saw Evanescence and Lindsey Stirling with a full orchestra and they were both amazing! Here are a couple of pictures.

It was really hot, but definitely worth it.

I haven’t been wanting to cook or eat, but we did have a couple new recipes this week.

We had chef’s salad with lettuce from the garden! We have so much lettuce right now. It’s been very hot, so the salad was nice and cool. Today it’s already 75 and I’m going to stay hiding inside. My lungs aren’t handling anything well.

We also had a new brand of all beef hotdogs.

They were the Teton brand from Costco and were pretty good. I have to be careful with hot dogs. One of the all beef brands was still in natural pork casings, which wouldn’t have helped me.

I had a friend’s kids over for Lego time and made tacos with homemade tortillas. We had taco meat leftover, so I made a beef taco soup.

I roasted peppers, onions, garlic, and tomatoes and threw everything in the crockpot while I was at work. It turned out good. I like using the leftovers.

We had baked chicken with garden herbs on Thursday, but ate separately, so I have no pictures.

Speaking of the garden, it is growing very well. I do need to water the herbs a little more, but I have lots of tomatoes started!

The zucchini plant won’t even fit in a picture. 🙂 I keep seeing new blossoms on it too, so we’ll have to see how many squash we get.

Here’s the lettuce:

A bunch of the pepper plants have flowers and buds too, so I’m Excited about that. Everything is growing much better than it was in pots!

Well, I’m going to see if I can sleep some more. Hopefully I’ll feel up to doing some sewing, baking, or canning today. For now, I’m content with not coughing quite as much.

Have a great day!

Canning and Gardening and Crafts, Oh My!
Canning and Preserving · Crafty · Gardening

Canning and Gardening and Crafts, Oh My!

LSiehLeave a comment

We had a lovely weekend. We had friends over on Sunday for crafting and video games and it was lots of fun. They helped us cook and we used the grill two days in a row!

Fancy was in heaven with two other people to pet her, plus we got her the treat she likes the best from the dog bakery. She’s currently recovering with multiple naps.

My craft this weekend was canning. I made five jars of pickles. There were originally 6, but one popped in the pot. I have always been afraid of it, but it’s probably good it happened with pickles. The mess that exploding jam would cause makes me cringe just thinking about it.

I found out when I went to check the  pot and there was a floating jar. That’s not a good thing to see when canning. The bottom just popped right out with a pretty clean cut. All the pickles stayed right in the jar too, so it wasn’t too bad to clean up. There wasn’t  good way to take a picture of it while it was still hot, but the picture up top is the circle of glass from the bottom.

Here are the intact pickles:

My friend had the brilliant idea to cut the cucumbers into chips after I found out I didn’t have enough wide- mouthed jars. Sometimes my prep skills could be a little better, but I thought I had more and was trying to avoid having to smuggle more jars past the Husband. Apparently I still haven’t canned enough for him. 🙂

I have a few more pickled veggies to add to my list, but not during this week. We are way too busy! I need to outdo my Mom’s pickle trays though, now that it’s become a thing.

My craft ladies discussed the differences between pickle and relish trays for about 45 minutes after they heard the story. My Mom was so proud when I told her. 🙂 This year for our parties, we’ll have homemade pickles!

On the crafty front, I cut a bunch of tea wallets over the last few days. I pulled from the red, brown, and purple scraps this time. I got in a groove and found myself with a huge pile of tea wallets needing to be made.

I worked on the purple ones first this time.

Here are the insides. The blue one at the top right has planets on the back and on the inside!

The garden is growing pretty well. We have three zucchini on the plant and a whole bunch of tomatoes coming in. The green pepper plant has two peppers on it. I couldn’t get a good picture of the “massive” jalapeños. There are three of them starting, but they are so far not living up to their name.

I did have a problem with blossom end rot on three of my big tomatoes. We’ve had a few days with a lot of rain and I probably need to add some more special fertilizer. I had the same problem with them last year and the internet said it was probably due to inconsistent watering. I was really terrible about watering enough last year.

The lettuce will be a wash this year. It’s completely covered in spiders and is starting to go brown. It’s quite sad. I have successfully grown baby lettuces before, so I think in the future I’ll stick to that.

I brought home my personal clipboards from work to collage, as I wanted to make sure I could tell them apart from the work ones. I’m going to just do the backs, so that there is still a smooth surface to write on. It will also let me go through some of my art supplies, as I need to have a bit more of it in the office right now.

Have a good night!

Craftiness and Garden Update
Crafty · Gardening

Craftiness and Garden Update

LSiehLeave a comment

How did it get to be Monday again? It seems like it was just Tuesday and now I need a weekend to recover from the weekend. We had friends over for a Driveway Movie Night, where we projected “Moana” on the garage door and watched it from lawn chairs in the driveway. Fancy got to see a dog friend again and did really well when the other dog was in the house. We were happy with that, as she can be territorial.

It’s pouring rain and thundering this morning; the perfect kind of day to stay home and do nothing. I don’t have that luxury, sadly, but do have French Onion soup in the crockpot for later which will be comforting.

Fancy had the right idea this morning. She hid under the bed and refused to come out. I was making chocolate ice cream, so bribed myself with that, otherwise, I would have been under there with her.

I was pretty crafty last week. Having to be in the basement with Fancy helped me get some more fabric cut up and organized. I had to start a new box for purple fat quarters, as I kept finding more of them. I also almost completely cleaned out a box with random fabric and crafty things in it. I also made 12 new tea wallets for Twinflower Fancies, or Hawthorne and Vine, a flower shop where they are also currently being sold.

When I sew these, I organize them in color groups based on what color thread they will be sewn with. I chain sew them as well. It doesn’t make sense to do them one at a time, as I would have to switch thread colors constantly. Normally, I wait until I have three or more in each color before I start sewing them up. I tried to expand my color range this time. I know I tend to stick to colors and patterns that I like by accident, but need to remember that it may not appeal to others as well.

Here are the green ones:

These three buttons were my favorites, I think, from the whole stack.

Here are the two black ones:

And the blue ones:

The octopus one might have to be my work tea wallet. I just love it and don’t know if I can give it up, despite already having a Red Riding Hood one in my purse. It’s just too cute.

It ws fun to go through the fabrics and remember what they were from as I was sewing them. This batch had a lot of familiar prints.

The owls are from a baby quilt for my cousin’s little girl. The dark green and vine print one is from a purse that I had tried to hand sew when I first started out. It was not a good idea and I finally got up the nerve to just rip it and reuse the fabric.

The geranium one and the holiday recipe one are both made from scraps of aprons that have been made for my Mom. When I bought the geranium fabric, the lady at the cutting table asked if I could adopt her too, she was jealous. 🙂

The gold treble clefs are from pillows I finally made the Husband this year after buying the fabric when we were dating. The blue and white waves with the boat is from one of the first skirts that I made.

All the other fabrics are from the stash. It’s nice to think if those special fabrics being used for something else too. That’s why I love scrap quilts so much too, there are a lot of memories in each of them.

Now for the gardening update:

I keep accidentally almost killing my lettuces. Plus, there are spiders living in them. Gross, hairy spiders, who have made a home in the lettuces themselves and in the pots. The Husband is going to have to cut them when, or if, they survive. I am not having spiders crawl on me. I think I’ll stick to farmer’s market lettuce next year. Any tips would be appreciated.

We have been getting some strawberries before the squirrel does!

These were all from yesterday and I found another one today. There are still a bunch of green ones on the plants too.

My peppers are looking good. The Mammoth Jalapeño has a pepper started. We’ll see how big it gets and if it lives up to its name. 🙂

The tomatoes all have some started. This one is the Roma, I believe and it had the most on it. I need to get some more stakes.

Here is the cucumber. This sucker is huge! It has a lot of flowers, but no starts yet. It keeps trying to escape into the yard.

My herbs are doing alright. The basil doesn’t look good. There has been a beetle that keeps eating it and it got very leggy and scraggly looking. It has yellow bottom leaves too, which I’m sure isn’t good. The oregano seems to have bolted. It keeps sending up flowers. I’m going to prune them off and see if I can get more out of it. Everything else seems to be growing well.

This week I have a few late nights, but most of my other days have a little more flex in them than usual. The weeks that my biweekly clients all come can get a little crazy, but it evens out with a few slower days occasionally. I’m hoping to get the fabric washed for the Rainbow Quilt and get it ties this weekend. Our friends are coming over this weekend for another sewing/video game day, so I can get some sewing done then too.

I also have a goal of canning three recipes, blackberry cinnamon tequila jam, nectarine orange marmalade, and dill pickles. I have some time tomorrow and a few other times this week.

I’m considering starting a “Simple Sunday” post which would be a quote or two, either funny or inspiring. I found my quote book from a while ago and was sad that the quotes I liked were just sitting in a book and not getting shared. It would be a good way to find out other quotes too, so I think that will start this Sunday.

Have a great Monday!