2 More Summertime Goals

Alright, blogworld, here's the deal.

I have about half a dozen posts half-written in my mind, but I still have some 101 in 1001 goals to update on here. So, here's another checklist kind of post after a whirlwind of July so I can get my blog-brain up to date!

77.   Go to the drive in movies.
During the last week of June, my niece and nephew stayed the night with the plan to see Monsters University that even. You see we've got some serious Monsters' fans in the family! My niece used to beg to watch Monsters, Inc--and take a bubble bath and brush her teeth--every.single.time she came to our house. My nephew is equally enthralled with Sulley & Mike; as is Ainsley! I can't even guess how many times I've watched Monsters, Inc. Coincidentally the Van-Del Drive-ins has BOGO on Tuesdays evening and kiddos 5 and under are free. So for seven bucks, Mister, Sondra [2 days shy of her 6th birthday!], Stuart, Ainsley, Jacoby, and I were able to enjoy a movie! 

About three-fourths of the way through the movie, the temperature dropped drastically. People scurried about collecting blankets and popcorn bowls, seeking refuge in their cars. Sondra turned to me asking if we should get in car. I relieved her that everyone else was just wimps, we'd be fine, buuuut I did keep a close eye on the lightening in the distance! The kiddos stayed up for almost all of the movie, with just a little dozing off at the end! They then slept the whole way home and all through the night. 

Cue the hallelujah chorus!

10.     Can vegetables grown in our garden.
I felt a bit of pressure looming with this goal. You see, last year, I thought our garden was pretty lush. This year? I don't feel like we've gotten much out of it. Either way, if I wanted to accomplish this goal I needed to can something. 

After thinking that I picked all the beans and then being informed of a whole 'nother section, I realized green beans was the produce of choice. [That and we did grow any other commonly cannable produce this year.]

So we took our snipped beans out the Mister's parents and his mom helped teach me.  You see, we have "uh garden" at our house, but Mister's parents? Now they have A GARDEN! And his mom is good at storing away for winter. 

Mmmmm... How I love some comfort food on a chill winter night that includes preserved summertime favorites. Green beans. Corn. Peaches. Yum! Yum! So that's where this goal came from and we spent some time canning. Nancy really did all the work and I just asked all the questions. I'm no where near being able to do it by myself--although Mister reassured me that there's this thing called a "user's manual" and it'd probably be able to walk me through it step by step. I'd say he was talking nonsense! ;-)

In the end, we had enough to can just 5 quarts of green beans, but I'm already looking forward to enjoying them this fall/winter! Next year I'm hoping for the bountiful harvest, or at least not being on vacation when my mother-in-law could use the help canning beans and cutting corn!

September

This post will be tying up some loose ends for me.  I have lots of pictures too!  And this will be long. 

So here we go.

We had Ainsley’s birthday party on September 1, which meant we were either going to have a beach theme party, or we were going to get the back patio finished.  Well, we didn’t pass out leis, so we’ve finally finished the project.  And it looks amazing, if I may say so myself.

Weedless landscaping, almost!

With our gazebo!

We finished the Thursday before, I pulled weeds (tons of them), I mowed, we put up some tents and tables, we busted out the lawn chairs, and we had ourselves a party.  It did rain just a little bit, but it was a great day.  Ainsley really enjoyed her cake too.  My mom made a cake for everyone, and then made a large cupcake for Ainsley, which we affectionately called her ‘Smash Cake.’  And that she did.  She probably ate half of it, and wore the other half.  It was shower time afterward, before opening presents. J  We had a blast though!  The photographer we had for her party was amazing too!  (ahem)  He only took pictures for about 20 minutes, and never got any besides Ainsley, her cake, and a tomato worm we found in the garden.  We'll see if he makes it to the next one!

You may not want to eat after her.

Precious Princess!  Love her lots!

On a different note, I did get my clothesline put in a while ago.  I’ve finally used it a few times as well.  I find it very relaxing as I hang up clothes to dry.  It’s a way to help me slow down and enjoy the little things.  It’s weird, but I think I will have a clothesline at our next house, if we ever move.  There’s just something about having to slow down to let your clothes dry.  It’s … I don’t know.  I may be in love with it!  Now, we’ve discovered that we won’t put everything out there to dry.  For instance, none of Rachel’s undergarments, no nice shirts, no pants, and I think that’s it.  So t-shirts, Ainsley’s clothes, socks, some of my underwear (as long as I’m cool with it), towels.  So, yes, we still use our dryer, but we use it less now, unless it’s raining when I do laundry.  And, no, I’m not planning on using it in the winter time.  It would be hard to put on a frozen tshirt.

No one's panties are hanging on it right now.

My brother Paul is leaving for his final deployment and final leg of being enlisted as a Marine.  So we’re getting excited for his move back home.  My parents drove out a couple weeks in advance to enjoy some western sites and to help Paul’s wife Kambria move some stuff back home to Ohio.  So since my parents have been gone, I’ve been blessed / cursed with a huge tomato harvest.  I don’t HAVE to get them, but I feel as if not using them would be a huge waste of a large tomato crop.  So we’ve been trying our hand at making our own sauce.

Our first attempt wasn’t bad, but it didn’t have much flavor, even though we added garlic and onions.  Our second attempt was better with flavor since we added some herbs, but weird in texture, because the tomatoes were larger and had longer strings / tissue than the previous batch.  So on our third attempt, we decided to ask for some recipes from others.  And we got lots of great advice.  I think our ingredient amounts were off because it came across somewhat bland.  So we'll keep experimenting until we get something that works great.

Slicing and Coring

Blanching

Blanched and about to be peeled

Stewing

We cored them, squished out the seeds, boiled them for about 10 minutes, doused them in cold water, peeled off the skins, and then added some herbs, onions, garlic, and anise extract.  Yes, that’s right, anise, the stuff that gives black licorice its flavor.  It actually smells really good when you’re cooking it, and it reminds me of Sambuca from Olive Garden, an Italian liqueur that you’re supposed to drink with 3 espresso beans for good luck.  I never tasted it, but it smelled pretty good.  Even though I’m not a huge fan of black licorice, I do like the smell of the extract.  We froze it in 3 cup amounts, perfect for spaghetti for 2!

Also, while we’re speaking about tomatoes, I tried some fried green tomatoes the other day.  I didn’t really like them, but I’ve never seen them cooked before.  So I could have done it wrong.  Rachel’s grandma says she eats them with sugar, or at least can tolerate them with sugar.  So I may give that a shot next time.  But I decided I’d try to see if I like them because I have slugs eating holes in my red ones if I don’t get them the day they turn red.  So I thought I’d try a green one and see if I could beat ‘em to the punch.  Nope.  At least not this year anyway.  Maybe I’ll force myself to like them next year.  I’m good at that.  Last year I didn’t even enjoy eating raw tomatoes.  This year, I eat them off the plant, and even got Ainsley to like them too!  Careful, world, I may decide to conquer you!

Slug-eaten Tomatoes

So our garden has produced an excessive amount of tomatoes, and it’s also done well with zucchini and spaghetti squash.  We grew tired of grilling and frying zucchini, so I made some zucchini bread.  OK, let's be honest.  I made A LOT of zucchini bread: 8 loaves to date.  It’s so good!  We made chocolate zucchini bread last time, but decided to skip the choc this time.  By no means does it mean it’s healthier.  There’s so much sugar in it, I was amazed.  But, again, it’s delicious, and I don’t really care that much.  Especially since I like to slather it with butter as well.  So stop on by and get some.  We have a few loaves in the freezer.  But they don't last long.

Zucchini Bread

Here’s the berries, growing like crazy.  I’m wishing I only got blackberry plants, because they’re growing so much better and look so much healthier.  But alas, I didn’t.  I’m feeling better about the raspberries as they get bigger though.

Raspberries.  The blackberries are seriously 4x times as big!

Here’s the garden.  I replanted some beans, peas, spinach, and lettuce.  I think it’s been too hot for the peas still, but we’ll see what happens.  I hope there are enough bees or butterflies to pollinate them for fruiting.  The first crop of beans were eaten alive by insects.  This time I put some Seven on them to keep them off.  Well, it rained one day.  I told myself I’d wait til after the next rain to put more on, but I was already behind.  But they haven’t gotten worse since I did that.  They need another dusting soon though, or else they’re gone-ers too!  The spinach and lettuce have barely come up, but it’s been hot lately, and I haven’t given them much water.  And since two and two is four, that explains our problem!

Peas.  I've eaten 4 so far this round.

Beans.  Doing a little better since the picture was taken.

I’m still amazed my spaghetti squash is still producing so well.  The one section got some mildew on the leaves, and it killed all the plants.  I thought the other section was already done, but it decided it wanted to go for another round.  So I still have 9 more squash coming!  I hope I can figure out how to eat it all, because I don’t think Rachel is going to want much of it.

The ONLY pepper to grow this year!

Ainsley eating an apple.  It is fall after all.

All right.  Loose ends all tied up.  Thanks for reading.  Go enjoy something today!

-mister-

Garden Satisfaction

Well, it's August.  That means school is coming around again.  It means it's supposed to be blazing hot outside.  It means tomatoes should be turning red...and they are.  Remember back with me to the spring when I planted way too many tomato plants from seed.  Remember with me how I didn't care for them and most of the first batch died.  Remember with me that I did successfully start from seed 4 Brandywine plants and 4 Jelly Bean plants.  Well, I've only enjoyed 2 jelly bean tomatoes so far.  This first picture is the first harvest of tomatoes.....off the plants that I didn't plant on purpose.  I have 5 plants that started growing on their own, and they're doing phenomenally well!  You will only see 10 tomatoes in the picture because Ainsley helped me get them.  I set her down with one zucchini, and went after the tomatoes.  She tried to eat the stem of the zucchini, which was pretty funny.  I put 12 tomatoes in front of her, turned around for 30 seconds to pick the other two zucchinis and I laughed at what I saw.  She had bitten and spit out the first tomato, but she was going in for another!!!!  She's like a bull, she loves the color red.  I've tried giving her tomatoes again, but she spits it right out.  I think she gets the texture thing from her mama, but I didn't like tomatoes as a kid either.

We have probably picked about 6-7 dozen tomatoes!  No joke.  We've used them all so far with different recipes.  My favorite super simple one was dicing them up, adding some garlic salt, and spreading it on buttered toast.  Refreshing!

We've picked about 10 zucchinis so far, using all but two of them at this point.  Some top recipes for these has been the zucchini cakes mentioned last time and the chocolate zucchini bread we made for Sunday school.  Oddly, Rachel wanted to make it, and then never even tried it.  One of our pastors said it's the only way to make zucchini taste good.  :-)

The next picture is some lovely homegrown goodness from our friends John and Amber.  They have some peach trees in their backyard, and it's way too many peaches for them to eat themselves.  It's pretty rough being their friends and HAVING to take them off their hands.  I ate about 5 peaches the day they brought them, and then cut all these up the next day, finishing them off on day 3.  They didn't last long.  Thankfully, they brought another bag this week too since they were blown off with the last storm that came through this past weekend.  I'm trying to savor them this time.  Ainsley is definitely my daughter though; she polished off 2 peaches all by herself.  (Oh, I also saved a seed or two to try planting a tree for us too.)

One other amazing surprise from the garden this year: remember how 5 tomato plants are growing that I didn't plant on purpose?  Well, I had a couple potato plants do the same thing.  I dug up 2 decent-sized potatoes yesterday, and I didn't even plant them!  That was really cool.  I also harvest the beets, which only produced one fairly small beet and four tiny things.  So if I choose to grow them again I'll look for growing tips.

We received about 50 carrots the other week, from my mom's garden.  They tasted just as good as the full sized carrots from the store, but knowing where they came from made them even better.  I just need to find a good way to make them last longer than a week in the fridge, because I can only eat so many carrots in such a short amount of time.

I'm also hoping to grow more diversity next year with more root crops and different things.  I also intend to plant them at the right time and give them what they need.  We'll see if I can actually follow through with that though!

Thanks for reading.  Time to eat.

-mister-

July Garden

To start off this post, here are some pictures taken recently.

SummerFest in Spencerville

My transplanted tree thing that blooms great when watered...

...and dies off quickly if not watered.

Raspberry growing slowly

Blackberry growing more quickly

Rachel is digging, and Ainsley is sleeping

Spaghetti squash running away from the garden

Tomatoes, some turned red the other day!

Last phase before adding stone for our patio!  We're getting there!

We've been enjoying the squash from our garden.  Squashes #4 and #5 are on the table, ready to be chopped up for the grill tomorrow, and #'s 6, 7, and 8 will be ready to pick any day now.  We made some zucchini cakes with one the other day, because Rachel loves the ones from Ruby Tuesdays.  They were pretty good, but we’re going to look for another recipe to see if we can find any better ones.

Zucchini/Summer Squash

We’re about to start enjoying the spaghetti squash too.  I just need to figure out how to cook it really well.  Honestly, I’m fascinated by it, but I’ve only ever eaten it once, ironically enough at Ruby Tuesdays as well.  So I hope I like it a whole lot, or else we’ll be giving away lots and lots.

Spaghetti Squash, in the wild

I savored these peas the other day too.  I’m not holding out much hope for many more of those since peas don’t grow very well in the high heat.  And with the temps hitting 100 last week……..my desire for lots of homegrown snap peas will either have to wait until fall or next spring.

Last of the Sugar Peas

My pole beans got destroyed this year.  I mean, the plants are still spreading and growing like crazy, but there’s no way they’re going to be able to produce any beans since the leaves have been going to church every single day, i.e., they’re super hole-y!  So that’s a bummer.  I might try to plant some more in a few weeks and see what I can do to protect them from being bug lunch, instead of our fried goodness with bacon and mushrooms.  Man, I can almost taste it.  I’m going to try again this year now!  Maybe even tomorrow I’ll put the seeds in!!!!!

Destroyed Pole Beans

Oo=99999=99====[[9,=== /im/   ;   (That was from Ainsley)

Ainsley is getting so big!

On a different note, we’ve been making our own bread a lot during the past 6 months or so.  There have been times we didn’t want to or forgot and really just wanted some store-bought bread, but we’ve been enjoying the smell of fresh bread in the house about every week.  Well, I made three kinds this week, each with a new twist.

The first, and most normal, had oatmeal and flax seed mixed into it.  The second, with an amazing new twist to it, had Italian seasonings mixed in—wait for it, wait for it—with parmesan cheese on top!  It was really good.  Rachel made an ‘Italian’ meal just so we could enjoy the fresh Italian bread with it.  And the third had cinnamon and raisins mixed in, with a little sugar on the top.  It was as good as I hoped it would be.  The touch of sugar on top really sealed it too.

Oatmeal and Flax Seed

Italian Seasonings with Parmesan Cheese Topping

Cinnamon and Raisins with Sugar Coating

So if these pictures cause you to drool, here's the recipe:

Mix 2 cups of flour (bread or all-purpose, they both turn out the same for me) and 2 cups of really warm water.  Then add each of these one at a time: 2 tablespoons sugar, 2 tablespoons active bread yeast, 2 teaspoons salt, 2 tablespoons oil (I use olive oil).  Mix it all together and let it sit for about 10 minutes.  It should be really bubbly when you do the next phase.

Stir/knead in another 3 cups of flour one at a time (sometimes I use whole wheat flour for 1 cup of it—because we have it and because it’s not as modified as the others are).  When the dough is the consistency of your ear lobe, and not too sticky, it’s good.  Cover it with a warm, damp cloth, and set it in a warm spot to rise for 45 minutes.  It should about double in size before you work it anymore.

At this point, you split it into however many loaves you want (typically 2 or 3 depending how quickly we think we’ll eat it).  This is the point where you flavor it or doctor it up as you desire.  I don’t use measured amounts here.  I just add the seasonings or whatever else as I think looks good.  When you’ve mixed it in, you want to make sure you shape it as you want it.

Place them in greased bread pans (I have tried olive oil, baking spray, and butter.  Butter works the best for me.).  Cover them again and let them sit for about a half hour, until they’ve about doubled in size and are pretty much the size of a finished loaf.  Preheat the oven to 350F, and let them bake for 25 minutes.

Let them cool on a rack or a cutting board before cutting, to ensure you don’t demolish your newly baked loaf.  But if you absolutely can’t resist diving in, I completely understand.  My advice there comes from experience!!!

Enjoy creating your own!

-Mister-

'Green' Update

Well, a lot has changed in our garden since the last post.  Lots of things are growing and producing food already, and a few are not even close.  First, though, I wanted to tell you about our berries.  It could be a post all to itself!

The best blueberry bush

The one that started over at ground level

My mom ordered some blueberry plants online.  She got about a dozen plants total of 4 different varieties.  I took 3 plants home to plant, and she kept the others.  You have to have at least 2 plants so that they can cross-pollinate with each other, in most cases.  There are special plants that can cross-pollinate themselves, but most cannot.  Before we planted them, we prepared the soil.  I picked out the spot I wanted to put them, had my dad bring over his tiller, and we worked it up.  It was terrible soil, almost entirely clay.  That’s one joy of living in Ohio—the large amounts of clay soil.  Unfortunately blueberries need well-drained soil, and clay does not fit that category.  So we got some peat moss and tilled it in, which loosened up the soil a lot.  We did the same thing at my dad’s house.  We watered them and waited.  We watered them and waited.  We watered them and waited.  We watered them and then contacted the company.  We watered them and then received a full refund because only 2 seemed to have survived.  I have one of them.  Most of them pretty much started over, because there are small sprouts at ground level with dead stalks that should have sprouted.  Only 2 completely died, and I have one of those too.  I almost went to a local nursery and bought some bigger ones, but I figured we would have enough blueberries in a few years anyway with two bushes.

Raspberry

Blackberry

I did put in some blackberries and raspberries as well.  We prepared the soil the same way we did for the blueberries, adding lots of peat moss to loosen up the clay.  I got two of each.  They aren’t growing as well as I thought they would, but I really haven’t had any experience with them either.  So I’m not entirely sure what they should be doing.  They are still alive, and flowering a little bit.  So I’ll let you know when we get our first berry!

I transplanted some bushes to help separate the berries too, which made that side of the house look a lot better.  I still need to mulch it, which would help the berries and other plants a lot more.

Transplants and Rasp-/Blackberries

I did get some mulching done around the front of our house.  I started by mulching around my raised beds, which I think looks pretty sweet.  Then I used the rest on the front of the house.  It was the perfect amount, down to the last shovel full going right where I wanted it to go.  So that was pretty cool!

Garden, mulched around the beds

The garden is growing, mostly.  I did reap some ‘fruits’ already.  We shared our first snap pea, which tasted ….very green.  I liked it, Rachel didn’t.  She’s not too much of a pea eater anyway, which means I get them all—and I am by no means complaining.  

Snap Peas

We also got a huge bowl of lettuce and a small bowl of spinach.  I was nervous about the lettuce because I tried some when I was cutting it, and it was really bitter.  Once I got it inside and washed it and trimmed off most of the stems, it was good refreshing lettuce.  I will welcome any tips on growing lettuce.  I enjoyed a salad already, and I think we’re going to be giving most of this bowl away to some friends.  This is way too much lettuce for us to eat anyway.  We’re planning on freezing a lot of spinach to cook with at later times.  And I’ll be sure to have some fresh spinach before it’s all as cold as Santa’s toes.

Spinach on left, Lettuce on right,
2 beets in the middle, 2 peppers at top and bottom

Pole Beans

Our squash (summer squash and spaghetti squash) is by far the best growing plants in the garden.  They’re so arrogant with how quickly they grow and how much they take over.  I had replanted some green beans right next to them, and I had to trim back a bunch of leaves from the squash just so the beans can get some sun light.  Maybe they’ll grow better now.  The beans and peas haven’t really done all that well yet.  They’re growing, but they aren’t thriving.  The only thing I can think of is to give them more water, but I’m having a hard time giving them a good drink every day as it is.  We’ll see if anything changes soon.

Remember all of those seedlings of tomatoes and peppers I started and then had to restart because our house was too cold for them?  Well, they’re barely bigger than when I put them in.  The tomatoes are still alive, but not really growing.  A couple peppers became rabbit food and insect food, but a few are still hanging on.  No idea which colors they’ll be!  












The cool thing about getting topsoil from my dad is that they used to grow tomatoes there and they used to throw out some food scraps there.  So I have 5 tomato plants growing that I didn’t plant.  And they’re growing better than the ones I wanted to grow!!!!  And potatoes too!  I didn’t plant them.  They grew on their own.  So I’m excited to see what they do.

Asparagus

Asparagus is still growing, getting bigger and thicker.  I filled the trench in the rest of the way with good dirt and some peat moss.  I never did re-read the instructions with them, but they’re still alive and growing.

I had planted an avocado seed last year just to see what would happen.  I also researched to find out if they would even grow around here.  Avocado trees don’t like frost at all.  It will kill them.  And I live in Ohio.  So.  I would have to keep it inside in the winter like I already have done, but it wouldn’t produce very much fruit, if ever.  So I put it outside to toughen it up and see what happened.  I think it got too much rain….and sun….and wind….and became a snack for some insects too.  But I’m not concerned since Ainsley will have one less plant to attack and less dirt to eat come next fall and winter.

Almost all dug up!

Lastly, this is where we are currently with the patio.  It's taking so much longer than we anticipated, but it's still getting done.  We feel like we know what we're doing with it and how to do it.  And I'm learning that I'll probably never do it again without either a lot of help from friends in a matter of a weekend, or heavy machinery.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures.  They were taken on our brand new Nikon D5100!  It’s a perfect camera for us to share.  It can do with it what I want from a photography standpoint (which I really haven’t done much with taking photos in a while anyway), and it takes good pictures quickly and easily enough for Rachel’s desires.  So it’s great.  Thank you, Nikon.  Thank you, Amazon.com.

And thank you for reading, whoever you are.  (I apologize for the crazy formatting.)