Winter Cover

Every year spring has me wanting to get planting as soon as possible.  After all, it's another couple of months before you're able to eat anything you've planted, right?   Incessant drizzle keeps me from the garden in January and most of February, so by the time I can get outside, it's too late.  Over the winter the beds get choked with chickweed, or buttercup takes over.  So there are hours of weeding to be done just to find the soil.  In the rainy northwest, "sow seed as soon as the ground can be worked" can mean May or even June.  I always push the limits.  The soil is wet, forming huge back-breaking clods that no fragile veggie seedling roots would ever want to penetrate. 

I've tried cover crops.  I have yet to find one that doesn't require a rototiller to work into the soil.  Last time I tried, I had a huge grassy mess with roots that took forever to break down.  And there were still huge clods, and the soil took forever to dry out.

This fall I tried something new.  I knew that the rain was pummeling the soil something fierce.  I could step on it in places and hardly leave a dent.  I figured that if I covered the beds with something, that the covering would take the brunt of the force of the rain.  If I made it of a dark material, hopefully it should keep the weeds down, too. 

I thought about black plastic, but hated the idea of having to dump it in the garbage after a few seasons.  It also has the disadvantage of having to purchase it.  I thought about grass clippings, but didn't like the idea of any grass or weed seeds in my veg beds.

Then I thought about all the leaves from our maples.  Hmmmm.  Free, biodegradable, dark.  Maybe this could work.  So I had DS1 dump all the leaves onto the veg beds instead of the compost pile.  I worried that they might all blow away, but once they were wet, they stayed in place. 

And then this week came the moment of truth.  I really needed to get the peas planted.  I had waited since the weather was so changeable (we had snow last week).  So I pulled back the leaves, just enough for the area I wanted to plant.

And I found the most amazing soil!  The worms had been working it like crazy.  I took a handful, gave it a squeeze, and easily broke apart the ball.  Perfect workable soil in March?  Right after it snowed?  So I grabbed my garden fork.  Normally, I would have to step on the fork with all my (considerable) weight, and I could maybe get the tines three-fourths the way into the soil.

 I could push the garden fork, with my hands alone, two inches past the tops of the tines.

I had stumbled on something amazing!  Hardly any clods, and those very small and easy to break apart.

Best.  Idea.  Ever.

Time to get planting!

Edited to add:

And weeds?  What weeds?  Okay, there were exactly five dandelions in the 16 square feed I cleared out.  One was a full grown monster that the leaves didn't cover.  The other four were pathetic, puny shriveled things.  All came out without the use of tools.  Now I realize that the weeds may come back now that they have light, but at least it's at a time of year that I can deal with them.

Dreaming of Gardening

Lookee what came in the mail this weekend!

Okay, maybe you can't lookee because I can't get blogger to post a photo right now.  So you'll just have to use your imagination.

Picture 22 packets of seeds from Territorial.  Oooh!  Aahhh!  What did I get?

A half pound of Maestro peas
Red Ace beets
Blue Wind broccoli
Roodnerf brussels sprouts
Derby Day cabbage
Mokum and Yaya carrots
Double Yield pickling cucumber
Giant Musselburgh leeks
Flashy Trout's Back, Red Sails, and Salad Bowl lettuce
Cherry Belle radish
Bloomsdale Savoy and Olympia spinach
Oregon Spring (slicer), Striped Roman (sauce) and Sungold (cherry) tomatoes

Basil, Coriander, Marjoram, and Parsley

I just realized that I forgot to buy scallion seed....  I'll get some when I get onion plants/sets.

After no gardening last summer, all my seeds had seen better days, so it was time for major seed renewal.

It's so cold here in summer that I have a hard time getting sauce tomatoes to ripen.  I'm hoping that Striped Roman will be early enough that I can put up loads of sauce this fall.  The broccoli cultivar is new to me this year, and I've never grown leeks or brussels sprouts before, though I love to eat them.

Anybody get anything new they're excited about?

New Year, New Goals

A Happy 2013!  It's been a little over a year since I last posted.  Much has happened, but not in the way of postable material. 

An extended vacation left my veg garden a disaster.  The fruit trees pulled through, and I had enough pears for a couple of canner-loads for the first time ever.  But we were gone for cherry season, and the weeds took over the strawberry bed and all of the veggie and herb beds.  All I had time for this fall was to try and clear the beds as best I could, and keep up with leaves.

So what are the plans for 2013?

Knitting:  I have started my first knit-in-the-round sweater.  I have sport-weight wool from Imperial Yarn in Oregon, and I have finished the body up to where the sleeves join, and 1-1/2 sleeves.  It has a stranded yoke, which I also have limited experience with, but I am determined to plow through.

House:  We fixed up the boys bathroom two years ago, and I still haven't painted the darn thing.  Same thing with the powder room downstairs.  The shed needs a coat desperately, too.  I'm tempted to add all of the bedrooms as well, but I'm trying to keep my list under control.

Garden:  I'm just about starting from scratch here.  The backyard beds are in deep need of composting.  We have a pile, but it's totally out of control.  Get the beds composted and the pile gone.  In the front yard, prune the prunes, roses, and generally renovate the eastern bed.  Spend 30 minutes a day as weather allows weeding and/or deadheading.

Health:  Yeah, okay.  I need serious work here.  Be more active.  Walk a lot.  Start hiking, say, twice a month.  Our family will not purchase soda for the year, even at restaurants. (The restaurant part is easy for me, because I usually drink iced tea.  But I do love my Coke.  And Dr. Pepper.)  Eat more veg.  Take vitamin D daily.

Mind:  Outside of the books I read for the library reading group, I'm reading a lot of, frankly, crap.  You know the free books that Amazon has for Kindle?  Yeah, that garbage.  So I want to read at least two books from this list.  I have knocked off eight of them already.  Yeah, I'm a bit past 30, but it's a good list.

Household:  Less time on the computer (games, facebook), more time doing chores.  The level of dust in here is atrocious.  Doing laundry would be easier if I wasn't working around mending and ironing.  Make a major dent getting photos into albums.

Okay, ambitious list.  Wish me luck! 

The "S" Word

Around here there's a four-letter word beginning with S that sends everyone into a tizzy.  No, it's not that word.  It's S-N-O-W.

People from east of the mountains laugh at news stories of western Washingtoners slipping  and sliding our way around our streets.  But we actually have cause for panic.  Snow events are relatively rare around here, so even though most of the state's population is on this side of the mountains, most of the equipment to deal with snow is on that side of the mountains.  For example, Yakima County has 32 plows in the unincorporated county servicing a population of around 89,000.  Where I live, there are 33 snow plows serving a population of over 300,000.  So as you see, we don't get much coverage when it does snow.

So I find the best thing to do is watch the weather reports, and stock up on supplies to get us through until the snow melts.  Which is what I'll be doing this week, as there's a threat of snow on Friday and Saturday.  Mr. E claims that the "S-word" must be threatened three times before it actually does snow.  Personally, I'm not taking any chances.  If I'm ready, it doesn't snow, if I'm not, it does.

You see, it's not that I can't drive in the snow, it's that there are so many idiots in huge trucks where I live that think that 4WD means go 50 in a 35 zone on a steep hill.  I like my car, and I don't want (another) idiot totalling it.  So I'll stay home, thank you, and do my running around on Thursday.

The weather is gorgeous right now.  It's about 60 degrees and sunny, crystal blue skies.  It's days like this that make me absolutely love fall. 

Today I'm wrangling Thing 2 into helping me bring in the rest of the apples.  I took a turn around the garden just now, to see what's left to harvest.  It looks like a deer ate a bunch of my carrots, based on the hoof prints in the carrot bed.  There are quite a few holes where the carrots should be.  There are beets that need to be harvested/eaten.  I need to find some recipes to use them up creatively, since my family seems to have an aversion to beets.  Not that they've had them that much, and when they're snuck into something, like a salad, they say "Mmm.  What's this stuff?"  Anyway, the good apples need to come in, the bad ones composted.  I should've done it sooner, since we had this good stretch of weather, and it would've been best to get a fall coat of fungicide on the trees.  Well, I'll be ready for the next day of dry weather.

Other things in the garden include scallions.  They'll survive the winter, and it's nice to not have to pay a buck every time I want a few scallions in something.  I also have some parsnips.  They didn't really get going until the fall rains came.  I'm not sure if that's because they were too close to the apple tree, or if that's just how they grow.  Next time we have beef stew, one will get tossed in the pot.  The fall planting of spinach was a disaster.  It just didn't grow. 

I'm going to get a soil test done early next year.  Frankly, I'm tired of things not growing, so it's time to figure out what's going on.

Cleaning House

I know that spring is the traditional time for cleaning your house, and in the days of heating with fireplaces and coal, it made a lot of sense.  The amount of dust made by our wood stove is enough to drive me nuts, and it's not running all the time.  By the time spring arrived, I'll bet the interior of the house was in need of a major wash.

These days, with central heating and vacuum cleaners, I find that our house rather needs a cleaning in the fall.  During the spring and summer, I'm too busy outside in the garden to bother much with keeping the house super clean.  With the kids back in school, and the hectic end-of-summer racing around over, it's time to clean up and clear out.  Friends are more likely to want to be inside, rather than out on the patio, so it's time to get the dustcloths out!

The other day I cleaned out our big freezer.  Boy did it need it.  I tried to do a minor cleaning out of old food a few months earlier when my in-laws freezer died, and they brought some stuff to keep in my freezer.  But this time I really got down the the bottom of the shelves, finding really old blueberries, and beef stew meat with freezer burn.  I used to try to use an inventory list, but inevitably I couldn't find that last package of hamburger. 

I'm doing better, I think, to simply keep things in designated spots.  The top shelf, for instance has blueberries, bread and cheese.  I will not put these items on any other shelf, and since they stack nicely, it's easy to see how much I have left.  Other things don't stack nicely, like big bags of chicken breasts, but I find that they will stand up on their side on the bottom shelf.  Then it's more like books on a library shelf.

I'm also not stocking too much of anything anymore.  If it's more than a couple of months' worth, it'll either get lost, or have yukky freezer burn (if it's meat).  DH swears the taste of chicken is off fairly quickly, so I'm not buying too much of that at a time. 

How do you keep your frozen food in rotation?  Do you prefer spring or fall cleaning?  Or somewhere in between?

Baking season

I tend to think of seasons in terms of food.  There's soup season, salad season, apple season, strawberry season.  Right now it's baking season.  After not using the oven much all summer, I'm ready to make breads, pies, cakes, cookies, and roast meats and veggies.  After a stormy week, I was in need for a little sunshine in the form of coconut macaroons.  Mmmmm.  I'm not quite into holiday cookie and gingerbread season, but I'm getting there.

Oh, last night hubby and I went out to Brouwer's, and I had the yummiest hard cider - Ace Pumpkin Cider.  It doesn't taste like pumpkin, more like a mulled sweet cider, with a hint of fizz.  I wish I could find some bottled somewhere....  Looks like it was hugely popular, and they're planning on making lots more next year.  That's a good thing!  Someday I'd like to try homebrew hard cider.  We certainly have enough apples for it.

What's your favorite food season?

I came across this recipe at a grocery store.  It was really yummy, although the original recipe was a bit spicy for my family (and we really like spicy food).   I think the key is to adjust the amount of red pepper flakes to taste, because the amount of heat in curry powder can vary wildly.  I have very hot curry powder, so the combination of it and 1/2 teaspoons of red pepper flakes was too much.  I'm giving the amount here as half that.

Curried Winter Squash with Apples

2 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
2 cups winter squash, peeled and cubed
1-1/2 cups diced onion
1 baking apple (Granny Smith, Johnagold, etc.)
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp butter

Mix together curry powder, salt and red pepper flakes in a large bowl.  Mix in squash, onion, apple and olive oil.  Pour into a large shallow baking dish.  Roast at 375F for 40 minutes.  Mix in butter, and roast 5 minutes more.

Cold

Our first frost arrived yesterday morning.  It was a couple of weeks late this year and was very light.  Oftentimes it's in the mid 20s during trick-or-treating, but we barely managed 30 this time around.  Tonight colder weather is supposed to move in, dropping the snow levels in the mountains, and "winter" will settle in.

For fun, I'll check the DOT cameras for the weather in the mountains.  What's the snow level like?  Is it at Stevens Pass (4000 ft) level?  Snoqualmie (3000 ft)?  Or below that?  I also can tell based on where the snow line is on the mountains out east how low the snow level is, once it's below 3000 feet.  Or, checking the Doppler radar with snow or rain/snow mix color enhancement is fun, too.  Hi, my name is Kristi, and I'm a weather geek.  It's been 45 minutes since my last weather fix.

I cleaned out the furnace filters as I do the first of every month.  I hope for a warmish day because I have to run them through the dishwasher, and of course the furnace isn't on during that time.  Last December our furnace gave out completely.  We took advantage of the tax credit and had a high-efficiency model installed.  I find it interesting that our gas usage hasn't dropped a bit, considering that our old model was only 80% efficient.  I need to have it tuned up in December, so I think I'm going to ask some pointed questions when they show up.

Tonight we're having Buttermilk Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes, and curried apples and squash for dinner.  Comfort food for a cold day.  DH is going to stand in the rain at the soccer game, and I'll bet he'll be chilled and soaked through when he comes home tonight.  He might opt for leftover Gulaschsuppe (goulash soup) instead.  Both heat up well.

I'm conserving wood for our stove right now.  I haven't found a source for firewood yet this year.  I need to hurry up, because we only have enough for a couple of weeks, less if the power's out.

How do you stay warm? 

Well, it's been just about a year since I last posted to this blog.  I've truly missed writing.  It's one of those things that I need to schedule into my day (along with everything else).  So what's new?  Well, I've had a few successes, some failures, some plans come to fruition, and others that were hopelessly overoptimistic.  So, the usual, I guess. 

Thing 1 and Thing 2 grew like weeds this last year.  I purchased the first "men's department" clothing for Thing 2 the other day.  I think Thing 1 is mostly done growing.  At almost 6'3", I certainly hope he is, because otherwise finding clothes will be even more tricky than it already is.  Jeans in 31-34s?  How about a dress shirt for 15-37?  You get the idea.  We don't need "Big and Tall", we need "Scrawny and Tall".

I am currently making Thing 1 a nice, it-better-last-you-for-ten-years-so-you-better-take-care-of-it sweater.  I actually had it finished, or so I thought, but the sleeves were too tight once I sewed it up.  The pattern was a bottom-up body, but top-down sleeves, and it just didn't fit right.  So I frogged the sleeves, and am reknitting them bottom up.  I have one done, and about six inches (of 23) on the other finished.  The sleeves should attach to the sweater better as well.  The odd thing is, I made the same pattern in a smaller size for him several years ago, and it worked out fine.  Strange.

I didn't weigh out all of the produce from our house this year.  Spring was extremely cold and wet, and I was so disappointed by June, that I just didn't bother.  There simply wasn't much to harvest.  The mice got into the few potatoes and carrots that I had, and the early beets, spinach, and lettuce simply didn't grow.  The rabbits totalled the peas.  With the exception of the cherry tomatoes, which were a full month late to harvest, I had maybe a half dozen tomatoes off of a dozen plants.  Talk about dismay.  I managed one butternut squash from my plants, and some small oddly-shaped acorn squash.  Strangely enough, the cucumbers did relatively well, and I pickled many quarts.

I did manage to can several quarts of applesauce.  Enough to get the family through the winter and into strawberry season, I hope.  I also purchased two boxes of peaches, and canned those as well.  22 quarts should hopefully be enough.  I was hoping to buy a couple boxes of pears as well, but didn't see any at the time.  Nor was I smart enough to buy out the only guy I found that sold pie cherries this year.  I did make lots of strawberry jam and some pizza sauce, though again from purchased fruit, and I'm now trying my hand at making mustard. 

I'm still making my own sandwich bread, and occasionally fresh pasta and spaetzle.  I found a new to-die-for recipe for an apple batter cake, and an easy BBQ pork sandwich recipe that I'll share soon.  It's a good thing the rabbits have disappeared, because I was seriously thinking hasenpfeffer might be on our table this fall.

I guess that's it for today.  Back soon to add more.

Warm Weather

You know the weather's whacky when it's November and you are washing the car in a short sleeve T-shirt.

It's actually been warmer the last two days (72 today, 75 yesterday) than it was during many days this summer. I'm trying to get in as much yard work as possible right now....

Drying Bay Leaves

Bay leaves are the one herb that I harvest in October. All other herbs are at their peak in May or June, and sometimes I'll take a second cutting, but no later than August.

Bay leaves, on the other hand, are best taken in the fall. It gives the plant all summer to size up its leaves. Otherwise, the small new leaves curl up while drying, and are fairly tasteless.

Yesterday was pleasant - it wasn't raining at least - so I clipped a few branches on our monster bay tree. I washed off some scale insects that were clinging to a few leaves, and hung them in the kitchen to dry. They take a while to dry nicely, but not as long as basil. I don't bother trying to keep the leaves perfectly flat. They don't curl up that badly, and once dry, I either keep them in a glass jar, or generally, just leave them hanging in my kitchen, waiting for me to pluck a leaf for soup. The color of the stuff you buy at the store looks like mine after they've been dead for a year. Hmmm. Makes you wonder how long the store-bought have been around.

I've had an interesting time growing bay leaves (Laurus nobilis). Many years ago, a friend had a small tree that she gave to me to keep while they moved from a house into an apartment. A year later, the tree moved with us to our new home, and I planted it on the south side of our house. It's partially shaded, which seems to give it a compact, brached habit.

When we put the herb garden in, I planted two more trees thinking that my friend would be moving into a house again soon. These trees, planted in full sun, grew very fast, reaching eight feet tall in just a few years. The branches were long, and perfect for making wreaths. What a pretty way to display my bay leaves! I rank it right up there with garlic braids. My friend's tree also grew quite tall, and when they finally moved into a house, the tree was twelve feet tall! There was no way we could move it, so I guess it's mine now. It's now about 20 feet tall. Did I say it had a compact habit?

Unfortunately, a few years ago we had an extremely cold winter. Every so often we get a cold blast out of Canada. It hit zero degrees here with a brisk north wind. The two newer plants weren't protected from the wind, and didn't have the house to keep them warm. Both trees died. My friend's tree, although cold-damaged, survived. The next years' growth was stunted, but it's come back quite well.

So, the bay leaves are drying away to add flavor to another winter's worth of soups. Based on the amount of time they're warning us about the winter we're supposed to have, it's probably a good thing I'm drying lots.

Planting Garlic

I took advantage of the warm (77!), sunny day and planted my garlic. Since it's supposed to be a cold winter, and the rest of September seemed like October, it was probably a good time to plant.

While researching garlic bulb spacing, I ran across this site by Colorado State University which shows a study on bulb spacing and irrigation. They say that six-inch bulb spacing is the way to go, rather than the three-to-four inch spacing that I've been using. While I've been getting okay bulbs, I'd prefer larger ones.

So I spaced the bulbs six inches apart in "rows" eight inches apart across my four-foot beds. I had Thing 2 help set the bulbs, only having to rescue a few that were upside-down.

I spent a good portion of the day weeding out one of the herb beds and cleaning up around the front of the house. Mr. E trimmed a tree and sheared the hedges, so our house looks a little more cared-for. He also cut me some muchly needed kindling. Tomorrow is supposed to be cool and wet, and I think a fire in the wood stove would be nice.

Thing 2 and I looked to see if the squirrels left us any filberts from our tree. Usually there are quite a few left on the ground for us. This year, however, I couldn't find a single one. Not one! It makes me wonder if this is a sign of the kind of winter we're going to be having....

First Day of Fall

The first day of fall 2010 finds me in the kitchen. It's a dreary day, drizzle with a high of only 55 degrees here. I had to turn the heat on, or face a very grumpy Thing 2. Even with the heat on, he's cold. "Put a sweatshirt on," I say, and hear a grumble in response. I wish we could have at least had a warm fall to make up for our lackluster summer.

I'm in the process of preserving as much as possible right now. I have about 60 pounds of apples to deal with at the moment. I haven't even had the time to weigh them all, and so have only been doing it as I use them.

Today I dried about eight pounds of apples. Eight pounds fills my dehydrator trays, which in turn fill one one-gallon ziploc bag once dry. I dried another eight pounds a couple of days ago, and will do another two or more batches this week. Thing 2 loves to have them in oatmeal, and prefers eating dried apples to fresh.

I peel, core and slice them on my contraption that's used for such purposes. It takes under an hour to fill the trays, and another six hours before they're dry. Then, into a ziploc they go, as much air squeezed out as possible, and they stay in pretty good shape for months in the pantry.

I was going to order Clear Jel from Amazon, but they were sold out already, and I have no clue where to find it around here. I wish I had some to can apple pie filling. If anyone in the Seattle area knows of a place that carries it, let me know! I'm thinking applesauce this weekend at any rate.

Pantry Shelves

The problem with canning my own produce is that I wind up with a lot of it. I want that strawberry jam to last a year, so I put up several half-pint jars. And then there's chutneys, apple butter, apple pear butter, pickle relish, and mint jelly. And also many quarts of applesauce, peaches and pears. By September and October, by pantry is getting nice and full. The shelves are all loaded with summer's bounty.

Yesterday, while in the kitchen, I heard a strange popping sound. Just one loud "pop" followed by another several hours later. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. At one point I looked at our wall-mounted pantry shelves, and although they didn't look quite right, I couldn't see anything really wrong with them. I did think "I really need to re-adjust the shelves and get nicer brackets." I guess the pantry agreed with me.

While I was picking up Thing 1 from soccer last evening, the whole set of shelves ripped itself from the wall anchors and crashed to the floor.

Amazingly, only one jar of mint jelly broke. But you can imagine the state of my kitchen right now, as I have all the stuff from over 50 square feet of shelving strewn about the kitchen and dining room. I guess I really did need to clean it out. I just wasn't planning on doing it RIGHT NOW.

Palm Zipper

I picked up the Palm Zipper by Chef'n in a kitchen store in Ashland, Oregon this summer. Thing 1 just got his braces on, and would not be able to eat corn on the cob for the next two years. (What? No sweet corn? Inconceivable!) And after he's done with braces, Thing 2 will be in the same boat.

I've tried using various methods to get corn off the cob so I could freeze it. I've used the corn cutter that looks like a giant bobby pin with a circle of steel in the middle of it - the cobs never really fit correctly, especially the really fat ones. I've tried cutting it off the cob with a knife, which results in lots of half-kernals, kernals with the tops sliced off, etc. Not to mention the fact that I always feel like one of my fingers is in danger of getting sliced. I needed something better.

So last night I tried the Palm Zipper for the first time (yeah, the corn is that late this year). Woo-hoo! I love it! The thing is wicked sharp. It slices through the corn like a hot knife through butter. Given my history with sharp objects, I didn't hold the ear in the palm of my hand, but set one end on a plate, and held it upright with a corn holder on the other end. Zip zip zip. It only takes off two rows at a time, and could maybe be a little bit deeper, but full kernals came right off the cob with very little waste. I also like the fact that it's nice and small - no big mandolin-style set-up. It's a keeper in my book.

Back Again

Hey, everyone! I'm still alive. Spring was hectic, and summer even worse. Now that things have calmed down, I finally have the time and energy to write.

The garden was a major disappointment this year. The spring was too cold and wet, the summer was cloudy except for a couple of spurts of hot weather (when we were on vacation, no less). I didn't put Kozy-Koates on my tomatoes, so the first ones are just now getting ripe. The strawberries are still a mass of weeds. Half of the things I wanted to plant, didn't get in the ground.

The cabbages that I started under lights early this year bolted, as did the broccoli. The lettuce nearly died when I transplanted it. The lettuce that self-sowed did much better overall. The cherries had a late frost, so I didn't get any. Even my apple trees are not doing so well, many having succumbed to a fungus.

Now the weather powers-that-be say that we're in for a La Nina winter, which means that nothing will overwinter here without serious protection. September is supposed to be way colder than normal, and October wetter than normal (read "floods"). It's supposed to rain at the end of the week, so I'm going to put something over the tomatoes to help keep them warm and dry (so they don't get late blight).

In lieu of garden fruit and veggies, I've been trying to find u-pick and local food. The boys and I picked 14 pounds of blueberries and several pounds of raspberries. I bought 20 pounds of peaches at a farmer's market and canned several quarts. I'll make a trip down in the valley for pickling cukes, corn to freeze, and whatever other veggies I can find.

I'll still get another batch of lettuce, spinach, radishes and scallions planted for the year, and maybe some arugula and mache. I'm not hoping for anything beyond that, though. I'll be stocking up on supplies this year as La Nina has lately meant two weeks of snow, or I can't get across the valley to the grocery store due to flooded roads. I've already started stocking up on my son's medications, canned tomatoes and beans, although an inventory is probably in order.

Hmm. Nice to core-dump. Back with more (accomplishments this time) soon.

April Can Jam - Mint Jelly

April's Can Jam was herbs, and since the only herbs really going here are the chives and mint (and what the heck can you can with chives in it?), I needed to find something to do with mint. Besides mojitos. Which is normally what I make with my mint, in my Mexican pot, called "the Mojito Pot". And even though I was totally aghast at using up all my mint, and had to find more at the store (but, hey! I managed to find organic AND local (like 13.3 miles local!) mint) all I can say is:

Mmmm. Ymmmm. Smack, smack. Mmmm.

I just pulled my first (and it will not be my last!) batch of mint jelly out of the canner. I have never tasted anything like it! I'm totally blissing out here.


Mmmm. Golden jars of minty goodness.

The recipe, from Ball Complete book of Home Preserving

Mint Jelly (makes 4 half-pints)

1-1/2 cups fresh mint leaves, packed
2-1/4 Cups water
2 T lemon juice
3-1/2 Cups sugar
One packet liquid pectin

Prepare jars, canner, and lids. Wash, dry, and chop the mint fine.

Combine mint and water in a small saucepan. Bring to boil. Turn off heat and cover, letting it steep for 10 minutes. Strain through a jelly bag.

In a large saucepan, mix 1-3/4 Cup minty liquid with lemon juice and sugar. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. When boiling so hard, you can't stir it down, add pectin and boil hard one minute. Remove from heat.

Skim scum, pour into jars leaving 1/4" headspace, process 10 minutes.

Out Sick

Ugh. I've been sick all week, so unfortunately, no alliums canned, jammed, or otherwise preserved. Next month, for sure! I'm wondering if the food-of-the-month for April will be rhubarb?

I managed a short stroll around the garden today. You can almost feel the energy in the fruit trees, pent up all winter, ready to burst into blossom. Many will probably erupt late next week.

Today is gorgeous, tomorrow is supposed to be near 70 degrees, then back to our normal 50s and showery. And back to bed for me.

Everything's Sprouting!

This weekend was a busy one in the garden. We had one last warm weekend before the weather turned last night to what is to be normal or below-normal temperatures this week. Good for the lean snowpack in the mountains that gives most of our area its' fresh water, but not so hot for puttering around the yard.

The cabbages and onions that I started in February went out into their final places this weekend. Ten Golden Acre cabbages in the two or three leaf stage went into one bed, while twenty row feet (five rows across a four-foot wide bed) of tiny onions went into another. I could've waited until April to put out the onions, but I'm so forgetful about turning off the lights at night indoors, that I'm afraid that they're going to get too long of a daylength and bulb up too early. So they went outside in their little cell-packs pretty early, and since they seemed to be happy like that, I figured that planting them now would be okay, too.

Most of the seeds I started are up now. Only the peppers and Oregon Cherry tomato have yet to show. I've never grown peppers before, so I'm not sure how long they take, and the Oregon Cherry was slow last year, so I'm not surprised that they're not up yet. The lights in the garage are pretty full, and I'll need to move the broccoli outside fairly soon to make room for the rest.

The peas I planted outside February 20th are starting to poke their heads above the soil. I don't expect them to go much further until after the weather warms back up after this week. The 6-10 day and 8-14 day forecasts show above normal temperatures, so this cold period looks to be pretty brief. Hopefully the radishes and lettuces that I sowed outdoors will finally make an appearance....

In good news, my new computer will finally get here on Wednesday. This will be the last Dell computer we ever buy. The customer service and delays are not acceptable. I won't go into more, or my blood pressure will go through the roof again. At least I'll be able to post photos again soon!