Growing boys...

We are thrilled to no longer be dealing with diapers and sleepless nights. Woo hoo!!! But I am sad how fast these munchkins grow. We are never happy are we?!

My two oldest boys have started losing teeth. The second oldest boy lost his first one before his older brother. So our eldest son lost his first tooth Sept 21, 2010 and now has another couple loosed. Then the next oldest lost his first tooth August 3, 2010 and several days later lost another one. He is waiting for more to fall out. They are both waiting for more to fall out - money maker! They love it when their dad and I don't communicate and they profit from both of us. I put money down for their tooth, then their dad comes in and puts money down for a tooth. Neither of us knowing what the other did but hearing the next day about how much they made on their teeth. Punks!

This is my eldest after his first tooth - we had to help him smile to show the tooth:

This is his younger brother - please don't be grossed out by the yellow teeth - he was eating when it happened (plus he went to the dentist afterwards for his regular cleaning):

Fall Gardening

What happened to summer, I will never know. I have pictures with dates to help me know what I did for next spring and summer. So now I have a few fall garden crops in the ground. I went very simple because of a hectic schedule....broccoli and brussel sprouts. While I love cabbages, beets, lettuces, etc. I just didn't have the oomph to do more. It was all I could do to get those in and that was after killing 24 plants in three days. It was still very hot and dry here in the south in September when I planted a first round of 18 broccoli and 6 brussel sprouts starts. I didn't mulch or put straw around them. I watered good the night I planted them, came back two days later - all dead! Waaaahhhh! I give up!

Then my garden neighbor's husband bought 18 broccoli plants when she only wanted 3 - so she gave them to me. I planted them. They are growing now. But it cooled off and rained too. That always helps. I also put wheat straw around the plants to help keep the moisture in and weeds off.

This picture was from Sept 24, 2010 but you get the idea. The plants are probably 5x the size now. I should check on them. We have been having good rain and sun so they will be fine.

I learned something interesting - don't use wheat straw in the spring. They will go to seed and then grow. Good to know! But in the fall it is alright.

I let one of my plots just sit for now and through the winter. It is a good plot so I don't want to wear it out. Just kidding. I just don't have the energy. So I will amend it with my compost over the winter. Then my second plot that was horrible with weeds, the garden board decided to experiment and cover with black plastic. Did I tell you that that plot is infested with fire ants!? Another reason to cover it - kill those suckers!! They bite my toes and ankles. It hurts. They bit my son. He won't come back to the garden. 

First Patty Pan Squash

06/24/2010 - Here is the first Patty Pan Squash. Or some call it a Scalloped Golden Squash. It is a little on the big side and I would like them a little smaller. But........it was still delicious! :-D

More bounty - Pickles, Squash and Zucchini

06/16/2010 - Here is a shot of the bounty from the garden. There are Crook Neck Summer Squash, Baby Zucchini and Cucumbers - both pickling and slicing. These were all delicious if you must know!

Pickles!!

06/12/2010 - I spent most of the day pickling my first bounty of pickle cucumbers.

First, there are sweet pickles. I did two batches of 6 pints - one dozen:

Second, these are Bread & Butter Pickles from the Ball website. One batch of 4 pints.

And finally here is a Hot Dog Relish. 12 - 8oz jars. Don't be misled by Hot Dog Relish...We don't use this on hot dogs but we use it on white beans. I added some tabasco to the recipe so we will find out what sort of bite it has.

After canning these pickles and relish I wanted to know how they tasted. So I thought I would pop one of each of these open. Oops, the Ball Blue Book says that fresh pack pickles need to sit for 4-6 weeks. What? How will I know if I want to make more of them since these cucumbers are going crazy?! They won't have the full flavor but I popped them open anyway. Can I just say - DELISH! What will happen in 4-6 weeks if they are this good now? :-P  I took one of the Sweet Pickles and one of the Bread & Butter Pickles to a garden meeting to share with others. They were received well even though they were only a week old. The Sweet Pickle recipe from my mother-in-law ended up in the garden newsletter thanks to my neighbor and fellow gardener. I guess they were good. :-)


On 6/20/2010 I canned more of these assortments of pickles. I have quite a collection now. Let's see - 9 pints of Bread & Butter, 12 - 8oz of Hot Dog Relish, 6 pints of Hot Dog Relish, 12 pints of Sweet Pickles.

I tried my hand at some Hamburger Dills from the Ball Blue Book. I let them sit several days and then tried them. Major Fail!! They were HORRIBLE! The only thing that I did differently was I used dill weed instead of fresh dill because I couldn't find any fresh. The recipe made 4 pints so I didn't lose too much, thank goodness. My neighbor is going to try one of the dill mixes from Ball. I hope hers turn out well.

Progress continues...

06/07/2010 - Here are some pictures of the progress of the garden. Not much to elaborate...just progress!

Cucumbers!! Can you say "Pickles"?!

06/04/2010 - Here is my first harvest of pickling cucumbers. Aren't these beautiful?!

I will show you in another post what these will turn into!

A lot happens at the garden in 10 days

The last post I put up was from 5/21/2010. Here are posts from 5/31/2010. Isn't this crazy?

These are shots of our community garden. I do love coming here even though it isn't at home and isn't very convenient. It makes me hunt for a home where I can have a garden. Please?!

Here are a couple of carrots I pulled up that were choking out my jalapeno. I will try them again another time....when I can be more patient. :-)

Here is an assortment of other plants around my plots - cucumbers, green peppers, tomatoes, squash and flowers:

This last picture you can tell how badly I need to get out and weed around the flowers. It is hard to tell what is flowers and what is weeds!


Here is a picture of my new jalapenos I planted. I hope these survive and do better.

Looking back and seeing things grow

You know it has been awhile since I updated my garden stuff but I have been keeping up on the calendar so I could write here. It has been so absolutely crazy busy I think I could cry! But that isn't what I write about here. :-)

As I write about the end of May having just been to the garden today (6/24/2010) and I look at these pictures, it is just amazing to me to see how things grow and change. Wow! And who said God wasn't the Great Creator?!

5/21/2010 - Things are taking off and I am starting to see blooms, blossoms and the beginning of fruits/veggies.

Here is a Beefsteak Tomato plant - see the little tomatoes?

Ugh! Too much lettuce! At this point I am getting tired of lettuce and it wilts so fast to pass it along to someone else.

Here are some pictures of my peppers - green and red. My Jalapenos didn't make it. I think it is because I had planted carrots that I didn't think were ever going to come up. So I planted the jalapenos over the carrots. Then the carrots decided to make an appearance. My jalapenos died. WAH!

See where there are carrots mixed with my jalapeno? Not good. And I am not savvy or quick enough to think to transplant. Well, I am now. :-)

See the little Poblano pepper? Woot! But I came back a few days later and someone or something took or ate it! Not happy! :-( WAH!

Here is some okra - so little!

And there are cucumbers...I have planted slicing and pickling cucumbers. Two of each.

And of course we have plenty of tomatoes - Rutgers, Beefsteak, Brandywine (from seed), Cherry and Romas.

Some summer squash and sprouts of baby zucchini and patty pan squash:

And finally here are some of my daughter's sunflower sprouts

Well, that is what I have for this day, stay tuned for more!

Spelt anyone?

In an effort to learn more about grains and use more healthy grains since I live in a house of breadhounds, I bought a couple of new flours at an area health food store. They fresh grind all of their flours or you can buy it in bulk yourself and grind your own. That is what my end goal is - to grind my own. But I want to try different grains to determine if that will work for the family. So I bought some spelt, hard red ground ultrafine, and soft white ground ultrafine. We would probably be buying the hard red wheat or soft white wheat in bulk so I wanted to be sure I tried those.

So Friday morning for breakfast after looking at these flours I bought, I went for it! I made my regular 3 cups of flour recipe for buttermilk pancakes but substituted 1/2 c spelt and 1/2 c red whole wheat for 1 c of unbleached white. I knew I had to go gradual for fear of a pancake revolt. So my recipe turned out to be 1/2 c spelt, 1/2 c red whole wheat, 2 c unbleached white flour along with the other ingredients. They tasted great and no texture difference. The kids didn't even notice! Cool! Next time I will go for a higher amount of wheat and spelt. Or I may try kamut or amaranth wheat.

That evening I also modified my pizza dough recipe that is the family favorite which is already 1 1/2 c whole wheat flour and 1 1/2 c white flour. But I put in 1/2 c spelt and 1 c of the hard red wheat in place of the normal King Arthur whole wheat I use. In theory the King Arthur whole wheat should be the same and come from hard red also, but this that I bought at the village market was fresh ground there, so maybe a little better and not so processed? Could be a toss up but being a grain newb I don't know what's what. The pizza came out great and no one again was the wiser. I may be imagining this but the dough was more elastic and chewier which is good....but I could be imagining that. Anyway, nothing went to waste! :-)

So I feel a little more comfortable and more adventurous ready to try some more grains and recipes. Then my next endeavor or question will be if these home mills will produce as nice flour as I can buy from the village market. I have a friend with a similar mill to what we are looking at so she may shed some light for me.

New Seeds!

5/15/2010 - I had ordered Yellow Scalloped Patty Pan Squash (two kinds) and Courgette F1 Bambino Zucchini (baby zucchini) since I couldn't find those things around here or in the standard seed catalogs. I received all my seeds and am ready to plant this morning. I made three mounds for my squash and two big mounds for the baby zucchini and planted those. I am so excited about these and hope they come out well! I will need to get some more compost for these squash since I ran out and squash needs lots.

The wildest thing happened I had never seen - when I got to the garden and checked everything out before starting to work, the sunflowers had grown a little since I had been down there a few days before. But by the time I left a few hours later and the sun had hit them, they looked taller and spread out more - REALLY! I thought I may have been dreaming but seriously that is what happened. Maybe I did imagine it? My mother-in-law and another friend said it was probably true - sunflowers are like that. So cool!

The clouds look really heavy and we are expecting some good rain. We so need it!

I have also planted some herbs at home that I have forgotten to write about. On 5/7/2010 I planted Rosemary, Sage, Basil, Lavender, Flat Parsley and Cilantro plants and some Oregano seeds. Unfortunately my mint died so I will need to get another of those. I am not sure that my lavender is going to make it either. I also planted a Patio Tomato that looks pretty good.

Pictures will be coming soon when I get them downloaded!
***UPDATE: Here are some pictures from 5/15/2010***

Here are the Patty Pan Squash and Baby Zucchini picts - freshly planted:

And here is a bounty of lettuce - YUM!