Unexpected Harvest

As I said in a post or two ago, nothing looked like it was gonna be ripe for the next few days at least, but I just went out to water and found out I was mistaken. I guess the plants were in dire need of fertilizing because I did so a few days ago, and each of the tomato plants have actually grown a foot taller and bushier, and so many are ripe! The same with all the peppers (hot and sweet)! And the Ichiban eggplants have grown tons of new leaves and flowers! Nice surprises are always great in the garden, they sure beat out finding squirrels have discovered your plants and dug in your pots. Which are the kind of surprises I'm used to.

So here's today's harvest.

Tomaaatoooesss

dried cayenne

cayenne seeds saved!

peppahs

Even more tomatoes, I just find the different colours so pretty. One cherry tomato plant I have growing was labelled Black Cherry Tomato but sadly it was mislabeled and they're just extremely large cherries.

Some more of the garden:

The darn squirrels keep munchin' on my aloe

Crafts

My initial intention was to make this blog a gardening and crafts blog. I seem to have become overtly obsessed with my gardening lately so it kind of took over. So I shall now add some craft posts since craft content is severely lacking. And by severely lacking, I mean nonexistent.

Anyhoo,

Yay craft!

These are a pair of candlesticks I made a few months ago for my mother for her birthday. It's from the same piece of wood as this:

A project I did for a course last semester at OCAD.

It's structure I built for my Time Based Media class. It's made out of a oak tree branch I found at the side of road from pruning, cut into sections with plywood boxes I built in between each section.
In the plywood boxes I cut and glued together plexiglass to make more boxes boxes to fit into the wood ones. The top and bottom ones with bundles of wires going through them, to look as if the wires run through the tree. In the middle box, there is a robotic-thing I made that when you push the 'on' switch, it spins two slices of the maple pretty fast.

I got a lot of use from that oak branch. I also made this for another class around the same time.

Close up

This was a self portrait for another class. Basically on each slice of oak there is an image that I've transferred on from old family photos and other shtuff I like. Each piece is held together with a thin loop of wool.

More crafts to come including some jewelry I'm selling! Hopefully my Etsy page will be up and running really soon.

Garden Update

Things seem to still be blooming and growing new fruit constantly, but right now besides tomatoes, nothing's really ready to be picked for a while. My zucchinis keep growing baby ones, but the past three times they decided not to actually grow fully, but turn yellow and fall off. The bell peppers seem to have finally started producing lots of little ones, which is great. I was worried I wouldn't get any bell peppers this season because until recently they weren't even flowering and it's already August.
So here's a few plants.

jalapenos, red pepper (not ripe), and sweet banana

'Super sweet 100' cherries, green peppers, and the surprise tomatoes. 

Eggplant, the surprise weed tomatoes, and cherry toms.

While picking my eggplants, I discovered that the top green part of eggplants and the plant itself had thorns/ spikes all over it! I was not expecting that and was pretty surprised. 'Tis hard to pick something with a top of spikes.
I don't know if it'll be obvious from this picture but...spikes!

On the left side, a thorn! Ahh.

 Anyhoo here are some tomatoes I picked today. Mmmm. These golden ones are so delicious and sweet I've picked about five or more a day since the plant started producing (and eaten then right after)! I'm going to try out saving seeds from tomatoes ( which is more complicated than things like peppers and herbs) when the season ends so I can get a plant similar to this one. It's so hardy and amazing.

Mmm so delicious.

Pickling!

I have a one sweet banana pepper plant in my garden, and one jalapeno pepper plant. I have gotten so many peppers from these two plants, I didn't know what to do with them all! 

So I decide to give pickling another shot. I cut up the jalapenos and a few banana peppers and put them in one jar along with some green cherry tomatoes that fell after my potted cherry tomato fell over and broke a few branches. I tried to leave the banana peppers on as long as possible to turn orange, but they seemed just just get yellow or start rotting so  I picked them all at once, and decided to make my own pepperoncini.  I had some extra vinegar pickling stuff left when I was done filling the jars of my peppers, so I decided to make some pickles, and see how they turn out. I didn't have any actual dill for the cumbers, but hopefully they'll be tasty.

 

 I used equal parts cider vinegar to water (1 3/4 cups each),

2 cloves of garlic chopped up,

3 tsp of kosher salt, 

2 tsp of sugar

about 2 tbsp of pickling spice I bought 

(basically cardamon seeds, black pepper, dill seed, and other strange things)

Be warned that I haven't tried what the peppers taste like, but I based what I did on a few different recipes.

For these, don't refrigerate, but leave out in a warm-ish area in your house for a week or more.

For next year, when (hopefully) I'll have many more peppers and cucumbers I really want this.

Today's Harvest

Ooooh rainbow!

And here's everything so far:

Tomato Branch Transplant Success!

 

The tomato transplant took! Looks like it's doing really well, especially after all the coffee grounds I just out into its pot. Yaaay for successful experiments!

Here's the Mulberry tree seedling I got from a friend who's whole backyard is full of trees they also started from mulberry seedlings from their one tree they had in the front of their house. Growing pretty fast! Only had two small leaves when I potted it.

 

I hope this grows to a full tree, I's love to start making Mulberry jams.

Fried Eggplant

    Three of my eggplants have ripened! although they're all supposed to be a lot bigger, I'm not so surprised they're so small since I have them in pots that aren't big enough. Two are Ichiban (although they don't look like it) and one is Italian.

(Two of the three)

 I fried them after first salting them, then brushing them with olive oil. The way I salt eggplant is to put down some paper towel, sprinkle salt on them and then put down the sliced eggplant. I then salt the side facing up, and put more paper towels (one layer) on top and letting them sit for anywhere from 5 to30 minutes, however long I need to prepare anything else. The paper towel will get a bit wet from the eggplant, that should happen. I do this because apparently this process takes out any bitterness when you fry/barbeque the eggplant. My favorite way to cook eggplant is to do this and then BBQ it, but my barbeque broke a month ago. Super sad, I look forward to BBQing all winter. Frying the eggplant is a very close second though.

Tomato Branch Transplant

     I have a couple of tomato plants that were passed onto me from a friend who had no room for them in her garden when we were planting it a month or so ago. She didn't know what kind they were (she also got them from a friend), and looked a bit sickly so I didn't think much of them at the time when planted them into the only plastic pots I had left which were pretty tiny. I didn't expect them to survive very long.
   They surprised me and have grown huge! I never put up any stakes or cages for them so they kind of grew into each other into a bush. Now they are actually growing pretty inneresting tomatoes, some pear shaped and others looking like they might be beefsteak!
   Last week there was a crazy storm here and we got quite a bit of hail, which bruised up one of my zucchinis and knocked some of the tomatoes over, which cracked a branch that looked like it was about to flower off the stem of one of the plants. I decided maybe I could keep it in water, and it would maybe survive a bit like a flower and maybe in that time so roots would grow, since I've seen tomato plants grow roots all along its branches high above the soil.

And it worked!

Roots!

After a day, there were small bumps on the bottom two inches of the stem, and after two days, tiny roots started to form! This was after four or five days. I potted it into soil and out it back outside, since it started to look like it needed more sun, which it wasn't getting so much of outside. Next time I'd keep it in water longer, since the roots aren't very fully developed.

It's now outside, and so far so good!

Garden Update and Dandelion Stir Fry

It's been a few days since I've posted,

so here are some updated garden pictures, and yet another recipe for dandelions!

So many colouursss

I  finally bought a tea ball. I've wanted one for a long time and I decided I needed one for my mint and dandelion root grounds, so I bought this adorable one from David's Tea. I love the little grapefruit weight at the end of the chain!

peppahs.

Dandelion (and a bit of kale) stir fry!

 

 

 

 

 

 The stir fry. I served it with kale, fried eggs and tomato with some pita to scoop up the yolk for dinner. Mmmm.

Easy dandelion stir-fry:

What you will need: Washed dandelion leaves, oil, garlic, and ginger.

- In a wok (or whatever you want to use for stir-frying) put in some cooking oil. Not much, just to fry the garlic.

- 2-3 cloves of garlic cut up as small as possible. Add after the oil heats up a bit. Make sure it doesn't burn.

(Feel free to use less garlic, I love fried garlic)

- While the garlic is cooking add some (or lots) of ginger to taste,

- Add the dandelion leaves, and stir it all up. If it's taking a while to cook thoroughly, put a tiny bit of water in and a lid over the wok to steam the leaves. Might need some salt.

Goes really well over rice or with eggs!

 

What I picked today. Yay peppers!

 Also it turns out the squirrels have discovered my backyard garden and have been digging in the pots (major Grrr). So I (with some help) cut up some of the habaneros and put them everywhere to guard against further squirrel attacks. Also put some cayenne pepper along the fence for good measure. I hate squirrels. I hope the peppers will scare 'em away.

Bam.

It's bothering me that my last two posts were all just brown.
Here's some more colour.

Dandelion Coffee Part Deux

Time for part two!
But first, I forgot to mention in part one a general rule about dandelions (or any weeds, really): 
NEVER use dandelions from anywhere that might have been sprayed with pesticides! Only use dandelions from your own property where you know what is being sprayed or done to the plants you're ingesting.
Safe eating!

Anyways, back to the recipe.
So where I left off I had the roots washed and cut up and ready to go.
I put the roots in a food processor to chop 'em up quickly and easily.

 
It only takes a few seconds 'till they're like this:

 

After they were all ground up, I spread them onto a cookie sheet in a very thin layer so they'd dry evenly.

So much brown!

For the roasting part:
I preheated the oven to 250° F and put the baking pan in for around 2 hours. Mine took a little less than that, and you should stir them up a bit, so they dry evenly and don't burn.

I actually forgot about them while on a walk with a friend, and had to race home terrified of finding them completely burnt.
I am extremely lucky that when I got back they were fine, and actually perfectly roasted and ready to come out of the oven. (This recipe also says to keep the oven door open while roasting to release the moisture, but I had no problem keeping it closed since it's so hot.) 


I scraped it all off the tin foil, and poured them into a mason jar ( I'm trying to find ways to use them I have tons) to keep it all fresh.

Oh, I forgot! you're supposed to brew it like tea. I put a tbsp in hot water and I'm letting it brew, then straining the grounds out.
These grinding and cooking directions were incredibly helpful.
Now I just have to brew some and taste it to see if the whole endeavor was worth it.

Update:
Brewed and tasted! Now that I've seen the final product I feel like I should be calling this post "Dandelion Tea" not coffee, I don't really see the resemblance between the two in taste or in colour. But I do love the taste! It needs a tiny bit of honey or sugar, but I love it.

The final product:

The left one is from a coffeemaker, the right brewed like tea. I noticed the brewed one was darker, but also more bitter.

I think tomorrow I'm going to add some cinnamon while brewing it. The second time I made it in my coffeemaker and it's easier and less bitter than brewing it like tea.
I'm super glad it was worth all the work in the end.

Dandelion Coffee Part One

So in my last post I mentioned a link on how to make dandelion root coffee.
I decided to make it my next project!
Little did I know how much work and mud would be involved.

Lots.

Anyways, I found big groups of small dandelion leaves and thought if I just pulled them up strongly, the small root would pop up, and yay! easy roots!
I was wrong.

Dandelion roots get pretty fat at the end of summer, and were a whole lot harder to get out of the ground (let alone whole) than I thought they would be.
I found the easiest way is to hold all of the leaves in your hand straight above the root, and slowly and gently make a clockwise motion while twisting to loosen the root.

You're going to need a trowel or some sort of small gardening shovel to sink into the dirt around the root, and try to pull it up. Don't try to just pull the leaves hard, the root won't come up, the leaves will just break off at the stem and you'll have a harder time getting the root out without  anything to hold onto.
One you've dug down a bit, hold onto the root, and slowly and gently try to twist it and pull it up. if the soil's not too compacted and wet, the root should come up unbroken.

Now that you have your roots of all strange sizes and shapes, fill a bucket/ big bowl (there will be lots of dirt so don't use anything you don't want to get dirty) water and throw your roots inside.

Pull off leaves before soaking, I just had to put them somewhere.

 Agitate them with your hands a few times, and wait until the water is full of dirt. repeat process. it's all right if they don't look fully clean yet.

I am realizing how many steps there are while writing this, let's hope the final product is tasty!

Now, cut them into chunks, and wash again until the water is clear of dirt.

End of first two steps (pulling them up and washing)! Phew.
Only grinding them in a food processor and roasting is left.
I warn you, if you only have a few roots I'm not sure this whole process is worth it for such a small amount of coffee. I'm actually going to pick a few more and let them soak (the first picture is the larger amount).

Part deux coming soon!

Dandelions!

So, I have tons of large dandelions growing all over my backyard. I had no further work to do in my garden yesterday so I decided to pick all the large dandelion leaves I could find and make a salad or something.

 

 

Mmmm free healthy green leafy veggies. . .

 

 

 

I ended up making dandelion chips (much like kale chips) which are super easy to make, which is great because I wasn't up for stir frying or washing a wok at midnight.

Here's how to make them:
After washing the leaves thoroughly, break them into pieces (the leafier the better, get rid of most of the stem), and drizzle a little olive oil over them and place them on a parchment paper-covered cookie sheet.
Then it's in the oven for about 10 minutes on 350-375° F. 
Make sure to check them, so they don't burn! They cook pretty darn fast. Garnish with sea salt and really any other spice you want.
Here's the full recipe.

Before...and no after picture, they were devoured upon coming out of the oven.

 

 

 

And here are some other things to do with dandelions: Make caffeine-free coffee, salads, and more.
Yummmm.

It's A Rainy Day. . .

A perfect day for my first blog post! Since going outside at all is now out of the question, with the hail and all.

Anyhoo, most of my garden is ripening! Most of what has been ready until now has been one tomato or a cucumber every so often that they get devoured right away. But my eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes, and even the mildew ridden zucchini plant are blooming with veggies.

The zucchini and eggplants have already been devoured. I'm trying to dry some of the cayenne peppers (the red ones), to have during the winter, and putting some in the freezer. Gonna take a second try at pickling the jalapenos, I wasn't a huge fan of the first batch I made. But that could be because the pickling spice I bought had strange additions like cloves and cinnamon in it. Or maybe because I'm making this up as I go along?
I still don't know what to do with the habanero, and I'm a little afraid of it. Being so incredibly high on the Scoville scale, and all.

Wish me luck!