As okra goes, I stunk at growing it this year. I kept waiting too long to pick it and ended up with a whole bunch of brown, hard seed pods. So I have a lot of seeds…but did I wait long enough to remove them, or should I have let them completely die off on the plant? Will they be useable?
Guess I’ll be back to frozen okra when I need it. Does anyone ever see it fresh anywhere? At Sprouts? Anyone?
Meanwhile – I was noting the okra leaf…haven’t I seen something like that somewhere before? Oh, yes: everywhere in Colorado!!!
In other {GARDEN} news~
What is the deal with the beefsteak tomatoes? Are they really like twins or triplets and sometimes even like quardruplets that just join together so we can beam over our 2-pound blushers? I have got these gigantic beefsteaks on the vine, heavy, juicy and so deliciousssssssssss! Yes, I am scheduling regular BLTs at this time in my life!
Does anyone know if you can eat the leaves of the sweet potato vine – especially if they are completely hogging up all the room in all of my flower pots?
Down to the last of the gargantuan Brussel’s Sprouts leaves. Washing two big sink-loads as we speak, which will give me space for Chinese Cabbage for the fall garden! I popped some seeds in 2 days ago and in this heat, they have already germinated! Perfect!
Now-these leaves – You can stir fry them, use them in a fritata,cook them the same way you would cabbage or broccoli or kale, you can use them as a wrap for a crab filling, make a sausage soup, roast them with garlic or make flavored, baked chips out of them. I am sharing these ideas for my kids because everybody is going home with some Brussels’ leaves! :)
Do you know what I love most about this time of year? It’s ripe.
When I stepped outside this morning, the air just smelled ripe. Everything tastes better, all the colors are richer and the garden is reaching its’ intended glory. This is why I planted and weeded and fed and tended. For now. The world is heavy with ripened fruit…
We are. We have been for sometime now. Yet, I can’t get my husband to avoid buying things in huge quantities. It’s fine with a 50-lb bag of jasmine rice or a moving-sized box full of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. They have a long shelf life and eventually they’ll be used. And he always does it, he tells me with love, because “you like this.”
Dave, why did you buy a 25-pound bag of dried black beans?
Because you like them, honey. This way you won’t run out.
Honey, all 17 of these avocados are ripe this very second – did you have something in mind when you bought them?
Because you love guacamole. I thought maybe you could make us some?
What is this Beth-Moore-Sunday-School-Class-sized party-platter of cinnamon rolls doing here?
I know you love cinnamon rolls.
Yesterday this:
4.26 pounds of fresh corn tortillas. I do love corn tortillas, yet…We are blessed to live near the Mexican Market with a giant tortilla factory in full view through a large window (take your kids to see them made fresh and have lunch on one of the big southwestern wooden tables with delish food from the Cantina). We LOVE getting them warm from the little conveyor belt we can actually see.
But here is the prob: I HATE wasting anything. I don’t want 4 loaves of assorted breads because there are only 2 of us. We’ll have to throw too much away! Boo. But if I like something, my sweet, thoughtful husband wants to buy it for me and if he happens to be in the bread aisle and sees four different loaves of bread he knows I like – well, then…
You can see the dilemma. It isn’t that Dave is wasteful, because he isn’t. He is just much more generous than I am.
But see the sell by date? In order for me to not agonize over wasting them, I have to eat 4 pounds of them {{FOUR pounds!!!}} within the next 4 days! And there is only one possible menu on the fridge list within which to actually utilize them.
Reminder to husband: we are empty nesters. There are only 2 of us now. I think we can cut back to a 3 pounder…maybe even less? Think about it.
I hadn’t had time to properly clean and prepare the beets from the garden yesterday, so they were “vased” and refrigerated for posterity. Yes, I put them there. I was still surprised. What is your point?
Do I like beets? Not especially, actually, but I had some seeds (you can grow 9 at a time in a 1-foot square) and you can eat the greens in a salad and roast the root with garlic and olive oil – or just juice the whole, crazy pile with some oranges (yum). And there are health merits.
At the very least, opening the fridge this morning made me happy. :)
But today there were peppers: Hungarian Wax and Sweet Bananas and Salsa-Jalepenos and my wondrous, most glorious Poblanos (there will be chile rellenos in the next couple of days, oh, yes, there will be!). There were 4 types of tomatoes and some zucchini and squash. Oh and the tomatillas are going to be amazing, I can tell from the very first one, ever! Got a big bunch of chamomile and 2 nice, fluffy bunches of kale. I got Brussels Sprouts greens and some cukes, plenty of dill (called a weed for good reason) and good heavens – what will we do with all of this basil? There’s some Rosemary and a few beets, and many-many-many more peppers to come tomorrow! Not everything is pictured here because ~ it just wouldn’t fit!
Three 4 things about today in the garden:
1. Today was nearly perfect, seriously. The temperature, the blue sky, everything. Being in the garden today is a reward, not work. Such grace!
2. I am reminded that between the time you drop the seed into soil and the time your arms can barely contain the harvest, many things happen and much time goes by. But it will happen. If you plant the seed and actively wait, watching, making sure it gets moisture and sun and time {you can’t hurry love} – oh yes, time is so necessary, well, then – you will reap a harvest. You will eat of the fruit of your labor of love. The time you gave, the blood, sweat and tears you spilled into the ground – will reward you, by the grace of God.
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap…And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.
Galatians 6.7-9 nkjv
Seed-time and harvest are two distinct and specific times. Don’t give up in the middle!
3. You MUST apply yourself to using this beautiful, natural, organic bounty to its’ fullest glory. Do not let this be what happens:
qsprn.com
No – let nothing of the sort happen!
4. Making more salsa tomorrow. Yum! :)
There is a garden
Something like the shadow of a butterfly
And lies beyond the gates of dark and light
And, darling, it belongs to me
When you go there
There will be such laughter in the dimpled sky
The songs you sing will drive away the night
The magic garden has a way of making you feel free
The sweet, little Averi-kins came by the other night. She was delighted at all the colorful peppers, so we snapped this shot.
What a wild kingdom! If you look closely you can see at least 4 varieties of peppers, maybe 5. There are tomatillas and beefsteak tomatoes in the background and even a bunch of those blasted garlic chives. A few young green beans leaves are waving in the bottom left corner. Hello, world, say the bean leaves.
Then we meandered over by the sunflower hill, where Averi-J watered for me.
A quick jump on the trampoline as the golden sun was settling over the Rocky Mountains and then inside to eat juicy peaches.
Her mommy said, when Averi and I were cuddling, “There you two are with your cute matching feet.”
“Aw, we have matching feet, Averi,” I told her as we both stretched our feet out in front of us side-by-side to compare.
“Yes,” she affirmed, “but mine don’t have any wrinkles.”
How astute. :)
Averi starts Kindergarten tomorrow.
But I still remember when she was this little ball of love.
She’s always been my little spicy chile pepper. LOVE her!
Finally – it is going to live and grow to be and do that for which it was created.
Poor little plant. I almost yanked it out and threw it away last week. But it has apparently finally established. It got its’ first flower yesterday, already dropped. Soon it will give me a beautiful baby-zucchini.
In the nick of time, too, for last Tuesday, I went ahead and started 2 new zuch-plants and they already sprouted and got their first real leaves. They are raring and ready to be planted wherever, and though it is a bit late for warm-weather plants to be just getting started, they grow so fast in current conditions. If we have a mild fall, I could be eating fresh zucchini for months.
The 2 seeds tale, though…
This plant:
And this plant:
were started at the same time. And this is how they look today. The top one is still so little, finally just getting nice, healthy-looking leaves. The other has already been giving me beautiful fruit and thriving and growing and making happy, even though, quite by accident, it ended up in the sunflower patch, a place really too shady for it to have grown up so full and free.
What has made the difference?
They were planted the same day. They are from the same seed package. They germinated within hours of one another. But one is healthy and strong and happy and fruitful. It got planted in some rich soil, mounded up behind some shrubbery where I was placing the sunflower seedlings. It established itself early, got strong and took root and reached high to find the sun. It apparently made friends with the flowers and created a nice little ground cover for various perennials round about. All the plants there are quite relationally content and mutually encouraging, all growing well.
But the little one – a different path.
First, I left it in the egg carton in which I started it too long. It was “born” healthy. It germinated quickly and grew well and had lovely leaves and all the potential. But I ran out of space and needed to wait until some of the cold-weather crops were finished so I could plop it into the 9 square feet of space it would need to become everything it was meant to be.
So, while it grew as much as possible, the roots ran out of room. The soil couldn’t support them and it dried out quickly between the daily waterings. The leaves reached out for sunshine, but became leggy and long, un-planted in a deep-rich-soil place. It tried to get what it needed, but became scraggly and “anemic,” yellowing leaves betraying a gardener’s neglect.
Realizing I needed to do something until the garden square had space, I got some good potting soil and planted it in terra-cotta container. Some color returned – it started to look a little stronger. It was there for a few weeks, still very small compared to the deeply rooted plant across the yard. But alive, if you could call it that – in temporary quarters, unable to fulfill its’ purpose…
When finally I had begun to remove the cold-weather crops from the garden square, I pulled the squash-plant from its’ pot and placed it into the side of the garden where, as it grew, more plants would be leaving to create space, but it just sat there. It did nothing, but look deathly ill. It was yellow and stringy and lifeless. The leaves sprawled onto the ground. I surrounded it with soft straw to blanket and give warmth. I brewed compost tea and watered it carefully. I watched and waited and waited and watched.
And it seemed hopeless. So, I decided to plant new seedlings for replacement.
But in the same week, the conditions have changed and in the hot sunbeams of the day and the afternoon rains from the skies, the roots have finally trusted the space and plunged deep into the rich soil and have tasted the healing tea and established. And being firmly established, this zucchini plant will now be everything it was created to be and do all it was created to do.
The lesson from this tale:
Rootlessness will stunt all growth. Being uprooted and moved and moved and moved will keep a plant {{or a person}}, from thriving. They’ll be anemic and taxed beyond their ability for having tried so hard to stay alive in spite of poor soil and growing conditions. So then, even when they are planted safely, they may not respond for a while. Their roots may not recognize the safe place yet, the true home. It will take some time. Hot sun will be needed, and pure rain. Extra nutrients would be good and space and ~ time. It will absolutely take time – this cannot be rushed.
So even though I didn’t do right by this plant and almost killed it in the uprooting, it is now establishing, planted by the waters of good care, and when the other zucchinis have finished producing and run their course, this one will still be going – because it will be fulfilling its’ destiny, everything it was created to be and to do. Just a little later than “normal.”
The great hope: If you have been moved around, neglected and uprooted repeatedly, if you are weak from lack of nutrients and care, it is not too late to be everything God imagined when He created you and here is my prayer:
In other news…
I wrote this in my journal in February (when he was just one month old):
Malakai is thriving. Growing. Getting healthy and robust. Love is causing life.
He hasn’t started crawling yet (though he does creep about) but that is because, at barely 7 months, he wishes to begin running. He loves being up on his feet, high-stepping it whenever anyone will help him go. He is happy and healthy and whole. His roots are planted deep into the good soil of a loving family and home. And being rooted and established in a safe place will always cause him to thrive.
Here my top secrets {not really} for making it look like I can cook
These are little trips and tricks my girls think I have mysteriously developed that make me a “natural” cook. But not really. Just my favorite 3 tips in the kitchen.
1. Use Kosher salt.
I figure, if you are going to use salt anyway, use Kosher. It has been blessed by the Rabbi and who couldn’t use extra blessings wherever they can get them? Silly? Perhaps, but I like having a box of Kosher salt nearby as I cook.
2. To keep spaghetti noodles from being sticky – at all, in any way: PRE-COOK!
Here it is: pre-cook. I found this out by accident. I fixed too much spaghetti for company as a newlywed and my mom said, “No problem. It can be frozen.” This was revolutionary to me because there was never any leftovers in my large family growing up. I had never seen her do this.
Throw it in a freezer bag (any excess pasta) and when you want to use it, throw it in a pot of boiling water long enough for the noodles to thaw, separate and heat through which is usually a minute or less (please do not re-cook them). Then just drain and it is perfect for right now.
It still took years before I realized it wasn’t just a great way not to waste too-much cooked pasta, but that if you were going to serve 57 people a big Carbonara Penne and you didn’t want any stress about the pasta being perfectly al dente and ready at 7:05 pm on the dot, PRE-COOKING is your very best friend, ever! Cook it the day before (fridge) or two weeks before (freezer), rinse it with cold water (do NOT add oil or butter-this keeps the sauce from coating the noodle later) and when you drop it into the boiling pot of water minutes before serving, you can be assurred it will be there for you, to perfection – at 7:03 on the dot (allowing time to plate and toss it with the sauce for a 7:05 presentation)!
BUT the biggest and most wonderous part of this is – the noodles will never ever be sticky at all. Never. Even if they seemed a bit dry and sticky when you froze them. They will be separate and you will look pretty darn amazing to all 57 people.
3. When baking, always be generous with shortening (or butter) and eggs.
Yolanda Gonzales taught me that. It can both make everything denser and richer or lighter than air. I am not sure how that happens, but if you’re baking and the eggs feel small, add more.
Nothing earth shattering here. I don’t think they’ll give me my own cooking show, but yes, these are things I subscribe to. Bon appetit!
Watermelon is a vine-like flowering plant originally from southern Africa. Its fruit, which is also called watermelon, is a special kind referred to by botanists as a pepo, a berry which has a thick rind and fleshy center. ~Wikipedia
So cold, so frosty from the fridge, the sweetness – it’s like I am eating juicy, red chunks of a sugary snow-cone.
Little secret? The reason you are not finding the delicious, sweet and satisfying watermelons of your youth is your obsession with seed-free varieties. You are selecting unnatural fruit, or “berries,” as it were. Don’t be afraid of a seed. It is proof there is something of heaven and the eternal there. Everything around the seeds echo the transcendence…
My Sweet 100 Cherry Tomato plant, in a 3-gallon pot, having overcome the 8-lb. hornworm not long ago, is making little tomatoes like crazy. Except, it must not understand the size thing. Cherries are not this big, little tomato plant. You are really going to way too much trouble. But thank-you for the juicy deliciousness!
