Garden Update

Pepper Crop

I couldn't believe how much the vegetable garden had changed in the nine days I was up in Oregon.

Cindy's pepper plants are now producing red and yellow peppers.  She's freezing most of them for use later on.

The huge Cinderella pumpkin is now revealed in all its mighty glory; the vines had become so riddled with powdery mildew that Cindy ripped them out to let the pumpkin continue to mature until she's ready to deal with it.

We were surprised at the size of this pumpkin; Cindy thought she was planting pumpkins that would be much smaller pie pumpkins, rather than a Jack o'Lantern size pumpkin.  It's probably a very good thing that this is the only pumpkin the vine produced--I love pumpkin pie, but this one pumpkin is going to provide a lot of pumpkin meat for pies.

Cindy said that when she planted it, she was thinking that "Cinderella" referred to something small, not something the size of Cinderella's coach.

If it had gotten much bigger, it could pass for a small Volkswagen.

Welcome, New Ramona

New Ramona

About ten years or so ago we bought a garden ornament of a seated Native American woman called "Ramona With Jug".  We put her on the front porch at first, then moved her to the front of the house where more people could see her.  Cindy loved working in the front yard under Ramona's inspiration and would sometimes clip a rose and leave it on the jug in Ramona's lap.

Several people had asked us if the piece was by San Diego sculptor Donal Hord, but this was a mass-produced piece we bought at a nursery.  Unfortunately, about a year ago some low-life with more brawn than brains just stole her right off the porch, and we've missed her presence ever since.

When we were mulling over what to do for our anniversary at the end of July, I suggested going back to the nursery to see if they had another copy.  They didn't, but referred us to a place across the highway that was able to order one for us.

So we picked her up yesterday and installed her in the back yard on top of the wall by the fence.  Getting her out of the car and onto the wall was a major engineering feat involving a hand truck, ramps, levers and a stack of wood so we could slide her from the hand truck to the wall without actually having to pick her up.  She's HEAVY--I don't know how the scumbag who stole the original one did it, but I hope it cost him a hernia and a couple of slipped disks for his trouble.

Anyway, we finally got her into her new place in the back yard, where we can enjoy her presence while we're back there.

That should make her much less vulnerable to human thieves and, as far as we know, ground squirrels don't like to eat clay.

Garden Delights

I love these flowers.  I don't know what they are*; the blooms don't last long, but they're beautiful while they last.

*  O.K., my gardening guru (Cindy) says they're Calandrinia.  Beautiful.

Why We Have The Varmint-Repelling Panels

The one tomato plant that is not currently surrounded by Cindy's anti-varmint panels is the bush tomato in the black bag.

So, of course, that's the one they are going after.  When I went out behind the fence today, I found the remains of a big, luscious tomato on the ground.

As I went back into the house to get my camera, I found another half-eaten tomato on the stone wall.

I  figured the critter would be back, so I sat and waited for him to emerge from the shrubbery.  He eventually appeared in a convenient hole in the Plumbago, but wouldn't come all the way out while I was there, even though the tomato was waiting about two feet away.

Can you see him?  He's there, watching.

Anniversary

Today is the first anniversary of this blog!  It's been a good year for the garden and I've learned a lot by doing the blog.

I've enjoyed taking the photos, and I always learn something, too, because I ask Cindy about the plants, or I do some research on the various animals before I post anything.  In the past year I've learned about Katydids, Western Fence Lizards, Clarimore Zucchini, Monarch Butterflies, Marah macrocarpus (Wild cucumber), and many other interesting plants and animals.

We've also eaten very well, with tomatoes, zucchini, snap peas, Oregon Giant peas, green beans, violet beans, leeks, onions, basil, parsley, tarragon, lemon verbena, thyme, sage, rosemary, and who knows what else.  We have a Cinderella Pumpkin growing in the back that just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger that will eventually become many pumpkin pies.

It's been a very interesting year.

Sausage Update

We had some of the sausage Cindy made yesterday this morning as breakfast sausage, and it was delicious.

I was amazed that the whole sausage making process went so smoothly, especially after the earlier Mozzarella fiasco; since it had taken us almost an entire day to make a 30-minute Mozzarella recipe, I was anticipating at least half a day to make a 20-minute sausage recipe.

It probably actually took Cindy most of a half day to cut up the pork and prepare the various mixtures or herbs and spices and to soak the casings, but the process of getting the meat into the casings was fairly quick.  Having the Kitchen Aid sausage maker attachment helped a lot; it would have been a lot messier process if we had had to stuff the casings by hand.

Years ago somebody described a participant in a litigation case I was working on as a "sausage maker".  When I asked what that meant, I was told, "He turns out a good product, but you don't want to look in the kitchen and see how he did it."  Oh.  Got the picture.

But ours turned out to be a good product, our kitchen didn't get messy and we used our own herbs and tomatoes in the process.  

Making Sausage

The Set Up

Cindy, true to her German heritage, has always wanted to learn how to make sausage, so she took a class from Mary Ann Vitale at Great News a couple of weeks ago.

Ever since then, she's been champing at the bit to make her own, so yesterday she went to Mona Lisa Deli in Little Italy and bought some pork and some sausage casings.

Today she prepared the ingredients and the casings, set it all up on the kitchen table and impressed her Assistant Kitchen Scullion (namely me) into service, and off we went.

Cindy held the casing while I pressed the prepared meat and herbs into the mixer's hopper.  The auger in the mixer pushes the meat mixture out into the casings and Cindy made sure it was filling evenly and without too many air pockets.

Making The Links

Soon we had four different sets of casings filled, and it looked pretty good for our first attempt.

Cindy then separated the stuff into separate sections and twisted them into links.  So now we have four different sausage mixes with tarragon, basil, fennel, lemon balm, parsley and sage, all of which came from our garden, with some of our tomatoes, some asiago cheese and I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was some of our zucchini in there, too.

Sausage

That's one of the advantages of making your own sausage:  you can use your own ingredients, put whatever mix you want together, and you definitely know what's in it.

A Mighty Blow

Lovely While It Was Blooming

Cindy decided to take out an overgrown Bush Germander, Teucrium fruticans, in the front yard last week.

It was pretty early last spring when it was in bloom, and the honey bees loved it.  I sat and watched them mining it for pollen while I was waiting for Mr. Upside Down, the Monarch butterfly, to hatch out of his chrysalis.

Alas, Poor Mattock

However, after the bush stopped blooming, it just kept growing and by summer it had become very leggy and too large for the space it was in.  It also had some tall grasses growing up through the stems of the bush that were almost impossible to weed out.

So she cut the bush down and then went after the roots with her favorite garden tool, the mattock.  Unfortunately, the root was thick and very strong and resisted her efforts to dig it out until she gave it one more mighty whack.

The root finally came out, but the force she used bent the blade of the mattock.  I didn't know it was possible to do that, but just don't stand in Cindy's way when she's determined to root something out.

Thick Roots

Calling All Zucchini Recipes

The Clarimore Zucchini, Persian Cucumbers and some of the tomatoes are starting to roll in in vast quantities, so Cindy is pulling out all the recipes she can find that use zucchini, tomatoes or cucumbers.

She's sliced, she's diced, she's sauted, she even grilled some 3 inch slices of the Clarimore zucchini (they were delicious).  Zucchini bread, zucchini quiche, zucchini cream pie, cold tomato and potato soup, cold zucchini soup, cold cucumber soup.   She's made pesto from the basil and we've eaten so much Swiss Chard I'm starting to turn green.

Zucchini Slice

It's really wonderful to have so much fresh produce;  NOTHING tastes as good as a tomato fresh off the vine.

The other day we had sliced zucchini and cucumbers for lunch.  Cindy made a dipping sauce with chunks of bacon that made it just that much better.

If this is a plot to get me to eat vegetables, it's working very well.

What To Do With The Whey?

Way Too Much Whey

In our three attempts to make mozzarella yesterday, we managed to produce quite a bit of whey, the liquid that's left after the solids are removed from milk to make cheese.

In fact we were surprised at how much liquid was left after we had formed the mozzarella.  We ended up with about two-thirds of a gallon of whey and 1 pound, four ounces of mozzarella from the third effort.

Mozzarella

So what to do with the left over whey?  You can use it to make ricotta, but we already had plenty of potential ricotta from the not-quite-mozzarella second batch.  Cindy can also use some of it in baking (gotta have bread to go with the tomatoes and mozzarella), but that still leaves quite a bit left over.

So Cindy decided to use the extra whey on the plants in the garden.  It's liquid, it may add some calcium, so why not try it?  She put some on some of the plants she watered this morning, so we'll see how they do with it.

Mozzarella Madness

We started out to make some mozzarella this morning with hopes of having fresh mozzarella to go with the tomatoes that are rolling off the vines in great numbers.

Several years ago we read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and loved her description of making homemade mozzarella.  Shortly after that, one of Cindy's Master Gardener friends invited us to help experiment with a couple of different 30-minute mozzarella recipes, and we had a great time doing that.  We had tried it once or twice at home successfully since that time, so we thought we knew what we were doing.

Not Quite There

After a long hunt for the citric acid, which was hiding at the very back of the fridge, we assembled the ingredients, including a gallon of whole milk, the elusive citric acid, lipase and rennet and set to work.

Unfortunately, the whey never became clear and the curds never really separated from the whey.

We reluctantly dumped that lot and tried to figure out what went wrong with it.  Cindy's engineer Dad would probably have said, "Test the variables" if we had consulted him, so we decided to look at those.

Curds Looking Better This Time

The first variable we considered was the milk, which can be pasteurized, but not ultra-pasteurized, because the temperatures used in the ultra-pasteurization process are too high to allow cheese curds to form.

So Cindy trekked off to the store, bought a different brand gallon of whole milk, and we tried it again, but got the same result.  The curds were a little firmer the second time, but never got quite firm enough to make proper mozzarella.

Cindy decided to save this second batch and make ricotta this time.

Stretching It Out

So, it was off to the store one more time.  For the third batch we decided to use a recipe from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company that did not use lipase, because the lipase was a year past its expiration date, which was sort of a clue that it might be the culprit.

This time the curds formed up beautifully and Cindy was able to knead and stretch it into one big, shiny, smooth ball.

That's The Way It's Supposed To Look

Then we chilled it and formed it into five smaller balls.  We'll have one with the tomatoes tonight.  Yum!

Fresh Mozzarella For Dinner!

By Popular Demand

Bagged Tomato Plant

Cindy's dad wanted to see a picture of the tomato plant in the fabric bag, so here it is.

I originally bought the bag to plant potatoes in (did I mention I'm very fond of potatoes?), but Cindy hasn't been able to work out how to get a reasonable amount of organic seed potatoes, so she planted this tomato in the bag instead.

She's got a drip line running to it and it seems to be doing very well indeed.

Pink Naked Lady

Naked Lady Bud

That's what the neighbors say this plant is called.

It just showed up in our planter; one day there was nothing and the next there was this leafless stalk with a pink bud on the end of it.

We didn't plant it and have no idea how it got there.  The neighbors say that these plants come from a bulb that grows all over the hillsides in our canyon, so one of the varmints probably carried it in and buried it in the planter.  Maybe they think they owe us something for all the vegetables and other plants they've destroyed over the years.

When we told Cindy's dad about it, he said maybe we should plant some among the zucchinis and cucumbers.  I didn't get the joke, but Cindy said, no, those are growing at a rapid enough clip, thank you.

Pink Naked Lady

Anyway, we've had fun watching the bud and flowers unfold over the last week.