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.