We love bread

One of my favorite things is my  Zojirushi bread Machine.  DH got it for me for Christmas & we thought I'd use it if I were busy & didn't have time to let it rise or gotta go somewhere & bread was ready to bake.  There are many things in life that do interfere when you make bread from scratch.  Imagine our surprise that now it's something I use a LOT!  I love it!

In Houston it is hot so many months.  When the fall & winter months are here I do bake an awful lot & love to try new recipes.  Now however, I don't want to heat up the oven for bread.  This wonderful machine makes it so nice.  I just put the ingredients in, set the timer & voila in the morning we wake to the smell of fresh bread... yum.  The machine does put off some heat, but that heat dissipates easily in the early morn.

Thought I'd share a few photos of my bread that I made this week.

Cheddar Cheese Bread

I got this recipe from King Arthur Flour & yes it's really is yellow looking & GOOD.  I have been having it with ham, grilled in my cast iron skillet for lunches, no need to add any extra cheese.  There is absolutely nothing healthy about this bread, but it IS good.

Our daily sandwich bread is 75% whole wheat (yes, that I grind in my Nutrimill Grinder).  It's very good & healthy too.  I will eventually make it 100% whole wheat but this works great in my Zo bread machine, so for now it's good enough.

Daily Bread

Lastly today I made some very healthy Hi-Fiber English Muffins.  These are for breakfast - Yum.

English Muffins

Not too bad looking for a first attempt, I think.

This & That

My butterfly bush is blooming.  That makes me happy.  I really like purple (bet you could tell huh?), so this is one of my favorite flowers.

Butterfly bush

The beans in Brenda Lee that I replanted 9 days ago are popping up nicely.

Brenda Lee beans

Today I picked our first squash.  Looks nice huh?  Weighed it right at 1 pound.  The tomatoes were all from Kate - hehehehe we got them - not the Mockingbird.

Squash from Rick - tomatoes from Kate

We had an agreement!

We love our birds.  We have 2 ponds with bogs & a fountain.  The birds come & drink & bathe there.  We even provide bird seed for them & the occasional crust of bread. Our backyard gets robins, blue jays, cardinals, wrens, doves, chickadees, sparrows, finches, woodpeckers & an occasional grackle.  We get along fine with all of them - EXCEPT the MOCKINGBIRD.  He just doesn't understand our rules.  They are, you must admit, pretty simple... I'll let you bathe, drink & eat YOUR food in our yard - just don't eat MY FOOD!

When I first started gardening I put in full sized tomatoes, then ONE day before they'd be ready - the mocking bird would come down & peck it!  Ruined! And to add insult to injury - he won't even eat it - he just thinks it's something else!  So, then OK I'll plant cherry tomatoes, at least he can't ruin them all - wanna bet!  So then we tried the black bird netting - such a pain to deal with, it catches on everything & is hard to reuse. Last year at least 3 times they were able to get inside the netting.  Don't get me wrong I won't whack them or anything, so I have to let the frightened bird outta my netting enclosed tomatoes without injuring him or me!  And usually it's been a while (hours) before I find them, not good for either party.

This year, new beds, more tomatoes & I'm back to full sized tomatoes in addition to the cherry for our salads.  My mouth is all set for slices of red ripe tomatoes on burgers, sandwiches, with mozzarella... yum! So, how ya' gonna deal with the mockingbirds.  And if you're thinking - Cindi they aren't that bad!  Right!  So, Friday evening I was at my kitchen window & saw HIM!  He flew into the yard & right up to Kate (I flew out the back door!)  He was right there getting ready to peck a cherry tomato when I yelled at him, he turned his head, saw me & flew away!  YES SUCCESS!  But I just don't have that kinda time to save every tomato!

But we have a plan.... it's kinda hard to find 5 more scary words around our house.  I found new netting.  This stuff is has a little smaller mesh, so am a bit concerned that maybe bees won't be able to get inside it & we want them to be able to... but not gonna worry about that now.  It drapes wonderfully, folds up fine & you can stitch it together to make bigger pieces.  Too cool.  I just couldn't find this netting locally.

So yesterday DH had figured out how to make this work - step one gather all those shepherd hooks you have from feeding those freeloading birds & make a framework around the cherry patch (Kate).

There are 8 shepherds hooks - they create a nice round top.

I already have 6 more mostly ready tomatoes & TONS more that are very hard to see here.

We needed a fairly large piece of fabric to drape, so we sewed it together using garden twine & a chopstick!

DH drilled hole in top & sharpened stick end.

Then just weave.

Double sewn for durability.

Now drape & you're done!

Bet they can't get in here!

You do realize that had I just started the post with this picture you would have thought "You did WHAT!?"

P.S.  So, does it work?  Well the little fink came back again tonight!  I had enough time to get the big camera so I could get a picture without spooking him.  He spent a good 5 minutes walking & flying all around it - here's how it turned out -

You'll notice he's on the OUTSIDE!  Success!

Lettuce & critters

I'm going to try again for my lettuce.  Here are my seedlings.  They all have 2 true leaves & are a bit leggy.  Sorry the pic is sideways, but don't see a way to rotate it.  I will rotate before uploading in the future.

Lettuce seedlings

 Here are 4 planted, along with a red onion that's been there.

I planted all of the seedlings today (18).  The varieties are all supposed to be heat tolerant.  This weekend I will set up a shade cloth.  We've had SUCH unseasonably hot weather already - high 80's maybe 90 today, that it's probably a really LOW chance of them actually turning out . But hey I have the seeds & they are already sprouted & one more batch going behind these in the garage, so we'll see.

I have some more cherry tomatoes which are almost ready to pick.  As you can see below, I'm not the only one watching them.

The WAR is ON!

I have a terrible time, mostly with mocking birds, eating my tomatoes, & also my red bell peppers.  I have tried a variety of ways of netting them in years past.  Mostly, they see the red, pick thru the net & or manage to get INTO the bed thru an, unseen by me, opening in the netting.  Not a good thing for them either.

This year I have new green netting that seems to drape much easier & I'm hoping that since the net is green it will disguise the red a bit too.  Now the trick is for us to put on the netting so that the birds don't get in but it's still quick for US to get in.  Stay tuned.

Purple Beans!

Despite the fungus & most of their leaves dropping off, some of my bean plants have managed to actually bear beans!  Cool!

See my purple bean on the right!

Not big enough to pick yet but there were about 1 per stem right now.  They are actually called Burgundy Bush beans.

Julia's cherry tomatoes

Also my tomatoes are starting to go red even in Julia, but the plant isn't growing very high.  Is this because of type, or as DH suspects, because it developed fruit too early & thus the amount of nutrients the plant could use for growing has been instead used for the fruit?  His theory sounds good so we're gonna make sure others don't develop fruit quite so quickly.

Spaghetti squash - here's a good example of where location, location, location comes in.

Rachel - spaghetti squash

I planted spaghetti squash seed in Rachel on 2/23.  Today is the first day it's bloomed & as you can see it's not very tall - in fact there is netting to the right of the plant but it clearly doesn't need it.  Should I pick off the blooms???

Now look at the spaghetti squash in Meg!  This was planted a full 2 weeks later!

Meg's spaghetti squash

OK, so I misread the package when I planted these & planted a bunch (16) instead of 2!  Learning!  Anywho, only about 6 actually came up (whew) & I have room behind if they want to trail on ground.  Right now there are 4 of them clearly trailing up the netting.  No blooms tho.  I suspect that the growth is better than the blooming right now, but don't know exactly what to do.  I'll have to see if I can read anything on that later. 

I'll pick the last of my lettuce tonight for salad & hope to get my lettuce seedlings out in the garden tomorrow.  They are doing ok but not great as seedlings.  I still have lots to learn there. But at least these have 4 leaves (2 true), which is 4 more than the ones I sowed in the ground in Feb. They never even popped up!  I need to add the water misters to the bed & put up a shade cover but that'll be this weekend with DH's help.  We're really too hot for lettuce in summer, but I am trying to grow some "hot weather varieties" from Israel & Hawaii. We'll see.....

Starting a New Bed

Looks GREAT!  4/3/11 This is Brenda Lee

4/15/11 - WHAT!?  Got a fungus!  so... replant

As you can see from the photos I got a real bad fungus in the pole beans.  The leaves just fell off!  As I said this blog is about my learning.  Anywho so I ripped all those plants out & put in new ones.

This is just the bed & soil

.

Here you can see the sectioning off & that circle in there is my drip line

Now I've planted & put back the bamboo teepee

I put in Blue Lake & Romano pole beans.  Also my sage & Roman Chamomile I had planted there were not very happy, so as long as I was going to re-do the beans I might as well do those too.  So I moved the sage to the herb garden containers & put the chamomile in another bed.

I have planted a LOT of cucumber plants.  Last year we just didn't have enough for the two of us.  So, in typical Cindi fashion, I probably planted waaay too many this year.  That's ok, we like pickles.  Uhhh I don't know how to make pickles.  No problem, plenty of time.

Leo - see his cucumbers - easiest to see on right side

 
As you can see the plants are barely 6" high.  I have access to the worlds greatest library.  So I got a few pickling how to books & now I have a plan.  Of course reading all those recipes let me know right away that I don't have enough dill plants!  So I replaced the sage & chamomile with 4 dill plants.  It takes 20 days before you even see if the seeds germinated....  Oh well, next year I'll know so much more & get this timing down better.

Dinner salad tonight! This is getting towards the end of the lettuce I planted in December.  But still good.

& the first of the year tomatoes...

Please don't worry about the goodness of our garden - we have our very own inspector.  This is Cleco.  She LOVES to sniff & sometimes eat what we bring in.  That's chives she's actually chewing on there & yes, it's one of her favorite foods - go figure!  She will start meowing LOUDLY the minute I bring in anything until I let her smell it.  And if perhaps she is napping when I bring in things & have washed them, that's not good & hardly is worth her time.

Cleco

Dehydrating Apples

I started dehydrating a few years back & the more I did it, the more I enjoyed it.  One of my favorite things to dehydrate are apples.  For great videos of dehydrating go here  She does a great job of explaining it all.

For those of us in Hot HUMID Houston, if you are new to dehydrating & wondering why it takes so much longer than the book says - Humidity - I can dry things in half the time during our winter months when it's "only" 45% humidity versus our summer months - so just hang in there, let the dryer go longer & test along the way.  The good news is you CAN'T overdry things.  Remember when you are testing, or tasting, for doneness, let the item cool down about 5-10 minutes & then check.

We have gotten to where we actually prefer the apples dried over raw, who'd have ever thought that!  But, what to do with all the apple peels we get? I dehydrate them along with the apples.  Then, put them in a DRY blender & blend them until they are the consistency of sand or maybe brown sugar. I can't ever get them real fine.  Then, place them in the freezer for 48 hours.  The reason you do this is to kill any possible eggs that the skins might harbor.  Freezing kills off all those yucky puppies.  Then I store them in mason jars (removed the air with my vacuum sealer) & use whenever I think of it.

I have started putting them in: pancakes, muffins, tortillas & even bread.  They have no taste yet are full of fiber.  The only word of caution I have is a little goes a long way.  In most things I use 1/4-1/3 cup.  If you think of any other uses let me know.

Outside my kitchen window

This is what I used to see 2/18/11

  Now it has 2 veggie beds:  Rachel  & Julia.  When you have 15 beds it's hard to say, "Did you see the bean plant with spots in the bed next to the tree by the kitchen window?"  The WHERE is a lot easier if you name them, so we did.

Julia is the bed closet to the front & Rachel is the farther bed.

Julia & Rachel 4/19/11

There are definitely things growing, but we're not don putting up all the hardware yet.  You'll see as we go along.  But nice to see my progress & in only 2 months.

My New Square Foot Garden

I've been gardening for about 4 years now & it's been pretty good, but I am by no means a real gardener.  I'm more a cook that has gotten tired of the bland tasting veggies at the store.  My DH found a book titled "Square Foot Gardening".  I got it from my local library & 3 days later we were off & running.  I went from doing 3 raised beds & growing cucumbers, tomatoes & bell peppers (96 square feet) the old fashioned way - to now I have 15 raised beds, 330 square feet & 11 different vegetables!  The fun part comes because in some cases I have no clue what some of these veggies look like, in the growing stage, some of the beds are in spots that we're not sure get enough sun... or, geez you mean they ALL came up! 

I think this part time hobby has expanded into a part time JOB! I'll get around to putting up pics & such soon.