August 11, 2014
Due to Max's illness, frequent visits to the vet, and trying to keep up with canning the bounty from my garden, I need to take a break from blogging for a week or two.
Will hopefully be back by the end of August. Take care and enjoy the rest of your summer!
Monday, August 11, 2014
Monday, August 4, 2014
I Wonder If This Ever Happens To Martha Stewart...
Last night I
gathered some beautiful tomatoes out of our garden, in anticipation of making and
canning spaghetti sauce today. I washed,
cored, and chopped the tomatoes and cooked them up so I could get a head start
on my canning this morning. Everything
went according to plan.
This morning I
got up at 6:30 a.m. I fixed Charming’s
breakfast, packed his lunch (he’s still helping my brother finish up a
construction project), kissed him off to work (this closely resembled a Blondie
and Dagwood Bumstead episode as I hustled him out the door while simultaneously
giving him instructions and handing him his lunchbox, a towel for drying off in
the mid-day heat, and two fresh t-shirts in case he feels the need to get out
of his sweaty shirt). I then fed Max the
Wonder Dog, made the bed, washed the dishes, and took a quick walk with my
sister who has just moved in down the street.
Upon coming home,
I began to prepare my spaghetti sauce. I
took the previously cooked tomatoes out of the fridge, ran them in batches
through the blender, then through the Foley food mill, and finally dumped the
pulp-thickened juice into the biggest pot I own. This went along fairly quickly and I moved
effortlessly around the kitchen, singing a happy song in my way-way-off-key I
Love Lucy voice. Cooking and canning are
two things that make me happy, so I sing when I work. My sister calls me “Martha Stewart, Jr.”
With the big pot
of tomato sauce on the stove, I turned the heat to up to get the ball
rolling. Figuring I had a few spare
minutes, I zipped to the bedroom for a big armload of laundry and headed for
the laundry area in the basement. Our
black cat, Walker Walker Walker
I sprint back up
the stairs; thinking that my sauce is happily bubbling away…which it was…away,
away, away over the top of the pan and all over the stove! YIKES!
I rushed to the sink and quickly wash my hands then raced to the stove
and turned off the heat. Tomato sauce was
EVERYWHERE, so for the next 30 seconds, I said almost every swear word I
could think of. Then, because the heat
and tomato sauce eruption was somewhat subsiding, I composed myself and simply
started groaning…oh, no, No, NOOOOO…ohhhhh, no.
What’s a Martha to do?
After several
minutes of just standing in front of the stove and staring at the mess, I
slowly walked to the sink, grabbed my Handi-wipe dishcloth and a mixing bowl of
water with a squirt of dish detergent, then I mustered all the Queenly grace I
could find. I walked back to the stove
and mopped, and mopped, and mopped. In
my mind, this is all that any Martha can do.
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| This is what happens when you try to do too many things at once. |
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| The stove as it looked 2/3's of the way through clean up...yes, it was much worse than this before I started cleaning it up. |
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| Starting over...which proves you can sometimes screw up in life, but start over with a clean slate. |
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Now That’s A Tomato!
I picked my first
batch of tomatoes for canning on Tuesday evening. As I picked the different kinds of tomatoes (Amish
Paste, Mr. Stripey, Mortgage Lifter, Pink Brandywine and our own “Mystery”), I brushed
against the leaves and was blessed with that strong, sweet tomato plant scent
that is every gardener’s favorite aroma.
Not that I consider myself a true gardener…I just plop seeds and plants
into the dirt and they somehow grow into lovely edible jewels.
The “Mortgage
Lifter” tomatoes that we are growing this year seem to be doing well. I picked one last night and it was huge! Although not completely ripe, I was afraid to
leave it on the vine for fear it would split.
It measures six inches across and over three inches tall! We will probably save this one for seeds to
plant next year. We’ve been saving seeds
from our Mortgage Lifters for the past few years and they never
disappoint. We ordered the original seeds
from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Mineral, Virginia Mid-Atlantic States . They also offer
hard-to-find seeds that you can’t find at the big box stores, such as the
Asparagus Beans that I was bragging about a few posts ago.
My first batch of
tomatoes for the year will be made into salsa.
Charming loves the stuff and will eat almost a pint with one taco
salad. That’s why I’m canning this batch
in quarts. Otherwise, I would waste a
lot of time running to the basement to grab another jar of salsa. For salsa, I use the Mrs. Wage’s method. I don’t care for growing cilantro nor do I
care for eating it. Therefore, as far as
salsa is concerned, I’ll leave the spices to the professionals. It’s quick, easy, gluten-free and Charming
likes the taste. That’s an all around
winner for me!
Although I do not
really like salsa, I do find it to be palatable in casseroles. I make a “Mexican Casserole” that is layers
of corn tortillas, grated cheddar cheese, and a mixture of canned chicken
(boneless chicken thighs that I can myself), rice, salsa, and a gluten-free
substitute for condensed cream of chicken soup that I concoct myself. Charming loves this casserole and will ask me
to make it on special occasions like his birthday. Neither I nor Mrs. Wage can ask for a higher
compliment than that!
Oh…one of my
readers brought it to my attention that, using Internet Explorer to access my
blog, she is unable to “see” my e-mail address and unable to access the “Comment”
section. (For some reason it is visible
to those who use Google Chrome as their web browser, but for not Internet
Explorer.) My e-mail address for this
blog is virginiarealblog@gmail.com
if you should want to comment or contact me.
I’m sorry for this technology glitch.
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| This "Mortgage Lifter" heirloom tomato measures six inches across and over three inches tall. I placed it beside these quart cans of beans (that I canned Tuesday night) to give you a sense of the tomato's size. |
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| My...or, rather, Mrs. Wage's...salsa. |
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| Canning the salsa. |
Monday, July 28, 2014
Seeds of Progress…
My onion seeds
are ripening and I’ve started harvesting them to save for next year. This year, we planted yellow onions, white
onions, and some large “bunching” onions (bunching onions are attached at the
bulb…you may get three or more onions in a bunch). We pulled up the onions and
they are now hanging under the porch roof of our garage/storage shed. (We let the onions hang to “cure” for several
weeks because we plan to store them for later use…not sure if everybody does
this, but my family always did it so I do it, too. )
Onion seeds can
be saved by letting a few of your onions develop flower “heads” (little puff
balls of white flowers at the top of the plant). We let these plants grow until the tops fall
over and then pull the onions up and cut the seed head off. We put the seed heads on a tray and let them
sit in a location that is dry and has good ventilation. After a couple of weeks, a lot of the seeds
will have fallen out onto the tray. To
be sure to as many of the seeds as possible, I simply tap the seed head against
the tray and watch the shower of large black seeds fall onto the tray. We try to save as many seeds as possible as
the germination rate for onion seeds is fairly low. While it is easier to just buy onion “sets”
(tiny little onions that someone else has started from seed) and just stick
them in the ground to grow, we get personal satisfaction from beating the odds
and coaxing the onions to grow from our seed.
When you live the simple life, you learn to take great pleasure in life’s
little triumphs.
On another topic,
one of the big hurdles in our kitchen renovation has been cleared, due to
Charming’s creative and engineering mind!
When we moved into our “run-down ranch,” we inherited a cabinet from the
previous owners. The cabinet wasn’t in
good shape, but it did have a white enamel top on it…like the ones that the old
Hoosier cabinets have. (My Momma had a
Hoosier-type cabinet when I was little and she used to roll the most amazing
pie dough on that cabinet top.) Shortly
after we moved into this house, Charming was loading the cabinet onto the truck
to take to the landfill when I yelled…“STOP!” Not surprisingly, Charming has developed a
healthy fear of my deep and abiding affection for all things old. However, he patiently asked me what in the
world I wanted with the cabinet. “Not
the cabinet,” I replied. “Just the top. We’re going to use it in our future kitchen
renovation.” Poor Charming! I remember that his shoulders actually
slumped when I said that. Bless his
little heart; he removed the top and stored it in the basement where it has
been these many years.
So, when Charming
decided to make cabinets for the new part of our kitchen from scratch, I saw my
opportunity. I started planting the
seeds (with my gardening experience, I’ve gotten good at planting seeds…ha, ha!)
first by saying, “I wonder how that enamel top would look on part of the new countertop.” Then when we were discussing the cost of the
renovation, I slipped in the comment, “Well, you know if we used that enamel
top on part of the counter, we could save the cost of about four feet of
countertop.” After strategically
planting seeds like this as often as possible, he started to formulate plans to
make the top work with the new kitchen counter’s design.
He cut wood strips
and fitted them to the underside of the enamel top and then added more strips
to the cabinet…all the while mumbling something about counter-sinking screws, adding
shims, and needing stronger wood glue. Before
I knew it, he was lugging the enamel top up the basement stairs and fitting it
on top of the cabinet. After positioning
it into place, he seemed surprised that his plan actually worked, but finally he
said something about being “proud of himself”.
I have to say that I’m proud of him, too.
Even though the
progress on this project is very slow, I know that the kitchen renovation will
eventually look “AWESOME!” I’m just
hoping the enamel countertop will help me to make amazing pie dough like my
Momma’s!
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| A previous picture of our garden...You can see our "bunching onions" on top, left of this photo. The white seed heads on top of the onion plant contains the seeds for next year. |
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| These are the seed heads that have been drying for a couple of weeks. The picture shows me tapping the seed head against the tray to release more seeds. |
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| With Charming's ingenuity, a plain enamel top from an old cabinet becomes a functional part of our new counter top. The cabinets above will house my baking supplies, while the cabinets below will have metal pull-out shelves that will corral my mixer, mixing bowls, and baking pans. The counter top also gives the kitchen the "retro" look that I love. YAY! |
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Is It Asparagus or Is It A Bean?
Usually we don’t
have very good luck growing green beans.
We plant them in the spring, the plants come up, and the bean bugs take
over soon afterwards. However, this year
our beans are doing great. I like to
attribute it to me quitting my job, which has allowed me to concentrate on
growing food, creating craft projects (which I see as a real “need”), and
keeping the house clean enough so that the health department doesn’t declare it
unfit for human occupation.
Last year we
ordered some beans called Asparagus Beans from a company called Southern
Exposure Seed Exchange. (This is a great
company, by the way, as they offer many heirloom seeds, which is what Charming and
I prefer to grow. Their seeds are from
the same stock as what our ancestors grew in their
gardens…long before Monsanto and DuPont started fiddling with the genetic
make-up of American seeds.) As
I recall from the description in the catalog, the beans actually originated in Asia and although they look like green beans
they are really more closely related to cowpeas. They are often referred to as “yard long”
beans. Not surprisingly, last year’s
crop did not do as well as we’d hoped.
We harvested just enough to save for seed to use for this year.
Not expecting
much from the seeds that we had saved, but not willing to give up on them, we planted them again this spring. Well, they grew up their trellis in no time
and are producing like gangbusters. Either last year's plants adjusted to our planting environment or our more diligent work on the garden paid off. I’m
not sure how long the beans would get if we left to grow, but I generally
pick them when they are less than two feet long. So far, they have been resistant to bugs with
very few spots or blemishes on them. After
picking them, I mix them in with our Kentucky Wonder pole beans and cook
them. We really like the taste of
them. I have frozen about eight 1-pound
bags of them and, barring unexpected extreme weather, expect to get at
least that much more to freeze.
I’m already
saving some of the beans for seed stock for next year. Not only are these beans good to eat, they
are a curiosity for neighbors and family members. I guess the old adage that, “bigger is better”
holds true in the case of these beans.
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| You can see the beans growing in the middle and lower left quadrant of this photo. |
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| Here I'm holding six or so of the beans. They usually grow nice and straight, with very few imperfections. |
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| This picture really shows how nice the beans are... straight, almost perfect, and lots of them. |
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| As you can tell by the tape measure, a few of these beans have reached the 2-foot mark. Doesn't take many to make a meal. |
Monday, July 21, 2014
Mountain Girl Pearls...
I’m the kind of
person who likes to be productive for as many (awake) hours of the day as
possible. Maybe it’s because I am a
“Type A” personality. Maybe it’s because
I grew up in a family where the saying “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop”
was ranked right up there with the Ten Commandments. I don’t know, but what really matters is that
I believe that God only gives us so many hours on this Earth and I want to make
the most of every minute. I like to
think I do this by channeling my creative energy into making things that are
useful; things that could quite possibly make it into the next generation or
even into the next century. I love anything
that can stand up to the wear and tear of daily life like braided rugs, quilts,
knitted items, stained glass, etc. and actually improve with age. I tend to gravitate toward making things that
are durable as well as functional…and it gives me a tremendous amount of
self-satisfaction if those items are pretty as well.
Recently, I
crocheted some necklaces that I affectionately call, “Mountain Girl
Pearls”. So far, I’ve made them in pale
blue, off-white, mint green, red, and am currently working on one that is
pink. The base of the necklace is
crocheted with scallops on the bottom edge.
I sew matching colors (or not matching colors) of buttons of varying
sizes onto the scallops. The necklace
fastens with another button that fits through a crocheted opening. My first off-white necklace turned out to be
fairly attractive. Then I envisioned
what a red one might look like. After
that one was finished, I thought about using paler colors and they turned out
nicely as well. Before I knew it, I had
a collection of six necklaces and was churning them out rather quickly as I
moved through the thread colors that the craft store had available.
I came up with
the name “Mountain Girl Pearls” because, in times past, most mountain women
saved everything they possibly could. This
included fabric, zippers and buttons from worn out or outgrown clothing. Buttons were a precious commodity to mountain
women. I recall when I was young that my
Momma and my Granny both had “button boxes”.
After I grew up and moved into my own place, I started my own button collection. I have buttons that I’ve removed from the wool
clothing used to make my braided rugs, buttons purchased at yard sales and
thrift shops for almost nothing, and buttons that I’ve bought from the
clearance bins at fabric stores. My collection
has, over the years, somehow morphed from one small container to one jar and
two good-sized tins of buttons. I will
probably never use all of these buttons in my lifetime. However, I hope that they will eventually
fall into the hands of someone who will treasure them just as much as I do, and
as my mother did, and as my grandmother did.
For now, I’m
content with recycling some of my precious buttons and turning them into sweet
little necklaces. (Charming says that I
need to consider parting with these and selling them on etsy.com or some other
venue…at the rate I’m churning them out, I think he fears that if I die first he’ll
be stuck with a dresser drawer full of ‘em! I'm trying to convince him to think of them as an "inheritance" not a "burden".)
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| My button stash...about a half-gallon in the jar and the other two containers are full to the top of beautiful buttons in every color of the rainbow. |
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| Six completed necklaces. |
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| All six necklaces...laid out for better viewing. |
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| The original "Mountain Girl" (me!) modeling my Mountain Girl Pearls. (Hmmm...could that be a new wrinkle on my turkey neck?????) |
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Compost Tea, Anyone?
This year we had
a little “volunteer” tomato plant that grew up right beside our compost
tumbler. (For those of you who don’t
recognize the gardening term “volunteer,” it means that the plant was not
intentionally planted and it grew from seed that either fell to the ground, was
dropped by a bird, or made its way into the soil by some other means.) Our compost tumbler sits on two rubber mats
that used to be in our dog kennel. Since
Max spends almost no time in the kennel now that Charming and I no longer have
jobs outside the home, we moved the mats under the compost tumblers in an
effort to keep weeds from growing in that area.
Getting back to
the volunteer tomato plant…Volunteer plants are usually pretty hardy as they
made it, against the odds, to germination.
We could have dug this one up and re-planted it in a better location;
however, it grew right smack dab in the teensy weensy crack between the compost
tumbler mat and the garden bed that butts up against the mat. What are the odds? I tried to pull it up to transplant, but its
root system is firmly in the ground and it wouldn’t budge.
Anyhow, we
decided to let it grow…and grow it did! It
is now up to my waist and interferes with the little latch that releases the
left side of the compost tumbler that allows the tumbler to spin and aerate the
compost. So I decided to take the
compost out of the left compost tumbler and put it in the garden bed where I
grew snow peas this spring. (I pulled up
my snow pea plants over the weekend and got a bunch of leftover snow peas for
seeds…but that, in itself, is a subject for another blog post.)
This morning I
took the not-quite-ready compost and dug it into the now vacant garden
bed. I shoveled the compost out of the
tumbler and into our ancient green wheelbarrow.
After dumping the dark brown stuff onto the garden bed, I used a hoe to
mix it in with the already loosened soil.
After I leveled it off, I drenched the entire bed with water from our
rain barrels and will let that soak in until this evening when I will take our
handy-dandy post hole digger and make “wells” in the garden bed for our final group
of tomato seedlings. I’ll add egg shells
and a tiny bit of cow pooty to the holes for the plants. In addition to the compost, this should give
them a great start on their growing adventure.
We have fifteen
tomato seedlings that I’ve been nursing along since spring. They have held up like little troopers, just
waiting to get their chance to stretch their roots into the warm, dark
dirt. I’m anxious to see if, due to the
added compost, the poor little things will do as well as the ones we planted in
the spring. Will keep you updated on
their progress as well as the progress of the show off growing beside the
compost tumbler!
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| Not-quite-ready compost in our compost tumbler. |
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| The "show off" volunteer tomato plant that grew in the crack between the rubber mat that the compost tumbler sits on and the cinder block that outlines one of our garden beds. (It is a beautiful specimen...though I'm not yet sure of what variety.) |
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| The garden bed after I threw the compost onto it. (Awww... note my trusty garden buddy at the top of the picture.) |
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| The garden bed after I mixed in the compost... |
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| The garden bed after watering. The water will soak into the bed and be ready for planting left over tomato seedlings this evening. Yay! |
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