We’re now getting a handful of cherry tomatoes every day. But the really exciting news is that the canning tomatoes are starting to ripen! They’re just beginning to turn yellow. These are Heinz 2653, specially bred for canning. I have frozen tomatoes before, but have never canned them, so I’m looking forward to it. Post [...]
So far, all of my pictures and most of my updates have featured the vegetable bed in the front yard. It’s pretty well established now, and I don’t have to do much with it right now besides water and weed. The tomatoes aren’t ripe yet, and the beans haven’t started beaning. I’ve been picking about [...]
Posted on August 15th, 2010 in food
No, we did NOT get Chinese take-out! Chicken Fried Rice was actually a great way to use up leftovers and things we already had on hand. I used the remains of a roasted chicken, some long-frozen carrots, homemade chicken broth, and fresh green onions and zucchini from the garden. Here’s my recipe, adapted from an [...]
Posted on August 05th, 2010 in Sustainability, food
I follow a wide range of people on Twitter. Well, truthfully, I’m probably more likely to follow people who are like me. But they’re not 100% like me. Anyway, some of the people I follow are in agriculture. Some are organic farmers, and some are more conventional farmers. Farmer Haley falls more on the side [...]
Nothing very eventful today. I made another bike trip to the grocery store this evening. I left after 7:30 p.m., and it was actually dusky enough on the way back that I turned my lights on. The garden is finally bursting forth! The tomatoes are fruiting and outgrowing their cages. The zucchini are finally getting [...]
Yes, we’re in the midst of a 90-degrees-plus (Fahrenheit) heat wave, and I’m blogging about winter. No, it doesn’t keep me particularly cool. In fact, my first reaction to seeing Cooking Up a Story’s video on starting a winter garden is to resist, run, hide my head under a pillow. I have enough work to [...]
The sun and heat have finally arrived in Oregon! We had a very cool, wet spring (almost a non-spring), which did affect gardens. But now the tomato plants are doing well, although there’s still no fruit. And we should be eating zucchini within a day or two. The carrots and green onions are finally getting [...]
Posted on June 30th, 2010 in Sustainability, food
After making my strawberry freezer jam, our neighbor (a young, single lady) came over with two more bags of strawberries! She also gave us some strawberry plants, as hers are spreading too far. I decided to try the Small Batch Strawberry Jam recipe that I’d seen at Cooking Up a Story, and made three jars [...]
