Garden 2020!

Because the back deck garden did so well, in my opinion, we are going to try again this year but are starting plants ourselves.

A couple of weeks ago I went out to find seeds for this year's garden. I found some Brandywine heirloom tomato seeds. I remember Brandywine tomatoes as being so luscious and flavorful that I had to buy them.  There were several other heirloom tomato plants I wanted to grow but Dear One asked me how many tomatoes we were going to eat.  Good question!  With the raw tomato allergy, it does not make sense to raise lots of them.  Or does it?!  I can dry them. I can turn them into sauce and can them.  OR I can dice them and can our own diced tomatoes.  How good is that?!!  So, I started tomatoes.

On 27 January I planted eight or ten Jiffy peat pellets with 2 seeds in each one after re-hydrating them with water.  On the 31st those little babies pricked through the soil!  I was so thrilled to see them. 

We got a clamp-on shop lamp and put a sunshine lightbulb into it.  After watching a few gardening videos on YouTube by the Rusted Garden, Dear One ordered a different lightbulb for our plants.  Apparently the seedlings need to have specific lights 2 inches away from them as they start growing...so in fact, we were late in putting in the light. Because of this on 4 February I started a few more seeds growing.  These kids came through the soil on the 7th of February!  These little guys have  had their lights at 2 inches above them from the moment they came through the soil. I am going to note the difference in growing.

Here are the seedlings with two seeds per peat pellet in the clear plastic Rubbermaid tote and the lamp clamped on.

Plant wisdom is that you start two seeds in each pellet then, when they are up and growing, you pinch out one of them.  This is very HARD TO DO!!!  Cutting off the life of one dear little plant seems so wrong. But I did it. I did apologize to the plants as I was doing it and thanked them for their service to my soul in coming up and growing so well.

Gary at the Rusted Garden also gives the advice that the tomatoes will do better if you take them out into the sunshine any day the temperature is above 50 degrees.  This will apparently kill any potential mold or other nasties in the "soil" plus will start hardening off the plants from about day one! 

Our little pals have been out several days.  They went out last Friday when we were having big wind.  I went out after 45 minutes and those poor little creatures were lying on their sides, just like trees at the head of a canyon in Utah!!!  I brought them inside and told them they had had enough sun for the day.  Now they are really happy again, and standing straight up.

Munchie Monday: Spring Rolls/Vietnamese Salad Rolls

We had a vegan potluck yesterday. I made Vietnamese Salad Rolls and Spicy Thai Peanut Sauce.  I put up the sauce recipe on Monday.  Today I am showing the Vietnamese Salad Rolls I made.  I should have watched the LifeIsNoYoke video again first because these rolls would have been so much better...i.e. much more tightly rolled, if I had done that!

This was the counter as I set up to make the rolls.

This was the "take" for the day.  I had to not test even one of these before taking them to the potluck!  If I had done the test, there would have been very few left to take and NONE of the sauce left!

#LifeIsNoYoke

Food Friday: Quick and Easy Breakfast

This really is a quick and easy breakfast.  It may seem slightly weird at first but it takes perhaps two days to get into it.

Jane (and Ann) Esselstyn have a YouTube channel with many healthy plant-based recipes.  I really enjoy watching them prepare food that I am confident will help heal my wretched body.  Well, not wretched, really, but the body I have not taken good care of for almost 70 years.

They have had several videos on oatmeal.  We have made some of those recipes.  Now we just use this quick and easy variation on their recipe.

This is what I do, and Dear One buys into it, too! 

Out comes the bowl.  Into it goes a big handful of dry old-fashioned rolled oats.  Next a few shedded mini wheats (NOT the sugary ones for me.  I cannot saw the same for everyone in the family...!) and a big spoonful of Grapenuts.  One small banana is chopped, or half a large banana, and thrown on top with a big handful of fresh blueberries...or frozen ones if we have no fresh ones.  Pour on unsweetened plant milk, stir and eat.  This took perhaps five minutes to prepare.

Yesterday I remembered I wanted to put on some cinnamon and flax meal.  The flax meal was readily at hand but the cinnamon was not...SO I put in some quickly visible homemade pumpkin pie spice.  NOT A BRILLIANT IDEA!!!  It made it very difficult to eat this otherwise healthy quick and easy breakfast.  I did manage to choke it down, but never again!  I think it was the cloves that made it so difficult to eat.

Fun With Paper And Chocolate

Those rosettes I made a while ago were so fun to make.  I made a few extra then made some more. I found a pattern on how to make a "heart rosette" which I tried with small success.

The kind ladies who took me in when we arrived here in South Carolina have a monthly Girls' Night Out.  I have felt so welcome and loved.  Consequently, I want to share the love back to them.

Since it is February and Valentine's Day is coming right up, I decided to lay in a little chocolate and make rosette flowers...with chocolate centers!  On the face of it, this was a great idea.  At least in my opinion.

The idea was to put the rosettes on some sort of stick and put them in a vase to put on the table at the restaurant.  It sort of worked but was not great.

You can see the box they were ready to travel in. You can also see that I made a large rose.  That was such a great idea until I had an issue with hot glue.  MAN, is that stuff HOT!!!  A large blister arose on my index finger.  Dear One recommended popping it!  Can you believe it?!!  Not a chance.  (I scratched my skin several years ago and developed a very bad infection that took heavy duty medicine to kill the thing, so I did not want to take the chance. ) Anyway, the burn, that put an end to the rose project!

Our grandchildren love Dove chocolate so I got a bag of it plus a bag of heart shaped chocolate.  When I got it home and ready to make the rosette flower centers with the chocolate I had a piece of each kind.  It was so awful I wanted to cry.  The Dove chocolate had peanut butter flavoring.  The heart-shaped candy had some nasty strawberry flavoring.  Such a disappointment.  Well, it was now the night before so I went through with it and made the centers, installed them on the rosettes, then attached to the skewers...which would probably have worked better if they were heavier-duty.

Since the chocolate was so bad I stopped at the store on the way to the dinner and got more good Dove dark chocolate and some plain milk chocolate hearts.  The bowl was almost empty when we left after dinner and most everyone was kind enough to take home another of my imperfect projects so all in all it was not a total failure. You can see why I love these ladies!

This picture shows the heart-shaped rosette. I thought they were pretty cute but I used heavy card stock so they were difficult to manage.  Live and learn.

Funny Thing I Saw Today

Today I went to the YMCA to start a new Move Well class for diabetics.  On my way in to the class I noticed (AGAIN!) that the trash bin at the foot of the steps was full. 

The thing that struck me as funny is that every time I go by the bin is full... AND!!! It is full of "bad stuff"...fried chicken boxes, candy wrappers, Coke cans, Little Debbie's wrappers.  It is like people are divesting themselves of the junk before they go inside to help their bodies.  Funny.

Of course, while making this observation, I have to admit that I am not lily white in this respect...!  There have been occasions when I have dropped trash in also....

Tuesday Thoughts

We have a lot of books. (Even after leaving many in Vermont and giving away many more.)  They have been, and many still are, lying in rows on the floor in our bedroom.

This is/are the pile/the rows after we purchased a bookcase for a great deal of money from the furniture store that sold us most of our furniture, which books are remaining after filling the expensive bookcase downstairs.  I have not wanted to spend that money again.  My sister told us about bookcases made of rubber wood that were available on Amazon.  They are less than half what we paid before.

Dear One ordered one of those bookcases which came on Saturday.  We put it together.  Mostly him, but I was a third hand, off and on as needed!

This was a semi-fun project.  At least the anticipation of the end result was certainly wonderful.

There is much left to do to get the books installed in the bookcase but I am so encouraged at the progress we have made.  We have even decided that some of our books can remain in storage for a while...!

In the interest of full disclosure...nearly everything on the bookcase currently is about knitting, sewing, quilting, cooking.  There is still the topic of watercolor, which books will get onto a shelf soon.  Dear One's contributions are on top of the bookcase!

Munchie Monday: Quick and Easy Hot Fudge Sauce

Homemade hot fudge sauce is so easy to make and tastes far better than any sauce you can buy at the store. In my opinion.

You need a double boiler to make this but you can figure out one by putting a large bowl on top of a pot of boiling water.

In the top of the double boiler place:

1/4 butter
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate

Stir until both are melted.  Add:
3/4 cup granulated sugar

Stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Remove from heat.

Add:
3/4 -1 cup heavy whipping cream
1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Dash of salt

Stir well then pour over ice cream or whatever else you want to douse with lovely hot fudge sauce.

If you do not use it all, place in a glass jar in the refrigerator then warm up when you want serve it again.  OR...just use a spoon and spoon it right into your mouth...!  It is that good.  In my opinion.