Basil!!!

The basil is up!!!  I just had to share the good news.  It is not supposed to be up for another week, according to the seed packet. I think those lights make a huge difference. 

Tomorrow I will be able to transplant the second planting of tomato seedlings.  I am going to hope for the best for all these little dearies!

Crafty Business

Today I made a birthday card.  Instead of the usually Gelli print, I decided to make it a window card.  Here it is!

Some time ago I found this window die and made up several windows, then just put them away.  I like how this turned out.  I also like the print behind the window. 

Nifty Craft Tool: Heat Tool Stand

When I went to visit a friend to play with her and her rubber stamps, I came home with the loan of a few fabulous rubber stamps, her heat tool, and her HEAT TOOL STAND!!  This is the handiest gadget to have on your crafting table if you use a heat tool.  I thought I had a heat tool but when I was at her house did not remember where it was to be found.  Since then I have found it.  Now I want a heat tool stand, too!  I may see if I can talk Dear One into making me one, when he has time. Back in the old days I could have gone to my grandfather's shop and made one myself pretty easily and quickly.  He had all the best tools for this sort of project.

If you want to make one,  I believe this is pine.  The bottom piece is 3 1/2 inches wide by 6 1/2 inches long.  The upright is 3 1/2 inches wide at the bottom and narrows to 2 1/2 inches wide at the top and is 5 1/4 inches tall.  The top piece is 2 1/2 inches by 4 1/2 with about a 2 inch circle cut out of it.  There are two counter-sunk very small nails, or maybe even brads,  attaching each horizontal piece to the upright piece.

This is a pattern to scale of the cut outs.  Each square is 1/4 inch.

There you have it.  You woodworkers can make yourself and your friends one of these pretty quickly.

Munchie Monday: Unusual Enchiladas

Our daughter-in-law makes the best enchiladas.  We both love them.  When I made these  today Dear One asked if they were her recipe.  Well, no, though the idea was the same.  Mostly.

As far as I know enchiladas are flour tortillas (with a filling) that are rolled up and placed in a nice glass dish which has enchilada sauce in it.  More sauce is poured over the top and they are cooked at 375 degrees F. for 30-45 minutes or until the sauce is bubbling.

This is how I did it:

Chopped up an 8-ounce container of mushrooms and added them along with a bag of frozen peppers and onions (they had been waiting in the freezer for just such a day!) to a large saucepan and "water sautéed" until they were mostly cooked.

Added three cups of cooked black beans (equivalent to two cans of black beans which are drained and rinsed), one head of cooked-until-mushy cauliflower, 8 ounces tomato paste, 2 Tablespoons lemon juice and 1 solid teaspoonful of Montreal Steak Seasoning.

Stir this stuff all together well and taste to see if you need any more flavorings.  I failed to put in fresh garlic since the head we had was definitely ready for the compost pile so I did not use it.  I put in a teaspoon of granulated garlic.  I wanted to put in more but often some garlic is great, too much garlic is a disaster.

Now that we had the filling, I made the sauce.  A. uses enchilada sauce.  We did not have any so I used a jar of Herdez Salsa Verde, one of my favorite things, and a can of Hunts Garlic and Herb spaghetti sauce.  (Be sure not to knock it until you have tried it! I thought it was pretty good. In fact, I could have just used a spoon and pretended it was soup!)

Finally I put half the sauce in the bottom of a 9 by 13 glass dish then put about 1/3 cup filling into flour tortillas, rolled them up, and put them seam side down in the sauce.  Cover with remaining sauce and bake at 375 degrees F for about 30-45 minutes.  We were pretty hungry so we stopped at 35 minutes and it was fine...i.e. heated through.

Tasted great!

For my final part of the meal I steamed the stuff out of some garden fresh kale that I had harvested moments before and chopped fairly fine.  I steamed it in the Instant Pot for 15 minutes on HIGH.  I loved it.  Dear One had one TINY leaf and choked it down like a good sport.  One of the many reasons I love him.

All in all, it was a great meal. In my opinion.

Food Friday: Spicy Thai Peanut Sauce

Here is another LifeIsNoYoke recipe!  It is so good.  Granted, I don't think I have found a peanut sauce that I did not like, but this one, made with fresh peanuts is really yummy.

Spicy Thai Peanut Sauce

In a VitaMix container place:

1/2 cup peanuts (I used unsalted but roasted peanuts)

3 Tablespoons soy sauce ( I used Braggs Liquid Aminos)

1 Tablespoon rice vinegar (I used the seasoned rice vinegar we had)

1 clove garlic

1 Tablespoon sriracha--though I used only 1 teaspon the first time.

1 Tablespoon grated ginger (I just peeled a big hunk of fresh ginger, chopped it roughly and threw it into the jar)

6 Tablespoons water

Slice of fresh lime with no peel (I can say that if you forget to put the lime slice into the jar even though it is lying on the counter right there in front of you, it is still good sauce)

Blend on high speed for 1 or 2 minutes.

This is a photo of my first batch:

SO GOOD!

If you use this recipe Lenny and Shalva have a request:

Snap a pic and tag #lifeisNOYOKE

LifeIsNoYoke on Youtube

Garden 2020: True Leaves and Real Babies and Maybe Basil

Tonight I took a picture of the tomatoes in their greenhouse, bathed in full spectrum light.  I realized that what I was seeing was a display of true leaves!  And new babies going to town.

Tomorrow I will need to transplant the big plants into pots.  I will also need to move them a little bit away from the light.  It looks like the number of plants started that first day is 10.  There are going to be four in the newly planted seeds once I clip off the second plant in each pellet. 

Another thing for tomorrow:  plant some basil seeds in the remaining peat pellets.  We shall see how they do.

More Garden 2020

Following Gary's at the Rusted Garden's advice, I put aluminum foil all around the inside of the Rubbermaid tote so the plants could get more light.  I also moved it off the kitchen island so the greenhouse is out of the way and I can work in the kitchen!

You can see the foil and the lamp operating.  We ordered a power strip that has a manual timer so the lights will be on 16 hours a day without me having to remember to turn them off or on.  Bonus!!!

This is a close-up of the greenhouse with the foil and lamp.  You can see that some of the pieces of two by fours I collected from dumpsters outside building sites in our neighborhood have come in handy.  After hearing about not only sunshine/full spectrum lights, that the lights should be 2 inches from the plants, I found another piece of that dumpster-dived two by twelve and lifted the tomatoes up.