Homemade Pasta

Katy,my niece, came to visit for the day. This afternoon we went grocery shopping and then we made pasta sauce AND homemade pasta. It was fettucine. Katy thought it was fun and "kind of messy"! Our recipe made lots of pasta and we had fun hanging it up to dry.

Mozzarella Cheese

What is unusual about this homemade pizza is that not only did I make the dough but I made the mozzarella cheese that went on it! I am re-reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver which is about knowing where your food is coming from. Her family spent a year trying to eat as much as possible in a 100 mile radius from their home. In the book she talks about making 30 Minute Mozzarella and I decided that I wanted to try it. I ordered the ingredients ( 2 of them) from one of her sources and the only other item I needed was a gallon of milk. It was really cool watching the milk turn into curds and then working them together and stretching them like taffy. And it truly took 30 minutes! Definitely worth a try. I may try a few other kinds of cheeses now that I was brave enough to try this first one! Cheesemaking here I come!

The seedlings are sprouting

What is this you might ask? It is some arugula that we planted about a week or so ago. During the day we keep it in the sunspace for the light and at night by the woodstove for the heat. Seeing the seeds pop up make us think that spring might actually arrive at some point. There were a few chives peeking up out of the ground outside until they got buried on Friday with 6 more inches of snow!! April Fools! Hopefully it will disappear fast as I am starting to get the gardening bug again.

This little guy was looking at me at eye level we have so much snow! He was on top of the snow and would go down a hole and come back up to the top with something that he found to eat. What a funny sight to see him/her eye to eye!

Garden Gluttony

I recently read a newspaper called Garden Gluttony. I think that might be a good description of us this summer. Not only did we plant a lot of vegetables (18 tomato plants) but they all did amazingly well this summer. We had so many tomatoes that I even canned some this year which I haven't done for a long time!







But were we content with that, no, of course not! When we dug up our potatoes, we planted again in the empty space. So, we are still getting some veggies from the garden! We have a second batch of radishes for salad along with some spinach that we just planted a few weeks ago. Swiss chard is still coming and the tomatoes that we pulled off the plants last weekend are slowly ripening inside. We made chili again tonight with fresh tomatoes. In addition to all the stuff in the freezer we are still enjoying fresh potatoes, onions, rosemary and sage from the garden - yummy!
I love heading into the winter with a pantry and freezer full of good food.

What happened to the Garden Season?

Well, here I am again. I've gone from a posting in May talking about finally having a few garden chores to do and being very excited about it to four months later and the garden is still very much alive! It has gone from putting plants in, to "It's a jungle out there"!

And then to "What am I going to do with all of these tomatoes"?



Here's one of many solutions - Tomato, mozzarella and basil salad - otherwise known as Caprese salad.




Other options these last few weeks have been batches of homemade spaghetti sauce, stewed tomatoes, frozen chopped tomatoes, chili, beef stew, zucchini stew, grilled cheese and tomato, tomato on toast and if all else fails - give them away!!

Maybe now that I have done this posting, it will be easier to get back to doing it on a regular basis. I did have a few things going on this summer like getting married, having a big party and another family wedding coming up in a week and a half! I hope you'll forgive the long lapse - I have!

Planting has begun!

Gardening season is beginning. This past week after coming back from vacation, I picked up some live plants that probably had been sitting at the post office for a week. Hopefully they are very hardy and will survive. I planted Bellflowers and Johnson's Blue Geraniums. How is that for a nice name for a flower! And it's my favorite color! Tonight, I planted some potatoes. Last year we had planted some potatoes from old potatoes from the year before. I read that you will get better production if you start with fresh "tubers" so I ordered some and put them in. The test will come later I guess. I also have onion sets and garlic to plant - I may run out of room this year. The seeds have arrived too and haven't had time to even look at those. Hopefully this weekend will be good weather and the bugs won't be too bad so some of them can go in. I still will wait until Memorial Day to put in the tomatoes and anything else that can't take the frost. Happy planting everyone!