Garden Update

Herbs, Peas, Lettuce (harvested), Tomatoes & Kale

So, it's been nice not to have to water my container garden very much, what with the crazy amount of rain we've been receiving. It's really making me wish we had a rain barrel. I really think it would be half-way full by now.

Anyway, I have a total of 5 tomatoes growing (finally!), I've harvested lettuce twice - once being an emergency harvest after the hail, and I've gathered some of my purple kale for a yummy kale, onion, and bean sauted salad. The purple is so pretty in a dish! Strangely, my peas have finally flowered, so who knows if my sugar snap peas will ever arrive. At long last, I transplanted 2 of my tomato plants into bigger containers (a.k.a. large plastic buckets with holes drilled in the bottom).

I had one bucket left over and got a little ambitious... And now I have a compost! I have no idea what the heck I'm doing, but I always feel so sad throwing away perfectly good kitchen scraps and grass clippings that I don't use as a mulch cover for my plants. So, I drilled one hole in the bottom of the plastic bucket, chucked in some old dirt, grass clippings and some fruit skins, etc and voila! Compost. I am really excited! I have no clue if it will work. I'll probably have to abandon the noxious mess when we move, but at least I'm trying!

And as soon as I get some more dirt I'll add it and then go buy some earthworms at the store. Unless it rains again and I can pick them up off the sidewalk somewhere. Does anyone know if you have worms in your compost that you don't put a cover on it? I don't want to bake them, but I don't want to attract flies either. I guess I'll find out. Yipee!

2 Brandywines sharing a tub

A Brandywine tomato!

Bloody Butcher Tomato plant and my Miracle Jalapenos
(doesn't "Bloody Butcher" sound awesome for a tomato name??)

Butter

I finally made some homemade butter thanks to a very descriptive and simple blog post from The Mobile Home Woman. I went over to a friend's so that we could make it together. My cream was about a month over the expiration date, but it hadn't gone bad yet. So, I decided to use it.

We discovered really quickly that it was indeed important to have the cream at a little cooler than room temperature because the butter just would not come while it was really cold. My friend, Clair, had read the instructions more closely and had warmed her cream in the microwave and her butter came really quickly. So, I warmed mine up a tad and it worked like a charm! We used a spoon and our fingers to wash the butter and I think using fingers got more of the buttermilk out. I added salt to mine, folding it in really well on a plate and pouring off the extra water as it came out. This really helped a lot.

Now, I don't know if it was because my cream was really aged, but my butter had a wonderful flavor - nothing like the store-bought stuff. You should give it a try. I spread this butter on a slice of homemade bread and there's nothing like it in the world!

The Storm

It's been pretty rainy and cool here in Cache Valley. I am a huge fan of this! However, I've never had a small starter garden in pots before and the last storm that howled through did not treat my little plants very nicely. With the thunder and rain came pea to marble-sized hail. Earlier that day I had harvested some of my butter crunch lettuce. But after the storm, my last two heads were completely thrashed (a great before and after!), my once-wimpy tomato plants were quite wounded as well - limbs sliced off, holes punched through leaves or slightly shredded. My Miracle Jalapeno plants weren't too badly hurt - they're living up to their names. And the peas just look like they layed down for a nap. Strangely, I'm not too saddened by all this destruction. I think the plants will survive. (Though one of my Brandywines keeps aborting its flowers and I don't know why!....) But we are moving soon to where ever my husband's job will take us. If it's long distance, I seriously doubt that I'll be able to take any plants with me. I will miss my purple sage!

Here are some pictures right after the hail had stopped, but with the rain still coming down.

Our yard covered with hail.

My garden after the hail.

Cheese and Milk Ramblings

So, I made some cheese for the first time. In fact I tried it twice. I was going for mozzarella, but both times the cheese would just not"glue" together, turning into the stringy, creamy, taffy-like mozzarella it's supposed to be. I followed two different recipes and both times I got ricotta; a very yummy ricotta, but still it wasn't mozz. I think it was the milk. I've read that dairies sometimes pasturize milk at the higher end temperatures which kills a lot of the proteins that make the cheese. I thought organic milk would be a good option, but it turns out that the big chain organic milk is ultra-pasturized which means it is pasturized extra long so that it can be shipped long distances without being refrigerated. In essence - it's shelf stable milk. No wonder it has that special taste...

The best milk to use for making cheese is raw milk which you can then, in turn, pasturize yourself at the lowest of the temperatures for pasturizing. Finding the raw milk is the hard part. It all boils down to bacteria. Because of Utah state laws, farmers who sell raw milk have to keep it hush-hush so they don't get in trouble. Does anyone else see the silliness in all this? If someone wants raw milk, why can't they be allowed to buy it from the farmer without anyone getting in trouble? People eat produce from the store that they don't wash. Think of the risk there, and yet there are no laws about that. (I guess they can't do everything for us, and that's a good thing.) Anyway, raw milk is not a dangerous chemical or addictive drug. Pasturization is good, I think, but if we don't want it pasturized, why can't we buy it the way we want? I'm sure there's more to this issue than I realize, but I just want to make cheese, darn it!

Man, where's that milk cow in my backyard when I need it?

A Not So New Way to Recycle

Recycling is a word that makes you feel great or guilty. The word is pushed on us, calling for us to take responsibility for our actions and for our planet. Some people don't care and don't bother. Other people are obsessed. But most people, I think, are an odd mix inbetween - half-heartedly recycling, doing it enough to make themselves feel good without having it become an inconvenience. It's an interesting dance of balance about what you believe and feel comfortable doing and what society expects of you.

What do you think of when you think about recycling? Big blue bins waiting on the curb stocked full of washed out cans and cardboard boxes? How about washing out plastic ziploc bags to reuse them... Am I the only one that does that? It's a pain but so worth it. We save tons of money! Well, anyway, those are two way of recycling, but today I'm here to remind you of another way to recycle - reusing. Yes, washing out plastic bags is one way of reusing. Have you ever shopped at a thrift store or an antique store? Well, then you've reused! I don't think there's anything more fun than finding a sweet deal at a yard sale or a thrift store. Heck, yesterday I went a little crazy because I was feeling the bug. At the thrift store I found: handcranked metal meat grinder - $3, cast iron frying pan in good condition - $5, a heavy duty tub with a lid - $4, a very nice metal pastry blender - 50 cents! Then, at the antique shop I found: a set of 3 cheese graters that my mom used when I was growing up (they ROCK!) - $12 for all 3 (it would cost that much for a new plastic one), and a vintage, beautiful, pale yellow ceramic serving bowl - $9 (marked down from $21!)

As fun as finding all that was, my ultimate reusing feat (heck, they really just call it thriftiness) was reusing an old, despised laundry basket. This is what I did with it:

I cut holes in the bottom for drainage with a jigsaw. Then, I taped a plastic grocery bag to two sides (kind of as an experiment) and the other two sides I covered front and back with clear packing tape.

Then I filled it with dirt! It was the perfect, shallow planter for my lettuce. And it makes me giggle that I can see the dirt through the clear packing tape. :-)

It's a little silly, but I'm pretty proud that I thought to do this with the basket. See, thriftiness is a learned skill. My mom was excellent at it and she learned that from her mother. I used to be pretty good at it, but with a lot of moving around and school I lost touch with my inner creativity and imagination. It feels good to stretch it a bit!

Let me know ways that you have found to reuse things or any amazing finds you've had at the thrift store, antique store, or yard sale. I'd love to hear about them!

Garden, Market and More

Beautiful Local Eggs

Speaking of eating locally... You know how "people" say that it is better for people to eat what is local healthwise because they should eat what grows naturally in their climate? Well, I think there's good points to that, but I don't necessarily want to give up pineapple just yet. Anyway, something weird happened to me when we moved to Cache Valley. I think we had been living here for a month when I started to crave raspberries. Really bad. Okay, so I was pregnant at the time, but it was a different type of craving. It was a deep, subconscious need that was completely mystifying! When I learned that raspberries are a huge crop in this region, it just blew my mind. How did my body know that?? I had never craved raspberries before in my life, and here I was tuning into what was grown naturally in Cache Valley. Strange...

Okay. So, I was getting sick of babysitting my poor little weakling tomato plants by bringing them inside at night. A few nights ago I had had it. I yelled at them through the screen door "If you don't make it through the night, then you don't deserve to survive!" I was pretty darn resolved. Then later, I heard it raining hard and gasped, "My tomatoes!" I ran to the back door where they sat there huddled against the wind and the cold rain. Actually, the wind wasn't that bad - the tomatoes were staked well. And the rain wasn't that hard. It was actually pretty gentle. So I said, "Heck with you boogers. Tough it out!" and walked away. And they've trucked along. There's even a sign of a flower bud on one. I guess you never can tell how much gumption a plant's got until you let it alone for awhile. Pictures of my garden:

Wimpy tomatoes. At least they're green, even if they're a little sunburned.

My two proud Brandywines. Can you tell which one came from the nursery? (Look for the one with the macho stem.) The container is a tub from the thrift store that came without a lid - how perfect for plants!

This jalapeno plant survived a 36º F night and survived like a champ! I call it the Miracle Jalapeno. He has since been joined by 2 others...

My beautiful Purple Kale that I couldn't resist adopting from the nursery.

My happy herb garden. Left to right: Rosemary, Purple Sage (I love this plant!) and Cinnamon Basil (oooh! Fancy!)

Farmers' Market Spoils: Oregano, Butter Crunch lettuce plants, spinach, eggs (aren't they beautiful??) and goat milk soap - Forest Glade scent, mmmmm..... :-)

Cache Valley & Eating Local

Beautiful Cache Valley, Utah

I am really interested with the concept of eating locally. I try to imagine myself stocking our shelves and our fridge with nothing but what was grown or raised locally - local meat, cheese, milk, eggs, produce, etc. I try to imagine myself living without bananas or fresh pineapple. (Does canned pineapple count?) I try to imagine also eating what was only in season and what we lay up in store for the winter. Could I do it? Could I really eat locally? I like to think I could, but I know it will take one step at a time to conquer that mountain of changing habits.

Which brings me to my experience today. I was getting together a package to send to my family out in Indiana. I was trying to get a lot of holidays and special occasions covered in one box. And I wanted to get them something special. I like getting food because it doesn't sit around gathering dust (at least that's the hope), and it gives a lot of pleasure. So, I thought, "Hey. I'm going to get my step-mom some of our local raw honey from Cox Honeyland and some cinnamon basil seeds from our locally-owned gardening store." (Well, I thought that in so many words...) I continued on that line of thought and ended up getting my dad and brother some coffee beans from our local coffee roasting company Caffe Ibis (organic, shade grown, and fair trade!). I felt bad that my little brother wasn't getting anything, so I headed over to our local candy factory, Bluebird Candy, and got him some yummy chocolates.

As I was packing up the box I was struck with the realization that I was sending them gifts that were 100% supporting local Cache Valley companies. I then got this overwhelming sense of satisfaction and happiness. I felt like I was so integrated into my community that I could support the companies in that way and also have wonderful unique gifts to send to my family that they couldn't buy anywhere else but here. It may not sound that big of a deal, but to me it was huge.

I actually feel really lucky living here in Cache Valley. We have a local cheese factory, candy factory, local grass-fed beef ranches, local eggs, local honey made from local flowers by beautiful bees, gorgeous huge raspberry farms, multitudes of fruit trees like apricot, peach, apple, etc. and the list goes on! I guess I've taken all of this for granted the entire 3 years I've lived here and now that my husband is looking for a job with no possibilities of staying here in Cache Valley, I am tremendously sad at the thought of leaving! What will I do without the cornucopia of local offerings? It's hard to believe another place will have so much to offer. So, to compensate, I'm stocking up on the honey. :-) And I'm going out to Bear Lake for their famous raspberry shakes in a few weeks. Mmmm. My mouth is watering. Live it up in Cache Valley while I can!!