Entries in garden (18)

Wednesday
Sep262012

Pickle Time

This summer has had a hold on me like no Seattle summer ever has. Mostly due to our new outdoor space for gardening and entertaining. Our garden gave us much satisfaction with its meager yields. Gardening in the PNW holds it own unique challenges like slow starting summer and lack of sun. This lead to some disappointments and my biggest one was my pickling cucumber plants never grew. Pickling is one of my favorite things to do and this year I again had to pick up my cucumbers from the local farmers market. 

I find pickling so easy and fun. It is something anyone can do. And you can pickle so many vegetables - carrots, beets, cucumbers, okra and the list goes on. With these cucumbers I decided to do some spears and burger chips. 

I started by washing them then slicing them the way I want to pickle them. The spears I just cut lengthwise into slices and the burger chips I sliced on my mandolin. 

I washed and sterilized my jars ina boiling water bath. 

The smell of fresh dill is so amazing. I also picked this up at the farmers market. 

I got my water bath set up and on high. Then I made my brine. 

Pickling Brine

4 cups white vinegar
4 cups water
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup pickling & preserving salt
Bring all ingredients to a boil. 
In each jar I put:
1 bay leaves
2 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon pickling spice
1 head fresh dill
1 dried pepper (I like them spicy but this can be omitted)

Once the herbs and spices are crammed at the bottom I fill the jar with the pickle slices. I make sure to fit them in there nice.

Once all the jars are filled I fill them with hot brine and put the lids and bands on. They go into the water bath (make sure they are completely submerged) for 10 minutes. Pull them out and let them cool on the counter. Now let them sit for at least 3 months and you have amazing pickles!

Thursday
Sep132012

Here I am!

I bet you thought I disappeared. Me too. Summer is coming to an end here in Seattle and there has been a mad scramble of weddings, BBQs and events. While I have loved seeing my friends and celebrating with everyone for so many reasons, I think that the end of summer has me down. I have a lot of things coming up as we transition into early fall - pickling, readying the garden for winter, last ditch yard efforts, basement cleaning and the such. I will be sure to share it all with you. 

The neighborhood my store sits in had a block party with yummy food trucks. Mr. Ramon brought these delicious items back to me for lunch. I can't remember the name of the food truck but the food was divine - some little pork taco type snacks and some type of warm sugar sprinkled donut. Mr. Ramon know just how to make me happy. 

We have been eating a lot of zucchini. I love it and am not even close to sick of it yet. One night I just sauteed one of our sweet onions from the garden in butter and olive oil then added the sliced yellow zebra zucchini and cremini mushrooms, some thyme, salt pepper until just soft. Sprinkled some parmesan on it and yum! Eating from the garden tastes so good. 

While we wait and hope that our larger tomato varieties both paste and slicing ripen before the weather turns. We have had many cherry tomatoes and they are sweet like candy. Perfect for a quick salad.

On Labor Day Mr. Ramon and I had the day off so we went to Whidbey Island again with the dogs. We took our friend Kalin and her two dogs and let them all run on the beach for a few hours. It was such a gorgeous day. It really made me wish summer would never leave. 

 

I hope you are enjoying the end of summer. What fun things are you doing to make these days last? 

Tuesday
Aug212012

Raw Garden Salad

 

The best thing about growing your own food is eating it! With this warm weather I swear I can see my zucchini grow. Wanting to stay ahead of the squash downpour about to happen I made Mr. Ramon a raw garden salad for work this week. It was really cool to be able to pull a few of our vegetables together to make this tasty salad. This salad is easy and fresh and crunchy. You can add almost any vegetable you have growing in your garden. 

Open, drain and rinse 2 cans of Cannellini Beans - place in medium bowl

Slice 2 small zucchinis lengthways into 4 pieces then chop into thin bites - place in bowl with beans

Slice three handfuls of green beans on the diagonal - add to bowl 

 

In a small separate bowl mix well- 

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • salt and pepper to taste 
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil

Pour over vegetables and mix until coated. I like to top the salad with crumbled feta cheese. This salad is even better the next day. 

Enjoy!!

Thursday
Aug022012

How does your garden grow?

Of course I had high hopes when starting our garden this year. We eagerly built our beds and filled them with plants we were sure to see great results from. Wah Wah Wah! The combination of extended rain and no sun during some of our plants most important growing phases left us with some stunted plants and others just starting to take off at the end of July. 

Our pickling cucumbers never grew and are sad little plants only about 5 inches tall. Similarly our green beans never quite took off but are trying hard to produce beans on their stunted little stalks. 

All has not been lost. We have had a great run on lettuce, fava beans, radishes, potatoes and kale. We are just about to experience green beans and zucchini. Our cook neck squash and tomatoes are just setting and hopefully with the continued heat we can get to a harvest. 

I hope that your vegetables are faring better than ours. Would love to hear about your garden and what you have been harvesting! 

Tuesday
Jul312012

Outdoor Laundry

When we moved into the house in September one of the things I was excited about was being able to hang laundry outside to dry. Mr. Ramon thought it was very amusing that I requested a clothes line. In almost every home I lived in we dried our clothes outside in the warmer months. I love the smell of grass and sun on the clothes - so warm and fresh. Sheets were my favorite. Hard like boards but so soft and sweet when you climb in at night. 

Hanging clothes saves money on energy to run the dryer. We are using so much more water with the garden it is nice to cut back somewhere. 

I started with a folding clothes rack from Ikea that worked really well inside over the winter and great on my porch this spring and summer so far. I used it for delicates and dark cloths. But I really wanted an actual line outside. It slipped my mind for a couple of months until I was in Lowe's picking up some light bulbs for the store. I wandered down the cleaning tools isle - no surprise there and found a retractable clothes line by Minky. I purchased the clothes line and a bag of classic clothes pins. 

The Minky I bought is the 49-ft Retractable Clothes Reel. It gets great reviews online. I love that is closes up to be out of the way and can easily be brought inside for storage in the winter if needed. It has these benefits and features. 

  • Easy to use fully retractable outdoor clothes line offers 49' of line drying space
  • Weather-resistant, stable protective casing
  • Unique mounting bracket allows reel to be removed when not in use
  • Used to dry clothes indoors and in outdoor backyards
  • Stows neatly away when not in use
  • Wipe clean PVC coated line
  • Plastic housing with metal mounting bracket

It was easy to hang only requiring 3 screws. I was able to hang clothes on it right away. 

Here is my first line of clothes. I took them down dry and summer smelling today. I am really excited to save the use of the dryer for things that really need to be dried. 

This type of clothes line could fit almost anywhere - even inside. I urge you to let nature dry and freshen your clothes this summer!