Adopt a Crop: RED

Me: Bubba! You want to see the most awesome thing! Wait! I have to get my camera! You want to see the most awesome thing! (Notice how none of these are really questions, more like orders.)

Bubba: Yes. Ok. I mean, YES! Let me change my clothes!

Me: Ugh. Fine. COME ON. The most awesome thing is out there!

Two seconds go by...

Bubba: Ok! I'm ready!

Me: GAWD WHAT TOOK YOU?

Bubba: (under his breath) Love my wife. Don't kill my wife. Love my wife. This better be awesome.

Just kidding, he didn't say anything like that, but I wouldn't 100% blame him for thinking it. Frankly, he was totally "ready to see the awesome thing" I was screaming about, so bless him. He knows my crazy.

I led him out to the garden (Obviously. You didn't think there was something awesome in the basement, did you?) by his pinkie finger and around to the back of the beds where we barely go because a mystery creature keeps leaving black mystery dumps back there EW, and after navigating the mystery poo piles I pointed very enthusiastically at this beauty here:

Awesome, right?!

To which Bubba appropriately exclaimed: NICE! IT'S ABOUT TIME, TOMATOES!

Yes, I do believe he thought it to be an awesome occurrence as well. The first tomato of the season.

*Sigh* As sad as it may sound, I totally live for this. I won't go banging on about the depth and severity of my particular tomato-inspired brand of crazy because you can read all about that here, but just know that my world is all right in the head now and I can go on living another day because no matter how many people flip me off in traffic or insist on leaving their five year old in charge of their cart while they run out of line at Trader Joe's to just get one more thing of blanched almonds, I can go on with my life knowing that tomatoes are on their way and that being jailed for manslaughter at this moment would be the worst torture ever because my tomatoes are just coming into season and I can not miss it.

Not even for strangling a parent who returns with yet even more than just blanched almonds like twenty minutes later to banshee shriek at their five year old for eating a candy bar off the rack and HOW COULD I LET THAT HAPPEN WHY DIDN'T YOU DO ANYTHING.

Hey, I wasn't going to stop the kid. I like candy, too. Except I'm worried about the fatness and he clearly is not, so I say, live it up, kiddoo!

All said, we are mere weeks (days?) from sinking teeth into Tomato #1 and then you know things get real fucking crazy around here with canning and sandwiching and bacon (more on this later) and the Best Tomato Sauce Ever. Yep. and what not.

Gird your loins, folks - the tomatoes are upon us.

Also, there's melons. Ok, there's ONE melon. But that is because I ripped out the squash of doom and the very bright sun and surviving squash beetles tried to kill the plant and its babies dried up.

But do not fear! I have killed many squash bugs and do twice daily checks (oh no, I am not anal retentive at all) on the plants to search for more bugs to crunch between my fingers so that I can watch their evil plant sucking goo come squirting out their behinds. SO - maybe more will grow and I will be able to enjoy eating a Midget Melon if only to tell the tale.

And I'm sorry if that description about bug smashing was too graphic for you, but you'll just have to accept that I support squash bug genocide as long as it is done in a non-chemical type way. Like by smashing with my hand. BASTARDS.

I need sunscreen.

There's also some bean action happening. Specifically the beans are climbing the peas, which sounds porny, but it's really quite cute. When Bubba asked me what kind of beans they were, my only answer was, "Green", which seemed normal to me, but made him give me that look of, "Really now. Do you think?" and so I will say that they are specifically Blue Lake String Beans and that's all I know.

They also seem to like the remaining snap peas in the biblical sense.

Hey baby, you from around these parts?

Chard. Oh the damn chard. It took the opportunity to grow into a hedge while I was out of town trying not to die in a tornado and when I found it upon my return, I do believe my cries were heard throughout the town.

But I got it into check, if only for a moment, and I will post the recipe(s) for Chard Killing soon with a story about my Awesome Stalker and how I'm not afraid of being chopped up in the night. At least not by him.

I'm such a fraidy cat!

Do not fear me. I don't have opposable thumbs. Yet.

I'm getting annoyed with the bell pepper. To the point where we've renamed him the Bell Pecker. And in some more inspired moments, the Bell Peckerhead, because he's growing vuurrrrrrrryyyyy slowly.

These blooms (shone in the yellow haze cast upon us by recent wildfires circling our quaint valley) were a long time coming and I do think there *may* be a teensy bell pecker developing from one. Another two just fell the fuck off, so who knows what's going on here.

Again, I blame the soil.

Call me a peckerhead, will you?

This is the Tastes Like Bitter Ass lettuce I was referring to the other day. It's now in a wilted pile near the compost bin getting ready to be turned into future soil. It bolted recently, as happens in the heat of summer, and so we will use its space for late season beets because I can't be bothered to create any shading apparatus under which to grow more lettuce. Sorry Square Foot Gardening Guy, I am too lazy for this kind of thing.

Lettuce tree.

Remember I said there was a volunteer pumpkin somewhere near my basil? Yes, right. There's now a pumpkin plant everywhere near my basil. Which is AOK with me, as long as it doesn't start attracting more squash bugs for me to kill because frankly the activity is starting to annoy me.

But I do hope this guy makes pumpkins. That'd be rad.

I mean no harm.

I had a nice little harvest when we got home from the trip of a thousand hail softballs and, since, I have eaten all of this. Some with Bubba, some without. The strawberries were especially good since I've broadened my anal retentive gardening habits to include Strawberry Perching in addition to Squash Bug Crunching.

To keep the soil-born strawberry munchers from ruining my crop of berries, I perch the green newbies up on the higher berry leaves to keep them out of harm's way. Sure, I could probably put some type of plastic mulch under them or something, but Perching is what I can do when I'm still in my work clothes and the inspiration strikes.

I think this is also the last of the radishes.

I guess I don't really need to do an update on the sunflowers, since I've technically never planted them and they're not really a crop per se, but this one is particularly amazing because it's a volunteer growing outside the beds and right in front of the dutch gate we share with our nice neighbors. So, basically, despite the constant smashing that happens when we open the gate and traipse to and fro, he has lived and thrived and has about 10 of these flowers on his one big stem/trunk.

I am so sexy. It's hard to look away from my face.

And, finally, because I know you're all out of breath like I am, the real Adopted Crop update: cucumbers.

Fluffy has jumped ship and begun to seek acreage outside of his bed. Which is fine by me since there's plenty of space to roam, as Bubba and I have done 100% of nothing with the rest of the back BACK yard. Grow all you want, bud, you're the whole show right now.

I will be in Pickle Round #3.

Wee Man here is doing pretty well, given that he is slow as hell and appears to only produce flowers and never any fruit. I'm OK with it if only because he's alive and hasn't made me cry with his dying. Also, no squash bugs have been sighted on his leaves, and that is good news.

I found one on Fluffy the other day and nearly went at it with a hatchet.

Don't worry about me down here. I'll be fine.

And that's it. I mean, there's more, but I can't justify going on since I'm pretty sure my subscriber number has gone down just as you've read through this post.

But next week I hope to have a little more variety in the posts, even if it's just one day when I show you the fun gift I made for my Grandma for her 84th birthday. It's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. And it doesn't have anything to do with the garden, as may come as a relief to you all.

I will also have at least one Chard Killer recipe and then some not so nice things to say about what it's like to drive Northern California freeways on 4th of July. OH - and there's a bacon surprise coming soon, too.

Mmmm...unexplained bacon...

Fluffy, in all his glory

It's ok. You can look. Don't be shy of my hugeness.

After my first shot at pickles, which came out very mustard-y but not altogether inedible (thank you, Bubba, for eating anything), I was determined to take a more palatable shot at pickling my cucumber crop.

I mean, sure, Bubba will eat these pickles, but will I? Probably not. Because, let's face it, they are brown and make my mouth pucker and I have been doing weird things to them like changing their brine while they sit in the fridge in an effort to bring out a more traditional pickle flavor and, alas, they're getting strange.

Not that it matters, though, since Fluffy put out another crop of Fluffies as soon as I had the previous crop relegated to the depths of the fridge. Good boy!

Some of the Fluffies are larger than others because some of them like to hide in the nasturtium until I get back from vacation.

I will say, that at least from a color standpoint, I am much more hopeful about this batch of pickles.

They are way less brown and alarming looking than the previous batch, and the recipe included dill, which for me is a must-have for pickles. Of all the recipes in my pickling book, only a few called for dill, which I find to be wrong.

I mean, who gives a corny crap about sweet pickles or pickles mixed with carrot coins and beans? Um, no one in my house, I can say that for sure. It is possible that I misspent my $8.49 on this book when it's clear that I'll be using it for maybe two pickle recipes instead of the 40-something in there.

I also don't have plans to pickle any other vegetables (although there will be tomato canning, to be sure), so the whole rest of the book after Cucumbers might as well be blank.

Then I went ahead and made an impulse purchase while at OSH of the Bell Blue Book of Preserving if for no other reason than the fact that their instructions are very clear (read: spelled out simply as though your monkey's uncle were doing the canning) and it was the only thing in the canning section that I didn't already own.

My my, has my life has changed from the time when I would buy a great top in every color at Banana Republic rather than every item in the canning section at a hardware store.

Anyway.

I feel like this book, the one with the newsprint-ish pages and lack of photography, spine printing and spellcheck (oh, the glorious grammatical errors) will probably become the water-damaged, dog-earred, woefully worn bible of my pickling life rather than the glossy, photograph-y, also totally un-spellchecked Pickled.

And while I'm on the subject, what the hell is the deal with these books making it to glossy, hard-cover printing with no evidence of editing WHATSOEVER? Good lord, it is bad. But bad in an it gives me something with which to amuse myself while the water in the canner boils, way. I'll try to find some good examples of what I mean so that we can laugh and point together.

Since I'm so grammatically correct and not making up my own language or anything right here on this blog and everything. Mmhhmm.

SO THE PICKLES are resting in their two quart sized jars and will be ready for sampling in three short weeks. Meantime, I will be peaking in on them in the cupboard because there is scant else that makes me squweeeee with retarded joy like seeing my own canned goods just sitting there on the shelf all We are ready for you in a catastrophe or power outage because look how we don't even require refrigeration and everything.

Come to think of it, I should start canning pie. You know, just in case of emergency.

Please enjoy the not-brown color and the dill in these pickles, all proper like.

Oh the mighty beet harvest.

So, it's a good thing that beets weren't the Adopted Crop, because it would appear that my beet growing powers are, well, weak. And that doesn't make for good television, when the star of the show is a big dud and we're all left wondering who the hell planned this hot mess and things of that nature.

I sowed two sets of beets and of those, only two beets came to fruition, and one was tiny (see tiny beet above) and it ended up germinating in the cucumber bed.

What the hell happened?

I blame the new bed. Not because it's not constructed in the same genius and sturdy manner (by Bubba WUV YOU!) as my other beds, but because I do not trust the soil mixture that I conjured for these plants. For one, there's too much mulch and for two, the Garden Soil isn't so much soil as it is fine bark mulch.

To put it in simpler terms, I think the soil is too dense and these plants are getting stifled. It may be too warm, too, but in any case, the mixture is not just right like I like it when I'm trying to make things grow rather than wither and then crush my soul with their dying.

Anyway.

Of the one million (estimate) beets I sowed, the two that grew to edible size were indeed delicious and I roasted them up with two other red beets that came in the Almighty Farm Share.


I didn't do anything fancy to them. I didn't even stack them up with goat cheese in the middle because OH HELL the goat cheese went bad and was very slimy (barf) when I took it out of the fridge. Plus, I didn't have any oranges and that wouldn't have been right.

So, I decided to kill a couple of birds with this particular stone and roast up the pre-promised fennel from the share as well as the beyoooteeful broccoli that came bagged and ready to toss up with the gnocchi that is becoming a freezer staple in my house.


Despite the unfanciness of this very veggieful meal, it was very good in a Hey this all came from close by except for the gnocchi and gorgonzola kind of way. I took great joy in every bite of beets, which for the record I did not share even though Bubba thought he wanted to try them again just to see if he might like them, and it satisfied my yearning for home grown beets if but for the moment.

My mom has promised me more Detroits from her garden this weekend, and so I will hold out for that.

AND, in a moment of genius (or rampant naivety), I've decided that the newly vacant (bye bye bolted lettuce that tastes like bitter ass) spot in the new bed will be first amended with some nice home-cooked compost and then sown with another round of Detroit Beets.

And how do ya LIKE ME NOW?

Yes, I get very excited for the prospect of beets, k.

I remember reading (in my Square Foot Gardening book perhaps?) that beets can be sown mid summer for a fall harvest, and that is just what I'm going to do. I briefly considered putting in a bean teepee and getting crazy on some green beans, but I already have some growing on the fence in the back and how many beans can one household eat, right? Especially given the bounty that is sure to arrive in the farm share.

Not only might I be eating in season I also might be eating a variety of seasonal foods, which I believe is something those healthy people advise so that you don't turn into a chicken McNugget or something. Who knows!

So, for those of you Adopt a Croppers quietly rooting for the beets, there you go. I grew two (ish) and ate them in grand style. I will now attempt to grow more and have a more plentiful harvest to show off in approximately 89 days which is the ridiculously long growing cycle for these beauties.

Start the clock.

FaDSA: May/June WINNER + July Project

Dear Donk,

Are you ever coming home? I miss you and our never-ending email strings. I'm very selfish, because I know you're taking care of those who really need it, but Finny misses you and wants you to come home already.

Meanwhile in The House of FaDSA, many fun things have been going on. For instance, the making and show-and-telling of some HOT wrap skirts.

I will say that I'm very impressed with the overcoming of bizarre obstacles and creating of totally wearable and beautiful skirts that occurred in this group. Y'all are no wimps, that's for sure. And diligent as the day is long.

WE ARE NOT QUITTERS AROUND HERE, FOLKS!

This double month project winner, of all the Hardcore FaDSArs that stuck it out through May and June, is Denverbrunette.


Not only is her skirt amazing and in the groovinest fabric ever - she strutted a sweet pose for the pool and really created a wardrobe item. At least, in my opinion anyway.

That is the thing with sewing clothes, I've found, is that I may find a pattern I love and a fabric I love and go to all the trouble of sewing it all up only to find that, meh, I doubt I'll really wear it. And then it gets shunned to the back of the closet or the bottom of a drawer and eventually gets shuffled off to Goodwill under the shroud of night or whatever.

Not this skirt though! I imagine Denverbrunette will have herself a few saucy outings in this cute wrap. Great job!

Now send me over your full name and home address to finnyknits AT gmail DOT com so I can send you a prize befitting your efforts.

Everyone else - GOOD JOB with the darts and ribbon belt (so glad the blanket binding was helpful to some. It quite literally saved this skirt from the Goodwill treatment for me.) and what not.

I think next month's project needs to be something a little more lighthearted. And given the free-spiritedness that comes with summertime, I say we call it Dealer's Choice so that you can pick and choose the pattern YOU really want to make from the kid's patterns in the book.

So, make up a terry cloth toy or an imp hat or a confetti raincoat OR if you are a genius and can rework a grown-up's pattern for a kid - GO FOR IT. You'll have my admiration just for the math, that is for sure.

And then you can gift it to some nice child that needs a bath or a clean shirt or dry shoulders or a pin-tucked runner for their dollhouse.

And then meet back here on August 1, when Kelli will reveal the month's winner and August's project while I drunkenly wander the beaches of Costa Rica with Bubba.

Cheers,
Finny

And strawberry ice cream, too. [RECIPE]

We're going to be such fatties at our house, what with all the pie and ice cream eating, but that's hardly stopping us.

I like to think that using FF or 1% milk will keep us from busting our buttons, but who knows what happens when you are mixing that with cups of sugar. And we all know I'm not doing the math, so if my pants start getting all snug around the waistline I guess I'll have to reconsider the Only Pie and Ice Cream diet we've been on lately.

It's just, what are we going to do with all these strawberries if we're not putting them into pie and ice cream? I mean, WHENEVER ELSE do you have so many strawberries at your disposal that you can do crazy ass shit like pour two whole pints into a whirling ice cream maker and not be thinking HOLY CRAP I just poured two whole pints of strawberries in there?

See, it's a rare occasion, which means that it's OK that we're eating pie and ice cream all the time because there's, like, no other time in our whole lives when the strawberries will be abundant quite like this. Certainly not next summer or next week or anything. No.

So, you see, the story with the strawberry ice cream goes like this:

Once upon a time we signed up for the Great and Powerful Farm Share. And then every week since we've gotten 1-3 pints of strawberries. Plus a truckload of other produce which we then have to race and eat before the next week's truckload arrives.

Thus enters the pies and ice cream and shakes and Hey, I'll just eat these from the tupperware with my fork while I sit my ass in the garden and what not. Because WHOA we do not want to let strawberries go bad.

No.

That would be a crime. A punishable and shameful crime for which I would never forgive myself. I just imagine myself sitting around all shivering and sad on a winter's day in my ugly gray sweater, thinking longingly about some strawberries knowing full well that I was so wasteful as to cast old ones aside during the summer months when they were plenty and available.

FOR SHAME I would say. And then I'd watch some football because that is what I do in the winter months when I'm not skiing. Then I'd probably make some Smoky Bacon Chili, because that is what I make when its cold out. But there wouldn't be any strawberries and for that, I would be sad.

So for now, we avoid wasting the delicious and abundant berries by putting them in pie, shakes, cereal, random open mouths, ice cream and in the future, jam.

Strawberry Ice Cream
Adapted from Cooks.com recipe
My changes in bold

1 qt. fresh strawberries, cored and stems removed (same as two pints I learned. Well, I'll be.)
1/2 qt. buttermilk
1/2 qt. 1%milk
2 c. sugar
Juice from one lemon

In a good sized bowl, puree your strawberries using an immersion blender until there are still some good sized chunks left. (UGH. I hate that word. Chunks. Filthy.) In that same bowl pour in your milks, sugar and lemon juice.

Now pour the whole mess into your spinning AND TOTALLY FROZEN ice cream maker bowl through the hole in the lid. 25 minutes later, remove it to the freezer after the obligatory taste-testing.

In a few hours have a strawberry ice cream feast and be somewhat less guilt-ridden knowing you used 1% milk at some point in there and it's *probably* not going straight to your ass.

...so I made Black Cherry Chip ice cream [RECIPE]

And it was really good. And still IS very good since we somehow have some left in the freezer which I assume will be eaten tonight after a very large salad and some beets.

Thankfully when Bubba went on his death-defying cherry picking excursion in our neighbor's yard (I was busy picking the low hanging fruit, as always - lazy!), he/we managed to pick more than the four required cups for the pie recipe and had *just enough* left over for me to try my hand at cherry ice cream.

And, since I'm a genius (obviously. Why do you laugh?), I managed to reserve only the big black SWEET AS HELL cherries for the ice cream, so when I tossed them in the mix with some 1% milk (oh come on, I'm not using half and half - that's crazy talk), sugar, vanilla and lemon juice, I knew the combo was going to be extraordinary.

Well, I knew it would be once I added the chocolate chips anyway. And I just have one big tupperware thingee that I pour all my chips into, so there's a nice variety of sizes in there which I like in my baking because it makes it a little weird. And we like weird around here.

I will tell you that, if you have one of them shmancy ice cream makers (perhaps from a bridal registry because I think that's the only time people buy these things. Ahem. Like us.), this ice cream blends up like a dream. I defy you to find a better Black Cherry Chip ice cream at the supermarket. WILL NOT HAPPEN.

Just for the record though, the photos are not good. It was hot and we wanted to eat it and this was the only shot I could get off before Bubba ker-snatched the ice cream from view. And also before mine started melting.

You don't really mind though, do you?

Black Cherry Chip Ice Cream
Recipe of my own devising. I promise it's not gross.

Ingredients
2-ish cups of pitted black cherries, halved
1 quart 1% milk
Juice from 1 lemon
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup of mini and regular semi and milk chocolate chips

First, make sure the freezer bowl for your ice cream maker is frozen solid. Like, freeze it overnight in your freezer otherwise it'll just thaw and you'll have to do all manner of swapping around in and out of the freezer to get your ice cream to *take*. Go on, make your ice cream tomorrow if you haven't frozen it yet. Just pre-mix the ice cream according to the following directions and then pour the mess into your frozen bowl tomorrow at this time. K?

In a bowl (preferably with a nice spout), mix cherries, lemon juice and sugar. Then add the milk and stir thoroughly. Then add your vanilla and mix. Finally add your chocolate chips.

When you've got your freezer bowl spinning with the lid on, pour this mess through the hole on top and let it spin for about half an hour. It should look like soft serve at this point, which means it's the perfect moment to taste test. I promise, this is an official rule. Once you and your beloved are done taste-testing, toss it into the freezer to let it fully set-up.

Come back in a few hours and have yourself a cherry chip feast. This is especially good if you have some little chocolate chip cookies to throw on there. Because if you're using 1% instead of half and half or whatever full fat nonsense, you can have the cookies on top and they barely count.

Right?

All food in pie form - Cherries [RECIPE]

I do believe I have said this before, but I have some awesome neighbors.

Also some shitty neighbors, but that's only one house out of a whole block (as far as I've researched anyway), which isn't bad. For future reference though, just remember that I have one house of shitty neighbors and we'll just never speak of them again. We'll just assume that when I say Awesome Neighbors that we're not talking about their stupid asses. Yay!

Anyway, one of my awesome neighbors has an awesome cherry tree. One of those ones with a bunch of grafts of different types of cherries, so when it fruits you get tiny sour perfect looking bright red cherries and gigantor almost black super sweet cherries and then some variety in between.


In a word, it is miraculous. I love this tree very much. Even more, I love the ladder she puts by the tree and the open invitation she extends to Bubba and I (and other neighbors, too. I'll admit we're not the *only* special ones) to just come pick as many as we want PLEASE HELP ME whenever we feel like it.

Tell me that's not just plain rad.

A few weekends ago we decided to traipse over there with our sacks and pick us up some cherries. Unfortunately we'd waited a little too long and the biggest boon was to be had at the tippy top of the tree. Thankfully, Bubba's arms are long and his resolve is strong, so swinging from the ladder while picking cherries behind his head wasn't a problem. At least not one that required a frantic call for an ambulance.

Although I did have 9-1- dialed on my cell phone just in case, per our usual emergency response strategy.

After the Extreme Cherry Picking Expedition, I headed back across the street with my two sacks of cherries and a loaner pitter (See - she is awesome. She loaned me her pitter, too. Rad.) with a clear vision of the pie I was about to hatch. And this time I was going to make a crust from scratch since the Fresh Strawberry Pie which we loved so much, was sorta not as good as it could have been due to its store-bought crustiness. Boo.


And really, if I'm going to all the trouble to pit a truckload (there were so many geez man) of cherries, I'm putting them in a really good crust.

So, that's what I did.

I made up the crust from scratch, which took all of 10 minutes (given that five of those minutes included the strain of cutting in the butter by hand with a pastry cutter BUT WHATEVER I'm a slave to my pies) and then pitted cherries which took a lot longer but was totally worth it.


Oh the mess I made. It was a glorious, if not slightly alarming, time in my kitchen after which everything needed to be washed including me. And my fingers were stained purple for all of last week. Pretty!


And in a moment of unknown sisterly bonding, my sister was making the same exact pie at the same exact time from the same exact recipe two states away which she told me about the next day and HOW WEIRD ARE WE ANYWAY?

Fresh Cherry Pie
Recipe adapted from Joy of Cooking's Cherry Pie recipe
My changes in bold

Ingredients
2 pie crusts (I recommend Joy's recipe for Flaky Pastry Dough)
4 C fresh sour and sweet cherries
2 2/3 tsp cornstarch
1 1/3 C sugar 1 drop almond extract or none at all
2T butter

First, make your crust and while it's cooling in the fridge, pit your cherries. Once you've cleaned up the wreckage from the cherry pitting, you can mix your pie filling.

But first, preheat your oven to 450.

In a good sized bowl, combine cherries, sugar and cornstarch. Let this sit for a few minutes for some reason (Joy of Cooking says so?). Once it's sat for a whatever amount of time you can manage (15 mins should be good - go have a cocktail and come back) add the almond extract (if you're using it) and mix well. You should probably taste it at this point because YUM.

Go retrieve your pie crusts from the fridge and carefully lay one on the bottom of your pie pan. Now pour the whole mess of cherry filling into that pie crust. Cover your pie with the second crust in whatever way suits you.

I am very lazy and just toss the crust on top and slice in some vents. My sister, on the other hand, was clearly gifted with the patience in the family, and is able to summon the energy at this point to make up a lattice top crust which is very fancy.


If you are equally fancy or not burnt out from pitting cherries, feel free to do the same. Or get WICKED crazy like this chick and make flowers and twisty ties and what not to go on top. But, if you're in my house making cherry pie and you start messing with these kinds of shenanigans, expect to be hassled by Bubba because you're TAKING TOO LONG WHEN WILL THE PIE BE READY I DON'T CARE WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.

Oh, my favorite and most useful baking tip/warning: For godsake, put a foil covered rimmed baking sheet under your pie in the oven. Please.

I like to set up the racks in the oven so that they're stacked as close together as possible in the middle of the oven so that I can slide the baking sheet RIGHT under the pie without having to actually put the pie on the sheet and risk a soggy crust.

Just whatever you do, DO NOT, bake your pie without some kind of protective thing going underneath unless you really like to clean burnt pie crap off your oven innards, because inevitably the delicious cherry filling will just come a-bubblin' out and over the side and onto the bottom of your oven like sweet molten PAIN IN THE ASS TO CLEAN OFF goo.

See this? Imagine if there hand not been a baking sheet there to catch the goo. I would be cleaning my oven still at this moment. LAME.

Fun.

Bake your pie with whatever crust for 10 mins at 450 then reduce to 350 for 40 mins longer or until golden brown and the filling is doing the aforementioned a-bubblin'.

Then remove it from the oven and let it cool on a rack or your stove top or whatever way you cool things normally. And, when you do have a slice (or half the pie - BUBBA), I imagine it'd be quite good with some vanilla ice cream all a la mode or whatever on the side. Sadly, we didn't have any ice cream.

But, we did have just enough cherries left over for me to try my hand at Black Cherry Chip ice cream...

Adopt a Crop update: Pickles + Fluffy

Oh yeah, you read that right - PICKLES.

Ok, technically, I haven't tried them yet since pickles don't really go with Fiber One and soy milk, but I think I'll try them this weekend and then I can report back on whether this first round tastes like a horses ass or worse.

The floaties here are the powdered mustard. Looks nasty, but they say this is what it's supposed to look like. Specifically, when the bright green cucumbers "turn light brown in color". Which they have. But still.

That looks kinda nasty.

I used Gram's Crock Pickles recipe from the Pickling cookbook I picked (oh my god forgive me I couldn't resist) up in Portland because it didn't call for sterilizing jars or any ingredients I didn't have on hand. Well, technically speaking anyway.


It called for cider vinegar, which I sorta had (I used apple cider vinegar) and quart sized jars, which I sorta had (if you put two pint jars together they make a quart) - but otherwise - totally the same recipe!

Ok, except for the fact that I used 6 cucumbers instead of 3 pounds and left out the sugar (won't the "apple" in apple cider vinegar be enough?) - but I did use all the powdered mustard it called for so who the hell knows what we'll end up with.

Meaning I could be quite ill come Monday. But we'll see!

Anyway, crop update:

The adopted crop is doing quite well. I had enough cucumbers to try my hand at fucking up a pickle recipe on Tuesday (see above) and then enough yesterday to repick the same batch for a future pickling session this weekend when I anticipate I will more closely attend to the details of a different recipe in the book. Yay!

And this big giant super producer of a cucumber plant now has a name: Fluffy.

Yes, thank you Decca for this suggestion. I am taking this in the most lewd and naughty way possible because that is what entertains me. Can't figure out why "Fluffy" is porny? Well, then you're a better and more wholesome person than I. So you know, I'm laughing right now.

Also, this weekend I'll be rescuing Wee Man from the advancing everythings because look at this poor guy:

Call. The. Police.

He's still making wee cucumbers though, which is good. Because at the rate I'm going it may take me all summer to get all the ingredients into my house at the same time so that we can properly follow recipes and have cucumbers that don't taste like a butt.

I predict, anyway. I mean, WHO KNOWS, they could be good, but judging by the color and floaty business in those jars and the fact that I used apple cider vinegar it's more likely that these pickles will be N.A.S.T.Y., but I guess we'll see. Stay tuned for barfing!


One last thing, would it be cheating to use a "Pickling Spices" packet? I may have to resort to that.

Other crop updates:

The tomatoes are getting full. Like, we have a new cluster popping out every day and we're now placing bets on which tomato will ripen first, kinda full.

I, personally, vote for this guy on the right here since he was the one looking yellowish orangeish last time and is still the most un-green of the lot. I predicted we'd have ripening tomatoes in about two to three weeks.

Bubba says, "Two or three weeks? That's bullshit. COME ON ALREADY."

Sometimes it's so clear why we're married.


The volunteer pumpkin, for which I ripped out the encroaching squash, is doing very well. He's sorta hiding what I imagine is some alarming growth by doing his growing beneath and around the basil hedge I'm cultivating.

It is possible that one day I'll go to snip some basil and LO there will be a pumpkin there. Anyway, that's what I'm hoping. What I'm also hoping is that my hand-picking of the nasty squash bugs and their grody little babies is successful at some point so that I can stop interrupting my otherwise gleeful garden time with bug smashing.

It's not that pleasant.


The midget cantaloupe is also being protected from the squash bugs with my twice daily smash-fests. Apparently a few coupling squash porn stars managed to make it through the killing of the plant, and decided to move over to the melon WHICH I DO NOT APPRECIATE. So, I've been out there a-smashin' a few times a day since then.

It takes a lot of time to be this evil while also being gentle with the beeooteeful melon you see here. With any luck he'll grow to full size (single serving size that is - about half the size of a regular cantaloupe) and we'll see more melons.

I would like that a lot. Especially given the amount of murder I've had to commit to keep these plants alive.


Here's a gentlemen with whom you may not yet be acquainted. This is my bell pepper. He is growing very fucking slowly to the point where the ugly marigolds that have grown from seed are starting to smother him. In fact, I had to bribe them to stay out of this shot so that I can macro focus on this little bud for your viewing pleasure.

I have high hopes, but I fear they are misguided.


You will recognize this as the aforementioned scary ass chard forest. It gets denser and more intimidating by the day. Which is why I crown myself Super Chard Killer and bastardizer of a million miscellaneous chard recipes. I fear that if I do not cook the chard I will be swallowed whole by the chard.


This is my big beet. I can say that with some certainty because I only have two beets that made it through the precarious seed stage to actually producing something beet-like and this is the bigger one. Thus the name, Big Beet. I would have eaten him and his Small Beet buddy last night for dinner if it weren't 100 degrees outside which made it ridiculous to even think about firing up the oven.

Soon though, and for the rest of our lives, Big Beet.


This week, what with the heat and all, the beans decided to start climbing. That's really all I have to say about the beans, except that I got all excited to see them growing and decided to throw a few more seeds along the fence.

Because I don't know when to stop.



These are the radishes I pulled this week. Some are perfect, some are retarded. Some are real small. They all went into the same big salad last night and were lost in the load of farm share spinach.

Again, feel free to remark upon my flea-beetle free radish greens. WOO! One bug I haven't inadvertently invited into my garden! Random success!


And I'm spent.

That's all I got for now. Although I do have a few more recipes hanging out that involve strawberries, homegrown cherries and buttermilk. Not all together though. That'd be too much.

Something else to do with the squash I killed [RECIPE]

So, the secret's out - I yanked the squash like the cold heartless garden bitch I am because OH it was getting in the way of a volunteer tomato plant and potential pumpkin and we can't have that at all.

Also the squash plant attracts squash beetles and they are BAD so, bye bye stupid squash and hello tomato and pumpkin.

Yes, the pumpkin is also a squash and could also attract beetles but I like pumpkins better due to their jack-o-laternability so I'm willing to risk it. Plus I didn't know what to do with all that squash anyway so there you go.

Speaking of what the hell do I do with all this squash, I found something else to do with it aside from stuff it or saute it or bury it in every sauce and pasta dish to hit our table.

I baked it.

And not like baked a stuffed squash or something, but actually used it to bake biscuits which I didn't know I could do and now I'm a little sad that the squash is almost gone because apparently it is a very versatile vegetable if you can get past the beetles and the growing over everything else that it does.

Once again, I have my Garden-Fresh Vegetable Cookbook and its gifter, Shelley, to thank for solving my What the hell do I do with all this problem.

Best part is that this recipe called for julienneing (there's a word for you) the squash and HEY Y'ALL I recently bought a mandolin after many years of fantasizing, so I was all set to julienne my ASS OFF.

And I did. For about a minute. Because that's all it took to take the squash from this:

to this:

Wow. SOLD. Look at the little matchsticks! They're perfect! I could do this all day! What other squash recipes call for julienneing? I'll make them now!

Wait, I'm making biscuits. Right.

So, the magical recipe also known as Zucchini Cheddar Breakfast Biscuits transforms a giant squash into 2 cups of perfect matchsticks that get turned into 1 cup (after draining and squishing) of binding goop perfect for biscuit makin's.

But, waitaminute, are these biscuits going to taste like goopy squash? Because I really can't think of anything more repulsive.

As it turns out, no. They're pretty good! And I bet they'd be even better if I put in the bacon it called for, which I will next time because we all know everything's better with bacon.

Wouldn't you like to make these biscuits with all of the squash moving into your guest room? I bet you might.

Zucchini Cheddar Biscuits (No piggy)
Adapted from Andrea Chessman's recipe in Garden-Fresh Vegetable Cookbook
My changes in bold

Ingredients
2 cups of julienned summer squash
1 tsp salt
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp fresh ground mixed peppercorns
4 Tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1 cup grated cheddar
1/4 cup buttermilk

Toss the squash and salt into a colander and let it hang out for half hour. At that point you can squeeze the water out of it and end up with a nice 1 cup wad of squash goop.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and pepper into a bowl and cut in the butter until you've got a coarse crumb texture going on. Then mix in the cheese and squash with a fork and then add the buttermilk. Stir it around with your fork until it forms a nice stiff dough.

Flour your counter or a board and turn the dough out onto it for a brief kneading session where some of it will get stuck to your fingers, but that's OK. Just flour your hands more and stop whining. Roll the dough out and use a random glass from the cupboard to cut biscuits into the dough. I found our highball glasses worked nicely, but if you want to get all technical you could use a 3 inch round cutter like a prissy pain in the ass.


Put your biscuits on a baking sheet and toss in the oven for about 15 minutes. Don't burn them or they'll taste like ass.

Not that I know because mine came out perfect. For once in my sad biscuit-burning life.


Hey, do you also want to know what I just learned because I'm so behind the times? I know what "mock apple" really is - it's SQUASH, people.

Yeah, I turned the page in the cookbook to find a hundred mock apple recipes (OK, like three) where the apple is squash. That is so not right. And if you already knew that mock meant squash, well, I'm very proud of you for your big brains, but I didn't know that and now I'm feeling a little taken advantage of. Just another story my mom made up for us so that we'd just behave already.

Just like the car won't start until you have your seatbelts on and don't eat ketchup it's made of worms, I now have hunnie, mock apple is the same as apple just eat it to haunt my childhood memories.

What's next? Hammy didn't really go live on a farm with other hamsters after I saw my dad clubbing him with a shoe?