If you like to talk to tomatoes.....

I'm not sure that growing and canning your own is really worth it....

Last March I carefully planted tomato seeds into little toilet paper tubes and watered and cared for them until they were supposed to be big enough to transplant outside.

They all died/disappeared (Rabbits).

So we hunted and hunted and hunted for tomato plants that were bigger - mind you, it was now past tomato planting time.

We planted anyway, and cared for 4 regular tomato plants and 4 cherry tomato plants all summer (with some help from friends while we were away!).

The cherry tomatoes went crazy!  I ended up making 4 pints of salsa out of those.  That may have been worth it.

The other tomato plants, not so much.  In fact, at the end of September, I picked a full box of green tomatoes, wrapped them in newspaper, and coaxed them into ripening in my laundry room.

Finally, they ripened and were ready to be made into spaghetti sauce.  Since I didn't want to load my kids up for a shopping trip for JUST canning jars, I decided to freeze my sauce.

One hour later - after boiling and icing and peeling and squeezing and cooking down and adding spices - I have approximately half a quart of spaghetti sauce.  This might be enough for a spaghetti meal for my Curly Crew, but then again, it might now.  It depends on how it tastes and how saucy the Curly adults are feeling that day.

All in all, I'm not sure if it was worth it this year.  I mean, seriously, how many tomato plants will I have to plant next year in order to get a decent amount of sauce?  I just don't know.

As real as the chicken salad in his lap....

Food and I don't get along well when a camera is involved, so I have no pictures of what was one of the freshest, most refreshing, amazing light, cool summer meals I've made yet.

I'm not a chef.  I can follow a recipe, and I get by on some pretty amazing standard meals, but I don't do much substituting, and I don't branch out a lot - after all, if I make a bad meal, we end up eating out, and we just don't have much extra cash for me to be throwing a ruined meal away and buying one somewhere else.

Chicken Salad.  Sounds simple, is simple, and not something most people come running for.  Let me explain why ours was so great:

Fresh Italian bread lightly toasted.
Fresh, home grown cucumbers picked that day sliced long-ways, lain gently on top of said toast.
Fresh chicken (not frozen), farm fresh eggs hard-boiled, home grown picked the day before fresh raw peas, and home grown picked the week before fresh carrots.
Add a little miracle whip, some salt and pepper, voila!  A beautifully cool meal for a hot day.

I cooked the chicken in my Pampered Chef stoneware baker in the microwave.  Sounds odd?  It is, but it makes beautifully moist chicken in about 5 minutes, without heating up the house.
You boil some eggs (3 in our case).
You let the chicken and eggs cool - chop/shred the chicken, chop the eggs, chop the carrots, shell the peas, mix it all up.

Be prepared to have fresh watermelon outside that night - unless you decide there is no way you're setting out in 100 degree heat at 7:00 at night just so you can eat watermelon and watch your kids play in the pool (yes, we have watermelon for lunch today!).

Next culinary attempt?  Avocado/Cucumber cold soup.  It's my plan for Sunday.

Mary Mary Quite Contrary - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Answer: I have no idea.  But I am thrilled to announce our garden is doing well!

We have learned several things in the past few months about gardening though.

1. Start your tomatoes and peppers early.
2. Transplant them later than you think you should.
3.  Oh yeah, put up a fence or some other barrier BEFORE you transplant the tomatoes and peppers.
4. Plant peas. - they grown fast and are fun for the kiddos.
5. Put up string for the peas before you plant them.
6. Broccoli will over shadow your carrots.
7. No matter how many carrots it looks like you're losing - thin your carrots.
8. You do NOT need 16 lettuce plants - THIN THE LETTUCE
9. Strawberries do to die in the lightest of frosts (no matter what the package says)
10. One lone strawberry plant will not produce strawberries....
11.  But it will look nice amongst your cucumbers.
12. Planting cucumbers in June means you won't have any cucumbers for your salad until your lettuce is dead.
13. Mr. Curly and I are not German enough to preserve all this lettuce.
14. When spinach really starts to take off, you will start wishing you had planted less.  Probably the same with okra.
15. I have no idea when potatoes are ready to dig up.


It's a nice little list.  Our small herb garden (basil, cilantro, parsley) is doing well, but I keep having to break off little branches to keep the basil and cilantro from flowering too far.  It's growing faster than I can use it!

I'll post a picture sometime of our lovely produce - mainly because for the first time in my life, I feel like a successful gardener!

Here's to fresh produce!

It's official. I'm in love with Summer.

Ok, so technically, the title came from the movie "(500) Days of Summer" but it is still so true!

Mr. Curly and I planted a garden, with help from my father, way back in April. I realize it is now August, but we're starting to get food!

Our potatoes never grew, our sunflowers were eaten by bugs, our okra was drowned and frozen (apparently, while the calander says May, okra goes more by the night time temperatures, which were still dropping to the 40s).

HOWEVER, we have got squash and cucumber plants growing like mad! I've already harvested 4 cucumbers and they are the best I've ever had. Mr. Curly has 7 squash currently growing (they're about 2 inches long and so cute).

We have harvested green beans.

Curly Girl did a fantastic job helping with this. In fact, once I showed her what to do, she picked all of them by herself. Then we had to stop Curly Boy from throwing them back in the dirt.

Our green bean plants ended up giving us about 1/2 gallon of frozen green beans. That's not a lot, but enough for me (as I'm the only one in the family who will eat them anyway).

To preserve the green beans without canning, I merely blanched (boiled in super hot water) for three minutes, then put them in ice water for three minutes. I then spread them out over a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer for 2 hours. After this, I was able to pour the whole sheet into a gallon bag. Now, whenever I want green beans, I can shake out of the bag just the number I want.

I've also noticed our corn tasseling out!

This was our first successful attempt at a garden (the last one, planted while Mr. Curly worked on his master's, didn't stand a chance) and has made us pretty happy. We're looking forward to next year, when we will have a little experience and an already cut garden plot to work with!