If by chance you have thought to yourself, "I wonder what is Stephanie doing right now?" say anytime over the past five months, let me sum it up for you in one simple sentence: I have been
gardening. And with that comes planting, thinning, weeding, watering, harvesting, cooking and preserving. . .oh, yes and eating. Now I will elaborate. The picture below shows just a sampling of what we grew. This year's harvest began with
peas and
spinach. The kids eat the peas fresh off the vine. The spinach did great---too great, it went to flower because I didn't go out and cut leaves often enough. Next year I will do better. Still I enjoyed what I harvested. Next came
cilantro (it ended up the same as the spinach, but I did add some to yummy fresh salsa.) We had
strawberries from our patch in June and nowadays we get a handful of berries every other day. The kids eat them up right away. I have an
Anaheim pepper plant that has taken the admonition to "mulitply and replenish the earth" all too seriously. Bless the little plant's heart I can't count the number of peppers I have gotten and am still getting off of it. Because of it, though, I learned how to make some killer chili rellenos. I also have roasted them and used the green chilies in cheesy enchiladas and salsa, and frozen some. Right now I have a pile turning nice and red in my kitchen. I plan to roast them, maybe pickle a few, and dehydrate them. While we are talking peppers, I have two
bell pepper plants. Unlike my sweet green and red peppers I had last year, this year's crop is lime green in color (think banana pepper.) I have added them to breakfast hash and fajitas, and chopped them up to freeze and to dehydrate. We had a pathetic
carrot crop. Out of three rows of seeds only four carrots came up---4! Those four were absolutely delicious, though. A carrot right from the ground is sooo good. And since we are on pathetic, my
red potato experiment has only yielded three plants (Again I planted three small rows.) We haven't harvested those yet. I'll have to let you know how that goes. We had a whole garden box devoted to
corn again. We ate corn on the cob at dinner on three different occasions. Plus I used the fresh corn kernels in a mexican pasta salad. Next let's talk
cucumbers---lots and lots of cucumbers. Actually this plant has paced itself pretty well (unlike my pickling cucumber plants of a few years ago that thought it was funny to give me 10 cukes a day for a month!) I have enjoyed having cucumbers and ranch dip several times, adding them to salads and giving them to friends and family.
Green beans. I live to make Fresh Green Bean Soup in the summer. My mother and Madelyn love it, too. I made it twice, then also made Honey Cashew Green Beans and just plain ol' green beans. Josh loves to help snap the beans. We've got
onions! Both
green onions and
white onions. I won't begin to tell you how many different ways we use them. In the picture below there is bacon, white onion and parsley that I used to make Bean and Potato Chowder. I don't have any pig in the garden, but the onion and
parsley hail from my ground. I know it means a lot more to me than you, but I get a kick out of using my homegrown ingredients. My zucchini seeds never sprouted. I think that is probably the only way to kill a zucchini---don't let it start in the first place. Luckily I have had kind neighbors that have offered me a few here and there. I have made zucchini muffins twice, zucchini cookies, chocolate zucchini bread, fried zucchini sticks and grilled or stir-fried zucchini. My neighbors also gave me yellow squash. I made a Yellow Squash Cornbread---it was okay, and I have pan roasted some too. My
pumpkins are still on the vine. I have four medium to small sized ones all orange and ready. I am certain I would have had a few more but I discovered Maddie had been picking off the small fruits in order to try to grow the others larger. The problem was that this is a sugar pumpkin variety and they weren't really going to get bigger. Sigh. At least there is one pumpkin for each child (hmmm, maybe that is what my carrots thought, too.) Anyway, I have a volunteer
cantaloupe in my front yard with at least three nice melons on it, and more ripening. I didn't plant it with my petunias, but it most certainly has thrived there. I guess it was in one of my petunia packs, or a neighbor kid buried a seed there. Can anyone say
peaches? We have two trees. We thinned them this spring, we did well on one tree, but the other we didn't thin enough. That meant that we had a lot of small peaches on the not-so-thinned tree. Still, the crop filled several boxes. We have enjoyed eating fresh peaches and I have made several peach pies (freezing some pies), freezer jam, peach frozen yogurt twice, peach bread, frozen peach slices, and peach fruit leather. Last Saturday I cut up enough to fill a big bowl for our YM/YW after-temple-trip-brunch. The young women arrived first and they ate them all up before the young men even got there. We just kept it hush-hush and they never knew they missed out! This year I also gave several bags of peaches away to friends, family and neighbors. You say
tomato and I say to-mah-toe. The little plant tag says I planted Romas and a Beefsteak, but I don't have Romas out there. And whatever kind is out there the plants themselves are huge! I'm only sort of exaggerating when I say that I need a machete to cut my way through the massive tomato jungle. So far though I have only harvested a couple dozen tomatoes here or there. I used one dozen tonight in a very delicious Tomato-Pesto Sauce that we ate on cheese-filled ravioli. And I've enjoyed BLT's and homemade guacamole. I have a ton of green fruits on the vine so I guess as long as the weather stays warm I should still see a bigger harvest. (I don't think it will come close to Colby and Jamie's bounty.) Last, but not least. . .
sunflowers. This is the first year that I have grown them. As you can see the heads got fairly big. Maddie, Josh, Josie and I sat on Saturday afternoon, listening to the BYU football game and pulling out the seeds (Alyssa was at the game with Mike.) I then boiled them in salted water and toasted them in the oven. Yum, they are a healthy snack. I am fully aware that this was quite a lengthy blog entry. If you actually read the whole thing, kudos to you! I wanted to record my failures and successes. This gardening thing does take a lot of time. It has its own rewards, but it sort of helps to see where my time went.
We are three home games into the season, with another three to go. I took Alyssa to the first game. Mike has gone to the last two with Josh, then Alyssa again. We tailgated at the first game. The Cougs are ranked 7 and 8 in the polls and I'm loving it. The first game was played in very hot weather and Grandpa got mobbed by the grandkids when they saw his cherry slushie. Josie will sing the
Cougar fight song when she sees Y emblems or clothing, etc. I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.
