Life is busy

Life has been INCREDIBLY busy lately. I was in a wedding recently that took up an awful lot of time, and although I had a lot of fun with it, I've gotten way behind on everything that needs to get done. Here's a small snapshot of where I am:

PROJECTS
I have a huge long list of projects, including:

Redoing the guest bathroom (painting, redoing cabinets, and tiling the floor)
Redoing my bathroom (same stuff)
Building a bar for the sunroom
Furnishing the sunroom, including finding/making a low table and making floor cushions
Refinishing the sewing table a friend gave me, and building a shelf for my sewing maching to sit in it
Finishing the quilts I've started for my niece and nephew
A dozen other small projects, such as repairing the clock my friend made for me
Organizing my whole house and all my files

I don't know when all of these projects are going to get done. It makes me want to cry just looking at the list. I guess I just have to keep going one step at a time. Also, the September craft challenge on the Crunchy Chicken site is inspiring me to get at least one project done. Hopefully I'll keep you posted.

GARDEN
It doesn't seem like the season should be over yet, but my garden is definitely winding down. The tomato plants are all dead or dying, the squash is barely producing, and the cucumbers all died. Only my Japanese eggplant produced at all this year. On the upside, the tomatillo produced like crazy and the bell peppers are starting to, after a very chilly summer (relatively speaking, of course). I've learned a few things for next year. For one thing, I'm going to have to work a LOT on my soil. It doesn't drain well at all, which I think is contributing to my tomato problems. This year, I added a lot of composted manure, which I think is why the peppers and tomatillo have done well, and the zucchini did better than usual. Next year should be even better, I hope. It does get awfully frustrating, though.

HOUSE
Some of my house projects are listed above. I also need to get out into the yard and do some serious work out there, plus I want to completely purge everything. Just because I have room for something I will never use doesn't mean I should keep it just in case. I need to make better use of Craigslist and Freecycle to get rid of the extra stuff. And, on top of all of this, I got a call from the HOA for my neighborhood saying that someone had complained about my yard. So I got someone to fix the sprinkler system, which put a HUGE dent in my plans to pay off my credit card quickly (although I'm still hoping to have it paid off by the end of the year, even if it means I only get to eat beans for a month). And I have to wonder which neighbor complained, and why nothing has been done about some of the other residents whose yards truly look bad (whereas mine looked a little untrimmed, other yards could be considered a wholesale mess). It's not the most welcoming feeling when moving into a new neighborhood.

So I'm definitely looking forward to a long weekend this weekend, which will hopefully be spent completely redoing my guest bathroom. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Garden bonanza

I've got huge plans for food from the garden this week! Tonight, I'm making braised cabbage with a red cabbage that I found in my garden. I had pretty much given up hope on the cabbage, and tonight I went to pull out some older plants, and there it was! I'm also in the process of roasting a pepper from the garden to make frittata for breakfast tomorrow morning, along with tomatillo sauce, frozen from last year. It will be a bit of an experiment. As a side dish for tonight, I'll be making a simple tomato and avocado salad, with heirlooms from the garden. Despite my heirlooms barely producing, I'm determined to enjoy them as much as possible.

In other garden news, the corn has just about petered out. The cucumber is still barely hanging in there, and I'm hoping the removal of some of the corn plants will convince it to grow a bit more. I also have a honey dew melon! I was despairing about not having had any melons from the garden, and lo and behold, there it was! The basil is going crazy and I've barely had time to do anything about it. The tomatillo plant is looking promising, but hasn't produced a lot yet - about enough to make a small batch of sauce. Today, I planted squash in six more places. I'm hoping at least one of the plants will pull through. I bought a packet of multi-colored pattypan squash seeds, and I would love to have white, yellow, and green to make zucchini pickles with.

On dieting

Lately I have been trying very hard to lose weight, and instead, I'm losing the battle of the bulge. I've gained a few pounds instead of losing them, and my clothes are getting tighter. I've been exercising a decent amount, mostly training for a bicycle race that's coming up, but I'm also eating with abandon. I'm not sure how to go about breaking the cycle, but I have a few ideas...

For one thing, I eat too much dairy. Dairy makes my stomach upset, and has a lot of calories for how filling it is. I've been eating toasted whole wheat bread with butter for breakfast, and the butter has a whopping 1oo calories per tablespoon. I think that from now on, I will have some hummus on my bread instead, which clocks in at a mere 26 calories per tablespoon, and is more filling to boot. I'm going to make some fresh hummus tonight and give it a whirl tomorrow. Another thing that I've been doing is using balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegar as flavoring. They're both quite low calorie, only 10 calories per tablespoon, and add a lot of flavor.

I also need to try to eat more veggies and more fiber. For this week, I'll be having some leftover pasta salad (unfortunately with cheese), some asparagus and mushrooms in oyster sauce with brown rice (and I know the asparagus is out of season, and I feel completely guilty about it), some grilled veggies one night (with a tomato and cucumber salad), and perhaps towards the end of the week, some black bean soup, risotto, or pasta primavera, depending on what my garden provides me with.

Speaking of my garden, things are progressing well. The corn is huge and is producing ears. The pole beans are going crazy, and also producing. The tomatoes aren't doing quite as well, for some reason, although the peppers are doing great, and the tomatillo is growing like a weed. The plants that i'm having the most trouble with, though, are the squash. For some reason, squash doesn't like to grow in my garden, and i have no idea why. I'm going to have to do some research and figure it out.

Until then, happy eating!

My first summer harvest

I just returned from my garden, victorious! I harvested a purple bell pepper, a yellow banana pepper, a dark green heirloom zucchini (zucchino?), a handful of green beans, two beautiful beets, and four carrots, three of which are perfectly usable, and one which needs a little help, plus one little onion. My plan is to roast the beets, one carrot, and a Japanese sweet potato for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow, and use the rest of the veggies to make a ratatouille to serve over rice for the next few days.

I'm beginning to wish that I had planted more beans, as I really enjoy eating and canning them. I also discovered that there are varieties of purple beans, so next year I may try starting some from seed. It would be very cool to can green and purple dilly beans.

So far, my zucchini haven't been productive at all. I'm hoping that will change, but one of the things I'm learning is that zucchini really don't like the heat that much. They collapse pretty quickly unless they get watered often. I'm determined not to make the same mistake I did last year and let the zucchini plants collapse.

Exciting garden news

I have corn growing on my cornstalks! It's such an exciting thing for me. Ironically, it's the smallest cornstalks that are producing right now, but i have at least three ears of corn coming up. My tomatoes are starting to produce, I have several peppers maturing, some of my beets are absolutely humungous, the green beans are doing great, and I have a small heirloom zucchini. the eggplants, tomatillo, and cucumber are all flowering, as are the melons. It's an exciting time for my garden.

Bonsais and mulch

Which have nothing to do with each other.

After a lecture (of sorts) from my garden neighbor, I decided to mulch my garden. Not having any mulching materials readily available, I headed over to my friend Sam's house to pilfer some from the streets. We grabbed some giant leaf bags and started shoveling grass clippings in. At one point, her neighbor came home as we were gathering grass clippings from in front of his house. He looked at us like we were crazy, then started laughing. I doubt he thinks we're crazy, just a bit eccentric. I got two giant leaf bags of clippings, which covered about 2/3 of my garden, which isn't bad. I'm curious to see how much it helps keep the weeds down and the water in. But so far, my garden is doing great!

One of my experiments this year is corn. I bought quite a few corn plants, some organic and some regular. I honestly can't remember which is which, but one group is doing far better than the other group. this is also the first time I've planted herbs other than basil, and they're doing better than expected at the moment. The beets are doing great! I picked a few the other day and roasted them, and they were delish. I'll have to plant more the next time around. I love beets. I pulled all of my shallots and I'm getting ready to hang them in my closet, the only cool, dark, dry place that I house. I also have a few volunteers, which I think are melons left over from last year. I don't actually remember what type of melon they are, but I know I didn't get the same kind this year, so I'm very hopeful they'll turn out to be good.

On a somewhat related side note, I've decided to take up bonsai, although probably not too seriously. Just a bit seriously. We'll see what happens. For now, I have two starters and no tools, so I can't do much other than just keep them alive (which is going well so far).

So if any of you want ideas for birthday gifts for me, bonsai tools and a tomato machine would be awesome!

The garden is almost finished!

Yesterday I planted around 25 corn plants, 12 pole beans, and 5 more bell peppers, and I removed 5 peppers that are apparently hot. Although who really knows? I also planted a new yellow pear tomato and some begonias in the planter outside my house. This brings the tally of plants in my garden to:

12 red bell peppers
6 yellow bell peppers
4 yellow banana peppers
1 great aconcagua pepper
1 serrano chile pepper
1 italian white wax pepper
3 blue jay peppers
3 orange bell peppers
1 lemon cucumber
1 pickling cucumber
3 eggplants
corn and pole beans
lots of bush beans
oregano
sage
some other herb that i can't think of right now
20 roma tomatoes
6 slicing heirloom tomatoes
1 yellow pear tomato
1 tomatillo
1 heirloom zucchini
1 yellow pattypan squash
1 honey dew melon
1 sugar baby watermelon
2 green and 1 purple basil

That might be too much for one plot, especially since I still want to squeeze in 6 more yellow peppers and a light green squash. I'm determined to use my garden to the maximum extent possible this year, after practically wasting all of the space last year.

Extreme gardening

It's getting to be that time to start getting all of my plants in the ground, and today is going to be a big day for it. I wanted to take a moment and record what I've planted so far and what I'll be planting today.

So far I've only planted my first heirloom tomato, a green zebra. It's one of my absolute favorites, as it produces wonderful sweet tomatoes that are the perfect size for one person to use in salads and sauces, and it produces a lot. I also planted a yellow pattypan squash, which will be great for roasting, grilling, baking, and plenty of other uses.

Today I'll be planting 20 Roma tomatoes, 6 European Red Bell peppers (with 6 more that accidentally went home with Stacey), 6 Golden Bell peppers, 4 Sweet Banana peppers, 12 green beans (actually more like 36, since each once has three individual plants), 1 Blue Jay bell pepper (a bit of an experiment), 1 Giant Aconcagua pepper (another experiment), and an heirloom Cocozelle bush zucchini. I still have to plant 5 more tomatoes (4 heirlooms - one red, one orange, one yellow, and one purple - and a yellow plum), a tomatillo, some basil, 2-3 cucumbers and 2-3 eggplants, although I haven't decided which kind to plant this year. I'm thinking about trying to plant some herbs in the brick planters outside my apartment, but I'm not sure what the gardeners would think.

I'm also somewhat accidentally stumbling into bonsai. I inherited a rather cool planter with a dead bonsai in it from my mother, and I finally got a new bonsai at the nursery. I wish I had done some research BEFORE I bought the bonsai, because I think I bought a deciduous plant, and I would definitely have preferred an evergreen. At least it only cost $3, so if I make a giant mistake, it won't be a horribly expensive one.

OK, I'm off to the garden to get these babies in the ground. Wish me luck!

The spring transition garden

My garden is finally starting to do pretty well, probably because the sun is finally getting up above the trees and shedding some light on the poor vegetables. I need to start putting in my summer garden soon, but I can't bring myself to pull anything out yet. Here are a few pictures from yesterday:

All of my lettuce is looking fabulous, but I intend to put tomatoes there. I still have the stakes from last year, although I need to get a few more for this year...

The carrots are also fabulous as you can see:





I picked a huge bag of lettuce and three carrots and I'll make salad with beans, baby corn, carrots, and shallots for the rest of the week. Yum!

The emerging spring garden

So I’m in my second month of saving money by shopping only once a month. I’ve also decided to eat out less. Much, much less. I’ve broken down once and gone out to eat, spending $10.50 for lunch at a great Japanese restaurant. But I only spent about $50 on groceries so far, and I’m not expecting to spend much more, except on a few veggies from the market. I’ll be planting my garden at the end of this month and beginning of the next, so I’m planning to only spend about $20 on food next month. I think I can do it, considering how full my pantry is right now. I have to do better at saying no to going out, especially when I have so much food at home.

In my garden I’m planning to plant 5 heirloom tomatoes, 18 sauce tomatoes, 1 tomatillo, 2-3 squash, 2-3 eggplant, 1 or 2 cucumbers, bunches of green beans, and 24 peppers. I doubt I’ll do melon this year, as my melons were not very successful last year. Right now I have beets, carrots, onions, shallots, leeks, cabbage and lettuce growing, all of which I’m really excited about, but especially the beets and shallots. Yum! I think I also have some volunteer garlic, but I won’t really know until it’s time to harvest. I had a few cloves of garlic that started sprouting in my fridge, so I planted them in the little planter outside my living room window. Stacey warned me that they probably won’t form bulbs (I don’t know why), so I’ll just use them as green garlic, an ingredient that I almost never use, but that I’d like to use.

At the moment, my garden is doing fantastically. My beets and carrots are growing quickly, the onions and shallots look great, and I have tons of lettuce. It's really fantastic! The two things that didn't do well are spinach and cabbage, and I'm not sure why.

Everyday life?

Wow, my everyday life seems to boil down to diet, exercise, and cats. How boring! I have plenty of other stuff going on in my life, and I feel like I should make a distinct effort to mention it...

First, I'm studying Italian. It has been extremely slow going, which is frustrating. I would love to be able to actually spend some time in Italy studying, or just living and learning. Unfortunately, here in America we believe strongly in debt, and my student loans prevent me from doing anything really cool for the next 2o years or so. That being said, I'm currently taking a conversational Italian class at the nearby Italian Cultural Society.

Second, I rock climb. I've probably mentioned this before, and while it does (kind of) fit into the category of exercise, it's also tons of fun. And yesterday I got my butt kicked by a 5.10C/D, which is kind of embarassing.

Third, I love to cook! I've been making black bean quesadillas with blue corn tortillas and homemade (and homegrown) tomatillo sauce this week, and they have been fabulous! I'm planning quiche for Easter dinner (which I've also mentioned) and I'm hoping to experiment a bit more in the coming months as I grow more vegetables (my beets look great! And my shallots!)

That leads me into my fourth topic, which is gardening. I love my garden. I wish I had more time to spend there, which makes me think I need to reassess my priorities a bit. I'm planning to plant all sorts of thing in the next few months, and I can't wait to get started. This storm we're having is definitely putting a damper on those plans, though.

OK, that's pretty good for now. Litter boxes are calling me!