Fall Planting

Yesterday I planted the last of the greens I will be planting for fall harvest. I planted kale, lettuce, spinach, mustard, arugula, and a mix of Asian greens, all to be harvested through November as baby salad greens. It has been incredibly dry this summer. We had plenty of rain through May and June, then when July hit, the rain stopped. We have only had a few very brief rainy spells, no where enough to keep the soil moist. I have been watering off and on, but with a garden the size of mine, the cost to water can quickly add up, so I avoid it as much as possible. For the most part, the vegetables seem to be doing just fine, but the lack of rain did greatly affect the fall crops I planted in the middle of July. Lettuce, endive, and spinach planted then sprouted very sporadically. I guess we won't be having many endive salad with bacon and blue cheese this fall! I did notice this morning, though that some of the lettuce seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago have started sprout. You can see the seedlings coming up next to the baby lettuce:
I planted next years garlic last week. It will sprout in a couple of weeks, then we will cover it with leaves and over winter it for next year. Usually I have problems with the squirrels digging up the bulbs right after I plant it (I just go through and tuck it back into the ground, and one the bulbs develop roots the squirrels loose interest). This year it isn't the squirrels, it is the chickens. They seen the little white tip sticking above the dirt and start trying to unearth it. So far there hasn't been any real damage done and I hope once the garlic starts sprouting, they will leave it alone (I can't imagine they will like the taste of garlic greens!).

I let the chickens out in the garden for at least an hour everyday. So far they they are more of a help than a hindrance. They run around and eat bugs and wood sorrel and don't touch the vegetables. I suspect that will change when they discover ripe tomatoes! They also like to take dust baths, but so far have limited themselves to two areas in the garden. When we had lots of chickens on the homestead, they could be very destructive in the garden, both with scratching up beds and eating ripe vegetables. I'm keeping an eye on my five hens, but so far, so good!

See? A BLT can be heathy!

I picked the first Mortgage Lifter today. In spite of my best intentions, somehow bacon made it into the frying pan. But that is where the resemblance to a normal BLT ends. This is what the finished product looked like:
Whole wheat pita bread, heirloom tomato slices, crispy bacon, and lots of tender baby greens--kale, arugula, beet greens, mustard, bok choi ,and purslane.

Pita Bread

All day at work, I thought about making bread. I wanted to come home and bake bread.The only problem was, I didn't need to bake bread. I still have three loaves in the freezer from the last time I baked. Then I remembered my pita bread recipe. I hadn't made pita bread for a long time and it would be perfect as something different to bring to work for those cold lunches. So I came home and made pita bread.



Pita Bread

3 1/2 cups bread flour (I used one cup white and rest was whole wheat)
1 t salt
1 T dry active yeast
1 t sugar
1 t olive oil
1 1/3 cups water

combine flour and salt in a large bowl.

Combine yeast, sugar, and 1/3 cup warm water. Stir and set aside for about until yeast is bubbly.

Make a well in the flour mixture, add the yeast mixture, one cup warm water, and the olive oil. Mix and form the dough into a ball.

Turn dough onto floured surface and knead for ten minutes. (Honestly, I never do it that long--10 minutes is a long time!)

Place dough in large oiled bowl, cover with damp cloth, set in a warm place, and let rise until doubled in size. Then punch down and form into a smooth ball.

Cut the ball into 12 uniform pieces, form each piece into a ball, roll out each ball and place on a baking sheet dusted with corn meal. Cover the flat pieces with a damp towel and let rest for 45 minutes. (I rolled out three at time---that is what fit on the cast iron skillet I was using for a baking sheet---and only let them set about 10 minutes. )
Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Bake pitas for for 2 two 3 minutes, then flip over and bake for another couple of minutes. Don't overbake! Wrap the hot pitas in a damp towel as they cool to keep them soft.

It always amazes me how they can go from being completely flat........
to all puffed up in a matter of seconds when placed in the hot oven!For dinner we had the pitas stuffed with chicken, tomatoes, summer squash, and fresh pesto. (Hmmm....note to self, don't take pictures of food on rooster plates...having a rooster tail in the picture doesn't do anything for the food.)

The Garden is Alive with Little Creatures...

Lots and lots of little creatures...

Good ones...bees, fireflies, moths, and butterflies...

Bad ones... Japanese beetles, cucumber beetles, grasshoppers (okay, so grasshoppers aren't really that bad unless you have lots and lots of them) and a stink bug (I don't know if stink bugs actually do any harm either, but they sure taste bad when you put one accidentally in your mouth along with a raspberry!).

And one kind of scary looking one. (Sort of looks like batman, doesn't it?)

And last, but definitely not least....one of my very best bug eaters....a California White hen. ....

The hazards of being a visiting nurse

Recently I saw a list of the top 10 most unhealthy occupations. Terry and I were both right on the top of the list with nursing and construction. Nursing certainly comes with many risks: exposure to all manner of contagious diseases, needle sticks, lifting and transferring heavy patients, etc. It can be also incredibly stressful and exhausting. I recently made the switch from hospital nursing to home care. One of the many motivating factors is that most people say they find home care less stressful. You are in more control of your schedule and your life. Most of my new coworkers tell me they love the work and would never go back to the hospital.

What I totally didn't expect is that many of my new coworkers are out of shape. One of my coworkers, and occupational therapist, commented to me sadly, that of all the occupational therapists, only he and one other are physically fit. We of all people as health care providers ought to know better and do better!

After three weeks though, I'm starting to figure out why. We do a lot of sitting. Today my preceptor started the day with a list of five patients to see. As we started to call them before we hit the road, three of them canceled for varies reasons. We ended up only seeing two patients, and spent the rest of the day sitting around the office for four hours making phone calls, finishing paperwork, and working on the computer. Even on the days when we do see all our patients, there is all the sitting in the car while you are driving from house to house. In the past three weeks I've done more sitting than I've ever done in my life. Quite a change from my previous job where I lost 10 lbs in the first two months I worked. If I wasn't actively trying to prevent it, I'm sure I would easily gain ten lbs or more in a couple of months. Sitting is problem number one.

McDonalds is problem number two. One of the agencies policies is that you don't use the bathroom in the patient's home. Visiting nurses get to know every single McDonald's in their area. I can see how easy it could be to grab something completely unhealthy while you are taking your bathroom break. (Ice cream cones for $1 could be my downfall...they taste far better than Dairy Queen, and the price is really temping.)

When I worked in the hospital excercise was built into my day. Often I walked the hour and 10 minutes to work (I didn't want to pay the $50 per month for parking, so either Terry gave me a ride or I walked). If I didn't walk, I routinely climbed the eight flights of stairs to my unit. The hospital was so big, it took ten minutes to get to my workplace from the front door. Caring for patients kept me busy running around all day. If I sat down it was usually only for five or ten minutes at a time. Some days you simply didn't have time to eat. Sometimes if thing were a bit slow I would go walk up and down the stairs a couple of times. Most charting was done standing up. I got my exercise whether I liked it or not, and very few of the nurses who worked on my unit where noticeably out of shape.

Nurses are notorious for caring for those around them and not taking care of themselves. We were continuously warned about that in nursing school. I do at least have a couple of things going for me. I am not good at sitting still. Not only am I not good at it, it makes me feel terrible. I quickly figured out in my first week as a visiting nurse that lack of exercise makes me really, really tired and achy. At the end of that first week I can home and I came home and cried. I was so tired from doing practically nothing and hurt all over. The next week I hopped on my treadmill for 20 minutes before going to work. It is amazing what a walking a mile can do for you first thing in the morning. There is a big difference in how I feel at the end of the day when I get my mile in first thing. The few days I've skipped it, I very much regretted it. It has become part of my morning routine. As soon as I brush my teeth, I get on the treadmill, then take a shower. I'm also trying to get a mile in as soon as I get home to perk me up and help me get through the evening. I feel like I want a nap when I get home, but a walk is really what I need. Once I get off orientation and am on my own I am planning take a walk during my lunch break.

I am also a lunch packer. When I was in nursing school and in every job I've had, I've always packed my own lunch. I've always said I do it because I am cheap. I'd rather spend $1.50 on ingredients and make my own than give up $5 or $10 of my hard earned wages for food that someone else prepared. Granted in the past, what I packed was often a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and fruit (in my previous job, food that you could cram in 3 minutes or less was pretty essential!), or leftovers from last night's dinner--but in general it was certainly much healthier and definitely cheaper than Wendy's or McDonalds. As a visiting nurse I can take a full hour for lunch and not feel one bit guilty about it. What a luxury! I can pack food that you actually have to sit down and use a fork to eat. The challenge comes in that food has to be eaten cold. When lunch time comes around, we are usually far from the office and a microwave. It takes a bit of creativity to pack decent cold lunches that use healthy ingredients.

I'm determined to use a least two vegetables from my garden everyday in my lunch. Let's stay away from anything with fat and lots of calories! Cold soups are nice and I am looking for more recipes. Today I had a green soup using kale, purslane, swiss chard and lambs quarters, along with carrot sticks and homemade hummus. I've discovered that cooked greens in potato salad and egg sandwiches are pretty good. Zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers are good in pasta salad (heavy on the vegetables please.) Green beans and broccoli are both good cold with a little bit of vinegar.

Eating healthy in this situation does take a bit thought and work. As I'm cooking dinner, I am also making and packing my lunch for the next day. It would be easier to just buy some bread and lunch meat, but them I wouldn't get the satisfaction of doing it myself and knowing that I am taking care of myself as well as I take care of my patients. I wouldn't think of cutting corners and jeopardizing my patients wellbeing. I don't want to become one of those statics that put nursing in the ranks of the top ten most unhealthy occupations. Getting enough exercise and eating well are the two most important things you can do to live a healthy life. There are enough hazards in my job already to not take care of myself!

My lunch for tomorrow...packed and ready to go. Salad from my garden with buttercrunch lettuce, baby kale, arugula, beet greens, mustard, and green beans, organic spelt bread with home made hummus, carrot and pepper sticks, and muskmelon. (Not pictured is a 6 oz container of plain, low fat yougurt--that is the one prepackaged thing I splurge on!)

Speaking of green tomatoes...

I'm wondering if Green Zebra is ripe. Any experts out there with an opinion? Here is what mine currently look like: Maybe I will be brave and pick them tomorrow evening! At least they are smaller tomatoes so it will be easier to resist the temptation to make BLTs...

Caspian Pink

I'm trying a few different heirloom tomatoes this year that I haven't grown before. Mr. Stripey being the first to ripen. Today we had out second one, Caspian Pink--a large pink tomato.

I'm impressed by the size, and judging from all the green tomatoes on the plant, it looks like it will be very productive...which is certainly a plus and somewhat unusual in heirloom tomatoes. The flavor, at least this in the first one was just a bit disappointing. Bland instead of sweet and a bit mealy rather than meaty or juicy. It could be that I picked it when it wasn't quite ripe. It can be so hard to tell with some heirlooms as a lot of them are supposed to have the green shoulders. Last year I grew Cherokee Purple and let most of them rot--not on purpose, but because they are a purplish green when ripe, and and I kept waiting for them to turn completely purple. I'm trying not to make that mistake again! None the less, Caspian Pink was a heck of a lot better than any store bought tomato. And it did make some pretty impressive BLTs.

(I don't know why I keep calling these BLTs when they are lacking the Lettuce!).

I really, really need to cut back on BLTs...it appears one the hazards of being a visiting nurse (I started a new job with a home care agency a couple of weeks ago) is serious weight gain. At least I'm guessing that by looking at the majority of my coworkers. It certainly is a lot less active than the job I had previously working a hectic medical-surgical floor! No running around on your feet all day for 12 hour days! So now I'm off to the treadmill to work off the calories from the all that bacon.

Curried Yellow Squash Soup

This evening I made this recipe from my first three yellow crookneck squash that you see in this picture. (This is todays harvest... royal burgundy and jade green beans, beets, carrots, collard greens, and Matt's wild cherry tomatoes, the first yellow pear tomato , and a glacier tomato.) I even made the vegetable broth following Diana's instructions. I would have never though to use yellow summer squash in a soup like this. Of course I didn't follow the recipe exactly ( I never do). I added a lot more garlic and used powdered ginger and maybe two teaspoons of curry powder. I also used half the recommended amount of broth and ended up with 6 cups of soup. It was thicker than Diana's, I am sure, but it was really, really good! I had some warm for dinner and put a big dollop of plain, no fat yogurt on it instead of the cilantro puree. I put some in my lunch box to to eat cold tomorrow when I am at work. I will definately be making this soup again!

Mr. Stripey

This is Mr. Stripey.

This is what he looks like on the inside.

This is what he looks like made into a BLT.

After one bite, one wonders why anyone ever bothers to buy store bought tomatoes ever.

Frist ripe tomatoes!

These ripened yesterday...The golf ball size one is Glacier and the two tiny ones are Matt's Wild Cherry. Both varieties are heirlooms. Glacier is very sweet and full of flavor. Matt's Wild Cherry may be tiny, but they pack a ton of tart tomato flavor---it is the most tomato-y tomato I have ever grown! Plus, I think they are really cute. Last year when I grew them, very few made it into the house...they mostly got eaten like berries right off the plant.

A Pickling Sort of a Day

Today was dedicated to pickles---sweet spicy bread and butter pickles and sour spicy salt pickles.

I would love to tell you that I grew all these cucumbers, but alas, my cucumbers are in serious crop failure this year. I was planning this summer to be a big pickle summer and in antipation, planted lots of dill and garlic and about 20 cucumber plants. In a normal year, I would be swamped with cucumbers. But this summer I am getting only a few everyday and those I saved for my bread and butter and pickles plus some for salads. And just for the record, I wasn't the one who bought these cucumbers--this was my husband's daughter's idea. I'm glad she suggested it, otherwise I would have ended up with just a few jars of pickles this summer.

I started the day with bread and butter pickles. I have this neat old book with lots of unusal recipes in it.Terry and I both love the this very simple bread and butter pickle recipe. (Click on the picture for a larger image.)It lends itself very well to being tweaked to allow you to use what vegetables you have on hand at the moment. I used one big bowl of cucumbers, four green peppers, and 3 big onions. I also only put in 2 1/2 cups of sugar. Somehow I can't quite quite justify using 5 cups of sugar in one recipe (unless of course I am making pecan toffee bars, but that is a recipe for another post).

Here are the cucumbers, onions, and peppers after they have been salted and ready to be packed into jars and covered with brine.

And here they are, all ten pints of the them ready for be stored for eating later. In the background you can see the cucumbers soaking in salt water for the salt pickles.

When I was done with the sweet pickles, Becky came over and we got down to the serious business of turning all those cucumbers in the first picture into salt pickles. The recipe we used is a secret Trombley family recipe and since I cannot claim to be a Trombley, I will not share it here. However, it did contain lots of garlic (homegrown, course)...

and dill....

and jalapeno peppers.
And of course lots of salt. If you are a Trombley, you need your salt, especially when it comes to pickles!

We peeled garlic, chopped peppers, and sliced cucumbers, and filled jars for what seemed like forever...and ended up with 31 quarts of salt pickles. Here we are, tired and hot, but almost done!

Becky's little son Finn couldn't wait for the cucumbers to be turned into pickles and had to eat one right away. In fact I''m pretty sure he ate at least two or three.

He also though that sitting in the canning pot was a lot of fun. It is a good thing he doesn't resemble a pickle!

When the pickles where completed, husband came in and insisted that we open a jar. My personal opinion was that the pickles needed to sit in the brine a while...say a week or two to soak up all the goodness from my home grown dill and garlic and the flavor from the spices. But I'm not a Trombley, so I defer their wished when it comes to salt pickles. Terry opened a jar, that was still warm and proceeded to eat half the jar. It appears that these pickles at least have the received the Trombley stamp of approval.

Summer splendor

So many things in full bloom right now....I have a hard time deciding what is my favorite! Here is cardinal flower. This is the first time I have ever had cardinal flower bloom. I got the plants in trade for Honeoye strawberry plants this spring.

I love this daylily...it is one I grew from seed.Terry and I both collect daylily seeds, and I grow them out and have fun seeing what they turn into. Often they are just the plain everyday ditch lilies or the Stella D'Ora type, but this year I have gotten some nice blooms. This one is one of my favorites this year. It is a prolific bloomer on short sturdy stems. The coloring is simple orange and yellow, but I love the way the petals alternate colors.

I also love this daylily--it was rescued from a construction site by Terry. It has great big lush looking brilliant orange blooms. (I love rescued plants!)

My zinnias in the front garden are going full blast and so are the marigolds. I winter sowed them this spring so they only cost me pennies per plant. They make my flower garden the loveliest one on the block. Okay, so the daylilies in this garden are pretty nice too. (This year there is not much of contest, though. I think I am the only one in the neighborhood who planted flowers. )

And last but not least, this lone phlox peeking out of a clump of hostas makes a lovely picture.