Green Tomatoes!

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Here's how the garden is looking lately.









So far, so good, on the the melons. Here's to hoping we'll get some this year.





A few summer squash.





A poor showing of carrots. The ground is just still too inhospitable. Mulch over winter should help a lot.





Eggplants are doing fairly well.





I've harvested a few brussel sprouts. The little heads are a bit loose. I need to look into why that might be so.





Some peppers.





Leeks.





Swiss chard.





The shady lettuce bed. Not too many of my starts survived. They should have been much more mature before I set them out.





I just love how each year is a new learning experience in gardening! This year I am learning how to deal with green tomatoes. I'm not sure why, but my tomato plants have not done well. Rebels, that's what they are.





It may be because I have them in the same spot as last year. I hoped I was going to avoid trouble in that area as last year was the very first year in that section of ground, but now I'm not so sure. Next year I will be moving things around. However, I am not the only one in this area whose tomatoes are struggling.





In any case, I did not want dessert green tomato recipes, nor a fried delectable morsel, no matter HOW much I love greasy fried things. On a search, I found quite a few savory green tomato pie recipes, however nearly every one of them called for a pound of cheese while using only about 4 green tomatoes. Not very economical.





But I did find a recipe that came from a heritage collection. I knew that would have to be economical! It ended up being very much like a baked summer squash recipe I use a lot.

What else did we do? We supported the movement to retain pioneer skills, no matter what the cost! For about 8 hours of combined work for my very dear friend who offered to come by and help us get ready for the Independence Day party and I, we got 5 quarts of tomato vegetable soup, and 3 pints of hot peppers!





Canning season keeps you busier than you remember being the year before...





Tomato art.









Ah that brings me back to the green tomato recipe.

~~~ Savory Green Tomato Pie ~~~

7 Large green tomatoes (or about 4.5 pounds of whatever size you've got)
2 TBL lemon juice
1 tube Ritz crackers (smash 'em up!)
1 cup of bread crumbs (I like Italian)
1 stick of butter (or two)
1 TBL brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Slice the tomatoes and layer in a casserole.
Sprinkle with lemon juice, then sugar, then salt and pepper.
Then you can mix the crumbs with the butter and brown it all in a pan before applying it to the top of the tomatoes, or you can do what I did, put your crumbs over the top, and then drizzle your butter all over it before baking.

325 degree oven. I'd like to say it will be done in 20 minutes like the recipe says, but it took an hour for my tomatoes. So bake 'em til they are as tender as you like.


Meanwhile, Ashlee and Michael did housework and party prep. They hung some wall decor for me.









And they put together the canopy.





This was the 40 dollar canopy I bought for myself for Mother's Day. It did not go together correctly, and we ended up having to take a hacksaw to shorten some of the pieces. But it finally got up. Whew! The heat wave was beginning to build up a fury.





We watered the grass for about a day, hoping for some green around the house where we'd be using fireworks. But it is much browner now. Sort of like wheat toast... without the health benefits. Or the taste.

Quite a change in summers since last year. Cold and wet last year, hot and dry this year. Wonder what next year will bring?





Manna?

~Faith

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I Have A Confession.

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I hate video games, they are limited in my home. But I have fallen victim to one.

Most people would not consider this a game, but I do. It's a ridiculous waste of my time and it's on this screen I am looking at right now, and that makes it video.

www.FloorPlanner.com

Yup, we leave it open on the PC and, at various times throughout the day, we stop by for a few moments and add on to our dream home.

It's educational in a way, you might say. True, but it's also sheer fantasy. This dream home has about 30,000 square feet, and that's NOT counting the 20 foot wrap around covered porch with complete wrap-around deck above.

But, if you need a fun distraction through the slower winter months, have at it. It's free for home use and you can have 3 plans saved.

Don't let the small size of the grid fool you. We quickly pushed the limits and found the grid expands as you build on, and on, and on....

Yesterday we went to can the last of those pears and apples I'd not gotten too. And they were way too far gone.

So the horses got some nice treats, and the compost pile is a bit larger. And my back porch is emptier.

Michael has just about gotten his school work done and we are heading out to sew with friends and practice dancing.

Here was last week's get together.





One young girl was in a wheelchair all last year. She's out of it, and dancing for her is slow and a bit shuffly, but she is having a wonderful time.

Ashlee and Elaine, at my place last week. Working on an overskirt. I had to sneak this photo!





And Leah, helping me fix my dropped loops in a knitting project for my daughter.





And would you believe this amazing sewing job! Ashlee is just learning to sew, and she was so happy with her progress on the skirt, that she went and got herself a pattern and is sewing this cute sundress, all by herself! I am ecstatic to see her discover a talent she did not know she had.





Last week I also began to try to work on this truck again.





Typical beater-type truck: can of starting fluid, and a pair of pliers to be able to open the hood, since the handle broke off.





It's so bad to leave a vehicle uncared for, but I have not been able to get to it. The tires badly need to be moved as they are developing severe flat spots.





So we got some handy old mobile home skirting sheets that I keep around for this kind of work.





And we needed to see about draining the old gas out of the tanks, as it goes bad if not used. I turned on the key to see how much gas we were going to be dealing with in the two tanks, and found that I had no power at all.





Time to drag out the charger again.





Put your red on positive, and the black on negative, then plug the charger in.









And don't let this fool you. For some reason, the charger reads full at first, then it slowly drops over the next hour or so, then begins to come back up again. I'm not convinced I have a correctly functioning charger...





Underneath the truck, I find an exhaust pipe that has broken off the muffler which is help up by baling wire.... bummer.





I do locate the two tanks, and follow the hoses coming out of them up to this little unit, of which I have no idea what it's called. Generally, I'll look this up, but I have no time at this moment, as I am desperately trying to get off to sewing again!





And that's where I THINK I will need to be working if I drain the tanks. However, I've got to get the electrical problem fixed first, and the (hopefully) charged battery is sitting on the truck cab floor, waiting for me to grace it with my presence.

Seamstress by day, grease monkey by night...

~Faith

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Magical Transformation!

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Yes, I get to cross something off my list! I've been needing to go through my poor houseplant rack for 2 years. We did it last night.

Again, I forgot a before picture. But I used to have about a dozen plants on it. However, with all the outdoor work, I kept forgetting to water these poor neglected plants, so most of the are dead, and the rest are looking poorly.

Here we are, beginning to untangle all the vines...





One of them, all it's little arms neatly coiled until I decide I have enough time to make a few decisions.





What a mess!





Well, it's definitely neater! LOL





Not really appealing, but for now, I'm just happy to have it all up off the floor!

The canner calls...

~Faith

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I Seriously Need A Cellar.

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I've got stuff all over the place.

















I ended up canning til 3 a.m. this morning, trying to get all those pears off my floor.

Remember these?





Well, they've been sitting on my kitchen floor for 2 weeks. There are still two boxes in the back porch, seen above, but now my floor looks like this, and I've got one more 7 quart load going in the canner right now.





Ooooh, I just got to blow my air horn into the phone on another unwanted sales call. I have my number on the registry, but these guys like to break the law and call anyhow. So this usually works for a few days.

I feel like I just cleaned my right ear....

~Faith

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Apples, Apples and Ginseng!

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With all the extra goings on, it's taken me a little while to get through the second batch of 3 gunny sacks of apples, but they are now cleared from my kitchen floor!

Leah came by and helped for the day. She is always such a sweet addition to our lives.

She and Michael found a semi-comfortable place to anchor the Apple gadget to and proceeded to knock off about 1/2 of our latest bounty.









With a fan to blow away the flies they got pretty quick at it.

And I ended up inside mostly prepping all the canning stuff. These went mostly to apples in light syrup...





And apple pie filling.





I wish I could say we got it all done, but it actually took us several days to complete the project. Michael went after them with the juicer





These all went toward applesauce. We are currently up to 34 quarts of it. Later on, I'll take some of that and cook it down into apple butter and can that.





I had a problem with my first batch of applesauce yesterday. All the jars overflowed and I had to reprocess them. But the rest went fine.

Michael and I got a special treat yesterday. We went for a visit with some friends of ours who are buyers and sellers of ginseng. We got to participate in seeing what they do, even being able to take part in the sorting.

I've got to tell you, that's a LOT of ginseng, and I can't imagine even being able to find and harvest all that these people do. It was about a refrigerator full, and that's how much they get every single day.





Michael took these with his little camera. They sure came out yellow. That's not the actual color of the room.





Ginseng is closely regulated by the government concerning harvest. The earliest you can harvest a root is if the plant has reached three years of age. This can be told by the rings on the neck of the root. They are VERY slow growing. Some of these roots are barely an inch long.

Their main market is China. So many Chinese buyers come here to inspect and purchase what has been collected. Interesting stories.





Being a fan of classic automobiles, I was not hurting to be working next to this beautiful car.





If you don't want to see a yucky picture, stop reading now!

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FINALLY got this guy! He's been evading traps for weeks!
You'll never guess what Michael did with him, when I said to take care of it.

He let him go in the woods next to the house...

Well, well, well! Our replacement rooster chick seems to have finally developed his crow this morning!

Tomatoes today. Pears tonight.

~Faith

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