Garden

Slow-Down Sunday and an Unexpected Macaroni Grill Copycat

After several hectic weeks, and an unfortunate tendency to overbook, overdo and overanalyze everything, we slowed things down around our house this weekend. I always seem to forget how fine the line is between “active” and “overwhelmed,” until I’ve jumped past it into the land of Stressville.

Yesterday started with a marathon canning session, because our garden is producing food faster than we can eat it. My husband has managed to keep the garden healthy despite the continuing drought, and I’ve kept my green-thumb-of-death far away from it. The tomatoes, eggplant and cantaloupe aren’t quite ready yet, but we have jalapenos and cucumbers coming out of our ears. After five more jars of jalapeno jelly, I tried my hand at sweet pickles:

That was certainly an adventure, because as a pickling virgin, I was unprepared for the otherwise predictable fact that cucumbers float. How in the heck do people keep them from popping above the rim and contaminating the lip of the jar before they can get the lid on? Am I missing something here? Anyway, these jars will have to cure about four to six weeks before I can taste- test them to see whether my first foray into pickles was epic success or depressing failure. As a relative canning newbie, the odds are split pretty evenly between these possibilities. Meanwhile during my canning sprint, the heathens goofed off, as they are wont to do:

Yes, that was my child wearing gloves, when the temperature outside was roughly 98 degrees. Furthermore, you should note that he cut all the fingers of said gloves off, which apparently occurred WITH MY HUSBAND’S BLESSING. My oldest has since been notified that he should run all scissor-generated wardrobe modifications by ME, before undertaking them…sigh. His brother managed to contain his amusement:

Probably because he was thinking, “better you than me!”

We watched a rare late afternoon storm from the shelter of our front porch:

And then headed inside for dinner.

Perhaps the best part of the day was my surprisingly successful bread experiment. In last month’s Food Network Magazine, I saw a recipe for something similar to Macaroni Grill’s bread. Since my youngest heathen loves this bread and can eat his weight in it, I decided this copycat recipe was worth a try. After all, I was in the need for some cool mom points to start my week off right. I mixed up the dough in my stand mixer, and let it rise in our laundry room, since the heat in humidity in that room cuts our rising time in half:

Forming the loaves was easy, because this dough was very forgiving and not at all sticky:

The finished product was perfect:

So, yes, I did in fact rack up some cool mom credit. The only way I deviated from the recipe was by omitting the additional sprinkling of rosemary over the top of the loaves. Rosemary is a strong enough herb in this recipe that the flavor already comes through well enough, and the additional rosemary garnish probably would have freaked the heathens out anyway. Want to try it? Here’s the recipe I found at Food Network:

Almost Famous Rosemary Bread

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Servings: 0
Notes

Notes

Ingredients
  • 1 1/4-ounce packet active dry yeast
  • 2 teaspoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing and serving
  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
  • 2 tablespoons dried rosemary
  • 1 teaspoon fine salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt Freshly ground pepper
Directions
Stir the yeast, sugar and 1/4 cup warm water in a large bowl (or in the bowl of a stand mixer). Let sit until foamy, about 5 minutes.
Add 1 tablespoon olive oil, the flour, 1 1/2 tablespoons rosemary, the fine salt and 3/4 cup warm water; stir with a wooden spoon (or with the dough hook if using a mixer) until a dough forms.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead, dusting lightly with flour if necessary, until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. (Or knead with the dough hook on medium-high speed, adding a little flour if the dough sticks to the bowl, about 8 minutes.)
Brush a large bowl with olive oil. Add the dough, cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature until more than doubled, about 2 hours.
Brush 2 baking sheets with olive oil. Generously flour a work surface; turn the dough out onto the flour and divide into 4 pieces. Working with one piece at a time, sprinkle some flour on the dough, then fold the top and bottom portions into the middle. Fold in the sides to make a free-form square. Use a spatula to turn the dough over, then tuck the corners under to form a ball. Place seam-side down on a prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough, putting 2 balls on each baking sheet. Let stand, uncovered, until more than doubled, about 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Bake the loaves 10 minutes; brush with the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil and sprinkle with the kosher salt and the remaining 1/2 tablespoon rosemary. Continue baking until golden brown, about 10 more minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool. Serve with olive oil seasoned with pepper.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Garden Observations In Lieu of Housework

Despite the fact that I know the misery of a Louisiana summer is just around the corner, I can’t help but revel in the perfect Spring weather. As you can see, the hydrangeas are blooming, which happens to be my favorite flower. I plan to grab some shears tomorrow and clip some flowers to put around the house. Even though my housework is sadly neglected in recent days, I grabbed the camera after work, and spent an hour snapping pictures and watching the guys play catch. After all, who needs clean underwear anyway?

Our vegetable garden appears to be thriving, probably because I keep my green-thumb-of-death far, far away. I call it an altruistic act of garden preservation…my husband calls it flat-out laziness. Who cares, as long as it lives?

We still have plenty of work and tinkering to do around the yard, but I managed to solicit (read: draft) some volunteers. I may or may not have said, “come on, put your back into it,” in the seconds before this photo was taken.

Just kidding! He WANTED to play with the shovel…really!

If you’ll excuse me, I have a bathroom to clean…

Send wine, STAT!

I Need a Shower, a Cocktail and a Bucket of Icy-Hot Please.

Wooooo boy.

I have been unintentionally MIA recently, mostly because my workload tripled this week. This means I have been not only sick, but stressed, snarly, coughy and not fit for public consumption. I’ve even gone so far as to take a couple of vacation days next week, because my house is starting to look dirtier than the Haunted Mansion.

And that’s WITH Granny coming by and secretly doing my laundry. Sad, I know.

Despite running fever and coughing up my left lung on occasion, I still slapped on my gardening gloves and spent the weekend catching up on our various projects. We had plants that needed planting, and waiting another week was probably not a good idea. After all, when a heathen has actually gone through the trouble of planting some seeds, the least we can do as parents is plant the seedlings before they outgrow their pots:

I continue on my quest to overcome my green-thumb-of-death, but admit that it’s too soon to tell if I’ve improved on my total stupidity on all things plant-like. We had a truckload of dirt delivered to fill the remainder of our raised beds, but the closest the load could be dropped was our driveway. My poor husband has been shoveling and pushing the wheelbarrow so much that he probably needs muscle transplants; meanwhile, our driveway is still piled high with more dirt than we could ever need. Poor planning on my part, I guess. We got most of our plants in the ground, including our tomatoes:

Peppers:

Eggplant:

And herbs:

I also planted zinnias around the tomato bed, because I think I heard somewhere that they are supposed to help…help do what I have no idea….or maybe it was marigolds….oh well.

I also planted another flat and a half of various flowers, but was too tired to get the camera and walk around the yard.

So, that’s what my weekend looked like…now I just have dinner to cook, dishes to do, sheets to wash…

Or I could just fix a drink and hide in the bathtub.

Decisions, decisions……

Having a Love/Hate Relationship

Spring is here! As you can see, my dogwood tree is blooming. So are the wisteria, which I love, and the dreaded oak trees, which I hate. My car and porch are coated in greenish-yellow pollen, and as a family afflicted by seasonal allergies, our home is not the happiest place on Earth right now. Given the high cost of even over-the-counter allergy medication, we may go broke trying to keep our entire family from sniffling to death. Kleenex and ear phones are our saving grace.

The weather is gorgeous, and we are trying to make the best of it despite the fact that we all sound like someone took a blow torch to our vocal cords. On a recent trip to our local home improvement store, our kids decided that they wanted to plant something…not just anything, mind you. Ohhhh, nooooo. They wanted to plant a marigold…and only a marigold. I kid you not, you would think those heathens were angling for a puppy with the way they hounded us through the store. Given that a $1.50 marigold is a heck of a lot cheaper than a puppy (and it doesn’t poop), that was an easy request to give in to, even if I was shaking my head at two boys who seemed inordinately attached to a potted plant.

Thank goodness Venus fly traps are not indigenous to our area. Otherwise, we’d be in big trouble.

 

A little less imagination and a little more reality

Ooooh boy. It’s been a week.

After my house was felled by the stomach virus last week, both my youngest and my husband have developed some severe cold/allergy funk that has made sleep elusive for all of us.

When my youngest woke up with fever on Saturday, (and after I finished banging my head into a wall and lamenting the fact that we can’t seem to catch a break lately), my husband and I still managed to finish the raised vegetable beds we’ve been toiling with for weeks:

Yes, I realize those beds are obscenely high. In our neighborhood, the soil is hard-packed clay, and even if we will till the top layer, the ground remains inhospitable to healthy vegetables. We learned this the hard way last year, and decided to play it safe from here on out.

After my husband finished swearing at his decrepit electric drill, we planted our squash, which had quickly outgrown its’ seed-starting cups:

We had not wanted to plant any of our seedlings so soon; from the get-go, we realized that we would need a truck-load of dirt to fill all our vegetable beds, because buying bags of soil from Lowes was not economically sensible. However, I had just not gotten around to making those arrangements…I blame the stomach virus…work…solar flares…and/or wardrobe malfunctions. The squash seedlings had other plans, as well as a lack of compassion for the calamity of stomach viruses/solar flares/work/wardrobe malfunctions, so we compromised and filled one bed with too-expensive soil.

After lifting 40 bags of 40-pound soil, I am a sore, whiny wreck of a woman.

And all the sudden, my dreams of a picture-perfect garden have a nice dose of reality. I am not deterred, however.

I’ll save disillusionment for the 105 degree days of July.

Garden Fever and Manual Labor

I came home to this today:

The bulbs around the yard have started to sprout like crazy. Meanwhile, our seeds sprouted too:

And the weather this weekend looks very promising. I think we may find time to construct the raised beds we have planned for our vegetable garden. Both the landscape of our yard and the soil are not very conducive to healthy gardening, so raised beds are the best option for vegetable success. We’ve built raised beds in the past by following the easy picture tutorial from Ree Drummond, a.k.a the Pioneer Woman (http://thepioneerwoman.com/homeandgarden/2009/02/build-your-own-raised-flowervegetable-bed/). Having all the steps and materials described in layman’s terms made constructing the old beds a snap, so I bet we could knock out all four new beds in an afternoon. I may be getting overly optimistic, but I really want to conquer my green thumb of death this year.

Besides, the kids are old enough now for manual labor, and I foresee pulling weeds as the new punishment for mouthy boys.

Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

Good Weather + Ambitious Husband = Victory for ME!!!!

My husband has been busy this weekend. In an effort to stop me and the kids from slipping and sliding in the mud between our deck and the cars, he decided to recycle some paving stones the previous owners of our house left behind.

As you can see, this is a work in progress. He laid out a path from the driveway to the deck, and then another from the deck to the detached garage. He has been hard at work, digging out the squares, sinking the pavers, and leveling the whole mess off.

I helped too…that is, I kept him supplied with cocktails and tried to look far too delicate to do any heavy lifting.

Hopefully, he’ll finish this section soon, but in the meantime, I can get to my car now without my heels sinking into two inches of mud. For these small things, I am grateful.

Recycling K-Cups and Plywood into Seed-Starting Trays

A few days ago, I posted about how my husband figured our coffee K-Cups were the perfect size for starting seeds. In an effort to recycle these plastic cups, as well as the plywood scraps from our Halloween decorations, he created some impromptu trays for starting seeds. I was really impressed with what he was able to throw together, using only materials he recycled from other projects…and it gave me a good excuse to drink more coffee while I ogled him with the power tools. All we needed for this project were the K-Cups, plywood scraps, a pencil, an electric drill and a jigsaw or circular saw. We also ended up using some screws we had leftover from Halloween as well.

To get started, my husband first laid out some of our empty K-cups onto a plywood scrap in order to try and see what the best way to arrange the cups was. We wanted to maximize the use of the plywood scraps, while still giving enough room for plants to actually grow. Also, he wanted the trays to be smaller and more maneuverable, so that we could easily move them around as needed:

Once he had the design, I traced the base of the cups onto the plywood, and he drilled holes using his 1-1/2 inch drill bit:

Next, he used his jigsaw (though admittedly a circular saw would have worked too), and trimmed down the plywood scrap into a rectangle:

We used this first rectangle as a template, and quickly traced it repeatedly over our larger plywood scraps, so that we could speed up the process:

Once he had cut out the rectangles, my husband free-handed a design for legs, so that the trays would be supported and allow the K-Cups to drain well when watered. We cut out two for every rectangle:

In the meantime, I put my oldest heathen to work cleaning out all our collected K-cups and punching drainage holes in the bottom…because why have kids if you can’t make them do a little manual labor every once in a while?

Finally, my husband screwed the legs onto the rectangle, and the kids dropped in the K-Cups:

Overall, we made nearly a dozen trays in a very short amount of time, while using only materials we had on-hand. In our slow efforts to be more environmentally conscious, we’ve accomplished two goals with this project: we found a way to recycle and repurpose some things, and we are even more motivated to get our garden going this year.

As long as I keep my green-thumb-of-death contained, this should be a good year…

Thinking Spring…And Suckering My Husband.

You may remember that I got my husband this coffee maker for Christmas:

While I am still in love with it, the coffee maker also requires these little plastic cups:

That’s the part I’m not so in love with. I am by no means the princess of environmentalism, but I am a little uncomfortable with that kind of waste…even if those boogers produce the tastiest coffee I’ve had outside of a Starbucks. So, I’ve been enjoying my tasty, tasty coffee with the nagging guilt that these plastic cups are a problem.

In the meantime, I’ve had just enough time to develop amnesia about the reality of 105 degree summer days, and have yet again convinced both myself and my husband (not really), that this year, I really will overcome my green thumb of death. I look at seed catalogues, and plot about how I (i.e. my husband) can turn our yard into a Southern Living photo op.

Rather than try and talk me out of it (again), my husband looked at our pile of plastic coffee cups, and realized that they would be just about the perfect size in which to start our seeds.

See? My madness is contagious. Either that, or I have whined him into submission. Whatever the cause, he has big plans for our plastic cups, and I’ll post some pictures soon.

I now have perfectly good excuse to drink more coffee than I should…just promise to peel me off the ceiling later.