little woman

One of the things I was most excited for when moving into a house was composting! Cooking at home most nights with lots of fresh produce, we have an abundance of “chum” as we call it. We now have two “chumbuckets” because the first was getting far too heavy to turn. And if you just use one, I wasn’t sure the best way of separating the decomposed goodness from the more recently items added.

About 6 months ago, (when we got the 2nd composter as a wedding present… thanks, Cary!!) we stopped adding to the first bucket to really let it decompose.

I started prepping the beds for fall planting today and decided to mix in some of the compost.  The first bucket looked like it was ready to go!

The second bucket is abuzz with activity. At first I was concerned when I saw tons of little gals (obviously not earth worms) digging around in our chum. I did a little research and it turns out they are the larvae of the Black Soldier Fly which are perfect for assisting in decomposition. Some rear them to use them in their composters. In fact:

Photo from davesgarden.com

Luckily, I haven’t seen them anywhere but inside the bucket doing their thing… so they are welcome!

We signed up for Farmhouse Delivery which makes a weekly delivery of seasonal, local produce each Thursday. You have the option of adding on local meat (n/a), dairy, eggs and other products (local honey, flour, homemade bread, dough, etc.) so it is actually more of a local grocery delivery.

We got our first bushel today: mustard greens, butter lettuce, okra, cucumbers, tomatoes, peaches, egg plants, squash, corn and figs. And next week we are getting a gallon of local milk! I haven’t ever cooked with figs or mustard greens before. And I can’t wait to see if these Hill Country peaches give my Parker County peaches a run for their money.

And we have now harvested garlic, onions and many (many) tomatoes from the garden. We have a few red and yellow cherry tomato plants doing really well. My only full sized tomato plant that made it is a hollow tomato that acts more like a bell pepper.

Onions and garlic… yum yum!

And very soon we will be knee deep in pesto!!

Happy farming!

I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything since the wedding. Things have been so crazy!

We had the most fantastic honeymoon in England, Wales & Scotland. I posted my favorite photos from the trip on facebook so you can see the “quick” version here. If you REALLY wanted to take some time seeing the sights, you can see ALL of my photos here and here… all 1,100 of them. Pretty sure Paul took another 1,200 in case that isn’t enough for you.

The weekend after we got back, I was a bridesmaid in my dear friend Elisabeth’s wedding. It was beautiful and we had a lot of fun! I posted pictures here. We immediately came back and had a Memorial Day, wedding-is-over, Paul’s birthday party with swimming and grilling and honeymoon pictures.

Paul got a wine making kit for his birthday and we are about to start on a new adventure. He was given a Chilean Merlot recipe!

The following weekend we headed north for Gram’s 80th birthday pool party on Saturday and Caryn’s graduation pool party on Sunday.

The garden is doing well! I am harvesting tomatoes and basil like crazy. Our potato harvest was small, but I will know what I am doing this fall! We also have beautiful snapdragons, purple coneflowers, black-eyed susans, daisies, and indian paintbrush in full bloom.

Last weekend we purchased a new mattress and bed!! The mattress just got delivered, but we won’t get the frame until August. Mattrezzz Guys & Gage Furniture are great local shops if anyone is in the market.

Tomorrow we are having Wil(l)’s 1st birthday in the park behind the house! And next weekend, Val, Vaughn & his girlfriend, and Chad (my cousins) will be coming down for the weekend. It has been non-stop for the last 6 months, but we are having a great time together.

Not sure what has made me experiment so much in the kitchen the last week… perhaps it just provides something else to focus on instead of the wedding. Also, I have had a bit of a dillsplosion. This weekend I made my first attempt at pickles!

I did it while we watched Mary’s commencement. There was a live stream of it online (and apparently some on TV) because President Obama gave the commencement speech! I had to look up who gave my commencement speech… Gordon England. Meh…

As I do with most anything I make, I made it up as I went along, using a Spicy Dill Pickles recipe from Emeril to guide me. First your must sterilize. I put everything in boiling water for about 5 minutes.

While everything was getting sterilized, I cut everything up. I included big chunks of onion, lots of fresh dill, peppercorns, big cloves of garlic and, of course, the pickling cucumbers. I didn’t have any peppers on hand.

After everything has been sterilized and cooled, start your pickle juice! I used 3 cups of apple cider vinegar, 3 cups of water, 1/2 cup pickling salt, and 1/4 cup sugar. Stir so it all dissolves and bring to a boil. While that is coming to a boil, pack the jars full!

After your juice comes to a boil, pour it into each jar leaving a little room at the top. Be careful! It is hot! Tap each jar on the counter at least once to get rid of any air bubbles. Then place your lids!

Bring more water to a boil so you can process the jars. Carefully put your jars into the boiling water for about 15 minutes. I found that taking the pot off the heat made it easier for taking them out of the boiling bath when they were finished. Tongs didn’t do it for me.

That recipe called for 3 weeks of waiting… but it also left the cucumbers whole instead of cutting chips. Oh well, we will be preoccupied and out of the country for a bit anyway. We will try them when we get back from GB.

One of our wedding gifts was a pasta machine. Tonight we took our first stab at fresh pasta and it was a huge success! I don’t think I will ever go back.

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups organic, unbleached, all-purpose flour

6 regular cage free organic eggs

Process

Mound flour on a clean surface. Have plenty of work space. Make a well in the middle of the flour and crack all your eggs inside.

Whisk the eggs in the middle and then incorporate the flour into the eggs. The dough should be sticky and elastic. Knead the dough for about 4 minutes.

Wrap in plastic and let sit for 15 minutes. After it rests, cut into 1/3s.

Take one section and wrap the rest back up in the plastic. It is important the dough never get too dry through this entire process. Take your first section and put it through the pasta roller on the highest/widest/thickest setting (7 on mine).

Then fold it into 1/3s onto itself… like a letter.

Put the folded section through the pasta roller again, still on the widest setting. Continue to do this 6 or 7 times. Should the dough become sticky, sprinkle with flour. After 6 or 7 times, the dough should remain elastic and smooth. Set this aside and cover it with a dish towel while you do the same to the other 2 sections.

After all 3 sections of the dough are finished, take the first section you completed and put it through the roller again on one setting smaller (6). Continue putting it through the roller each time turning down a setting by one (5, 4, 3) until you get to the next to last setting (2). This section will be come extremely long.

At this point we cut this long piece in half. Set this section aside and cover with a dish towel. Do the same to the other 2 sections. We ended up layering sections of pasta and a dish towel to make sure it didn’t dry out. After all 3 sections have been rolled down to the next to last setting, let them all sit for about 10 minutes.

After they rest, take your first section and put it through the pasta cutter of your choice. We chose the linguine because the thicker strands might hold up best for our first attempt. We didn’t find this process to be a one-person job, but especially this part.

As your cut pasta comes out, lay it out on the dish towels again (or a spiffy pasta drying wrack if you have one… or coat hangers). Cut all sections and lay out to dry for 15 minutes.

Then you are ready to cook! We boiled half and put half in a plastic bag to freeze for later. It supposedly lasts for 6 months frozen. Don’t forget to put the date!

I wasn’t sure if it would, but, like homemade gnocchi, the pasta floated to the top when it was finished. Don’t walk away. It won’t need to cook longer than 5 minutes. I stuck around and continued to stir lightly. I was afraid it might congeal in a ball if I didn’t.

When I drained the pasta in the colander, I immediately ran some cold water on it to stop the cooking. Voilà! I tossed in some basil from the garden, tiny mozzarella balls, cherry tomatoes, olive oil, 4 or 5 chopped garlic cloves, and salt & black pepper. I can’t wait to make this meal again with homemade mozzarella and tomatoes and garlic from the garden!

Very tasty first attempt!

By the way, Drusilla is the Swallowtail caterpillar we found in the backyard. I figured I wouldn’t ever be able to persuade Paul to name a pet or a child that in the future.

So I put her and the carrot tops in a box. She stayed through the night but when I got home from work the following afternoon she was gone. But Paul found her (we are going to pretend that it is the same one, ok?) on some Queen Anne’s Lace in the yard. She has been there for several days!

I liked how this picture came out…

hanging upside down

She was really going to town on this plant.  Queen Anne’s Lace is a member of the dill family which makes sense! Then Paul checked some of the others around the yard and we found some other friends.

Slightly different coloring but these are also Black Swallowtail caterpillars.

There were two! We are calling them Tweedledum & Tweedledee.

When I come home from work every day, Sonny and I immediately hit the backyard to see what has happened during the day. I immediately noticed this caterpillar on one of my baby carrots.

It is the caterpillar for a Black Swallowtail butterfly that is getting ready to pupate. They apparently like to hang out on carrots, dill and parsley. Nothing looked too ravaged though. I just picked her up (gently and with a spade) and moved her. (My brief research tells me that you cannot tell the sex of a caterpillar just by looking at them.)

When a Swallowtail caterpillar feels threatened, they stick out what looks like orange horns and (apparently) release a foul smell. I never did smell anything though.

I realized I had pulled up a funky carrot yesterday and still had some bits left over. I put the bits and the caterpillar in a box in the backyard. Hopefully she can still turn into a swallowtail in our backyard and not eat our garden up!

If anyone has any swallowtail experience, pass it on!

Last weekend was beautiful! We woke up early on Saturday and went to the Natural Gardener and then headed to the Wildflower Center sale. We put in a new bed in the front along the side of the front porch by the door. The UPS lady suggested we put a shrub by the door to hide packages and I had wanted to put something there anyway.

We got a wooly butterfly bush, a Texas sage shrub, some Mexican feathergrass (been wanting this forever!), an American beautyberry and two red Columbines. We don’t get a lot of sun in the big bed just outside of our bedroom and only partial sun in the new bed so I stuck with shade/partial shade perennials.

The pot by the front door has a hops rhizome. Just yesterday we saw a sprout poking through the soil!! Woowoo!

This picture doesn’t do it justice but we have TONS of visitors to the bird house and bird bath we got for Christmas.

The snapdragon vine is coming along nicely! I just help it decide which way to grow a little bit each day…

Crossvine is making a come back!

Sonny is helping us check on the veggies and herbs.

This little guy was poking around on the front porch.

While we were at the Wildflower Center, we saw this beautiful sculpture.
It might be difficult to make out… it is three people performing a wedding ceremony.

Paul had to work all weekend because of our long weekend at the coast. I took advantage of this to have some much needed self time and get some stuff done. It has been a very productive weekend! I:

• cleaned the house
• stuffed and mailed wedding invitations (w/ Paul) (while finishing The Wire) (!)
• weeded the yard
• planted TWELVE tomato plants
• did laundry
• watched the 3-part BBC adaptation of the Tenant of Wildfell Hall
• got the beer supplies for the rest of the wedding beer
• had mini-Xenathons in between all of these things
• checked on Marley for Ryan & Sarah (w/ Paul)

I love weekends with nothing on the books…

Just pulled my first carrot out of the ground! She was growing in the middle of some wildflowers

The winter garden is small but coming along nicely. My lettuce is growing like a wild fire, but a bad case of the caterpillars made it virtually inedible. I have onions and shallots started in peat pots, potatoes in a “trash can” (actually more of an abandoned plastic tub without a lid I found at work) and some strawberries in a pot. My garlic and dill are still in the bed and looking good. I haven’t had the heart (or the time) to go dig out all the dead quite yet.