"It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought"

-James Douglas

time seems like it's bizarre, lately. like, i can't wrap my mind around the fact that it's ALREADY the end of November. everyone is just as crazy, if not more crazy, than i. this leads to spidzer Thanksgiving plans.

for dinner at my mom's we don't need to bring anything, but want to. so...sauteed brussels sprouts w/lemon and pistachios,it is.
plus, i want to make a vegan pecan pie, but do not, despite hours(yes, hours) of searching, have a recipe. they're all too slightly different and i don't know which direction to go w/it.

i'll let you know, maybe.

also, we're having Thanksgiving at mom's on Daniel's birthday, so i might make him some sort of cake, i just don't know. i mean, i like cake and i guess that decides it. i like cake.

i haven't been reading enough lately and i can feel it in my brain. it's like it's short circuiting or something.

"luckily" winter's on the way. so, lots of time for reading.

planted a couple herbs in small pots for the winter. brought in the oregano and thyme that aunt Janice brought us and our rosemary plant. newly sprouted are a bunch of cilantro and a few dill, plus a bunch of catnip that i'm trying to use cat-mind control to try and save so that they can grow at all before they get attacked/eaten. oh yeah, and a bunch of sage that, if you ask me, is one of the best-looking herbs out there.

i will now medicate my brain w/coffee and recipe-searching.

“What fun is it being cool if you can't wear a sombrero” -Calvin and Hobbes

Salsa verde.
We grew tomatillos.
(I hate that this computer doesn't know Spanish-therefore it squiggly underlines verde and tomatillos b/c it thinks that i misspelled them)
Didn't have any of the peppers the recipe called for, so i used 2 of the small super-hot ones that my step-dad gave us from his garden, and it burninated my mouth, but was otherwise good.

20 tomatillos
2 hot peppers
2 cloves garlic
appx. 4 T lime juice
salt
cilantro
1/2 onion

besides my mouth being on fire, it turned out fairly well.
have a bunch of tomatillos left, i think i'll give it a day or two and try again, minus the burning!

“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion" -Henry David Thoreau

had a BUNCH of pumpkin puree left from when i made the ravioli. wasn't really ready to make more ravioli, so i made some pumpkin, cranberry, walnut muffins.

every recipe that i could find called for either brown sugar or molasses, which there was neither of, in our house,so i searched and searched and finally found one that called for neither. but it didn't seem altogether right,so i altered it,very slightly.

2 C flour (1 C w wheat, 1C white)
1/2 C sugar
1 T baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
15 oz. pumpkin puree(yes, our measuring cups have ounce measurements and i forgot to look at what that equated to...)
1/2 C cranberry (i would recommend cutting each cranberry in half)
1/2 C walnuts(smashed)

they are pleasantly not too sweet,but fruity and pumpkin-y. had one then w/soup and it was perfection. just had one w/coffee and it was just as good.

"We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, so we buy ice cream." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

i made pumpkin ravioli,again. after looking back to last year's MND-posts, i realized about half-way through making this year's that i did not actually post too much about it and that i'd written all of the dough and filling-making stats in my "recipe book" (very commonly called a cookbook...FYI.)

so, i guess i will post last years' recipe:
dough: 2.5 C flour
appx. 1 C water
2t olive oil
salt

filling:
brown sugar
(vegan)butter
nutmeg
pepper
sage
vinegar
oh, and pureed pumpkin.

this year's recipe:

dough:same

filling:
pureed pumpkin
water
garlic powder
S&P
cinnamon
nutmeg
ginger
vegetable oil

and a critique of both:
the critique of last year's will have to be from memory,which, if you know me,is not terribly reliable. let's see, it was really, really good. there.
this year's was clearly a lot different. i don't think that this year's filling was as "smooth" as last year's. it seemed...chunkier? which isn't to say that it wasn't good. i just baked some pumpkin inards and Cuisinart-ed it. it definitely wasn't as sweet of a filling. the sweet filling offset the savory-ness of the sauce, if i remember right. this time we made a garlic-oil-sage sauce for it. i was satisfied.

*shrug*

still have a bunch of pumpkin left. will make more filling using a sweeter take on the recipe. i froze about a dozen and will make a nice,tidy comparison at a later date.

hmmm. i wonder how whole wheat flour would taste for the dough? i'll stick to perfecting the filling first...

oh, i also baked the apple pie-pocket-things that i froze this last summer and besides one leaking all over the tray, they were perfect and eaten w/ice cream...you know, b/c it's almost winter. and nothing says 'good-times' like ice cream when it's frigid outside...

lousy smarch weather!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/dining/29toma.html

//A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.// -Carl Reiner

again, i'm always so bad about this...i guess my conviction w/everything waxes and wanes and i'm sorry.

tomatoes are odd. they're all incredibly late this year and some seem to be diseased w/ some kind of "blight". mom's tomatoes, too, so i know that it's not something that we did wrong,specifically.

hopefully, before it gets too much colder there will be enough healthily ripened to make a couple ounces of reserve sauce for winter.

speaking of which, i keep putting off freezing latkes from our potatoes and making one last batch of apple sauce from the apples i picked a couple of weeks ago.

i also want to make zucchini bread,which i haven't made yet this year as we weren't blessed w/any amount of zucchini, this year.

everything just seems really stunted and slow-going as far as the garden is concerned,this year, and it's gonna be like trying to garden in Antarctica,soon.

bat-peep time!

after returning from Kristyn's wedding too much later than we should have and subsequently only sleeping 6 hours, i'm lazy. add to this that it looks depressing and overcast out, i did one quick garden walk-through and in about a week we're going to be tomato-ed. a pumpkin is perfectly shaped and the size of an infants' head.(ew, what?) okra looks like a couple might happen sometime maybe next week...one of our pepper plants flowered! due to some unfortunate-pepper-happenings(or not-so-much) i have no idea which kind it is,but whatever! i like peppers of all kinds, save roasted red ones...which i don't think you can just grow all roasted and red...a few cucumbers have started. cucumber flowers,despite their yellow-ocity are really pretty. i don't have the mental-energy to think about any of this right now...

I do my work at the same time each day - the last minute. -Author Unknown

i'm so bad/inconsistent w/this and that makes me EXTREMELY annoyed w/myself.

upon rereading i've realized that i just 'left you hanging' with a couple of things...the "mystery" of the sunflowers is that deer ate the tops right off. stupid,cute,hungry, diabolical deer. the dahlias are amazing and kind of perfect. they are simply maroon. the petals are awesome-looking.

i've been very lazy...or absent-mother-like w/the garden, this week. blame random, freakish, unavoidable faults of country-living. (if you want more details...ask,but be prepared for a no-less than 300-500 word rant)

not that it has anything to do w/the garden but we finally got a porch swing!!! we can now SIT AND LOOK at the garden. leisure-like.

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." -H.G. Wells, The Outline of History

2 things have happened w/in the last few days that are worthy of documenting. 1. we found the book of what/where we planted everything 2. if we hadn't found the book,the plants that we were (very poorly) guessing were eggplant plants were, in fact, tomatillo plants. don't even ask me what we were thinking. probably just wishful thinking as there is NO REASON that eggplants shouldn't thrive,but we have not been able to grow a single one, despite planting dozens.
either way,tomatillos. weird,but yay. i will seriously salsa verde-up this place.

it also looks as though a few of our heirloom tomato plants are tomato-ing!

we've gotten a bunch of potatoes this week and took in all of the garlic and a couple onions.

i made scallion pancakes the other night, which, despite what my spidzer-mom thinks, one does not eat w/syrup. they were exceptional.

i gave myself 2 blisters from "frenching" green beans, which is really the only way that i like to eat them.(i don't know why. they're just not as overwhelming) Jake got a mandoline for his birthday but i'm too scared of cutting various fingers off to ever use that,i will just deal with blisters. weird. maybe i hold knives wrong?

b/c a lot of the garlic was split and we want to be able to preserve/extend it,i chopped a bunch of it up and put it with olive oil in a jar, to be used for cooking, which is very garlic-y.

this week, we'll get the rest of the onions and will probably slice/freeze the majority of them.

greens and lettuce. lots.

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. -Chinese Proverb

super-rainy-summer. good for the garden...i suppose. makes me annoyed at myself that when it's not raining, i really do not spend enough time out there.

a few sunflowers have blossomed! one of them is of the red variety! yay. i specifically planted about 6 on the far-side of the garden fence,nearest the road,but still over 20 feet from the actual road and about half of those have been to all appearances,chomped in half. no more top. nothing. and there's no evidence of anything. in my head, it's some 'Lost'-like scenario that is half-ing my sunflowers! good thing i still have at least a dozen that planted themselves from last years sunflowers.

snap peas are currently sustaining us, food-wise. while any actual peas continue to be less-than-exilerating

also, greens such as lettuce, spinach and radish-greens are fine and have the potential to make me entirely sick of them if i wasn't so satisfied with not having to grocery shop for produce.

as i have previously mentioned, a lot of tomato plants were victims of blight, but there are a couple that we might get a tomato or two off of...grumble grumble.

also finally! eggplant plants?!?

corn is still stunted. all squash,pumpkin and melon plants have blossomed w/in the last day or so. cucumbers are...only 2(of 6) survived, but have not blossomed yet.

one nasturtium (flowered)...amazing that more did not survive as i previously have been known to consider them indestructable as they were THE ONLY THING that survived in PDX.
though, the only ones that i planted this year were from seeds that i saved from last years plants, so...

onions and garlic are almost there,but are really just miniature-versions of actually edible, exciting food. so i think that we'll give them another week or so to continue growing.

dahlias have buds but have not blossomed yet.

more string beans than ever. might can some. might. could freeze them too, we'll see.

"He does not need opium. He has the gift of reverie." -Anais Nin

ok, i lied, it only takes between 10-15 snap pea-plants to produce more-than-enough snap-peas. i have about an entire smarty-pants of snap peas...and there are at least that many more on the way.

green beans(of the not-green, but yellow and purple variety) are totally going to be in full effect in a day or so...

lots of greens and salad-y items...

some tomato plants appear to be trying to do something after appearing to have given up...

pumpkin plants look good. i'm vowing to make more pumpkin-ravioli than anyone could EVER NEED, this year. plus, can or freeze the puree for middle-of-winter pumpkin pies...

i'm excited to see the mystery-dahlias as they have budded but have yet to bloom. hopefully pictures to follow.

so many marigolds. mom started no-less than 6,000 and upon saying that i wanted them all around our porch,to ward off mosquitoes, and she keeps gifting me with them...

our corn appears to be stunted,much like our tomato plants appeared...i dunno.

cucumber plants are touch-and-go,really, at this point...we were totally going to "pickle" them this year, if we got as many as last year,but it's not looking so good.

The reason cats climb is so that they can look down on almost every other animal - it's also the reason they hate birds. ~K.C. Buffington

so, "gardening things" have been A LOT of weeding and getting sunburned(despite my constant application of sunblock)(yay! Team Paleforce!) and awaiting the arrival of no less than ONE ZILLION beans.(mom bought a "frencher," which is the only way i've ever liked to eat green beans. they taste better that way. it's probably something about the surface-area and the brine-y salty-ness.)

i have recovered about 5 pea pods,leading to the conclusion that if a person wants to do anything like-eat a serving of peas, instead of-add them to a stir-fry, that person needs to plant no less than 50 pea plants. our 15 or so, do not make for good eating. but the flowers are pretty, if nothing else

of the 6 pumpkin seeds planted, 5 came up and are growing and despite being outside of our garden-fencing, have not been eaten by deer. mom and Stan planted their entire former-alpaca-grazing-area with pumpkins and deer cleaned it out. oops!

been talking to some people a lot lately about elevation and how apparently vital it is to take into consideration. example:less than 2 miles away it can be fine,weather-wise and here, it will be blizzard-ing. this mostly only matters when, say, you're driving and all of a sudden the road turns to ice and you have to be pulled from a ditch...but! when you've been very careful to repeatedly check last-frost dates and want to preserve your lovely heirloom pepper and tomato plants that you very carefully started indoors,and then they are all frost-touched, less then 2 weeks later, it's annoying,to say the least.

that said,we have a very short growing season,here. one stupid reason that we a.)can't grow sweet poatatoes and b.)need a greenhouse. (anyone want to gift me w/a million dollars?)

using the ever-faithful fallback of google,i've concluded that the elevation of Cayuta,NY is about 1060-ish ft. who knows what part of Cayuta that measurement was taken,but it's approximate. compared, Elmira is at about 984ft.

deer,elevation,bugs,blight(whatever THAT is)-all factors to consider,when gardening. as well as rainfall,freak-wind storms that uproot entire rows of corn and cats (and neighborhood dogs)who ignore the fence and use parts of the garden as their litter box/personal lavatory.

the Dead Animal Count for this week is: one huge robin, 2 baby mice(still in wrinkly,fetal-position!), and two adult mice. my favorite being the fetal mice, one being dropped in the middle of our bed and one being batted underneath the couch. Stan's building us a bat house(at my request b/c i'll do anything to stop the onslaught of mosquitoes) and i just hope that we can find a place out-of-the-way enough so that Euronymous doesn't catch ANYMORE bats...

happiness is garlic

spent much of the morning weeding and being attacked by various forms of the insect kingdom. now it is raining,which is good for the garden and to stop bugs, so i am pro-this rain.

there were a couple of pea pods! it's very exciting.

Publish Post

other than that and tons of weeds, not much else is happening yet.

garlic scapes are good, kinda creepy-looking,but, you know. might try making some garlic-scape pesto...

there are so many friggin' ways to use garlic! i love it! garlic-lovers unite!

"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks." -Tennessee Williams

got the first 'fruits' of the garden,yesterday. 2,yes 2 radishes. i hate radishes. but they grew! and Jake likes them.
the pumpkins have sprouted!
i'm excited about the dahlia bulbs that someones gave Jake. they are actually doing pretty well! it's an exciting mystery since they can look a thousand different ways,and these are rumored to be red!
raspberry bush transplants also happened.
as well as mom building a small rock wall around the lilies and other random flower-bed, spidzer mom.

rock gardening 2009

planted about 10 pumpkin plant yesterday. one couldn't really imagine the amount of rocks just below the surface! it was crazy-hard.

also found,when loosening the dirt in the last two rows that sunflowers from last years seeds have planted themselves! this is very exciting. now i just need to be careful not to squish them. and i hope that they are the red ones. i saved a million of the regulars, but the red ones were incredibly hard to extract/find the seeds on and i like red...

it's not so windy today,but kinda freezing.

i'll wait for the temperature to go out and finish preparing the final pieces of garden,then i have to decide what to actually plant there...

porch sitting and lemonade drinking.

Stan found and ordered some sweet potatoes that have a shorter growing season than most,so would(hypothetically) be able to be grown in these here parts...he gave us 6 of the plants...i counted 12 bean-plants that have already sprouted from planting them last week!

still have 2 rows left to get done and planted. what's going in them is a mystery as it could be any of dozens of things to choose from.

i've got to get a bunch of pumpkins in today,which also requires digging in the rock capitol of the universe.

it's so windy that i might die.

so many itchy-bug-bites that i might die,also.

Weed 'em and reap.

it was hot and sweaty yesterday and even though i was up really early today and continue to put in beans and peas around the perimeter of the garden,(so they can climb on the fence) i've managed to get about 50% of them in and i'm dying of sweat and bugs.

stupid rocks! i hate you! and bugs!

the bugs and rocks make me reconsider hobbies and how 'worth it' growing tons of food actually is. i know,i know, i'm just being cranky. it's totally worth it.

and really,what other hobby do i have? tv? the interweb? disciplining cats?

i should get back out there. i know,i know, i'm going. going to finish planting the beans and peas today.

we'll see when the rest get done(i'm going to predict that 'tomorrow', is likely,if it doesn't rain,which we could actually use...)

The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes. ~Agatha Christie

been relocating herbs and over-active seedlings to bigger/more permanent pots. still a week or two before we can get the rest of the stuff(besides roots) into the ground. probably finish up the roots tonight with the potatoes that we prepared the eyes for planting the other night.

Jake and Stan finished the roof of the porch last night. Jake lost a good hunk of his finger...

debating whether or not to make some kind of little apple-pastry that i have yet to plan out,at all.

still have about 2X the amount shown in the picture to till up and try to de-rockify, before planting can commence. 'good' thing there's still over a week of potential-frosts.

"Plant carrots in January and you'll never have to eat carrots. "

officially started the garden for this year!

got a bunch of onion and potato starts from a farm/garden place that i can never remember the name of.

have some onions that i started from seed that,i guess,are going to have to go in a different area. either way,onions.

turnips, carrots,radishes and beets. hella. i don't like radishes. Jake and mom do. many happy-radish-parties to them.

will do more this afternoon...clay deposits and tons of rocks make it a very time-energy-consuming task.

plus dahlias. thumbs up.

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. ~

apparently, we started the 'starts' a little too early. we've still got about a week or so before the real chance for a frost passes, and most of the 'starts' are READY TO GO.

so many tomatoes! which is good b/c this year,i'm gonna freeze enough sauce to make it through this year.(or longer than October,which the time that we made it to last year.)

also decided that,for next year, we're going to plant like 5 or 6 rows of garlic, preserve a lot and then go back to 1 or 2 rows the next year,and so on and so forth. 1 row is simply not enough!
plus,i really enjoy young-garlic scallions,but would feel wasteful if i did that to the 10-ish plants we have right now.

our peach tree blossomed! both it and the pear have another year or so before anything substantiates, but i'm excited. plus one cherry baby-tree(of the 2 that my mom bought us) survived the winter and has leaves!

no word on any of the nut trees, as they appear dead. or to be 'sleeping',but who knows!?

for the past couple of days i've been dirty-ing myself with trying to get the flat walk-way rocks set. harder than it looks!

thinking about making some pierogies for dinner and freezing some,too. we have a lot of potatoes that Jake got from a 'veganic' farm in Ithaca,who are at the farmer's market. think they're called 'Unexpected', but my memory is unreliable.

okay,hours later...i did make the pierogies,onion and roasted garlic. we have run out of flour,though,so only enough for a meal,not to freeze,yet.

" In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." ~Margaret Atwood

we've gotten the main garden-area raked and fenced and basically,ready to go. the fence was the hardest part,since there are hundreds of thousands of huge rocks just below the surface just waiting for someone to TRY ANYTHING. rock farmers.

in the fall we started a small(about 10 plants,but we LOVE to use it) row of garlic. it's like bulbs. for 'best results' they should be put in in the fall.

we have yet to see if,in fact,the winters are too harsh for asparagus,since it takes a couple years before you start getting anything edible. now we're looking at sad little piles of potentially-dead asparagus plants,hoping that they survive.

we've got the starts-started and now we're waiting for fear of frost to put them in the ground.

we've also got it pretty-much mapped out, as far as taller plants and sun exposure and plants that need to climb on things,ect.

still planning out a couple separate spots(dirt mounds?) for things that have a tendency to try to take over and dominate the rest of the garden. these include,but are not limited to,cucumber,zucchini,pumpkin and squashes.

cucumber blossoms are the prettiest. wouldn't mind trying to come up w/a stuffed squash blossom recipe,this year...

If you pass by the color purple in a field and don't notice it, God gets real pissed off. - Alice Walker

did the heirloom 'starts' 2 days ago. it basically was everything that can't wait to be put directly in the ground,which will begin to happen w/in the next month,unless we keep getting freak snow-storms that blanket the ground with 2 inches of snow...greatest thing to wake up to ever!

finally,after more than a week,a pepper decided to sprout...one of the non-heirloom ones that i started awhile ago,just to 'see'. weirdo. beardo.

we also(finally)got on top of obtaining a compost bin.

we also got a wheel barrel.
good for moving things around and such.

picked up some really cool flower seeds. passion flower. it looks like an alien. it's a climber,so i would like to have it,eventually, climb around the garden fencing, which we,of course, have yet to get around to putting up. flowers everywhere! the lily bulbs that mom got me have sprouted! hope snow doesn't get them! also want to try and save the living christmas tree by transferring it to new dirt and ground and fresh air, w/in the next week...plant. plant. plant. dirt. dirt. dirt.

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_178/1188148841SCGa5U.jpg

spring approach-eth.

haven't planted any heirloom seeds yet,as i want jake to help,so that i'm not the only one to blame when something "doesn't work. "

non-heirloom seeds that i have planted and that have spouted are:
*sunflowers
*red sunflowers
*catnip
*basil
*dill
*climbing spinach
*nasturtium
*peas
*okra
*sage
*sweet marjoram

in the next few days,i think that jake and i are going to at least start preparation for heirloom-seed-ocity.

nothing too exciting yet...

make it okay.

planted a couple of herbs yesterday,before i got really frustrated with dirt/mess/cats. running a humidifier next to the seedlings,see if it does anything besides make the room really humid...probably try to do some more today and be more patient about the whole deal/cats.

bonfires and gardens...

we got our heirloom seeds yesterday. so many seeds! still gonna be a couple of weeks before i can start seedlings.

not that it's 'mountain news'-y,but it's news...we went to a 'punk' show last night. better than my expectations,but by no means good. 'fag' and 'cunt,' are not synonymous w/bad. i love living in western ny!!! or...i left as soon as i could. boomerang life. oops!

we're still trying to plan out/execute the 'greenhouse' room. we'll see how THAT works out.

don't understand amaranth. we have seeds for it. jake is excited. i continue to shrug my shoulders in confusion about it.

there is still snow. why so much winter?

time to work on a 'zine!!

//she could be a farmer in those clothes//

we made french toast(obviously vegan...) out of zucchini bread, last night. for the record, the frozen zucchini has a slightly freezer burned taste. but it worked. and we have been super busy with planning the garden.
plus, we actually have the stuff for fencing it off this year.(well,the front one.)
we have a lot of seeds left from last year,which are mostly random ones that mom picked up on sale,plus some that i retrieved from the garden and we ordered well over $100 worth of heirloom seeds.

we're still unclear about heirloom. like,is heirloom always organic? i mean,i'm pretty sure that it isn't the other way around,so i dunno.

are you ready for the giant list? yeah?yeah?yeah?

crappy(regular store-bought) seeds that we had left over from last year:
sweet basil,climbing spinach,regular spinach,dill,parsley,catnip,opal basil,cilantro,sage,sunflower,red sunflower,jalapeno,thai hot pepper,habanero peppers,carrot,garden beans,radish,romaine lettuce,zucchini,cayenne peppers,sweet corn,turnip,nasturtium,nevada summer crisp lettuce,cucumber,okra,four seasons butterhead lettuce,mighty red oak lettuce,black seeded simpson loose leaf lettuce,eggplant,broccoli,peas.

saved from the garden:
dill,cilantro,sunflower,red sunflower,jalapeno,tomato,plum tomato,arugula,thai hot pepper,zucchini,pumpkin.

ordered heirloom seeds:seriously,we just go the small 'seed package'
cumin(yeah,yeah we did),corn,peas,cowpeas(i have no clue),carrots,beets,cabbage,onions,tomatoes,peppers,eggplants,melons,watermelons,cucumber,lettuce,greens,okra,winter squash,summer squash,radishes,turnip,huckleberries(yeah,i dunno),sunflowers,leeks,amaranth(jake's excited...),broccoli,ground cherries(??),kohlrabi,lemon basil,genovese basil,german chamomile,cilantro,catnip,oregano,parsley,cilantro,sage.

we're also starting to use the blue room(since it's on the right-light side of the house) as a pre-garden greenhouse-type room,to be kept cat-free.

zoom!

we'll see.

the plan is to have two small garden spots to do all of the leftover seeds and zucchini and sunflower plethora in the back.

also going to try to keep an herb garden going indoors all year long.

"researching" compost bins. definitely want one of those kind that are easy to rotate. found one that is supposed to look like it's a rock formation(or a castle or a covered bridge or something...),which i'm more inclined toward than one of the incredibly ugly looking ones,but it isn't easily rotated...

i'm bear-like. i hibernate in winter. curling up into a ball and reading a lot is way more enjoyable than ever going outside in january...

happy birthday to my lil' sisters. i would make them a cake if they were here,maybe i should make a cake anyway...

a thousand thoughts...

perhaps one of the reasons that i don't make new year's resolutions is b/c i make a thousand everysingleday that i can't make myself follow through with,so i find the idea of it to be a practice in futility.

but,either way,i made one this year,in my head,to myself- "to get more things done." and even though,i really do plenty(more than some,not as much as others.) updating this more frequently,was a big part of that. clearly i have proven my theory correct b/c i thought that maybe telling myself that it was my resolution would motivate me...nope. besides the fact that it is the dead of winter,i can't make myself DO anything.

yesterday, we sat down and made a list of potential garden-ideas for the spring,since we're determined to have this year's be better than last. or,at least, less hurried. last year's was fine,but now we've learned a little about what's good out here,ect. so now we know that 9 tomato plants are not an adequate number if we want to freeze even close to enough sauce-base to last us through,even november.

anyhow,we want to do so much more than last year. we definitely want to put things like zucchini and pumpkins in areas other than the front garden area,since they just TOOK OVER the entire left(north?)side of the garden...

new things to plant this year are: kale,collards,chard,cabbage,brussel sprouts(ew,for jake,not me),celery,mustard greens, parsnips,onions,scallions,leeks,chickpeas,peas,cantaloupe,chervil,bay,horseradish,fennel,tarragon,chives,mints, and catnip that we won't let ed sleep on and kill.

definitely want to try eggplant again,as nothing happened last year...and we know it was more us,than 'it'.

i want to check again, but,if i remember right,there's not enough of a growing season to do artichokes,which i am totally in love with. so,i guess they'll have to wait until i can invest the thousands of dollars that i have just sitting around,in a greenhouse...

we'll see...

i guess my 'new year's resolution' is to make myself do this more often. this surely means putting more time/thought into it than," i just did this," or "i'm thinking of doing this". we'll see.

going to start a few indoor herbs today. cat-attacks have been the #1 thing stopping me. i can put a few in the window above the sink and the cats won't be able to destroy them,it's just on the exact opposite side of the house than what would be the better side for growing...goodness.

we'll see.

made zucchini fritters last night with apple shredded in with the zucchini. made some soy-peanut-sauce to go with it. they were a lot fluffier than last time,but tasted just as good.

since the sister and her boyfriend will be here tonight,we're making tempura. not sure of the exact recipe yet,will post later...

coconut is magic

to cure(or at least,aid) my constant craving for coconut,we made these:

CHOCOLATE COCONUT MACAROONS
and
DRIED FRUIT AND COCONUT CANDIES

both from The Joy of Vegan Baking,our new favorite cookbook. though,neither required the oven to actually be turned on.

we're thinking of making the candies continuously,but varying the recipe with,among other things,different nuts...since it called for walnuts,but if we were to use,say,cashews,the flavor would be entirely different. the continuous part is because they are entirely raw and jake has been trying to start the day raw(for the first few hours) since he says that he feels better when he does that. pancakes are good too,if you ask me,but whatever. fine by me.

i think tonight we're going to make ZUCCHINI FRITTERS with apple chunks in them. the shredded zucchini being frozen,from our garden. yay. i'll post that recipe when it happens.

possibly complimented by some of the jalepeno jelly that i made in the summer.

i'm going to try to get back to doing this more frequently. i can't seem to concentrate, fully, on projects.

we're waiting on an organic seeds catologue to come in the mail before we really start planning this years garden. definitely decided that we are using an entirely seperate space for squash-type plants. mostly because they took over and choked other plants to death,but also because we want to plant more More MORE! this year. the tomato sauce that we froze from the upwards of 10 plnts last year,was gone in less than 3 months. putting the squashes somewhere else will free up SO MUCH space to plant,say triple the amount of tomato plants.
we're also going to try a few more things this year. just to experiment,last year,we planted anything that we could get our hands on,but i think this ear we'll make it a point to try things like eggplant,specifically.

since winter is really setting in,and our basement remains unfinished, i think that we're going to try brewing soon...still haven't decided specifics yet,but i do think that we'll most likely, start with wine,just because it'll be easier...and we're lazy,on top of having a billion things to do,already.

went to watkins yesterday. wandered the block of the town. just like i anticipated,it's really a very seasonal town. went into a secon-hand store that is truly a glorified(alphebatized,clean) packrat's basement. only vonnegut they had were ones that i already had. the dude said that it was hard to actually get any of his stuff... also stopped at a coffee shop/bookstore. they had 2 vegan bakedcgoods. blueberry with puff pastry...i wish they would expand that to other fruits...
the summer. i swear,this year.

//i'm faking it 'til i'm psuedo-making it.//

i don't know what's wrong with me. i have so many ideas floating around in my head but can't pin them down long enough to put any effort into getting them done,let alone actually write about any of them...

since i almost always crave coconut,we bought a package of shredded coconut like a month ago. i've stopped myself from opening it and simply eating it with a shovel. we're thinking chocolate coconut macaroons are the way to go. also found a dried fruit and coconut candy recipe in The Joy of Vegan Baking that sounds good.

i will post the recipe of whichever one that we finally decide on.

sewing will happen today. but not fun sewing,fixing sewing. necessary.