My blog-friend, the author of YD's A Little Bit of Everything Place and her husband Mike stopped by on their way back from Florida. She is every bit as lovely, friendly and generous as her blog. And her husband is the perfect match!
I will say that I was a little bit nervous about meeting someone I really didn't know, but it turned out we knew a lot about each other already....and we have so many good and joyous things in common, that it was like we were never strangers. Our shared love of our dogs, cooking, blogging, our husbands ... as well as both of us being foreigners to the US. Of course those countries are as far apart as can be (she is from Malaysia and I'm from Sweden!).
We ended up in the kitchen, all of us including Kane, and made some excellent homemade pizzas. Homemade pizza dough recipe from Farmgirl Fare and a somewhat BBQ chicken pizza loosely based on Pioneerwoman's recipe. It was great fun, and I'm so appreciative of having friends that pitch in for dinner. Mike was an excellent pizzamaker, and showed us some of his professional(!) tips for yummy pizzas, and Sean even brought out the coveted roasted green chiles from New Mexico. Not everyone gets to share in his New Mexico roasted green chile stash!
For dessert I had made Pioneer Woman's best chocolate sheet cake ever, cut it in 4 pieces slathered raspberry/blueberry/strawberry jam in between 4 of the layers, stacked them with strawberries in between, added some whipped cream and our awesome local strawberries. YUM!
Kane was played with, loved on and petted. He was a very good boy and sent some treats back to his friends Samantha and June.
Now Sean and I have to plan a trip up to see them! Maybe in the fall, who knows?
Thank you for the flower, YD! Hope you all had a safe trip home!
Here's an update from the kindergarten room: This year we have invested in a heating pad for the tomatoes and peppers, hoping to get some faster sprouters and some stronger plants. I haven't really had a problem with strength, more so that it takes FOREVER to get pepper seeds sprouting. Since my husband LOVES hot peppers, this is a must in our garden.
I purchased my heating pad and thermostat at greenhousemegastore.com. Fast delivery and the product worked really nice. My pepper seeds were started a week after the tomatoes, and they really came up in about a week and a half. The tomatoes were fast as always! I've also started eggplant, broccoli, kale, some flower seeds (bunny tails! I just couldn't resist the name....), and all the herbs (basil, bergamot, marjoram, thyme, oregano etc).
It's almost time to feed the hungry little sprouts, and the tomatoes are already developing 3rd set of leaves! Time flies - my how my little sprouts have grown! :-)
I've been going back and forth about markers for our garden this year. But finally I had to give in. If you saw my list a few posts ago, there is no way I will remember where all those veggies and herbs went! I do draw things out in a notebook, but I don't want to always bring that with me out to the garden.
I looked at expensive copper markers with etching pens, found ideas on other blogs about using plastic knives and Sharpies, saw crafty markers done using small terracotta pots and hangers, decorative paint and a lot of time! Something about putting plastic into my carefully crafted organic garden seemed all wrong, and I really couldn't see myself spending on those nice copper markers. I wanted something easy, cheap, long lasting and nice looking.
Sean helped me come up with this handy neat idea, that will look great in our garden. We had some left-over marker stakes, the kind that you mark out construction projects with. At our Lowe's they sell them over by the construction wood in a package of 15 or 20. They are pointed at one end and are about 1 1/2 inch wide.
Sean then used a woodburning tool to burn in the names of some of the vegetables for our garden. I think it looks great. Not sure how they will hold up through watering, rain, southern sun and heat, but if not - they were pretty inexpensive. Thanks honey!
...we make snow lanterns!
Back when I was a child, waaaaay back when, in Sweden we used to make these snow lanterns when it snowed (which it did quite often). I always loved how they glowed so nicely, making the snow look warm and inviting.
We got a bit of the Southern snowstorm on Friday night, so I taught Sean how to make a snow lantern. Here's how:
1. Decide on placement so that you can see it from inside the house.
2. Make 6 snowballs about 3 inches in diameter. Decide where your opening is going to be for putting the tea light in there and for lighting purposes.
3. Place the 6 snowballs in a circle
4. Make 5 snowballs about 2 inches in diameter.
5. Place the 5 snowballs on top of the original 6, so that they rest in the cracks between the original 6. Place them a little bit inward so that they form a smaller circle
6. Continue making 2 inch snowballs and placing them on top of the others so that eventually they meet and form a roof.
(Tip: If it's not snowing when you make these, you can leave it without a roof. But if it snows, chances are the snow will kill your candle.)
7. Light a tea light and place it in the middle of your lantern.
ENJOY!
Our snow has almost completely melted now, but it was nice to spend a few moments looking at our snow lantern on the porch!
Some of 2009 Harvest. Looks nice, but this was probably all the edible potatoes we got!
We were lucky to receive some great plants as wedding present from friends: blackberry bushes, raspberry bushes and a persimmon tree. I am going to find out if I can grow black and red currants in SC too. I'm so used to having these berries from Sweden, and I miss making jelly, jam and juice from them. I've ordered frozen berries from NY state, but I want to have some of my own.
This year our strawberry and blueberry patches should start producing as well. Can't wait for that.
We found some EMF on Craig's list, bought some garden fabric and are planning low covered tunnels this year to start our planting earlier and extend our season to all year around.
Here's a complete list of seeds/plants we are planting this year (take a deep breath):
Potato, All Blue
Potato, All Red
Potato, Carola
Potato, German Butterball
Potato, Yellow Finn
Tomato, Hungarian Italian Paste
Tomato, German Pink
Tomato, Costoluto Genovese (inspired by Inadvertent Farmer's tomatoes!)
Tomato, Riesentraube
Tomato, Yellow Pear
Sweet Potato
Sweet Pepper, Tolli's Sweet Italian
Sweet Pepper, Sweet Banana
Sweet Pepper, Carolina Wonder
Hot Pepper, Wenk's Yellow Hot
Hot Pepper, Serrano Tampiqueno
Hot Pepper, Ancho Gigantea
Squash, Yellow Crookneck
Squash, Black Beauty Zucchini
Squash, Waltham Butternut
Pumpkin, Musquee de Provence
Pumpkin, Connecticut Field
Beans, (yard-long) Chinese Red Noodle
Bush Beans, Provider
Pole Beans, Genuine Cornfield
Pole Beans, McCaslan
Pole Beans, Dean's Purple Pod Bean
Pole Limas, Violet's Multi-colored Butterbeans
Carrots, Chantenay Red Core
Corn, Pennsylvania Butter-Flavored
Corn, Golden Bantam
Corn, Stowell's Evergreen
Cotton, Red Foliated White
Cucumber, Boston Pickling
Cucumber, Homemade Pickles
Eggplant, Black Beauty
Sunflower, Cucumber Leaf
Sunflower, Selma Suns
Aragula, Aragula
Parsley, Dark Green Italian
Spinach, Long Standing Bloomsdale
Swiss Chard, Ruby Red
Swiss Chard, Rainbow
Herbs, Mammoth Basil
Herbs, Sweet Genovese Basil
Herbs, Cinnamon Basil
Herbs, Wild Bergamot
Herbs, Borage
Herbs, Bouquet Dill
Herbs, Oregano, Greek
Herbs, German Winter Thyme
Lettuce, Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce
Lettuce, Tennis Ball Lettuce
Lettuce, Thai Oak Leaf
Snow Pea, Mammoth Melting Sugar
WOW! Are we going to be busy or what?
In addition, my friend YD asked me if I wanted some asian seeds that she did not want anymore, so I'm getting some Komatsuna, Mibuna, Chinese Kale & Thai Yellow Egg Eggplant. Last year I traded some seeds with my friend Jeff at the office, and hopefully we can do the same again. It only takes one tomato seed to have a different kind of plant! I urge you to swap seeds with friends, it's fun to get some different varieties and then you can compare how your plants succeded (or not, lol).
Happy Gardening! Now I'm off to make some Inadvertent Farmer's Whole Wheat Cinnamon Raisin Bread. Great smelling house alert in 3, 2, 1......
I knew when I saw this recipe for Chocolate Truffles with Sea Salt, that I was in trouble. Bad kind of trouble. The kind of trouble that goes right to your thighs. At least in my case they do.
However, don't be scared. I urge you to go forth and conquer and make these. I know the holidays are over, but maybe you have someone's birthday that you should celebrate. Maybe there's a dinner party to attend? A potluck in the office? Maybe your husband did something wonderful? (Mine does ALL the time! Yup, we're still newlyweds!)
The best part about finding something as delicious as these chocolate truffles is that you can give them away.
My modifications to this recipe are as follows:
I used 3/4 semisweet chocolate (Ghirardelli) and 1/4 Dark Chocolate (Hersheys, it's what I had in my pantry) for the actual truffle. I'm sure the mix that Pioneer Woman uses is just as good. Use what you like. I'm more of a milk chocolate woman than a dark chocolate woman anyway.
Some tips:
After you melt the chocolate and the sweetened condensed milk, you can split the mix up and flavor differently if you want to. I added a few (3-4) drops of peppermint to one batch and that tasted great.
Smaller is better for truffles. I made my second batch about 5/8" in diameter instead of 3/4".
I left my truffle mix to sit out on the stove to cool. The first batch was put in the fridge overnight, and I then had to remelt it in order to get it to working form. Play around with what works for you.
When covering the truffles with melted chocolate, I used a fork with wide prongs and several toothpicks. I would throw 3-4 truffles into the chocolate, use a spoon to heap chocolate on them, and then fish one out and use the toothpick under the fork to swipe away the chocolate that drips through. (Are you salivating yet?)
Recipe can be found here: Pioneer Woman's Chocolate Truffles with Sea Salt
Let me know if you are going to be blaming these truffles like I am.
Back to the gym...
I will say that I was a little bit nervous about meeting someone I really didn't know, but it turned out we knew a lot about each other already....and we have so many good and joyous things in common, that it was like we were never strangers. Our shared love of our dogs, cooking, blogging, our husbands ... as well as both of us being foreigners to the US. Of course those countries are as far apart as can be (she is from Malaysia and I'm from Sweden!).
We ended up in the kitchen, all of us including Kane, and made some excellent homemade pizzas. Homemade pizza dough recipe from Farmgirl Fare and a somewhat BBQ chicken pizza loosely based on Pioneerwoman's recipe. It was great fun, and I'm so appreciative of having friends that pitch in for dinner. Mike was an excellent pizzamaker, and showed us some of his professional(!) tips for yummy pizzas, and Sean even brought out the coveted roasted green chiles from New Mexico. Not everyone gets to share in his New Mexico roasted green chile stash!
Kane was played with, loved on and petted. He was a very good boy and sent some treats back to his friends Samantha and June.
