Category Archives: Weather

One of Those Perfect Mornings

Posted on September 25, 2012 by AnnieRie

You know what I mean. The air is crisp. You slept with the windows open. The A/C has been turned off. Here in West County, we have seen temperatures in the 50s at night. Today I threw open all the windows and have the screen door in the kitchen giving us cross breezes in the back of the house.

This is my favorite cooking weather. The kitchen stays cool. It is soup and crock pot stew time. Yesterday I processed the last of the green tomatoes found hiding in the garden. There were another dozen or so that escaped notice when I was there over the weekend. I froze slices of the larger ones. They will come out in the winter to see if I can make that pesto pasta with frozen tomatoes. Some will become fried green tomatoes as a side dish.

flash frozen green tomato slices

All of the little ones and those still left on the windowsill were put together to make tonight’s dinner. I am going to make the pesto and the green tomato sauce, but put it on a whole wheat pizza crust as a variation on the pasta dish I have made numerous times. Might as well get the most out of the green tomatoes.

This morning I did a “twofer” in the food processor. Pesto and ajvar. Just enough of each to use for dinner tonight. I am making the pizza using ajvar on one side and green tomato pesto on the other. Should be interesting. If it works out, I will post pictures. If it is a bust, well, at least I will talk about it.

The pesto.

Parsley and basil combined. Some pine nuts. Parmesan. Two roasted garlic cloves. Salt and white pepper. Olive oil to make it the right consistency. Absolutely no idea how much of any of it. This is where I have fun when I cook. Creating by taste.

The ajvar, that wonderful Serbian spread I discovered a while back.

Again, no measuring. I roasted all the baby eggplant from the CSA, and three small red peppers, the other day and put them away with two roasted garlic cloves in the fridge. This morning I put them in the processor after scraping out the pesto, added balsamic and some olive oil to process, then just to see what would happen, dropped in a small handful of pistachios. Wow, what an interesting kick the nuts added to the spread.

I had my coffee on the patio and listened to the birds, particularly the blue jays who are out harassing a hawk somewhere near here. Loving the changes of color in the meadow, and seeing the first leaves turning.

the meadow in the morning

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That First Hint of Fall

Posted on September 19, 2012 by AnnieRie

Fall is definitely coming. We will hit lows in the 40s sometime this week. I harvested all the tomatoes left in the garden.

the last of the heirlooms

One lonely ripe red fig. A few yellow plums from the ground, where they fell. All the others were green, and will become one more dinner of green tomato pesto pasta, for the little ones. The larger ones will be cut, cored and sliced to freeze. Deep in the winter, I will do my fried green tomato dinner. They fry best when taken directly from the freezer, coated and fried.

The leaves are starting to fall. The wet weather yesterday has them glistening on the deck. Won’t be long until we are sucking up leaves and turning them into compost.

the cherry tree drops leaves earliest

I filled the hummingbird feeder with lots more nectar than normal. I have three hummingbirds that regularly visit. Mom, Dad and a baby girl. The baby was there again this morning, as usual when the camera was inside. She nails that nectar.

The trees and shrubs are full of berries, and acorns on the oaks. You can’t walk in the yard without crunching acorns beneath your feet. The animals are gathering nuts and the birds are feasting on the berries. The crab apples will keep the berries all winter, and attract flocks of cedar waxwings.

Fall is my favorite time of year here, even though I will be busy cleaning up the yard and filling bags to use in our compost, with the extra going to a master gardener that we connected with. We used the rake and take program in the county to do this. We make bags of leaves and bags of grass clippings, then mix the two to get the green/brown ratio. Using the bags over and over until they finally fall apart makes this a fairly less back breaking exercise. We rake everything into a long snaky line, then efficiently and quickly vacuum the yard under our oak, maple and cherry trees.

Vacuuming leaves to turn into compost

I am also keeping an eye on the herbs. The thyme and rosemary will hang in there for quite a while. The basil is giving up the ghost, so to speak and all will be harvested today. I saw the last of the plants drooping over this morning while I was collecting acorns for the Conservancy to use in their critter creations at the Christmas craft fair. I have a carpet of thyme on the ground. I may cut it back and cover the rest, to see how long it stays viable.

Let’s just hope we don’t get snow for Halloween like we did last year.

October 29, 2011

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Fall Plann(t)ing

Posted on August 21, 2012 by AnnieRie

Planning on planting for the fall? It is time to get started. I was looking at Victoria’s great garden pictures over on The Soffrito. Planting in containers for the fall is a great way to extend the season. These were my spring greens. I will do the same for fall. I plant them in a protected corner and put netting over them to deter the bunnies.

Mixed greens

I also saw an awesome recipe while watching The Chew today. I was in the midst of helping my husband with a filing project and had the TV on after the noon news. What to do with green tomatoes? We will soon be at that stage of harvesting the last of the summer goodies. My planning includes creative ways of using up some of the ones that don’t ripen, before ripping out the plants and putting in kale and arugula. I will be freezing slices of the large ones to make fried green tomatoes, and freezing any little ones to make this spaghetti recipe.

Besides all that, I need to get a few more heads of garlic from the CSA that can go in the containers once I remove the flowers from the summer. After planting in October, I will heavily mulch them to survive the winter.

Organic garlic, perfect for planting this fall

The CSA has announced that Columbia will be a location for the fall extension of the CSA, so we will have fresh veggies in November and December. Check out the Sandy Spring site to see if you want to join us. Fall veggies like carrots, potatoes, greens, pumpkins and other squash varieties are great to use in stews, soups and crock pot dinners. What could be better than this in December?

CSA basket from last December

Sounds like I need to check on my topsoil supply and get a few more bags of mulch to mulch the garlic. And, run out to some of the nurseries to see what they have for fall planting. Maybe fennel?

hocofood@@@

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Sunday Morning Ramblings in the Garden

Posted on August 19, 2012 by AnnieRie

It is a cooler Sunday morning, with the heat finally abating in the area. I was out this morning filling the hummingbird feeder and checking on the status of the garden. The tomatoes are making a valiant attempt at a comeback, but it seems now the stink bugs may be winning, and also the weeds and the morning glories.

The hummingbird feeder is a simple design that uses wine bottles, and as we all seem to know around here, I certainly empty my share to make their feeders. I keep them in the small refrigerator in the laundry room after I make a quart of nectar. Hopefully, no one goes in there and mistakes them for wine.

Hummingbird nectar ready to use

The nice thing about this feeder is the ability to just recycle the empty bottles and minimize what needs cleaning. The birds love it and one came up immediately after I went back in the house. Of course, the camera wasn’t near me. Trying to photograph our hummingbirds is difficult.

I wandered out and checked on the herb garden, which now has marigolds all around it. They didn’t bloom in time for the fair, but are putting out a nice amount of flowers that I can cut and use on the table.

Now, the garden. The garden is a mess. I found that weeds are growing rampant between the backs of the cages and the deer fence. I can’t easily get to them to pull them out. Only weed whack them from outside or try cutting them off by reaching through the fence. Not working. And, the morning glories are out of control. At least the bees love them.

Morning glories

I have three different colors growing all around the fence. I like the delicate blue ones best. They are also finding a way to climb my husband’s ropes that anchor antenna wires.

On the back side of the garden, I did find one of my wandering cucumber vines trying valiantly to make a comeback. We shall see if these slicing cucumbers make it to an edible size.

I did find another of those monster pickling ones hidden deep down between the bunny fence and the deer fence last week. Another one of the same size as this one photographed earlier.

As for the tomatoes, I am still getting lots of the little ones, and the larger varieties have small green tomatoes all over them. But now, the stink bugs are out in force. They dig into the small crevices and pretty much destroy the fruit.

I wish we could find a reliable way to erase these pests from our gardens. Every year there are more of them here. We need to find a natural predator to release that will feast on all the eggs laid by the bugs, before they hatch and crawl everywhere in our plants.

But, thankfully, they don’t seem to like the blue basil, like the batch I harvested last week to make pesto.

African blue basil

I got six cups of basil last week. There is at least enough out there to do this again sometime this week. I need to buy pine nuts, or maybe use the walnuts left from the rhubarb walnut bread I made. The basil is now creeping in all directions around the bird bath and under the wildflowers in the back of the herb garden. As for the rosemary, I may need to trim it back. I am going to be drying rosemary this fall, as it has reached a point where the three bushes are becoming small trees.

Rosemary

The rosemary, basil and cotton lavender were the three herbs that got my first blue ribbon in the fair. The cotton lavender is in a planter, but the others are in the garden. I want to dry some of the lavender too.

Cotton Lavender

Enough wandering in the garden. I think it’s time to wander somewhere in west county, like maybe to Larriland to pick peaches.

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What Do You Do with a Boatload of Basil?

Posted on August 14, 2012 by AnnieRie

Or, should I say bouquet?

African Blue Basil

I have so much basil in the garden. Far more than I ever had before. The weather is definitely conducive to growing basil this year. I harvested half of it yesterday. Six cups of basil into the food processor. It is pesto making time.

I dry toasted a cup of pine nuts in a skillet to add to the basil. I then added 1 1/2 cups of parmesan and drizzled olive oil into the processor. Salt and pepper to taste and five cloves of garlic.

Toasted pine nuts for the pesto

I ended up with three containers to freeze and a little one to use to make pizza with shrimp and bacon this weekend.

Basil Pesto

The garden is giving me lots of good herbs and tomatoes this year. Hopefully the little green tomatoes out there will continue to ripen and give me tomatoes to marry with the basil, far into the fall.

hocofood@@@

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Prepping for the Howard County Fair

Posted on August 2, 2012 by AnnieRie

The Howard County Fair starts Saturday. I am in the final stages of choosing my entries in the tomato and potential other categories. It is a frustrating exercise when Mother Nature hasn’t cooperated. Last week there were many ripe tomatoes.

Assorted heirloom and hybrid tomatoes

This week I have dozens of green tomatoes on the vines, and just a handful that are at their peak. The stink bugs, as usual, have ruined quite a few, putting holes where bacteria will grown and blacken spots. You can cut these spots out and eat the tomatoes, like we used to when we didn’t demand perfect tomatoes (devoid of taste but pretty), but these aren’t show tomatoes.


Amana Orange with a stink bug created spot

I also have dozens of what would be lovely great whites, legend and chocolate stripes, all with large dark circles that the stink bugs have created, all just destined to become salsa, and not ready for prime time. This year the stink bugs were late in arriving, for whatever reason, and seem to be peaking just when I want to harvest for the fair. Earlier harvesting tomatoes seemed to be fine, and were lovely to eat and process.

Legend, chocolate stripe and great white, all perfect for eating in July

Right now, I have one lovely great white, but I need two to enter. All the chocolate stripes show stink bug damage. I have a handful of Amish paste that look to be close to perfect, and a handful of very small legend tomatoes, perfect in shape, but not the size that they normally achieve. My early July Amish paste were all processed and reside deep in my freezer as a base for winter tomato sauce. I had a dozen lovely early produced tomatoes, that were way too early for the fair.

Amish Paste

Here are some of those, just picked and ready to join the rest to be blanched, peeled, processed and frozen. They have been one of the stars of this year’s garden, and there are dozens more on the four plants out there. I should be able to process and freeze at least three or four more batches this year. I don’t like to attempt canning the heirlooms, as their low acidity makes them a more difficult vegetable. You would need to adjust the acidity upwards by adding it, and pressure canning is recommended by many people. I don’t have a pressure canner (yet), and I am just getting into canning using small simple batches.

I find that for my winter soups and stews, freezing vegetables that can be loaded into a crock pot and cooked all day is the way to go. Now that I got a dedicated freezer for my fruits and vegetables, I am using that method.

Now that I have checked out my heirlooms for the fair, I am also deciding which cherry tomatoes to enter. I need fifteen good samples of cherry tomatoes. I am also considering whether I should enter my plum tomatoes.

As for herbs, many of mine are doing well this year.

Grey Santolina (Cotton Lavender) and Chives

The herb entry calls for three varieties. Some do better than others in water, and some just get so bug eaten that they look awful, but still taste great. I really enjoy the luxury of picking herbs just before dinner. Snipping chives for eggs or potatoes. Tarragon and marjoram for chicken. Rosemary for potatoes, or for lamb. Mint for salads and tzatziki. The four or five varieties of basil I grow are all doing great this year, with some of them turning into bushes.

African Blue Basil

Same thing for all the thyme varieties. Decisions. Decisions. I need to make my choices soon. Entries are accepted Friday night or Saturday morning. All this anxiety just for a little strip of ribbon, right? I don’t know. It must be that Olympic influence that makes us compete. Here’s hoping my tomatoes and herbs do OK for me this year.

See you at the Fair!

hocofood@@@

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A Window Full of Sunshine

Posted on July 18, 2012 by AnnieRie

Varieties of tomatoes ripening on the sill

This is my favorite view in the kitchen. Dozens of almost perfectly ripe cherry, grape and pear tomatoes all reaching their peak of ripeness in the morning sun.

And, yes there are larger ripe ones these days.

Orange Blossom Tomatoes

Caspian Pink

The Caspian Pink is a new one for me. It looks wonderful, but I did have to pick it a bit early because it was cracking and I didn’t want a storm to water it down.

Detail of small cracks forming on top

I don’t have any chocolate stripes ripe yet, but they are getting close. They have the most tomatoes on each plant so far. I have three plants of them. Crossing my fingers that they ripen before that forecasted four or five days of rain late next week. The rains last year really watered down the flavors of the heirlooms.

Two weeks from this coming Saturday, the Howard County Fair starts. I will be picking which heirloom has the best taste. That is what I will enter. Taste, not looks, does better in the heirloom category.

The sweet olive is my most productive small tomato so far. They are predominant on the windowsill picture above. They also have a wonderful flavor, but cherry and grape tomatoes are judged on looks alone.

Have you ever entered anything in the fair? This year, besides tomatoes, I will again enter herbs. Definitely the basil, but haven’t chosen the other two yet.

African Blue Basil

This year I am also considering entering some of my photographs, particularly my little feathered friends, like these.

Bluebirds Rule the Bath

Put the Fair on your calendar for something great to do. It runs August 4th through 11th. We get a $20 pass for the entire fair and go almost every day. If you want to see a real hoot, go watch the zero turn mower competition. If you want to see something amazing, go watch the 4Hers show their animals.

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CSA Value Assessment

Posted on July 14, 2012 by AnnieRie

I didn’t post my savings until I got some updated numbers from local markets and vendors. Week Ten CSA was delivered Thursday. It looked like this

Sandy Spring CSA Delivery Week Ten

and I wrote about it here.

With this week’s savings, of $9.65 over weekly cost of $29.75, I am now $89.80 ahead in total for being 40% through the 25 week season. If anyone doubts the value of joining an organic CSA, they just need to look at what organic foods cost in stores, markets and at farm stands.

The breakout from week ten is this:

Corn, 5 ears, 50 cents an ear, $2.50
Carrots, $3.50 a bunch for heirloom varieties
Fennel $1.69 each for 2 of them, rounded to $3.40
Pickling cukes, white variety, a bargain at 2/$1, there were 8 of them, so $4
Slicing cukes, 3 large ones, $4.50 total
Garlic, two heads, $2 each at market, so $4 total
Heirloom red radishes, $2.50 a bunch
Blue Viking potatoes, 3 lbs at $1.50 a pound, $4.50
Zucchini, one very large, over a pound, so $2
Green beans and Rattlesnake beans, $3 each basket, so $6 total
Jalapenos, 5 medium to large size, $.50 each, so $2.50

What is missing in all this number crunching is that intrinsic value. That freshness of taste. That discovery of a new and interesting variety of vegetable not encountered before. For me this week, rattlesnake beans are a new addition. I read up on them and found that young and tender, treat them like green beans, older with heavily developed beans, take them out of their pods and cook them.

Young rattlesnake beans

As for the garlic, I love getting organic garlic, and later this year, I will put aside a few heads in order to plant them this fall. Victoria over at The Soffrito planted hers in pots and heavily mulched them over the winter and got lovely garlic, including scapes prior to digging up the garlic to cure. Supermarket garlic won’t sprout; it is treated with an anti-sprouting agent.

Organic garlic, perfect for planting in October

This week with my other CSA goodies, I will be making potato salad, pickling some cukes, and also making tzatziki using some of Wegmans Greek yogurt and their organic lemons and mint from my garden. And, yes, I will be grilling some corn. I love it when corn season arrives.

Oh, and if I get a few more large tomatoes in the next two or three days, there will be gazpacho on the menu. Maybe on one of those hundred degree days that might come next week.

hocofood@@@

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Friday Morning Garden Report

Posted on July 13, 2012 by AnnieRie

The tomatoes have finally arrived for real. That is, the big ones, and not just the cherry, grape and plum tomatoes. I harvested the first orange blossom and Amish paste tomatoes the past two days.

Now, I just need those chocolate stripes, or the legend, or great white to ripen, to see what will be submitted to the Fair in three weeks. These tomatoes need to move into high gear. I know they shut down and go into survival mode during excessive heat, which is what they did for those 90-100 degree days we had. After a quick start, they are moving along at a snail’s pace. I did get the first of the red fig tomatoes, a very interesting heirloom I bought from the Howard County Master Gardeners on Earth Day this spring.

The rest of the little tomatoes continue to put out new growth and are giving me a few a day. I got the first green grape tomato today, in the middle of the sweet olive, yellow plum, yellow pear and red figs in the bowl, there is a lone green grape, just about ripe. I pick these just a bit early to minimize pest damage, like stink bugs do.

They will ripen on the windowsill. As for other garden goodies, the stealth cucumbers are still out there. This one was hidden down in a crevice behind all the tomato plants. The vine had climbed over the bunny fence and dropped down into the fence post corner, where it hid until it reached mega size for a pickling cucumber.

We are actually attempting to make this monster into a dill pickle, which should be interesting.

On the flower front, the gladiolus plants are winding down, but hanging in there. The first marigolds have bloomed, and this one was saved after the bunnies chomped it off its stem.

Herbs are doing well in spite of the heat. Hope we get a little more rain to get the gardens around here in better shape again. I know there are water restrictions due to the water main break repairs. That doesn’t bode well for gardens in intense heat. Being on a well with a high water table right now, I am thankful to be able to water the herbs in the pots and keep them going.

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Location, Location, Location

Posted on July 3, 2012 by AnnieRie

That’s what all the real estate agents tell you. But, what about location? What is important? Peace and quiet? Access? Amenities?

Out here in West HoCo things are different. Slower. More people are self sufficient and don’t rely on outside services. We like it out here but you have to be prepared. We thought we were in pretty good shape. Wood stove for heat in the winter. UPS’s for power glitches. Gas grill. With a little advance notice, fill the tubs with water to flush the toilets. We should get a small generator to keep the freezer and sump pump powered but haven’t done it yet.

Our worst outage before last weekend was 16 hours long during the ice storms a few years back. After Irene, it was only 10 hours while they repaired the sub station down the road. Saturday was 23 hours, and we expected quite a bit worse than that.

But, we were lucky. The gas stations up the road became important. Diesel for utility trucks. Gas for people’s generators. One by one, other stations ran out of gas and the ones in the Triadelphia circle, Shell and Royal Farms, had gas but no power. As we came home Saturday night, we saw trucks run up the road.

That Shell station was the reason we had power, since we are on the same feeder. They got power. So did we. Location. Just lucky while other houses around us were still without power. That was one of those Ah Hah! moments.

We had another of those moments during Snowmageddon. That Royal Farms on Superbowl Sunday was the closest source of food for the snow plow drivers coming out of the Dayton shop. They plowed the local roads down to blacktop on Sunday morning while all our friends in Columbia were snow bound. We only had to get to the road from our driveways and we were out and about.

I remember standing out in the road taking these shots on Saturday the 6th, but by Sunday we were clear and running around.

When we bought our home, we didn’t think of some of these things, but now we are very grateful that buying on a through road, heavily traveled by plows and utility trucks wasn’t that bad of a choice. Sometimes Mother Nature tells you what is important.

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