Harvest Monday and Celebration!

It's Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions!

We have had rain all weekend, and right through the Kentucky Derby. Glad I wasn't out there. But I did have one good harvest before the rain came. Lots of spinach, lettuce, a bit of kale and chard. And there is more rain to come this week. My garden will be happy, though I still have a few things waiting to get out of containers and into the ground! Maybe in between showers!

Spinach, Lettuce, Red Russian Kale, a few tiny cuts of Rainbow Chard.

We also celebrated my twin's 7th birthday.

We ate breakfast and then had cake! Oh by! I didn't get all fancy with the cake this time, but I did make it from scratch with all real and organic ingredients and it was super soft and yummy!

After cake, we rushed off to Newport/Cincinnati for the aquarium and spent some time at the park along the river. Lovely area if you have the chance to visit!

My beautiful birthday girl. (boy refused to pose)

This weeks partial view of the garden. Almost all is planted in this area. The darker back bed is still waiting on purple sweet potato slips to arrive. Corn is planted all along the fence from the potato bed back (left), about 125, along with pole beans and vine squash (Three Sisters planting). Tomatoes, basil, onions, carrots and garlic in the 'L' bed. Peppers, carrots, spinach, lettuce, onion, basil in the next bed. Then the squash and cucumber bed. And the bushy bed is the raspberries!

Happy Harvesting (and planting as well)!!

Harvest Monday 4/29/13

It is Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions. Don't forget to check out what others are harvesting right now!

Lettuce, kale, chard, and spinach. Enlarge to see types

Last week I shared my favorite salad ingredients. Here they are. Dh really loves this salad as well, which surprised me a little!

Mmmm!

There is nothing in here from my garden sadly, but it is my own concoction that I think is yummy. Homemade meatballs made with homemade Italian bread crumbs with homemade bread and with herbs from my garden...oh I guess it does have something from the garden! Layered with a baked potato, steamed broccoli and spicy beef gravy...oh, one more thing from the garden, hot peppers! Both the herbs and peppers were left over from last year and the year before.

I am really looking forward to these babies!

Blueberry and strawberry plants mingling with the Azaleas! Need to get them covered, bunnies are chewing through this lattice too, to eat my strawberry plants!

Potato bed filling out quite nicely! I plan to plan beans in here today!

Corn waiting to be planted today or tomorrow!

I am filling in the squash and cucumber bed.

Raspberry leaves. I have read that dried raspberry leaves, picked before flowering, can help reduce muscle cramping. I have advanced stage endometriosis and I am going to try a raspberry leaf tea, give it a test try.

I really love these bags for drying things like herbs. It will work well for the raspberry leaves. I will just shake it up every now and then to separate wet leaves. This one was actually a gift bag, but I have another sold as produce bags. The thyme is hanging in it!

 

Today's salad harvest! Yummy!

Harvest Monday 4/22/13

It's Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions.  

I am still getting a small amount of lettuce and spinach. My lettuce types are Ashley, Red Sails, and Rougette de Montpellier.  I love the variety of red and green colors. I think the ones shown in this picture are the Rougette de Montpellier and Red Sails. The Ashley are a much darker red. This bowl I mixed in a salad that I shared at a dinner party. It was lovely! My favorite salad to make with it right now has this mixed lettuce and spinach, raw sunflower seeds, raw yogurt cheese and a home made dressing with Olive oil, a splash of Apple cider vinegar (like Braggs), a mixture of Italian herbs from the garden (oregano, basil, thyme, etc.), garlic and a bit of salt and pepper, and Shake, Shake, Shake! Super yummy!

What is your favorite salad recipe?

It's Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions! Love Harvest Monday! Love seeing so many ideas for things to grow, probably too many ideas, and sharing what I have going on in my garden too!

Lettuce and Spinach is all I am harvesting this week. But I am getting a decent amount so I am happy! One less thing to buy at the store!

Everything is going so well in the pop up. Most of the peppers and tomatoes have been replanted into larger "pots". The corn is coming up well on the bottom shelf. Most cool weather stuff has been transplanted outdoors.

Speaking of transplanting, I transplanted about 10 Purple Peacock Broccoli plants to the side of my deck. I fenced it all in, except for this latticed area. Well, a stinking bunny appears to have chewed through a few places on my lattice and ate all but one of my Broccoli plants! I am so frustrated! There is one left and 2 with a couple leaves that I am not sure I have a lot of hope of coming back.

2 like this down to the ground, several just plain gone.

The garden redo is coming along really well! Can't wait to see it full!

The All Blue potatoes have begun to show themselves. No red la soda's yet. But I like the colors of these, they are a pretty dark indigo color as they come out and then turn a bit more green. Very pretty.

One or two purple passion are showing, hope more show.  But Yeah for these!

What's going on in your garden? Any great harvests this week? Share them at Daphne's Dandelions!

Harvest Monday and Spring has finally sprung!

It is Harvest Monday today at Daphne's Dandelions!  

I did harvest some spinach this week twice for a spinach, mushroom and feta omelet! Mmmmm, my favorite! I didn't take a pic of my harvest but you will see a pic of my spinach bed a few pics down, a bit picked clean ;)

In addition to my little harvest this week, there is a lot to look forward too! And I have been taking advantage of the beautiful weather!

My pop up green house is full and working hard growing all these goodies. On the top I have Sweet potatoes, tomatoes and peppers. Next is more tomatoes, some herbs, and the summer tray has just been started with squash and cucumbers! The third shelf down is mostly herbs and cabbage and a few flowers! The bottom shelf is corn that has just been seeded. The blueberries on the side are flowering and everything! I bought them last month and since they were in a green house they were already budding so I kept them in my green house and they are way, way ahead of the three I have planted in my garden that are just now budding. These may give me a nice bunch of blueberries! And they are protected inside my pop up from hungry critters! CAN'T WAIT!

 

Tomatoes and peppers!

Sweet potatoes, with still more slips growing in my kitchen window.

Cabbage and a few herbs and flowers.

The largest planter here was my 3 yr old's Easter present, he got a pot, gloves, shovel and a froggy stake and was allowed to pick some veggies from my green house to put in it. He chose Kale, Chard, and lettuce. The other pots also have kale, chard, and purple sprouting broccoli. (Looks like the kale!)

This is one of 10 Purple sprouting broccoli plants that went into this garden surrounding the peas sprouting up in the back of the picture, and 3 lettuce plants not shown. Need to get the bamboo teepee up!

This is my spinach and lettuce that I overwintered in the pop up green house. It has been picked clean a bit this week to make some yummy omelets! The holes in the back of the bed and the bed behind it have all blue and red la soda potatoes in them!

This bed has a bunch of garlic, onions, and also carrots are planted all over in it and I am impatiently waiting for them to germinate! There are some planted in the bed pictured above too, between the lettuce and spinach.

This is my other son's little garden he got for Easter. He chose lettuce and carrots.

The raspberries are beginning to leaf. I am looking forward to lots of yummy raspberries! I cleaned and pruned the bed really well over the winter and I really need to fix the bird netting and add some compost.

I also have a trench that I have planted some Purple Passion Asparagus, that I hope have handled the late cold snaps well.

With the nice weather, I am sure everything will have a burst of growth here soon! Very exciting to have the 2013 garden season off and running!

Hop on over to Daphne's Dandelions and see what others have going on in the garden around the world!

Tiny harvest and garden preparation

I have a tiny little lettuce and spinach harvest I picked last night for dinner. I probably could get more spinach but I didn't really need it yet. The lettuce though is quite pitiful, not liking the cold temps even under the frost blanket.

 Under the blanket below is the lettuce, spinach and one Pak Choi all moved out of the pop up and into one of the new beds! These were all planted in the fall and have barely survived the winter, but they will be great when they get growing good.

New beds all done! Well, except one is still waiting on soil, maybe this weekend. The L shaped one has garlic planted in it, which cannot be seen from this distance. The smaller older bed with stakes around it holding up the bird netting has the raspberries. I am excited to get started.

 I will have new ground beds too that I will post as soon as I have them all prepared. Dh is going to have to move a bush for me for one of them.

The windowsills are full of seedlings. A little leggy, I know, but they will quickly go out to the pop up green house on the patio. This week maybe. My house just doesn't get good light.

Sweet potato slips. I will be pulling these off this week and rooting the slips.

My unhappy onions that were moved to the popup last week. Hopefully they will revive themselves. They need to be planed to the garden soon.

on the top I am germination all my tomato and pepper varieties. On the bottom, the potatoes are sprouting. Will be planting those soon too. Maybe when it warms up later this week. I need to cut the bigger ones and allow them to callous first though. My varieties this year are All blue, Red La Soda, and some blue and red fingerlings. OH BOY!

I have a tiny harvest right now, but all of this garden prep shows great promise for the summer! Join in at Daphne's Dandelions to check out beautiful harvests around the world...you know some places are having great summer harvests right now, right?

Real Food changes update

It has been about a month since I posted about our changes to our diet. I thought I would give an update. So far we are doing really well and made lots of changes. Pretty much all packaged food is out of the house. I have been making my own bread, crackers, rolls, buns, etc, and the family seems to love the changes. Dh and I love that we have each lost between 7-10 lbs. AWESOME!

These are a few of my homemade goodies.  I can't make enough crackers. The kids eat them up. Great for snacks to send to school.

 I made hamburger buns one night. 100% whole grain, they were a bit heavy but soft and yummy! Definitely will do again.

I used this recipe with only a few changes.

1 cup warm water
3 tablespoons warm water
1/3 cup coconut oil 

 1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Directions:

1
Combine water, yeast, oil and honey; let rest for 15 minutes.
2
Add salt, egg, and flour to yeast mixture and mix well.
3
Roll out 3/4 inch thick and cut into 10-12 rounds.
4
Place rolls on cookie sheet sprayed with nonstick cooking spray.
5
Bake at 400-425 for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Be careful not to overbake or they will be too dry. Every oven is different.

Read more at: http://www.food.com/recipe/super-quick-whole-wheat-buns-140492?layout=desktop&oc=linkback

I made this pot pie with a whole wheat biscuit topping and chicken and vegetables with a homemade whole wheat gravy sauce. It was super yummy.

 It has taken many not so yummy bread recipes to finally find a good one for my bread machine that works. I found it here. It is quite difficult to find a completely whole grain recipe that is not so hard and dense. This one is working well for us and goes pretty quickly.

Over all, some of the changes we have made so far are:

*from earth or smart balance to real butter from PASTURE raised cows.

*from skim milk to whole milk from PASTURE raised cows, non homogenized and low pasteurized since raw milk is illegal in KY. booo!

*Eggs from a local farmer that allows the chickens to roam free and have a mostly organic diet. (you would not believe the difference in these eggs if you buy store bought. HUGE poofy bright orange yolks and yummy!)

*conventional meats to pasture raised meats

*conventional to organic (as much as we can afford.)

 It's amazing how much organic stuff Costco carries! Who knew.

*Raw organic cheese, I find this to be a yummy change!

*Making my own baked goods, breads, crackers, sweets. (Although, my little Girl Scout did have to sell us some cookies we couldn't refuse!)

*Switched to using coconut oil for all my cooking and baking needs and Olive oil only for cold use like dressings. No other oils.
*from sugar to honey, pure dark maple syrup, or in very small amounts, organic coconut palm sugar.
*we have used whole grain flour for quite some time, but still was using some bread flour. Now only using 100% whole wheat organic flour.

Some of these were not easy changes with how much low fat diets are emphasized. But there are a lot of articles disputing some of the information out there. And considering we have been told to eat low fat for so long and obesity rates just keep going up and up, seems to me, it isn't working, not for us. So, I am willing to try something different, or maybe Old.

Luckily, there are lots of farms close where I can get meat and eggs from and I grow my own garden so will have access to PLENTY of my own organic raised fruit and vegetables! I will be preserving as much as I can this year!

I have to say, I am happy and so is dh to see the scales going down for a change, rather than being stuck or going up. It has given him the encouragement to get back to the gym more, I have not yet. It has been discouraging in the past to spend many hours going to the gym each week or walking in the hood with no visible results. This gives us the encouragement we need!