How're YOUR seeds coming along!?

I've been busy on and off with starting seeds, buying some of the cheapest perennial (tubers, roots, etc) I can get my hands on, etc and doing whatever I can to get the growing season started. Sure, I still haven't taken the time to create my own homemade seed tapes for carrots, lettuce and...spinach maybe? And no I don't have ALL the direct-seeded stuff that could probably go out in this cold springtime weather... So I'm feeling like a total failure. But at least I've got all these guys started:




Hm, the vertical scroll bars aren't showing up for me in Firefox on the Macbook, but I AM able to scroll up and down. Just so you get the full effect of the spreadsheet, and so you don't think that, whoopdy doo, I've only planted like 6 plants, make sure you see if you can do some vertical scrolling! ;-)

Yes, there are a lot of tomatoes and peppers, and no, I won't have room for all of them, but filling up a flat of peat pots of each is my safety net for that rare occasion that I lose something, plus I share the extras with friends/coworkers. And that, in exchange, has gotten me bags of grass clippings, trailer loads of manure, and more!!

This year I told myself I wasn't allowed to buy any new tomato varieties - so I think I did pretty good in that I only got a couple new varities! ;-) And yeah, there's a butt load of new peppers this year, but...

1. I wanted to try a bunch of varieties from the "Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer" book Brett got me (it was mostly about the author's life, somewhat about tomatoes, and a very small bit about peppers, but the pepper stuff was really interesting!), and...
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. I've found I just haven't done a good job of saving our peppers in previous years - partly because we haven't had much harvest beyond what we use as they come off the plant. This year I want a wide variety of sweets and hots, I want to make some cool marinades/sauces, I want more for salsas, and I definitely want to have enough for the freezer this time around! Sure, some of them are supposedly the hottest peppers known to man, but that'll be part of the fun, riiiight? I'll just have to make sure I don't try saving any of my own seeds from the peppers or tomatoes. With that many varieties in close proximity, who knows what sort of cross pollination's gonna happen!?

I'd like to get the Frozen Snowshoe with a Frosty Mitten Job!

So who out there watches How I Met Your Mother?!?!

(let's see a raise of hands!)

And did you see this week's new episode, "Old King Clancy"? LOL We looooooved the crazy story Robin was telling about The Frozen Snowshoe and how he supposedly wanted to do an Old King Clancy with her! And you realize, after an episode like that, you HAAAAVE to go look up the site she was referring to - canadiansexacts.org! (Seriously, it's ok - check it out!)


And speaking of new things learned that episode...we met The Frozen Snowshow (or just 'Shoe for short). Wowza - that's some nice eye candy! I guess the actor, Aaron Hill, is a regular on Greek. Hm, might have to start getting that via Netflix!! I'd seriously do a Five-Legged Caribou with him ANY DAY!

Another note about HIMYM - sort of a new game for us is to see how they hide the baby bumps each week. Both lead actresses, Alysson Hannigan and Cobie Smulders are BOTH preggers, with Alysson/Lily far enough in the lead that they've been trying to hide her growing bulge (except for where they showed it off because she supposedly put on so much weight from eating hotdogs awhile back). Cobie/Robin doesn't appear to be showing in the belly region yet - and sometimes we think she's maybe looking a little plump in the face. This past week they mostly hid Lily's belly with a laptop. Other times it's a huge purse, a super-over-the-top blowsy shirt, etc. What'll it be next week!?

Socks big enough to fit a dog?!

So awhile back I posted about how I'd recently finished and felted/washed the new pair of "patriotic colored" socks I'd knitted, and then started on yet ANOTHER pair... On this pair I wanted to try an experiment - instead of knit 2, purl 2 for the calf area ribbing, I wanted to try knit 3, purl 1. The only way I'd see the real difference between the two techniques was to try it for myself.

I also knew I wanted to try making this pair just a little bigger over all, considering how much they shrink upon washing. Sure, the blue socks fit nicely, but could we ensure they were a little bit bigger!?

Brett picked out the colors, and the sizes of the colored stripes - this pair is for him. No pressure there! I wanted these to be perfect! But let's be honest...perfection doesn't quite happen when you're knitting, oh, probably a couple thousand stitches? (I haven't counted, but if there's sixty stitches around, I'm guessing a couple thousand in a pair is a good guess)

So here they are - and they're BIG! Look, it looks like you could fit a puppy in them!


Ok, maybe that's just a matter of perspective... But they are bigger (and they haven't been washed yet - so we don't know how much we can get them to shrink). There are a couple very minor flaws in the calf of one sock, and there's a spot where some of the yarn was frayed a bit in the toe area of the other sock. Not deal breakers - and this sort of thing might just disappear once washed. We can hope.

Buuuut - one sock SOMEHOW turned out nearly an inch longer in the foot area! WHAT!? How'd that happen!? Hm.

Ok, what if Brett just leaves the longer sock in the dryer a bit longer!?!? ;-) I'll report back later!

Pokey little puppy

Remember that cute little, 14-pound puppy we brought home last fall?


Well, he's now weighing in at just over 40-pounds, and still isn't too fond of being picked up!


SQUIRM SQUIRM SQUIRM!


Ok, hold him still for the picture!


Yeah, that's just not happening!


Trust me - while he might LOOK a lot bigger, he's still very much a puppy at only 9-months old. There's still plenty of occasions where he's getting lectured for hyper behavior, glared at after whipping his tail into a bowl of cereal milk, or knocking over a drinking glass. He still rip-roars around the house with a bad case of the puppy zooms, and still gets slashes on his nose from trying to give the cats WAY more love and affection than they could ever want from a dog.

Yup, definitely still a puppy. A really big puppy!

Dough!

I've been in the mood for cinnamon rolls lately - probably because of all the really good cinnamon I've gotten my hands on! You should smell our pantry! Anyhow, it'd been awhile (see the date: January 12th) since I'd last made Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls, and I hadn't tried making them again since freezing all the extra dough. I hauled two bags of the dough from the freezer and put them in a mixing bowl in the kitchen sink, filling it with hot water, which I replaced every 15 min or so with more hot water. After awhile, the dough thawed and, sure enough, started showing bubbly-signs of rising again. Cool!


While I was at it, I also decided to whip up a fresh batch of the 1-hour pizza dough from Cook's Illustrated, which I love. You dump the stuff into the food processor, and the action of the whirring blade both mixes AND heats up the dough, providing it encouragement to rise! After the two dough blobs sat on the counter for an hour, well, I couldn't resist fondling their voluptuous goodness!

Awwww yeah - you like that?!


Before I made the pizza I rolled out the two cinnamon roll blobs, spread on a mixture of softened butter, sugar, and Saigon cinnamon, rolled them up, sliced, and stashed them in pans to rise over the pre-heating oven.

Then the pizzas were made up and baked... Sure, the plain pepperoni pizza got a little greasy looking:


...but the other pizza was definitely the star of the show!! Now it might not LOOK like much (I'm willing to admit it wasn't very photogenic), but it tasted GREAT!

Remember all that fried chicken from earlier in the week? Well, I diced up a leftover fried breast and tossed it around in a bowl with Red hot wing sauce... After patting out the dough I drizzled on bleu cheese dressing, then sprinkled on a mixture of shredded colby jack and mozzarella cheese (this was not an occasion for fancy fresh mozzarella - sorry to disappoint!). Then I poured on the sauced up chicken, added a little more shredded cheese, a LITTLE more drizzled bleu cheese, and then any remaining hot wing sauce got drizzed on.


The dark spots are just the chicken breading that was already a bit dark - it got darker in the really hot oven. Didn't actually taste burned though.

Oh yeah - and the cinnamon rolls? Well, let's just say I was REALLY popular at work the next day! I think they were all gone not long after lunch time!!


Mmmm good!

Inappropriate behavior

You have to admit this is really cute - right?


But if you'll take a closer look at where Tucker's all sprawled out...


...you'll see he's on the kitchen counter.


You can see here just how ashamed he feels. Not.


If you own cats, you know it's practically impossible to keep them off the higher spaces in your house. If they want up there, they're gonna get up there. And maybe they won't APPEAR to get up there when you're around, but you KNOW they're having parties on your counters when you're at work! Moxie and Simon have no interest in getting on the kitchen counter. Tucker? That's one of his favorite spots! I just have to make sure I RE-clean it thoroughly every time I'm working with food!


And speaking of behavior, this one isn't so much "inappropriate" as it is "out of character". At least for a dog.


C'mon Doogie - what do you think you are - a cat?!


This really isn't something we find Doogie doing very often...but it sure is cute!

Dogs: Pros and Cons

These pictures were taken yesterday evening. Brett had given Doogie a bath and even though Brett had used TWO towels to dry the dog, he was still a little damp deep down in his fur. This made him more cuddly and had him in the "you look toasty - keep me warm" mode.

Meanwhile, we'd eaten dinner and I was flopped down on the sofa under a blanket (it's still a bit chilly even though it's now officially "spring").

So I didn't mind all of Doogie's 40+ pounds weighing down on me, fiddling with his post-wash curly fur, etc while we watched TV.


That is, until the inevitable happened!


I should've just turned him around to point that weapon in the other direction! Tucker and Moxie never fart. Simon can let fly some lethal ones. And y'know what? So can Doogie! Ugh!

Quack!

Well now here's something we don't often see in the backyard!



Considering we have a decent sized drainage pond behind our backyard, I really do hope we'll start seeing more fine feathered friends back there... How cool would it be to have ducks and geese back there with the occasional crane?!

Green Latern movie - getting closer to production!

While there's still no for-sure word on who will play the lead role of Green Lantern Hal Jordan, it looks like the pace is picking up and by Christmas 2010 we could be seeing the power-ring toting intergalactic police force on the big screen.

(Ok, when I phrase it like that, it really sounds kinda silly, eh?)

Marc Guggenheim, the creator of the recently cancelled Eli Stone, is one of the writers for the new Green Lantern film. From what little I saw of Eli Stone, and from what I understand of some of his other writing credits, he must crank out some decent stuff....so let's hope he and his co-conspirators on the GL project come up with something faithful to the comics, AND something entertaining!

Sour and fulla fiber!

So I keep stalling on posting about bread. I have so many old "fresh baked bread" pictures piled up now that it's crazy. It was one of those "I want to wait til I have time to post a recipe, or at least the full story about how I worked up this bread recipe."

Yeah, that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon... Oh well - screw it. Here's some bread I made recently, using the King Arthur Flour sourdough starter I've had going in the fridge for awhile. I started off with the King Arthur Flour basic sourdough recipe (included on their web site and it comes with the starter), and decided to have a little fun with it...


But I swapped in whole wheat flour, unprocessed oat bran, potato flour, millet and some slightly-boiled wheat berries (I have all the measurements written down somewhere). Because this seemed like it would make a heftier bread, I also upped the amount of yeast that works with the starter for leavening.


The bread TASTED really good. But it was also really hefty....with a good hearty chew. Maybe next time I found find a way to add a bit more leavening? Either more yeast, or more rising time? Oh well - it tasted good plain, and was also great toasted for tuna salad sandwiches!

Yummy fried goodness

Guess what I still have from last year's garden!? Miniature spaghetti squash!


They've just been sitting in a basket for "decoration" - I don't know why I haven't eaten 'em yet. They've sure held up well though...although once I cut one open I could see they knew spring is on it's way - a couple of the seeds were starting to sprout!


I know, I know - the blog posting title is "yummy fried goodness" - and we're not frying spaghetti squash. What's the dealio!?

So I picked up buttermilk recently because I was craving some fried chicken. Following the recipe in the new Martha Stewart book Brett got me for my birthday, I added cayenne pepper and dried mustard powder to buttermilk, tossed in boneless skinless chicken breasts (she called for bone-in), and let it all marinate in the fridge. Now it was only supposed to marinate for up to 24 hours, but things didn't work out, and so it went more like 48. Oh well - it certainly didn't harm the chicken...if anything, it might've kept the meat moister while frying!

Then you take the meat out of the marinade and let it sit on a rack to drain for about an hour - this brings it closer to room temp (for more even cooking), and lets the buttermilk remaining on the chicken get tacky. The chicken is then dredged in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper for just a hint of heat.

Here are the breasts fresh out of the oil... I actually used a stick thermometer to check each of their temps and make sure they were cooked too perfection (about 160F).


Some parts got a little darker than others - it seems like those were mostly where the breading buckled away from the meat a little and let the oil in between the meat and the breading. Did it taste burned? Not really!

Anyhow, to round out the meal, I was having spaghetti squash nuked in the microwave, steamed broccoli (mostly for Brett, who won't eat the squash, but I had a little as well), leftover mashed potatoes that Brett had made when his parents were over the previous weekend, annnnd to top it all off, some turkey gravy (yes, I cheated, it's from a pack).


Ok, there was no way I was gonna try to eat that chicken whole while sitting in front of the TV (is this how most of you eat your dinners these days? or do you sit at the dining table like a wholesome family?). So there's the cut up chicken - see how moist and tender the meat looks? This was some tasty stuff!


Now we only ate two of the breasts. Later I'll show you how I used up one of the leftover breasts - NOT something you'd normally think of with home cooking, but daaaaamn was it good!

Black and old

So I completely forgot to post pics of what my office looked like when I got back from treating myself to a few days off for my birthday! I came in one day and it looks like Cindy and Jamie had a bit of fun...


There's streamers in the doorway, streamers spelling out "40!" on the wall, balloons all over the place, and more!


There's even a nice, gloomy black and sparkly center piece on the desk!


Jamie topped it off by putting black streamers across the eyes/faces of various pictures in my office....kinda creepy! LOL


Yes, my office is a mess. It includes a couple of cardboard cutout standups of pre-Tom Katie Holmes from some office jokes that were going on a number of years back... Even Katie wasn't safe from the black streamer syndrome!

On your mark, get set....GROW!!

We've had a couple of beautiful days in a row - sunny, warm breezes, the birds are out gallivanting all over. Hell, as I type this, the spring peepers (aka frogs) are chirping up a serious chorus in the marshland across the street. PEEP PEEP PEEP! Loooooud, and maybe a touch annoying, but also a nice sign that spring is almost here.

Want another sign that spring's almost here? Here's what things are looking like down in the basement (take note - in the foreground, starting dahlia from seed!):


And before you think that's all I've got going on, that just one of three areas I've got my sprouting seeds parked in my "potting shed" area of the basement. Another shelf has two levels of seeds growing, including my first ever leeks (which are in need of a haircut at this point!). And across the room from all of this? Welllll......


And again, you're not seeing the full picture there!

Check the tray in the front/bottom of the picture - that's a full flat of alyssum seeds! I love 'em!! I'm really hoping many of the ones I started from seed last year and had out in the flower beds threw their seeds down everywhere and will make a comeback. But if not, I'm prepared!

And do you remember the experiment with the lupin seeds? Well they're doing QUITE well, thank you! (No, I'm not growing marijuana - those are Morello Cherry lupin)


Here's another experiment - old cilantro/coriander and basil monstruoso seeds. The taller sprouts here are the cilantro seeds, and the interesting thing about them is the seeds are 2-3 years old, and bought at the bulk store! I bought a large quantity of "coriander seeds for cooking", and lucked out - they sprout just fine, and I'm guessing they're quite a bit cheaper than buying little seed packs! I'm gonna have to make sure I keep these guys warm - and maybe even move some of them up to the kitchen window so I can watch them closer, keep them warm in the sunlight, etc...


Here's a new one for me - California Poppy Mission Bells Mix. They look BEAUTIFUL in the seed catalogs - and they seemed to be a little slower to sprout than other stuff I planted the same week - but now it looks like they're coming along just fine! And according to Dave's Garden (a GREAT resource for so many gardening reviews), while they're not hardy in zone 5, there's a good chance they might reseed themselves. These are totally going in my "warm colors" bed!


Like alyssum, lobelia's something else I can't do without each summer. I'm guessing it's because my folks always have it in their deck planters and flower pots? I love the almost-ultraviolet purpley blue color these are best known for...


I also planted some tubers and roots today - my first begonia from bulbs, more hostas to add to the existing ones, my first ever astilbe, and what I'm most excited about, my first ever peony. Now I have to admit - I'm not going to be 4-years patient for the tiny little peony's I got dirt cheap to bloom - I'm going to be on the look out for something fancier - like a "show plant" to add to the garden. You can buy peonies at different ages, with 2 year plants being cheaper than 4 year plants, but you've got that many more years before they'll bloom (I guess they're likely to start blooming around 3-4 years old?).

Now we're still at the stage where all the growies are indoors-only. Sure, we may have hit 70 today, but here's the forecast for tonite. First we'll get some rain, which those peas I planted the other day are gonna need (since I neglected to water them)...



And then early tomorrow morning? Yup, that's right - a chance for flurries!


So we're not going to be putting any tender growies outside for quite awhile!