Homemade Bruschetta

With the bounty of our garden being pretty decent this year and having gotten a cheese making kit from my brother in law as a Christmas gift, I thought it would be fun to make completely homemade bruschetta.  

I have never made cheese before, but I thought, how hard could it be?  There were instructions, the kit ingredients I needed, got some milk, and I thought I was good to go.  Well, it turns out there's something to picking the right milk, which I am not very good at.  Yet.  I did pretty good until I added the rennet tablet and then it kind of went south.

 My cheese never really "set up" to a curd state, so I kind of got this ricotta looking stuff instead.

On the upside, it still tastes pretty decent, so I decided we still had a green light for bruschetta.

I picked some basil from our deck.  The scent of fresh basil is unmistakable! 

Then I harvested some really red tomatoes.

During the day I made some homemade baguettes thanks to our nifty bread maker.  It has the option to do those which has been handy more than once.  Finally, I put it all together. (You can see my "helper" in the background)

For me personally, I thought this was pretty tasty.  This is saying something since I don't really like tomatoes.  I have gotten a lot braver over the years to try them in different ways, but I think bruschetta is about as close as I will come to having that much tomato with little else around it.  My husband thought it was extremely good and he is much more a connoisseur of these things than I am.

I think it's pretty awesome that all of this was either grown or made by our own hands.  I'll be looking for more ways to take advantage of our garden in the coming years, but this was definitely fun!

Garden Goodies

This is our second year with our container garden and I have to say, we are quite pleased with it.  Last year was really what I call our learning year.  We grew a variety of things from radishes to peppers.  Our biggest failure last year was tomatoes which I tried to grow from seed.  Everyone told me that was hard and I said, "Oh but I want to try anyway!"  And so I did and I was rewarded with no tomatoes.  The biggest success last year was jalapeno peppers.  I used those to make pepper jelly which was pretty tasty!

So this year we are growing:
Bell peppers

Jalapeno peppers

Tomatoes

Green Beans
Romaine Lettuce
Butter Crunch Lettuce
Summer Squash

Cucumbers

Green Onions
Radishes
Basil
Parsley
Spinach
Garlic

So far we have had a good harvest from the green bean, cucumber, and tomato plants and our lettuces with the exception of the spinach.  The peppers are finally starting to take shape and who only knows what's going on with the summer squash.  It's big and flowering, but no fruit yet.  Things I will not be growing again - Spinach, radishes, and Green onions.  Next year I would like to try to grow broccoli.  I am hoping to get a bigger garlic harvest next year, but we will see.

Today I harvested some of the basil today to hang it up and dry for future use in the winter months.  I am hoping the basil plant continues to grow.  I have been told cutting it back promotes growth, so we will see. Later this week I am going to make homemade bruschetta with our tomatoes and basil and then I am going to make baugettes and mozzarella cheese.  I can't wait and I don't even really like bruschetta!  I'll be sure to share some pictures.

Will It Grow?

It's been a long long time since I have lived in any one place to be really "settled" in.  In fact, now that I think about it, the last time I was in one place this long I was in high school.  Wow.  I guess that enhances the reason of why I am so excited about my garden project.  It's been forever since it was even a possibility!

My father is a farmer.  He grew up on a dairy farm and has basically had a farm, tractors, land to play on most of his adult life.  I know how delicious food from a garden can be and have wanted to have a mini garden of my own for a long time.  Even growing herbs seems to be a challenge around here with cats.  This year I decided to get serious about it and figure out what I wanted to plant and how.  I called my dad and said, "I have room on my deck that gets good sun, what can I grow?"  The answer was apparently a lot.

This is my year of experiments.  I plan to take notes on what grows well, what doesn't have a hope and a prayer for making it on the deck, and how much of any one thing I really need.  I went to the garden supply store in March and purchased starter soil, containers, and seeds.  A lot of them.  I think the whole thing came to about $50?  I figured there's something to that 'strength in numbers' philosophy, so I planted a bunch of them.  Probably more than was necessary, but that whole survival rate can be tricky.  There were a few things that had a terrible success rate; oregano - zero, catnip - one plant made a come back, dianthus and carnations are running at about 2 plants each. 

Most people think I am nuts that I am growing everything from seeds.  Apparently, getting starter tomato plants is the preferred method.  What do I know?  Seeds were $1.69/pack with the potential for 24 plants.  I had time and space, so give it a whirl.  If it does work out, I am out $5 for the containers, dirt and seeds.  I am ok with that investment risk.  So far about half have made it and of those, I am not sure which are going to thrive in the transplanting process.  I tell myself the solution will be to just buy the starter plants everyone else buys and call it a day.  :)

So what did I decide to grow?  I am so glad you asked!  Here's what's growing so far:
Heritage Tomatoes
Roma Tomatoes
Peppers
Jalapeno Peppers
Romaine Lettuce
Butter crunch lettuce
Spinach
Radishes
Green Beans
Peas
Green Onions
Parsley
Basil (also sad growth rate, but I have 3 tiny plants)

The radishes and peppers are doing very well, the tomatoes had a lot of struggling seedlings, but they are in the zone where they may make it.  I am planning on also planting a hill of cucumbers for giggles.  I am probably most excited about the lettuces because we do eat so much of them.  It would be wonderful to have a good crop to save some money there.  I am planting waves of those to have them available all summer/fall long.   

So, the ultimate question - Will it Grow? should be answered over the summer.  I'll keep you posted!

Accidental Gardening

Last year I bought an amazing petunia hanging planter from the Farmers Market in Syracuse.  It became my kind of zen garden I took to pruning and watering every day when I got home from work.  I would pick all the dead heads off the plant and prune back the dead branches.  Since I had one flowering plant at the time, I could manage it to this level.  When the fall came, we brought all the plants inside, including the dead carcass of what was my petunia plant.  It spent the winter inside with all it's dead branches hanging around above a bookcase.  Why do you ask?  Well because I was lazy, forgot about it and then it became scenery and I stopped noticing.

Fast forward to this spring, around May/June.  When we moved, we set almost all of the plants outside on the back deck immediately.  We really had to place to put them inside and sunshine would be good for all of them.  This included my hanging basket of dead petunia parts.  I had gotten it in my head that I would finally deal with the dead plant here because I had room and a yard.  Let's just say that didn't happen.  The spring rains came and dowsed all the plants and they began to thrive.

Then I noticed the hanging basket started to get all kinds of little green dots on it.  It wasn't mold, but growth of some sort.  I thought, well that's odd, I wonder what kind of weeds I am going to get.  In the spirit of letting nature take it's course, I would throw water on it while I was out watering the other plants and then one day, I saw the most remarkable thing.  A petunia bud!  What in the world?!  Apparently when I brought them inside last fall, it prevented them from freezing, so they basically re-seeded themselves and began anew this year!  How delightful lazy gardening can be!