Mid-Summer Abundance

Despite, or perhaps because of, the great heat wave and dry spell the Niagara area has been experiencing, my garden's bounty has begun in earnest.

I've been collecting little odd bits here and there, a few basil leaves to make pesto, a bit of kale to add to potato salad. But the last couple of weeks things have really begun to produce. We had friends over for dinner the other night, and though I didn't get to offer them any tomatoes yet, we did have cucumber salad, fried baby zucchini and a killer Swiss-Chard Tart ( stole the recipe from Laura Calder).

The mulberries! You can't pick them by hand or else they will burst. So I laid out a vinyl tablecloth (a tarp would work too!)  under the tree, shook the branches and watched as all the fully ripe berries fell. It was easy, and I love that I've got a harvest of something for free!

It all kind of started with the discovery last week that we had a Mulberry tree in the front yard. I googled all kinds of Mulberry recipes and had decided to just make them into another liqueur. Then I finished gathering them all up and wouldn't you know it, they are just about the most delicious berry I have ever tasted. Needless to say, they did not get turned into alcohol and are tucked away in the freezer so that I can grab a handful of them to make frozen yogurt or throw in a smoothie or on oatmeal.

Layered out to get frozen. Once frozen I threw them into a baggie and now I can grab them as I please.   Leaving them frozen means that if I want frozen yogurt, I grab the frozen berries add them to a cup of greek yogurt and blend with my immersion blender. Instant delicious!

This week the tomatoes are beginning to ripen, and they are delicious. I was worried that all this heat and no rain would make them super tough, but they are sweet and juicy and delicious! ( I threw the cup or so I collected tonight into my Pesto Quinoa Salad with Tomatoes, Olives and Cucumber...mmm...yum.) And I've had to begin checking on the zucchinis everyday now, as I had a couple that got so big they had to be shredded for winter consumption ~ hopefully in the form of chocolate zucchini cake!

Today's bounty. From the left: Collard greens, kale, massive zucchini, snowpeas, basil, cucumbers, jalapenos (and one large red chilli) and the first of the tomatoes.

I was also able to pick a large bowl full of snowpeas - the vines are taller than me now and full of peas. The cukes are coming along steadily, I can eat at least 2 of them a day now (and by "can" I mean I have to eat 2 a day just to keep up with them.) I also picked about 10 jalapenos off the bushes and they are HOT!! like super HOT! My fingers are still burning! I cut them all up and froze them, so I can crack open a bag of them whenever I need jalapenos. I've also had to start paring down all the greens I planted. Both the collard greens and the kale got wrangled down to size today, blanched and frozen.

Thankfully, my mom got me a FoodSaver for Christmas and though I didn't open it until last week, it is now getting put through its paces.

And this is what I ended up with! Go Foodsaver Go!

I spent the evening (4 hours!!) blanching and chopping and grating (with the food processor, thank goodness!) and foodsaver-ing. But now I feel incredibly good about having begun to store the excesses of summer for the winter when I'll be craving all those fresh from the garden veggies.

Next up, Tim and I will be making pickles. I'm not sure he's aware he'll be helping yet, but considering his only concern has been being able to make crunchy pickles, he's got to help out. Although I might have to send him out of the room when I start boiling vinegar (he hates the smell!).

Ch...ch...ch...cherry bomb!!!

Can you tell what this post will be about?

With that obscure reference to The Runaways, you probably think this post will be about music. And while I am still rocking out to 70s and 80s records (cuz our record player now works!!!) this is actually going to be a post about making Cherry Liqueur.

Note the cherry juice everywhere! I tried to protect the kettle in the background with a dishcloth...didn't work so well.

Thanks to the high high temperatures and low low amounts of rain we've been getting the cherries are ready and ripe and delicious and sweet in the Niagara region. And thankfully I live in the heart of it and so can just walk up the concession and a basket of cherries. Or if my mom is here, we'll drive up the concession and buy two, like we did this Sunday past.  With the plethora of cherries, I started to look up recipes to use them in (of course I've also gorged on them - ripe and raw- as it were.) Everything was some sort of sugary baked good, not really what I'm in the mood for in the middle of the summer of deadly heat. So, I thought I'd make sugary alcohol, because I'm sure I'll be in the mood to have sugar in the middle of the winter when the alcohol will be ready.

Cherries and sugar and vodka...not really any more complicated than that.

I also just happened to be reading a book called Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris (she wrote Chocolat as well) about the German occupation of France during World War II that had a recipe for Cherry Liqueur in it.  And after reading the following, I couldn't not make it:

The secret is to leave the stones in. Layer cherries and sugar one on the other in a widemouthed glass jar, covering each layer gradually with clear spirit (kirsch is best, but you can use vodka or even Armagnac) up to half the jar’s capacity. Top up with spirit and wait. Every month, turn the jar carefully to release any accumulated sugar. In three years’ time the spirit has bled the cherries white, itself stained deep red now, penetrating even to the stone and the tiny almond inside it,becoming pungent, evocative, a scent of autumn past. Serve in tiny liqueur glasses, with a spoon to scoop out the cherry, and leave it in the mouth until the macerated fruit dissolves under the tongue. Pierce the stone with the point of a tooth to release the liqueur trapped inside and leave it for a long time in the mouth, playing it with the tip of the tongue, rolling it under, over, like a single prayer bead. Try to remember the time of its ripening, that summer, that hot autumn, the time the well ran dry, the time we had the wasps’ nests, time past, lost, found again in the hard place at the heart of the fruit… 

So I spent all of last night pitting cherries (which is a juicy job!) and making liqueur that will hopefully be delicious in a couple of years...and if not, at least it will have been a helpful patience builder for me.

Cherry stained fingertips!

After reading a couple of recipes, I did change it up a bit from recipe in the book. I have to say that I am not patient enough to wait 3 years, so I pitted the cherries (thus opening up the cherries to the alcohol and hopefully speeding up the process a bit). I did break open the pits and remove the intensely almond flavoured seed inside, to include in the batches - to hopefully create a layering of flavours. 

Cracked open cherry pit with the little nugget of almondy-goodness in the middle. There were cherry pits flying all over the room until I got pit-cracking down to an art. I ended up using wire-cutters~the pliers ended up just squishing everything.

But like the passage from the book I did layer the cherries (plus about 8 cherry pit seeds per jar) with sugar, probably about 3/4 of a cup per jar and then topped up each layer with vodka, until I had two jars that were 3/4 full of cherries and sugar and then I just topped it up the rest of the way. Then I labelled them both with their official open dates!

Notice, I am a little short on patience. One is to be opened this New Year's (I figure that they will be an interesting addition to the champagne). And I'll wait a full year and a half before cracking the second one.

And now I can't wait for New Year's!

Trending...In My World Anyway

(Image from Honestly WTF)

Just a little list of things I'm loving right now and that are inspiring me thus far this summer.

Old-school embroidery thread friendship bracelets to help fill up your arm of bangles, as seen here.

The green-ness right before it thunderstorms (there has been a lot of that happening around here lately)...like this and this. (Plus that last one has an awesome house that makes me want to move to Sweden.)

This running podcast that has helped me learn to love running, or at least allows me to suffer through it.

Our record player which is finally working after we figured out that it was the speakers. Records just sound sooo much better.

This gorgeous penthouse in Paris....look at those beams! And another French gem.

This Hummingbird Celebration cake, that I want to make and eat right now...by myself. Mmmm... coconut.

This great super simple grecian maxi dress that I happen to have made recently, as a bonus it can be worn in a ridiculous number of ways, like this.

Hope you are having a fun and inspiring summer so far!

Gardening and Thoreau (by way of Gaspereau)

With Tim in London for the triplets birthday this weekend I had little to distract me - so I put on my gloves and rolled up my sleeves and got down to weeding and doing some other gardening tasks.  I am happy to say that all of the things that I planted from seed directly into the garden are doing exceedingly well.

My scarlet runner beans (in the front) are growing like gangbusters! I'm hoping the corn in behind can keep up since the beans are supposed to use the corn as a support.

In fact the snow peas are doing so well that I had to scrounge about for the materials to make an impromptu trellis, as they are already putting out their little feelers.

The snow pea trellis, a.k.a. the Spider's Web. I didn't want to have to buy a trellis system so I scrounged around the yard for dead branches, stuck them in the ground and kitchen twined it up good! It's not pretty but its free and soon enough it will be covered in the snow peas so it will grow into a beautiful thing.

 I also thinned everything out in order to give seedlings more room to grow into big hearty plants - this was exciting for me, as it meant I got to have wilted baby rapini and swiss chard with garlic for lunch....mmmm mmmmm good.  It was delicious but its probably because I grew them myself.

There is just something so satisfying about the results of ones own labour - can you tell I've been rereading Thoreau's Walden. I was reminded how much I love the book by a recent lecturer at Willowbank Andrew Steeves- one of the partners in the small publishing company Gaspereau Press (in the news semi-recently because of The Sentimentalists).

He came to speak about the traditional methods that Gaspereau Press uses in the very modern world of publishing - yet the lecture had very little to do with the use of older technology and much more to do with taking great care in what you do. In Andrew Steeves case that means understanding the needs of the book that you are publishing - from the cover art or lack of it, to the font style, to the sewn binding, so that you create something that conveys the message of the book and will survive to do so for the next century or so. It is really about being respectful and responsible about what you create - which if you've read any novels recently, has not usually been the purview of the huge publishing corporations out there.

Steeves just mentioned Walden in passing within the lecture but it got me to thinking about the book again and how much I liked it when I first read it. I also figured that if I read it again now, it would help to put the summer in perspective i.e. the growing of our own food and saving as much money as we can.  When it comes down to it, I don't think I could give up as much as Thoreau did when he was living on Walden pond (although I don't think that's his point - since he repeatedly pleads for people to live authentically - the lives that they want to live and not the lives their families or society dictates.)  BUT I do think that I can do with much less than many people do and I think I've got my priorities straight when it comes to stuff. That's not to say that we don't have a lot of stuff (much more of it is Tim's than mine!!) but it doesn't drive our lives in anyway and there isn't much that I couldn't part with if and when we move into a smaller place.

On that note, here's a picture of one of the gorgeous peonies that are just beginning to wain from too much rain and wind in the front yard. They were gorgeous while they lasted.

Bring on the weeding!

So, despite the fact that it blustered and thundered and blew our plants around yesterday, the garden is looking pretty darn good and it's finished. I just went out and picked up a few more plants (zucchini and eggplants) to fill in some remaining space. I had made a last dash decision to not try to grow the romaine lettuce seeds that I had gotten. I didn't think they would still do well - seeing as it is already getting super hot and muggy so I needed something to put in their place - tiny "kermit" thai eggplants it is - should be a cool experiment.



Here ares some pics of the finished garden, notice that I made a few more paths out of some more scavenged rocks and some barn boards:

Yes there does seem to be a lot of empty space...BUT those have seeds in them which will hopefully produce a beautiful cornucopia of edibles!

This is my little corner herb garden. It's so cute!

Here is a list of the veg we are growing this year:

- Tomatoes... of course, they are all cherry varieties, including the more exotic yellow canary and zebra striped but including Sweet 100 and Juliets
- Basil...and lots of it! pesto here I come!
- Herbs - parsley, lemon balm, rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano and dill
- Snap Peas
- Rapini
- Brussel Sprouts
- Cabbage
- Bok Choi
- Swiss Chard
- Collards
- Carrots
- Jalapenos
- Red Chilis
- Corn
- Scarlet Runner Beans
- Squash
- Cucumbers
- Cantaloupe
- Zucchini
- Eggplants - Sicilian and Kermit Thai
-Potatoes

I have high hopes for this garden. I'm really hoping to reel in a big harvest come the end of the summer and stock it away for the winter, plus its just fun to putter around in the garden. Tim seems to be all for the garden but I'm not sure if he knows what he is getting himself into - he did plant the parsley and then complain of vertigo after standing up. It might be a long summer of weeding.

The Garden...So Far

So down here in Niagara, April showers turned into May Showers and I've barely been able to get into my garden over the past month. On the few days when it didn't rain, we got out there, taking out the sod and putting up rabbit board along the bottom of the fence but its been slow going. Apparently all of this rain has been good for growth and flowers and all that, and all of the bulbs and perennials on this little plot of land have been coming up beautifully. If only I'd been able to get in there and plant my veggies a little earlier, alas, like the rest of the country I am waiting for the May 2-4 to plant all my veg (though in reality, because we will be in Orillia and London over the weekend it will likely be done on Monday or Tuesday of next week).

We went to a local nursery today to get our plants, because I know there will be a mad dash for them this weekend and I don't want to be stuck with slim pickin's after the long weekend rush. I had planned on starting most of my plants from seed but that was an experiment in FAILURE. After my first failed attempt, I thought that I had just left them under the clear plastic lid on the seed starting kit, but my second attempt hasn't been much better. I just don't think they've gotten enough light - its not that bright in here on the best of days and all the gloomy rainy days over the past little while haven't helped. I have not given up though, next year we will definitely try again but with a grow lamp.

Failed seed attempt #2. These are the basil and tomatoes, most of them are at least still alive, but they are still quite small. This is not even the worst batch, all the cruciferous veg I tried to start got really tall really quick, then they got all droopy and died. Boo.

With all of our plants bought and sitting on my kitchen table. I figured that I had best do what hardscaping I needed to do in the garden before the long weekend, because I won't have much time afterwards before the plants all need to go in. Thankfully, it was a nice day today - we didn't even get any of the scattered showers they were calling for and it was even sunny in the late afternoon - hurray!! So I got to work organizing stones and turning over soil. Yes that's right you heard me - organizing stones.

Here is the garden pre-hardscaping and with bags of composted manure all ready to go. It's a good picture that shows the rabbit board we've put around the garden (all sawn by my own hands I might add) and the potato planter outside the garden - apparently potatoes don't like amended soil so, I've put it outside the garden and filled up a couple of buckets of soil for when I start hilling the potatoes.

I was determined to keep this garden on as low of a budget as I could by seed starting (fail) and by using free materials when I could. Luckily, I was able to get old barn boards from a barn that was being torn down and have used that for rabbit board. And as you'll know from all our house pictures we've got a big stone ruin in the back yard that has provided us with piles of stone (don't worry heritage friends, they had all already fallen out of the wall and were in various piles about the yard - or buried in the garden), so I was able to build a little pathway and a bit of a dry stone retaining wall to keep the slope where the melons and squash will grow from tumbling down into the rest of the garden.

 A nice sunny after picture in the afternoon. My pretty little path and all freshly turned over soil. Unfortunately I've run out of stones, so my other paths will have to be leftover barnboards. Not as pretty but it'll have to do.

Another view that better shows you the wee stone wall - it's only about a foot high. 

Now all I need to do is get the plants in and then we can begin to weed in earnest. Tim has no idea what he is in for!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter Everyone! It's my favourite holiday of the year.  And this Easter Sunday has turned out to be a beautiful day - chockful of blooming flowers! (See the picture above.)

We were in London for the Easter weekend, which was great because we got to see Tim's side of the family; meet an interesting family that's living our dream by living in rural northern ontario with five home-schooled kids (ok, maybe my dream, 5 kids seems a little much for Tim); and we also got to spend the Easter Triduum (well Friday and Saturday) at St. George's which was a great Easter present to ourselves.

My school year is over, which means that I am trying to find myself a summer job (if anyone knows about anything either construction-y or planning-y in the heritage field let me know! Will travel for work!) But while I am on the hunt for the elusive awesome summer job experience I will be working on the garden. We started cutting out the sod a few weeks ago when it was warmer but its been raining ever since. Here's a sneak peek of what we are working with, there will be more to come in the next little while.

Ulli eating grass in the garden area that should not have grass! We'll be getting to that this week.