I Stuffed a Pumpkin Full of Hush Puppies

The hush puppies were left over from last week's Taste of Cherry Creek ward activity. I made Carolina BBQ as my ethnic dish. A week out, I didn't think they were worth keeping.

The pumpkin I grew in my garden last summer. I had the pumpkins in the boys' bedroom window because I don't have a root cellar. It's a little sunnier in the boys' window than in a root cellar, so some of the pumpkins didn't make it. This pumpkin was dry and tender. You try to pull it off the window sill by the stem and the stem flops right off, creating a perfect little Pup-hole. So I stuffed all the outdated hushpuppies into the pumpkin, en route to the compost heap out back. It was fun to stuff them in. I'd do it again in an instant.

More and Better Carrots This Year

Last year we had six or eight measly, miniature carrot-type plants. This year, with the help of my Vegetable Gardener's Bible, I had a bumper crop of humongous carrots, with thick, lushy greens. I tilled my soil deep, like 12-15 inches deep. I added compost and manure to the soil. I threw the seeds down on the soil all over the wide row and covered them with a board until they started sprouting. Then I took off the board and let 'er rip. They really stepped up and grew like crazy. I came back from my quilt retreat (more info on that later) and 90% of the carrots were ready to harvest RIGHT NOW, so I had to bring them in. Some I used right away, some I dehydrated, some I cooked into baby food for Scotty. Some are still in the fridge drawer, I think.

Anyway, following the advice of a real gardener produces real results. I need a different variety next year. These were all super fatty and a tad stumpy, which is what they were supposed to be, but I prefer a slightly more slender carrot.

We Grew Carrots...But Not Good Ones

The title pretty much says what happened. On a bit of a whim I planted some carrot seeds and when nothing came up I replanted the row with cucumbers. So halfway through the summer, in between all the cucumber vines, here come these carrot greens growing strong and healthy. My mother-in-law gave me the seeds and told me that when she went to harvest her carrots, they were tiny stumpy nubs, so to leave mine in the ground, which I did. I finally brought them in after Halloween. Here's the entire carrot harvest, from largest to smallest. I was just pleased something grew at all. We...didn't eat the little guys.

Oh, and that IS my big fat old belly there, at the bottom of the picture. Sometimes I think I'm not that huge-looking, and then something will happen like this picture, and I'll know for sure that, yep, I'm tremendous in size. Anyway, here's to a better carrot harvest next year! Cheers!

Tomatoes: a Review

My whole life, everyone who cares has always asserted FORCEFULLY that homegrown tomatoes, vine-ripened and freshly harvested, are INFINITELY SUPERIOR to store tomatoes and that store tomatoes are trash. I have always agreed that store tomatoes are not awesome. Too...tomato-ey? Anyway, the other evening we harvested our first tomato from our garden and diced it up to put in a pasta salad. It was much lovelier to cut into than a store tomato, and we didn't harvest it until it was actually ripe. Those store tomatoes that say,"vine-ripened" are totally lying, since they're not ever actually ripe. Anyway, it was actually edible. I don't really like tomatoes, since they taste so tomato-ey and not as fruity. But this one from our garden was almost fruity and that nasty pungent tomato flavor was mellowed into a tastier, riper, and more-fruity taste. So, in the end, I agree that store tomatoes stink and home-grown and vine-ripened tomatoes are much, much better. But I'm still not to that tomato-activist point of saying that you can just go out and pick the tomato off the vine and eat it like an apple. THAT'S too much for now, but I did like our ripe garden tomato.

Holy Horticulture, Batman!

Here's my garden now. Those there, up front, are the tomato plants. I had to give up on raising my tomatoes from seed this year and just go buy these. Luckily they were on clearance or the price of each little plantling would have given me a stroke. THAT'S the last thing I need this summer, eh? Then there's a row of dud beans, then a row of half-duds and half-awesome beans. Then another row of tomatoes, of a different variety. Thanks, Dot and Jay for your cast-off tomato cages from last year. My dad laughed at how big they were when he saw them, but I feel that our little 'maters are doing them justice. Behind the second tomato-row are two rows of corn, with vigorous pole-beans climbing every stalk. And behind THAT you can see some extremely bushy beans. They are going crazy and this next couple weeks - hopefully - will see me canning some huge bean-harvests in my pressure cooker/canner. Thanks for that, Will and Jodi! You guys are great!

Then in this here picture you can see my poor sad little pea row, staked up with string and branch chunks right from our dead backyard trees. Then an enormous, bushy cucumber row. I plan to use that harvest to make little pickles, and maybe some big pickles. I got the gallon-size pickle chips from Sam's Club and the kids are kind of going crazy on them, so maybe I'll use my P-Chef crinkle cutter to do up some fancy old pickle chips. That's a big maybe. Anyway, beyond my little green garden stool you can see the king of the garden: my enormous, outrageous, novelty, competition-size pumpkin vines. Just vines, so far. With plenty of flowers. Every day that I can, I go out and poke around looking for a little gourd to appear but so far, it's just a bunch of flowers. Soon, little gourds, soon. You'll have to come soon in order to be ready and hilariously large by Fall. Then next to the big old pumpkin vines are some smaller but equally vigorous Butternut Squash vines. They have flowers too and no gourds. But it's just super-cool to have something growing so dang well in my garden, where nothing but rocks and debris were flourishing when we moved in.

Seriously, when we moved in, this was a nasty dump-hole. My mother-in-law came to help turn over the soil and get the garden ready, but first we had to move a box of busted-up mirror tiles, two of those concrete-based poles for mounting what? satellite dishes?, a long strip of galvanized flashing, lumber scraps, and literally TONS of landscaping rocks that were a couple inches deep under the deadish grass. I still have more of those to pick out for next year's optimistic, expanded garden. Plus all the stuff we un-buried while rock-picking, like lots of pennies, old batteries, matchbox cars, two bbq grates, some pavers, busted bricks, and more plywood scraps. And pens. Plenty of pens. And toys. Little mini toys.

So, thank goodness something good is happening in the garden, and hopefully lots of it will result in harvested vegetables. And none of the vegetables will be malignant!

Someting's Happening in the Garden

Corn. I never grew corn before but Seth's family does all the time so he requested it.










onion- I'm not really onion crazy but my in-laws gave me these onion sets and you do have to have some onions for flavah, so I'll grow these maybe, and then chop them up and freeze or dry them.











peas - I love peas so much. Also they smell pretty growing. Mine are wilt-resistent! So, bonus.











Butternut squash-I saw a recipe where you put butter and brown sugar in the squash and cook it and it made me want to try them. Otherwise I don't like squash, but I know you can make pumpkin-like pies with these if you don't want to eat them straight.








Pumpkins- I love novelties so much, so I got the enormous-competition-size-pumpkin seeds. Wouldn't it be SO COOL if a couple grew on the vine!!! Huge Enormous Pumpkins!!! It's like my dream come true.

So I planted all these seeds in the garden like three weeks ago and nothing has been coming up and nothing has been coming up. So like three days ago I started, duh, praying over the garden which I should have been doing all along, and voila! three days later here come all these crops popping out of the ground. I was so thrilled I called the kids out and made them examine each little sproutling. When Seth got home I made him come right out and examine each little sproutling. It's a pretty good miracle since all I did to prepare the soil was pick out most of the landscape rocks with which it was previously covered, and turned in the "compost" I had made during the whole last year of living in a townhome.