Starred in my Google Reader:
First, Arborio Rice Pudding with Cinnamon-Cardamom Streusel is another recipe from Sugar Plum that I really need to find time to try out. It looks toe-curling good.
And then there’s Michael’s Simple Summer Pickles from Urban Garden Casual. My cucumbers aren’t ripe yet, though. PICKLES!
While you’re thinking about pickles and pudding, read Feeding the PMS Beast on simply stated. I’ve actually tried chicken, salmon and tofu to take the edge off PMS cravings, and not one did a damned thing. Rice pudding and pickles do, so there you go.
Gardening with Children is an article from Urban Garden Casual which offers seven planting ideas to spark your kid’s interest in gardening. The top two are radishes and carrots, which germinate quickly. I planted neither this year, but Aya is very happy to see the aforementioned cucumbers growing. She also likes the flowers on the watermelon plants.
Plague is another laugh-and-cry entry from the amazing Anne Nahm. Stay away from people who have pinkeye, even if they claim it’s just a sinus infection!
Finally, Read the Numbers on Your Fruit is an article from SkrewTips that explains just what those little stickers on the fruit you buy at the supermarket mean. Here’s a hint: if the number on the sticker starts with 8, look for something else.
Aya was up late last night with a cough and a terribly sore throat (still!). She was crying because she couldn’t even swallow. Roleplay was truncated and I missed the last half of Dr. Who, but with much cuddling (and ice chips, honey, and Motrin), she finally fell asleep, so it was worth it. I don’t get much of a chance to mother her, so it felt good to be able to comfort her.
Anyway. She’s feeling better and her tonsils aren’t so swollen now. I’m still too sleepy to write much.
The air was clearer today and it wasn’t quite as hot, so Aya begged to go outside for a while. We wandered around the garden, tending the plants. Aya picked strawberries, screeched when some ants crawled on her arm, and played with an enormous earthworm before letting it go back to work under one of the tomato plants.
At Tomato Casual, Vanessa Richins recently offered some answers to a reader’s question: What makes a tomato mushy?
- The variety of tomato.
- The environment the tomato was grown in.
- Storing picked tomatoes in the fridge.
I was initially surprised by that last one. Anyone who’s seen tomatoes swell and ripen quickly over a period of one or two very hot days knows tomatoes thrive in the heat. But, I thought, shouldn’t everything go in the fridge? What if my tomatoes spoil before I use them?
And then I remembered how my mom always stored her massive tomato harvest every year in crates in the laundry room. Even as fast as they were added to salads or sandwiches or made into pasta sauce or jarred for the winter, scores sat out there for weeks or even months, in the hottest room in the house! They were never refrigerated and they never spoiled.
So, my tomatoes are coming out of the fridge today. No mushy tomato for me!
I also found a very helpful online tool for diagnosing tomato problems through Tomato Casual: Tomato Problem Solver pointed out that one of my plants has bacterial speck. I need to move it away from the sprinkler.
Image Credit: tomatoes squaredcircle by Muffet at Flickr.
In a month or less, the hills surrounding of the Sacramento valley will be gold. The flowers will be parched, the air thick with smog and redolent with drying grass.
But for now, everything is green and growing.
The bees are busy and seem to be showing up in greater numbers than last year. The scent of jasmine and honeysuckle and juniper from my front yard reaches even into the street. Birdsong, chirruping frogs, and crickets drown out the sounds of traffic and sirens.
Thus surrounded by growing things, life feels idyllic, bringing to mind simpler times.
Maybe more innocent times.
This is Eden to me.
During my first few years at this house, I tried to recapture a rural childhood by struggling to find time for gardening in a very decent-sized suburban yard. My weekends were crammed full of tilling soil, watering, weeding, and harvesting burgeoning crops of zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and chard. It was a lot of work, particularly with a husband who refuses to toil in the soil or do yardwork, and I gave up.
Then, last year, I stumbled across some articles about about container gardening and decided to give it a try in the front yard. I discovered that growing flowers, fruits and vegetables in pots is much less work than digging beds, and I can find time to tend the plants while I’m making dinner. Encouraged by that success, I added a few more pots in the front yard this year, plus an herb garden right by the front door.
With that in mind, Urban Garden Casual is my new favorite blog. The site is indispensable to anyone looking to start and maintain an urban (or suburban) garden with limited space (and time)!
Yesterday was a beautiful spring-like day. The operative word in “spring-like” is “like” - because while it was sunny and the birds were singing, it was still very cold. Brian took Aya to the park and let her race around, then he sat outside and read for hours. I spent almost the entire day inside, huddled in front of my computer, exploring Angmar in LOTRO.
The brighter skies have me starting to think about garden plans, though. I’d like to put in a raised bed garden in the front yard, assuming Brian will hack down the 10 feet tall bottlebrush shrubs so we can get more sunlight. Then I’d probably use the containers for herbs and lettuce and stick tomatoes, peppers, corn, zucchini and cucumbers in the raised bed. Maybe melons, too. Should probably try some squash. Hmm.
I can’t plant anything yet, because it’s still too damn cold. There was a half-inch of ice coating Lil’s car this morning. Took about 10 minutes to chip it off the windshield, even with the defroster running full blast.
I finally watched Fantastic 4 over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised. It was much better than I’d anticipated. That, combined with last week’s unearthing details about the New Hellions made me want to coerce Lil into playing EmmaFR0ST again so I’d have someone to play a Marvel-ish mutant with again.
