New Toy! New Toy!

Look what arrived at the house yesterday:


A FREEZER! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am extremely excited about this - can you tell?

We have been shopping for a freezer for what seems like forever. Probably almost 2 months in reality. You wouldn't think it would be that hard to decide on one but there's quite a few options to consider. Upright freezer or chest freezer? Then what size of freezer do we need? Is 7 cubic feet big enough? Or should we go with 13 cubic feet? The 13 cubic foot freezer is not that much more expensive than the 7 cubic foot freezer so maybe we should just get the bigger one. But do we really NEED a freezer that big when there's only two of us? Who has the best prices on freezers? Will we be able to take it home ourselves or do we need to have it delivered? How much does delivery cost? Which freezer is going to last at least ten years? Where will we be in ten years? Will we have kids? How many? Okay maybe we do need the 13 cubic foot freezer...

Whew. See? There's lot to think about! We ended up with a Frigidaire chest freezer. It's 8.8 cubic feet with two baskets. It holds 300 and some pounds of food, and we decided that was plenty of space. We opted for a chest freezer over an upright because they are less expensive for the same amount of space, they are more energy efficient and they can keep lower temperatures.

We really needed this freezer because of the garden. We've thought about getting one before for buying in bulk but this year really sealed the deal with the garden. Our freezer in the kitchen has been completely PACKED for several weeks now. Almost everytime the door was opened, something feel out. We have not had ice for awhile either. The ice maker is broken and there was no room for ice cube trays. This is what it looked like:


Here's the inside of the new freezer:


Look at all that space!

The first thing I did when I got home was move a ton of food out of the kitchen freezer into the new deep freeze. It was four or five bags of food. I had no idea how much I had crammed in there! And there was some stuff buried that I had forgotten about including some break and bake cookies (mmmm).

Here's the freezer all full:




I label everything with masking tape and a Sharpie so I remember what it is. Even if it seems completely obvious and I think of course I will know what this is, I still label it. You never know.

There is still a lot of space left in the freezer which is great. I should be able to put up some more tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and okra before the first frost.

I think I'd also like to get some more baskets for the bottom of the freezer just to keep everything more organized. Right now I just threw everything in the bottom.

I also put the core to my new ice cream maker in the freezer! I got this brand new ice cream maker for Christmas last year and I still haven't used it. I have been dying to use it this summer but once the freezer got full there was no way. The core should be kept in the freezer at all times so that you can make ice cream whenever you want. Now it has a home in the new deep freeze. The core should be completely frozen sometime tomorrow and I plan to make watermelon sorbet. Look for a future post on that!

I read something interesting about freezers the other day. Freezers sales are countercyclical. When the economy is down, freezer sales go up because more people are buying in bulk, gardening and eating at home. When the economy is up, people eat out more and cook at home less, therefore they don't need the extra freezer room. It makes complete sense. I just thought that was interesting. Freezer sales are probably very high this year!

I'd like to give a special thanks to my cat Paulie in helping write this blog by laying on top of my arms while I type so that it took twice as long to write as it normally does. No matter how many times I pushed him off he just kept on coming back. I admire your determination Paulie.

Glamasaurus Rex

Term of the day:

GLAMASAURUS REX

Inferred meaning: to be completely and totally glamourous as in so glamourous that you feel like a million bucks and have extreme confidence.

Discovery of term: "I was in my Glamasaurus rex outfit earlier and I got changed out of it and I'm a little bit more comfy" as said by Anne Hathaway in this interview on MSN.

Used in a sentence: "I was a Glamasaurus rex in my little black dress and purple party shoes at the wedding last weekend."

Wedding Cupcakes

Here are a few pictures of the cupcakes I did for SIL3's wedding reception a few weeks ago. I made the little cake on top too!




I think the little cake kind of looks like a face. The flowers make the eyes and the ribbon makes the smile. Hehe.





I thought they turned out pretty good. Most importantly the bride was happy with them. Congratulations!

CSA: Week 19

Only five weeks left of the CSA! Boooooooo!

This week I received:

1 spaghetti squash
1 red pepper
2 large tomatoes
5 roma tomatoes
green beans


I'm super excited about the spaghetti squash. I've always wanted to try it. Supposedly you cook it and then stick a fork in it and it winds up like spaghetti or something. We'll see how it goes.

And a red pepper - finally something other than yellow. I might have to make roasted red pepper something.

The beans looked really good. I already washed, trimmed and blanched them and then mixed them up with chopped red onion, feta and a drizzle of olive oil and balsalmic vinegar. YUM.

Previous CSA posts:
CSA: Week 18
CSA: Week 17
CSA: Week 16
CSA: Week 15
CSA: Week 14
CSA: Week 13
CSA: Week 12
CSA: Week 11
CSA: Week 10
CSA: Week 9
CSA: Week 8
CSA: Week 7
CSA: Week 6
CSA: Week 5
CSA: Week 4
CSA: Week 3
CSA: Week 2
CSA: Week 1

Mini Mees

I have developed a cold. It sucks. I'm laying in bed with a box of tissues, watching my all-time favorite movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, waiting for my nighttime cold medicine to kick in. I also thought I could catch up on some blogs I have had planned for weeks!

This tiny watermelon has been sitting in the garden for awhile now and I finally picked it the other day.


It was about the size of a softball, a bit larger than a tennis ball.


I wasn't sure what would be inside when I cut it open. I've never seen a watermelon this small. Since it was so small I figured there was no way it had developed properly. I fully expected it to be white inside like my first watermelon.


It was ripe! Ha!

It was actually a little too ripe. I cut it up and got about one cup of chopped watermelon. I don't think I will actually eat it though. I did taste a small piece and it was only fair. You can't tell from the picture but it looked a little orange around the edges.

There are a few other small watermelons still sitting in the garden but none this tiny. I need to cut them soon!

I have another plant producing mini mees in the garden. One of my six pepper plants has decided to produce tiny purple peppers. The other five plants produce yellow peppers. Four of those plants I purchased as seedlings, so I knew they would be yellow peppers. The other two plants I started from seeds from a pepper variety pack so I had no idea what color peppers the plants would produce. One of them gives me yellow peppers, much to my dismay, as I already have four yellow pepper plants. The other one gives me these:


I was hoping to get some purple peppers just a little larger. I cut a few open and they are green inside. I have no idea why they don't grow larger like the rest of the plants. It could be because the plant is a lot smaller than the other plants. It may also be too crowded. It is in between two much larger plants and an extremely large clump of marigolds. Note to self for next year - more room between plants!

CSA: Week 18

Arg! I'm so far behind on blogging. Here's a quick update on last week's CSA. I received:

2 yellow bell peppers
some tomatoes (I don't remember how many!)
green beans
small jar of blackberry jam!

I think that was everything. If I think of anything else I'll come back and add it later.

I tried the blackberry jam last night on some toast and it was delicious. I wish I had a larger jar of it. When I first opened the jar I thought maybe it had molded or something because the top of the jam was all white. Turns out there was a wax type disc over the jam. Once I pried it out I could see the delicious jam underneath.

I'm going to have to learn how to make jam next year I think.

Rain, Rain Go Away!

Until today, I had not been out to the garden since last Wednesday. This is what I found in the rain gauge when I went out there this afternoon:


From last Thursday through Saturday night we got almost FIVE inches of rain. I think it might have been the remanents of tropical storm Lowell (from the Pacific) but I'm not completely sure. It was not the remanents of hurricane Ike. That went east of us.

Needless to say the garden is completely waterlogged. Luckily the plants did not suffer any major damage. A couple were leaning over but that can be fixed.

I snapped a few quick pictures. The beans are pretty much done. They look really, really sad. Mostly just a bunch of dead branches sticking up in the air. Not many leaves left. The only beans that are growing are turning yellow before they get very big.


The watermelon patch is also dying out. I haven't seen any new watermelons for several weeks now. In the picture below the roma tomatoes are to the left and each plant has several dead branches. The zinnias are to the right and they are doing fairly well. I need to cut them back a bit in a next few days.


The sunflowers no longer have blooms. They just have big giant heads. They really did get to be 12 feet tall though which is just amazing.


I also spotted several mushrooms when I was walking out to the garden this afternoon. I'm not a mushroom eater so I have no idea what kind these are.





I just checked the forecast and we are supposed to get sun for the next five days. Thank goodness! Honestly I don't think the plants have enjoyed all this rain.

Roasted Eggplant Soup

The eggplant plants have been producing tons of eggplants this year. I've been seeking out eggplant recipes and came across this one for Roasted Eggplant Soup on All Recipes. I'm kind of a soup junkie so I was all over it. I pretty much made it as stated in the recipe except I only used 1/2 cup cream instead of a full cup. I bought a pint of cream from the local dairy farm and it was super thick and rich so I only needed 1/2 cup. Here's how it went:

Roasted Eggplant Soup
4 servings

3 tomatoes, halved
1 eggplant, halved lengthwise (or 2 small)
1 small onion, halved
6 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tbsp chopped fresh thyme
4 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup heavy cream
Crumbled goat cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Place tomato, eggplant, onion and garlic on a baking sheet lined with foil. Brush with vegetable oil.


Roast in preheated oven until very tender and brown in spots, about 45 minutes.


Scoop out eggplant pulp and discard skin. Slip skins off tomato halves. Place eggplant pulp, peeled tomatoes, onion and garlic in a heavy saucepan with broth and thyme. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then reduce heat and simmer until onion is very tender, about 45 minutes.

I have to take a minute to say that this soup looked completely disgusting at this stage. Eggplant is not attractive when it is cooked.


Puree in pot with an immersion blender, or in batches in a food processor. Return to low heat and stir in cream. Looks much more appetizing!


Bring to a simmer, thinning with more broth if necessary. Season with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with goat cheese.

The result? It was pretty good. It took a really long time to make though. The texture of food is also very important to me and in this soup the eggplant seeds bothered me just a tad. But not enough to not eat the soup. I really liked the goat cheese part too. I froze a couple bowls of this soup (pre goat cheese) and it did well in the freezer.

Honestly I don't know that I'll make this soup again. And that's not because I didn't like it or anything. It was good but it wasn't so good that I see myself craving it. I'm going to hang onto the recipe though. It might end up being one of those "once a year" recipes that I bring out when we have more eggplants than we know what to do with. Kind of like the Mexican Zucchini Casserole I made several weeks ago.

I would like to mention that if you do not own an immersion blender and you cook soup frequently, you need to get yourself one. This is my immersion blender:


It was extremely cheap. I got it on Black Friday a few years ago for $5. It works great. I don't use it all the time, but when I do, boy am I glad to have it. It doesn't take up much space in the kitchen so I don't mind having it around when I don't use it frequently.



Other eggplant recipes:
Summer Stew
Eggplant Croquettes

Strawberry Corn

Back in week 14 of my CSA program I received three ears of dried strawberry corn in my share. Strawberry corn is basically small ears of red corn that look like strawberries.


The CSA guy said to let the ears sit on the counter for another week and then I could put them in a paper bag in the microwave and the kernals would pop off the cob into popcorn. I finally tried it last week.

I put the ear on the left into a brown lunch sack and folded over the top. I put it in the microwave and set the timer for three minutes. I wasn't really sure how long to set the timer, but I figured I could just listen like I do with regular microwave popcorn.

I started the microwave and listened. Before long the kernals started popping! It sounded just like regular popcorn. Not quite sure if I was expecting a more special popping noise or what.

It only took about a minute and a half before the popping slowed down enough that I stopped the microwave and got the bag out. This is what I found:


About half a cup of popcorn popped off the cob. There were a bunch of kernals that popped but stayed on the cob.


The popcorn tasted ok I guess. I think I overcooked it a bit and it didn't have any seasoning. The strawberry corn was fun to try but I don't think I would want to have it around regularly. It would be a fun project for kids though!

CSA: Week 17

A better CSA share this week! I received:

1 zucchini
1 green pepper
2 tomatoes
2 small hot peppers
a bunch of okra


This was perfect timing on the zucchini because I haven't had a zucchini from the garden in several weeks now. I'm just about over my previous zucchini saturation.

I was not so excited to see the plethora of okra as there is a ton of okra from my own garden in the refrigerator right now. I need to find a good recipe to use up all this okra.

Previous CSA posts:
CSA: Week 16
CSA: Week 15
CSA: Week 14
CSA: Week 13
CSA: Week 12
CSA: Week 11
CSA: Week 10
CSA: Week 9
CSA: Week 8
CSA: Week 7
CSA: Week 6
CSA: Week 5
CSA: Week 4
CSA: Week 3
CSA: Week 2
CSA: Week 1

Garden Count Update

I have finally added up my tallys over the past two months and here are the numbers of everything I have picked from the garden so far. These numbers only include good items and do not include anything that went straight into the compost bin.

Zucchini - 77
Bush beans - 2,192
Grape tomatoes - 508
Okra - 98
Watermelon - 7 (102.5 lbs total)
Roma tomatoes - 126
Big boy tomatoes - 33
Yellow bell peppers - 15
Eggplant - 19
Broccoli - 2 heads
Enough basil to make approximately 8 batches of pesto
Several bouquets of zinnias (one or two each week)

Now some of the counts are a bit misleading. The tomatoes and beans would be better presented in pounds instead of eaches since tomatoes and beans can vary greatly in size. However I do not have a food scale so I count them instead.

I want to get some average prices for these items from my local grocery stores and calculate how much this yield is worth. For example today I saw watermelons at my grocery store for $5.99 each! That would mean my seven watermelons above are worth approximately $42.

But would I have actually purchased seven watermelons this year if I didn't have them in the garden? Probably not. However since I did have the watermelon to eat, I'd like to think that I bought less of something else to eat and ate the watermelon instead.

Anyway at the end of the season I will compile that information and post.

CSA: Week 16

Kind of a disappointing share this week. I received:

3 tomatoes (one with a bad spot)
2 green tomatoes (as in unripe tomatoes for making fried green tomatoes)
1 teensy banana pepper about the size of my thumb
1 half green, half red bell pepper (already wrinkled in places)
2-3 handfuls of yellow salad tomatoes

Oh well. It is what it is. Luckily I have more than enough yield from my own garden.

Last week I said it wouldn't be too much longer until it started to feel like fall outside. Well today is the day. The remanants of Hurricane Gustav are soaking the midwest with rain. Luckily we are on the edge of the remanants so no flooding yet, however we have had an almost constant drizzle for the past 24 hours, accompanied by temperatures in the low 60s to upper 50s. The garden got 8/10 of an inch of rain yesterday and then another 4/10 today. And it is supposed to rain all day tomorrow too! I probably won't have to water the garden for a week. Which means I won't have to wrestle the 300 feet of hose and that makes me happy. I'll gladly take the rain.

Previous CSA posts:
CSA: Week 15
CSA: Week 14
CSA: Week 13
CSA: Week 12
CSA: Week 11
CSA: Week 10
CSA: Week 9
CSA: Week 8
CSA: Week 7
CSA: Week 6
CSA: Week 5
CSA: Week 4
CSA: Week 3
CSA: Week 2
CSA: Week 1