Coulda' Been Worse!

Late last night I made a double batch of strawberry jam.  First time in a couple of years we've had enough of a strawberry crop to make jam!

It was at the end of a hot day, and heating up the kitchen (and what seemed like the whole house) wasn't a pleasant thing to do right before bedtime.  (Phew!)  But the bounty was worth it.

Just as I was filling the very last pint jar . . . POP!

The whole bottom of the jar cracked off.  The boiling hot jam could have done real damage if it had gone on the floor and splattered my bare legs.  Or it could have exploded in the canner.  As it was, not a bad mess to clean up!

Tour of Some of the Field Garden

This ferny forest is my asparagus plants.  I can't believe how tall they are.  Some are over 6' tall.  Does this mean there will be a bumper crop next year?  Or are the roots putting every bit of energy they have into the ferns and will be weak as kittens next season?  Gadzooks, I hope not.

This is a line of zinnias along the north end of the field garden that will soon grow into bushy bushes of riotous color.  I hope.

I plant pickling cucumbers and make pickles only every other year.  This is not a pickle year, but my dear husband wanted some to experiment with in making some old-fashioned pickles in a crock so I planted eight feet of them for him.  They're only about 2-3" high as we speak.

Our three rows of potatoes have been hilled for the second, and last, time.  The plants are so tall I really can't get any more soil to stay up around them.  Only the one variety, the Burbank Russets, are blossoming at this point.  (Those four little scraggly plants in the foreground are volunteer nasturtiums from last year that I can't bring myself to yoink out.)

The shell peas never seem to grow up their trellises as fast as I think they should.

But I did spot the very first blossom on them yesterday.

This is my planting of pumpkins (with the rather pitiful pot of geraniums in the middle) I just barely managed to squeeze in this year.  I'm going to leave only one plant per each of the four hills and baby along each pumpkin it produces.

My row of bush beans germinated 100% this year compared to last year when I had to replant bare spots twice.  They're lookin' good.

This is a shot of one end of my double row of Brussels sprouts.  I find them such a pain in the patoot to harvest, clean, blanch and freeze that every year I say I'm not going to grow them again.  And every winter we enjoy eating them so much that I do it all over again.

Oh, I do love to garden!  And I consider the dividends it pays in wonderful food for us are well worth any time and trouble on my part.

Baking An Empty Pie Shell

Now if that isn't a blog post title to rev your engine and start your day off with a bang, I don't know what is!  Therefore, I won't keep you waiting in suspense any longer.

Often when making a pie with a cold filling (which, of course, is especially nice in the summer time), the recipe calls for a baked pie shell.  

Recently a friend commented she couldn't turn out a decent looking baked pie shell for love nor money.  

I told her it was many years before I managed to do the same.

It wasn't until I came upon the method used in this book.  I made a couple of adjustments to my liking and now it's easy as pie.  (So sorry, that just slipped out.)

In our house, one of our favorite summer pies is Strawberry Cream and since our strawberries are starting to come in, I've been chomping at the bit to make it.  Yep, it requires a pre-baked pie shell so here's how I do it.

Roll out your crust and form it into your pie plate as usual.  Using a fork, make lots of prick marks all over the bottom and sides of the unbaked shell.  (Just an aside -- I've found using a glass pie pan works much better than a metal one.  Dunno why, it just does.)

Next, take a sheet of aluminum foil and gently press it on the bottom and up the sides of the unbaked shell, shiny side down.

Weigh the foil down with some dried beans.  You can buy special pie weights for this purpose, but I've been using these dried lima beans for years (yep, same ones over and over), and they work just fine.

Place in a preheated 425 degree for just 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven and carefully (you don't want to spill the beans . . . haha!) lift the foil holding the beans out of the pie pan.  Your shell will be about half done now and needs to finish baking without the foil and beans. 

Turn the oven down to 350 degrees and bake the shell for about 10 minutes (or more) depending on how browned you wish the pie shell to be.  (I like to keep an eye on these last minutes of baking because I have had "poofs" want to form in the crust even at this point.  If you see this happening, just gently prick the area with a fork to release the air underneath the crust.)

Remove the shell from the oven and cool on a rack before adding the desired filling.  

And here's my end product made with those luscious, fresh strawberries.

This pie is so light and fresh tasting that I do believe I could eat the whole pie without even suffering any digestive distress!

Recipe for this pie is here if you're interested.

We Have Strawberries!

Our new strawberry plants (planted last year) are starting to bear.  This is a week earlier than I've ever had ripe berries before.

The three varieties we're trying are Annapolis, Cavendish and Earliglow.  I did get a few of the Earliglow a couple of days ago and now a few more today.  The harvest today was the first one for the Annapolis.  The Cavendish seem to be a little behind in ripening, so we've yet to sample them.

So far, the Annapolis have the best flavor, by far.  The Earliglow have a good "strawberry" flavor but are a smidge on the sour side compared to the Annapolis. 

These three varieties are June Bearers.  We also planted a small amount of everbearing strawberries, Seascape variety, which are supposed to come in earlier than any of the June bearers, take a rest mid-summer and then produce another crop in late summer after the June bearers are done.

I'm beginning to think it doesn't work that way in northern Minnesota.  The everbearers are just now giving us a couple of berries (paltry harvest shown above), right about at the same time the June bearers are.  Hmmm.  The most disappointing thing, so far anyway, is that when we taste tested the Seascape everbearers, they had almost no strawberry flavor and were kinda "watery."  I've tried growing everbearing strawberries once before without much luck, so I'm not sure why I thought this time around would be different.  (Slow learner, am I?)

Yikes, what IS that?

 Just a selfie of my knees after a day of gardening.  While wearing shorts.  Which I don't do very often because it hurts to crawl around on bare knees.  All of the ugliness washed off in the shower tonight, and I sustained no permanent damage (I'm sure you're glad to hear).  I normally prefer to garden in long pants, but it was so hot today that both Papa Pea and I changed to shorts while the day was still young.  He was doing various jobs, mostly shredding brush and mowing so his knees didn't end up looking anything like mine.

I'm going to try to be very organized and keep track of the quantity (in pounds) of strawberries we get from our various varieties planted.  And will the flavor of the berries remain the same through the picking season?  I suppose that may depend on the rain, sun, temperature, etc. that we get while they're bearing.

Speaking of rain, it started raining again here about 45 minutes ago.  I do wish I could send some of it to those of you who could use it.  Obviously, not to West Virginia though.  My heart goes out to those who lost so much in the flooding.  Makes our frequent rains so inconsequential.

The Week Gone By

Lots of rain this past week which has made working in the garden . . . sporadic.  Yesterday we had a storm roll through (again) and two real gully washers came down, one of them accompanied with 1/2" hail.  The hail didn't last long enough to do real damage in the garden.  As far as I can tell.  But I haven't made a close inspection yet.

The toddler geese didn't seem fazed by the heavy rain, just walked in their typical "follow-the-leader" type manner from one spot to another looking a bit puzzled.  I kept yelling at them to go in their house for shelter . . . to no avail.  When it started to hail, they had the sense to bee-line it for the shelter of some pines with low hanging branches.

There was a note on our local Internet community "bulletin board" this morning of someone on a nearby lake looking for two sections of his dock that blew away in the storm.

Now this morning I see we had more rain overnight which definitely means no work in the field garden today.

My potatoes need to be hilled up again.  Along with the rain we've also had unusually hot, humid weather, and the taters have been growing by leaps and bounds.  I can't seem to keep up with them.

The garden is giving us as much wonderful lettuce and salad greens as we can eat.  My big planting of radishes (I love 'em) is coming in with a vengeance.  There are blossoms on the two cherry tomato plants.  The strawberry plants are absolutely loaded with berries but no red coloring is showing yet.  I'm hoping they will start being ready to pick in another week or ten days.

I harvested a bunch of garlic scapes this past week and have a jar of them fermenting on the counter.  Also did a jar of radishes.  It will be into this coming week before we can sample either batch.

There is a young fella in the area this year who is baking bread in an outdoor brick oven and selling it at our small farmer's market on Saturday morning.  I try to bake my own bread regularly kinda/sorta as often as I can but summertime is a hard time to keep up with it so I've been buying bread from him at the farmer's market.  He makes a wonderful ciabatta (my fave) and an all-whole wheat sourdough to which Papa Pea has become addicted.

I took advantage of the stormy weather yesterday to clean house.  Boy, did it need it.  Of course, it always feels sooo good when that task is done and everything is spic and span . . . which seems to last about half a day.

Hubby and I have both been short of sleep lately and were exhausted (so what's new?) last night.  Maybe it was the atmospheric pressure, but we crashed before 9:30 and slept this morning until . . . holy cow, seven o'clock!  Other than having a slight, dull headache (I think from sleeping so hard), I feel great this morning.  Seriously though, we need to start winding down earlier each day (how many kajillion times have we said this?) so we can get to bed earlier.  We're both morning people and would be delighted if we could get enough hours of sandman time each night to arise ready to whip our weights in wildcats (and that's a lot of wildcats) around 5:30 each morn.  Wish us luck.

Well, once this weather settles, we will have lots of weeding, mowing and weed whipping to do.  Speaking of which, we're waiting for my very own weed whip to be delivered.  I can't manage the one Papa Pea uses as it's about 15 feet long (okay, maybe a smidge shorter) and heavy.  So we did a little research and my dear husband ordered one I should be able to handle.  Is he good to me or what?

First Mint Harvest

Just after sunrise this morning I put on my faithful, old Bean slip-on boots, and squished through the dew-laden grass to my mint patch in the garden.  My mission was to harvest this season's first cutting of mint, when it would be at its optimal best, before the sun hit it.

You see, Papa Pea drinks a big mug of peppermint tea each and every morning after his cup of coffee.  And I figure the best mint we can secure is that grown in our garden.

I hadn't taken the time to dress yet at that early hour so was still in my shortie pajamas and robe.  Not wanting to kneel in the wet grass, I bent from the waist as I made my way around the mint snipping my harvest.  

With a little imagination you can conjure up the sight this afforded to any early morning wildlife.  Does the vision bring to mind those once popular wooden cut-outs of ample-bottomed grandmas bending over the flower bed?  Well, I'm afraid my posture definitely exposed some tender body parts that must have screamed, "Look!  Breakfast!" to a myriad of biting bugs.  Not my most intelligent move of the week.

As I dropped the first cuttings into my bowl, I realized I had neglected to mulch around the plants and our frequent recent rains had splashed mud up onto the undersides of all those purdy, little, vibrantly green leaves.  My bad.  Sigh.

So, back into the kitchen with my bowl full of (muddy) mint where I put it through several gentle washing in cool water.  Then a couple of twirls in my handy-dandy salad spinner (which I couldn't live without) and the mint is now drying on a towel . . . 

. . . before I nip the leaves off their stems and put them in the dehydrator.

Not only does peppermint make good tasting tea, but it has other medicinal purposes.

It's a mouth and breath freshener, promotes digestion, soothes upset stomachs, balms made with a mint base rubbed on the forehead and nose give quick headache relief for some people, it alleviates inflammation and is a natural skin healer.  It reduces respiratory problems and coughs, and is good for asthmatic sufferers.  It's even been used as a stimulant to help with depression and fatigue.  The list of mint's beneficial properties goes on and on.  Makes me wonder why I don't grow an acre of the stuff and use it much more than I do!  To my mind, having your own planting of mint in the garden is a very good thing.

Hmmm, I wonder if it would relieve the itching on my . . . oh, never mind.