Greenhouse - Part 2

Sometimes my enthusiasm outstrips realty. This greenhouse - would it be just one more example of something that wasn't nearly as much fun nor as useful as I dreamed? Oh, no, this time I was right on!

Everything is a bit late - contractors who put it up and installed electricity never seemed to hit a due date. But finally it is up and running. I'm eating radishes - at least a dozen a day, French breakfast, my favorite. The butter lettuce is wonderful. It's a little crowded, but it is working out well, a fresh salad ever couple of days.

The day before yesterday, I put in 12 kale plants, in the spaces left as I harvest radishes. They were started in the seedling tray, and once they were removed from those tiny cells, they exploded in size!

I planted two tomato seeds in every cell, except for a couple of things that my experience taught me never germinated extraordinarily well. Except this year! Wow! Germination has approached 100%. I'm giving away plants - was sure that I would have requests for a couple hundred at least. Not so much. They are late, and a lot of people already have their plants in. (Fools, I say. I've lived through killing frosts during Memorial Day Weekend.)

My kids made me promise not to turn this into a business. I didn't expect this many extra plants, though, so unless they are willing to plow up their yards, I will be selling plants here at market. The other vendors would not be happy with me giving away plants while they are trying to sell the fruits of their hard labor, so there will be a price tag on each tomato plant.

I had a commercial greenhouse on the farm, raised between 4,000 and 6,000 plants a year. Raising 300 is definitely in the "hobby" vein, and I am having a great deal of fun. It's still not too late to get some freebies, so if you want a few plants, respond to this blog and tell me how to get in touch with you so that you can get your plants.

Here are pictures from the new greenhouse in town, and from harvests at the farm. We planted around 200 plants at the farm each summer, and I just loved the old heirlooms - weird shapes, all different sizes, beautiful colors - and every one of them very tasty indeed.

Seedling tray in the hobby greenhouse in town

Seedlings potted up, going to their new owners in a couple of weeks.

Harvest from the farm. 

Offering tastes at the market

A Brandywine from the farm

Canning the market leftovers

Aren't they beautiful?

Bumper crop of yellow tomatoes

Getting ready to can

Tomato plate - tasty treat!

Seedling trays at the farm - thousands, not hundreds!

A lot of plants  were grown in the 18' x 24' greenhouse! I miss it.

RECIPE - Hard boiled eggs

I hate it when it is nearly impossible to neatly peel a hard boiled egg. So every time I read an article with someone's magic recipe for how to have perfect hard boiled eggs that peel easily, I try it. I am always disappointed. That is because they don't tell you the most important thing - a very fresh egg will NOT peel easily no matter what method you use.

Eggs are one of nature's most perfect foods. And they are encased in great natural packaging. If an egg is not washed, you can safely leave it sit on your counter for a month. There is a natural film on the shell that creates a barrier to keep your eggs safe.

A commercial egg is washed, and that film / barrier has been removed. So you might want to refrigerate them. Mine are on the counter in this great little red ceramic egg carton that I bought. (Just for fun I keep my chicken salt and pepper shakers next to it - a gift from my daughter-in-law Julie, who always seemed to know what I would like.)

Eggs ready for action!

I know, they have been washed, and even if fresh from the farmer at the South Bend Farmers Market, by law they must be washed. But they are gone from my countertop quickly, and I'm still alive. They are never out there more than two weeks. And when the recipe calls for an "egg brought to room temperature," I'm good to go immediately. (One caveat -- if you need to separate whites from yolks, a cold egg separates more easily.)

So back to that egg's natural packaging. In spite of it, an egg begins to shrink inside that shell from day #1. And that shrinkage will be the difference between an egg that gets mutilated when trying to peel it and one from which the shell is easily removed. After just one week of aging on the counter, eggs will peel better because the albumin is shrinking away from the interior of the shell. When refrigerating, give them two weeks. When I was bringing in fresh eggs from the chickens on the farm, I would set a bowl of eggs into the back of the fridge for at least two weeks just for hard boiling. Once your eggs are at least two weeks old, some of those egg peeling pointers may actually make a difference. And three weeks should be guaranteed success, no matter what method you use.

I love Ina Garten's show, the Barefoot Contessa. And I love her method of hard boiling eggs. It is a little different from any I have seen, and I do recommend it. Most supermarket eggs will be well over a week or two old by the time you get them home. If you want guaranteed success, try keeping them for at least another week before hard boiling. If they are straight from the farm, don't use them for hard boiling until they have aged at least two weeks. So here goes, this is Ina's recipe with a couple of small tweaks:

1. Put your eggs into a deep pan and cover completely with cold water.
2. Bring to a full rolling boil. Immediately turn off heat. (If electric stove, remove from burner. On my gas stove, I just let them sit there in the pan of hot water on the turned-off burner.)
3. Here's where Ina's recipe is different. Leave them sit in the water for only FIVE MINUTES!
4. Remove the eggs from the water. Don't rinse with cold water. Just let the warm eggs sit on the counter on a paper towel.
5. Here's where Ina and I differ. She says to wait only two minutes before peeling. I recommend waiting about five minutes. The first egg I tried to peel at two minutes didn't do too well. At five minutes, they peeled beautifully.
6. Now roll the eggs on the counter top with the palm of your hand. The shells will crack into a myriad of small bits.
7. CAREFULLY peel. They should come off pretty well.
8. If you are still having trouble, hold the egg under running water while you peel, my second tweak to Ina's wonderful method.

Great thing about this is that the yolks are still a beautiful yellow color, no green around the edges. They are on the very edge of still being soft in the middle, but they aren't.  They are just perfect!

Thanks, Ina.

Now I'm going to have another deviled egg for breakfast. Recipe for my favorite deviled eggs coming soon.

My new car - and my other new car

I drove my Prius for nearly 200,000 miles, longest I have ever driven any car. It was very useful on the farm. I hauled hay and straw in it, during greenhouse season I could squeeze 17 flats of plants in it. More than one newborn calf took a ride in that car. I got it stuck in fields, had to pull it out of the mud more than once with the tractor. And I hauled milk to the farmers market, where the shareholders picked it up. Occasionally there was a spill. But it soldiered on.

I finally traded it in after moving to town. The guy at the garage told me gently that the car had some odor issues. Oh, really? LOL

I had done my research, and I bought a VW Jetta, diesel, SEL, which was the top of the line. I loved it. On the highway, it got 57 mpg on one trip to Rockford to visit my grandson and his family. It loved to go fast, and the faster I drove, the better the gas mileage!

I had owned it about six weeks when the news hit. VW had deliberately programmed their diesel cars so that they sensed when they were in a testing station, and emissions all met standards. Once the car was on the road, the computer sensed that they were NOT in a test station and reprogrammed the car to run like a deer and get great mileage. They were also producing between 10 and 40 times the allowable amount of nitrogen oxides. That's smog, and that's what irritates lungs.

In Indiana, where we can boast having the worst air in the nation, there are no emission tests for automobiles, of course, so I could have kept driving my car. But being a tree hugging progressive, and remembering a granddaughter with asthma when she was a baby, how could I keep the car, no matter how much I loved it? So I opted to sell my car back to VW.

The local dealer didn't have much choice on the lot for a replacement car, but there was one I fell in love with. I could have waited until I got my refund and bought a different make of car, but I had driven a dog (let's face it, you don't buy a Prius for a power trip) for six years, and my Jetta was fun to drive. So I bought a 2016 Jetta GLI, 2.0 liter engine, drove even better than the 2015 diesel! It sat in my garage, in storage, to keep the insurance down, until the VW dealer pointed out to me that if I wrecked the 2015, which I was continuing to drive, it would no longer be eligible for the buyback program, and even if I was not at fault in the event such an accident should occur, the car would be valued at book, which ain't much, thanks to VW's chicanery. So the diesel went into the garage in storage, and the new 2016 GLI came out. The VW buyback program accounted for the loss in value, and we are being compensated quite well for that difference.

My appointment to return the 2015 diesel Jetta is January 18. I will finally be able to put the new car in the garage. I never dreamed I would own two brand new cars within 15 months of one another. But as of January 18, this single person household will finally be a single car household again.

GLI waiting for its turn in the garage

Greeting fall with mixed emotions

Fall is undeniably here.  The mosquitoes have already calmed down a bit, and soon they will be gone. This year was really miserable for those of us who don't like heat mixed with high, high humidity. I am one of them, and feeling cooler air today is welcome, even with the humidity. However . . .

There hasn't been a frost yet, nothing even close, but the plants are looking pretty sad. No amount of water or tender loving care will make up for the fact that summer annuals have a genetic life span, and it is nearing the end for many of them.

I love the zinnias at the front of my house. So cheerful! They are multi-colored, some tall, some medium, some short. They shaded the delicate shade-loving impatiens well enough that they are still looking quite nice. However, the zinnias, not so much.

Sad zinnias

Sadder zinnias

As for my tomato garden on the deck, they are done. I am just letting the last crop of tomatoes hang on the sad, brown plants in the hope that they will ripen before they rot. They are almost all Moldovan Green, my favorite tomato, so even though they look very un-ripe, they are not. I brought in two last night, one for supper with my wild salmon, the other one sitting on the counter for today's lunch with some cottage cheese and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.

Sad tomatoes

Sadder tomatoes

A few of my mums made it through the winter, and I notice one is just full of buds. One of these days I will have to tell the ragged looking zinnias that they have served their purpose. I will blow them a kiss and then pull them out to make room for the mums to show off.

Mum budded out - it's having its day.

I planted several lavender plants against the foundation, bought from the booth that sells everything lavender at the market. The owners, Mike and Doreen King of Lakeside Lavender & Herbs, tell me that I need to trim them back this fall. They will be healthier next year if I do so. The smaller ones on the right are best for culinary uses, so they will get extra tender loving care.

Lavender against wall

Culinary lavender, smaller

Even the basil is sad - but this was a GOOD GOOD YEAR FOR BASIL.

There are several perennial herbs hidden among the zinnias that will be useful well into the winter - tarragon, oregano and thyme.

Oh, and I planted potatoes last spring. It's time to go on my potato search. Two organic potatoes yielded eight potato plants. Now if I can just find where to start digging!

Isn't it wonderful what one can do with foundation plantings?

Now for the easy part

Last night I worked the butter into my brioche dough, probably the hardest and most time consuming part of baking for Saturday market. Next week I'll get a picture of that. But for now, I just want to record the easy part.

Brioche feuilleté was formed and baked first, then the other half of the dough was formed into a log, spread with butter, and then sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Half was topped with raisins, the other half with raisins and walnuts, then cut and put into the pan for a slow rise. They will be popped into the oven as soon as the bread as done. I turn the oven down for the rolls, but that first pop of really hot air after the bread comes out will give the outside of the rolls a great exterior, with a soft and buttery interior.

Well, back to the stove. Here are the pics of the work in progress - the easy part, really. Just heat the oven and start baking!

The workhorse - my Kenwood mixer, same brand Chef Berard used in Provence.

First batch out of the oven

Baguettes under wraps for final rise

Flaky cinnamon rolls about to go in oven

Mise en Place for my first try at making Fougette

Baguette dough weighed, first formation for six loaves

Decisions, decisions . . .

I have been a staunch supporter of Purple Porch since its inception and am a stockholder there. I have also supported them by being a producer at their Wednesday evening farmers market.

When I was on the farm, I had plenty of products to offer. There were organic garden produce, greenhouse plants in the spring, fruit, baked goods made with organic ingredients and items from my line of skin care products from Ceres & Co. (click this link to get to my website, or come on down to the South Bend Farmers Market, 1105 Northside Blvd., South Bend, IN.).

Then I sold the farm. No more plants, no more garden produce, no more sour cherries - the list got much shorter. People come to the Wednesday evening market at the Porch mainly for produce, which I no longer had. But I still had a pretty good following for my baked goods. Adding my line of soaked and dried nuts as well as my Trail Mix, all organic ingredients, made it worth my while to show up most weeks, and I like the community of the producers and customers.

As I wrote recently in this blog Passionate Phoenix can feel it coming on. I am ready to make some changes in my life. For me, anyway, change is the spice of life. But if something new is coming, then I acknowledge that something else has to go. I want time to hit the river in my kayak, throw a line in the water, tend my gardens. No more 12 hour days!

Last night was my last night to bring product to Purple Porch. It was the "something" that had to go. I have mixed emotions about it. I reminded my customers that I am still at the Farmers Market, at least for the time being, and they can always call for special orders.

Au revoir, Purple Porch. I will still be there for your excellent salad and soup bar. I'll stop by on Wednesday evenings to shop, but I won't be behind a table selling my wares anymore. It is bittersweet, but while I am floating on the river from the dam back home, it is a decision I will not be regretting.

Where I want to be

Sharing with the goslings

Passionate Phoenix can feel it coming on . . .

A few days before my sixty-first birthday, I was croned by my dear friends.  There were about 50 women and men there, from four states, from old jobs, family, fellow drumming women, young, old - and of course the first two crones in our group - Sparkling Wisdom (who has since passed to the Summerland) and Flowering Creatix, also known as Butterfly Peggy, a woman who has a way with words.  We wanted to capture the poet in Peggy, hence her crone name Flowering Creatrix.

So there is this thing about crone names.  We don't get to pick our own; we are named by the group.  The woman being croned has to leave the circle while the group deliberates on what her name will be.

Before I left the group to their task of choosing my crone name, I read a couple of letters, one from my sister Lynn who wrote about how as a young child, I had always opened green beans to look for worms before I ate them.  She related how my mother tried to break me of it, but even if she put a cream sauce on the beans, I still broke them open in spite of the mess.  One day I found one!  Whoa!  Lynn recounted my mom saying, "Well, I'll be darned!"  It got a laugh.  And of course, having found one worm just once, the deal was sealed.

My daughter Valerie couldn't be there, but she wrote a lovely letter and said that my name should be Passionate Flower, because I am passionate about everything I do and I loved to garden.  Her suggestion was taken into consideration, but she wasn't there, so the others would have their say. My friends sent me for a walk in the woods while they took up their task.

As I left the circle, my friend Matt said, "How about Worm Seeker?"  THAT got a laugh, even from me, but fortunately the group kept working on my name while I walked until I was out of earshot.

I heard someone shouting that I should come back, that I had a new name.  I returned to the circle, stood in the middle, and learned that my crone name would be Passionate Phoenix.  They all agreed with Valerie on the Passionate part, but given that I remake my life every few years, they came up with Passionate Phoenix, which I find very appropriate!  I love my crone name, and feel comfortable calling myself Phoenix every now and then.

It is true that I have reinvented myself more than once.  Wife and mother in my early 20s, I became a single mother at 27, worked hard at whatever jobs I could get (why did I quit college?), started taking some night courses, eventually remarried, sold real estate, then fell in love with a little Victorian house and put a restaurant in it.  Next I followed my husband to Chicago where he had taken a new job.  At that point, I got serious about school and transferred my credits to the University of Illinois at Chicago and got a degree in statistics.  When my husband moved to Florida for his job, I remained in Chicago to finish my degree and decided to stay there after graduation.  The salary for my new job seemed like a lot, until I tried to live in Chicago on it.  So I started my graduate degree at the ripe old age of 55, at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

I moved to Indiana, where the cost of living wasn't so prohibitive, and drove back to Chicago one night a week to finish my MBA at Northwestern.  At last, I was able to get a really good job as a program manager in the aerospace industry.  I was making good money.  But of course I couldn't leave well enough alone.  There were some things about the corporate world that didn't sit well with me, and when I got the opportunity to take early retirement with some pretty good benefits, I jumped at it.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I had bought a farm, designed and built a house, put up a barn to store a couple of tractors, and had moved there a couple of years before the early retirement.  On the farm full time, I got organic certification, bought a small dairy herd, put up a dairy barn and a greenhouse - yup, another reinvention of my life!  But it was hard work, and when I reached 72 and got a new knee, the work started getting to me.  I put the farm up for sale, and after a long search for a house in town, I got the farm sold and the house in town habitable at about the same time.  That was a stroke of luck!

I still have my booth at the farmers market.  I am a one-woman manufacturing department, making soap, skin care and herbals, and bottling essential oils and aroma therapy formulas.  There are no more greenhouse plants or garden produce to deal with, but I'm tired.  My 75th birthday is just around the corner and I'm beginning to feel my age.

I can feel it coming.  The Phoenix needs to rise again from the ashes.  I think I know what my next reinvention will be.  It has been gelling in my mind for several years, but I have repeatedly pushed it aside.  There were always other things to do.  But most of those take more energy than I have to expend.  I was thinking about doing cooking classes, but I did one Sunday and it took me two days to recuperate.  This other idea churning around in my mind takes less energy, and it is rearing its head more and more often.

I envision myself lying in the settling ashes of my life as it currently is, the Phoenix bowed but not dead.  My wings are moving, brushing aside those ashes and the cobwebs in my mind.  I feel it rising - another incarnation, another challenge, another reason to look with relish and purpose to the days ahead.  Soon, soon . . .

Too much to do . .

Income tax - still not done.  I have promised myself and my accountant that it would be in her hands by close of business tomorrow.  Maybe . . .

Leaks - there is now a hole in the ceiling of my powder room downstairs because of a leak in my shower upstairs.  We are still not sure that the problem is in the drain.  I plan to take a long shower with a bucket under the drain.  If there is water in the bucket, then the problem is the drain.  If there is none, then the fix that the guy who tiled my shower did this afternoon is the whole solution.  I'm betting on water in the bucket.  Either way, there will have to be some drywall repairs.

My booth at market - good news, bad news.  For winter, business has been surprisingly brisk.  I am working to get caught up on inventory, but I seem to be having a hard time reaching the finish line.  Are people having more sinus problems than usual this winter?  One might think so.  I have several products to address them, and I keep running out of them.

Dog - Figgy, actually.  While he is a very smart little guy, he still hasn't cottoned on to going out the automatic door to relieve himself.  Is he housebroken?  Well, sort of.  More like his mama walks him so often that the indoor mistakes are few and far between.  I long for the day when he is as good as Tashi is - and Ayn Chee was.  All of those walks are taking their toll on me.

My foot - I have tendinitis in my right foot.  Ouch!  The first three or so walks are just fine.  By the fourth, I am in pain!  How am I going to walk the streets of Paris in pain?  

Speaking of Paris, my second language - right now, I am sick to death of French!  French Meet-up at Barnes and Nobles every other Thursday, conversational French at Forever Learning every Thursday, French Canadienne Radio in my car, meetings with a tutor every Monday and every other Thursday, and Pimsleur lessons on my smart phone.  Je suis tres, tres fatiguee!  

Speaking of smart phone - really?  What is smart about a phone that loses calls in the middle of South Bend.  AT&T informs me that the phone I bought last September is already out of date, and they basically didn't promise me a rose garden.  It can't keep up with the updates, or so they say, and so it is failing.  I still owe $580, and now I get to buy another one!  Or go to Verizon, who will give me $650 for switching.  Not a hard decision.  

The other stuff - what do I do about internet, TV, a home phone (which I need in order to call myself when I lose my cell phone)?  

I just do not have time to deal with all of this.  Another time.  I'm going to bed.

Why are my machines always pickin' on me? And I'm not Charlie Brown . . .

Everything is breaking around here! I make my own distilled water, have used the same Waterwise unit for over 20 years. Yesterday morning, the cord from the top unit burst into flames where it plugs into the water tank, burning through the laminate on my new counter top in the soap room.  What a mess to clean up!  Soot eveywhere, in about a foot circle around the site of the mishap.  Thank goodness for built-in safeguards.  Surrounding damage was minimal, as it immediately shut down, but phew, it stinks!!

 

A new one is ordered, but it's not here yet. I still have one gallon of distilled water on hand, but I hope the new machine gets here soon! Not only is distilling at home cheaper, but I use at least three gallons of distilled water a week, and I don't want to have to haul it from the store.

And then, my scale that measures down to 0.1 ounce died within an hour of the fire. I've resurrected it twice, but this time all efforts were for naught. New scale ordered, still haven't even gotten a shipping notice. It is the scale I use to fill boxes of Trail Mix, one box at a time to make sure that the ingredients are evenly distributed.  Fortunately I just filled a bunch of boxes, so I'm probably good for a week or so.  

The bluetooth keyboard for my smart phone died.  I bought a warranty, but I found out that Staples doesn't handle the warranty.  I had to contact the warranty company direct, then found out that it was still under manufacturer's warranty, so I had to go to them.  It got sent back this week, and hopefully a new one will be forthcoming.  I do not do well typing with my thumbs on my phone, and I just love that keyboard!

In addition to the scale I have ordered, I have one that measures to 0.1 gram and 0.01 ounce, which I need for my essential oil business.  Well, it works fine - if I put new batteries in it every time I use it.  The auto shut-off works, but it is always dead the next time I get it out.  I guess I could have been pulling the batteries out after each use, but that is not what I bargained for when I bought it.  Same problem, the vendor I got it from doesn't do the warranty.  They were good enough to send me a copy of the receipt and the warranty (I had no idea what I had done with them), and it too went into the mail to the manufacturer this week.

Sigh - why are my machines always pickin' on me?  I really do feel like Charlie Brown today.

Apples, apples, apples!

Since I follow a low carbohydrate diet, I limit my apple consumption to a slice or two when I am baking a pie for someone else.  That is not a slice of apple pie, but rather a slice of apple.  Even the tart, crisp baking apples have way too much sugar in them.  If I were to eat a whole apple, it would be akin to handing a beer to an alcoholic.  There is no stopping me once that sugar hits my brain.

Each fall, we have an apple pie contest at the market.  I submitted my favorite apple pie last year.  It looked beautiful, but I was having trouble with my oven, and it didn't taste nearly as good as it looked.  I didn't win a prize, no surprise.

This year I feel like I have to redeem myself.  I have found some workarounds to get the results I want from my oven, and I'm trying again, this time with a new recipe.  I've made this pie once to rave reviews.  But can I repeat it?

Is it a winner?

I baked the first pie with organic Gravenstein apples.  They are very hard to find.  When I got such good reviews, I went back to the store for more Gravensteins.  They were not to be had.  But lo and behold, there was a flat of organic Cox's Orange Pippins.  They are even harder to find, and some believe them to be THE best pie apple in the world.  So I bought enough for two pies, one for the contest at the market and the second one for a dinner party I am having the day following the contest.

Then I got an invitation to a dinner meeting for Purple Porch shareholders, and they are having an apple pie contest.  So I thought, why not?  I went back to the store for more Cox's Orange Pippins. But they, too, were not to be had anymore.

I started reading labels, and what did I find? Be still my heart --  Roxbury Russets!  Too good to be true, but there they were, staring up at me in all of their russeted beauty!  So I bought enough for another two pies.  Mixing the two apples in each of the pies will only make them better!

If you live around Mishawaka / South Bend, it is worth the trip to Martin's.  I'm not sure if they are carrying these antique apples at all of their stores.  Call first, or mosey on out to the Martin's just east of Capital on Lincoln Way East.  But you had better get there fast.  There are people in the "apple know" snapping up these flavorful fruits.

Paleo snacking at its best!

I just can't leave well enough alone.  I always seem to need something new to keep me interested in my business.  Right now, one of my biggest sellers is soaked and dried organic nuts -- walnuts, almonds and pecans.  They sell 10:1 against the plain organic nuts.  Why soak and dry?  It's a process that removes phytic acid from the nuts and makes them healthier.

So I got to thinking.  What if I mix them with some organic blueberries from our local market?  I can dehydrate them in my Excalibur dehydrator, which I use to dry the nuts after they are soaked in salt water.  Why not keep it busy - and BUY LOCAL?

Why stop there?  I have found an excellent (albeit not cheap) source of quality organic nuts and organic dried fruit.  So here's the lineup, all USDA organic:  Soaked and dried almonds, walnut halves, pecan halves, pepitas and sunflower seeds; local dehydrated blueberries; dehydrated sour cherries (mmmmm, I keep sneaking those from the package!) and sultana raisins; unsweetened coconut flakes; and yummy dark chocolate chips.

Then the ingredients are loaded into boxes, each box individually filled ingredient by ingredient, carefully weighed, so that each contains exactly the same amount of each ingredient.  Then a nice snap-on lid so you can dip in and munch, and then keep it covered (if you can) until the munchies hit you again.  This is paleo snacking at its best!

Stop by Purple Porch Wednesday night market or my booth at the Farmers Market for a taste and to purchase!  Available by mail as well.

Paleo Trail Mix - all organic ingredients