Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. I did my first turkey which turned out perfect. I made my own stuffing for the first time too and it was as good as my usual paxo brand. And all the veg was local and very tasty including the potatoes and carrots from the backyard. We are still waiting for our squash to loose their last bit of green lines but we had our first frost today so I guess I better bring them in.

Final Potato Harvest

We've been eating potatoes out of the garden since June so a lot of them have been harvested already but I pulled up the remaining. I got a whole five of the 3 litre basket full. Now I just have to find a good place to store them.

Summer Baby Shoes

I made these yesterday and I love them. I used this pattern and I think they turned out very professional.
http://www.michaelmillerfabrics.com/blog/cloth_shoe.pdf

Quince Jelly

Our quince bush was full of quinces so we harvested them to make some jelly. We got a little over 5 pounds of quince. We used the instructions here
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/quince_jelly/

Last year we made apple and quince jelly which was good - nice and sour. This year's should be even more sour without the apples. We had to throw away most of last year's because of mold but that was the first thing we had ever ever canned and we didn't have a proper rack or jar lifter or lid lifter so I'm sure they won't get moldy this time.

Huge Compost Bin

I finally got a staple gun that was tough enough and finished my big compost bin. It is 10' x 2', fitting perfectly at the side of the house - the compost bin. I am hoping with this new addition along with saving bigger sticks to burn in the firepit I won't have to put any leaves or garden waste at the curb.


At the same time, I finally made the second cold frame. Here is some mache sprouting inside the old cold frame (they are both just filled with mache for this year). It has gotten so cold so suddenly though, I just hope it has time to grow.

Portugese Corn Bread

I tried a new recipe from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day book for Portugese corn bread. It was good, not as cornmeal-y as I would have liked, tasted just a bit different than regular white crusty bread. The crust was really really good though so I definitely will make it again.

We ate it with a soup of squash, carrots, the very last of the garden green beans, potatoes, and black eyed peas. And later that evening we roasted and ate the squash seeds.

Cottage Pie with Cabbage

Out of the cabbage patch we only got one nice big cabbage and it's been a good size for a few weeks now but I was leaving it in the garden until I was ready to eat it. And of course after it's survived all these months and turned into a beautiful full grown head of cabbage, now the slugs become interested in it. All of a sudden it got attacked and I lost about half of it.


But after cutting it up, I still got quite a lot - so much that I think I will try cutting into some of the smaller cabbage heads, probably enough in there to make it worthwhile.


The only thing I know that I like with cabbage is sweet and sour cabbage and because this is the combination I always had when I was growing up I only think it goes with cottage pie. So that is what we had for dinner tonight. It was good and used up some potatoes and carrots (including that curly carrot!) from the garden plus oregano and some mushrooms from our basement
mushroom garden.

First Ultrasound at 18 Weeks

The baby is growing. Here is the first ultrasound at 18 weeks. I don't know if I am biased because it is my baby but I honestly believe that it is the cutest ultrasound picture I have ever seen in my whole life.
I am almost 19 weeks now. Just a few days ago I started being able to feel the baby move around a bit if I am in the right position but am still waiting till I get to feel it more.

A bushel of apples

I ordered a bushel of St. Lawrence apples from Bailey's Local Foods on Friday and I've now used just about all of them up so all that are left are a few to eat as snacks over the next week or so.
I dehydrated most of them. It was easy with my new apple machine! It is just a simple machine where you turn a handle and it peels, slices, and cores each apple. It was awesome, I couldn't believe it.


And this is what you end up with!


Here's the final product, a huge bag of dehydrated apples, plus a few already ripped up in that measuring cup ready to be added to granola (I made the granola with extra cinnamon so it is really good!), and one sheet of fruit leather. I made the fruit leather just by blending up a few apples and adding some strawberries from the freezer - it is just like 'fruit to go'. I also made an apple pie and some apple muffins.

Canning salsa and more

Along with dehydrating, I have been doing a lot of canning. Recently I have done some cucumber relish with cucumbers from the backyard.


Then I made some pear chutney with some pears I bought that I didn't like the taste of.


And last night Kevin and I made salsa - got 7 pints of it. All the tomatoes were from the backyard along with some of the jalapenos. It was really fun to be doing it together. We used the tomato salsa recipe from the Little City Farm Blog.
http://littlecityfarm.blogspot.com/2009/08/canning-preserving-workshop.html

Drying Mushrooms

I bought my dehydrator and it arrived last week. I settled on the Nesco Square dehydrator and bought the maximum number of trays. So far I have done another big batch of little tomatoes. And some mushrooms. My home grown mushrooms still aren't doing so well, am still working on reviving them. So when I had the opportunity to buy 3 pounds of local organic shitaake mushrooms I took it. Here are some pictures of them drying process, I used all 8 drying trays and filled up to the top 2 small freezer bags. I also kept a bunch fresh to put on a pizza later in the week. I definitely want to try to do a cream of mushroom soup sometime when it gets a bit colder.

Mushroom Harvest

Our mushrooms are ready already! It's been less than 2 weeks since we got them! They only took a few days to sprout and then they went pretty quickly. Except I bought a dehumidifier to run in the basement yesterday and they are not too happy about that, have started being a bit dry around the edges. The laundry room really smells like mushrooms, not in a good way.


Today we had them in a pasta with a basil and sun dried tomato pesto sause. We used sun dried tomatoes and basil from the garden. It was good, the oyster mushrooms had a lot of flavour. And yesterday we had a mushroom gravy that was also good. So far we've harvested one bunch, there are 2 more to go. And then they're supposed to grow at least 2 more times.