NEW VISITOR TO THE FEEDER ~ GARDEN UPDATE: THE HARVEST BEGINS ~ RECIPE OF THE WEEK: JALAPENO-INFUSED VODKA ~ PARTING SHOT

NEW VISITOR TO THE FEEDER

We don't get very many "different" birds around here. We usually only have the usual suspects: the house finches, the goldfinches, the sparrows, etc. But when we do get a new addition to our bird family, it is very exciting. This past week we kept hearing a bird call that wasn't one of the usual ones, but somehow it did seem familiar. Finally the culprit showed himself. We caught fleeting glimpses of him as he flew around the neighborhood, voicing his presence with his loud, scratchy call. Then we saw him fly to our feeder a few times, but he never stayed more than a few seconds. Finally, he landed on the feeder and stayed long enough for me to get a picture of him.

Who can it be, now?

This gregarious bird is the western version of the Eastern Blue Jay, a much more colorful fellow. He is called a California Scrub Jay. The reason he sounded familiar to us is because we have seen him down at Linda's dad's house. He is a regular visitor to the feeder there. And we also have seen him over in the Seattle area, too. I do believe he is somewhat common in the Yakima area, but not so much in the urban parts. At any rate, we were glad to see him come to our feeder. He has been back to it almost every day. The picture does not do him justice as his coloring is much more blue than it appears above. This video below shows his coloring a bit better and lets you hear his voice.

GARDEN UPDATE:  THE HARVEST BEGINS

Despite the fact that everything in the garden is about 3-4 weeks behind our usual schedule this year, we have still had some vegetables to harvest a little along for about the past month and a half. The cherry tomatoes have been producing well this year as I pick a half a bucket almost every day. We seem to be able to keep pace with that, but I am here to tell you that there is no way on this green earth that we can keep pace with eating the Armenian cucumbers. I have never seen a more prolific garden vegetable. It even out-performs the zucchini, and that is saying a lot! I could pick two or three probably every day. I try to pick them before they get too big, but last week I was out in the garden and happened to glance over at the edge of the garden. I could not believe my eyes. There was the biggest, baddest Armenian cucumber I had ever seen! I had Linda take my picture holding it as proof.

That's a whopper!

Keep in mind, this is supposed to be a cucumber. In actuality, it is a type of muskmelon. But they taste like cucumbers, so it is called an Armenian cucumber. I wasn't sure if this guy would be any good, so I peeled off the skin and took a taste. It really didn't have any flavor to it, so I decided the best thing to do would be to turn it into pickles. So today I sliced it up and made Freezer Pickles out of it. After I peeled it and took out the seeds it weighed almost 4 pounds. Of course, the garden is still pumping these babies out and I picked 6 regular-sized ones today. Below is a picture of the day's harvest from this past Saturday, with the huge Armenian cucumber on top, and some regular-sized ones to the left of it.

All in a day's work

At the bottom of the picture above is a bucket almost full to the top with all of my onions. The tops had all fallen over on the ground and were turning brown, so I pulled them all up and now they are sitting out on the back porch curing. We have been dehydrating zucchini almost every day (I have the machine going with a load right now). The zucchini chips are wonderful sprinkled with a little spice, almost like eating potato chips. The trouble is that I can sit down and eat a whole jar in one sitting!

I am happy to report that some of the peppers are starting to turn red now. The little Hab has a bunch of flowers but no actual peppers starting to form yet. As a matter of fact, a couple of the flowers fell off yesterday because it has been almost 100 the past few days and triple-digit temperatures predicted for most of next week. I moved it over to the shade so hopefully it won't get too hot.

Almost-red Shishito

Red "hot" jalapeño (not a Tam jalapeño)

About this time of the season is when the tomatoes really start coming in. Although this year, we have only had 3 or 4 ripe tomatoes off of the only non-cherry tomato plant we have. That tomato, the Cherokee Carbon, an heirloom, has quite a few tomatoes on it right now. A lot of them have color to them but are not ripe yet. The cherry tomato plants we have (Yellow Pear, Red Cherry and Sun Sugar) are all going crazy producing those sweet little orbs that we so love. The Red Cherry plant is sprawling all over the place and is absolutely loaded with tomatoes in all stages of ripeness. I picked some today and decided to try smoking them. I saw a post on Facebook from Meathead of Amazing Ribs (click here for his website) stating how to do this, so you know I just had to try it. I sliced 2 trays of cherry tomatoes in half and put them in the smoker for 3 hours. Here is what they looked like when they came out.

Like candy!

RECIPE OF THE WEEK:  Jalapeño-Infused Vodka

I ran across a recipe the other day for a "Frozen Bloody Mary." Since it is supposed to be 101 degrees on Saturday, I figured this might be a good recipe to try for my cocktail on Friday night. The recipe calls for "Jalapeño-Infused Vodka" if you can find it. I thought to myself, "I have jalapeños and I have vodka, so I will just make my own." And that is what I have going right now.

Infused Vodka

This is the simplest recipe in the world. As my mother would say, "if you can pour pee out of a boot with directions on the heel," you can make this. All I did was combine 2 cups of vodka with a couple of sliced jalapeños. I used a recipe from a blog called The New Potato (click here for the actual recipe). Since I wanted to try this recipe out first without using a whole lot of vodka (just in case I don't like it), I cut the recipe in half. You will notice that I did, though, use two whole jalapeños, and the reason is because one of them is a Tam jalapeño and not as hot as the other one.

PARTING SHOT

Summer Girl has her favorite spots out in the yard in which to spend most of her time doing what she does best, which is sleeping. But her favorite spot in the garden has always been among the pepper plants, probably because she is hot stuff herself.

Summer says "Meow"

BICYCLING ~ DEHYDRATING FEVER ~ THE EVENT OF THE YEAR ~ GARDEN UPDATE ~ PARTING SHOT

BICYCLING

Things have finally slowed down in the garden enough so that I don't have to be out there early every morning to water, pull weeds, check on hoses, tie up plants and harvest produce. Since I was going to have a few early mornings with some free time, I decided to get my bicycle out and get it ready so I could start riding it. I have always enjoyed bike riding when weather permits (this includes it not being too HOT). Since the mornings here are kind of cool up until around 10:00, it is a good time to ride. So I pumped up my tires, got a new battery for my odometer, and set out to ride in the mornings. After several days of this, I decided to have Linda take a picture of me with my bike for the blog. This bicycle is what I call the "old person's bike." It doesn't have the curl handlebars that most of my previous bikes had (because us old folks can't bend over that much). Nor does it have the streamlined seat, for obvious "old person anatomy" reasons. The bike shop where I purchased it told me this was the "comfort" bike model. They were right because it is probably the most comfortable bike I have ever ridden. The seat is nice and big and soft, the front fork has shock absorbers on it, and the upright-position handlebars have nice padded grips.

Queasy Rider?

After Linda took the above picture I headed out for my morning ride. Linda had just come back from her walk and told me the route she had taken. I decided to ride my bike along the same route so I could tell her how far she walked. I was about three-fourths of the way along that route when all of a sudden I kept hearing this funny swishing noise. I stopped and inspected my bike and was dismayed to find a piece of metal about 8 inches long and 1/8 inch wide embedded in the side of my rear tire! I believe it was a part of some kind of fireworks. At any rate, my tire was flat as a pancake and I had no choice but to walk the bike back to the house. Fortunately, it went flat right as I got to our nearby park, so it wasn't that far. But it was starting to get hot and now I didn't have that nice "breeze" you get from riding a bike. By the time I got home I was nice and toasty! Linda came out and helped me load the bike into the truck and I took it up to Yakima Valley Cycling & Fitness, which is close to where we live. They fixed me right up and now I can enjoy my early morning bike rides once again.

DEHYDRATING FEVER

As if I didn't have enough to do, I have now decided to take up dehydrating. One reason is because of all the produce coming out of the garden. The two of us just can't eat it all, and most people don't want it when you offer to give them some. But if you can dehydrate it, you can greatly extend the life of your produce and enjoy it well into the winter months. I decided to start with something simple and abundant: zucchini. I sliced it very thin using my mandoline and laid it out on the trays. I only have four trays, so they would only hold half of the very large zucchini that I sliced up. I plugged in the dehydrator and magically, six hours later, I had zucchini chips! The next day I repeated the process and even sprinkled a little salt and paprika on the zucchini as I put it on the trays. Delicious! I think my next endeavor is going to be potatoes!!

Zucchini on Dehydrator Trays

Zucchini Chips!

THE EVENT OF THE YEAR

I hope most of you had the opportunity to take part in the event of the year. Of course, I'm talking about the Solar Eclipse of 2017. There was a lot of hype leading up to this event, but I am glad that the actual event lived up to all of the press. We had planned to watch the eclipse on television, but decided to pick up a pair of the solar-viewing glasses at the grocery store last Tuesday just on a whim. We are so glad that we did. While Linda sat in a chair and checked out the eclipse at regular intervals, I watched the live feed from NASA on my iPad. The actual experience of seeing the eclipse with my own eyes through the solar-viewing glasses was far better than the media coverage of the event. An added bonus was that Yakima was in the 96% totality area, so at the height of the eclipse we only saw a sliver of the sun peeking out around the moon. It was quite a sight!

Watching the Eclipse

We were blessed with an absolutely gorgeous day without a cloud in the sky. I know a lot of you were plagued with rain clouds and didn't even have a chance to see it. For you, I am glad that there was so much media coverage and the chance to see it that way.

GARDEN UPDATE

The garden is just sitting back there pumping out the produce at an ever-increasing rate. My pepper bushes are loaded and a few of the peppers are finally starting to turn color. This is what I have been waiting for because this means that they are fully ripe. Most people don't know that a regular green bell pepper is one that has been picked before it has ripened. If allowed to stay on the plant until it is ripe, a green bell pepper will turn a different color, depending on the type of pepper it is. There is one type of pepper, the Permagreen variety, that stays green even when ripe. But most of them will turn orange, yellow or red, with red being the sweetest. This holds true for most other peppers as well. However, this takes an awful long time which is probably why red bell peppers are so expensive. I can attest to the fact that it takes a long time because I play this waiting game every year. I am very patiently waiting for my Jalapenos, Anaheims, and Shishito peppers to turn red. The Tequila Sunrise pepper is supposed to turn orange, and the California Golds are supposed to turn...you guessed it, gold. The Sweet Banana peppers start out a kind of light-green color and turn yellow pretty fast. But if you let them stay on the plant, they will turn a lovely orange color.

Ripe Banana Pepper (top) and Shishito Pepper turning red (bottom)

 

Panorama Shot of the Garden

PARTING SHOT

Summer Girl has been enjoying the nice green grass we have under our Catalpa tree. She loves to stretch out on it and take an impromptu nap whenever the notion strikes. Too bad someone with a camera has to come along and mess up her nap!

What, me worry?

Check back again next week to see what has been happening up here in the Northwest!

FLOWERS IN THE GARDEN ~ A NEW BEER TO TRY ~ GARDEN UPDATE ~ RECIPE OF THE WEEK: ZUCCHINI RELISH ~ PARTING SHOT

FLOWERS IN THE GARDEN

For the past several years when planting my vegetable garden, I have been including some marigold plants along with the vegetable plants. A friend told me that marigolds would keep away bugs, so I was all for that. It turns out that this year there was some kind of bug that actually liked them because they almost got eaten up! But eventually whatever bug was out there moved on to greener pastures and the marigolds got a chance to make a comeback. Now they are absolutely gorgeous! I also like the fact that I can plant them along the soaker hose in areas where there aren't any vegetable plants. That way the water isn't going to waste. And they do attract bees to the garden, so that is an additional benefit. But most of all, they are beautiful!

Marigolds in the garden

A NEW BEER TO TRY

Even though I love my gin & tonic on the weekends, I also have a fondness for a good craft beer every now and then. I am always on the lookout for a new beer to try, and I especially like what the local craft breweries here in Yakima have to offer. There are quite a few breweries here and it seems like more are opening up every year. It may have something to do with the fact that 75% of the hops grown in the U.S., and a third of the hops grown worldwide, are grown right here in Yakima County. Hop Nation Brewery (click here for their website) provided the beer at the Wags to Riches fundraiser dinner a few weeks ago, so I had the opportunity to try out their beer. On our vacation trip to Leavenworth back in June we tasted some amazing IPA beers at another local brewery, Blewett Brewery. Ever since then I have been wanting to try out a Yakima IPA. I always thought that IPA beer was too bitter for my taste, and some of it is. But what we sampled in Leavenworth had my taste buds intrigued. So this week I decided to take the plunge and buy a 22 ounce bottle of an IPA, just to try it and see if I liked it. For this test I chose EGO India Pale Ale by Hop Nation Brewery, since I liked their beer at the fundraiser. Believe it or not, I actually liked this IPA very much! I don't know if the logo picture for their brewery influenced me any, but you have to admit it is pretty awesome. It is a red Phoenix Bird with a hop flower making up the body of the bird. If you live in the Yakima area, I highly recommend that you give Hop Nation Brewery a try.

My new favorite beer

 

Hop Nation Brewery logo

GARDEN UPDATE

There was some excitement in the garden this past week. I checked on my little Hab plant one day and was surprised to see some flower buds popping out all over it! Even though they are still tiny, I was overjoyed to see those buds. I was skeptical that this plant would be able to produce buds since it got such a late start. However, after we got past the week of mostly triple-digit temperatures, it settled down and like the rest of the garden, got down to business. Here is a picture I took this afternoon and if you look really closely, you can see the flower buds. I may actually get some Zavory Habanero peppers after all this year!

Little Hab has some buds!

The potato plants have finally gone down to the ground but haven't turned brown yet. I think the rain we got the other night may have helped them bend over to the ground. Since everything is a couple of weeks behind this year, we have been anxiously awaiting our homegrown potatoes. I couldn't stand it any longer, so I dug one up yesterday. It is a pretty nice sized potato and is sitting on the back porch curing right now.

First potato this year

RECIPE OF THE WEEK: ZUCCHINI RELISH

If there is one thing I can count on each year to be an over-achiever in the garden, it is the zucchini plant. We are going crazy trying to keep up with eating what it produces. So when I saw a Facebook friend mention that she had just made some Zucchini Relish, I jumped at the chance to get her recipe. A big thank-you goes out to Linda Burkett, one of my friends from the Facebook rock painting group, Yakima Valley Rocks. She was gracious enough to share her recipe with me, one that was handed down to her from her mother. I so enjoy it when people pass on their family recipes. You know they will be good because they have usually been tested for generations. Since I had four very large zucchini staring at me from the refrigerator, I decided to give it a try this morning. In making this recipe I also got to use some Candy Sweet onions from the garden and also a few of my Banana Peppers and a California Gold pepper. Here is her recipe:

Zucchini Relish  by Linda Burkett

Ingredients:
10 cups zucchini
4 cups onion
5 Tbsp salt

2 1/4 cups vinegar
5 cups sugar
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp turmeric
2 Tbsp cornstarch
2 tsp celery seed
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 each or more red & green peppers, chopped finely

Directions:
Grind or shred the 10 cups zucchini and the 4 cups onion, add the 5 Tbsp salt and mix in. Let stand overnight (I put mine in the fridge--Peg). The next day, drain and rinse in cold water.

To that add the rest of the ingredients and cook for 30 minutes.  Let cool and put in jars.
Note from Peg on storage: Since I don't do shelf-stable canning yet, I always keep anything I jar up in the fridge or freezer.  If you know how to do shelf-stable canning, you can absolutely use that method for storing.

This recipe smells wonderful while it's cooking. You probably won't be able to resist having a bowl-full of it as soon as it's done. Mine got done right at lunch time, so I added a nice dollop to the top of my salad. It was delicious!

Making you hungry?

I envision using this relish the next time I make some Southern Style Potato Salad, which will be as soon as I start digging up potatoes. I bet it would be killer in a nice coleslaw, too. But hey, it's good all by itself!

PARTING SHOT

It's hard to get a picture of Summer Girl doing anything other than lazing around this time of year. To her, this is the "Cat Days of Summer." At least she does vary her nap venue from time to time. Here she is after I woke her up from her afternoon nap beside the patio.

GARDEN UPDATE ~ ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY ~ FROZEN GIN & TONIC ~ HOME IMPROVEMENT ~ PARTING SHOT

GARDEN UPDATE

Let me start this week's blog with an update on the garden, which is starting to consume more of my time. We have harvested quite a few zucchini now, most of which I have cooked on the grill. I also spiralized one and used it to make a very nice zucchini and cucumber salad, dressed with just oil and vinegar. I gave a few to a friend and one to my neighbor. So far we are keeping up with production, but I fear we will be overrun soon. Anybody want some zucchini? Funny thing, Monday was "National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day". This is true, at least that's what Facebook says...so you know it MUST be true! Anyway, here is a picture of the harvest from yesterday and this morning.

All I can say is...YUM!

I actually could have harvested a bucket full of various kinds of peppers, but I am holding out on most of them so they will turn red. That is when they have the most flavor (and heat if it's a hot pepper), and also when they look the prettiest! The two red Cherry tomato plants are really starting to produce. I just snacked on a small bowlful and they are so tasty, nothing like the tomatoes that you get in the grocery stores nowadays. I wouldn't really call those tomatoes, because they taste nothing like a real tomato. Local fruit and vegetable stands have far better produce in the summer than any of the grocery stores, so we try to go there if we need anything that we don't grow ourselves. One thing we don't grow ourselves is corn. I tried it a few years ago and it was riddled with bugs and didn't produce much at all. It was too much work for the yield, so I haven't grown it since. However, our local produce stand had corn on sale this past week, 4 ears for $1.00. The grocery stores have it 2 ears for $1.00, so we decided to get some at the produce stand here in Yakima run by Jones Farm (click here for link to their website). Since we wanted to put some in the freezer, I decided to smoke some of it. In the past two weeks I have smoked 29 ears of corn. After I smoke it I let it cool, then cut the kernels off the cob and pack it into sandwich bags, which we then put in big freezer bags. We did this last year and it was so nice to be able to have "fresh" corn in the middle of winter. Here is a picture of the corn going into the smoker.

Smoking Corn

This little smoker is turning out to be one of my most favorite things. I used to have a bigger smoker, but I like this little one better. It is a better size for smoking something for one or two people. This smoker is electric and is so easy to use. I just plug it in, put the chips in the holder, fill up the water tray, load in the food and then close the door. I usually smoke the corn for around 1 1/2 to 2 hours at 250 degrees. On the last batch I used mesquite wood chips, which I haven't tried before. I really can't distinguish between the different flavors of wood chips, but I just like the smoky taste it imparts to food. If you are interested at all in smoking food, I highly recommend this little smoker that I have, made by Masterbuilt (here is the link to their website). Right now it is available on Amazon for around $99 and includes free shipping.

I got off track a little bit there, but I wanted to mention the smoked corn. Now, back to the update on the garden. Everything is starting to get big, although it isn't as big yet as it has been in past years by this same time. The only concern I have is that my little Hab will not have time to give me any peppers. This is the Zavory Habanero plant that I grew from seed and got a late start because it was so small. Right now it is doing very well but hasn't produced any flowers, as you can see in this picture.

The Little Hab

I am hoping that it will still have time to produce a few peppers. It's just amazing what a little time, sun, and water can do. Below is a picture of the garden now.

The garden as of 08/08/17

The onions have already bent their tops over and the potatoes will soon be doing the same, which means they are done and can be harvested. Everything else is still busy growing! I must mention that I had a huge problem pop up in the garden the other day. While putting up fencing around one of our tomatoes (you can see it in the lower right-hand corner), I accidentally placed a stake on top of my longest soaker hose (see tear below). So now I have to either fix it (hello, duct tape), or else I will have to hand-water about a third of the garden. Keep your fingers crossed that I can get it fixed!

Hole in hose at top

ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY

We had another anniversary recently, but this one was not a happy one. On July 28th we marked being one year without our little Precious Baby. We still both miss her terribly. I am hoping that as time goes by I won't miss her as much, but I don't know. She was such a special kitty and I know she will always hold a special place in my heart.

FROZEN GIN & TONIC

The recipe for this week is Frozen Gin & Tonic. I mentioned this recipe in my last blog two weeks ago. I tried it out that weekend and it turned out really good! So, here is the link to the recipe on the Kitchn website. This was a really refreshing drink, which was very much needed as we have had triple-digit high temperatures for the past two weeks.

Cheers!

HOME IMPROVEMENT

The reason I didn't post a blog last week is because we were having carpet installed and we had to get all the furniture out of those rooms. This included the office where our computer is located. So, pretty much all last week our house was in disarray, with furniture everywhere it wasn't supposed to be. Things are back to normal now and we absolutely love our new carpet. Here is a before and after photo of the living room.

Old carpet on top, new carpet below

PARTING SHOT

I still can't get my videos to upload to YouTube. I think the problem is that the videos were taken on an iPad and the file format is incompatible. So you will have to be content with just a picture of Summer Girl. I know it has been a long two weeks without a Summer Girl fix, but a picture of the Black Cat Ninja is better than nothing!

Her favorite place now...in the garden!