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.
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| Who can it be, now? |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Almost-red Shishito |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Summer says "Meow" |
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