Spicy Cornmeal Crisps

I made 2 kinds of crackers this year for Christmas. I thought this was the better of the two myself; but the others disappeared faster, so apparently that was a minority opinion. Still, these have a nice dry-crunchy sandy texture from the cornmeal, and the seasonings make them delicious plain or with cheese. Like all crackers, it is very important to make them as thin as you possibly can. Otherwise, they are not crispy, just tough.

32 crackers
1 hour prep time

1 cup soft unbleached flour
1 cup fine cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon rubbed dry rosemary leaves
1/8 to 1/2 teaspoon crushed red chile, such as Aleppo
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 to 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt

Preheat the oven to 425°F. Tear off a piece of parchment paper to fit a large baking tray.

Mix the flour, cornmeal, and seasonings together in a small mixing bowl. Melt the butter and mix it with the buttermilk. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. When it gets too stiff to mix easily, dump it out on the parchment paper and knead briefly until well amalgamated into an even dough. Don't let the dough sit, but roll it out at once - it will get very stiff and hard to work with unless you get right to it.

Roll out the dough as thinly and evenly as you can, on the parchment paper. Keep it in a neat rectangle as well, trimming and patching the edges to do it. Cut the resulting rectangle into crackers with a pizza cutter. Lift the parchment paper carefully onto the baking tray. Sprinkle the tops of the crackers evenly with the coarse sea salt.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until dry and firm, and slightly browned around the edges. They will continue to harden as they cool. Break apart the cooled crackers to serve.




Last year at this time I made Red Cabbage, Carrot & Onion Stir-Fry.

Creamy Mushroom Dip

This is a simple, classic dip that goes together very quickly. The original recipe, which I got from our family cookbook, called for tarragon. I hate tarragon, but you could replace the savory or thyme with a couple of tablespoons of fresh tarragon. Actually, I think chervil would be excellent, but chervil is next to impossible to find.

There was a fair bit of this left over from our Christmas party. I sautéed some more mushrooms with a chopped leek, added the dip to the pan until just heated, then tossed it all with pasta and cabbage, and I think it was an even bigger hit than it was as a dip. 

12 to 16 servings
20 minutes prep time - but allow an hour to rest

250 g fresh button mushrooms
1 or 2 cloves of garlic
1 cup cream cheese (light is fine)
2 tablespoons mayonnaise (light is fine)
1/3 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons dried chives (OR 1/4 cup fresh)
1 teaspoon rubbed savory or thyme
1/4 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
the juice of 1/2 lemon

Clean and trim the mushrooms, and cut them into quarters. Peel, trim and slice the garlic. Put them in the bowl of a food processor with all the remaining ingredients except the lemon juice. Process until well chopped and blended, but leave a little texture to the mushrooms if you can. Add the lemon juice and pulse it in, then scoop it out to a serving dish. Keep in the fridge until wanted.




Last year at this time I made Squash or Sweet Potato Puff.

Caramel Popcorn

Need a last minute Christmas present or stocking stuffer? Don't want to go out in the freezing rain? Here's something that can be whipped up pretty quickly with cupboard staples.

Christmas is nearly upon us, and now that I am kind of back in the swing of posting it's time to take another little break. Things are going to be very busy over the next few days, even though we are probably not going to go down to visit Dad and his partner. (We have learned our lesson from Snowmageddon.)  Stay warm and safe, everyone, have a good Christmas, solstice, or whatever, and if I'm not back before then, best wishes for a happy new year.

12 servings
1 hour 45 minutes - 45 minutes prep time

10 cups popped popcorn
1 cup peanuts or other nuts of your choice
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup Sucanat or dark brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the popped popcorn and the nuts of your choice in a very large mixing bowl. You will have to stir hot syrup into this so you need lots of room!

Bring the vegetable oil, Sucanat and honey to a boil in a good sized, heavy bottomed pot. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Keep it boiling steadily, stirring constantly. Medium heat is what you want. At about the time the timer goes, the vegetable oil will mostly disappear into the syrup. This is the moment you've been waiting for. (Use the timer just as a guide.) Remove it from the heat, stir in the vanilla, and pour it over the popcorn.

Use a spatula to scrape out the pot. The syrup should be stirred into the popcorn as quickly and evenly as possible. It doesn't hurt to have another person do this as you are pouring and scraping out the syrup. Be careful! Syrup burns are very nasty.

Spread the popcorn out evenly on a lightly oiled cookie sheet. Bake it at 250°F for 1 hour, stirring once or twice during that time. Allow to cool and break it up slightly, so that there are no very large clumps.




Last year at this time I made Cranberry Turkey Meatballs in Mushroom Gravy. 

Spaghetti Squash au Gratin

I still had some cooked spaghetti squash left, so it went into this casserole. Very nice! You could serve it as a side dish with plainly cooked fish or chicken, but it's rich enough to make a good vegetarian main dish as well, which is how we had it. A green salad or steamed green vegetable will complete the meal. 

4 to 6 servings
1 hour prep time, plus 1 hour to pre-cook the squash,
not including cooling time

4 cups cooked, loosened spaghetti squash strands
8 to 12 button mushrooms
2 large shallots
2 large cloves of garlic
1/4 cup chopped dried tomatoes
2 tablespoons mild vegetable oil
1 teaspoon rubbed basil
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 teaspoons arrowroot or cornstarch
salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste
140 grams (5 ish ounces) chevre (soft goat cheese)
2 tablespoons bread crumbs
1 teaspoon butter

Pierce the spaghetti squash with a fork, and roast it at 350°F (on a tray) for about hour, until soft. Let cool, then cut in half and discard the seeds. Loosen the strands of squash from the shell with a fork, and discard the shell.

Preheat the ovent to 350°F. Wash, trim and slice the mushrooms. Peel and dice the shallots. Peel and mince the garlic. Chop the tomatoes.

Heat the oil in a large skillet. Cook the mushrooms and shallots until quite soft and slightly browned, stirring regularly. Add the minced garlic and basil, and cook for a minute or so longer. Add the dried tomatoes and most of the chicken stock. Mix the arrowroot in with the remaining chicken stock, and when the vegetables have simmered for a few minutes and the tomatoes look softened, stir in the remaining stock with the cornstarch. Season with salt and pepper to taste; the amount of salt will be affected by whether your chicken stock is already salted or not. Mix in the chevre, until it is completely dissolved.

Oil a 2 quart casserole dish (8" x 11" baking dish). Mix the spaghetti squash with the sauce and spread it in the prepared pan. Sprinkle it with the breadcrumbs and dot with the butter. Bake for about 45 minutes, until browned and bubbly around the edges.





Last year at this time I made Crisp Winter Salad with Cottage Cheese Dressing.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts in Spaghetti Squash Nests

This is a bit of a gimmick more than a recipe, but at least it's an attractive and good-tasting gimmick. Roasted Brussels sprouts make great "eggs" in little nests of spaghetti squash tossed with cheese and herbs. Serve them as their own course as part of a formal dinner, or with a piece of roasted or poached chicken breast alongside and call it the whole thing.

This was a spaghetti squash I grew myself, and it separated into nice clean strands, just as it should. I've had more troubles with purchased spaghetti squash being too soft and mushy, which is really annoying when they are not cheap. Pity we are not good growers of squash, generally getting few and small ones. I hope that one of these days we will get the amendments right and win the battle of the bugs.

Makes 4 to 6 servings
1 hour 20 minutes - 20 minutes prep time

1  1 kilo (2 pounds) spaghetti squash
1 kilo (2 pounds) Brussels sprouts
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon rubbed oregano
1/2 teaspoon rubbed savory
1/2 teaspoon rubbed thyme
freshly ground black pepper to taste
a little more grated Parmesan to sprinkle over, if you like

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Wash the squash, and stab it in several places with a fork. Bake it - on a tray; it may leak - for 40 to 45 minutes, until soft.

Meanwhile, wash and trim the Brussels sprouts, and cut a cross in the base of each one to facilitate faster cooking. Toss them with the oil in a baking pan, and put them in the oven when the squash is about half done (20 or 25 minutes still to go). Sprinkle them with a little salt first if you like.

Have the butter and grated cheese standing by, along with the seasonings. When the squash is done, remove it from the oven and cut it in half. Scoop out and discard the seeds, etc from the middles, then use a fork to pull out the strands. put them in a bowl and toss them with the butter, cheese and seasonings.

Divide the spaghetti squash onto individual serving plates, and form into little nests. Serve with the roasted Brussels sprouts divided amongst the nests, and with a little more cheese sprinkled over top if you like. You will need to work quickly as I found the spaghetti squash cooled off fairly quickly. They could go back in the oven to stay warm if you need a few extra minutes to get other parts of the meal ready, as long as your plates are happy with that.





Last year at this time I made White Chocolate Mousse with Cranberries, on the occasion of my mothers birthday. I was just thinking about what a fabulous knock-out dessert it was, and that I should make it for Christmas dinner this year, and there it is. Oh yeah, I think so. It was SOOO good.

Dressing (Stuffing) Flavoured Baked Beans

It has been my opinion, ever since childhood, that the best part of a Christmas (or Thanksgiving, or turkeys-were-on-sale) turkey is the dressing, or stuffing. (We can discuss religion and politics and even computers at our dining table. But don't get us going on whether it's properly called dressing, or stuffing. You'll notice I waffle on the topic.) So I'm always interested in bringing that flavour profile to other dishes.

I'm going to have to come up with a lot of bean dishes this winter, since we ended up with jars and jars of dried beans. Seed selection for the win! Also, we just plain planted a lot. Anyway, here is my first new bean dish of the season, and I am declaring it a success. Apart from the fact that dried beans are always a bit slow on their journey from jar to table, this is very easy to make, and requires little attention as it cooks. We both thought it was really tasty.

These are my rare and exotic Deseronto Potato beans, but navy (pea) beans are readily available and should work perfectly well for this dish; really any mild white bean.

We were impressed by the Deseronto Potato beans, by the way. This was the first time we actually tried any even though it is our second year of growing them and we got a decent crop last year. Unfortunately, last year I put them away in a glass jar when I thought they were well dried down, but I was wrong, and they went mouldy. The seed beans were okay as I had stored them in paper bags, but it's been a long wait to try these. THIS year I made sure they were well dried in our food drier before they went into the storage jar!

4 to 6 servings
3 hours - 30 minutes prep time. NOT including pre-cooking the beans.

2 cups (450 grams; 1 pound) dried white beans
2 recipes Poultry Seasoning
2 large onions
OR 4 to 6 shallots
6 stalks of celery
OR 2 cups peeled, finely diced celeriac
salt as needed
2 tablespoons sunflower seed oil
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock

Put the beans (rinsed and picked over) into a large pot with plenty of water to cover them. Bring them to a boil, then turn off the heat and cover them, and let them sit and soak for an hour or so. Repeat the boiling and soaking one or two more times, until the beans are soft enough to eat. You can, and probably should, do this the day before you bake them.

When you are ready to proceed, mix up your poultry seasoning. If you decide to use canned beans, and your chicken stock is salted, you should probably omit the salt, as they will have plenty already. I found it necessary to use an extra teaspoon (so 2 teaspoons altogether) but neither my beans nor my chicken stock were pre-salted.

Preheat the oven to 300°F. Peel the onions or shallots, and chop them finely. Wash and trim the celery or celeriac, and chop it finely. Drain the beans well.

Heat the oil in a large skillet. Cook the onions (shallots) and celery until fairly soft. Halfway through the process, add the poultry seasoning and mix it in well. Add the beans and mix them in well, then transfer everything to a 9" x 13" baking pan. Or you can mix them in the baking pan; whichever you think will be easier. Spread them out evenly and pour the chicken stock over them.

Bake for 2 to 2 1/2 hours until starting to dry and brown just a bit on top. That's it; easy! We had ours with cole slaw.




Last year at this time I made Leek & Garlic White Bean (!) Soup, and Michael's Grandmother's Pickled Onions.

Yeah, I've Not Been Posting

You may have noticed, if there's anyone out there still to notice.

This has been a difficult season. Dad fell down the stairs and spent a week in the hospital being observed; fortunately he was just badly bruised and there were no long-term repercussions. This was followed by a discussion with my mother-in-law about how we think she shouldn't be driving anymore; fortunately, she agreed and we will now be spending a certain amount of time driving her around. UNfortunately, this was followed by her suffering from gallstones, kidney stones, and heart irregularities, and the driving started immediately and with a vengeance, not to mention the waiting around in doctors offices. Again, we are lucky that in spite of these problems she is basically in very good health.

While all this has obviously eaten up a certain amount of my time, the real problem (for me) is that it all sent me into a complete funk. Intellectually, I've known for a long time that we are all getting older. However it was a lot easier to ignore 2 months ago when I didn't even know any of this was on the horizon. So I've been busy digesting all this change and it turns out I needed such a complete break from the blog that I couldn't even bring myself to post a be-back-sometime message.

Since I have now been able to cope with the idea of posting a be-back-sometime message, I guess that means things are improving, and I'll be back - sometime - probably even this month and if I am able to get myself in gear, later this week. In general, though, I suspect I'll be posting at a slower rate than I was.

Hope you all have happy, holidays, with the people you love, and a healthy and productive new year.

Kale & Parsnips à l'orange

I usually prefer my parsnips roasted rather than boiled, but I'm prepared to make an exception for this dish. The creamy parsnips, astringent kale and floral orange flavours all blend together very well, and on top of that this is a very easy dish to make.

4 servings
45 minutes - 15 minutes prep time

3 medium parsnips, about 12 ounces or 300 grams
4 cups finely chopped kale
1 tbsp butter
the finely grated zest of 1/2 of an orange
the juice of 1 large orange

Peel and slice the parsnips. Put them in a large pot with water to cover them well, and boil them until tender, about 20 to 25  minutes.

Meanwhile, wash the kale well, removing any limp or discoloured leaves and coarse stems. Chop it finely. Steam the kale - over the parsnips is a good place to do it. Put them above the parsnips when the parsnips are easily pierced with a fork; the kale will be cooked in about five minutes.

Remove the kale to drain, and drain the parsnips well. Mash them with the butter and orange zest, then mix the orange juice and the kale into them.  Be sure the kale is well drained.




Last year at this time I made Chocolate Cranberry Panforte.

Broccoli with Bacon, Mushrooms & Onion

I try not to do too many vegetable dishes filled with rich, fatty things like bacon, butter, cream or cheese. However, if you can get a good lean bacon, this is more of a main dish than a side dish, just needing some rice or other grain to complete it. Otherwise, if you keep the bacon down to 2 or 3 slices, it would also make a good side dish. Therefore I'm not saying how much bacon to use; put in whatever seems appropriate to you. If you are treating it as a side dish, maybe cook the bacon fairly crisp and keep it out until the end, just sprinkling it over the top as you serve it.

Of course, the bacon, mushroom and onion combination is just as good with other vegetables, such as cauliflower, cabbage, or green beans.

2 to 4 servings
20 minutes prep time

1 medium onion
8 to 10 large button mushrooms
1 medium head broccoli
bacon

Put a pot of water on to boil, in which you will blanch the broccoli, so it should be sufficient to cover it. 

Peel the onion and cut it into slivers. Clean the mushrooms and cut them in quarters. Wash and trim the broccoli, and cut it into florets.Cut the bacon into inch-long pieces.

Cook the bacon in a large skillet until just shy of what you would consider done. Remove it to a serving plate. The broccoli should go into the boiling water at this point, and cook for about 2 to 4 minutes, depending on how large your pieces are and how tender you would like them to be.

If there is too much fat left in the pan, drain some of it off (or in the remote possiblity it is necessary, add a little more oil to be sure the pan is sufficiently greasy. Then add the onions and mushrooms to the pan and cook until softened and browned in spots, stirring frequently. Drain the broccoli well, and add it to the pan about halfway through this procedure. Once the broccoli, mushrooms and onions are looking all happy and well acquainted, add the bacon back in, and continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the bacon is hot and the dish otherwise strikes you as "enough".





Last year at this time I made Celery & Peanut Butter Soup. 

Beet & Egg Salad

This was a simple little salad to put together, but it made good use of some of the vegetables now coming of our garden. I found the original recipe in a cookbook from around 1890, and have expanded it a little - yeah, that was a really simple recipe.

I garnished mine with a few sliced olives, which I thought was a nice touch.

2 to 4 servings
15 minutes prep time but allow 2 hours for cooking and cooling

Make the Dressing:
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
 1 tablespoon sunflower seed oil
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
salt & pepper to taste

Whisk or shake together in a small bowl or jar.

Make the Salad:
4 medium beets
1/4 cup sliced sweet onion
1/2 cup (1 small) sliced fennel bulb
OR 2 stalks of celery
salt
2 large eggs

Cook the beets in advance by putting them in a pot with water to cover them generously, and boiling them until tender, about 40 to 45 minutes. Alternatively, wrap them in foil and bake them at 350°F for a similar or slightly longer amount of time. Let them cool, peel them and slice them.

Peel and slice the onion. Trim and slice the fennel or celery, into fairly thin, fine slices. Put them in a shallow dish, and salt them heavily. Set them aside for about half an hour, then rinse them well and squeeze them gently dry.

Put the eggs in a pot with cold water to cover. Bring them to a boil and boil them for one minute, then turn off the heat and leave them, covered, for 10 minutes. Put them in cold water until cool enough to peel. Peel them.

Arrange the onion and fennel or celery on individual plates, and arrange the beet and egg slices over the top. Less decorative, but probably a bit easier to eat would be to chop the beets and eggs finer, and mix them with the onion and fennel.  Either way, then drizzle the dressing over the top of the salad.




Last year at this time I made Pork with Fennel & Peppers. 

A Visit to Tree & Twig

A few weeks ago, just before I had my little fit of incompetence, we went down to visit my father. Since we were in the neighbourhood, I arranged to visit Tree & Twig, a small farm on the edge of Wellandport run by Linda Crago, who has a finger in an awful lot of pies, both for income and her own interest in unusual and heirloom plants.

These chickens, which supply her with eggs, are Plymouth Barred Rocks and Rhode Island Reds. 

The garden was in the process of being cleaned up for the winter, but there were still quite a few things still growing. It's definitely warmer in the tip of the Niagara peninsula than it is up here!

This little vine is melothria scabra, known as Mexican sour gherkin, or mouse watermelons (sandia de raton). You can see one hanging by the first wire support to the right. They do look amazingly like tiny, tiny watermelons, although the flavour is of slightly sour cucumber. They are a little on the seedy side, but not bad, and apparently make good pickles.

In addition to the chickens, Linda has some geese, and a pot-bellied pig named Joey. A chorus of dogs greeted us when we arrived. Linda may be in the business of heirloom vegetables, but she is obviously also very fond of animals.

She is also very interested in unusual plants. This one is Morelle de Balbis, or Litchi Tomato. To me they look more closely related to the physalis family; tomatillos, ground cherries and the like. We sampled a couple; they were surprisingly appealing. Slightly tomatoey in flavour, but with a sweet fruity quality as well. I can see them making excellent chutneys and relishes, as an ingredient in salads, and perhaps even used in desserts. Behind them, there is a comparatively more prosaic row of Lacinato (Dinosaur) Kale.

The garden is relatively small, with about 4 acres of the 9 acre property planted. About 3 of those acres are vegetables. Plenty of work for one person, though! I don't know how she does it. The 2 of us do half of that and think it plenty. She's right on the edge of Wellandport, and the property is backed by the Welland River; a very attractive spot.

Linda runs a CSA all year - it really is milder in Niagara - although of course most of the winter vegetables are stored or grown under cover. She sells a few vegetables to restaurants. Her biggest endeavour, though, is plant sales in the spring. She grows 700 - wow! - varieties of tomatoes, as well as peppers and other vegetables.

Here is another look at the Lacinato Kale, mulched in hay. Behind them there is a row of lettuce, long gone to seed. Linda sells seeds, some of which she grows herself and some of which come from Seed Savers Exchange. She has been a member for many years, but for most of us here in Canada it can be hard to get SSE seeds, so this is a good way to access them.

Linda shows us some of her pepper plants, still producing nicely at this point. I always feel a bit bad at how closely we pack our pepper plants, but Linda's are even closer. Her soil is heavy clay, so her plants don't get that big - ours are certainly larger, and we really don't fertilise beyond a little compost or manure to start - but they looked very healthy and productive. She grows a large selection of the very hottest pepper varieties; apparently they are popular with young male customers in particular. Ghost, Carolina Reaper, Scorpion and 7-Pot Brain Strain were some of the varieties in her plot. Yikes!

In addition to her other projects, Linda is a test grower for Rodale's Organic Gardening Magazine, the only one in Canada in fact. Each year she is sent, along with their other test gardeners, a set of seeds to grow out. They are tested for their ability to grow in different parts of the continent, and rated.

I was really interested to see this plant - it's red-foliated cotton. I don't know how much cotton it would actually produce here, but it makes an excellent ornamental plant, with reddish heart-shaped leaves, big pink hibiscus-like flowers and attractive seed pods.

Here is Linda's winter hoop-house - a little bigger than ours, and much more accessible. She still has tomatoes growing down one side, along with what looks like a zucchini that doesn't want to pack it in, but the other side and been cleared out and planted with winter greens such as arugula, chard and kale.

On top of all her other projects, Linda organises Seedy Saturdays in Niagara Falls. For those of us who are too far away, though, her mail-order seed list is full of interesting things. It was really exciting and inspiring to visit Tree and Twig. Linda left a career in the city as a social worker to do what she really loves, and it was great to meet her and her amazing garden. I'm going to be sure to order seeds early this year, as I've missed a couple of items I've wanted to try for the last 2 years as they have sold out before I was ready to order. I suppose I shouldn't tell you that; now I will have to order even earlier...

End of the Season Garden Notes

Uh, hello. Kind of fell of the edge there for a while. The noise-to-signal ratio in my brain is never the best, but lately it's been all-static all the time. However, sooner or later one has to attempt to pull things together again, so here goes.

It's been a long time since I've done a garden report, so I'm going back to the end of August for this part. We had a wild thunderstorm one evening, during which we heard an enormous "CRACK". "Wow, that was a close strike!" we said. In the morning we went out and found this 100' poplar had fallen over. It hadn't actually been struck by lightening that we could see, just blown over. Fortunately, even though it fell towards the house, it was about 95' away, so it just brushed the house, and it was the tip of the tree that broke and not the house.

We hired a tree company to come in and chip up everything small enough to chip, so we now have an enormous pile of mulch available. The trunk was cut into "manageable" pieces and left to us. Fortunately, a neighbour saw them and asked if he could have them, and we were able to get rid of them quite quickly.

This photo is from mid September, I guess. I can see the beans still look okay, although we got anthracnose in them this year, and our harvest was definitely cut short. We did get 90% of what we expected to freeze and a very large quantity of dried beans, so it wasn't a complete disaster. Still, anthracnose is a nasty disease and I am very annoyed to have yet another bacteria/fungus cavorting in the garden to be dealt with.

I can see from this picture that one bed has been cleared of dry beans and planted with lettuce for the late fall/early spring. Also that we have not put away the live-trap, with which we hoped to catch the damned rabbit that ate a bunch of our soybeans, but failed.

Here is Mr. Ferdzy with our largest watermelon of the year, a Moon & Stars (Van Doren strain). If Mr. Ferdzy looks a little dismayed, it's because when he picked it up to pose with it, rotten liquid poured out the bottom. It turned out that a number of watermelons failed to seal up properly on the blossom end, and so the insides rotted. Too bad; this would probably have been close to 40 pounds of watermelon.

However, we weren't exactly short of melons. They were my project of the year, and we had lots and lots. It wasn't the best year for melons at all, but I console myself with the thought that if you are assessing a large number of melons, there are benefits to doing it in a bad year. You can at least tell which ones hold up to abuse and which ones don't. And since abuse is a regular garden feature, it's something you need to know sooner or later.

Here was the second-largest of the Sun & Moon watermelons, a 24 pounder, along with a selection of other melons. The spotted pear-shaped melon in the middle was an excellent melon I will certainly grow again, a crenshaw-type melon called Sweet Freckles. Most crenshaws don't do well in short, cool summers, but this one was specially bred to handle it, and handle it it did.

Early in October, right after we did our garlic tasting, we planted our garlic for next year. We cut it down from 7 varieties to 4 varieties, although we still planted the same quantity of garlic overall; a 5' by 16' section. That's a lot of garlic, but we use it and/or share it with friends and family, and we expect to run out before the next batch is ready to harvest.

For the first time, we were actually able to harvest sunflower seeds. This is something Mr. Ferdzy has been trying to do for several years, and failing because usually the birds get to them well before we do. We picked up some sunflower seeds in Turkey, and they turned out to work well. The blossoms are slow to fall of the seeds, which I think helps hide them from the critters, and then they are very tightly packed, which makes them harder to get out once the critters do find them.

Unfortunately, we picked them then left them in a cool spot when we should have been drying them with heat, and they went mouldy! We've rescued enough for seed, but very frustrating. I'm also not convinced that they are worth all the trouble involved in processing them, though I suspect sunflowers will be a useful thing to grow if we ever get around to getting some chickens.

Even though the weather has continued to be cool and rainy, we have been working on getting the garden cleaned up for the winter. The compost compound is full to bursting, with much more still to come.

Most of the trellises are now down, just a couple still to go. Lots of weeding still to be done, and we need to run around and pick up all the hoses, rakes, ladders, etc that have just been left lying around. (Neatniks we are not.)

The peanuts and sweet potatoes have been harvested, so only the peppers are still under plastic and they will come out as soon possible at this point. We got an okay sweet potato harvest in spite of the weather, as we kept them under plastic pretty much all season. Unfortunately, there is a lot of mouse damage because the plastic provided good cover for them too. Next year if we cover them, we will have to also run a trap-line.

After that, there will only be a few frost-hardy things left in the garden: brassicas, rutabagas, parsnips, carrots, celery, leeks, and winter radishes. Some will be picked and used or stored, and some will be left in the garden to overwinter.

Here's some of this years dry beans. Compare them to the ones from last year. I don't think the weather was better for beans, and we had the anthracnose to contend with this year. Still, this is WAY more beans (holy cow, it's more than double!) from the same space as last year - I believe this is one years worth of seed selection, paying off.

We had a couple of crossed beans show up this year. One would have happened at the seed company, and one would have happened in my garden. The first one wasnt' worth keeping, but I was impressed at how this one turned out. The mother was Dolloff, and the father, I'm pretty sure, was Cherokee Trail of Tears. There were 3 plants from the cross, and between them they produced about 2 cups of seed - pretty impressive. The beans are also attractive. I have yet to try eating them, but I've saved some for seed and if they are tasty we will grow them out and try to stabilise them. If we succeed, it will be a new variety of bean! That would be fun.