Our Green Babies

He says:

   I fancy myself a bit of a gardener, and the "bit" should be stressed.  While I have grand plans for our future property, right now I have to settle with what we have - a 1'x12' gardening strip on the side of our house.  I've heard that we all have to start somewhere.

Ample gradening space, eh?

    Last year I planted so many things, but I think a mixture of bad germination rates from the seed packets and a horde of voracious slugs claimed everything but two cucumber plants, one pitiful daikon radish and tons of mustard greens in pots.  Fun fact: you can scorch your mouth by eating raw, fresh mustard greens.  Every salad that I had only had one ingredient (mustard greens) and each one ended with me crying from the heat.

   This year I learned from the my previous mistakes and bought some plants as transplants and then seeds from a reputable source that moves a lot of product so they should be fresh.  So far the strawberry and cabbage transplants are doing well, the peppers not so much probably because we get a paltry amount sun on the side of our house.  We have 2 strawberries!  It appears that our slug problem is still the death of most of my seeds so I decided to grow them as transplants.

Our strawberry crop so far

   Last weekend Abby and I planted 20 seeds in tiny seedling containers.  We've got kale, malabar and regular spinach, swiss chard, and cucumbers.  Abby only helped me because cucumbers were included, just kidding?  The idea is that we will transplant these seedlings once they sprout then move them into a bigger containers and then finally into the ground.  That way when the ravenous slugs emerge from their vile ground dwellings and descend upon my garden the plants will have a little more defense than if they were just seedlings.

   So far two of the kale "babies" have emerged.  Nothing else yet, but I guess it's still early.  Every day I take them out in the morning, water them, and then bring them back in at night so they're safe.  I can't wait to taste them.
 

Look at those babies!

Happy May!

Here is a picture from May 2nd:

Right now it's 93 degrees outside.
What the heck, May?

One Foolish Errand

He says:

Years ago a seed was planted in Abby's and my mind. It came from different sources for each of us, but it’s genesis was around the same time. About 2 years ago I was listening to a podcast about homebrewing beer and the host of the program mentioned that his favorite sour beer was New Belgium’s La Folie. I had never tasted a sour beer, and this host sure was talking it up like something great. I was interested. A friend of Abby’s had mentioned to her that during a brewery tour she had tried La Folie and liked it even though she didn’t especially enjoy beer. Abby was interested.

Being two self-actualizing young adults, we went in search of this beer. And search we did. I will say that our interest started about 2 years ago and we saw a bottle of it in person for the first time last night. Before that there were phone calls, store visits, and website searches to find this thing. Apparently stores get shipments in about once a year and then it flies off the shelves, usually right about the time that Abby and I would catch wind of it. It always seemed just out of grasp.

You can only imagine the excitement when we happened upon not one but two bottles of this supposed elixir. We purchased one, drove home, and drank it as soon as it was cold. After our first drinks, I can say that I was certainly glad we didn’t purchase both bottles. I won’t bore anyone with tasting notes, but I will say that I was disappointed (and so was Abby). It was sour, actually very sour. But that was it. No layering of tastes, no life changing new flavor, just sourness.

Certain stories and figures of speech come to mind that say that the journey is better than the end or that it’s not about whatever lies at the end but about how you get there. I can’t help but notice a similarity. We will certainly remember this saga. But, man, I sure wish the end to this journey would have tasted better than this.

Dress Up

She says:
   I have books, journals, and a "crafts" folder in my favorites bar chock full of things I plan to make someday.  This dress from Target was yet another thing that I saw and thought "I could make that!"  So I bought it.  The dress cost something like $21.99, which I supposed is a reasonable dress price to some people, but is about $17 more than I would want to spend on it.  My plan was that I would have to make myself a dress in order to return this dress (I was going to use it as a pattern), and since Target has pretty strict return policies, I knew I would have to get it done in 90 days if I wanted my money back.  This helped move someday to today!

Target dress.

   I used a couple of tutorials that I had previously saved in my "crafts" folder (here and here) along with using the dress as a pattern to come up with a way to sort of recreate the dress.  However, I decided not to put in the pockets.  I know pockets in dresses is the thing, but that's extra fabric at my hips that will absolutely never be used as pockets, so I nixed them.  Instead, I spent my time learning how to use bias tape to make my neckhole nice and neat (and an alliteration).
  
   I went a little bit crazy buying clearance fabrics to try to use in this project.  I ended up buying all the good-looking fabrics I could find on the super-cheap ($3 per yard), which got me 5 different patterned fabrics to work with...so I made five dresses.  It felt like it was taking forever sewing in little bits and pieces whenever I had time: a side seam while my quesadilla was cooking, closing up the armholes after finishing homework and before moving on to more homework, etc.  But I got it all done within the 90 day Target return window (waaaaaaaay within, thank you!).  I returned my one dress for $21.99, and kept my five new dresses (which cost a total of $26 in fabric, thread, and elastic purchases).

 



Even though this is the worst lighting in the world, all five dresses are there!  The front one is red with small white hearts.  The second one is purple with yello polka dots.  The third one is navy with white polka dots.  The fourth one is maroon and tan checked.  And the last one is a gray and pink paisley.

  

Hey Diddle Diddle

She says:

   During the epic snowstorm we had last week, I got to stay indoors (yay!) and do homework (boo!). The good news is that one of my homework assignments for this week was to write and illustrate a childrens' book.

   If you want to take a look at the most adorable cow ever (and more!), here it is:
Hey Diddle Diddle Book Project

   Stay tuned to see what we come up with during this week's snowstorm!

What did the grape say when the elephant stepped on it?

Nothing. It just let out a little wine.

 

He says:

 

I don’t brew beer much anymore. It’s not that I don’t like beer anymore, I still like to drink it, but I’ve found that my attitude has changed about the act of brewing. The process that I was using took about 3 hours of time and then probably another hour of setup at the beginning and cleanup at the end. A 4 hour chunk of time is a big commitment and slowly I found myself just not wanting to make it. Fermentation still hold a special place in my heart, but I moved on to non-beer fermentations recently, such as sauerkraut, kefir, and most recently ginger beer (which isn’t really a beer since there are no grains).

 

One of the main reasons that caused this shift is my perception of fermentation. As I read more and more about different fermentations from different cultures, I found that fermentation is supposed to be easy--so easy that it’s almost an accident to get delicious results. Beer is not like that. With beer, strict sanitation and cleanliness needs to be followed. If you forgot to sanitize one tiny bit of vinyl tubing or a spoon and it touches your beer then there’s a good chance that whole batch is ruined. You can kiss those 4 hours goodbye.

 

Sauerkraut is made by chopping up cabbage and squishing out the water with your hands, then punching it down. Ginger beer is made by making a starter from the ginger root, which comes from the earth. Good luck sanitizing that. All of these fermentations and more involve placing natural ingredients and the right conditions and allowing nature to take over. Modern beer brewing is an exercise in chemical sanitation, while traditional fermentations are an exercise in natural biology. I prefer the later.

 

I recently started two batches of wine. One wine batch is certainly much easier to throw together than beer, I think I took 25 minutes total for the two. Even though my schedule isn’t packed, I can certainly appreciate the time saved.

 

I have never been a big wine drinker, mostly being put off by the pretense that accompanies standard wine culture. I have, however, become very interested in country wines or wines made from fruits. The idea of preserving a crop of fruit by turning it into wine is intriguing. The two trial batches that I just made aren’t going to be award winners, and they will certainly have their flaws. But they will certainly be unique.

And Now For Something Weird...

She says:

   Several months ago we took a day trip to Weston and found some oddities in the little shops in the downtown, including:

Adorable welded crab sculpture

 

Tiny animal-shaped tealights

   We oohed and aahed over the tiny tealights for a moment before realizing that their cuteness would soon turn to horror upon lighting.  So, of course, we bought some to take home and try out:

 

 

"Is it getting warm in here?"

 

 

About ten minutes in. 

 

One hour later.

 

 

Well-done.