In the garden:
This week I have been working on some maintenance tasks. I did some edging on the borders of the garden and then put down sheet mulch (cardboard plus 6 inches wood chip mulch. I plan on putting flowers at the tops of each row next year to attract beneficial insects.
Speaking of next year, are you planning your garden yet? I already feel like I’m behind on it. Mostly because I want to make sure I get the seeds I need. I ordered a few, but there are still so many out of stock at this point.
I saved some seeds from my own garden too but for some crops I have too many varieties or they are in the same plant family and they would have crossed. I’m hoping I can still find some of my old favorites but I may have to branch out a bit!
I harvested a very large cabbage this week. It was a fun change because usually I grow small, quick maturing ones. It is a Brunswick Cabbage.
In the kitchen:
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I’ve been taking a nice rest from preserving. And now we are digging into the foods we put up a little more. Here are some things that we have made this week with our preserved food.
- Pizza topped with Kale, fresh apples, and prosciutto. Made with canned pizza sauce.
- Taco Corn Soup (Recipe is from the book Hope’s Table, found HERE. I highly recommend the book! Lots of easy and simple recipes.) This used canned black beans, canned tomatoes, frozen corn, and storage onions from the pantry.
- Homemade whole wheat soft pretzel bites with canned pizza sauce and frozen cantaloupe and blueberries from this summer.
- Butternut squash lasagna. This is a new one we tried out and Cameron and I really liked it! The kids all ate it too. But they weren’t fighting over the leftovers which means it doesn’t make it to the favorites list for them. I will definitely make it again though. It was a tasty way to use butternut squash and also had a kale pesto in it that was delicious. Recipe is found in the book Eating from the Ground Up HERE.
House Progress:
After last week’s stress over roofing, I think we are getting things figured out. Our general contractor agreed the roofers did do a poor job of laying down the roofing underlayment. He clarified that he is not going to have them come back out to fix it because it was such a small job for them.
Instead he is going to what he called “short pay”, or give them less money than what they billed for.
The metal roofing company that was going to be so great, came out to measure and they added an additional $10,000 to their bid! They went off the house plans for the original quote but I guess after measuring it was very different. Hmm.
We had the guy that did the roof on our previous house come out and give us a bid based on plans. The quote was good but he hasn’t measured yet either and I’m hoping it doesn’t come back way higher than his initial quote too.
2 comments
Holy moly that’s a big cabbage! What are you going to do with it?
What company(s) do you like to order your seeds from? We have had good results for tomatoes from Stokes but they don’t have everything else we want. For a few things where we just want one plant, we get the plant from a local nursery. Like jalapeños.
Have you ever made lasagna roll ups instead of regular lasagna? I like to make them with a combination of spinach, pesto and ricotta. The Skinnytaste blog also has a butternut squash roll up that I’ve been meaning to try. Tonight it’s going to be a vegetarian black bean enchilada dinner with cilantro lime rice.
It really stinks when you get shoddy work from a contractor and then still have to pay the bill.
We ate the cabbage in a salad. We also harvested two more last night and fried them in a little oil with some steak seasoning. It was all we ate for dinner my kids love to eat cabbage sautéed!
I order seeds from a variety of companies. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, High Mowing Seeds, and Johnny’s Selected Seeds are my favorites. I am moving more towards organic seeds in the plants that are disease prone. The organic seeds already have some defenses built up in their genetics and it makes a noticeable difference in the plants being able to fight off disease.
I haven’t make lasagna roll ups yet! I printed out a recipe once for it but never got around to it. Black bean enchiladas sounds delicious!