A Giant Corn Privacy Fence.

I don't know if I have mentioned the neighbor lady who lives behind us. I will call her Patty, which is not actually her real name, but we'll call her that anyway. I really try to be kind to my neighbors because the foundational cornerstone of my faith is "Love God and Love People". I know it's God's little way of reminding me that the world is full of nuts, flakes and fruity folk, because this can be very hard sometimes.

Well anyway, Patty complains ALL THE TIME about her health. She takes 300 pills per week and get 6 injections per week, and has migraines and seizures and so on and so forth. Seriously, this woman should be on death's doorstep and yet she persists to come over and complain to me about her health. If she is that ill, I wish she would stay in the house and stop pestering me. I do try to talk to her at least once a week, because, like I said, I am trying to be kind to my neighbors. I'm not about to be the snooty neighbor that no one wants to help or be around.

Unfortunately, Patty has become a bit of an annoyance. It's getting to where I don't enjoy going past the back door. This is bad because most of the good stuff in the garden is right outside the back door.

The funny thing is that Patty gave me some advice regarding my corn. Like me, she has problems with our mutual neighbor, Lowell, whom I KNOW I have mentioned before in exasperation. Patty's idea was for me to continue digging up my side yard and planting more of that amazing variety of corn that has grown to be higher than the gutters of our garage. "Just like a great big privacy fence!" were her exact words. So that Lowell couldn't see what we were doing on the patio.

Now that's actually not a bad idea. A great big corn privacy fence all the way around my garage and patio to block BOTH of them.

This picture was taken one week ago. The corn stalks are actually higher than the gutters now.

Well Zippity-Do-Dah to That

My little zucchini family. In the back we have Zeke and Zepher, and in the front are Zelda and Zach.

 The zucchini are delicious.

Waiting for these tomatoes to turn red is making me insane!

Green Beans!

I love this picture.

This is a Pink Accordion Heirloom variety tomato. Except it isn't actually pink yet.

The package said that it's a pattypan squash. I think it's not.

Government Overstep

http://www.oakparkhatesveggies.wordpress.com/

Now HERE is a cause I could champion. I don't really care about the stuff that's in the headlines, but this is something that burns me up.

From what I have read on this woman's blog, the city government of Oak Park is taking these homeowner's to court for planting vegetables in their front yard. The funny thing is that the city TORE UP their front yard for sewer work to begin with! They just happened to replant the yard with veggies. And thus began the troubles.

Wow.

This is what we've come to in America?  We're the land of the free as long as we put grass and shrubbery in our front yards like everyone else?

Visit this blog, sign the petition against the city's case, educate yourselves on your own city's laws regarding landscaping. Personally I find tomatoes, beans and squash perfectly acceptable plants for landscaping and they're edible too. But what do I know?

Images

Savory Leek Soup - Straight From The Garden

This morning was one of serious productivity. I had the grass mowed before 8:30 this morning and just now I dug up all of the onions and most of the leeks. The leeks were an interesting experiment for me from last year. They have been in my yard for almost a year now and I believe they struggled to grow almost as much as I struggled to lift them from the dirt. I unknowingly sowed their seeds in an area with heavy clay very close to the topsoil. The poor roots had nothing helping them achieve their fullest potential.

Though my leeks never got more than a half inch in diameter, they still had a fine flavor and sweet onionish fragrance. My plan all along for these babies was to make them into a savory leek soup with potatoes and freeze them for a day in the future winter when I can warm it up and think fondly back to this hundred degree, 100% humidity day in early June, when my deepest cares were simply the abundance coming out of the garden.

So this is the recipe. It would have been smart to take some pictures, but alas, I didn't think about that today. I just had digging and cooking on my mind.


Savory Leek and Potato Soup

6-8 small leeks (white and light green parts only), chopped
5 medium potatoes, boiled and mashed with a spoon
salt, pepper
two pinches of dried basil, or 4 fresh leaves chopped
3 cloves of fresh garlic
2 tablespoons butter
One can of vegetable broth (16 ounces)


In a saucepan, saute the leeks and garlic in butter until crisp tender.

After boiled and mashing the potatoes, add the broth to them and bring to a boil. 
Add leeks and garlic. Boil, stirring continuously. Mixture will be lumpy.
Season with salt, pepper and basil to taste.
Once the soup mixture is heated thoroughly, transfer the mixture to the food processor in batches and process until thick and smooth. Add milk if desired, to make the soup creamier and thinner.
Enjoy immediately, or put in freezer containers to enjoy at a later time! Especially delicious in a bread bowl, sprinkled with fresh cheese. :)

For The Love of Vegetables

 Cannellini Lingot - Dry Shelling Beans

These beauties are wonderful for soup. It's going to be a few months before I can harvest these, but when I do, I plan to dry them in my dehydrator and store them in a few big jars. This winter, when the snow raises hell all around us, I will have a hot ham and bean soup, flavored with thyme and oregano. I can already taste it. :)

 "Jade" green bush-type beans will grow in 2-4 foot tall bushes instead of vining around and taking over the garden. The bean pods themselves can grow up to 10 inches long and are virtually stringless. They're also tender and sweet. I plan to transplant them from the greenhouse at the same time I sow my sweet corn into the same bed together. Beans and corn are natual companions, each one providing necessary nutrients to the other that are needed for healthy and vigorous growth. Corn, beans and squash are the traditional "Three Sisters", grown together by Native Americans for hundreds of years.

I can't wait to bite into one of these Pink Accordian heirloom tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes are a very valuable piece of the garden. They are not modified in any way, not hybrids, not altered to suit some commercial farms needs - perfectly natural and the way that Mother Nature intended them to be. The seeds are savable, and can be continued on for years to come. They never look as perfect as the tomatoes in the grocery stores, but beautiful in their own way.

"Country Gentleman" shoepeg corn is also an heirloom variety. It's especially grown in the south, and is considered one of the best roasting varieties available. It's self-pollinating, and not hybridized, and will grow perfect with my green beans. I have plans to dry some for seeds, scrape the kernels off of the cobs for freezing and perhaps an ear or two on the grill with the hamburgers and bratwurst at family BBQ's this summer.




All of these pictures were borrowed from Territorial Seed Company's website, but only because I already purchased the seeds for them and they haven't turned into big beautiful vegetables yet. Do yourself a favor - start a garden. Grow a tomato or two. Put some herbs in a pot and be proud of yourself when you can add them to your cooking. Nothing is more beneficial to the soul than waiting on a seed to come forth.

Pickled Beets and Purple Eggs

I have a wonderful memory of my Grandpa Orlin, who was my greatest inspiration and hero. It's not my favorite memory, but it's a beautiful one to me just the same. We always had certain foods when I went to Grandma and Granpa's house in the country. We always had tapioca pudding, applesauce over white bread and butter, oatmeal with milk for breakfast, green beans from the garden and sweet corn from my Uncle Dwayne's farm down the road. And pickled red beets with hard boiled eggs.

I just planted 5 rows of red beets in the garden and it made me remember sitting on the patio at the glass-topped table and Grandpa came out of the garage with a big plastic bucket full of purple juice that would permanently stain anything it came in contact with and said "Who wants purple eggs?!"

And my sister and I would say "Eggs aren't purple! Eggs are white!" And he would chuckle and dish out pickled red beets and hard boiled eggs that had been stained purple with beet juice. Carrie would never touch the beets, but it was one of our 'special' foods that we only got at Grandma and Grandpa's.

So in about 9 weeks, I'm going to say "Who wants purple eggs?!" And even if there are no takers, I'll be sitting on the patio, staining my teeth and tongue with beet juice, thoroughly enjoying my pickled beets and purple eggs. :)

Vegetarian

I subscribe to the Vegetarian Times magazine because I love to try new recipes with strange and exotic ways to cook veggies. I am not a huge fan of meat - except for bacon. I love bacon. I can do without almost every kind of meat.

One of the downsides of living in the Midwest is that, being a traditional agricultural society, we tend to boil or fry our veggies and slather them with butter and salt instead of getting creative with them. No wonder my husband wouldn't touch a veggie with a ten foot pole. There are a lot of veggies that I just recently learned to like because all of my life they were improperly prepared. Plus, I learned how to roast them - and that has changed everything. :)

Anyway, so I subscribe to the Vegetarian Times, which I appreciate for the recipes, but hate the politics.

So I'm going to cancel my subscription and start searching for recipes online again. I'm sorry about it, because I would really like this magazine if it wasn't so preachy!

Is there a single vegetarian community in the entire USA that ISN'T a holier-than-thou, liberal, tree-hugging, in-your-face, animals rights, environmental terrorist organization? Because I might have to start one pretty soon if there isn't. Where are the vegetarian communities for those who don't live in California and feel like the world is going to end if we don't stop eating meat? Are there any vegetarian communities that don't feel like they have to convert the entire country to their way of eating, which in itself is like a misguided form of religion?

Would you actually believe that there are people out there that would enjoy a vegetarian diet without shoving it down someone's throat and treating that poor carnivore like a convicted sex offender for enjoying his cheeseburger? The preachiness is what turns people away.

The issue of VT that I got this week had a former NBA player as a primary interview and he said "You can't be alive if you're eating something dead. You are what you eat after all."

FLAWED LOGIC.

Plants are LIFE. A carrot IS a living, growing, breathing, pro-creating thing. When you take them out of the dirt, and chop them up on your cutting board, you are killing something. So answer me this - just because it isn't staring at you with giant brown eyes like a cow, or bleeding all over the place, does that make it any less living?

Chew on that.

And since you're sitting there, thinking to yourself what a moron I am, there is a LOT of research to support a vegetarian diet, but there is a lot MORE research to support a well-balanced omnivorous diet. For every study out there that says we should eat a strictly vegetarian diet, there are approximately 5 completed studies that say we should be eating more vegetables and balancing our protein intake with carbohydrates and fiber.

So my vegetarian recipes and meal plans will be for people like me, who are simply looking to eat more veggies in new ways. I shall never hold any political ambitions, such useless endeavors anyway.

And I'm heading out to the market in about half an hour - we're going to have a vegetarian dinner tonight, because we ate McDonald's last night. Balance!