Growing, Harvesting and Using Sweet Basil

Growing: This is the first year that sweet basil ( Ocimum basilicum ) has really taken off in my garden. It is located in the border outside the main garden. This spot gets sun most of the day, with a bit of shade in the late afternoon from the arbor just to the NW of the plants. The soil is heavy clay, with some compost added each year. The plants survived the drought conditions here in Texas very well with only minimal watering. Toward the end of the summer, the leaves were small, about the size of my thumb, but still tasted great. In September, we began to water this patch heavily and the plants quickly responded by putting on a new flush of large (almost palm sized) leaves.



Harvesting: The leaf is the edible part of the basil plant. To harvest for meals (usually pesto cream sauce, mmmm) we simply plucked leaves from the plant as needed.

Near the end of the summer, the plants bolted and began to flower and set seed. Since this has become a favorite cooking herb of my family, I decided to harvest and save some of the seeds for next years basil crop (if it does not self seed for next year, which I hope it will).





After it flowered, I allowed the blooms to dry on the plant (this was more of a happy accident and the result of garden neglect more than any actual planning or foresight on my part). We collected the dried flowers put them in a colander, which was then placed over another bowl.



Using pre-school labor, we crushed the dried flowers and seed pods to release the tiny black seeds. Shaking the colander gently to allow the seeds to fall through to the bowl below.



Once most of the seed heads had been crushed, we gently blew the chaff away from the seeds, leaving about 1/4 cup of dark black basil seeds.



Uses: Our favorite use is to make Pesto and Pesto Cream sauce (recipe to follow). I also add leaves to spaghetti sauce, stir fry and salad dressings.

Another fun Basil use is to prepare seed packets for friends. In this case, I wanted to share seeds with the attendees of my bread baking class (we made pesto with dinner) so we prepared several seed packets.

I used tiny zipper top bags (like the kind that come with the extra button when you buy a new shirt) and portioned off about 1/2 tsp of seeds per bag. We cut a sheet of plain white paper into small rectangles, folded them in half, and then stapled them onto the bag. My son drew a picture of a basil leaf and I labeled each packet Sweet Basil.

Super Hero Capes

Last year, I made two superhero masks for my kids for Christmas. Handmade Holidays Part III -Superhero Masks



A full year later, both of the masks I made were still around the house, and often near the top of the toy box (meaning they are used frequently) so I decided to make the kids capes to go along with their masks.





I used the same felt material (60 inch wide EcoFelt from Joanne's, regularly it is $4.99 per yard, but goes on sale for 50% off all the time. Add in the coupon that Joann's puts in my mailbox nearly weekly and it was a very cheap project)



I used black felt and free-handed a cape shape. I cut out the cape and then hand sewed a contrasting felt letter onto the cape.



A tiny piece of self adhesive Velcro at the neckline and it was a wearable cape.

Honestly, I was a bit shocked at just how quickly and easily this project came together so I decided to make another... and another... and another, by December 19th I had made 12 cape - and - mask combos for all of the kids in our lives.



I never got a photo of all of the capes together since they were gifted as quickly as I could finish them.




Here is what the gift looked like, one simple mask and a monogrammed cape--pink for the girls, black for the boys and everyone got a black mask.



This project was a lot of fun, and very easy to churn these puppies out assembly line style. From start to finish a cape took less than 1 hour each to complete. By far, the hand stitching was the slowest part (the letter M was a particular pain), but it was also very easy to do while watching TV.

Most of the capes were for local friends from our church, but one cape was hand carried all the way up to Connecticut for my second cousin (is that what you call the child of a cousin? oh well)

Notes:
1) I free handed the first few letters then decided to just print out a set of 6 inch high letters from the computer-- much easier to use a template to get the letter just right.
2) I used embroidery floss in a contrasting color to applique each of the letters to the capes. At first I was kind of disappointed with my uneven stitching, but then decided it looked folksy (sure, why not)
3) The rough outline for the cape came from here: http://pukingpastilles.com/?p=57 but I did not go through all of the effort of lining the cape, mine were super easy, no sewing machine needed.
4) With careful placement, I could get three toddler-sized capes from one 20 inch cut of the fabric. Fabric is 60" wide and the capes are each ~20 inches wide and 20 inches tall.

Fall Garden 2010

Saturday, October 2nd the kids and I cleaned out what was left from our spring veggie garden. Honestly, there were not many plants left. There were about a half dozen very scraggly tomato plants, they had started to bloom again, but I've learned from experience, fall tomatoes from spring plants are a disappointment. Oddly, the broccoli from spring was still growing strong (even though it was supposed to have been killed off in the heat) and even had a few small old heads of broccoli on them. I found two pepper plants in the back, and those were spared. One neat surprise was a mullein plant growing in a back corner of my garden. Mullein is a medicinal plant with huge fuzzy leaves. It grows wild here in Texas and my mom always has plants pop up in her yard, but I've never seen it growing in town and especially never in my garden. My artichoke plant, which produced for the first time this summer had died off, but four new baby plants have sprung up from the roots of the original plant.

The tiny 4" mint plant I got in 2009 is now a waist high shrub that covers an area 5 feet by 5 feet. Part of it has started to take over a section of my veggie garden (mint does not respect wire garden fences--HA!). I shoveled it out by the roots and was able to pass on a 5 gallon bucket of rooted mint plants to a gardening friend of mine. I warned her it needed a place to S P R E A D out.

During the clean up, we found 3 snakes (which boy called rattle snakes, but they are just harmless brown garden snakes), bunches of geckos (which boy can now correctly identify), and two spiny fence lizards. It was a cool morning so all the poor reptiles were moving slowly, I had to teach boy over and over how to gently hold the geckos (one ended up dropping his tail from the initial rough grab). He kept pinching them with his thumb and forefinger and the poor geckos eyes would nearly bulge out of their heads. Once boy learned the art of just cupping them in his hand, he was so happy to see that they stayed whit him calmly, the cold lizards enjoyed the warmth. I was less picky about his treatment of the snakes. I learned last year that the primary food of the little brown snakes is earth worms, so they are less welcome in the garden. I let the boy play with them, and we even threw a few to the chickens who ran and fought over who got to eat the little snake. The white chicken is quite the hunter and was the best at grabbing the snakes before they disappeared into the leaves.

We weeded, we raked, then I hand dug 2/3 of the garden with a pitch fork. Partially so boy could find worms and partially because most of this garden is still fairly new soil and there is lots of heavy clay areas. My little tiller can't break up the clay and hand turning just seemed like the best thing to do. Once the clods of soil were turned up, my little tiller made quick work of it.

Sunday after church boy and I got out my bag of cool season seeds and we planted pretty much every seed I had. I tried yet another new layout (this is 3 layouts in 2 years of my new garden) and we'll see how it goes this fall/winter. The rows now run east to west and I did not put in any formal paths, just the typical 18 inch spacing between the planted seed rows.

North to south rows

Along the north garden fence: Oregon Snow Peas
Purple Top Turnips
Broccoli
Beets
spinach (mixed old seeds with this years Laewa and Bordeaux Spinach seeds)
cabbage
brussel sprouts
cauliflower
carrots (Danvers, half long, Taigo? short carrots)
Thomas Laxton pod Peas (along a temporary border fence).

I sprinkled mixed lettuce seeds at the start of each row of other veggies.

The far south section of the garden (the shady section) was left fallow with the Jerusalem Artichokes, which are still blooming) and some purple basil plants which are about to go to seed.

After the seeds were planted, boy helped me to wrestle the soaker hoses to lay along each planted row. He was such a big help holding the ends of the unwieldy hoses, it would have been very difficult without him. We gave the garden a good drink and now we wait and let this beautiful Texas fall weather sprout the little seeds. All week we have sun forcast with highs in the upper 70s and lows in the 60s, perfect!

Potatoes In -- March 3

This morning before work, boy and I planted the seed potatoes into the cold ground. It was 35 degrees with a coating of frost on everything, but we have 60 degrees forecast for today, so I did not feel too bad about breaking through the frost layer to plant the potatoes. Yes, frozen ground, I've never had to deal with this in Texas before--it's that dern global warmin' I tell ya!

My seed potatoes were purchased about a month ago. I got 3 lbs of Red Lasoda from Calloways, I also had another pound or so of Wal-Mart baking potatoes that had sprouted. These potatoes have been hanging out on a platter in my kitchen window for the last few weeks working on sprouting their little eyes.

On March 1st, I carefully cut each seed potato into sections with about 1 strong sprouted eye each. For the potatoes which were fist sized or larger I cut into thirds, smaller than fist sized I cut into halves, and for golf ball sized potatoes, I just left to plant whole. I probably could have gotten a few more starts if I had been more ruthless in my cutting, but I don't have much room for potatoes, so my amount worked out just right.

I let the cut potatoes sit, cut side up, on the window for two days to allow a nice scab to form over the cuts. The theory is that this scab will prevent the potato from rotting in the ground. I did not let the cut potatoes scab over last year and they did just great. I have also heard you can dust the potatoes with powdered sulphur to prevent rot, but I've not gone that far yet.

The potatoes are tucked neatly into their potato coffins and hopefully ready to grow with the warmer sunny weather that is forecast for us.

The boy was helping me plant this morning, he said "These are seed potatoes, we will plant them and they will grow into BIIIGGGG mashed potatoes!"

Home-Made Pasta and Ravioli

With the power out, I got kind of bored so I decided to try my hand at making homemade pasta. First big issue... I had no recipe. I rely on google for anything new I try. No power means no google--gasp!

I used my perogie dough recipe as a start and made some modifications--with great success.

This was our first attempt at cooking with the dehydrated eggs from our food stores. I mixed 1 tbs egg with 1 tbs water and assumed that made about 1 egg's worth of egg-like goo.


Egg Noodles:

6 tbs dehydrated egg
6 tbs water
Mix until smooth.

To this add:
2 cups all purpose flour
~5 tbs more water until the dough holds together.

Mix and knead until smooth, then roll out to about 1/4 - 1/8 inch thick. Munchkin kitchen labor is optional.


Slice with pizza cutter into ribbons.



Place on towel to dry slightly.

Boil in lots of salted water until al-dente. We ate them with just a little butter and they were delicious.

For the Ravioli, I followed a similar pattern with fewer eggs in the dough (not sure why, it just seemed like the thing to do).

Ravioli Dough:
2tbs egg, 2 tbs water, 2 tbs powdered milk
~1 cup flour, more water to make dough.

Filling:
1 cup cottage cheese, 1 fresh egg, 1 tsp Italian seasoning, ~1/4 cup bread crumbs

Assembly:
Roll dough as thin as you can (this dough was harder to work than the egg noodle dough).

Place ~2tbs globs of filling on half of dough at even intervals



flip second half of dough onto globbed half and seal between raviolis.

cut with pizza cutter.



Boil in salted water until they float.

We served these with spaghetti sauce and they were good. The thinner the dough the better they tasted.

Handmade Holidays Part III--Superhero Masks

On a whim, I made superhero masks for the kids for Christmas gifts. Boy is a big fan of The Incredibles, a super-hero family who all have secret powers and wear masks when saving people. Andrew will act out scenes of the movie as we watch it, very cute.



They are made of felt, and the applique is hand stitched on. The head strap is a piece of black elastic cord that held boy's Christmas boots together at the store.


Girl has hearts on her mask, and she is not too happy about wearing it...


Boy got lighting bolts on his mask, and he loves it.




He kept on wearing it, even at breakfast later.




I made a template of the shape of the mask on folded copy paper (to get a perfect match left to right)



I tested the size and eye hole placement as I went.

I then pinned the template onto a folded piece of black felt and cut carefully along the edges of the template.

Cutting the eyes was the trickiest part, I ended up folding the half mask in half again lenght wise and cutting a slit, then opening the mask up to widen the eye slit.



I cut the applique pieces out of yellow felt, doubled so they would match perfectly and hand stitched around the edges of the applique with yellow sewing thread.




Here is the super hero in fireman boots with McQueen PJ's, how is that for mixing up the idols?

Twelve Days of Christmas--Yard Work Style

If I write this properly, it could possibly be sung to the tune of "Twelve Days of Christmas"



On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
1 load of pea gravel,
a 55 gallon barrel of manure,
a years worth of compost,
four bales of hay,
5 pickup truck-loads of mulch,

12 nasty gruuuubbbs

okay, so I got bored with this somewhere in the middle of my song.



Very nice December weather has been upon us (after our hard freezes in the first week of December) and we have made the most of it. On Dec 19-20th we were able to get 5 truckloads of mulch from a friend who had a landscapers dump truck pour a full load of mulch in their driveway. The mulch is great, mostly palm sized or smaller pieces with lots of leaves (live oak and cedar) and only a few large branch sections.



Load 1 went to the new buddliea bed in the back yard as well as along the front edge of the garden. Load 2 went to the new flower beds in the front yard, load 3 went to the garden, loads 4 and 5 mostly went to the crepe myrtle bed--which is really just an annoying section of mostly bare dirt next to our driveway. My hope is to reclaim the mulch from there to build my path in the garden after it is tilled. I am very excited to get so much free mulch. Generally, a truck load of mulch seems like a boon to me but now I have 5 loads to play with, wonderful!

I also cleaned out the fall garden. All but the artichoke and collard greens has frozen to the ground and was ripped out. We emptied a 55 gallon drum of horse and chicken manure (hauled in from my in-laws farm) across the garden. We also dumped the compost bin.

The compost did great this year. The bottom 1/2 of the bin was dark, rich, beautiful compost. The top half still had some clearly identifiable food stuff in it. I made an effort to turn the compost this year, at least for the first part of the year, and I think that made a big difference. One big mistake I made was to put whole eggs in the compost without breaking them first. I hit one with my shovel when spreading the manure and I had to leave the garden for a few minutes. Generally, I'm a pretty tough person smell-wise. I can handle dog, cat, child, poop or vomit without batting an eye (gee, the things moms brag about!) but this rotten egg was horrible. Next time I'll know better. I also found that my hubby's habit of stacking cracked egg shells into one another keeps them from breaking down. Really, egg shells were pretty much the only identifiable portion of the finished compost. Quite a success.

The load of pea gravel is for a surprise Christmas gift for the kids. But, we only needed 1/3 of a cubic yard, but the rock yard wanted me to pay for a full yard... so I told them to just load it all up, if they were going to make me pay for it. So the pea gravel is also going to line our utility area behind the garage. This is where the bees live, and also a real junk collecting place for all of the random outdoor bits that don't belong in the garage.

So there we go, the 12 days of Christmas, garden style (my favorite). On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love is going to be tilling the garden... he just does not know it yet!

Home-Made Holidays--Hats!

This year we went the (cheap) no, (easy) definitely no, lets say 'homemade' route for most of our Christmas gifts.

I have made dozens of baby hats during my down time over the summer and fall season. Pretty much everyone with a baby or kid in our life got a hat for Christmas. The hat pattern is a hand written (and long since memorized) one from my Aunt. It starts with about an inch of 2x2 ribbing then stockinette stitch for a few inches then decreases with k2tog every (8, 7, 6, 5 etc) stitches. I'll write it out better later in another post. The hats started out simple one color jobs, then I got fancy with an owl cable pattern, then I started adding stripes, then even started adding color work. The pattern is easy enough that I can bang one out in about 2 hours of dedicated knitting time. Car rides, jury duty, oil changes, doctor visits, plane trips... all prime knitting time for these easy gifts.



Here is boy modeling one of the cabled owl hats


Here are some friends of our modeling their Christmas hats--and headbands. I realized the day before gift time that two hats were not going to happen, so the girls got head bands. I think it is better that way, they have beautiful hair and a hat would only hide it.




Over 14 hats have been gifted so far! I guess I need to develop a 'handmade by Sandra" label for them. Possibly with washing instructions, since kids tend to be messy.

Teal owl hat--Laura
Dark Blue Owl hat --Asa
grey, white, purple --Bradley
grey, white, purple stripe Ryder
Purple horse hat -- Camden
pink seed stitch band -- Kelsely
purple 2x2 ribbing band --Raelyn
Cranberry with white heart -- Maddy
grey, white, cranberry -- Brett
Green owl hat -- Carter
White with blue snowflake -- baby Brooks
Grey owl hat -- Tyler
Pink snowflake hat -- Angela
Pale pink owl with rhinestone eyes -- Lily
Pale pink tie up earwarmer -- Grandma Hannah
Purple tie up earwarmer -- Candye

Lily's pale pink owl hat with rhinestone eyes

Here is the gift list that I remember... my plan is to maybe next year make matching mittens or scarves for the kids. Hmm, that is if the hat will still fit next year and has not been lost. I know my kids have lost hats already. In fact, I 'found' one of my own hand knit hats in the church parking lot more than a week after boy dropped it.

I guess the hat maddness started back in August with this attempt at a hunting hat for my hubby.



"Lucky Deer Hat"

This hat never made it off the needles, it was waaay too big and ended up frogged and reknit twice before I gave up on it entirely. Knitting for hubby is impossible for me for some reason. I actually made him another hat for his trip to London and it ended up not quite right for him. A little too short and 'not full enough" so it was regifted to someone with a small head.

Fall Garden Review-December

Garden and December are two words that don't' really belong in the same sentence, but here we are: December 1st and we have not yet had a freeze, or even a frost in north Texas. I realized in November that I have pepper plants that are older than my daughter! And here is a picture of those beauties now...



Here is another view of the fall (and almost winter) garden. This time from inside the garden.


The arbor is absolutely covered with Hyacinth beans, the bush beans have produced over 10 pounds of beans this fall, the peppers are still going strong, and the fall planted squash has give us about a dozen zucchini, crook neck and banana squash. Other things that have not done as well are the tomatoes, my poor poor fall tomatoes have not produced a single ripe tomato, mostly because the only batch that was about to ripen got trampled by the dog, darn it.




Oops, more cute baby pictures


baby in a bucket, how cute!

More garden friends, an anole on a roll of fencing behind the garage



Here is hubby and the baby showing off how great my hyacinth beans are doing




I also have a bunch of volunteer potatoes and the trial plant I dug had about 5 golf ball sized potatoes on it. My sweet potatoes look great, but I have not tired digging any of them yet. I plan to let them stay in the ground as long as possible before harvesting.

This week it is forecast that we will have our first real freeze, and possibly some freezing precipitation. Nothing like a coating of ice to finish off the garden for the year. As hard as it is to say it, I'm ready! By now, I usually have room for my peas and beet plants, but I can't bear to rip out the summer veggies that are still producing so well.

Jacobs Cattle Bean

We planted a new type of shelling bean this year called Jacob's Cattle Bean.

Pretty beans, just like spotted cows. Purchased from Seeds of Change http://www.seedsofchange.com/garden_center/product_details.aspx?item_no=S10954

It is an heirloom variety of bush shelling bean. I put in a single row, as an afterthought along the fence line of the garden.
Jacobs Cattle Bean Row, April 24, 2009


The plants came up strong and topped out at only about 8-12 inches tall. Despite the small height, each plant had 4-8 pods on it.
May 24, 2009

When the beans were young, I picked about a dozen and cooked them up like green beans (blanched and cooled to eat), but they were too tough for my tastes. After that experiment, I just allowed the pods to dry on the plants.

Harvet on June 11th, 2009

I picked all of the plants on June 11th, just before a big rain. 90% of the plants were dead from the heat and the others were yellowed. I allowed the plants to dry in a basket for a few days and then enlisted the help of boy's small fingers to help shell the beans. Forget child labor laws, he loved the task.

It was not much of a harvest. I planted about 20 plants and harvested 1/2 cup of beans, mabye enough for a side dish. I'm not sure it was really worthwhile use of space in my small garden. Still, what a pretty bean and my first sucessful crop of shelling beans.

Cloth Diapers

We started using cloth diapers when our son was born in 2007, it has been a huge money saver and I think it is better for their skin because you have to change diapers more frequently. We have used the same diapers and wipes when our daughter was born a few months ago. I do not exclusively use cloth diapers, only when we are at home and on quick errands. I have found that both kids knew very quickly when they were wet with the cloth diapers, so I have to change them frequently. With a newborn, I use 12-15 diapers a day and as they got older it decreases how many are needed. By about 9 months of age, I found that my son was only going through 5 or 6 diapers a day, it took too many days to get up enough diapers to make a full wash load and the diapers got stinky in those few days. At that point, we quit using cloth diapers; however the cost savings in those nine months was amazing.



Materials:
24 prefold diapers (best quality Chinese cotton)
48 flannel baby wipes
6 Dappies diaper covers
3 Snappie diaper closure
Diaper pail
heated wipe warmer

To get started, it cost more than disposables, but after that, it has been essentially free.

Costs:
Diapers $1.67 each = $40
Flannel 2 yards = $5
Dappi covers $3 each = $20
Snappies $2 each =$6
pail = $8 (needed one for disposables anyway)
Wipe warmer = $20 (would have bought it anyway)

For just the cloth diapering stuff, it was about $75, the same cost as 5 packs of regular diapers, but it is a one time cost. Yes, you do have to do more laundry, but I found that I only need one small sized load a day, and that is about the same amount of water as a few flushes of the toilet--hardly a big waste of water compared to the bags of dirty disposable diapers that would be trashed. We also use a plastic trash bag liner to keep the sides of the pail from getting dirty, I can reuse this plastic bag for several days, if the pail starts to stink, the liner gets thrown away.

Diaper Wash Routine:

Soiled diapers and wipes are put into a diaper pail. Our pail has a lid, but I found that the pail actually smells better if you leave it open. I think it allows the diapers to dry out a bit and keeps the stinky bacteria from growing. I do a diaper load each day, so this also helps with the odor.

Just before bed, I fill with wash with hot water on the smallest size load and dump in the pail of wipes and diapers. With a breastfed newborn, the poop is very runny so pre-rinsing is not needed, I just let the washing machine handle the first rinse, rather than me. I allow the washer to agitate for about 5 minutes, then drain off the water and refill with hot water and a scoop of detergent, leaving the washer lid open. This water soaks the diapers overnight. In the morning, all I have to do is close the lid and allow the wash cycle to do a full run. Most days, I am able to hang the diapers out on the clothes line to dry. On rainy days, the diapers go into the electric dryer and often take more than one cycle to dry. Since the dryer is one of the bigger power users in our house, I hate using it to dry diapers.

We were so pleased with how well cloth diapering worked for our first child that we have happily used the same setup for our second child. The biggest draw back is what I call 'mushroom butt' not a gross fungus or anything, but just the giant padded butt the kids get while wearing the cloth diapers. Both kids needed a full size larger of clothing if they were weraing a cloth diaper instead of a disposible.

Knit Zoo

I started knitting when I was pregnant with my first kid. I am now quite proficient at it and love to make lots of random things. This project was a gift for a 2 year olds birthday last week. They are zoo animal finger puppets, and yes, you insert your finger where you might imagine...


The patterns knit up really quickly and I have found I can do two copies at once in most cases. That is why there are pairs of elephants and lions. When it came to the giraffe, there was a spot I had to pause on the second one to finish the first. So only one got made in time for the photo.

As I was finishing up the last of the knitting, I asked Curtis for a fun way to package them for the party. We had been watching Madagascar (for the 100th time with our toddler) and Curtis suggested using a packing crate, just like the ones the animals are shipped in during the movie. In less than an hour, he had a prototype box built up for me. The box has an easy sliding lid closure with a 'breathing hole' for the animals. In the hour before the party we added shipping labels, if we had more time, a coat of spray varnish would probably be a good idea to protect the wood and labels.





The animals are knit from patterns published by the Chesterfield Zoo, which I'm guessing is somewhere in the UK based on the wording in the patterns. The patterns were apparently sold as part of a kit at the zoo gift shop and I found about 8 different patterns online. Luckily, printed off copies, because I have not been able to find the patterns since. I used Red Heart yarn and my favorite size 7 needles. The animals are knit flat and then sewn together and details added.
The box is made of cedar and finished with paste wax.