The Days Are Counted!: vegetables

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Healthy Vegetable (not) & My Creative Side

I love vegetables, I really do. In raw form, steamed, stir fried, baked, etc. Broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, squash, zucchini ... you get the picture. But sometimes you see a recipe & think to yourself, wow that sounds good.

I had a resolution for this year to only cook recipes that had been tried & true from friends, books or magazines. It seemed in 2016 that I tried too many Pinterest recipes that failed. Most times an ingredient was missing or the wrong amount was specified. The pictures looked beautiful but somehow it didn't taste even 1/2 as good as it looked. However, I saw this recipe for cauliflower patties that I really wanted to try.

Like with mashed potatoes, I usually always have leftover cauliflower. With potatoes I make a twice baked potato casserole or patties. So I decided to try the cauliflower patty recipe but didn't follow the instructions exactly. For instance, the recipe called for 2 eggs but when I broke my eggs they were both double yolks. I said ehh, I'll just add a few more bread crumbs & a little extra cheese. See, that's where the healthy vegetable becomes not so. I patted them out & fried (so not healthy again) them in a little oil. They were delicious! We had extra so I've frozen a couple to see how they stand up.

As a homage to Mama Pea committing to being creative this year I wanted to share a wreath I made just before Christmas.

It's made with a pool noodle & canning rings! I wanted it a little bigger than the instructions called for so I enlarged & used more rings. It is quite heavy. Also, the extra weight caused it to sag a little & become more oval but I still like it. I have great plans to get some more quilting done this year & to finish a few of my UFOs that are in my drawer. I'll post as I get around to them, hopefully.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

The Expo Was a Lot of Work!

As mentioned in my prior post, I had volunteered to help my friends over at Hoss Tools at the AG Expo last week (Tuesday thru Thursday). This Expo is mainly geared towards commercial farmers but my friend talked the shows representatives into letting him open a Sustainable Living Center for home gardeners that were interested in more natural & organic growing methods. Especially since at least a third of the attendees are home gardeners as well.

The location of the show is on an old airfield (over 600 acres). Last year was the first year & it rained almost the entire time & was basically a muddy mess. But, there was a lot of interest so the Center was deemed to stay. They added an open air metal building to hold the vendors & displays of pumpkins which was the theme this year. And, they have a garden shed where attendees can select which implements they want to try. There are single wheel hoes, double ones as well, plus a double seeder & a sweeper attachment (to cut weeds off while pushing through the rows), raised bed kits & a variety of rakes & hoes. The garden was fenced off & divided into 9 or 10 sections. Each holding various flowers & vegetables (4 or 5 kinds of pumpkins, 7 or 8 of squash, pinkeye peas, 2 kinds of okra, various lettuces, pak choy, broccoli, zinnias & cockscomb & sunflowers just to name a few).

They had to bring in over 18 cubic yards of compost because the dirt there was in bad condition. Farmers Organic supplied the compost & Johnny's Seeds supplied the seeds & they both had booths in the building. There was also a speaking tent where various people gave speeches throughout the days, including NY Times best selling author Forrest Pritchard who was promoting his newest book Growing Tomorrow.

We got started each day around 7:00a & ended around 5:00p. The first day started out quite chilly but warmed up to a nice 78 degrees. The next 2 days were quite warm. There were 2 other volunteers from nearby who both have organic gardens, One has a CSA with her brother. We walked around the garden answering peoples questions. Hoss Tools demonstrated their products & let people try them out for themselves. It was quite tiring & as I arose each morning around 5:30a I felt like I had gone back to work!

The interest & enthusiasm showed by attendees was outstanding. Greg from Hoss was interviewed by various newspapers & gave 2 separate live interviews from local newstations. The gardens were beautiful & people were very impressed. We hope to expand next year, maybe have some raw milk & grass fed beef and/or pork products.

There was another vendor (Lauri Jo's) who was exhibiting in one of the larger buildings, doing live cooking demonstrations. She brought in celebrity chefs each day & they came to the garden each morning to pick product to use in some of their demos. Who knows maybe next year we can have a chef or two on site (in the building).

Although this show is always held in the fall, the Media Girl from the show was talking about doing a Spring/Early Summer event just for the Center (read ... no big AG). We'll see.

Here are a few random pictures ...