Crazy Weather

Today we hit 85F or 29.4C! Mind, you it's January!!! Just a few weeks ago in Dec, we were hitting lows of 50's during the day and freezing temps at night. It feels like summer and I'm confused. I bet the plants don't know quite what to do either. I wonder if this year will be ups and downs all year around like last year too...

Here's some oranges that were picked on Jan 17th. Picture added later

Green Tomato Salsa

We ended up making Salsa out of all those tomatoes last night! There was 18 cups worth of tomatoes, once cut up. The only regret I have is that I moved my smaller, pint sized jars over to my Mom's and didn't have them handy to can these salsas, so they are in quart jars. (Seriously, who goes through a whole 1 quart of salsa in the event of opening a jar...) The one that is half filled will be refridgerated, just to ensure safety. No one ever told me the reasons why it's important to fill the jar to the recipe's requirement, does anyone know? Thanks to my DH for helping so much! Now, onto figuring out what to make for dinner, then baking bread.

Harvest Update

So, here's the rest ofthe tomatoes that were in the garden freezing their fruits off at nights. Many were frozen and the slugs got to them, but I rescued these. Not bad for something I wasn't even taking care of! Now, I'm off to find Green Tomato Recipes, maybe salsa for canning...

Homemade/Homegrown Food

Here's some homemade Taco fillings. The Guacamole(unmixed here) that has homegrown tomatoes, farmer's market avocado, cilantro, and onions. The ground turkey is from local Pomona farm called Shelton's, they don't do antibiotics.

Here's some Homemade Gluten+Dairy free pizza with homemade crust, pizza sauce, farmer's market red bell peppers & onions, plus organic sausages, bacon and olives. The cheese is non-dairy, casein-free soy cheese. This is before it was baked.

I still bake 2 loaves of gluten-free bread every 2 weeks. I think I've finally got a recipe I'm happy with. I've tried a few from online support groups, some were winners, others were not too good. I took the winner and kept altering it, adding new things, or trying different amounts of the ingredients, and now I think I have my own recipe. The flours in it include Potato Starch, Sorghum, Millet, Amaranth, Buckwheat and Tapioca.

Winter Harvests

Here's a few of the winter harvests here, I know, we have tomatoes in December! It sounds absurd, but it's the last of them for sure. The frost has gotten to the rest of them and the slugs are having a feast, since I've been a bit too busy packing for our move. There's quite a few green ones left on the vines, but I don't know how to prepare them to eat. We still have some Bok Choi, Shungiku(edible chrysanthemum), broccoli, onions, oranges and chives hanging on. The tangerines are just starting to ripen and the tree is quite loaded with fruit. Can't wait to eat them, their fragrance is amazing!

Over at the new location, AKA my Mom's place, we planted cabbage, broccoli and kale seeds, my Mom decided to plant the potato "seeds" really early, and they have actually sprouted already. We cut down the borer infested persimmon and apricot tree. We are sad to have to do so, but there weren't many other options to treat it organically. We will have to plant a new perismmon tree for sure, as it's one of our favorites. However, because the persimmon tree is gone, we can double the vegetable patch that was already existing. I'll have to map out the "new" garden. My Mom already has a well established garden, and her soil is very dark and rich compared to our compacted clay soil. So we have it pretty easy, but we'll be expanding the vegetable garden by double what we just doubled, once we settle in. I'll keep you posted, and hopefully take some pictures of the "new" garden.

smile!