Butternut Sqash

I was never a big squash eater, but we decided to try growing some butternut and acorn squash. The acorn squash didn't do too well. It was outside of the fenced-in garden area and the chickens and rabbits got to most of them before we did. The butternut squash however was inside the fence and is doing very well. So far we have tried it cut up into small pieces and baked, and as a soup base. Both ways have been delicious. I was surprised at how flavorful it was simply baked with olive oil and a little salt and pepper.

This week Ron baked some and then put it in the blender and used it for soup. He added some chicken broth, coconut  milk, curry paste and some kaffir lime leaves (from our own tree). It was so tasty! He even added some coconut milk at the end for presentation!

Figs

Our fig tree had lost of ripe fruit and we managed to pick some of it before the birds ate it all. While delicious on their own, we had fun trying a couple easy recipes with them. The kids are still warming up to them. I think they just aren't quite used to the texture, because the flavor is amazing!

Our first recipe was very simple: figs cut in half, dipped in balsamic vinegar and topped with goat cheese. We put them in the toaster over for a few minutes and they were delicious.

Our second recipe was only slightly more complicated. Figs and pears sauteed in butter and brown sugar in home made crepes topped with cinnamon and home made whipped cream. Yummy!

Home Made Tomato Sauce

Today we made tomato sauce. We bought a food mill that basically strains out the seeds and skin so all you need to do to prep the tomatoes is wash them and cut them. We cooked them in a pot for about 20 minutes and then just put it in the mill. Ron turned it into spaghetti sauce by adding onions and basil.

Prickly Pear Margaritas

In addition to all the fruits and vegetables we are growing in the garden and in the orchard, there are a few things that are growing wild on the land that we can use in cooking. One of these things is the prickly pear cactus with it's lovely purple fruit. It's not easy to pick a prickly pear (or to say it either), but the juice is pretty sweet and we were able to make margaritas without too much injury to ourselves.

Ron picked the pears using a pair of tongs (I think that I am going to take up writing tongue twisters) and placed them in a bowl of water. After they soaked for a short time, he cut them in half and cut off any parts that looked bad and put them in the blender. We used an old t-shirt to strain the juice by stretching the shirt over a juice container and pouring the juice. Ron had read that a t-shirt is better that cheese cloth, I'm guessing that you want the smaller holes to keep out any of the small spines. I was going to reuse the shirt and started rinsing it off only to get a couple small spines stuck in my hand. They are very small and hard to see! Needless to say, I ended up throwing the short away. Luckily the kids outgrow shirts at a fast rate so there will always be more.

Dork that I am, I forgot to get pictures of the actual margaritas! But they were good thanks to Emeril Lagasse.

Next we need to find a recipe to eat the pads, nopal.

Garden Friends: Snakes

As we were walking down to the garden, we saw a big gopher snake (about six feet long) slithering in the wood pile. We were all happy to see him there and hopeful that he would catch some of the gophers or squirrels that were eating all of our tomatoes. 

Suddenly, we heard a high pitch squeak. We thought (hopefully) that it might be the sound of a squirrel that was just caught by a snake. Maya, our dog, was very excited and ran to the wood pile, sticking her nose in a little hole in the woodpile. We called her back so we could see what she was sniffing at through the hole. Lacey was the first to see a bunny's head. She said that it looked like it was laying still. 

As we were all crowding around trying to see what she was talking about, Maya stuck her nose back in and that is when we heard a very loud hiss. Seriously loud, I did not know that snakes could make such a loud sound. We decided that it was probably a good idea to give the snake its space and called Maya away again and found some work to do away from the garden. 

After about a half-hour or so, we went back to see if the rabbit or snake were still around. All we could see was part of the snake's body sticking out of the hole where we had seen the bunny. One less rodent to eat our bounty.

This was a different gopher snake we found previously in a different part of our land.

Pest Control: Squirrels

Our tomato, tomatillo and pepper plants were finally looking beautiful. We had so many little baby fruits starting on all the plants we were already thinking about the number of different sauces we could make, learning about how to can tomatoes,thinking about whether we should invest in a pressure canner.

Then one day, Ron went down to check on the bounty that was our garden, and he saw the dreadful squirrel hole right in the middle of a row of tomato plants. After successfully battling the earwigs and other six-legged pests, controlling the moles underground, keeping out the rabbits, the squirrels could not be stopped. They will enter the garden from underground, get through any chain linked fence or just climb right over it. Not only did they make a hole inside the garden, but as if to taunt us, the squirrel left a half-eaten tomato right outside the fence. You may have won this battle my friend, but the war has just begun...

Half-eaten tomatillos left outside of the garden by squirrels

Scorpions, really?

I found a scorpion on the living room floor the other night. As if just finding a scorpion wasn't bad enough, my niece and one of my daughters were both sleeping on said living room floor. Like any normal mother, my first thought was to wake up Ron and the kids, run out of the house screaming, and burn it down. Instead, I found the nearest container, placed it over the scorpion and ran to get Ron so he could kill it. Ron came out to see it, but rather than wanting to kill it, he wanted to capture it.

The container that I had placed over the scorpion was one of those plastic food containers you get from grocery stores or delis. The kind with a plastic lid. Since Ron wanted to capture it, rather than kill it (crazy man!), I got him a piece of stiff construction paper that he could slide under the container and flip it over so that the scorpion would be inside the container and not likely to figure out a way to get out from under it. Once he had the container flipped over with the scorpion inside, I went to find the lid for it and handed it to Ron. As Ron took the lid from me, he asked, "shouldn't there be holes in it?" "Only if we want it to live," I replied. Unfortunately, he wanted it to live so he put holes in it.

Ron had bought a black light that could be used to find tomato hornworms in the garden. Hornworms glow in the dark with these lights and make them easier to find. Ron wanted to see if the scorpion would also glow, and it did. It was actually pretty cool to see it glow, but I still thought it would be cooler to see it dead.

Once it was safely in the container, I started looking up information on scorpions. Basically, I wanted to know 1) what would happen if you were stung by one and 2) did finding one in your house mean that you were likely to have more, like with rats, ants or cockroaches. I was glad to find out that most stings are not deadly and that they do not nest, so having one in the house did not mean that were was a nest in the house. Unfortunately, they do tend to come in houses in the summer, which means that we could find more.

Knowing that this was not likely to be our last encounter with a scorpion as long as we were in East San Diego County, I thought that we should find a place to live where there are no scorpions. While perhaps burning down the house was not an option, we could always move somewhere without scorpions. Sadly, the only place on the planet without scorpions is Antarctica. So, now I have to try and find a research job so we can move there. So far, I have not had any cooperation on this move from the rest of my family though.