Toasting Chili Powder

We know that roasting veggies intensifies their flavors, mellows bitterness, and carmelizes the sugars. This is especially true for hot peppers. But what if you're not using whole peppers? What if all you have on hand for a recipe are dried, commercial chili powders?

Well, you can get much of the benefit of roasting by a quick toast in a dry, hot pan. What I've got going here, which I'll add to a pot of beans, is a mixture of ancho and cascabel powders. Even a commercial chili con carne chili mix is improved by a quick toast in a pan.

Just start with a heavy, dry pan. When the pan is hot, add the chili powders and stir. Keep the chilis moving so they don't burn. They're ready when they've darkened nicely.

That's it!

Favorite Pickling Blend

Favorite Pickling Blend

5-10 peppercorns

10-15 coriander seeds

1 Myrtlewood leaf

A goodly sized sprig of dill

1. Drop spices and herbs in the bottom of each jar.

2.  Use a proportionately upsized amount of herb and spice blend in the cooked pickling liquid + salt and dash of sugar to taste.

I normally use this blend for jalepenos, but this time I was making watermelon pickles.  

About that mytlewood leaf:  Of course you could use basil, but I discovered this leaf on a trip to Oregon and love the flavor.  I used up the supply I bought in Oregon and ordered more online -- I think it was a couple of dollars for a large package.

Curing Onions for Storage

We had an unexpected rain storm today and so I ran out to the garden to gather these onions in a hurry before they got wet.  I have them drying on the back deck now, and I'll put them back in the sun tomorrow, where they'll cure for a few days more.

This is the first time I've grown enough onions to store so I'm not quite sure what will work.  My dad used to hang them in nets from rafter in our store room but I don't have a store room or rafters.  Just a small kitchen with vaulted ceilings, impossible to hang anything from.  I also have a garage that gets really hot in the summer -- approximately the temperature of the sun.  And a climate that stays humid most of the year.  Any ideas on how to best store these onions? 

First Loquat

Still very tiny, and the tree is still young, so we'll be lucky to get just a few this year.

But they make beautiful trees and are easy, easy, easy to grow under the toughest conditions that central Texas can offer.

There's a  restaurant in town with a loquat tree growing in the middle of a parking lot.   As far as I can tell, it never gets watered, or cared for in any way.  Yet it puts out bushels of fruit every year.

Green Smoothies

What's a gardener to do with an overabundance of garden greens?  Use them in salads, frittatas, omlettes, stews, and soups.  Make veggie enchiladas, tacos, and lasagnas.  

But the best, easy, fast, filling no-cook meal is a green smoothie.  This one is made with about 2 cups of cilantro, a banana, water, and ice.  Spinach makes a fantastic smoothie too.  It might look like pesto but the taste is lightly sweet and creamy.  So delicious that on weekends, when Widget Man is home in the mornings, I usually make 2 blendersful -- one for our breakfast and one that I transfer to mason jars and refrigerate for lunch or an afternoon snack.

Don't be skeptical.  I was at first and so was Widget Man.  But they taste delicious and power us through long hot days of gardening and working in the hot Texas sun.  Plus, very little clean up and no cooking to heat up the house.

You can make them sweeter by adding more fruit, if you like.  I especially like bananas and pears, because they add a creaminess.  Yogurt's good too.  And with bitter greens, a bit of lemon or anything acidic (like pineapple) cuts the sharp flavor.

Texas Sized Centipede

See this visitor to our garage?  Very mean, mean sting.

Squash Beds, Before and During

Here's what my first raised berm beds looked like, right after I tilled and built them.

Here they are now, with zucchini, yellow squash, several kinds of cucumber, and melon.

Permaculture Bed

Cilantro is a pretty plant any time -- bright green, delicate, excessively fragrant. But when it's in bloom, and luring bees and butterflies to the garden, it's a showstopper. I mean, I can't stay away. I just stand there and smile. So that alone would be worth letting a plant that takes up about a third of a raised bed take its sweet time going to seed.

But I'm hoping for more. This is in my permaculture bed, where I let about ten percent of everything go to seed or otherwise run its natural life cycle. I started planting it two seasons ago, and now I'm getting all sorts of happy volunteers -- kale, dozens of kinds of lettuces and greens, beets, and basil so far. I've also got some leeks in there that I'm letting go to seed, and redivide. This season I added chard, spinach, and tucked in some peppers, tomatillos and tomatoes. One nice result of this mixed bed is that pests never get a real foothold, as they might in a monoculture garden.

The Cruelest Plant

This pretty, bright green, delicate plant seems to grow wherever soil has been disturbed. In the open field where I have my garden, that means it primarily grows wherever I am trying to work -- at the edges of the garden berms, around the raised beds, any place I've planted fruit trees or berries. I mulch pretty heavily but it still finds a foothold.

Don't let its lovely heart shaped leaves fool you. It's a killer. The tiniest touch leaves bright red streaks on my skin, and mean, lingering sting. I mean this plant causes some serious pain. Here's a measure that anyone from around here should respect: I'd rather be bitten by fire ants than encounter this plant. Aahh, now you understand.

Spring Harvest, Tonight's Supper, and an Almost Oops

On the menu tonight is chicken soup, made with the first of the yellow squash, zucchini, the very first bell pepper, some onion and herbs, all from the garden. I was going to add potatoes and carrots from the store, plus some chicken broth I'd made and frozen several weeks ago.

Instead, I came this close to adding potatoes, carrots, and frozen banana/coconut smoothie I'd made and frozen last week. Must make labels clearer.

First of the Cucumbers

This year I planted small picklers, some heirlooms called Lemon Cukes, names so for their color and shape, not their flavor, or so I'm told, and Armenian cucumbers, which are very, very long. I've got ity bity cucumbers on all the plants, maybe 30 so far, but these are the first to mature. I hope to have enough to can.

Paul James is Blogging

Yippee, one of my favorite gardeners has a great website and an entertaining blog.  Read it here.

And, nopal cactus is in bloom!

Beans Emerge

Offhand, I can't recall if these are Scarlet Runner, Purple Hyacinth, or Chinese Long Beans.

In planted 6 foot sections of each along a fence, in an attempt to prettify a untilitarian deer fence, plus, have lots of beans.

Cheaper, Better, AND Faster: Homemade Deodorant

My sister, who used to be a marketing exec, told me that in product marketing they say there are three basic attributes you can use to sell something -- cheaper, better, and faster. But you can only pick two. The idea is that nothing can be cheaper, better, AND faster.

I don't think this is true. In fact, when I play around with making things from scratch I insist that it be all three things. Here's the recipe:

Homemade Deodorant
1 part baking soda
1 part unrefined coconut oil
10 drops tea tree oil

Mix. Use.

I've seen some variations of this recipe all over the internet. Many call for more precise measures; some call for an addition of cornstarch, which is supposed to help absorb moisture. I doubt if this would help much for profuse sweating and when I used this version, it left white streaks on my black sweater. With just the baking soda, no streaks at all!

After this jar runs out, I may try this without the baking soda. This is because I think the coconut and tea tree oils are the key ingredients. Coconut oil is a gentle antibacterial (and antiviral!), will keep skin soft, and acts as a carrier for the tea tree oil. Tea tree oil is a more potent, though still gentle, antibacterial. And it's bacteria that make for smelliness, not sweat.

I think the reason that people are adding baking soda and cornstarch, besides the idea that they may ever so slightly inhibit the appearance of sweat, is that they want to mimic the appearance of a solid roll-on deodorant. I suppose this has the advantage of allowing people to reuse old solid deodorant plastic containers for storage. An easier solution is to reuse a small jar.

I was skeptical about this recipe, believe me. I'm as uptight as it comes about body odor -- not even remotely sophisticated or crunchy on this issue. But it has worked for over two months now, perfectly, 100% of the time -- in hot steamy weather, after hours in the garden, in stressful situations. And, because of my super-sensitive, cry-baby skin, I'd been looking for something that doesn't leave my skin all sensitive and bumpy, which all commercial formulations, even the so-called natural ones, do. This does the trick.

By the way, tea tree oil has a kind of medicinal, camphor-like smell, but it dissipates in just a few minutes. A possible alternative to this might be lavender, which is also anti-bacterial, though I haven't tried it yet.