Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Whiskey for Breakfast

You'd look like an ancient Egyptian too if you'd been soaking in alcohol for months.

Not quite.
This has been the year of fruit flavored alcohols or alcohol flavored fruit, however. It began innocently, last June, as a big basket of peaches bought on the way home from lovely, Hendersonville, NC. Juicy, jewel colored, fuzzy, flavorful, make-you-weak-at-the-knees-beautiful southern belle, Georgia peaches.

June 2014 I was whipped, done, exhausted from a doozy of a school year, not to mention a lifetime of working in the public schools, and I was delusional, or I wouldn't have bought a lifetime supply of peaches. We started eating but we couldn't eat them fast enough. They go bad in a hurry, ya know. It was hot. Small Town Southern hot. No way I was going to can peaches when it was 100 + degrees. I was so not acclimated yet. How to preserve them? I asked the internet. Liquor. A most appealing idea, not offered in the UGA, So Easy to Preserve, tome on food preservation. What!?! So Southern :\ So USDA:/

Europeans to the rescue! Germans have rumtoff. The French, fruit flavored liquors. Me?  I made both. Look. I didn't even have to peel the peaches. Cut them in half, remove pit, put in a glass jar or crock, and pour on the rum and some sugar water. Now here where it gets good. Keep adding fruit. All summer long. Figs. Blackberries. Apples. Pears. In the Fall add sticks of cinnamon, a few cloves, a nutty nutmeg and wait some more.

Mid-winter scoop out some fruit for a warm winter compote good with roasted hunks of meat. Make a When cooled, serve over yogurt and you can have liquor for breakfast, sort of. Make a Rumtoff Cake soaked in spiced rum and eat it for breakfast, more liquor for breakfast. You will also have a tasty spiced rum for your Super Bowl Football Knitting Party. Because some of us are are in it for the commercials and half-time show.


Monday, January 19, 2015

Rock and Roll!

Take a lickin', keep on ticking', Savoy cabbage. The shar pei of brassicas! 

God loves us. That's my explanation for this warm, sunny mid-January day. All weekend the high temperatures were in the 60's and a most welcome sun has shone down on us. I pruned dead, slimy leaves from broccoli and lettuces, pulled the ones with frozen stems. They don't call it agricultural science for nothing: I'm always experimenting. Maybe the un-dead broccoli will send out edible side shoots. Maybe :)  Maybe :] Maybe :\
There was also pulling and digging of limp lettuce. In the now empty beds, Scott shoveled in composted chicken manure and wood ashes. Right behind him,  I sowed mache, spinach, boo choy, and arugula seed. A brave, hopeful, glass-half-full measure. Weather Channel forecasts show days and days of temperatures just right for cool season crops. Fingers, eyes, and toes crossed!
I also pulled turnips which were yummy julienned in pork tacos yesterday. It served as a fabulous substitute for other crunchy things recommended in the recipe. Turnips are really sweet this year. I credit the right regular rain for this.
The weather made gardening an all weekend event. I cleaned the clutter all around our garden bench and planted broccoli seeds in pots for indoor germination. Scott cleaned gutters. We pulled weeds, admired and wrapped up with a late season planting of garlic, because, you can never have too much garlic.
Rock and roll gardeners!

Friday, January 16, 2015

Stink Patch

…and then it rained some more, like all week until today more, two inches more. And it was cold, really cold. Damp cold. Dreary cold. Winter cold.
     Today there is hope. The sun shines down from a Carolina blue sky with not a cloud in sight! Birds are chirping, I can hear the happy voices of the preschool children on the playground on our block, it has warmed into the 40's and dog, Scout, is sleeping in a sunbeam at my side. Spring is in the air today. This is the good life in a small town down South. However, the garden looks and smells like a stink patch. Stinky, stinky, slimy frozen, then thawed, broccoli! Hoo whee!
     In the Just So You Know category:
     My retirement gift to self (there have been many :) has been a perennial flower bed. All summer I worked on it buying plants as they came available at our local garden big box centers. Bulbs were the last to go in and, despite the thoroughly yucky weather, are sprouting! Daffodill and crocus bulbs  have pushed little green shoots up beneath the pine straw mulch. Evidence that we are on the down side of winter, the upside of summer.
 



Monday, January 12, 2015

Rain. Lots of it.


When I woke up this morning I had this dreamy vision of our tiny, hobbitty house floating on a lake of water. That's how hard it rained last night. What would I see when I looked out this morning, I wondered? Alas no epic flood, just a drippy medium gray day. It is a balmy 50 degrees so I will venture out and contemplate starting new lettuces to replace the ones that froze last week when temperatures dipped into the teens. Perhaps the turnips, mustard, and broccoli have rebounded with the warmth. Kale, cabbage, and spinach took it like champs. All was not lost but, truth be known, I was grumpy about the lettuce (and dill) for days. Happily, we stumbled upon a seed display at Walmarket yesterday morning and I was back to a glass-half-full making plans. Cheers y'all!

Friday, January 2, 2015

Haiku for You

Fig. The centerpiece.
Every season she provides-
Jeweled fruit, jarred jam!

.