Homemade

In this simple living, self-sufficiency project I'm undergoing, I'd like to be able to harvest all my food from my garden, but that's simply not possible. Given that limitation, I'm trying to do the next best thing. I cook from scratch whenever possible, and buy very few processed foods. Three staples that I've been cooking regularly are bread, noodles, and tortillas. I can't grow wheat for the flour, but flour is very cheap, and all of these things taste better homemade than store bought.

Homemade bread is pretty common, and everyone loves it, but I hate turning the oven on in the summer time. Mom has a bread-maker, and she uses it regularly, but I found another alternative. Mother Earth has a great recipe for five minute bread. The dough is made in advanced, and the bread is made on the stove-top anytime bread is wanted. It's absolutely delicious, and I can use it in conjunction with other homemade foods, such as hummus and pesto. It also works really well for stove-top pizza.

The other two are a little less common. I love making homemade noodles. It's a great way to use my excess basil. In a food processor, it's extremely simple. I toss a cup of basil, two cups of flour, two eggs, and a teaspoon of salt. I turn it on until a ball forms. After letting the dough rest for about a half-hour; I role it flat with a rolling pin, cut it up, and drop it in the pot for a few minutes. I topped it off with a simple homemade tomato sauce, and some freshly grated Parmesan cheese. 

Homemade tortillas are even simpler, and just as important, they are infinitely better than most store-bought tortillas. I've been making these regularly, because we've been eating a lot of mom's homemade salsa from last year, and I'll be making them a lot when the tomatoes ripen, and I can start making some raw salsa. Like the noodles, a food processor makes these extremely easy, but they are easy enough without it. There are many variations, but the simplest one I found has 3 c. of flour, 1/3 c. oil, 1 tsp. salt, and 1 c. of warm water. Put it all in the food processor till it forms a ball, flour the counter and roll them out with a rolling pin. Fry them up, and that's all there is too it.

Preservation

I'm definitely at the point where the garden is producing more than we can eat on any given day. It's not an extreme overabundance, but unless we want to eat zucchini six times a day; We need to find ways to preserve it. The serious preservation project will come when the tomatoes start to come on a little stronger, but for now, we're doing a little bit of freezing, and a little bit of pickling.

The freezing was very simple. Some people online were suggesting doing a few things to the zucchini before freezing it, but a number of people said it can easily be shredded and froze, with no additional preparation. After picking and scrubbing all of the zucchini and yellow squash; I brought out the food processor, and attached the shredding blade. That made the process quite easy. I generally use the shredded zucchini to make zucchini pancakes. That's a savory dish that resembles hash browns more than zucchini bread, which is also an excellent use of shredded zucchini.
The turnip crop was another one that was starting to wear me down. I really like turnips, but it can be exhausting coming up with different ways to cook them. They were starting to get too big, and I didn't want them to start to get woody and flavorless, so I yanked them all out, and found a nice pickling recipe in my favorite cookbook, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food. His recipe for Three-Day Pickles is a nice simple refrigerator pickle recipe. It can be used on just about anything. I used it on the turnips, and mom used a similar one on the cucumbers.

• 2 lbs. of vegetable
• 6 tbs. salt (kosher or sea)
• 2 c. white vinegar
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1/4 c. pickling spice.

Slice the vegetables up, and put 2 tbs. salt on them; letting them sit for two hours. Rinse them, and pat them dry. Put remaining ingredients in a sauce pan and bring it to boil. Let it cool for a couple of minutes than pour it over the vegetables (I also included some fresh chillies for a little kick) and let it cool to room temperature. Transfer them to an airtight jar, and put them in the fridge. They can be eaten in three days, and will keep for three weeks.

New Fixie

I got a new frame for the fixed gear bike I put together for my brother. This steel Free Spirit frame is infinitely better than that Huffy piece of crap I was using before. I am glad I was using a cheap frame and throwaway components. I ran into a couple of problems I wasn't expecting. This really isn't going to be a long term bike for a couple of reasons. I somehow managed to cross-hread the drive-side bottom bracket. I should certainly know better than to put it in there with any force, but it was just sticking a little bit, and I tried it so many different times, and it took so little force. Once I found out it was cross-threaded; I just cranked it in there all the way as hard as I could, so the bottom bracket is now garbage, and the frame more or less is too. I mean, it's in there, and it's going to stay in there, but it will be unusable if it ever comes out, and the bottom bracket shell is ruined too, unless I could get it re-threaded. Another problem I had was with the non drive-side crank arm. I must not have tightened it down hard enough the first time, so it came out while Gabe was pedaling. Luckily, he wasn't going to fast. Online, a lot of people said that if it happens once it will continue to happen. I cranked it on there, and it seems to be on there fairly well, and it's been a month and a couple hundred miles, so hopefully, it's there to stay. I don't want to end on a negative note, because it's been a positive experience. I learned a lot, and my brother has a functioning bike. I can't wait to build my own.

Problems in the Garden

Overall, I've been exceptional happy with the early results of my garden's production. I've already eaten many pounds of produce, and flavored many meals with my herbs. Even so, I am a novice gardener, and I was bound to run into some problems. I'm hoping I can solve some of these with internet solutions, or others will work themselves out. I am a little worried about my tomato plants. While they all look very healthy on top, and have many blossoms and green tomatoes, there is some yellowing of leaves on lower limbs.

On the web, there are many potential explanations of this phenomenon. Over watering is one explanation. That seems unlikely. This happened during a dry spell, and while I was watering regularly, the soil did not look over watered. Hopefully, it's simply the result of healthy plants with too many branches to provide nutrients for. Apparently, it's not uncommon for lower level leaves on tomato plants to yellow and die, especially while producing tomatoes. For now, I'm just going to keep my eye on it, and hope for the best.

My cucumbers also have some yellowing and browning in the leaves.

Like the tomatoes, there are many potential explanations for the cause. It could possibly be a fungus. Because I'm trying to go organic, I'm going to let the plant try to fight it off on it's own. If I knew for sure it was a fungus, and what to use to combat it, I would just go ahead and use the fungicide, but since I'm in doubt, I'll continue to go the organic route.

Probably the most disappointing (so far (fingers crossed), if my tomato crop goes down that would be devastating) is the browning of my cauliflower heads. One of them was so bad that it had to go straight to the compost pile, and the other just had a couple of spots on it, so I cooked it up and it was good. This is disappointing, because I only had a couple of cauliflower plants.

I don't know what happened. It could have been the string of 90 degree days we had. The reason I didn't notice it earlier is because I had been blanching the cauliflower with the leaves. Blanching is the process of folding the leaves over the head, so it doesn't get any sun. This is supposed to improve the flavor and the texture. If I can find some more seeds I've going to plant some more cauliflower to harvest in the fall. I'm going to have to do a little more research before they start producing a head, so I can avoid this situation in the future.

Harvest is Gaining Momentum

I'm starting to have a hard time keeping up with the garden's production. This is a very nice problem to have, and I'll enjoy it while it lasts, because my supply of root vegetables (with the exception of potatoes) is dwindling. I did plant some more turnips and beets a couple of weeks ago, so hopefully, I'll have another round of root vegetables coming up. For the time being, I've been pulling up lots of turnips, beets, carrots, and onions. I don't know if I'll ever be able to construct an entire dinner with ingredients  solely from the garden, because I'll never be making my own vegetable oil or salt. Nevertheless, I'm beginning to make meals that are made mostly from vegetables and herbs from the garden. Most recently I made Cheesy Turnips and Carrots a recipe I got from my favorite online recipe source, allrecipes.com. It's a simple recipe that enabled me to use turnips, carrots, onions, and celery from the garden.

In addition to that dish, I made beet and goat cheese gratin from my favorite cookbook, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman. Like everything I cook, it's simple and healthy. After roasting the beets in advance, I tossed them in olive oil and salt and pepper. I then put them in a baking dish and sprinkled fresh time on them (from my herb garden, of course). Then I crumbled some goat cheese over the top, and put it under the broiler for about 5 minutes.

With the potatoes coming on strong, I hope my first round of root vegetables will last me until the tomatoes start coming on in a couple of weeks. Right now, the plants are loaded with green tomatoes and blossoms, so it looks like it's going to be a great crop.