Seems like it’s time to share our beginnings of this year’s garden. It is still too early to put plants in the ground because we could still have a frost over the next few weeks, but Spring is definitely making obvious inroads.
Our Redbud trees are beautiful and the grass is so green.
Redbud flowers are so stunning in the spring!
The hummingbird feeders are ready and the birds have found them. The geraniums are beautiful this year.
I planted lettuce and radish seeds in the raised planter on the patio.
The Super Sauce tomato plants have thrived under grow lights. Now a little sunshine and wind will toughen them up.
The strawberries are determined to get on with making berries, so off they go!
We’ve got to get the ones in the bucket into a different planter soon!
The cucumbers, Delicata squash and zinnias are still under the grow lights.
Up in the main garden the Lavender is showing signs of surviving the winter. I’m not sure what to trim away, so I guess I’ll just have to wait!
The Echinacea came back so that end of the garden should be pretty this year.
So that’s the tour of what’s happening right now. Soon it will be time to get the rain barrels set up, but we’ll wait another week or two. We set them up last year on April 27, 2021, so we must have been optimistic that the really cold nights were over. If you’d like to read about how we set them up, you can see it here: https://marykisner.com/setting-up-the-rain-barrels/.
Quinoa is a grain that has lots of potential, but personally, a pile of it on my plate doesn’t excite me. I have a powerful grain grinder that I can make it into flour, which expands ways I can use the grain. I also found a box of Quinoa Flakes that I thought could be used in my standard Oatmeal Bread recipe (see https://marykisner.com/marys-oatmeal-bread/).
The back of the box showed several ways the flakes could be used…as a hot cereal, in cookies and muffins.
Today was the day I needed to bake bread so I thought I’d try using it…mostly to see if it changed the flavor or texture of my favorite bread. I followed my standard recipe and added 1/2 cup of Quinoa flakes when I added the 1 1/2 cups of rolled oats. Here’s the difference in the size of the flakes:
Rolled oats on the left, quinoa flakes on the right.
I wasn’t sure if that little bit in four loaves of bread would even be noticeable but amazingly…it was!
The bread was very light and had a nice consistent texture. There was no noticeable difference in taste. It was a nice enhancement to my standard oatmeal bread and added a little more protein to the bread. I think I’ll make it part of my standard recipe!
I think I’ll try adding a tablespoon of the flakes to my morning bowl of oatmeal just to enhance the protein. Give it a try! Enjoy!
Shortly after my last post on Saturday, my computer shut down with a warning screen that I had some kind of virus. This is what the screen said:
After Bert’s experience last fall, I did NOT click on anything. I did NOT call any numbers. I basically forced the computer to shut down and walked away. Not too disruptive since it was Easter weekend and I was busy getting ready for my grandkids to visit on Sunday. Luckily, I could still easily check email and texts and a few news sites on my phone. Today, Bert took the whole computer to the Best Buy Geek Squad and of course, everything worked just fine! How embarrassing! They did see a few odd things so they will keep it until Thursday to check it for other viruses. Yea. So, I’m typing this on Bert’s computer. Just doesn’t feel the same!
Anyway, Easter with our daughter’s family was lovely. In the midst of all the frustrations with the computer, they brought me some tulips just ready to open! What a treat! I hope you all had a blessed Easter!
Looks like the tulips will be red!
This morning as Bert was headed out to Best Buy, we were surprised with snow! Winter is not going to go away without a last gasp or two! It is pretty, but we are definitely ready to be done with snow. I hope this all melts away quickly.
Snow on April 18, 2022
Hopefully by Friday I’ll have my computer up and running. If I do any exciting projects, I’ll share them then. Let’s go spring!
Looking at our gardens yesterday morning, you might lose all hope that garden season is right around the corner! However, we still have below freezing nights and the ground is either still frozen or at least pretty COLD! Not quite time to put seeds in the ground!
All weeds in the raised garden beds have been removed. Bert will run the small rototiller in here before I plant.Bert will rototill this garden and then put the boards back down so we can walk between the rows.
Lavender and Echinacea
When you look really close, guess what! There are tiny sprouts of Lavender at the base of last year’s plants. There are new shoots of Echinacea coming up too!
LavenderEchinacea
So, at least outside, things are happening!
Tomato Plants
Bert started the tomato seeds in the shop under grow lights the last week of March, so now 3 weeks later, we have plants!
“Super Sauce” tomatoes
Strawberry Plants
I ordered strawberry plants from Burpee in January hoping they wouldn’t arrive until I could plant them. Of course, the arrive in late March all smooshed together in a plastic bag. A week later Bert opened the bag and discovered they were trying desperately to grow so we had to get them into pots. Luckily, I wasn’t sure where I would plant them so I had ordered these stacking pots. He got the plants into the soil and can now move the whole stack outside when the days are warmer and can move the tower back into the shop at night. We will put these pots on the patio and try to keep wandering bunnies and chipmunks from munching on them as they cruise by!
I had just one of these pots. It could be up on a small table or block on the patio.This many plants didn’t fit in the other pots, so I’ll have to transplant them when the weather warms up. I might move the whole bucket full into a large planter, or I may tuck the plants into our raised garden beds. We’ll see!
So even if the gardens look like they are still asleep, preparations are underway and Mother Nature is noticing the weather is warming! April is always filled with hope for a great garden season! Enjoy!
I’d love to hear about your garden plans! Please comment or email directly at marykisner@comcast.net.
I was not happy with the colors of clay I used and the shapes I experimented with in that previous post. So, I pulled out the Pearl clay I had and started over.
I decided to make rectangles that were 2″ x 3″. I did not have a cutter that size so I made a cardboard pattern from an old tablet back.
I rolled out a ball of clay and placed the pattern on it. Then I used a zig zag cutter and just cut around it, like this:
I made about 20 of these rectangular shapes. Some ended up closer to 1 1/2″ x 3″ and a few were round circles. They baked for 50 minutes at 265 degrees in my old toaster oven.
Next, I printed out pictures of the vegetables we are going to grow. Even though I know what the common vegetables look like, I wasn’t sure about the various beans we were going to try.
Then, I pulled out my various bottles of acrylic paint and brushes.
I started with two of the round circles to see if I could make a representative picture of a radish and a strawberry. Those two, plus the lettuce and spinach, will be in the planters on the patio so they didn’t need huge signs.
Luckily the paintings are pretty small, so they didn’t have to be perfect! I’ll glue the signs to the wide craft sticks and then spray them all with a polyurethane spray. Hopefully, that will help them weather the outside summer temperatures and moisture.
Before I invest in more polymer clay to make my garden signs, I thought I should figure out if it will even work. I collected up my pile of partially used bits of clay leftover from other projects and spent the day making some samples.
I haven’t worked with clay for many months but the clay seemed to survive just fine in plastic bags. My first goal was to see if one color worked better than others and how I should write on them. My second goal was to figure out what shape worked best and how to attach the stick that will go in the ground.
The first color I chose was a pale pink. I thought I could write on it with a black marker. I also didn’t need anything too large because five of the signs could be small…they will be in the smallest planters on the patio. These small signs would be for the Radishes, Lettuce, Spinach, Radicchio and Swiss Chard. I put a piece of clay on the back that would make a pocket to hold the stick.
Back of the small sign.I used the flat end of a marker to tap down the edge of the pocket…hoping it would stay put after baking. I left the stick in the pocket while it baked to keep the pocket from collapsing.
After baking in my toaster oven (275 degrees for 30 minutes), I wrote Radish on the sign with a permanent marker. The sign looked like this:
I added glue to the end of the stick and stuck it in the pocket to harden.
Just for fun, I chose a cookie cutter of a gingerbread man to make a larger sign. I added the pocket piece to the back and tapped the edge down.
After baking, I glued the stick into the pocket using fast-drying E6000 glue. These are the ones I made today:
When the signs were cool, I turned them over and wrote on the black ones with yellow paint. I may have to make the rest larger than the round one above…too much to write so they need to be bigger.
After writing all the words with yellow paint on black I think I like the light color clay with writing in black marker. It’s much easier, especially as the number of letters increase.
When they are all done, I’ll seal them with an acrylic spray to make them waterproof. I’m sure they could also be more decorative too! I’ll have to look up some ideas on Pinterest! Enjoy!
Spring is trying to gain a foothold here in Pennsylvania. The piles of snow have melted away leaving grass trying to perk up and mud everywhere. We’ve had some 60-degree days, but the nights often dip to the teens. Still too early to even think about messing in the garden!
At least no lingering snow piles!Dogwood tree buds are ready to pop. Hopefully they’ll wait until the nights are warmer!
Garden preparations are still in a holding pattern, but it doesn’t mean we can’t plan! The tomato seeds have been started in the shop:
Nothing sprouted yet!
The seeds have been purchased and the garden diagram has been sketched out.
This was my original order of seeds from early January.At the last minute I decided we would try some shell beans…just for fun!The first sketch of where we’ll plant things.
The raised garden planter has been sealed (with a sealer that had a brown stain included by mistake!) and is ready for lettuce and radishes.
Bert added two patio planters for my spinach and radicchio.
I invested in a set of stacking pots for strawberries like this one:
I can dream that I’ll have strawberries like these on my patio!
Finally, I made a list of all the plants we anticipate growing so I can figure out what kind of garden markers I want to make.
Last year I used old wine corks and wood skewers, but they didn’t last very long and were hard to write on. The skewers were too skinny and would fall over when it rained. I needed them to identify the colors of the echinacea flowers when I was collecting seeds and the markers were on the ground and almost unreadable. Not helpful!
This year I’m thinking of making something out of polymer clay. We’ll see! Another project to keep me entertained until it’s time to plant! Enjoy!
A memory from Grandma Mary: Imagine the hottest summer day you can imagine with 95% humidity. I could hardly imagine it, with all of my 9 years of life spent in central Pennsylvania! We’ve had hot summer days but by evening it would start to cool off and 95% humidity meant it must be raining out there! Quite the climate shock for all of us, meaning my family…my parents, my big sister and my brother.
We had recently arrived in the Philippines in 1955 to spend the year while my dad worked at the nearby University of the Philippines on the island of Luzon.
Our house was very open and raised up off the ground to help circulate the air, but it didn’t feel like helped. Basically, I remember being quite grouchy about being so hot…and I even had to go to school in a uniform!
Mary (9), Jean (18) and Mark (15)I think the hat was just for fun…not part of the uniform!
My grouchy frustration included being unhappy that the only room in our house that was air conditioned was my parents’ bedroom.
My sister, brother and I had to sleep under mosquito netting, which was necessary, but made it feel even hotter at night.
Sort of like this, but picture a single bed. I have no idea at this time how the netting was held up, but I had trouble getting under it and then getting it tucked in without ending up all tangled.
One night early in our stay, when I felt like no one understood me (sort of like how all 9 year olds feel at some point), I decided to sneak into my parents’ bedroom and hide under the bed. They wouldn’t even know I was there and I could have one cool night (ha ha)!
Keep in mind, they had single beds too so I had to choose which one I could sneak under. I quickly decided the one where I could hide the best…happened to be my dad’s bed.
I’m sure the bed was not this close to the floor…but it was snug for me! Anyway, I settled in, feeling so smart! I would have a cool night!
I was sure I had fooled them, and they got ready for bed. They did not say anything about my presence. Of course, my dad is a big guy and he sort of flopped into bed, said goodnight and turned out the light. The whole bed sank down until I was left with little room to roll over. Oh my! Not sure this was a good idea. It was a very long night.
I will say, by morning I was convinced that the air conditioning wasn’t worth it. I tiptoed out of the room and got ready for school.
My parents never said a word about my sleep over (or under!), but I’m sure they realized I had learned a lesson. My frustrations seemed to dissipate as the year went on as I settled into the routine of a 9-year-old in 4th grade. That was enough of a challenge!
My school with some classmates outside.Can you pick me out of the class? With all of us sitting down, you can’t see how much taller I am than most of the girls!
The school year was a challenge for me. Instruction was in English but the students spoke to each in Tagalog so I was left out of their interactions most of the time. I was also painfully shy, so the first half of the year was tough. I will credit the teacher with helping me feel included in school activities. She ended up coming to Penn State in 1961 to get advanced degrees so I got to rekindle our friendship as I got older. She was a very dedicated teacher!
Anyway, nothing like trying to sneak into air conditioning to finally get acclimated to tropical weather. Quite a memory from the past! Enjoy!
Trying to find a sweet healthy snack food is hard when I have to avoid eggs and dairy, so when I found this recipe on Facebook I thought I’d give it a try. The author of this website (https://thevegan8.com/) is Brandi Doming, who also wrote a cookbook by the same name. Her recipes are simple and easy to follow.
Here is the recipe:
The hardest part of this recipe was getting the pan ready! Lining an 8×8″ pan with parchment paper was a real pain! I ended up first trimming the paper to fit the width of the pan, twice, and then trying to anchor it to stay put. I finally grabbed some clothespins to hold it until I could pour in the mixture.
Looks really professional, doesn’t it! Haha!
Here are the dry ingredients:
In the end, I did add the 1/2 cup of white sugar (on the recipe but not in the picture) because I remembered the cocoa powder tended to be a little bitter.
The brown rice crisp cereal is just whole grain “Rice Krispies.” At the store I kept looking for a flake cereal…wrong!
Dry ingredients.Dry ingredients mixed up.
I set this bowl aside and started on the wet ingredients. Here they are:
Wet ingredients.Maple syrup and almond butter…looked pretty disgusting, but eventually smoothed out!
The I added the flaxseed, vanilla and salt to the mixture and heated until bubbling.
Ready to mix into the dry ingredients.
When the wet and dry ingredients were well mixed, I spooned the mixture into the prepared pan. Pressing it down into the corners was important.
After filling the pan, I was able to trim the parchment so it didn’t drag on the shelf of the oven.
After baking for 27 minutes and cooling for 30 minutes I was able to cut it into 8 bars. It didn’t feel like it would stick together if I cut it too small. Then I slid the pan into the refrigerator to finish cooling.
When fully cool, I was able to lift the parchment out of the pan completely and remove the bars. They mostly stuck together and I put each bar in a small zip bag. I really think I’ll eat it like trail mix.
Next time I’ll work harder to pack it tighter in the pan. That might help it stick together better! However, it did taste good! That’s what counts! Enjoy!
One of the first blog posts I wrote (February 12, 2021) was about my homemade oatmeal bread and sticky buns. It is still there in the archive, but for some reason even I can’t make the link work. That means if I want to reference it in another article it can’t be found! Very frustrating.
So, today I’m going to repost the story. This is my go-to recipe when I want a good sandwich bread and it freezes well. Of course, my big batch makes at least 6 loaves of bread, which is beyond the scope of my standard mixer. When I also want to make some sticky buns, a big batch is essential. So, it’s time to bring out the BIG mixer!
Many of you know that each Christmas Bert bakes hundreds of chocolate chip cookies for gifts (this year it was about 140 dozen!); and, if you stop by as they are coming out of the oven you might even get to try a few. Bert has been doing this marathon baking since before we got married…so over 50 years! For many of those years he did it all by hand with a giant wooden spoon, and lots of muscle!
I should probably frame the big spoon!
Several years ago he finally decided to invest in this huge commercial mixer that he moves into the kitchen when it’s time to bake those cookies. Luckily, I get to use the mixer when I’m making a big batch of bread. Most of the time I mix bread in my KitchenAid mixer (I think it’s a 7 qt. bowl). The big mixer has a 12 qt. bowl. It is so slick to mix up a big batch of bread.
The BIG mixer and the standard mixer.
I usually use my Oatmeal Bread recipe. We like it and it feels more nutritious with the oatmeal in it. Since I cannot have eggs or dairy, by baking my own bread I have control over the ingredients. You can use any bread recipe you like to make sticky buns…probably even frozen commercial dough!
Here is my recipe. Not a lot of detailed instructions about mixing up bread, but it’s what I use. If you don’t know how to bake bread at all, there are many cookbooks (like Joy of Cooking) and YouTube videos that will walk you through the process.
The 3-loaf recipe on the left works well in my 7 qt. standard mixer. If your mixer is smaller, just decrease the total water by 1/2 to 1 cup. You will use a little less flour in the end.
Here are the basic ingredients:
The yeast is in the small jar…I store it in the refrigerator.
I use a loose dry yeast and measure it out with measuring spoons. If you want to use packaged yeast, each package is a little less that a tablespoon of yeast. I keep my yeast in the refrigerator in a glass canning jar, while the extra is kept in the freezer. Here are two example packages of the yeast I buy:
Mixing up the Dough
Step 1:
First, I put the rolled oats, sugar and salt into the mixer bowl. Then I pour the boiling water on them, stir them around and let sit for about 10 minutes to cool.
Step 2:
After 10 minutes or so, I use a small bowl to start the yeast…yeast plus 1 cup of warm water and a tablespoon of sugar. Let it sit until dissolved and bubbly (about 5 minutes).
Step 3:
Add cool or room temperature water to the mixer bowl, depending on whether the oatmeal mixture is still pretty hot.
Add oil to the mixer bowl. Using the same measuring cup (now greased with oil) measure out the honey…no sticking!
Step 4:
Begin adding flour about 2 cups at a time until most of the flour is added. Let the mixer run for 8-10 minutes to knead the dough. Add a little flour at a time if the dough is still sticky.
Step 5:
Dump the dough onto a floured table/board and work into a nice smooth bowl.
Step 6:
Place the ball of dough into a large oiled bowl to rise. Cover with a cloth. Let rise until doubled.
Step 7:
When the dough has doubled in size (about an hour), punch the dough down, fold in the sides and turn the ball of dough over so it’s smooth side is up. Let rise another hour.
After 1 hour, ready to punch down.After punching down, ready to rise for another hour.Ready to shape the dough.
Step 8:
Shape the dough…into loaves of bread or rolls or sticky buns. This large batch of dough made 4 pans of sticky buns and 4 loaves of bread!
Shaping the Sticky Buns
First, I prepare the pans by greasing them with butter-flavored Crisco.
Then I sprinkle about 1/4-1/2 cup of brown sugar over the bottom of the pan.
I sprinkle that with ground cinnamon. (You can also add chopped walnuts over the bottom of the pan).
Then I take a chunk of dough and pat it out to a rectangle. This gets sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon also.
Then roll up the rectangle of dough into a log.
Slice the log into 1″ rounds and place cut side down into the prepared pans.
If you have a little roll leftover, just put it in a greased pan for a little loaf of cinnamon bread.
Let the pans rest for about 20 minutes while you preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake about 25 minutes.
Flip the pans of buns directly onto a foil covered board or table top. Use a table knife to lift the pan off the buns.
(Advice: Fill each pan with soapy water immediately and let them soak while you clean up…the “sticky” topping is a real pain to clean up if you let it harden and cool in the pan!)
Shape the Loaves of Bread
Take any extra dough not used for sticky buns and divide into loaf-shaped portions. Place into greased pans.
Let the loaves rise in the pan about 45 minutes. Bake about 40 minutes in a 350 degree oven.
This is a great recipe to stock the freezer. Of course, I always think if the sticky buns are frozen I won’t be so tempted to eat them..haha…a few seconds in the microwave and they are just fine! Enjoy!
Next time I’ll work harder to pack it tighter in the pan. That might help it stick together better! However, it did taste good! That’s what counts! Enjoy!
