How Does My Garden Grow Week 14

June has been a rainy month. The upside to this is that we've had to hand water less than usual, and the garden is growing beautifully. The downside is that the weeds are growing beautifully too. It's time to mulch the garden in earnest.

I ordered some sheets of red mulch for the tomatoes, and I'll be putting them down next weekend. I have read that tomato plants thrive with red mulch, and produce bigger and better tomatoes, so we'll be testing that out. The cost of 8 square sheets was less than $2. If it's effective, I'll get more next year. I plan to reuse the sheets year to year.

It's nice to see small tomatoes on our tomato vines, and equally small peppers on the pepper plants. Our lettuce has doubled in size, and I planted more lettuce seeds yesterday (Mignonette Bronze from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed www.rareseeds.com). We should begin eating lettuce from the garden in a week or so, and I hope to cycle through new lettuce from now through the fall.

Our fingerling potato plants have started to flower, so they will be ready pretty soon. They seem to enjoy their environment. Unlike the sweet potatoes - most of those became fodder for the chipmunks. We've had good luck with our deterrent efforts, but the adorable little pests are still frustrating us. My husband has started to look from the hose to their den holes with a gleam in his eye.

We have wild blackberries growing over into our yard, so my husband harvested a few to munch on this weekend. They were tiny, but delicious.

Since the vegetable garden is in, we've paused on building more garden beds to weed and mulch the flower beds.

In addition to everything we expect to harvest from our garden, we picked up our 2nd week of CSA, and split a subscription to an 11-week fruit share with some friends. We are inundated with veggies. This week we dropped some of our excess at my Mom's, and we're going to have to do some intensive menu planning to use all the greens, but I'm looking forward to that.

Soon we'll be eating, and preserving food from our garden. Summer is flying by, it's hard to believe tomorrow is July.

Thursday Money Tips: Jingle Bells in June Edition

Each Thursday Ms. Moneypenny publishes 5 money tips. Have one you would like to see listed? Post it in the comments, and I'll file it for possible future use.

I know what you are thinking "Moneypenny, toots. Get a grip. It's June 26th. Why on earth would I be thinking about the holidays? Come over here and have a margarita. And shut up about winter."

Good point. It is June 26th. And it's the perfect time to be thinking about the holidays. Why? Because then in December when everyone is mad at the other people in the parking lot at the stores or the Fed Ex guy, or fighting a mall full of screaming kids, you get to kick back with a hot buttered rum and smile. Because those poor planners are suffering, but you've been ready for ages. No last minute dashes to the mall for you, my little early planners - the stockings have long been stuffed.

So, here's 5 tips to get you ready for the holidays, and take all the stress off shopping.

1. Casually watch what catches your give-ees eyes
This goes year round. Want gift ideas? Skip the list and just see what interests them over the year. Then shop accordingly. Someone asking your advice about gardening or stamp collecting? Use that as a basis for a great gift.

2. Summer is sale season
Summer is yard sale season. Estate sale season. And all sorts of sale season. Thinking about getting your nephew a bike for Christmas? Why not refurb a cool bike that cost $20, instead of a new one (which will soon look exactly like the used one) that costs $100.

3. Homemade gifts take time.
I have a rule. If my project gifts aren't done by October 31st, they aren't getting done for the holidays. So I start them in January. I usually complete about 1/3 of my planned gift projects, but those gifts often cannot be found in a store. And a family book of recipes or special scrapbook is a great gift.

4. End of season sales are great times to get things for next year
Got a friend that loves to throw parties? Guess what: those fish-shaped plastic ice cubes and margarita machines are all going on sale now. Stick 'em in a closet for a few months, and voila, they are prepped for next summer. All at a low, low price, of course.

5. Slow and steady wins the race
It's far easier to spend $20 here and $10 there than $1000 in a month. Spread the costs out - it just feels better.

Oh, and don't forget to check that gift stash before you run out and shop in December!

How Does My Garden Grow Weeks 10-13

It's been busy in the MoneyPenny garden the last few weeks.

The garden beds have taken much longer than expected.  Of the 8 we have planned, only 3 are complete.

The tomatoes are in now, as are all the peppers, potatoes, and the fruit trees, bushes and plants. Some of our herbs are coming up, others, like the basil plant, got frostbite and died. So our basil will be late this year, the freshly planted basil is still tiny.

We have 5 more garden beds to go.  Only one or two more will get done this year, and then we'll prep new beds over the next two years while we plant in the existing space. 

We recently made a decision to postpone the rebuild of our small barn in order to finish more of the garden space. Our garden will be smaller than we hoped this year, but a large portion of it will be ready to plant for us next year, and once summer rolls around, we will be able to focus entirely on the barn. We're stopping the barn rebuild after the old building gets knocked down and the foundation gets poured.

My tomatoes have begun to flower in earnest, and there are teeny buds on the pepper plants. Two pumpkins are thriving and blossoming, as well as a couple of melons and acorn squash.  

Only one cucumber survived our planting delays, unfortunately, so it's going to be a light cucumber year.  Same with the beans.  But oh well, there's always next year.  The cabbage plants from my Moms are growing strong, along with some asian cabbage we planted from seed - as long as I keep chasing off the cabbage moths.  

Add to that the rhubarb that seems to be settling in for the long haul, and it will be a productive garden indeed.  

On a fruit front, our apple and cherry tree are turning from sticks into real trees, and the transplanted raspberries and blackberries are budding up nicely.  Our strawberries have not survived the chipmunk infestation we're experiencing, so we're taking measures.  Right now, just some deterrent, but if they keep eating my berries, and digging up my sweet potatoes, and chomping the herbs, they may find themselves in a more precarious position.  

Note to other gardeners: chipmunks are cute in someone else's yard.

We are hoping to begin harvesting a few munchies in just a few short weeks.  It's amazing that July is almost here.  Summer seems to just fly by.

In addition to the vegetable garden, the flower garden is also blooming.  While we worked on our 'garden of eating', we neglected the poor flower beds, which have become infested with weeds, so this past weekend I started working on weeding and mulching the flower beds.  We've had 4 yards of mulch sitting in the driveway for about 7 weeks, but really, you can't rush these things.  It's slow going, but well worth it.  

Something's gotten to our rose bushes, so I'll be taking a few leaves down to the garden center this week for their help and expertise.  I love roses, and I'd hate to lose ours.  

The first garden bed my husband built was for our potatoes and sweet potatoes.  There are three now.  I'll add pictures of it's current state when it stops raining.

An In-Season Meal Plan

This weekend, our CSA (community supported agriculture) farm share started up at our local farm and farmstand, Green Meadows Farm www.gmfarm.com.  For the next 18 weeks, we'll receive in-season veggies for 2 adults for one week, plus pick-our-own flowers and herbs.  We're splitting a fruit share with some couple friends of ours, which kicks off in August.  We'll each get about 2.5 lbs of peaches or apples a week for 11 weeks - in addition to the raspberries and blueberries that Sander and I get as part of our CSA membership.  

Even though we've made efforts over the last year to buy local fruit, vegetables, eggs and milk (all available at the farmstand), this is the official start of our local food transition - ultimately trying to get 30% of our diet locally in 3 years.  That's a big number, 30%.  But this is one of those journeys of a thousand miles that begins with one step, and hopefully goes no further than a couple hundred miles from home.  We're trying to lessen our footprint on the earth, and that means putting some effort into our food - and putting our money, quite literally, where our mouth is.  

We decided to join a CSA this year even though we planted a garden.  Why?  Because it is the first year of gardening in our new home, and we knew that it was unlikely we would get enough planted to provide us with seasonal eating, plus food to preserve.  Given that we're still building permanent garden beds and it's late June, I'd say we made a good call.  Still, between the CSA and what we've planted in our garden, I fully expect to be absolutely inundated with vegetables.  

The challenge of eating in season, with whatever is ripe is that it takes some creativity and thought.  Which is odd, because just a few generations back, in-season eating was the norm. There was no such thing as Whole Foods, and strawberries shipped in from Chile in January. People ate according to what they had at hand.  

But for 2 professionals who spend their days in hermetically sealed office buildings breathing recycled air, and able to buy whatever they feel like at the grocery store, it's a change.  

This first week, our share included the following items:

Kale

Bright Lights Swiss Chard

Turnips

Spinach

Lettuce

Arugula

Sugar Snap Peas 

Oregano

Parsley

Thyme

When we got home, I immediately went to work in the kitchen, while Sander went to work in the yard.  

First, I made salads for lunches.  I can safely make salads for two to three days in advance, so today I prepped for Monday and Tuesday.  I had a cucumber and some tomatoes on hand, and I added in some olives, hot peppers, chick peas, avocado and wild rice to the arugula, snap peas and lettuce from the CSA.  I also hard boiled fresh eggs I'd gotten right from my parent's chickens, 6 miles away.  While the majority of the salad wasn't local, it was a really good start.

While I worked on the salads, I sauteed some vegetable potstickers for lunch with some of the swiss chard.  It was delicious.

About half of the kale and the rest of the swiss chard got chopped up to be added to tonight's dinner - shrimp curry over noodles.  I'll use some of the fresh parsley in there too.

The turnips, spinach, and the rest of the kale, along with the bulk of the snap peas went into the crisper. Tomorrow Sander is the dinner cook on deck, and we're thawing some chicken, and he'll use the rest of the peas.  

The kale will last for a bit, so I'll either add it to a soup over the weekend, or get a little creative, not sure yet.  And the turnips will get roasted with some garlic and be part of Friday night's date night dinner.  The spinach will either get added to salads or sauteed later in the week with dinner.  

As for the rest of the herbs, some of the oregano will get added to a pasta dinner this week, and some will be dried.  We'll probably dry the bulk of the thyme as well.

I didn't have a plan for how to use everything before we went and picked it all up.  I wasn't sure exactly what would be there, honestly.  But when I got home, and headed for the kitchen, it all started to fall into place.  The nice thing about chopping and slicing is that it's a good time to mull over ideas (as long as I continue to pay attention to my fingers, that is). 

This week wasn't hard at all - it was a great start to our local food efforts.  And nothing tastes better than fresh from the garden food.  I don't even like peas, and I'm going to eat the sugar snap peas we picked.  And probably enjoy them too.  

 I have never felt as good as I did about our food supply as I did today.  Mostly I worry about what goes into our mouths, what pesticides were used on it, and whether we really should be eating it. Today I knew for sure we were eating well, and I had hope for the future of our food supply. 

That's not something that can be bought in a store.

Thursday Money Tips: Not-So-Well-Spent Edition

Each Thursday, Ms. Moneypenny provides 5 money tips. Have a tip you'd like to add? Leave a comment and I'll add it to a later edition.

Last week I talked about things that were worth the money to us. Here's a few things I've spent money on that just weren't, and the lessons they have taught me.

1. Wasted food
It happens. No matter how hard I try to stay on top of things, an open jar gets forgotten at the back of the refridgerator, or something rots in the crisper. I don't have an estimate on how much food gets wasted per year in this way, and perhaps I don't want to know. Most of the time it's not much, but tossing that asparagus a couple weeks ago hurt.

Lesson learned: We need to stay on top of what's in need of eating better, and plan our menus around it.

2. Shoes and clothes that don't get worn
I used to be something of a clotheshorse. I'd buy things because they looked good, not necessarily because it fit well. I shudder to think of all the money I wasted over the years on uncomfortable shoes and clothes that weren't practical or wearable. As part of my de-Stuffing efforts, I'm working on getting rid of some of the things that I just don't wear or use. Consignment shops and donation bins are my friend.

Lesson learned: Buy what's comfortable, usable and serves a purpose. Useful and attractive are not mutually exclusive, but buying those shoes just for looks ensures they will sit in the closet so I don't get blisters.

3. Skin care products that don't work
I have sensitive skin. Over the years I've bought about every product on the market. Most of these purchases I've regretted quite a bit, especially the super expensive cleansers and creams. Now I use just a few reasonably priced products that work great.

Lesson learned: Just because it's expensive, doesn't mean it works better. Get samples before sinking big dollars into skin care.

4. 20 yards of grey silk velvet
I bought it years ago. I won't get into why. It's still sitting in a storage bin in the attic. I'm not yet able to part with it.....although I'm getting there. I still have this idea that maybe I'll use it. For something.

Lesson learned: buy project stuff for only identified projects. Don't just buy it because of someday. It will sit in your attic. Or mine, as it were. Need some velvet?

5. A really expensive bag
A couple years ago, I bought a Coach bag. I was consulting, making good money, and I wanted to spoil myself. I bought it on sale, but still. Honestly - I love this thing. Why do I regret it? Because it's a cranberry color, and suede. Good for the fall. When the weather is perfect. A single drop of rain....well, not so much. So for about 10 months of the year, perhaps more, it sits in the closet. Sure, I use it. I love it.

Lesson learned: for 2 months a year, I could have gotten a cheaper bag.

Confession - I had a hard time getting to 5 on this list. Not because I've never bought things I've regretted, but because I had to think about how much money I've spent foolishly.

Honestly, I'd rather not. But it was good for me. Now I just have to figure out what to do with that darn velvet.

Is Grocery Shopping on Amazon.Com Worth It?

Recently, another blog article mentioned ordering groceries on Amazon.com. Aside from the occasional order from Penzey's Spices www.penzeys.com, I rarely consider ordering food online, although I am pondering ordering some grass-fed beef. Having some friends that registered for their wedding at Amazon, and needing to come up with gifts at some point, I wandered over there. And while I was there, I clicked over to the grocery section.

I wasn't impressed. Everything I might order was either more expensive or comparable to the prices I find at BJs for bulk foods. And most items weren't things I purchased regularly - or ever. For example, one boxed item we do keep on hand is Annie's macaroni and cheese. We both like it, and it's an easy, cheap meal.

The price at Amazon was:
Annie's Homegrown Shells & White Cheddar Macaroni & Cheese, 6-Ounce Boxes (Pack of 12)List Price:$26.32Price: $18.80
You Save: $7.52 (28%)

Whereas the last time I bought it at BJs, it was $16.99 for a 12-pack. Even with the free shipping, not such a great deal.

The only feature I found fairly impressive was Subscribe & Save which allows you to receive scheduled deliveries of frequently used products at a 15% discount plus free shipping. If Amazon had items that we used regularly, I might take advantage of this. I could see where it might come in handy for new parents, as the idea of delivered groceries, plus their excellent selection of baby-care items make it a great option.

I was particularly impressed that they carried the entire line of Seventh Generation diapers, wipes, as well as adult-care items. I'm going to have to check some of the local prices for SG paper products to determine if what they offer is a good deal.

All in all, Amazon.com for groceries wasn't a good deal for us. But if you use a lot of the products they sell, and you want them delivered regularly - especially you sleep deprived new parents, Subscribe & Save could be a good deal for you.

As an aside, for parents going the disposables route, consider Seventh Generation products:
http://www.seventhgeneration.com/Natural-Baby.

A Really Great Meatball Recipe

I try to do as much kitchen prep on the weekends as I can, including making meals that have enough portions that I can freeze for later. This saves us time and money on the 'We have no idea what to make for dinner' nights.

Today, since I took a vacation day, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen. One of my favorite multi-meal recipes is meatballs. I've adapted my meatball recipe from The Best Recipe, by the editors of Cooks Illustrated. The cookbook was given to me as a gift, and it's a great cookbook to own. CI is willing to test as many recipes as it takes to get the 'best recipe'.

If you have about 90 minutes, don't mind getting your hands messy, and want to have 6-8 really good meals, depending on the size of your family, this meatball recipe is worth the effort.

This recipe makes 85-90 1" polpette-style meatballs.

You will need:

4 slices of wheat, oat nut, or multi grain bread with the crusts removed

1 cup of buttermilk or 1 cup milk with 1 tbsp vinegar mixed in, let stand for 10 minutes after mixing

2-2.5 lbs ground beef and pork (I use 1/2 and 1/2. Ground beef on it's own doesn't taste as good in this recipe)

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

1 large egg

2 tablespoons parsley or a combination of parsley, oregano and basil

1 teaspoon salt

black pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Get out 2-3 baking sheets, 2 plates, and about 8 paper towels. Place 2 paper towels on each plate.

Note: I don't use too many paper towels in my daily life, but here's an exception I recommend making. You do not want to have to clean regular towels after this process.

Tear the slices of bread into tiny (and I do mean small - about 1/4 to 1/3 size of a female pinky nail is about right) pieces into a large mixing bowl

Once the bread is in bits, pour the buttermilk or milk/vinegar mixture over the bread, mix well and let stand for about 15 minutes. The mixture should resemble a paste when it is done soaking.

Add all the remaining ingredients to the bowl. Hand mix the meatball mixture for 1-2 minutes, until the ingredients are fully incorporated.

Roll the mixture into 1-1.5" balls. Place in rows on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 11-14 minutes. You may need to slice one to ensure they are done.

While the first sheet is baking, roll out the rest of the meatballs. I typically fill about 2 1/4 baking sheets, or about 90 meatballs.

When the meatballs are done, remove immediately from the baking sheet to the paper-towel covered plates. Cover with more paper towels to blot grease. I usually have multiple towel/meatball layers when I'm done.

Let the meatballs cool. Place in baggies or tupperware and freeze. Assume about 5 per person, per serving.

I hope you enjoy this recipe, and all the meals it makes. Coming up next: Fresh bread, the kneadless way.