Friday, May 29, 2009

BBA challenge, Garden

I'm very unmotivated to keep this blog up. Most likely because I have blogs elsewhere.

BBA
Made the Anadama bread last weekend. Photos forthcoming. In the greatest putz move yet, I forgot to oil the bread pan before I put the loaf in. So, when trying to take out the loaf...well, I don't need to tell you. It's a shame because it was the most gorgeous loaf of bread I've made. Nice sized holes evenly spaced, a crunchy, caramelized crust. Only half of it sorta stayed in the pan when I pulled it out. :/
Anadama bread totally rocks it when you toast it and put a schmear of peanut butter on it.

I was going to make bagels this weekend and just skip the Greek celebration bread, but realized that I'm missing 2 vital ingredients in bagel making: high gluten flour and non-diastatic malt powder. Sure, sure--he says that they are optional but...uh, no. This is not optional for a true bagel and I aim to make a true bagel.

So, a jaunt over to the King Arthur's site and purchased said ingredients. And maybe about $50 in other things that I just simply had to have. Like a nice spoon set for measuring spices.

I'll flip through the book tonight to see what grabs my attention and go from there. I've decided that I'm definitely not going to bake all the recipes. I'll bake bread weekly, but I just don't really want to bake bread that I don't really want to eat. That seems foolish.

Garden
I've now got everything I need (well, everything I can have) for the garden. This weekend I put out : 3 basil, 1 marjoram plant, 2 French tarragon, 1 chive into the herb and general garden. In the general garden, I also planted another sauce tomato plant, planted more carrots (NONE of my carrots have come up! gah! It may just be a bad package of seeds? I don't know. If nothing comes from this crop, I'll wait until late summer and try another type of carrot I have for fall harvest), 1 rainbow chard plant, 1 rainbow chard seed, kale seeds, a whole square of breakfast radish, 1 square of New Zealand spinach seeds, 6 bush bean plants.

Against impulse, I've decided to keep my bazillion pepper plants and eggplant inside for at least another 2-3 weeks. The weather right now is GLORIOUS, but that could be a lark for Seattle. Nothing gets truly summer-time until 4th of July. I've got 2 red sweet pepper plants, an Anaheim chili plant, a Thai pepper plant, and somehow a habenero plant got snuck into my cart. I actually don't need 2 plants that are THAT hot---especially because the Thai dragon plant produces HUNDREDS of peppers. I guess we'll see. I can always give away hot peppers..at least I hope. I'm expecting my kitchen will become filled with dried chili peppers hanging everywhere.

Picked up a zucchini plant, but now I'm not so sure that I actually want to plant it. :( It's a "regular" zucchini plant and I've now got 2 hybrid plants for containers that are growing strong in the windowsill. I'd actually almost prefer to plant the hybrids than the regular zuchh. I didn't really realize how fast zucchini plants would grow or that I could have just started it from seed without the transplant. I hate to waste the plant, but 2-3 plants are going to yield more zucchini than I am prepared to handle. Even with the 2 hybrids, I'm most likely going to figure out ways to prepare zucchini blossoms so I don't' make myself sick. Eh, maybe a nice neighbor will take the regular zucchini off my hands.

So, after this all goes in, I'll wait until the mesculun (which desperately needs to be thinned now. It's out of control with the warm weather we've been having) bolts and I've got some compact romaine lettuce seeds I can put in there. I'm looking for poc choi seeds as well. It looks like I'll have 2 remaining squares after that and...I'm not sure. Maybe I'll shove some green onions in there.

The micro tom plant is setting fruit. 2 itty bittsy fruit so far. I'm astounded how tiny they are...literally pea-sized. The plant itself doesn't seem so happy. I'm not sure what it needs.

Home
I spent the weekend completely re-arranging the kitchen cabinets and actually organizing my pantry. I'm so happy with the pantry right now that Sunday I woke up, placed a chair in front of my pantry, and just looked at how marvelous it all was. Hooray for buying containers for all my grains and rice and baking supplies and labeling them! I love it! I can actually FIND things again! (And I found out I have like 8 cans of coconut milk. oops.) I actually need a couple MORE containers for things that I'm currently out of. I had some older containers that I'm still using, but I gotta say--I'm a fan of my new square containers over the round ones.

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