Rose Petal Vinegar

A few weeks ago I had a longing to do some preserving. It was a stunningly beautiful summer day, and I suppose I felt inclined to capture it somehow, to bottle it up. I also had a particularly clingy  one year old, and knew that any elaborate recipes, or anything that involved boiling and timing of any kind was liable to end in frustration. And that’s when I decided to make rose petal vinegar.

Little R rambled happily about outside (well, mostly happy) as I picked pink petals from the wild roses that grow around our property. I stuffed them in a jar, pausing occasionally to hold it up to my nose and inhale the sweet scent. When I was done picking I filled the jar with apple cider vinegar and covered it with plastic wrap. (I gather with vinegar you want to avoid metal lids.)

And that was that. I let the vinegar sit for a few weeks. It took on a rosy hue. Then I strained the vinegar and decanted it into a pretty glass jar with a cork. The scent of the roses is still quite strong, even through the vinegar. You can use this for all manner of things but so far I’ve just used it diluted as a hair rinse.

And now the roses are over, and I still have a bit of their sweet perfume bottled away.

Garden Pizza

I love creating meals from the garden. It gives me such pleasure to survey what is growing, and then decide how I can use it in a meal. I generally like cooking anyway, but we all have our days when it seems slightly depressing that ANOTHER meal needs making. Fortunately, using garden produce excites me enough, and becomes enough of a “creative” act to snap me out of that.

Last night I made a quick pizza. I used the garlic scape pesto as a sauce. I then featured the first tiny yellow zucchini and some zucchini flowers. I must say, I had a very brief moment of hesitation before I picked all the little growing zucchini. But it was oh so brief, because I know that in a month we will be unable to cope with ALL THE ZUCCHINI.

I tossed on some onion and some shredded swiss chard. The swiss chard is doing marvellously, as it seems the leaf miners are not at all an issue later in the season. So we find ourselves with an abundance of chard and I’m always trying to shoe-horn it in to meals. Bit of feta, bit of old cheddar. And just when the pizza came out of the oven I laid on some basil leaves.

Satisfying to make, and satisfying to eat!

U-Pick Strawberries

I’ve been wanting to pick strawberries for years but the season somehow always rushed passed before I had a chance. This year I finally made it happen and went picking not once, but twice!

So the freezer is quite packed with frozen strawberries. I crushed a few to make a batch of jam but decided to freeze those as well so I can get to the jam making on a rainy day. Little R has consumed a large number of berries (truly, they must be a wonderful thing to discover) and the chicks have had their share of the overripe and hulls.

Now I’m waiting for other u-picks to open as the season for blueberries, raspberries, peaches and apples arrives! Hope you get a chance to pick your own too!

(“Have a strawberry”)

A Taste of Garlic

The garlic we planted last fall is not ready for harvest, but we are none the less enjoying a little taste in the form of garlic scapes. We’ve been adding them to various dishes but to use up the huge tangled pile I made some garlic scape pesto! Seems like garlic scape pesto is on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days. Goole it and you’ll find a recipe. I used toasted almonds, olive oil, parmesan and lemon juice without any measuring. Yum. Nice to have a little garlicky taste of what’s to come!

Yes Peas! (and other stuff from the garden)

Today, a little look at a few things in the garden.

Peas. Looking good for a healthy crop!

Kale! Oh kale. There was a time when I thought kale was mainly for guinea pigs. But I have learned to appreciate it as a wonderful leaf veg. I started these plants in the cold frame and they all did spectacularly, so I’m very pleased. And the harvest has begun!

After several years of wondering why my swiss chard would always “dry up” I’ve discovered that it is due to vile little leaf-minors. I also started swiss chard in the cold frame and it was doing do well only to be struck down. No pictures of this, it just looks sad. We have another row or two just coming up but I’m not sure there is anything we can do to avoid a similar plight. I’ll look into it some more and if not perhaps we can just pick it all as micro greens.

Beets. I have been thinning these this week and we’ve been eating the thinnings. A few salads, and a baby beet green pizza. Still a bit more to do today.

And garlic scapes. They just look fun, don’t they.

I really enjoy thinking about what is out there when I’m trying to plan a meal, and see how much of our own stuff I can use. Of course, this gets easier and easier, but there is something so satisfying about the relatively early harvest.

Checking in with the Chicks

(some of the chicks in a small box for playtime with Little R)

The chicks have been here for almost three weeks. Seems like longer, though not in a bad way! It is interesting to watch them grow and change, and to begin to feel a little more comfortable with chick care. They are not very tame – perhaps I haven’t spent enough time holding them, but I also didn’t want to stress them, so I’ll just let things take their course.

The older chick is, I’m pretty certain, a rooster. I am calling him Ernest. He seems very gentle, if a little daft. Looks a little confused, or stunned, or just very earnest. The others still look to him as a mother hen, trying to hide under him, which doesn’t seem to bother him.

Ernest, trying to hide.

Another Barred Rock rooster (?), as yet un-named. The rooster count is growing…

We have a tiny chick that doesn’t seem to be growing (see bottom left of first photo), though otherwise seems energetic and healthy. It does tend to get run over if there is excitement but this doesn’t seem to be causing him/her any harm, and there have been times when this little one has been the first to grab a treat. Not sure what to expect of this tiny fellow. It’s impossible not to be rooting for him/her, although I have a sneaking suspicion that it may be a rooster, or indeed may fail to thrive in the end, so I’m trying not to get overly attached.

Tiny chick and Black Australorp?

We are also pretty sure that one of our Plymouth Barred Rocks is actually a Black Australorp. It’s legs are darker, and feathers are coming in completely black, unlike the others, and just looks different. A bit of online research has me pretty convinced. No matter. Hope it’s a hen!

The chicks have been outside a few times. We don’t have a perfect arrangement for this, but if I take them out in shifts and plan to keep a very close watch it’s OK. They love it.

In the box inside I’ve been enjoying trying them on different foods and watching the excitement. Wild strawberries, herbs, bugs, yogurt, cooked egg, a spoonful of leftover porridge…. And today, for a sweet-smelling box, I strew some lavender springs about in their freshly changed wood chips.

 And the wood for the coop is bought, and it now remains to be seen how quickly we can build it. I’m sure it will end up being mainly G but Little R and I will do our best to help out.

Peep peep!

Father’s Day Strawberries

Today I made use of the summer’s first strawberries for Strawberry Shortcake (of sorts) on a Father’s Day Picnic. We made our own whipped cream by shaking it in a jar when we reached our destination. Quite lovely and enjoyed by all. But  you do have to eat quickly and remain constantly on guard to defend yourself from “picnic” covered hands when Little R is involved. Ah, but this is surely life with a child. And one I hope G is enjoying.

Happy Father’s Day to my dear husband; a wonderful father.

Marsh Greens and Wild Strawberries

On Sunday we met a man with a bucket on the beach who told us he was going to get some marsh greens for lunch. This immediately piqued my interested because I had checked the little bit of beach we frequent for edible plants and found none. I should have quizzed him, I suppose, but instead I let him get on his way and quietly watched him walk along the beach so as to be sure to know where I should look! The next day, armed with field guide to foraging, I set off before lunch to see what I could find. We took a short cut through a kind neighbours field and the moment I stepped onto the beach I found the plant I was looking for – must be the easiest bit of foraging ever!

Marsh greens, predictably, are known by many names. Goose tongue greens, seaside plantain among others. I found the most info online by looking for goose tongue greens. I was careful to follow advice to take only part of the plant, and not pull it by its roots, so it will be able to grow again.

Once home with the greens I set about deciding what to do with them. Most people seemed to recommend eating them with vinegar, as a side dish. I don’t tend to cook many side dishes. Maybe it’s being vegetarian, or maybe I just prefer on dish kind of meals. Anyway, my mind went “vinegar…..balsamic vinegar…strawberries” (perhaps a bit of a leap for some, but I love strawberries with balsamic vinegar) so Little R and I went round the outside of the house picking wild strawberries from the grass. I made a little collection and Little R ate hers.

I then had three ingredients on which to build a meal so I decided to throw together a pasta salad. It went something like this:

caramelized onion (done with balsamic and maple syrup)

noodles

feta cheese

marsh greens, boiled lightly

wild strawberries

in a dressing of olive oil with more balsamic vinegar and syrup and pepper

And then we ate it all up. Delicious. I will definitely be going back for more marsh greens!

Good Cheer Chickens

The newest excitement at Good Cheer is a box of cheeping chicks. 10 in all: 6 Plymouth Barred Rock and 4 Silver Laced Wyandottes. I have to say that obtaining the chicks was not a positive experience but now that they are home and doing well it’s great. Five of the chicks were “day-old” when we got them on Monday evening, four were a few days old and one…well, one is probably about two weeks, and looking very awkward. The others look a this bigger chick as a mother, following it about and ducking underneath, looking for a warm spot. They are, of course, unbearably cute. (though I was not prepared for just how dead a sleeping chick can look!)

We are hoping a good number of these chicks will turn out to be hens, and as such will go on to give us eggs! The roosters…their fate is not entirely decided, but one option is that after a short, but hopefully very good, life with us, they will go on to give us chicken pot pie. I say “us”, though as I haven’t eaten chicken in many years, it will likely be for Little R and G.

But I won’t talk more about their end just yet, since they are only beginning, and it is time to enjoy their fluffy cuteness. (again, oh so “Sofs”)

And it is also time to build a chicken coop!

(And just in case you are wondering, the box shown is not their home, just a box to hold a few for a visit with Little R.)

From the Garden

I fully intended to share a post about the results of the cold-frame, and our first harvest (which was ages ago!), but what with one thing and another (and then another) I never got around to it. But a few days ago I snapped some photos of a basket full of greens I was picking for lunch. We’ve been eating salads daily. They are made up of mesclun, baby swiss chard, kale thinning, radishes, wild sorrel and, of course, chives. We have an accidental red cabbage plant left over from last year that is flowering, so I’ve also been tossing in the purple buds, which make a nice touch.

I’ve been seeing the value of successive planting and am trying to keep up with that so that when one row of mesclun/lettuce gets old I’ve got another just coming into its prime.  Which reminds me, I should sow another row today!

The cold frames were great, though they have not be necessary for quite some time. I used them mainly for the greens I mention above, though I also started some kale plants which have now been planted out.

The rest of the garden is planted and I’m looking forward to the coming season.