Our house is in great need of repair; we have an awesome little 1800's farm house. I feel overwhelmed working on the inside, so I have taken to working on the yard. My first project of the spring was to take out 17'x17' portion of the front lawn and put in a vegetable garden. To my surprise I finished the day I started and all ready have my plants in the ground! My desire to have the vegetable garden stemmed from my friend Timothee giving me a pressure cooker last summer. I went canning crazy, I sent Matthew all over looking for produce. Peaches and strawberries from Scott's, tomatoes and peppers from Urban Oaks and various Farmer's Markets. The best thing is to find a place that will save you seconds. We got bushels of peaches at bargain basement prices, we had enough peach marmalade to last the winter and then some. So I'm hoping to get a lot out of our garden. I planted cucumbers, eggplants, summer squash, pole beans, bush beans, peas and countless tomatoes. Now the waiting begins, other then watering, composting and some weeding there isn't much to do.
Although the marmalade was very tasty the best thing I made was a mole sauce. It was far from traditional moles, but so delicious. I made chili all through the winter with the sauce as the base. The sauce ended up being very versatile and worked with turkey, beef, tempeh and beans. I used dark purple brandywine tomatoes and these yummy chocolate habaneros. I thought it was clever using both these varieties because they already had a chocolate hint to them. I didn't have classic Mexican chocolate so I used Green & Black organic cocoa powder and it sure did the trick!!! This was one of those recipes I just winged and I hope I can recreate it this year. I will be sure to take plenty of notes and write a recipe.
Now to the rest of the yard. I don't have picture of the vegetable patch yet, so my flowers will have to do for now!!
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