Thanksgiving Leftovers = Sweet Potato Waffles

Yesterday we went to my aunt’s for Thanksgiving. Because I had a lot from the CSA, I brought sweet potato casserole and kale. My hubby made a shoofly pie and a maple pumpkin pie – both very good, but everyone was just totally stuffed by the time dessert came around, so I’ll be sharing them again tonight for a dinner with family friends at my parents’ house. Now enjoy some largely measurement-free recipes.

maple pumkin pie and shoofly pie made by my hubby

kale

Big Leaf Kale, Southern Style

1. Fill a giant pot with water.
2. Add twice-washed kale.
3. Add bacon. Best if you fry it up first. Feel free to dump in the grease.
4. I also add some ham-flavored soup seasoning.
5. Add a bit of salt (not too much, since the bacon and ham flavored stuff have that mostly covered) and pepper to taste.
6. Add a cup or so of vinegar and/or sherry wine. You can serve it with more after it’s cooked.
7. Cover and bring just to a boil.
8. Lower temp and simmer for as long as you like. I prefer to let the leaves not get totally wilted, but do whatever you like. I let mine sit simmering for about 3 hours yesterday.
9. Serve plain or with cider vinegar or white balsamic vinegar.

Sweet Potato Waffles

As noted above, I made sweet potato casserole (recipe linked above, too). My aunt also made candied yams, so we both ended up with a good amount of sweet potato-y leftovers. I will be bringing them to the family dinner tonight, but I wanted to use SOME beforehand because there are a lot. I based my recipe off of this one for pumpkin waffles. I made a bunch and will be freezing the extras to pop in the toaster in the AM next week. I serve my waffles with honey, but you can use whatever syrup you want.

2 1/3 c Bisquick (or make your own)
1 1/2 c milk
1/4 c vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 c mashed sweet potato mix*

* I used sweet potato casserole, so it already had milk and butter mixed in. I scooped in the topping and everything for some crunchy bits in the waffles (but you could leave them out) – just make sure it gets mixed well. If you’re using candied yams, I’d mash them up with a little milk before mixing them in and add some pumpkin pie-type spice if it wasn’t already in the dish. If you’re just using fresh or canned sweet potatoes, cook them then mash them with some cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, brown sugar, and milk to taste. Depending on the consistency of your sweet potato mash, you may need to add more or less milk in to get it to the right consistency.

Growing sweet potatoes in the compost bin

…accidentally.

Last weekend I actually harvested some compost from the bin because it was totally full. I’m saving it for spring (I put it in an old storage container in the garage), but I still have a hard time mushing everything down after emptying out the bottom (I really need to get a compost turner or something). So this weekend while I was out I made a point to go and try to turn and mix the compost to get some more room for adding food waste over the winter (I don’t add as much food during the summer because it gets SO full with yard waste, plus I can’t use my nifty pre-storage container because if you forget about it outside for like a day when it’s hot, it gets NASTY, which kind of negates the point of it. I use it in the winter, though).

Anyway…as I’m turning things, the first thing I notice is the plants I have composted that WILL NOT DIE. Those would be the lemon grass and spike plants. Way to make me feel guilty for composting you, guys. Thanks.

compost, damn you!

So after that I’m rooting around mixing things up and I pull up two tubers. Hm, I think. They look like they’re attached to the decorative sweet potato vine that practically overtook my deck all summer. I figure meh, maybe I can save the tubers and use them next year or something. They’d be hard to compost anyway. So I stuff them in a pot nearby that has some soil in it to deal with later. As I keep digging I find another bigger one and realize DUH – it’s a sweet potato vine. They’re sweet potatoes! They were not there when I threw the vine in (at least if they were, they were tiny), so that means they’ve grown while in there.

sweet potato from annual sweet potato vine

According to this thread on GardenWeb, they are edible. I’m kind of tempted to try it. I am already overrun with sweet potatoes though. I got a few from my mom and then we got like a TON from the CSA last week (I forgot to take pics). They keep forever, but I have nowhere to keep them in my small kitchen/house, so I’m now on the lookout for a very specifically-sized basket or something so I have a place to keep them. I basically have a whole CSA box full, which is a lot, trust me.

So good news, folks: Apparently you can grow potatoes in your compost bin! Who knew?

This post is dedicated to the memory of Frank, who was taken from us recently after a long battle with fin rot. We’ll miss ya, buddy.

Bloom Day – November 2009

First off, thanks for hosting, May Dreams Gardens! A week makes a big difference. Last Saturday it was just under 70° and I spent the day outside planting blubs and my hubby cut up the leaves in the yard. But it poured all last week (thanks to the remnants of a hurricane) so now it’s cold, muggy, and gross outside—oh and the ground is covered in leaves again.

The above shot was taken after we mowed. But because of all the digusting weather, we couldn’t have our shed delivered (hopefully next week – it’s going where the white square of rocks is) and it pretty much looks like the below pic again…even though this pic was taken right BEFORE we mowed last weekend. sigh.

Some of the below shots are from last weekend, some are from today. All the same stuff is still in bloom, it is just much soggier this week.

ice plant among the leaves

leaf among the phlox

helenium with color-coordinated insects

violas - the pansies I've planted in the front for the winter echo these colors.

Fordhook climbing nasturtium - going crazy!

Pansies are now by the front steps, but the gazania & dusty miller still looked good, so I stuffed it in a pot. (That's opal basil to the left.)

Think this sedum can survive the winter in a coconut liner thingy?? (zone 7)

all the bulbs I planted last weekend. yay spring!

some memories of summer w/my bachelor buttons

Happy bloom day, everyone! This is when it starts to get interesting. I’ll probably still have blooms in December (we usually don’t get really cold until January or so), but they’ll surely be fewer and scragglier.

Winter CSA

Winter CSA Week 1

On Thursday I picked up the first box of our winter CSA membership. This one was more expensive since it runs from November to approximately March, but my friend and I decided to try it out for a year to see how it’ll work out. So far, so good!

- Peach Mama Peppers – Haven’t tried any yet, but they’re beautiful! The pic makes them look orange, but they actually are a gorgeous peach color.
- Kale – I love kale, and I’m going to try kale chips at some point next week. I think I’m going to have to ger creative with this if we get a lot, bc my hubby isn’t a big fan. If I get too much, I can always pawn it off on my mom. My dad loves kale – specifically the kale my Mom Mom used to make (add bacon/ham hock and boil/simmer for evvver), but any kale is good kale to him
- Salad Mix – I actually got less than half of this because I didn’t realize that the bottom of the bag was the radishes when I was splitting things up (pictured above is only what I took). Very good tho – ate it that night!
- Radishes – I love radishes in salads or roasted (salt, pepper, olive oil, oven until toasty). Again though, hubby is not a fan.
- Sweet Potatoes – always a winner! These seem perfect for fries. It was actually a very full small brown paper bag. What you see is prob only 1/4 of the total – I took less because my mom had just given me a big bag of large sweet potatoes.
- Bell Peppers – I don’t like them and my hubby likes them but doesn’t eat them much, so I gave them all to my CSA-mate.

All in all, a great start for the winter CSA! It’ll be interesting to see what we get through the winter. Hopefully I don’t have to bog my hubby down in greens, which I like but he can only handle so much of.

Fresh things I still have

I still have some fresh veggies.

HERBS (need to dry some more!):
•The genoa basil is kind of sort of hanging on. the opal basil still looks pretty good.
•The sage looks OK, but isn’t really growing any more. Should be back next year, though.
•The rosemary is mostly evergreen, so that’s cool.
•The lemon thyme is still nice and lush.

VEGGIES:
I pulled all the tomato plants, but I rescued some green tomatoes. Some of those are turning quite nicely. Please also note in the picture below how I TOTALLY ON ACCIDENT color coordinated things. How awesome am I? Also note that I can only claim the tiny tomatoes on the left. The apples, red tomatoes, and beet are all from good ol’ WalMart.

tomatoes etc.

Peppers! The pepper plants still need to be pulled (just didn’t feel like it last weekend). They still have flowers and small peppers, but they’ll never reach maturity. I did pick a LOT of jalapeños last weekend. I may slice up some of them and add them to my freezer bag of peppers for winter salsa, but I’ve also been letting a lot of them dry. They’re kind of pretty to me – I want to figure out how to make a pepper string to keep in the kitchen somewhere. (Apparently that’s called a ristra? And wow, they look super hard to make (scroll down)).

Not pictured: a bunch of pimento peppers

Do you still have any edibles going strong (or well, going at all) in your garden?

Rainbows! DOUBLE Rainbows!!

I’m actually kind of glad I left work a bit late because of a meeting with my boss. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I saw a rainbow. When I looked harder, I saw another! Thankfully, I had randomly thrown my camera in my purse this morning. Luck!

I stopped and snapped a few in the business park, and then as I was leaving I noticed a few cars pulled over by the cornfields outside the park looking and taking pictures, so I pulled over as well. I kind of love that after a busy Thursday at work, there were still people who pulled over together by a cornfield to look at a rainbow. Makes me a little verklempt, actually (and believe me, I hate myself for that). Even those that didn’t stop got a gorgeous show. Unfortunately I was driving away from it to go home, but it was still gorgeous.

I can’t decide in the pics below if I like the “enhanced” or the non-enhanced ones better. I should prob do some actual Photoshoppery to enhance them better (I just used the auto thingy in iPhoto), and the enhanced is prob more close to how I saw them, but they’re both so different (the bluer ones are the enhanced versions). What do you think?

in the business park

Total karma on the road line lining up with the end of the rainbow. I win!

This guy had a great view (taken while driving over the bridge)

Umm…I still have to do all those things.

You know all the stuff that I mentioned I had to do before it gets cold in this post? I still have to do all of them. Well, not *entirely* true—I did pull up the big gigantic zinnia, bringing in a bunch of blooms before sending it on its way into the woods. I’m hoping maybe it’ll reseed next year randomly there? A girl can dream. The nice thing about cut zinnias is that you can but them when they’ve just barely started blooming and they’ll still finish and be pretty.

Proof that I pulled the zinnia. Prob should have taken a pic of these before they got all wilty, huh?

But ummm besides that, I really haven’t done anything outside. We’re even still waiting for the shed moving to be scheduled (Note to self: take pic of the yard before it gets moved for reference). The gravel pad is done, but it’s still not moved.

I know, I know. Alice is ashamed at our lack of progress.

Perhaps this weekend. We have some tentative plans (including organizing the sheds if we move the new one on Friday), but I could prob fit in a few garden tasks. Siiiigh.

Question: Do you plant your decorative mums each year or treat them as annuals? I can’t decide what to do. I want to plant them, but I don’t really have a ton of space for mums. I have 4 very small ones and 2 slightly bigger ones to think about. hmmmm.

I pick up the first CSA delivery of the fall/winter season tomorrow! Will report back.

Hank is ambiguous about our lack of progress.

To Do (Before It Gets Too Cold)

Sooooo I still have some stuff to do before it gets too cold. It may or may not happen next weekend (Halloween), but maybe I’ll feel ambitious after work this week.

• Plant the rest of my coneflowers. I had been waiting for the new garden we’re planning on, but that may or may not happen before it gets too cold. So I just need to find them a home. I already waited too long on 2 hostas, so hopefully they make it through the winter and come back in the spring.
• Pull up the gazanias in the front by the steps and replace them with the rest of the pansies I bought today. I actually planned out my pansies better this year and it looks nice. Pics TK.
• Pull up the rest of the stuff in the veggie garden (including the zinnias pictured in this post) and harvest the rest of the jalapeños.
• Get seeds from the pink gerber daisy if I can before trashing it. Two gerber daisies, the gazanias, and a few petunias are the only annuals left aside from the veggie garden.
• Plant bulbs! Crap. I keep forgetting. I actually had to come back and edit this (future)post when I remembered! I have 15 Apeldoorn’s Elite tulips, 15 Daydream tulips (my tulips didn’t do great this spring, so I wanted to replace them/freshen them up), 20 pickwick crocus (I like mine but don’t have very many, and I may have lost some when I planted other things nearby), and 15 Meleagris Mixed Fritallaria (I saw them and they looked neat). No daffodils because they were still OK last year and I have enough. I kind of don’t know where to plant them – probably most will go in the triangle garden, maybe a few in the front. It’s hard because I want to be able to plant them and leave them, but not have an empty ugly spot after they’re done. hmm.

I think that’s about it. Today I dumped some more annuals that were just done, did a few pots of pansies and violas, and potted up the bonsai azalea for the winter.

Hopefully, we’ll be finally moving our shed to our house, too – which is more exciting than you know! It’s still at my in-laws’ – we bought it when we were living there because storage costs were crazy and the in-laws suggested we just get a shed and keep it there instead. Our house already had a shed (a small crappy one), so we’ve procrastinated on bringing it over. But we really need to now, so I think it’s finally coming. Which means I can organize my gardening stuff *much* better in the old crappy shed now – the new nice one that’s being moved will be for actual storage (we don’t really have any storage inside the house). Yay!

THe Hibiscus’s Last Hurrah

The Mango Mist hibiscus is now officially in for the winter, but it gave me more blooms at one time right before coming in than it did all summer long. Gorgeous! I really hope it makes it through the winter.

Also, an official goodbye to our resident spider. He’s lived by the deck door all summer long. I left him there, figuring maybe he’d keep some bugs from coming in. Every night he comes out for dinner, and every day he goes back into the siding somewhere and hides. Before long, I guess he’s done for.

our friendly spider

And lastly, excuse the blurry pic, but can anyone ID this weed? It’s pretty.

[Pics from] Bloom Day – October 2009

It’s been raining since Thursday! ughhh. On Thursday/Bloom Day, I actually had to take a (rainy, and cold) trip to Baltimore for work. So I never got around to doing a post, but I did take some pics that day when I got home. And…it’s STILL raining on Sunday.

I really like how some of these turned out – the rain makes everything look different. The mums look like candy to me.

I love how the mums get a purple tinge after a while

Rudbeckia cappucino

mutant rudbeckia cappucino

furry rudbeckia

gazania - these will be replaced will pansies soon

helenium - w/ nasturtium in the background

icy-looking ice plant

nasturtium - *finally* starting to actually climb a bit on the jessamine's trellis. Did a good job of covering up ugly rose foliage, though. Will do that again next year.

Hibiscus is still blooming a ton - but it needs to be brought inside soon. What should I do to bring it in - prune it? Does it need a lot of sun? Help!

Finally got a couple more blooms from this gerber daisy - love it! How do I save seeds from it? I'd love to have it again next year.