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Garden update!

After a spring/summer where I failed to get anything started — started seeds inside too late, started seeds outside before the garden turned on the water after the winter (although the weather was definitely warm enough for maybe a month)… I have progress!

A native flower I grew from seed on my fire escape is blooming. It’s an aster — heartleaf aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium), I think. There’s a taller woodier volunteer aster elsewhere. Nearby native violets have buds.

I planted strawberries last week. All but one are coming up now. The variety is “Honeoye”, apparently named after a small town in upstate New York. They’re cold-tolerant, developed at Cornell, so they should easily survive the winters here. I originally wanted to plant native strawberries (Fragaria virginiana), but the cultivated strawberries have much bigger berries.

Landrace fava beans are coming up. These are supposed to be more heat- and drought-tolerant than normal favas, but still be good for cooler weather. I’m hoping they’ll survive over the winter for an early spring harvest!

Horseradish is coming up. They (apparently) sprout readily from roots or even root chunks, so I just bought one from the grocery store. I intend to eat the leaves, not the roots. Horseradish is a perennial and vigorous, so hopefully it doesn’t mind the shade.

(Foreground and fuzzy) Oland brown beans. I read that these are both shade-tolerant and prefer cooler weather (perfect for fall/spring planting here) and I actually already had them! I had previously bought them from Baer’s Best Beans for eating. These are just starting to vine.

In the foreground are various green onions, many planted from grocery store green onion bottoms. In the back are clumps of arugula and kale (not mine, I think spread from the neighbor’s plot).

My plot is dry (soil doesn’t seem to retain moisture well, despite adding a fair amount of compost) and shady. The summers are fairly hot (90-95° regularly, although humid), and the winters fairly cold (usually gets down to ~10° F at least once).

I’ve had trouble starting seeds, so I’ve been trying to pick perennials to plant.

An impressive squash or cucumber from 2 or 3 plots down is climbing on the fence, on the tree, and now turning back from where it came.

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Chocolate cheesecake snack

  • 8 oz (1 pack) cream cheese (room temperature, or microwave briefly to warm)
  • 1/4 cup cocoa powder
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • pinch instant espresso
  • 2 eggs
  1. Combine the cream cheese and dry ingredients.
  2. Add eggs one by one.
  3. Bake ~20 min at 350°F.
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Appliance advertising dinner

J and I went to a free advertising dinner for an appliance company. It was a neat experience. J described it as like being at an in-person infomercial. They did go a little too heavy on the advertising. I mean, I know that was the point, but they made both reasonable and laughable claims about their products (“this $10k fridge will pay for itself in reduced food waste”).

The whole showroom is like a bunch of luxury kitchens smooshed together. I enjoyed looking at all the details chosen for the different areas (e.g. yellow ceramic countertop with crackle glaze).

Interestingly, they use the actual products in the showroom to make the food for these events. I’m used to the appliances not actually being hooked up.

Vegetarian version was roast oyster mushrooms instead of scallop.

Vegetarian version was sad… Veggie sides were also sad.

This cupcake thing was really good! And the whipped cream was super rich.

They also gave us a lot of alcohol.

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The new mixing bowl already broke :(

I was making popcorn in the microwave in the mixing bowl I found and it cracked in half 🙁 Sometimes if the popcorn doesn’t mix itself well (the popping causes the kernels to mix themselves) because of the bowl shape, etc, it can cause a hot spot. I guess the hot spot was too much for this bowl and it broke. Maybe it had been dropped before…

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Freebie plants!

Last year I got a couple BIG batches of free bulbs from someone on Trash Nothing, a give-away site similar to Facebook Marketplace or Freecycle.

Tulips, daffodils, grape hyacinth

Paperwhites (last winter)

I planted them in my local tree square. Some are starting to come up!

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Community garden photos from last year

August of last year. Looking fairly lush. I actually had a fair bit more growth later in the season, even pretty late into the fall. The back fence was covered in vines — both my beans and other people’s veggies.

Front to back starting on the left side, I have basil, a pepper (hidden, gifted by a fellow gardener!), teeny baby onions, cherokee purple tomato (gifted by a fellow gardener!), cucumbers, and squash and stuff (volunteer brassica) at the back

Off to the right side are a yew (bush-like) and a box elder (small tree). Plus there’s a full-grown zelkova tree above the benches to the far right. So the plot isn’t too too sunny, especially that front right corner. The spot is too shady for veggies, so I’ve started putting some shade-tolerant native plants (inland sea oats, and volunteer violet transplants) in that corner.

I think the soil is really bad, too. I need to mix more compost in. I was supposed to do that over the winter, but time got away from me. Still planning on going some prep before planting seeds for this upcoming year.

I harvested a couple peppers off of this plant. They weren’t spicy at all. The plant was kindly gifted to me by a fellow gardener. She got the seed from a coworker.

Last harvest of the year (November). There were several pods, more than shown here. I had these beans in soup. I also got a cucumber (not totally sure it was mine. The vines on the fence were all jumbled together. I definitely had planted a cucumber, though), basil, and some other odds and ends.

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Shirt sewing project

I tried to start another sewing project over the holiday break after finishing the knitting needle holder. Clothes are always so much harder, though, and I didn’t get too far.

I wanted to use one of these nice fabrics from my mom’s collection.

I was looking at either making this kind of shirt (partial placket, no-button cuffs, probably replacing collar with mandarin or faced crew collar, e.g. a henley)

or the top half of this dress, as a shirt (both patterns from Austin Creative Reuse).

I tried to do the rugby shirt, adapting the pattern to use raglan sleeves, and it did not go well. No photos, but the shoulders were poofy and the rugby shirt pattern isn’t wide enough at the bottom for me. It was a mess. I’ll have to revisit this again in the future…

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Chandrakanthalu

Traditional Indian (from Andra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) cookies that are BOTH gluten free and vegan!! Plus really tasty. This was a great find for some of those parties where there are multiple people with food restrictions.

  • 225 g moong dal
  • 200 grams fresh grated coconut
  • 225 g sugar
  • pinch cardamom powder
  • pinch turmeric (or saffron)
  • Some cashews (maybe like 1/4 cup or to taste), chopped
  1. Soak beans a least an hour. Blend soaked beans to make a smooth paste. You’ll need to add some water.
  2. Cook bean paste in a pan by itself for a bit, then add everything else. Cook together ~10 min until no longer clings to sides of pan (or until you’re bored/think the beans are cooked through and it seems dough-like. Mine never stopped clinging).
  3. While still hot, spread batter 1.5 cm thick on damp cloth. Let cool then cut into shapes.
  4. Deep fry until browned (2-3 min at 350°F).
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Chocolate protein breakfast balls

Making soy milk generates a lot of okara (soy lees) as byproduct. It still has a lot of goodness left, so I don’t like to throw it away, but the texture isn’t super appealing (like wheat bran). There are some traditional recipes meant to use up okara (like unohana), but these protein/nut/chocolate breakfast balls are better and pretty easy.

Original recipe (don’t remember where it’s from)

  • 1/4 cup (64 g) nut butter
  • 0.83 cups (83 g) quick oats
  • 18 g protein powder
  • 13 g cocoa powder
  • 28 g maple syrup
  • 1 Tbsp milk
  • 28 g melted chocolate

Mix and roll into balls.

Recipe modified to use okara

  • 54 g nut butter
  • 25 g quick oats
  • 25 g dry shredded coconut
  • 50 g damp okara. Reduce somewhat if dry
  • 13 g cocoa powder
  • 56 g dark chocolate
  • 1 (?) Tbsp milk if okara is dry

Okara ball recipe scaled up

  • 216 g nut butter
  • 100 g quick oats
  • 100 g dry shredded coconut
  • 200 g damp okara. Reduce somewhat if dry
  • 52 g cocoa powder
  • 225 g dark chocolate
  • 4 (?) Tbsp milk if okara is dry