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Busy, Busy, Busy – Catching up in the Garden and the Kitchen

July 9, 2012

Bishop American IPA, Berry Preserves, Canning, Cucumber gazpacho, Gardening, Healthy Lifestyle, Making Jam, Tomato Growing , , , 9 Comments

I went out and picked a little this morning before the sky opened up and poured buckets of rain. I wound up with a bunch of cucumbers, a few ox-heart tomatoes and peppers. I will go out tomorrow and gather many more tomatoes and peppers. Into the kitchen now for a recipe experiment – I had a bowl of cucumber gazpacho in Carlsbad New Mexico this past week. It was very nice and refreshing but just a bit too peppery hot for my tastes. I searched the web and found a few similar recipes that seem to match my tastes.

My Cucumber Gazpacho

  • 7-8 Cucumbers – several varieties, seeded and cut into chunks
  • 2 Ancho peppers – warm enough and a very nice dark green in color – seeded
  • 2 – Anaheim peppers seeded – one that had turned red and the other a reddish-brown – for color and flavor
  • A couple of garlic cloves – skinned and crushed
  • 1 tsp coarse black pepper
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • ½ cup ice water
  • ½ cup white tequila
  • Tabasco sauce – season to taste – added a lot more after taste testing on day two!
  • Lime oil
  • Chopped fresh mint leaves

Puree the cucumbers with the olive oil, water, lemon juice, tequila, garlic, salt, black pepper and Tabasco. Add the coarse chopped Ancho and Anaheim peppers and pulse to chop coarsely…leaves a little bits of pepper chunks for color and texture. Refrigerate overnight. Garnish with a bit chopped fresh mint and a few drops of lime oil.

Next up for the kitchen before my wife returns from California – brew my American IPA Ale with Cascade and Chinook hops, can my strawberry and blackberry preserves and possibly a few more quarts of spaghetti sauce…..the last batch was very good – now where did I put that recipe????

Enjoy the slide show from the garden and –

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TTFN

Bishop

Ahhhhhhhh – Back Home!

July 8, 2012

Bishop Family, Gardening, Healthy Lifestyle, Philosophical, Tomato Growing , , 7 Comments

I have been on the road for much of the past 6 weeks with brief trips home for laundry and repacking. The travels were not without a bit of fun and a few new learnings, but I am tired off the road. I received a nice goodnight text message from my wife last night – oh, by the way I am home but she is still visiting family in California – The message, ” ‘Night – sleep well in our bed Hun.” and I certainly did. I have been waking up multiple times every night in the hotel beds, tripping off to shed some water….last night – I closed my eyes at 10:30 and opened them at 6:30 – Yee haw!

I did a quick walk through the garden yesterday evening and Lisa did a wonderful job keeping things green. I will be picking tomatoes and cucumbers today. I will take a lesson learned from a restaurant in Carlsbad New Mexico, The Stock Exchange, and make some cucumber gazpacho. I may not add quite as much of the hot peppers but it was both refreshing as well as having a good “bite” in the mouth. I will post an update to my culinary efforts soon.

Today – weeding is high on the list – They seem to enjoy my garden beds and grow like – well weeds – with the water, warmth and sun. Rain has helped keep the water meter from spinning too much. Son Joe will need to crank up the mower and fill up the compost bin today – The grass  is ankle-deep – at least!

I may do something I haven’t tried in twenty plus years….I will try to direct seed a few tomatoes for fall replacements – The Oxheart, Mortgage Lifter and Early girl tomato plants are succumbing tot he Houston heat and humidity. In their place I will plant some Juliette seeds(couldn’t find plants this past spring…they do so well here) Arkansas Traveler and ????? not sure for the third yet until I review my seed inventory. The volunteer cherry tomato is still “kicking butt” – the term is not as violent as it sounds….it means “out producing everything in the garden”!

It is so nice to be home!

Volunteerism and Tomatoes

May 28, 2012

Bishop Buzz Polination, Gardening, Tomato Growing, Vegetables, Volunteerism 7 Comments

Not sure about where to go with this concept but I will dive in. My compost piles gets pretty hot but not hot enough, apparently, to damage or disrupt the viability of tomatoes seeds. How do I know this? Well, almost every time I spread compost from my pile I see tomato sprouts in a week or so. They get weeded out and life goes on. This season one of these “volunteer” tomato sprouts managed to escape my evil weed pulling eye and was discovered at about 12 inches tall and very robust. Since I tend to be curious I let it go. It is now 6 + feet tall and loaded with small cherry style tomatoes with GREAT flavor. It is absolutely prolific, even as the day time temperatures are up near 90 F! I have never saved tomato seeds but I will be tempted this year.

I have heard that tomato plants respond well to a bit of rough play…slap them around a little and they produce better. I was sure there had to be some science to it so off to the web I went. Even though tomatoes are self pollinating they seem to benefit from some Buzz pollination….honey bees don’t generate enough energy….you need some volunteer big bombers…the Bumble Bees!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_pollination

Now, after understanding the need to “buzz” pollinate I tried to find some Bumble bees and ask them over every morning and or evening for a while…..I haven’t seem any RSVP’s nor “crashers” of the bumble bee kind so I took matters into my own hands so to speak this morning. I became a surrogate for my tomato blossoms and did my buzzing best to mimic the action. I grabbed my “Sonicare” toothbrush, and no dear – I did not use your brush….. it was mine, put on my yellow and black horizontal striped shirt…..not really, and went out to buzz around. I took my new toy out…Nikon J1 on video mode to capture my impersonating actions….Check out the video. After a little experimenting I was able to determine which blossoms would dispense pollen….a very visible emission! Watch closely….

TTFN

Bishop

Handful of the volunteer tomatoes….still green

Ahhhhhh – Back Home & Back in the Garden

May 26, 2012

Bishop berrries, Family, jam and jelly, Relationships, Tomato Growing , , , , 1 Comment

I have just walked through the garden this warm and muggy Saturday morning. I picked a few spears of asparagus, a handful of blackberries –they  have been washed and sequestered in the freezer bag for jam-  and a handful of strawberries. I will let Kathy pick through the pretty ones for her snacks and the ugly ones will go into the neighboring freezer bag for strawberry jam. I wonder if the big jam and jelly manufacturers also use the ugly berries as I do? The ugly ones taste just as good and once cooked down their beauty is really from the inside……Naturally grown, no chemicals and caressed by loving hands.

Tomatoes are getting big! In some cases tipping the plants sideways. The Oxheart, I love the shape, are being grown in my garden for the first time and seem to be producing well. I have been dying to try one…I have a good sized one that is a uniform color of pink. A little reading the web shows a variety of possible colors when ripe of which pink in one. I will give it a squeeze today or tomorrow and use that as a gauge on its ripeness.

Yesterday was one of those days that epitomizes the value of “home”. I had returned form my trip to Louisiana Thursday night. My son Ben, 22, is home from LSU for a couple of weeks, Joe, 17, was off from soccer training that night so it was feeling very nice at the house/home. I usually rise early, a little late this Friday morning, about 6:15, you have to sleep in once in awhile!  Joe is a self riser and was down around 6:30 to make his coffee, grab a bite to eat and converse in his usual morning grunts. As is my normal morning habit I was heading out the door to bicycle down to my hangout at our local Starbucks® when I spotted a sticky note from Ben on the back door glass. – “Dad, if you are going down to Starbucks®, please wake me up so I can go with you.” Ahhhhh – that warms a father’s heart. I needed to finish a business proposal so asked Ben if it would be OK if while we sat I could bang out the email? It was agreed and off we went. A couple of my old cronies were there and were introduced to Ben, the Baristas called me a liar…..not in a mean way but when I ordered a Venti Caramel Frappacino it didn’t register and they they thought that maybe I was pulling their legs…..there may be a history of that behavior by some customers!!!!!!

Once we returned Joe was off at class, Ben was “fixin” to cut the grass and Kathy wandered out to the garden with me. She proudly talked about her efforts over the past week “keeping” the garden while I was gone. I was able to see firsthand how well things were doing rather than through the vicarious text message news feed. We puttered about a bit, I cut some asparagus spears and she expressed some surprise….”where did you find those? I just picked yesterday!”…. She was surprised because these were  quite tall and thick….I just grinned…

Later she came into the house with a monstrously large pickling cucumber. The week before I had brought a large one in and she said, “I was wondering if you would find that one…I hid it to see if you could.”  As she was showing me the large one she said, “This was the one I had hid from you on the vine….the one you brought in was one I didn’t see!” Big smile from both of us and to the both of us……warm and real.  That seems to be common with my cucumber plantings. I plant pretty dense and when the production amps up it is a bit like hide and seek with the cucumbers.

Such a nice morning in the garden. Family, green, green growings and a pace of life that just makes you sit back and say “Ahhhhhh!”

TTFN

Bishop

A New Gardening Convert

May 22, 2012

Bishop Gardening, Pest Control, Tomato Growing 2 Comments

I am smiling this evening sitting in my hotel room in Covington, Louisiana tonight. My good friend John, the one I have mentioned many times in the past, has become a convert. Now he hasn’t said it out loud but as they say…..actions speak louder than words. A couple of weeks ago he Pismo proofed his garden…Pismo is his tomato eating golden retriever. We both thought the problem was solved… Then there was evidence of a bird attack on the tomatoes… OK let them have a bite or two near where they can perch and the others can ripen… Then came the rodent attack and it was ugly. On my first view they had eaten the inside out of a nice sized Celebrity tomato. They must have put out a dinner call because in two days every single tomato at every stage of development was gone, disappeared, consumed and gnawed off to the stem. They left their telltale calling cards…mouse droppings.

The conversion bug hit John! We talked this past week about traps and such but I didn’t follow through. John did and did so in a big way. First night with the traps he dispatched two of the gnawing, nibbling nemesis of his efforts. Then he went over the top and bird proofed his two 4X4 raised beds. With his recent actions….I am convinced that the conversion is complete. John – welcome to the brotherhood of backyard gardeners and to be politically correct – an honorary sisterhood is bestowed on your wife Beverly for putting up with my tinkering in your back yard – The evidence is posted below in the form of photos sent just hours ago. Wear the mantle proudly!

Look closely lower right. John also warned me – I stop by and pull weeds once in awhile…it might be painful if not careful.

The support structure for the bird netting. Nice job John!

TTFN

Bishop

 

Tomato War – Friendly of Course!

May 6, 2012

Bishop Philosophical, Relationships, Tomato Growing, Vegetables 9 Comments

I tried my best to have a ripe tomato before May 1st. I came close…..the garden that I put in for my friend John trumped me by over a week with multiple ripe red cherry tomatoes. Now, he has his own battle with his tomato loving dog Pismo…. Well I was checking out the lower level of one of the Celebrity tomato plant near the back of my garden and wow – a 4+ inch red globe of a nearly ripe tomato, a slicing tomato, a tomato begging to grace a sandwich, a tomato perfect for en echelon display on my plate next to some fried eggs…. in a  healthy oil like BUTTER! I grabbed the camera snapped my tomatoes smile  and rode over to John’s house, hopefully to gloat a little, but also to check on his tomatoes. The pictures don’t lie…. I am winning this skirmish! Aren’t we all winners by growing some of what we eat?

When visiting with John to take photos I noticed the new “Pismo” barrier. John has added a 3′ high fence to increase his odds of getting ripe and intact tomatoes into the house…..he now has a bird problem. One tomato shows signs of a bird beak pecking away at the tomato. I suggested that he leave it as is …… it is very available in the tomato cage and the bird is likely to go for the easy pickings leaving the others alone….seems to have worked for me in the past……..just a little bounty sharing.

TTFN

Bishop

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