My attempt at (straw bale) gardening...

For some reason, the need to garden is deeply rooted (pun intended) in me. Maybe it's the frozen veggies that sit in my freezer for years or the waxy feeling to a tomato at the grocery store, but something is telling me that I need to grow my own fruits and veggies. Unfortunately, I live in the worst possible place to garden. The "soil" (and I use that loosely) here is dust and rocks. And every few weeks gets another layer of dust on top of that. In order to have a functioning garden, you have to essentially dig up your entire yard and replace it with acceptable soil for growing a plant. Since I'm just beginning this gardening journey, I was looking for something a lot less demanding!

A couple months ago, while surfing Pinterest, I found out about Straw Bale Gardening. Essentially, you buy a couple straw bales, fertilize them, soak them with a hose for a few weeks and magically you have an acceptable place to place your plants. The websites I read claimed that you could buy straw bales for the cheap price of $2-$5 but around here, I found them at a local feed store for $7.95 which is still cheap considering how much it would cost to dig up the ground. I started with 3 bales and some ammonium sulfate as a fertilizer. It absolutely did the job but next time I will stick with chicken manure in order to keep it as organic as possible. Live and learn. After getting started, I bought three more bales of hay so now my garden consists of six.

I planted some herbs and tomato plants. Fortunately, once the bales have soaked for two weeks, you do not have to water your plants every day. The bales are more than wet and only the top dries out. The bales also keep the ground underneath them wet and fertile and now the ground under the bales is more like soil than dust and it's teeming with bugs and worms. The ground around my straw bales is also very wet and fertile and there is grass growing all around them. I'm not sure if it's left over grass from the straw or some dormant grass seed from a lawn long ago.

Here you can see the bales and the grass growing all around them. If you look past the bales you can see the rocky hard soil that is my backyard. And to the left top of the picture you can see the path the water run off takes. That hasn't been watered since the night before but you can see the ground is retaining water much better.

Unfortunately, we had a little set back when we went to visit my parents. Our new puppy, Mindy, ate the seedlings that I had nurtured and dug up the plants that I had planted. I didn't think anything had survived but the mint I had planted seems to be making a come-back on it's own.

So, I cheated and went to Wal-Mart and bought an heirloom tomato plant about two weeks ago and planted it. Low and behold, it bears fruit!!

Feeling pretty confident after seeing that!

And just as a comparison, I did dig up a four foot by two foot patch of land for corn. To fill in with the organic soil and fertilizer, cost me about the same as three bales of straw. And it's efficient. Especially for corn which I hear is hard to do in straw because it's so top heavy.

The grass or whatever it is, is seeping into this area as well. I may have my own field of alfalfa soon!

"Taglong cupcake"

"Tagalong" Cupcakes

 

 

My daughter is a Girl Scout, a great one at that. Often I keep a stash of cookies left over just in case anyone orders some after cookie season is over! This year, I used some of my stash to make these cupcakes. I couldn't find a recipe for a Tagalong cupcake that felt truly represented it to me, so I made this one up using inspiration from a bunch of other recipes. This makes about 20 cupcakes.

 

 

 

 

Cupcake:

 

20 Tagalong cookies. About a box and five more.

1/2 cup of butter, softened

1/2 cup of peanut butter

1 1/2 cup of brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups of flour

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/4 cup of milk

 

Preheat oven to 350. Place cupcake liners in muffin tin. Place one Tagalong at the bottom of each well. Beat butter and peanut butter until smooth. Add brown sugar and combine until smooth. Continue beathing and add egg and vanilla.

 

In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients. Add milk and dry ingredients to butter mixture about a third of each at a time.

 

Fill cupcake liners about 3/4 of the way. Bake for 15-20 minutes until toothpick comes out smooth. Allow to cool completely.

 

Glaze:

1/2 cup peanut butter

3/4 cup chocolate chips

 

Combine ingredients into microwave safe bowl. Microwave 30 seconds and stir. Continue to heat it on 15 second intervals until smooth and liquid.

 

Dip cooled cupcakes into glaze and allow to cool.

 

Peanut Butter Buttercream:

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup of butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla extract

Around 4 cups of powdered sugar

Milk, as needed

 

Beat the peanut butter and the butter until smooth. Add the vanilla extract and continue mixing. Add powdered sugar about a half cup at a time until the mixer becomes dry. Slowly add milk until it is creamy but still stiff.

 

Chocolate Buttercream:

1 cup of butter, softened

1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

Around 4 cups of powdered sugar

Milk, as needed

 

Beat butter until fluffy. Add cocoa powder and beat until well combined. Add vanilla and continue mixing. Add powdered sugar about 1/2 cup at a time until it becomes dry. Add milk until it is creamy and has a stiff consistency.

 

To get the swirled effect, I put the two frostings in separate bags and then put them both into a larger bag and piped it on with the 1m tip.

 

Enjoy

 

 

 

 



Mocha Ice Cream Cone Cups

I adapted this recipe from Rachael Ray. These were really good, but you want to make sure you don't freeze them too long or they are impossible to eat. If you freeze them longer than an hour, dip the bottom of the muffin pan in wamr water to soften the cups.

Ingredients:
12 sugar ice cream cones
5 tablespoons of melted butter
1/2 cup of espresso
12 scoops of coffee flavored ice cream
1 king size chocolate bar
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup of heavy whipping cream
4 tablespoons powdered sugar

1. Add ice cream cones to food processor and grind them into fine crumbs. Add espresso beans to food processor and continue grind. Finally, add melted butter to food processor and pulse until combined. Evenly spoon mixture into 6 jumbo muffin cups and indent the middle to form cups.

2. Add two scoops of ice cream to each cup. Freeze for 30 minutes.

3. Melt chocolate and olive oil in the microwave for 45 seconds, stirring after 15 seconds.

4. Combine cream and powdered sugar and whip until soft peaks form.

5. Remove ice cream cups from muffin cups. Drizzle with melted chocolate and top with whipped cream.

Bacon Cheeseburger Tacos

I adapted this recipe from The Betty Crocker recipe... My family really liked these and next time, I would double the recipe because they were gone!

Recipe:
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1.25 lbs of groundy turkey
3 tbs taco seasoning (mixed with half a cup of water)
1 cup of salsa con queso
12 hard taco shells
2 cups of chopped lettuce
3 chopped roma tomatoes
5-6 slice of cooked and chopped bacon (I like thick cut)

1. Saute onions in a 12" skillet until translucent. Add ground turkey and continue cooking. When mostly cooked, stir in taco seasoning and mix well. Stir in salsa con queso until combined.

2. Heat taco shells in oven or microwave.

3. Add lettuce to taco shells. Top lettuce with turkey mixture. Sprinkle the tacos with tomatoes, followed by bacon. Serve with sour cream. Enjoy!

This is probably just for the summer....

Welcome to my 908th blog (or something close to that). The problem is that I start blogging when I'm not busy, and then I get busy and I forget about the blog. Anyway, it's summer and the kids are home from school and I'm always tempted to get a job so I thought I would start (another) blog. Hopefully this goes well!