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Another uber-productive day here at Patient Saver's homestead.
I did 3 loads of laundry.
I tried out a chocolate/apple bread pudding recipe in my new mini slow cooker. It was not bad. Might be better to try another time with better quality bread, maybe a challah bread.
I also knew I had 3 or 4 full size celery plants growing in the veggie garden, and I want to make use of them before the frost kills them.
I dug up one by the roots today. I plan to try growing it in a pot indoors this fall and winter. It's the coolest thing: here's a blog post about it: http://www.17apart.com/2012/02/growing-celery-indoors-never-buy-celery.html
While my celery stalks were pretty skinny, I did have a ton of bushy leaves, which of course are also edible. Most people don't bother with these, but they're organic so I figured, what the heck?
I tried another recipe for cream of celery soup. Had to go the supermarket for a few missing ingredients, and it wasn't too hard to spend $30 there. (I got the freshest organic red grapes there; I've never had such crispy grapes. Really good.)
Instead of a cream of- type soup, the recipe called for about 4 oz. of brie cheese. I used my immersion blender to puree everything. It's not bad, but a little on the watery side.
Tomorrow, I want to try to use up a container of sour cream before it goes. I just hate wasting food around here. I have some frozen peeled bananas so may try some sour cream banana bread. However, I'll need to run to the organic farm for a dozen eggs.
I tried going on my state's healthcare exchange. I was able to create an account, but when I began applying for 1 of the 3 silver plans available to me with some credits, the system stopped working. It was also difficult to tell by going to the insurer's sites whether my doctors were in their networks.
I'll try again later this week.
The garden is all pulled up save for the celery plants, a yellow squash plant with one small squash I will pick soon, and several parsnip plants. The parsnips sweeten in the ground with a few frosts, so they can stay a while. I'm not sure how big the roots will be since i never really thinned them the way I should have. Bad me.
I had an average sized vegetable garden this year, with one exception. My dad had given me a surplus of cherry tomato plants he'd grown from seed, so I had probably 7 or 8 in the ground. Because I am obsessive about these things, I counted every cherry tomato I picked this season (as well as all my other produce). I weighed and calculated the organic price equivalent of my harvest, too.
So, are you read for the grand total of cherry tomatoes harvested? 1,198 cherry tomatoes. Yup. Amazing, isn't it?
Blight has become a big problem, though, so next year, I may have to only grow tomatoes in pots. I also want to try the celery again, along with garlic, shallots, scallions and potatoes. Each year I like to try different things.
1,198 tastes of summer
October 2nd, 2013 at 10:26 pm
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Seriously, for as many as I picked, there were tons that were wasted, so in reality, these plants produced about 300 cherry tomatoes each. Not a bad investment.
October 3rd, 2013 at 10:47 am 1380797247