Last Saturday we purchased a cherry tomato plant at the Winter Park Farmers market. This purchase led into the ideal of creating a mix herb pot. I had plenty of mini herb plants started from seeds so it seemed like a great idea for a porch plant. The 9 side holes have a mix of marjoram, dill, parsley, cilantro, oregano, sage, and basil. The cherry tomato is planted in the top hole. We are excited about seeing this planter grow.
We have no food yet but here is the gardening status.
What is thriving in the Garden:
Also…
yellow squash
zucchini squash
carrots
Okra
Seminole Pumpkin (In container)
Sweet Potato (In container)
What is on life support:
1 Juliet Hybrid Tomato
1 Cherry Tomato
1 Pepper
What has died:
1 Pepper
2 Cherry Tomatoes
Various seeds that never grew
Here is a group photos of things started from seeds that I have no idea what to do with.
Around two weeks ago, Carlos made octopus for dinner….
Every Monday night in Audubon Park, there is a community farmers market. Every week, my husband picks up locally made cheese, bread, fresh caught fish, and organically grown veggies. One particular week he brought home frozen octopus. Knowing that octopus seemed quite difficult to prepare, I left it up to him to figure out how to cook it.
After it defrosted, he cleaned out the eyes and ink.
While he was preparing the octopus, I had to leave to go play volleyball. He prepared the following octopus recipe –Polpi in Umido -Italian Octopus Stewed in Wine and Tomatoes.
When I returned, I was pleasantly surprised at what was prepared.
We ate it on its own with a side of boiled beets and sliced burpless cucumbers. The octopus and sauce would have been spectacular though as a pasta topping.
At the organic gardeners meeting last Wednesday we became the proud owners of a Sweet Potato slip and a Seminole Pumpkin plant. If you are not familiar, Sweet Potatoes are just awesome. The Seminole Pumpkin is a butternut squash-like veggie that is supposed to grow well here. As of now, I still have the sweet potato on the porch until I can determine what to do with it. And the Seminole Pumpkin has been transplanted to a larger pot and put under a bottle brush on the side of the house ( so it can climb it).
I am a pizza freak. If unrestrained, I could eat pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I have been talking about making home-made dough for a while now. I decided to try making pizza from scratch about a week ago. My goal is to come up with a dough recipe that uses alternative grains such as buckwheat and to possibly eliminate the use of yeast in the recipe. However for this pizza, I used the tried and true whole wheat pizza dough recipe that is in the The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso. It was not a difficult recipe to follow. We love to make our own tomato sauces so the pizza sauce is a variation of the spaghetti sauce we normally make.
The following ingredients were used in sauce:
Finally, I shredded Organic Valley mozzarella cheese for the cheese topping.
Final Notes
The pizza was quite good but the dough was a little thick and crunchy. The dough recipe allows to make two pizzas. The extra dough can be stored for a day or two in the refrigerator as long as it is covered. For the first attempt, I had preheated the pizza stone. I did not do this on the second pizza. Additionally in the second attempt, I used a rolling pin to flatten the dough to make it look more pizza like and to even the dough throughout. Finally, in addition to the mozzarella cheese, I added some grated cows milk cheese that I purchased from whole foods. The cheese had a similar taste to a parmesan. While I enjoyed both pizzas, the second was definitely better. Sorry I did not take pictures of the latter because we were rushed to eat it before a Broadway show.
