Friday, December 30, 2011

Cooking, food, and love


Recently I watched one of my absolute favorite movies about food, Eat Drink Man Woman. (Others include Goodfellas, Godfather, Ratatouille, Babette's Feast, and Marie Antoinette.) One of the really beautiful things about Eat Drink Man Woman in particular is how the preparation of beautiful and delicious meals stands for love and caring.

Honestly, this movie is one of the things that made me want to be a good chef. When I became part of my family (and here I'm talking about my wonderful blended family of myself, my husband, and my four stepkids), I knew that I wanted to bring us all together in some way, and I somehow settled on cooking the best, healthiest, prettiest food I could.

I know I got this from my mother. She is widely acknowledged to be a fabulous cook -- even if she makes things that I am personally too picky to enjoy: casseroles, lasagna, meatloaf -- everyone who does enjoy those things tells me she's the best at it. I believe them because everything else she makes is wonderful, and I think that one of the reasons her cooking is so good is that she puts her love for those she's cooking for into the meal.

Cooking time is special, too, because you have to be totally present and concentrated on what you are doing. It's very nearly meditative, as when you are really in the zone, everything outside fades. It's at this point when your love comes in, as attention, as detail, as luck.

Our family is lucky in that we get to sit down to dinner at the table together every night, and usually at least once a week with a larger group of family and friends. This time is special as it allows us to talk over our days, discuss events, plans, tell jokes, and generally binds us together as a family. I am so glad to be able to offer my love through the food we all share.

Friday, November 04, 2011

Boneless wings, normal and gluten free, and the world's best Parmesan garlic sauce

I know, its bragging. But my Parmesan garlic sauce is GOOD. I'll also put down the recipe for regular buffalo sauce if that's what you're into.

Boneless Buffalo Wings
1 cup all purpose flour (or 1 cup cornstarch for a gluten-free version - it'll be even crispier)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1 egg
1 cup milk
2-3 chicken breasts, cut up into roughly 1 inch chunks
Oil for deep frying

Start the oil heating (375 degrees if you keep track of that sort of thing). Combine dry ingrdients in a bowl. In another bowl, beat the egg, add milk, beat together until well combined. Take a small handful of the chicken, dip pieces into egg misture, then roll in flour(or cornstarch) mixture. Put pieces in fryer, fry 5-6 min or until lightly browned.

Parmesan Garlic Sauce
1 medium-large bulb of garlic
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 1/2 tbls butter
1/2 teaspoon dried ground rocoto pepper (that's a very hot pepper. Hotter than cayenne, which you can substitute)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tbls brown rice vinegar

Peel the garlic. Some people like to roast their bulbs whole; I hate the mess and the waste. Heat over to 350, put cloves in oven proof dish, drizzle with olive oil. Roast 30-40 min, until cloves are soft and easily pierced with a fork. Put the rest of the ingredients into the food processor, add garlic when its done, process until smooth. Whatever you do, don't skip the vinegar! It adds the zip that is totally necessary!

Regular Ol' Buffalo Sauce
1/4 cup hot sauce (I like homemade... I'll put the recipe up another day... or Frank's Red Hot. Tabasco doesn't have enough flavor.)
2 tablespoons butter (more or less to taste)

Melt the butter in the microwave. Whisk in the hot sauce. Ta-da!

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Breakfast Risotto with Blueberries


Just made this this morning, whole family loved it. A bit time consuming, but sooooo gooood.  The pic above is for a red, white, and blue 4th of July version.  Exact same as below, with fresh raspberries on top.

2 cups arborio rice (you could substitute a medium grain rice, wouldn't be quite the same, but it'd still taste good)
4 cups milk
2 cups water (plus extra if necessary)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon (to taste)
1 package fresh blueberries

In a saucepan heat the milk, water, vanilla extract, and salt until steaming (but not boiling - you don't want to scorch it). Add the rice and a cup of the liquid to another saucepan, and stir until the liquid is absorbed. Repeat until all the liquid has been used, and the rice is done but al dente (about 30-45 min) stirring constantly. If necessary (if all the liquid is gone but the rice still isn't as done as you like it) add a little more water to the empty liquid pan, heat and use it to get the rice to the doneness you enjoy. Stir in the butter, maple syrup, cinnamon, and blueberries. Serve.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Design tutorial - dynamic height shadow or gradient in email

See the original static height shadow/gradient file and the completed dynamic height shadow/gradient design file.

The Problem:
Our old email template was plain, white, boring. We wanted to add a background, border, rounded corners, and a shadow.


Unfortunately, email clients are notorious for being difficult to design in. Email requires design techniques I rarely use anymore - tables. The top and bottom of the email was no problem - because the width was fixed, I was able to just use images to simulate the outer box.
<tr>
<td width="20" height="20" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://www.trilliumarts.com/img/tutorial/promo-corner1.gif" width="20" height="20" alt=""></td>

<td height="20" width="650" background="http://www.trilliumarts.com/img/tutorial/promo-top.gif" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://www.trilliumarts.com/img/tutorial/promo-top.gif" height="20" width="650"></td>

<td width="26" height="20" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://www.trilliumarts.com/img/tutorial/promo-corner2.gif" width="26" height="20" alt=""></td>

</tr>


The next section was more difficult. The box height had to be fixed, because some email programs would ignore the background-image property (I tried both linking and embedding the image; it made no difference), as well as ignore an inline css background-image.


<tr >

<td width="20" height="500" background="http://www.trilliumarts.com/img/tutorial/promo-left-side.gif" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://www.trilliumarts.com/img/tutorial/promo-left-side.gif" width="20" height="500" alt=""></td>

<td valign="top" >

<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">

<tr>

<td>

<a href="" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.trilliumarts.com/img/tutorial/logo-small.gif" alt="Inspire - Together we&#39;re better" width="200" height="45" border="0" longdesc=""></a><br><br>

<font color="#000000" face="Arial, sans-serif" size="2">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam sit amet est semper elit condimentum faucibus. Vivamus eu metus tortor, in adipiscing enim. Morbi dignissim arcu quis erat viverra volutpat. Maecenas convallis arcu non neque placerat a ullamcorper turpis ullamcorper. Vestibulum vitae lacus sed mauris blandit facilisis.<br><br>

<center><img src="http://www.trilliumarts.com/img/tutorial/failgoat.jpg"><br><br></center>

Ut vel dolor nulla, at ullamcorper arcu. Mauris at sapien id ante pharetra viverra. Donec porttitor ultricies rhoncus. Pellentesque et nisi suscipit risus pretium convallis sed eu tortor. Proin bibendum libero at tortor malesuada aliquam. Maecenas nec massa sed arcu volutpat condimentum sed vitae orci. Praesent tempor, orci in consectetur euismod, turpis nunc placerat lectus, eu scelerisque urna neque vel elit. Etiam convallis fringilla risus, aliquet bibendum felis tincidunt eu.<br><br></font>

</td>

</tr>

</table>

</td>

<td width="26" height="500" background="http://www.trilliumarts.com/img/tutorial/promo-right-side.gif" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://www.trilliumarts.com/img/tutorial/promo-right-side.gif" width="26" height="500" alt=""></td>

</tr>


When it came to our daily newsletter, we had no idea how long the email would be, as it depended on how many groups a member belonged to, as well as how much activity there was in a group that day. When the email got longer than the specified size of the images that made up the sides, it would look like this in some email clients:


Not putting a height on the <td> and setting the <img> inside to 100% would not work; td's don't pass along their heights, and so the height of the img would at best be the height of the screen.

The Solution:
I couldn't find any answers online to this problem. I noticed that bgcolor seemed to work just fine in every mail client I tried (any mail client that supported html, of course). It then struck me that this could be my (somewhat ugly, but workable) solution.

I had the original promo-left-side.gif and promo-right-side.gif, which I opened in Photoshop. promo-left-side.gif was easy enough - it was 20px wide, and only had two colors, a blue for the border, and white for the rest. I made a 1px x 1px clear gif to save the correct amount of space, and then I created 20 td's to replace the one td with a background.

<td width="1" bgcolor="#CCCCFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="/img/tutorial/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="/img/tutorial/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="/img/tutorial/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="/img/tutorial/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>


Etc, etc.

promo-right-side.gif was more of a challenge, because of the shadow gradient. I zoomed in with Photoshop, and matched the background colors to each of the individual pixels.

This is what the code ended up looking like:


<td width="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#CCCCFF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#B2B7D7" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#B5BBDA" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#B9BEDD" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#BEC3E2" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#C3C9E6" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#C7CEEA" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#CCD3EE" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#D1D8F2" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#D5DBF5" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#D8DFF8" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#DAE1FA" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#DCE3FC" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#DFE6FE" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#DFE6FE" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#E0E7FF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#E0E7FF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

<td width="1" bgcolor="#E0E7FF" style="padding:0;margin:0;font-size: 0pt;"><img src="http://inspire/images/clear.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>


That's a full 26 <td>'s to replace a 26px wide image. I then had to add colspan="20" and colspan="26" to the corner td's. And after all that, this is what it looks like in every email client I've tested:


Yay!

See the original static height shadow/gradient file and the completed dynamic height shadow/gradient design file.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Taking a little time for myself

So Joshua is gone on a work trip, and the kids are staying with their mom until Thursday, so I've got a little time off, and I'm using it to pamper myself. Well, sort of.

Yesterday I had to take the animals for their checkup, and deliver Cordelia for a doc appointment. Oh, and I'm still doing that work thing. But, after all that I was able to sit back and watch some Star Trek, eat homemade ice cream (good but ridiculously unhealthy), cook some stirfry (which is basically what I'm living on right now, breakfast lunch and dinner; trying to eat more veggies!) read, work on the drawing for my mom, and get to bed early. Then I even slept in till almost 7! Tonight I've had stirfry again, and made and eaten some frozen yogurt, which is much healthier than the ice cream but I think needs more honey next time.

Its nice to have a little break from the craziness. I do miss the little 'uns, and I'll probably be taking them to the fair on Thursday when I've got them. But today and tomorrow... relaxation time! Well, relaxation and dishes, anyway.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

My window garden, post 9 - growth, flowers, death to aphids

Its been more than a month since I updated everyone on my window garden, and I thought you might want to see how things are progressing. First, there's the mint. Now, the mint had some serious problems; it had a seemingly incurable aphid infestation, and it was losing lots of leaves and generally not doing very well, so back in April I decided to move it outside, to prevent the aphids from attacking my other plants. Turns out that they were California aphids (the plant came from sunny CA), and were totally unprepared for Wisconsin late frosts.

It's ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE!!! (Yeah, I know this quote is overused, but, I'm so happy that it's alive!)

In not so happy news, the garlic bit the dust. I'm pretty sure the potting soil I got for the first batch of plantings just held too much water for it. I'll try again for next year.

As for everything else, it seems to all be doing well.

Remember, those are more than 4 foot windows... I'm 5'7" and I can stand on the level of the plants and the top of my head *just* touches the ceiling.

The things with the giant leaves are eggplant. I'm hoping they'll help with the summer cooling bill... they're certainly trapping the light well enough! The plant hitting the ceiling is a tomatillo.

In this shot there's tomatillo, poblano, lavender, rosemary, and I've moved the cantaloupe over to this window as well. Everything (except the cantaloupe) is starting to get flowers...


These are flowers on one of the poblanos. Most sites say that you can't grow poblanos in containers. I'm glad I tried!

The rocoto pepper, which we have now dubbed Mumm-ra the Ever-living, continues to produce flowers and fruit. I processed some of its peppers into powder the other day; its very difficult because they are so crazy hot that even just grinding them will make your eyes and nostrils burn and cause lots of sneezing and discomfort. Still, its a great way to add heat and flavor to a dish.

Then there's the okra, which I've read and seen have beautiful, cream colored flowers. My okra decided to sort of forgo the whole flower thing. The flower never opened, it was there, then it sort of just dried up, and now I've got this little okra pod. Looks like some of the other flowers are doing the same. I'd say it was a rip, but I'm getting food out of the deal, so I'll live without beautiful flowers.

Most of the peas are doing very well; one pot isn't. I don't know exactly what happened, but one of the pots of peas just died. Still, there's flowers on most of the plants, so there should be peas soon enough. Of course, once they produce they die not too long after, so I'll be bidding farewell to these guys soon.

In the living room window, the marconi peppers, which I started after the poblanos, are growing nicely. There's signs that flowers will show up soon. I hope!

And the beans keep producing. Couldn't be happier with how many beans we've gotten... they've been producing for almost 2 months now. So flavorful and wonderful, even just as a snack (we've only ever gotten a handful of beans at a time, so they're pretty much been eaten as raw snacks).

Then there's the newest addition - an aloe plant given to me by Robbin! Its bloody huge and I'll probably have to break it into separate plants soon. One small problem is that its cat accessible; fortunately they don't seem to really enjoy chewing on it. Still, I'm thinking of getting the bitter spray and seeing if that deters them.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

The no car challenge returns!

Its back and better than ever! I'm going to do the no-car challenge again, slightly modified from last time. I'll be doing this all summer long, from this weekend until it snows, so the rules are as follows:

  • No car for trips shorter than 5 miles, except to ferry children and animals. Riding along for trips less than 5 miles is ok, but I'll try and avoid it if at all possible.
  • If the trip is greater than 5 miles, I'm allowed to take a car, as long as someone else is in the car with me; carpooling only.

I imagine the first few days will be rough; winter was tough on my endurance. The biggest challenge I can foresee is riding out to Geiss; I'll have to figure out this weekend how to attach the trailer we bought at a garage sale last year. Trips to the grocery store are going to be ok, as I got a hook n' go shopping cart that's plenty light but can still carry 70 lbs. The only tricky part there is using an umbrella with it...

So wish me luck, and if you have any ideas, or questions, let me know.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Umami hamburgers

Now, generally speaking, I'm not a burger person. I think it comes down to the fact that I hate condiments, and most of the time burgers are slathered with condiments in order to disguise the meat. Now, I love good meat (even though I generally avoid ground beef like the plague, again, because most of the time its filler and has no real meat flavor of its own). So tonight I made my umami burgers, with sweet potato fries. The one condiment worth mentioning that I made was bagna cauda; slathering a burger with a garlic/anchovy/olive oil mixture only heightens the umami even further. Nom nom nom.

  • 2 lbs ground beef (pref. grass fed - so much more flavor - I like New Grass Farm)
  • 1/4-1/3 cup dry red wine (cabernet, syrah, chianti)
  • 2 tbls porcini dust
  • 1/2-1 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3 anchovy fillets, super finely chopped (the closest possible to paste consistency) - makes about a tablespoon

Knead all ingredients together thoroughly. Let sit in fridge about half an hour. Take out, make patties. Heat up grill, throw on until done to your liking. Serve on good buns (onion are nice).

Sunday, May 01, 2011

Savory sweet potato puree

Made this the other night. Its good for diabetics as a replacement for regular mashed potatoes because of its low glycemic index (among other things), and its good for everyone else because it tastes AWESOME. Cordi had half of the bowl all by herself. Very, very, very different than the usual thanksgiving sweet potato with marshmallow fare (here I will admit I don't enjoy the usual marshmallow fare).

4-5 sweet potatoes or yams
milk or cream
3 tbls butter
salt to taste
1.5 oz grated Parmesan, to taste

Cut sweet potatoes thin; I used my mandoline set to thick cut. Arrange in a saucepan evenly. Add milk (for healthy) or cream (for extra-delicious) to about halfway up the potatoes; also add a bit of salt. Heat over medium heat until just simmering, then turn down to low and cook about 20 minutes until tender. If you're using milk it will curdle, cream will not, but it doesn't really matter for the finished product. Dump entire contents of pan into food processor along with butter, and pulse until pureed. Add Parmesan and pulse further. Eat. Enjoy.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

My window garden, post 8 - beans, beans the musical fruit

Well, lots of growth since my last post - and my beans have begun producing. Boy, have they.

There have been some setbacks. The garlic is busy dying off; I watered it too heavily to begin with, and it never recovered properly. The mint's aphids simply will not die, so it has been sequestered outside to prevent spread. It'll live or die out there. And last, the soybeans simply refuse to germinate. No idea why. They just hate me I guess.

Everything else is doing great - starting with the beans.


This gives some idea how well they've done.


Several of the beans ready for harvest.


Preston likes beans!

Part of one day's harvest.


Beans on the right, Marconi red pepper in the middle, cantaloupe on the left.

The largest okra. The other two are also thriving; I've had to re-pot them. I really only have room for one, so I'll probably give the other two to my dad and see how they do in the garden. Really hard to grow them around here under regular circumstances tho.

The other two okra and the eggplant in the background.

Poblano!

Eggplant closest, tomatillo next, and the continuously producing Chilean insanity (rocoto) pepper.

Another tomatillo!

Lavender, ready to produce its first flower!

Basil!

The purple sage lives!

Garlic chives and rosemary. Thank goodness the black aphids never came back.

The massive pea riot. Still waiting for flowers....

That's about it. Mostly going pretty well. Keep wishing me luck!

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Yakiniku and spinach with peanut dressing

Its yummy. Trust me. Maybe the best pork chop I've ever had.

Spinach with peanut dressing

1/3 cup unsalted peanut butter (I like the natural stuff)
2 tbl soy sauce
2 teaspoons mirin
2 tbls bonito flakes
package of baby spinach
reserved water from cooking the spinach

Heat up some water and boil the spinach until its *just* wilted. Shouldn't take more than a minute or two. Reserve about a 1/4 cup of the spinach water, dump the rest of the spinach in a collender and spray cold water over it to stop the cooking. Once the spinach is cool wring it out against the side of the collender as best you can. Form into loaf or roll, put on paper towels in the fridge; let chill for a half an hour or so. In the meantime, mix together the peanut butter, soy sauce, and mirin. Once they are throughly mixed, add reserved spinach water in small increments until a liquid consistancy is reached. After a half an hour take spinach out of the fridge, remove towels. Pour peanut dressing over or next to spinach loaf, sprinkle with bonito flakes. Yum!


Yakiniku pork chops

Traditionally yakiniku would be done with bite size pieces of meat, but as I don't have a shichirin yet (much smaller screen than the big bars on my grill), and I had boneless pork chops, I went with them instead.

2-3 thick cut (3/4 inch) boneless pork chops
1 1/2 tablespoons miso paste
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce (I like marukin)
1 1/2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 1/2 tablespoons sake
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar (optional, to taste)
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 teaspoon wasabi powder

Combine all ingredients except pork chops until smooth, and marinate chops in it (in a non-reactive bowl) for at least 30min, up to 8 hours. Heat up grill for about 10 minutes on high, and grill about 5-6 min per side. Serve with sticky white rice.

Friday, March 11, 2011

A nice bit of design - blowfish grater


Isn't it CUTE? I am so in love with my new blowfish grater. Basically, I was looking for a way to grate foods - ok, specifically ginger - that would actually leave me with everything at the end. The old stand up metal grater does NOT cut it in this area - and its impossible to clean, to boot. So, I started looking online for ceramic Japanese graters. Basically, these are made with lots of little ceramic points in the bottom that grate the food, but there aren't any holes for it to fall thru, or have bits get trapped in.


You can see the little grating pyramids really well here; also you can see his mouth which works sort of as a spout for pouring out liquids that may be left in the grater.


Here's a nice close-up of the tail, which makes a convenient place to grab while pouring. And you can see the glaze, which is pearlescent and gorgeous.

But most importantly, it works like a charm.


That carrot took maybe 10 seconds, probably less. Clean up was super easy; just had to rinse it and everything came right off. This thing is a perfect example of beauty married to function - what every excellent design should strive for.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

My window garden, post 7 - potting, growth, more aphids

All the plants are doing well so far. A couple days after the last time I posted, the peas looked like this:

And now they look like this:


In the next couple of days I'll be putting up trellis for them; ok, by trellis I mean rope. It'll work.

The other baby plants are doing nicely. Here's the eggplant and tomatillos, and a couple of the beans pre-transplantation:


And here are the okra and melons, just prior to transplant:


Replanting the melons and beans:


Some of the new melons and beans happy in their new home:


And here are the beans I transplanted three days ago:



One problem I had, just a couple of days after the last aphids, was.. more aphids. This time it was black aphids completely covering one of the chives. Easy to take care of at least; more insecticidal soap. Chives are still doing well, and the rosemary too:


And the sage, basil, and lavender:


The mint has gotten a couple more aphids, but nothing severe.


The ancho peppers have just started to come up, and there's nothing from the red peppers yet (no surprise), but the rocoto has at least one pepper starting to turn - and the second plant finally has two flowers on it! Here's hoping!


Now I just have to pot the tomatillos, eggplant, anchos, red peppers, and parsley. If everything decides to come up. I'm starting to run out of room tho, I might have to pick and choose how many plants!

Thursday, March 03, 2011

My window garden, post 6 - attack of the aphids

OK, it sounds worse than it is. The mint has aphids.


I thought it had white fly too, but I've been squishing all the bugs on it I could find for a couple of days, and I don't see them anymore. Pretty much everything else that is of size on the window right now doesn't get aphids (except maybe the basil; I'm keeping an eye on it), but the aphids have to go as a number of my crops from seed are vulnerable. So...


It's insecticidal soap time! Coated the mint nice and thoroughly in it. The best part about insecticidal soap is that it isn't really dangerous to humans; I'm still going to wash the mint before using it, but otherwise, its good to go.

The rest of the plants are doing really well. (The mint really is doing well too, but I hate aphids.)


As you can see, the basil is going like crazy, the lavender has a ton of new leaves coming, and the sage has bounced back from its initial sort of sad looking state.


The chives are getting tall too, and the rosemary has a bunch of new sprigs. These plants were all difficult to see from the ground when they were planted; now they're all easily visible.

And of course the plants that I'm starting from seed are coming along.

The peas were the first to get too big for the seed starter (those are all pea plants in the above shot). Almost all of them are out now; so far only three haven't sprouted. I cleared off some room on one of our bookshelves for them; they like cool and shade, so I'm going to attempt to give it to 'em.


All of the okra sprouted and grew very quickly too; some of the melons, all the tomatillos, most of the eggplant, and a few of the beans are up. Still have some of the melons, most of the beans, and all of the ancho/poblano peppers to go. I'll be re-potting whatever is up this weekend.

Shipped this week were the seeds for soybeans, red peppers, and italian parsley. I really need more dirt and pots...

The garlic continues to grow, tho the pace has reduced since they're in the sun full time now.


The peppers continue to go crazy; The one plant now has 25 peppers and many more flowers on it. The other plant still has never produced a flower; I keep hoping as its greens are looking beautiful. But the producing plant is crazy. I can't even get close to getting a pic of all the peppers.