Tomatillos and Giant Snow!

Every year I try to grow something new amongst all the usual stuff that I grow in my garden.  So, this Spring/Summer garden season, I'm growing snow peas and tomatillos.  For my kiwi peeps, tomatillos are a small (cherry sized) green tomato that grow in a husk.  They originated in Mexico and are a staple in that country.  Tomatillos are most used for a green sauce called "salsa verde".  Being here in New Zealand, I'm missing my salsa verde and have put matters into my own hands- I'm growing my own this year! 

 

The photo below is an image from the internet of what they look like when picked from the vine. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My plant is only a foot tall at this point and have just been transplanted from starter pots to the actual tomato garden.  Yes, I have an actual separate garden bed for tomatoes.  My handsome, handy-hubby builds me anything I want.

 

(The lower red circle is the actual tomatillo plant and the red circle above is a sunflower that will tower over my tomatoes in a couple of months)

 

On to my cute baby snow peas..............

 

I planted my snow peas the first weekend in October.  Photo below.

 

 

I only knew that they would climb up the trellis and be low maintinance.  Well, they did grow up the trellis and have proven to be low maintinance BUT, really?

 

 

I think Jack (from Jack and the Beanstalk) will be climbing up my snow peas.  They are all out of room to climb and some vines have made a U-turn and are heading back down.  Look out below......

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The photo below is of my strawberries, spinach, and beetroot. 

All while I was sewing.....

Before I went down to my woman cave/sewing room, I took this picture of my hunny, creating his next sausage recipe.  I thought,' right, while I'm in my sewing cave, you'll be playing with your sausage... again.'

So, off I went to do some creating of my own.  When I was done, he was just wrapping up with his....

The main ingredients were, pork, bacon, sun dried tomatoes, basil, shallots and herbs.  I can't tell you the rest or .....

I'm a very lucky woman for more reasons than his sausage.

New Sewing Project

With my life being a bit busy and complicated I had lost my inspiration in some of my hobbies, one being my sewing.  So, to find my sewing “mo-jo” again, I enrolled myself into a sewing class that meets one night a week.  Two weeks ago I made a cute little top that uses elastic thread to gathered at the waist and neckline.

Took most of the first class un-picking the elastic thread from my top because I couldn't get the darn tension right.  Deep sigh...........


My next project was to make a skirt with an elastic waist and a flared ruffle out of the material below.  Cute for Spring/Summer!

   

In class (photos not taken), I pieced the skirt together and put in the elastic waist.  I was sent home (at 9:45pm) with marching orders/homework to “stay stitch” the ruffle to the skirt and gather it evenly.  I was like, right?!?  WHAT?  It always sounds so easy when the instructor is standing right next to you.
In the photo below you’ll see that I’ve pulled the top threads to the basted/stay stitched rows to gather the ruffle.

Once my ruffle was evenly distributed to the bottom edge of the skirt, I pinned it in place so that I could sew it together.  As you can see by the next photo, I had a little assistant.

This is the ruffle sewn on.  The thread from the stay-stitch just needs to be removed.

Next I had to overlock the seam, which keeps the fabric from fraying.  On a side note, I’ve owned my very own overlocker since Feb 2011 and this is the first time I’ve used it.  Teehee…  It was very exciting!

And finally I get to model my new skirt.  Ta-da!

Since I had a bit of free time this weekend, I also made this grey and brown striped tunic top to wear with jeans.  Yay!

What's next?  Well, I've had pajama pants cut out for Holming for over a year.  Maybe I need to put thread to those pants..... and, I'm sure Alex is waiting for a little something too.

Spring is here!

Here in New Zealand, the seasons always start on the 1st of a month.  So Spring started on September 1st, then Summer will start on December 1st.  You can do the math for the following seasons.  This is the last weekend of October and the sun finally made an appearance.  Hallelujah!!!!

Since the sun was shining, we decided to start our traditional, Saturday- Seafood BBQ, which will go on till we can’t anymore (maybe late March).  Each Saturday, we choose 3 (or 4 if we are greedy) different types of seafood to season and grill in 3 different ways.  This Saturday we had lemon fish, which I seasoned with garlic butter, lemon ride and lemon juice.  We also had prawn skewers and steamed mussels.  For veggies, we had asparagus and courgettes all dressed with garlic butter.  YummY.

Since the sun honored us with its presence   for both days of the weekend, we headed to the beach.  Anawhata Beach is a west coast beach that has black sand.  To get there, you must hike down through the Forest for about 20 minutes until you get to the beach. 

Sunny and Alex loved it!  They ran….

And ran………

And ran…………

Then we settled near the water and sent Alex to her cave!

We took a self-portrait... Look at the happy couple:)

We had a fantastic time at the beach.   I think Alex and Sunny will sleep like little angels tonight.
Night, night kids.

All in a day’s work

While my husband is the handy sausage maker, I’m still the chicken keeper. I currently have 7 chickens ranging in age from 3 years old to 1 year old.  Out of the seven, five are laying.  One is retired from laying and the other is confused is she is a he or a she.

Being mid-Spring, this is the high season for laying.  This is all in a day’s work. 

We had these exact fresh eggs with yesterday’s homemade sausages.  We are very spoilt in this house.

Boys and their sausages (trying to keep this PG12)

My husband has always wanted his sausage to be longer and tastier than any others.  Well, this weekend was his moment to man-up.  Show me what your beef is made of Baby! He finally brought out the sausage maker I bought him 2 birthdays ago.

Because most store-bought sausages have such a high fat content (and us being such health nuts), he’s always wanted to try and make leaner sausages.  Per 1 ½ pounds of meat, most recipes add ½ a pound to 1 pound of pork fat.  Yuck! 

He was a man with a mission this weekend.  I was only the photographer as he didn’t want me to touch his sausage…. I’ve never!

So, to start, he marinated the meat and herbs.  Once the meat was ready, in it went into the meat grinder.

This shot is from the other side.

Next he had to put all the ground-up meat back in the grinder to push it into the casing.

                                           (I have no comment about this photo but know I’d love to!)
It’s a tricky thing to fill the casing evenly through a very long sausage without breaking it.  See my honey’s long sausage.

Next he had to make them into individual sausages by twisting them at every 5 inch intervals.

Here’s the finished product and a very happy honey.

Almost time

It’s almost Spring.  With a sunny Saturday at hand and time to myself, all I wanted to do was get stuck into my garden.  No interruptions, no lunches to make and well, nobody but me, Sunny…. and the chooks.

Before you can start to plant a veggie garden or any type of garden, there are always pesty weeds to deal with.  The only thing that grows in my garden all Winter long are weeds.

I’m pleased that my parsley grew throughout Winter along with the weeds

Once I had dealt with the weeds, I needed to add nutrients to my soil.  I keep a compost bin in my backyard which I add most kitchen scraps (the one’s the chickens don’t get first), green and brown organic waste then wait till it breaks down to soil again.

                                                      More on composting in another post.

Once my piles of home-brewed compost are in place, I layer it on top of my existing soil and wait.  I wait for a few weeks to a month while the rain spreads the nutrients down to the rest of the soil. 

What do I do while I wait?  I plan my garden.  This is where my handy hubby comes in.  Honey, where should I plant my beans?

If I didn’t have chooks, I would have put the weeds in my compost bin but I saved them along with some extra worms for my girls. Everyone benefits in one way or another today.