Around and About on Thursday through Saturday

Artichokes: Yes, 5 on that 1st plant! August 2018

On Thursday I had 2 jobs I wanted to get done before it got too hot. I’d spent too much time working on post backlog and didn’t get outside until 8AM. I needed to tie up the tomatoes and to pull up the broccoli.

I’d done the tomatoes about 3 weeks ago, but they had finally taken off and needed done again badly. The broccoli I’d harvested on Wednesday and it was REALLY buggy, full of caterpillars. The 2 weeks of no foliar and weeks of torrential rain took its toll. So it needed to go to the pigs.

I did the tomatoes first.

The Matt’s Wild Cherry tomato had the first ripe tomatoes.

The Kapija peppers had some on them, but the Hungarian paprikas had a lot of green pods.

I harvested one of these cabbages as my helper friend was here and could help with the chopping for coleslaw. (I have big feet…)

Yup, 6.67 lbs of a single cabbage

The cleome is in full flower. These are volunteers that come up each year.

We’ve harvested 7 artichokes so far, and I counted 15 on the plants. That cold May set lots of buds this year.

The leeks have done beautifully this year. They have been of good size for a couple weeks now.

The basil, after a dismal start, has really taken off. I long ago got all I needed, with no powdery mildew problems appearing. My helper friend and another friend have been harvesting it regularly for pesto.

The hibiscus started to flower this week. It’s about on time for this area.

When the big rose finished flowering earlier this season, I cut off all the rose hips. It’s now flowering again for the 2nd time.

When my helper finished the foliar feeding, and I’d gotten half the broccoli pulled up, it was getting too hot for me so we went inside to make coleslaw.

This is another batch of @thefarmerswife’s recipe. The cabbage was so big I decided to make another different coleslaw recipe. I found this one in my 1978 edition of Joy of Cooking, page 97:

Hot Slaw with Apple

½ lb. finely diced salt pork
3 tbsp. vinegar
2 tbsp. water
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. caraway or celery seed
1 tsp. salt
3 cups shredded cabbage
1 lg. pared, grated apple

I made some changes:

I had no salt pork, but plenty of saved bacon fat, so I used about ⅓ cup of that. I can’t eat apples, so I used 2 medium pears. I used caraway seed and my own celery salt. And because I had so much cabbage, I used 4 cups instead of 3. I increased the other ingredients by ⅓ except the sugar.

My Ingredients:

⅓ cup bacon fat
4 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
3 tbsp. water
1 tbsp. sugar
1¼ tsp. caraway or celery seed
1¼ tsp. salt
4 cups shredded cabbage
2 med. pared, grated pears

Method:

Original directions:

Render salt pork slowly in a skillet, remove the brown pieces and drain on a paper towel, then reserve. Add everything except cabbage and apple to the fat in the skillet. Cook over high heat until they boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and add the cabbage and apple. Simmer about 1 minute longer and serve garnished with the browned bits.

What I did:

Melted the fat, mixed up the other ingredients together, except cabbage and pears, then added them to the fat and brought it to a boil. I put in the cabbage and 1 of the pears as the 2nd was forgotten. So the slaw sat in the hot skillet while we prepped the 2nd pear. Even though it cooked a bit too long, it was still delicious!

That was all I did until supper which was ground chicken patties with a cheese filling. Coleslaw for me, cherry tomatoes and marinated cukes for my husband.

I broke a tooth during supper, one of those “I didn’t bite anything hard, just the pattie” things. I’ve had the same thing happen 3 times in the last 3 years. No cavity or damage, they just break suddenly, always chewing something soft. But this one HURT!

I knew I had lots of good sized leaves and a few flowers on the yellow toothache plants I had started from seeds @derekfreeman had sent me this spring. So I collected some and tested them. The leaves did make my gums numb when rubbed on, but were hard to use. I tried rubbing the flowerhead and that also worked, but started to come apart all over my mouth.

So I rolled the flowerhead in a piece of surgical gauze to make a small twist and tucked it between my cheek and gum. It fit perfectly and it stayed there for 15 hours before it no longer worked.

Friday I was in a good deal of pain and the dentist tried to save what was left of the tooth. Time will tell if he was successful. But that afternoon the rest of my top teeth on that side were extremely painful, but not the broken one. Go figure! I took some moderately heavy meds and slept the rest of the day.

It was better in the evening and when I woke Saturday morning, the pain was gone. I’d made a new twist of toothache plant before bed Friday night.

So I am back to playing catch-up. Today, Saturday, is to be a rainy day, so I plan to take it easy and just work on posts all day. If I am up to it, I may go with my husband when he delivers fishing rods, and pat kelpies. (https://steemit.com/animals/@goldenoakfarm/visiting-kelpies)

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