Sweets for my sweet...

Hi, y'all!

At the beginning of this year I already mentioned that I have a special birthday in the family in August. My dear Wolfi (best in-law ever) unfortunately had to cancel his big party due to COVID, and so we packed him a nice present to sweeten his day. 

Sweet is a good cue… First I thought of a cable-knit cardigan/hoodie but he opted for chocolates/pralines. Well then, chocolates it is! As we had summery temperatures during the last weeks, I chose white chocolate as basis for my truffles and prepared two variations: lemon and bitter almond. The lemon truffles I rolled in powdered sugar, and the almond truffles were covered in brittle. My fridge looked like this:

Of course, I put them in a nice wrapping - my tried and tested Tetrapak-packaging: 

And through the grapevine I heard that some extravagant masks could be a nice addition… Well... I thought and thought and then I had my Heureka moment: I remembered that years ago, I collected champagne flutes, and each of them came with a matching napkin. I never used neither the flutes (not dishwasher-safe) nor the napkins. And as they had nice patterns in silver and gold, they would make some pretty face coverings.  

That's the result:

I took everything and put it in a styrofoam package together with special ice packs to keep the truffles cool, which worked although the parcel took a day longer than expected. But the birthday boy was happy, and so was I!

But I have to come back to our garden grapes… In a first attempt I harvested five or six bundles of grapes and happily munched them but then it was time to harvest some more. And then my fruit bowl was pretty full: 

We couldn't devour so many as were ripe, and then the first grapes fell from the vine, so I I picked another five kilos! We couldn't eat them all, even if we wanted to. Thus I made roughly 20 jars of grape jelly! 

Cleaning:

All ingredients:

Part of the result... Delicious - especially with banana bread!

But that wasn't enough, because there were still the ones waiting in the fruit bowl. They had to be processed somehow, and therefore, I made two cakes. I have to admit, that it might have been a good idea to use seedless grapes for baking, but let's just say, it adds extra crunch and fibers :-) 

Keep crunchin' and munchin'!!!

I heard it through the grapevine...

Hi y'all!

Well, either I was wrong when talking about my brown gardening thumb, or we are just incredibly lucky! When we moved in three years ago, whe did a bit of a redo of the garden and had someone install a lounge area with a wooden pergola. The guy did his best, but we put a sunsail over the construction which was waterproof, and the elements tug at the beams with some heavy rain and storm, so it's definitely not level. But life's path is seldom straight, and so is the pergola... We like it anyway. 

In the meantime we changed the sunsail into one which is permeable to water and fixed the beams, but they're still a bit crooked. To cover that, and because we like it, too, we planted three grape plants. First I thought, they are only for wine making or decorative, but you can actually pick and eat them straight from the vine! Well, I must admit, that one of the plants didn't make it, and the second one (white grapes) is doing quite poorly, but the third one (red grapes) kind of exploded during the last few weeks. Last year it did pretty well already, but this is no comparison to this year. I guess I could totally live of grapes for the next few days.

Zooming in you can see that there is much more to come...

And here I proudly present this year's first harvest (minus the ones which didn't make it into the bowl, but went straight into me instead...) 

I am unbelievably happy! Let's see, if I have to preserve some of them (e.g. in a cake, as a jelly/spread or as a Crema di Balsamico reduction), but I suppose they're best comsumed just pure as they are. 

To show you that these grapes are no exception to the rule of my brown thumb, please find below an update of my little lemon trees:

When my lavender finished blooming, I had to cut it in order to regrow strongly. While doing that, I made a few cuttings to see if I can propagate them. After one or two weeks, they produced tiny little roots, and therefore, I put them in soil yesterday. Will I be successful? I do hope so! 

(Isn't that picture beautiful? Yes, indeed.)

Anyway, you can't have too much lavender, and bumblebees and bees love it, too!

With that in mind: Don't get discouraged if something doesn't work out in the first attempt. Sometimes it just takes a while :-) 

Take care, guys!!!

Feelin' hot hot hot!

Hi, y'all!

It's getting hot in here… for sure, 'cause it's summer in our part of the world. With two fans and a pool in combination with working from home I'm doing pretty well, but I have to be extra careful with my furbabies. Dogs do have a few sweat glands below their paws, but they manage their body temperature mostly over their tongue by panting. They can't sweat like humans and cool themselves like us. In addition, our two guys are brachycephalic (which means they have a shorter nose and head). 

Due to anatomic reasons these breeds tend to overheat, therefore walkies only very early or late in the evening, when it's cooled off, food is served more often, but in smaller portions, so it's easier to digest, more water bowls in the house, and the water is changed more often, we have a cooling mat to lie on, and they get frozen yoghurt treats! Just put a teaspoon of plain yogurt into each cube of your ice cube tray (we Germans have to make our ice cubes manually, you know, and we are a bit jealous for the American cooling devices where the ice cubes magically drop out of the freezer door…). You might go over the top and mix the yoghurt with mashed bananas, liver sausage, apple sauce, cooked veggies, ham or cheese - but as Hein and Else like their yoghurt plain, I leave it as is.

But as we speak about sweating… A few years ago we were warned to avoid aluminium hydroxychloride in antitranspirants because it may be harmful, and so I changed to soda-based deodorants (sodium hydrogen carbonate to be exact) which I ordered from a small manufacturer in Heidelberg (nowadays, there are a lot more small locals who make things like this). And I was glad to find out that they really worked. Surely, you have to be aware of the different ways how antitranspirants and deodorants work - the latter doesn't stop sweating but it prevents that the sweat starts smelling. In that context I don't understand antitranspirants claiming to be effective for 72 hours - in that timeframe I take a shower more than once...

Anyway, in the meantime science found out that ACH isn't that harmful as assumed, thus I might use one of these antitranspirants again in situations when I don't want to get sweaty (for instance when wearing a light blue blouse or so). Nevertheless I'll stick to my soda-based deodorant for everyday, and yesterday I went into my witch kitchen to see if I can make a respective concoction myself...

I tried two different deo versions: one spray and one cream. As always, I try to stick to as little ingredients as possible and moreover, I wanted them to be very common in order to be able to get them in your regular supermarket. 

The cream deodorant is done very easily: Just mix three teaspoons coconut oil with two teaspoons starch (corn or potato) and two teaspoons soda, and you're done! I used a coconut oil which was fragranced with lemongrass, and that was awesome. In case you use unscented coconut oil, you may want to add some lemon oil or so. I put it in the fridge to solidify, and it got pretty solid, I can tell you... But that should be no problem, because my bathroom drawer won't be as cool as my fridge:-) Further, I have to admit that the consistency is a bit grainy due to the soda, but with my store-bought deo it's just the same (only a bit more creamy).

The liquid deodorant is just as simple: Heat 80 ml water to 50 degrees Celsius (not above) and mix in one teaspoon of soda. Add the juice and the ground peel of one organic-grown lemon and let that sit for about an hour. Then sift it, fill in spray bottles et voilà. Yesterday I tested it during my work-out - and yay, I worked out and the deo worked, too! I guess, in store-bought deodorants there is alcohol so that it dries quickly after applying it. As my mixture doesn't contain alcohol, it takes a tad longer, but apart from that I'm super happy with it.

Right now I'm using one of the spray deodorants and the others are in the fridge for the time being. Let's see about the best before date, but I'm very optimistic. 

Keep calm and keep cool! 

Fortune favors Fools

Hi, y'all!

Hope you're having a great day today - in my area it's beautiful, sunny and hot, and I guess we'll be having a BBQ tonight with some delicous baked potatoes, and I'll tell you why in a sec.

You might be wondering about the header… In Germany we have a proverb with the same meaning as the above, but it translates like this: The most stupid farmers harvest the largest potatoes - that's what led me to the theme of this week's post. But I get distracted, so let's get back to business...

There is a new trend to homesteading. Whereas prior generations gladly bought groceries and produce in the nearby supermarket (and it was surely a sign of wealth not to be forced to plant things themselves), I lately noticed a change in mindset due to various reasons. It may be because people want to be independent, or because they don't trust conventional farming any longer, or because they want their children to experience that cherries don't grow in mason jars, or simple because it's fun to dig in the dirt sometimes!

I grew up in a rural village and a small city, and I remember pretty well my grandparents' backyard with fruit and veggies galore. Nevertheless, at my parent's home we bought our groceries on the weekly market or the discount store. We didn't have a garden, and nobody thought of growing tomatoes in a pot. Therefore, my green thumb shows fifty shades of brown, I guess...

Anyway: When the panic shoppers raided the stores for toilet paper, I thought of planting a Kleenex-tree :-) Just kidding… We're far from being preppers, but still I get a calming feeling if I have a well-stocked pantry. And even better, if it's filled with home-made stuff. Therefore, I took some seeds out of a bell-pepper and planted it - epic fail! Nothing happened - null, nada, zero, not even the slightest hint of something green. Now I know, that this is normal - they are cultivated that way (maybe on purpose…). To guarantee some kind of success, I tried planting potatoes. This is planting for beginners, and if you don't eat them, you can produce Vodka - win-win, I'd say. 

Thus I grabbed some potatoes with eyes - 10 spuds in total, I guess. Then I took two containers I use for gardening and drew a few holes in them for drainage. A layer of little rocks to ensure that surplus water can get away easily, then soil on top and potatoes in. And both containers were put on movable plant stands to keep them mobile if needed. And after a few weeks there was some development:

To be honest: That picture wasn't from the early days - I had added some soil in the meantime. That's how you do it: Cover the potatoes with soil and when the green comes out, again layer some soil on top. Due to the containers' height I did that once or twice. 

And here you can see the difference: Maximum height of the green. After that, only the potatoes grew. Oh, and they bloomed: 

Pretty, right? They say, it takes roughly 100 days from planting to harvest, but you can also tell by the leaves. When they turn brown and withered, it's time to harvest. Which we did a few days ago: 

Roughly two kilos of potatoes - not bad for the first attempt, I think! We already had a taste test, and they turned out delicious. As there are so many tiny ones we might have waited a bit longer, but hubby was impatient. 

And in light of the size of the potatoes I might say we are on the right side of the German proverb...

Take care, y'all!

P.S.: In contrast to the failed bell-pepper experiment the lemon seeds grow well so far:

P.P.S.: Due to the transition to the new blogger version the system is bitching around regarding formatting. Just ignore it (maybe with the help of some Vodka...)