Okanagancook

I will chime in with Soba love

Kslick, I would love your recipe.

It is a lot of garlic but none of it goes to waste. First there are cloves for replanting. Garlic for my brother, Kootenaycook. Garlic for my best friend. Garlic confit in the freezer. Garlic butter in the freezer. Whole roasted garlic for the freezer. Fresh garlic which usually lasts me until February if they have been cured properly. i am making lunch for a group on Tuesday and one of the people is allergic to garlic. Sheesh, that really limits me. I am discovering that almost everything I make has garlic in it.

Here is a great site for all things garlic https://www.garlicfarm.ca/growing-garlic.htm my garlic is usually ready second to third week of July. The tips of the leaves start to go brown about two weeks after the scrapes. I do check the bulbs in the ground and usually pull one or two up for immediate use. Stopping watering a couple of weeks before harvest is also important.

Earliest garlic harvest ever! It has been wet the last couple of days but with sun in the forecast for all of next week I shall hang my garlic up outside in our covered dog run tomorrow. It will get nice breezes without the hot sun, just a little morning sun. The bulbs aren't as big this year and we are thinking it is because they grew so fast. Oh well, better than the store bought stuff and way cheaper than the farmers market garlic.

Shelby, to reiterate, glad you are safe. Chin up. It is early enough in your growing season to still get some kinda modified crop out of your veggie patch of love.

That's a whole lotta lettuce! Looks like garlic in the back ground. The poly is a great idea.

Made some parsley-mint pasta and we had it with lamb shanks braised in the oven until so tender all the bones fell off so it looked more like a ragu. Garden peas/roasted asparagus and some sautéed mushrooms. Picture of the just rolled out pasta. I had extra mushrooms so made a ragu to have with the rest of the pasta.

Me after a lot of mis en place to DH "Let's have a cocktail" "What would you like?" "I do the forking food, can't YOU decide on the cocktail, sheesh!"

Well. Excellent job! Ruby Blues got a gold for their Gwertz. They tend towards Germanic style wines seeing Prudence is Austrian, she is the owner / winemaker. We were just talking about wine sales at Deep Roots with the owner and they are probably going to limit the number of bottles of the award winning wines so no one is disappointed when they visit the winery. What do you think about that? Shawna at Bench makes wonderful cheese and Gavin is creating some nice wines. He was the assistant wine maker at the original Poplar Grove winery and then at Pentagw before they bought the vineyard on middle bench. Nice people and he has a great palate. Bruno is a beast. He is owned by Val who is the GM of the winery. Have to plug them here:. Val donated a whole case of wine to our Syrian Family fund raising dinner we put on last week! Very generous. well, come back to the bench for some more great experiences, cheers

FYI, the Naramata Bench Wineries did very well at the All Canadian Wine Awards just announced. Our good friend at Deep Roots won best red wine of the year for his Syrah and a few other Golds. Hope to managed to go there. http://allcanadianwinechampionships.com/acwc-2016-results/

No kidding. I'm in growing zone 6 or 7. I planted my peas in the first week of March. I started my zucchini plants in the greenhouse in late March and I am harvesting zucs everyday now. I'm starting to plant more butter lettuce in the greenhouse to set outside when they are rooted well and I've got lovely baby bok choy in the fridge. Also planting more of those in the greenhouse. Should be getting some potatoes in about two weeks and my garlic just needs to dry out and it is ready for harvest. Normally I harvest my garlic in the third week of July. I should mention that the Okanagan is about two to three weeks ahead of normal. Should be another phenomenal vintage for our local wineries.

Deryn, you could be developing an allergy to clams. My husband (who is 64) has always been able to eat mussels until a few years back we had some and he was distressed, like you. We thought he may have gotten a bad one so we had them again at a friends and it was worst. We thought that maybe Connie screwed up and it was a bad mussel. So, we had them again and within 10 minutes he was on the toilet and then shaking and vomiting. So no more mussels. But how strange, he can eat clams.

Ok, you are forgiven. i pulled my snap pea and regular pea plants yesterday...turning brown/no flowers. I shall plant more as I think we have time for another crop.

Btbyrd, my brother keeps his poly science rig in the basement...much quieter. I love my poly science rig. It is large but very efficient. Great for dinner parties with six people. Had mine for about 8 years. Yes, much more expensive than the news ones and not as sleek looking.

He looks like a wee fellow, that cuc. Murdered before his time.

My favourite chicken curry is from the Foods of the World cookbooks. Made with chicken thighs. It has turmeric, cumin, coriander, fennel seeds, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, fresh coriander and garamasala then finished with lemon juice. Just made three litres of it to take to a pot luck.

Paul's Shrimp, Okra and Andouille Gumbo. Nice and dark! There is a whole lotta frying going on in this recipe.

I make my dumpling dough using the pasta rollers all the time. I would just do a tester for the thickness, I think I use #4 on my KitchenAid Rollers. Great idea. Love dumplings.

BLT, my absolute favourite sandwich and I see you used lots of crispy bacon and mayo!

Mystery plants in the compost bin! I think they are a squash, maybe hubard or perhaps butternut seeing that is what we ate last fall. Maybe I should murder a few of them....it looks like there are five in there.

Thank you all for your kind words. I'm still recovering.

Oh, they have several guardian angels here in Naramata. One gal in particular has been amazing. She lived in Turkey for a number of years teaching English as a second language. She has been very helpful educating us about their culture which is so different than ours. She has been at their house pretty well everyday for the past six weeks. We now have about seven people who volunteer to drive them into town for their appointments, etc...a 15 km drive each way. They just really need to learn English so the husband can work. Their government money has been delayed so the money from the event will really help us while we wait for the other funding. Even buying food has been an issue.

Forgot to mention that the wife came to help serve. She plated the hummus and ezme then served people their meatballs. She was a little shy but we insisted and it all worked out well. Deryn: We put most of the food in plastic bags undressed in my fridges...I have an all fridge and a regular fridge. It all just fit. The fruit I took down to the hall in the am and put it in their fridge.

The dinner was a resounding success. Everyone was raving about the food and when the plates come back licked clean you know they were sincere. Someone asked if this could be a monthly affair! Financially it was very successful and we have enough money now to bring the family's relatives here from Regina in a couple of weeks. That will make an enormous difference to their mental state of mind. The local wineries/distilleries and businesses were very generous in their donations with one winery donating a whole case of wine. Here is what we made: