TicTac

@rotuts - A cutting will absolutely make your life (and your path to $$$ & stardom - as @weinoo eluded to) much easier and shorter. A guaranteed female from a known breeder will shave nearly a month off your process. Seeds are also fun, as you can hunt for various phenotype's within one particular strain. Now you are headed down a steep rabbit hole....so make sure your harness is on tight! Oh, and if you move to Canada, it is now part of your rights as a Canadian Citizen to grow up to 4 plants.

zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta, sautéed Egyptian onions, prosciutto and parm. no toes were harmed in the making of this dish.

Nothing against the broiler! Certainly would make it easier - though now that I think of it, you most likely will get different end products as I would think the pan method will reduce the overall salsa further. A recent chili order brought a new treat to experiment with, Morita peppers. Really smokey with nice fruity flavors. Roasted and blended, they make a great salsa addition.

The most important part of tonight’s dinner....zucchini flowers! This rendition sautéed with scapes, baby purple onions and a bit of lemon at the end.

Rather than roasting the tomatillos under a broiler, might I suggest treating them similarly to the first post, where the raw ingredients are 'toasted' in a pan - in fact, I continue to cook my tomatillo salsa in the roasting pan and turn it into a sweet/spicy salsa (caramelized tomatillos get a nice sweetness to them). Basic ingredients which can easily be added onto: Tomatillos sliced in half Some type of onion Garlic 2+ types of chili Cilantro Very basic, but many routes can be taken from that starting point.

I've heard storing onions in sand in a cold space for long storage is the best. Great haul @Shelby! Today I pulled about a dozen large zucchini flowers which will be stuffed with a ricotta/ramp mix and pan fried. Also got the first hot (Aurora) pepper of the year. Such a fantastic little purple powerhouse!

This thread makes me happy. I can use that. Your gardens all look fantastic, I am certainly envious of some of the space you all have (shouldn't say that out loud as I am sure @KennethT will pipe in about space limitations! ) So perhaps this is because I started everything from seed this year, and while I have always cared for my plants, I seem to have quite the attachment this year! Over the past few days we have had some high winds, less than a week ago, a large gust came and one of my poor yellow zucchini babies split. Completely in half - down the stalk...unreal. So in my haze of a mini-freak out, I reached out to my uncle who is my gardening guru; he informed me that zucchini leaves are edible (who woulda thunk it with all those pokey spines!) - so off the leaves went from the half a plant, into the kitchen (they are delicious, btw); I took the mutant Frankenstein zucchini and began my surgery - cleaned all the leaves, and then prepared a new home of heavily soaked starting soil combined with some organic worm castings and planted the wound into the ground. Well; it's been 4 days now and both the amputee and amputated half are still alive and dare I say, sprouting new leaves! A have often split plants before to give to friends/family or plant elsewhere, but this gives a new meaning to the method! I need to adapt either the straw method or perhaps the newspaper/cardboard one next year - too much weeding!!!

Can you post a link to the recipe or a general guideline? Love pickley things!!!

Nice specimen! Though I am not sure one 'plucks' broccoli....perhaps slice, hack, chop, or snap; might be more suitable verbs

Haiga rice - sweet and sour eggplant; all sorts of stuff thrown in.

I enjoy the stuffed ricotta method (I will often add things like crispy pancetta to the ricotta) I also like to pan sear the flowers freshly washed on high heat with some garlic and onions, sometimes chili - de-glaze with white wine and butter at the end and serve on crusty bread.

@kayb - do you not eat your zucc flowers??

Scored more live soft shell garden salad w balsamic and evoo

No kidding eh....that hollowed out pineapple...come on now, show off! 😛

This is a patch of deer tongue and another patch with a couple other varieties (and some vagabond dill!). I have patches of lettuce all around the property ... easy to grow in between crops and plants and if you spread your seeding out you can get 2-3 crops a year

lol show me yours and I will show you mine! (btw - what are we showing each other!?) 😛

There are a few types of arugula you can grow. Annual and perennial varieties. I prefer the perennial due to the flavour profile but also the fact that they come back every year, but also they do not bolt nearly as quickly as the annual variety. Been having some fantastic salads from the garden over the last week (I grow 4 types of lettuce, my favourite being Deer's tongue), with at least a handful or two of arugula in each bowl!

Vietnamese food is one of my favourites. Bun Bo Hue...o my! Looking forward to seeing pics from your travels (of food, that is - everything else while enjoyable, takes second fiddle here!) 😉

I have used tomato seeds per my method above that have been stored for at least 4-5 years with success. 14' ceilings...nice, look forward to seeing the new digs. Living tropical plant wall...very cool. Sign me up for one.

Ken - should have kept some seeds! Anytime I have a tomato I really like I just toss a few of their seeds onto any piece of scrap paper, label it, and put it away - best storage method ever! I would try the milk I guess, but as Shelby said, dilute it a fair bit. I often will throw crushed egg shells on my roses and into the compost heap. Lastly, please - stay away from miracle grow, that shit is garbage and is pure chemical nonsense! Just get yourself some good compost or a bit of bone meal and mix that into your soil. You can also make a 'tea' which I did recently for various...planted items....did it a few times, once with leftovers from veg stock; the other time I went all out, filled a stocking with compost and organic worm castings, suspended it in a huge pale and chucked a aquarium pump into the bottom - along with some molasses - plants seemed to quite like the stinky concoction.

Thanks @rotuts No idea how you managed that. Certainly not feasible from my iphone! I used to be techy....then I had kids. lol. Garden doesn't look nearly as nice as kay or shelby's but I think I am late to the game (good old Canadian climate) but I will update with far nicer (and healthier) looking garden shots in the coming weeks.

I too am envious of Shelby’s massive garden! Love the raised beds. One day I will have a nice piece of land with some water source on it...but Until then...my slow but expanding (this years growth brings it to 14’ x 18’) frond yard - overtake the lawn/grass! - project. I apologize - I even tried to edit the orientation on this darn iPhone .... it just wouldn’t take in eg...give yer necks a stretch! 😝

My pleasure. The beauty is in it's simplicity. In a EVOO/Butter mix (equal parts) saute onions and a clove or two of garlic, thrown in towards the end. Once slightly golden (you can take it further but I really like the sour aspect of sorrel and too much caramelizing might counter that) add in roughly chopped sorrel. Cook till it starts to break down. From here you can choose to add a bit of white wine (I did not, tonight) or more butter or even cream (which I opted for in this instance, simply because I had some leftover from the curry). Season to taste. My family's preference is salmon (though lately I have much preferred ocean trout!) tataki slathered with sorrel sauce. My condolences about your mom @Kim Shook

I am curious whether the blanching / drying would help the butter issue I encountered. Though I would hazard a guess that if you did not salt the butter (and used unsalted) it would not be as much of an issue. Certainly if you froze it into portions, you are good to go. @Shelby - if we can figure out a way to get it cross border, I would happily send you a jar of crushed ramp oil (which is essentially fresh ramps bottle up in a jar of goodness!!!)

Paneer spinach curry. Sorrel sauce (I had to cook some and I would eat this stuff on shoe leather). Warm sake. Jasmine rice not pictured.