Today I fixed a batch of vegan Italian Sausage and my favorite part of that whole process has got to be preparing the spice mixture.
From the bottom up, a layer of garlic powder, crushed fennel seeds, crushed black pepper, salt, sweet paprika, red pepper flakes, chipotle pepper flakes, smoked paprika, ground oregano.
I almost hate to shake up the spice bottle and mix it all together. It’s so pretty and looks like layers of rock.
Here it is all mixed up and ready to be shaped into logs to be steamed.
Today was a cooking day. Yesterday we picked the rest of the first batch of peas we planted. We pulled up all the plants, weeded that part of the bed again, and then planted 5 rows of carrots, and 5 rows of golden beets and red beets where the pea plants used to live.
I shelled the peas, then steamed blanched them, and spread them out of a piece of parchment paper and froze them. Here they are all frozen, and ready to go into a freezer bag.
I decided to do that with the next planting of peas, as well, and see how much we get out of the whole planting. We already ate 3 cups of peas, and this is about the same. My guess is we’ll end up with about 12 cups of peas, not a lot considering how much room the plants take up in the garden, but they taste good!
Another batch of jam from the garden - 3 parts strawberry, 1 part raspberry.
It mostly tastes like strawberry with just a little bit of the tartness from raspberry. We picked the fruit yesterday, and I cleaned the berries. I stored them in the refrigerator overnight, covered with white sugar, and then this morning I made the jam.
The cucumber plants have all set baby cucumbers, and the honey dew melon plant has set a bunch of melons. Dan thinks the melon plant is going to escape the greenhouse and take over the garden. It’s already a good five feet in diameter, which is bigger than any of the melon plants got to be last year after a full season of growing. And we got no melons last year but this year I bet we do.
Red currants are getting red, and the black raspberries are starting to turn color. The gooseberries are being harvested by a very enterprising chipmunk who lives in the wild roses next to the garden. I kept trying to give him a shower yesterday with the garden hose, but he’s fast!!! So I’m not sure how much, if any, of these fruits I’m going to get to play with this year.