Here are those lovely napkins if you haven't seen them before for our USA readers. Check out the link to August 7, 2009 and enter to win before Midnight tonight!
These are the cocktail napkins for our international readers. Please check out this link and enter! We want to make sure that everyone interested is entered. The winners will be announced tomorrow morning! Good luck!
I don't grow roses very well. Yet I still keep trying! This one is the Everblooming Cecile Brunner. It blooms from early summer through until frost. Most years it is neglected. This year some attention has been paid to it because of the groups we had touring. It is such a delicate flower but a real work horse of my garden. I wouldn't be without it! Don't forget to enter our contests! Check the August 7, 2009 posts!
Well, you are all thinking to yourselves she has finally gone over the edge! Green tomatoes and peanut butter! An heirloom 'Green Zebra' tomato so it is supposed to look this way. We have extra fiber bread so I think next time I may toast it. I was so excited that I just slapped on the peanut butter, place the tomato slices on the bread and I was in tomato and peanut butter heaven! By the way I use Jif Extra Chunky!
There is a back story with this post. I was a legal secretary for many years and the typewriter repairman (Yes, quills and ink were gone!) was fixing my machine at lunch. He asked what I was having and I said a peanut butter and tomato sandwich. He said, "You must be from Kittanning. My wife is from there and eats the same sandwich!" It was a little creepy and funny at the same time. Here is a picture of my hometown from a hillside above on a hot steamy day in July five years ago. Kittanning is the County Seat of Armstrong County and is situated along the Allegheny River. You can just make out the Courthouse in the distance!
We have an espaliered apple tree that is a 'Liberty'. The espalier has come undone and we have a massive tree that is producing apples. The good news! The bad news is is that I have to catch them as The Herbal Husband cuts them on the neighbor's side. Their dogs barking fiercely. I should have taken a video! It was chaos! Here is the pile of pruning apple tree. It looks bad at the moment, but hopefully early in the spring while dormant, we can get the espalier back! Our other apple tree is supposed to be a 'dwarf Granny Smith' but it was a giant instead. The Herbal Husband commented that we needed to take that tree out! It is full of disease and bad insects and needs to be shaped dramatically and sprayed. As my extension agent has said to me, "A chainsaw at ground level is its only hope!" You know it's bad when an extension agent tells you that! She really likes both of us! Really!
These are the 'Liberty' apples. They look nice, don't they? Well, these are their good sides. It's all in the staging! They may have even looked better were they in a basket and not on top of the washer with a Marshall's bag as a background! The Herbal Husband was a huge help cutting out the bad parts and getting them cut to cook down.
I put water enough so that it wouldn't scorch. We had about four quarts of apples, maybe five. At least quartered, but there were many little pieces. I added 1 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of cinnamon. It's chunky applesauce! I canned it last night. The finished product is a little less chunky. My first attempt at applesauce a few years ago was too runny and watery. This time it looks like marshmallows in the applesauce! It tastes great though and that's what's important! That fourth jar is a little thin as far as being full, but we will enjoy it! Hope you are preserving your harvest wherever you may be!
We like to celebrate with food around this house! Who doesn't! We had The Herbal Husband's famous guacamole with nasturtium flowers yesterday. The flowers add a peppery kick to the guacamole! Then we topped off breakfast today with some lemon verbena bread! A fitting finish! In case you missed my favorite lemon verbena bread recipe before, here it is again.
A year has gone by and we had to bring out the noise makers to celebrate blogging about our wacky lives! I was inspired to start this journey from reading the blog by two of my favorite sisters (we aren't related) from The Rosemary House and Sweet Remembrances in Mechanicsburg, PA. They have a wonderful blog called Rosemary's Sampler. The Herbal Husband and I want to thank you for reading and commenting on our journey through our travels and gardens and day to day lives.
We are bird lovers in this house. I know for some of you who have kids, this time of year can be difficult to entertain them! It is almost school time! UGH! Sooo I have the perfect solution if you are in the Pittsburgh area, take them to the National Aviary! Here is The Herbal Husband feeding a dollar bill to Minni, the American crow. Smart bird! She takes it from you gently and puts it in the box for a good cause.
There are feedings for the lorikeets or lorries that will delight your kids and you. They are very noisy, but it is very interesting to feed them. For a nominal fee per cup, you and your kids can enjoy this activity.
This is a clump of nasturtiums that we grew from seeds we bought in Holland several years ago. It is finally blooming wildly. I harvested 18 flowers from this clump yesterday to eat with The Herbal Husband's guacamole. Delicious! Remember you can eat both leaves and flowers that give a salad a peppery taste. This flower and variegated leaf below is a variety called 'Alaska'. A book called Edible Flowers: From Garden to Palate by Cathy Wilkinson Barash is my favorite book on edible flowers. You also need to remember that not all flowers are edible and Ms. Barash addresses both edible and non-edible flowers in her book. That's why it's my favorite. You can find it at Book Finder or favorite used book search engine.
