Aug 26, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

A bit of harvesting & foraging going on here

Despite a few setbacks in our garden (like the loss of 80% of our tomato plants), we’ve still had a fairly decent harvest. You can see our full list of harvest figures on our In the Garden page but here’s what we’ve collected from our garden in the last month. I’ve probably missed a couple things here and there but I tried to be fairly thorough. Carrots – 504 grams Salad... read more

Aug 13, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

How to make your own jalapeno hot sauce

When my dad came over from Texas to visit us a few months ago, one of the things we requested that they bring was Louisiana Hot Sauce. We can buy Tabasco here, which we use a lot in cooking, but the flavor of Louisiana Hot Sauce is so much nicer on tacos, eggs and other things we want to spice up a bit. They brought one of the biggest bottles of Louisiana Hot Sauce we’ve ever seen (among other... read more

Jul 21, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

Harvesting green goodies

We got to harvest a few more things from our garden last week…it’s always an exciting time. But it can be tedious when it comes to things like berries, especially gooseberries. They grow all over the bush and you really have to climb up, down and around the bush to see them all. Plus you have to be really careful not to get stuck with their long thorns. In our case, we also have to fight a... read more

Feb 23, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

No more folds for a while – 2009 Seedling Journal Vol. 2

We planted more seeds yesterday. I folded about 30 pots in a couple hours. Does it seem excessive yet? We’re wondering ourselves. But we actually have a lot more planting to do. Most of the seeds left will be planted directly in the ground, though, (carrots, more beans, onions, brussel sprouts, perhaps red potatoes, gourds) so we’ve got a bit more time to wait until the cold weather is gone. We... read more

Feb 8, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

Time to start folding again – 2009 Garden Journal Vol. 1

So we didn’t exactly get to finish the compost bin or work on the greenhouse this weekend. We managed to get ourselves out of bed at about 7:30 on Saturday but after fully waking up, taking the dog and cleaning up, it was almost time for our guests to arrive. That didn’t give Stefan time to cut the supports for the compost bin and we can’t use loud things like the table saw on Sunday, so... read more

Mar 14, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

What we got from Burpee

So I’ve mentioned that we got seeds from Burpee a few times now…and you may be wondering what we ordered…so here goes – it’s a LONG list, I know. But the seeds there cost a fraction of the price here, especially for chili seeds so even with shipping them over here, it’s totally worth it. Plus you can’t find okra seeds here…. We mostly stuck to heirloom... read more

Mar 14, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Starting seeds in newspaper pots

Because this is a blog about becoming more self-sufficient and “green” in general, I had a brain storm…well it actually resulted when I was feasting on the Burpee seed catalog and noticed a little gadget they have to assist in the making of newspaper pots. We get 4 free newspapers delivered to our house each week – whether we want them or not. That is a a LOT of newspaper going... read more

Feb 20, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Burpee seeds are on their way…

I FINALLY placed our order today for a huge collection of Burpee seeds. Athough this will be our first experience with them, I’ve heard fantastic things and found so many things in their catalog that I wanted to try out. It’s mostly tomato and chili plants but also okra and a few other heirloom varieties. We’re trying to avoid the hybrids this year because most of the ones we tried last... read more

Oct 6, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Cayenne harvesting

We got quite a few nice peppers from our cayenne plants despite not really giving much love or attention to them. We decided to harvest a few of the peppers before we went away last week and hung them up in our kitchen to dry. We tried a little piece of one of them in our chicken penne arrabiata dish the other night but probably could have used a tiny bit more. Stefan tried them once before and they were... read more

Jul 10, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Make your own picante sauce!

I will openly admit that I LOVE picante sauce. I grew up in Texas, we like our food spicy and there are few things tastier on scrambled eggs than picante. I am a Pace fan (it’s made in San Antonio, you know) but we can’t get it here in Germany. In fact, you can’t get “real” picante sauce at all, just the little jars that they sell with salsa on the chip aisle which still... read more