Blueberry Zucchini Bread

August 16, 2010 by 1 Comment
blueberry zucchini bread recipe

As you may recall, we are huge fans of zucchini bread in this house and I make a couple loaves almost every week. Now that Stefan is back at work and I want him to have something in his belly every morning, I'm back to baking. But I was feeling a bit bored with the usual zucchini bread and had a bunch of blueberries in the fridge to use up...and so this recipe was born. I basically just took my original recipe and modified it according to what I actually had in the kitchen. For reasons beyond … [Read more...]

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How to make & can sweet garlic dill pickles

October 15, 2009 by 1 Comment
garlic dill pickles

Although we didn't have a huge harvest of pickling cucumbers (or even regular ones) this year, I did still manage to get a couple jars worth of pickles. I have always been a big fan of pickles of all sorts but a spicy, zesty pickle to eat with a hearty lunchmeat sandwich is always something fine. So I tried a new recipe from one of my canning books, The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving (available on Amazon.com and Amazon.de). This book has over 300 recipes for canning but they all require … [Read more...]

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That’ll take care of the algae – covering an IBC tank

September 11, 2009 by 4 Comments
Covered IBC tank with container garden

Fall is setting in here in Frankfurt. The weather has cooled down a bit and it was raining a lot more last week. Been a bit overcast the last two days but no rain and I'm certainly not complaining. The fall weather has been absolutely glorious and I'm actually looking forward to the fire red, burnt orange and sunflower yellow leaves on the trees; even if it does mean winter is coming soon. Our salad seeds are starting to sprout and grow again, happy that the 90 degree weather has passed. And our … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Container Garden, Homesteading Life, In the Garden Tagged With: , , , ,

A bit of harvesting & foraging going on here

August 26, 2009 by 1 Comment
zucchini harvest for seed and food

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 cucumbers - 409 grams Bell peppers - 167 grams Jalapenos - 131 grams Habaneros - 2 grams (we have about 15 grams … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Expat Life, Homesteading Life, In the Garden, Veggie & Herb Garden Tagged With: , , ,

Harvesting a giant zucchini

July 27, 2009 by 3 Comments
first zucchini 1.5kg

I harvested our first zucchini today from our Fordhook (Burpee) plants. It's a whopping 3 pounds (1.5 kilos), 10 inches long and 4 inches across at the biggest part!! I grated about 1/3 of it and made zucchini bread (which takes about 2 cups grated zucchini) and plan to use part of it tomorrow for rosemary zucchini pizza. And since you usually only use a small zucchini for the pizza, I may even get another batch of zucchini bread from this one zucchini! Usually we pick our zucchini when they … [Read more...]

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Harvesting green goodies

July 21, 2009 by 3 Comments
arugala flowers seed saving

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 multitude of black ants that are attempting to get all the fruit before we do. Have to make sure I find a … [Read more...]

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Still growing strong – 2009 Seedling Journal Vol. 3

March 8, 2009 by 5 Comments

This update is LONG overdue, but what can I say. The plants are doing really well. I separated and replanted some of the bigger plants today into bigger pots; White Runner beans, Rouge pumpkins and spaghetti squash. Next time we start those seeds will make sure to only put one seed per starter pot because they grow incredibly quickly. Hopefully we'll find a way to build out raised bed tunnels soon so we can get some of these things in the ground. Of course we also need to finish up the outside … [Read more...]

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

February 23, 2009 by 4 Comments

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 also need to get the raised beds finished up (cleared of weeds and tree trimming debris, then filled … [Read more...]

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An aspiring chef – Rice with broccoli & carrots recipe

February 16, 2009 by 1 Comment

While my mom was visiting us here in Germany, she reminded me about something I used to make all the time when I was in high school. My interest in cooking was really starting to blossom then, although I still didn't really get into cooking until we moved over here - guess I was just spoiled by all of mom's awesome cooking! The dish was really simple, consisting of broccoli, carrots and rice with a bit of flavoring thrown in. So as I was making Baked Garlic Parmesan Chicken (which was an … [Read more...]

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

February 8, 2009 by 4 Comments

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 we decided to get our plants started for the garden. This will give us a little extra motivation to get … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Homesteading Life, In the Garden, Veggie & Herb Garden Tagged With: , , ,
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