Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Yesterday I took the boys to one of my favorite stores, 99 Ranch Market. After spending 10 minutes looking for a parking spot and another 10 minutes trying to escape the parking lot to leave I stumbled upon a parking space and snatched it up! Which brings me back to to title of today's post. Happy Chinese New Year!  I'm 1/2 fake Chinese, which means I like the food and have the genes, but know nothing of the culture and do not speak the language. Hopefully the family and I can take a trip to China in the future and rectify at least part of my Chinese knowledge deficit.

I spend a strange afternoon today.  I've been in a  gardening funk (that's denial speak for LAZY) and haven't done much, so we started a garden clean-up yesterday.  Out went some plants that had bolted, in went fresh compost and onions. Today I attempted to continue the garden clean-up, and I found some good good stuff during my "work". 



The turnip greens I had planted we just supposed to be the leafy portion. But I am so happy that they bulked up and we now have turnips. I guess neglect is OK in plants?

 I pulled the sweet potato that I had decided wasn't doing much.  This plant started from a sweet potato I found budding under my kitchen counter. I stuck in the ground thinking "hey, let's see what happens." It was next to the Thai basil and coriander. The coriander had self seeded, so it was very very aromatic as I dug today.  I probably killed off 5 coriander plants in my attempt to find my sweet potatoes. When I had  checked the progress of the sweet potato plant in August, there was 1 measly small spud. And after months of neglect I found a great surprise!  I may even try to grow sweet potatoes again the right way this summer.

And sweet potatoes - a couple of
these are even "store" sized.


  

And in my "regular" harvest we had just two things:



My two little Sugar snap peas from my 1 pea plant and some habeneros

Did I mention how TINY they are?



All in all it was a fun and interesting day out there! I can't wait for spring (proper!).



Winning back space!

How do you organize?  I have two little ones under the age of 4 and we are slowly losing our house to toys! Well, we just bought the house so the kids would have more space, and we have managed to consolidate toys, but yowza!

We are managing to win back this room, and may even have it toyless by summertime.

We started out with the above room being the main kid/play area and we have slowly been moving everything to the wood room aka - our future dining room. (It is closer to the kitchen and I can keep an eye on the kids while puttering around in there).  As you can see, the toys have exploded.  No matter how many times I pick up, the kids just follow behind me and undo all my hard work.

I am thinking we need more of these little cubbies.

  

My SIL has a ton in her small living room to corral the kids toys, she has triplets that are all 1. All the toys are the same age group and she's not balancing two different sets of age appropriate toy ranges. I saw how organized everything was over the holidays and I am lusting after space and organization. But she's so much more OCD than I am.

How do you keep all of the kid's stuff organized?

Compost

For Christmas I was gifted with an opportunity to choose a composter for my home garden!  Now I have to buckle down and select one, so I need your help! 

I don't have a very large garden, and while I am hoping to expand this spring, I will never have a huge garden (yard limitations and all).  So what kind of composter do you have and why do you like it (or why don't you like it)?

I am leaning towards selecting this composter: http://www.stoneharborgarden.com/compost2.html

Recent Happenings

How is it that when family comes to visit, you always think "Man, I am going to have so much free time to garden, blog, exercise, etc." and it NEVER happens?  I was sure that I would have more time since there would be an extra pair (or two) of hands around. But with the family, holidays and Christmas shopping and baking I have had NO TIME!  Every Monday rolled around and I thought "I have to post about the harvest this week!" and next thing I know it's Tuesday (or in some casesWednesday).

Well...... Let's catch up then.


The rabbit ate all of my kale... all of it... down to the stumps. I had been putting off harvesting because I was feeling lazy. And I really wanted to try kale chips with home grown kale! Arg!!!!  I bought repellent that same day.

But thankfully I didn't pull the kale out and let it try to regrow. And boy has it!  This is what it looks like today.  Hopefully the rabbit repellent will work it's magic and we can eat this batch. YUM!

 And the kiddo's bok choy has been growing fabulously. We harvested 1 pound 5 oz from a single plant I am treating as a cut and come again plant.  And it's getting fuller every day, so I see more bok choy in my future.

I also harvested some tatsoi, but we ate it before getting a photo.

What else.... all the Christmas goodies have been shipped to the family and we finally have down time!  This year the tins included Black Forest Crinkles, Chai Shortbread, Snickerdoodles, Hazelnut Crunch, Peppermint bark, Peanut butter kisses cookies, and fudge. Oh My!  I did manage to not eat everything and gain an obscene amount of weight by telling myself for every cookie I ate I would have to run a mile to burn it off (except the chai shortbread, they are only 57 calories a cookie). So I only ate 5 cookies... so far! The big tins were shipped off, but here are some pictures of the little tins for close friends =)



Top layer - Fudge, Hazelnut Crunch and Peppermint bark




Bottom layer - Chai Shortbread, Snickerdoodles, Crinkles and Peanut Butter Kiss cookies



I love the holidays!

Mom's visit....Day 1

To start off the food fest (which I am going to need to seriously start running to combat or diet heavily between Dec. 1 until Christmas....) I picked up my Mom at the airport and we immediately went to Ranch 99. My Mom lives in a small-ish town in Florida and LOVES, LOVES, LOVES going to the Asian market here in San Diego. I spent the last week clearing out the fridge because I knew she would go absolutely crazy and buy out the produce section. Last Thanksgiving when my Mom came to visit, we were days away from moving, and had worked so hard to clear out the pantry and fridge only to have my Mom stock up again! ARGGGGG! This time I let her go nuts. 

We gave my Mom a quick tour of our little garden and Ryle showed her his favorite part... His yummy Bok Choy. Yes, he likes to nibble on it while it's still in the garden. What a NUT!

One of my Mom's favorite things to get is the Peking Duck from Sam Wong's at Ranch 99. She has even been known to buy some and bring it home frozen in a cooler. (Ryle inherited his nuttiness from her!) We had a late lunch of the Peking duck, and despite initial hesitation, Ryle loved the duck.  Gray had no hesitation at all. The boy can eat!

I didn't say he was a neat eater... Yes, he managed to get rice up his nose. And not to be out-done, Ryle demanded a photo. And he actually wasn't goofy about getting his picture taken!!!

Mom made a great stir-fry using an ingredient that I have often seen and have never know what to do with, Chinese Okra. It was delish!!! I can see making it more in the future and maybe even growing some Chinese Okra in the garden next summer. Tomorrow is a trip to the zoo, should be lots of fun. Happy gardening all!

Harvest Monday - November 15, 2010

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions and is a great way to share what's coming out of your garden and see what other people are growing in their gardens as well! 

We had a small harvest from the garden this week, but that is because I am vain. My Mom arrives on Wednesday and I don't want to denude the  garden before she flies in. There are greens greens galore there!  Some boy choy, tatsoi, and turnip greens all waiting to come out. I can't wait to see what she cooks up.  I know everyone says this about their Mom, but she is an AMAZING cook. I cook well, but she cooks better.  I will keep the camera ready and make lots of posts about the yummies.

Fairy Tale Eggplant - 7 7/8 oz

Pin Stripe Eggplant 4 1/2 oz

Pimientos de Padrón - 1/2 oz

Fall is not a good time to grow peas or lima beans in this little section of SoCal.  Despite the babying and coddling, my arch nemisis Mr. Buddy is out to get me. The peas are being nibbled to the ground once uncovered and the lima beans are attacked from two fronts!  I nurture and nurture and nurture.... and he/she eat and eats and eats. When I uncover the tender shoots the bunny digs up the seed and nibbles it away and leaves a stalk with no base. Erg.

Sounds like it's time to make a special trip to the nursery to get bunny repellent. Happy shopping -- I meant gardening!

DC Toured, MCM done, what next?

Well, DC was a blast!  I managed to get several full nights sleep, saw the sights (not as thoroughly as I would like, but he, what do you expect with a whirlwind trip?) and ran a marathon. While I missed my boys so much, it was so nice to be free for 4 days!!!! 

Marathon Morning

Mid race photo - we don't look a bit tired do we?

Post race photo at the Iwo Jima Memorial

Grabbing the obligatory photo with some Marines. 

And now I am getting some rest (and feeling guilty for it) and hopefully making sure my achilles heals before the next race! And back into the garden and dealing with critters.