Success Stories

I've been starting to feel a bit down about my garden this year. My lettuce plants are still tiny, I haven't harvested anything, and it's been a little discouraging. However, since Friday I've noticed a few successes. First is that my tomatoes at work are starting to ripen. These are plants I got from a friend so I had no idea what kind they were. The verdict is in: they're cherry tomatoes. In a couple of days I should have enough ripe ones to make a pasta dish I know of. Yum. (I'll post pictures when I do make it!) Salads I'll save for later, when the lettuce gets a bit bigger.
But the lettuce is big enough that we can use it for some things. On the menu list for this week are moose burgers (really, it's the same as beef burgers but with ground moose instead) and we'll top them with lettuce from the garden. The burgers will be in homemade sourdough buns.
Which is my next victory: I finally got sourdough starter and have been using it! Yum. I should re-read the section in "The Urban Homesteader" about sourdough, and try their bread recipe because I don't like the one I have. It's too fussy, calling for "resting periods" on top of three different rising times! No way. Part of the appeal of sourdough bread is that it's so incredibly easy! Starter, flour, water, salt. That's it. I could just keep doing what I've been doing, and wing it. Not bad so far. The trick with sourdough, as with French bread, is to bake it with a pan of water underneath so that the oven gets really humid. That helps it to form a really nice crust.
I also found a few tiny squashes on a couple of different plants. One is round and green (still very tiny) and another is longer and starting to turn yellow, so they're definitely different types of squash. Yay! I think the yellowing one is probably a yellow summer squash. No idea yet what the other is. It actually looks a bit like a tomato at this point.
Finally, my potatoes have popped out of the dirt in their tire. I'll let them get a bit bigger before putting another tire on top and filling it with more dirt. (Not too long, now, though! Once potatoes decide to grow, they grow!) Never having done this before, I have no idea how many potatoes I'll get. But it's exciting anyway.
In addition to all of this, L let me "shop" through some of the clothes she was giving away, so I now have three new shirts! Now if only I could get ahold of some really nice jeans....
I'm totally making more of those fruit bars tonight. I've been thinking about them since they all got devoured. Today is cool and rainy, perfect for summer baking.