The difference is dirt

A few weeks ago, I blogged about how I had just put in our winter garden and sown all of the seeds! The last time we planted seeds it took around 3-4 weeks for us to notice any little green sprouts. The seeds then were not all that different than the seeds we planted for fall/winter. We had planted spinach and radishes for both of those seasons.

The difference has been entirely the ground. Learning from our summer season, we took much more care in preparing the soil for the seeds. Extra tilling and weeding, followed by extra sessions of fertilizing the ground. Being in the desert, we know that the ground is just depleted of so many vitamins and minerals that veggies thrive on! So we made sure to really give it the old college try.

The difference was almost immediate. I had little green sprouts in my lettuce row starting at 4 days post planting. 4 DAYS.

No kidding, this was after 4 days.

2 Weeks after that! The fall/winter garden continues to thrive and I am so excited to see what happens next!

I've been busy!

I do have a winter garden update post in the works, but in the meantime I am have been SO busy! My darling husband and I have a big trip coming up in the next few weeks and our planning has been going full force!

We are going away for 6-7 days and not many people know where we are going! So it might come off as a bit of a surprise, but this trip has been in the works for a few months now! Also traveling internationally can be pretty labor intensive on the planning front. I will do a whole post on in when we get back!

In the meantime, I have been spending loads of time with our little beauty exploring our tiny new/old town.


This little café was my favorite place to be in high school, and now that I have a little family to brunch with I still love it! It's the main street café and I am madly in love with their Cranberry and Turkey sandwich. It's totally calling me right now as I speak...

It's not my favorite place for coffee... it's not really anything special. But their sandwiches, hot chocolate, and environment is my favorite in town.

 All of the little stores next to it are adorable too. The little yoga studio, the quilting place, and the tiny little art gallery!

Small town loving!!

A quick break

Today I am taking a quick break from gardening. Partially because I had to spray insecticide last night because we are having some issues with powdery mildew on some of the squash plants. That needs to sit and then I need to try to lob off some of the infected areas with out putting the plants into distress.

But also because I have way too much going on today. Laundry, dishes, scrubbing my house, loving on my toddler, and going up to take a turn watching my dad because he had surgery Friday.

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about other peoples feelings and how they have been affecting me. I was so used to being anonymous in the city and being able to run anywhere looking like a total disaster. My self confidence was okay, because I didn't know any of these people and they didn't know me.

Flash forward to 6 months ago when we moved home. I knew that it was going to be immediately different. I can't go anywhere in this town with out recognizing a few people. The grocery store, the hair salon, getting fuel, the library, the list goes on and on.

What I didn't count on was losing this much weight and being in great physical health. So now I have other people staring. I don't say these things to be stuck up or anything like that. I mention it because it makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Mentally I am still a fat chick just trying to blend in and not try to make my presence known.

So after a few grocery trips with people staring at me a lot and wondering if I had that morning's spinach in my teeth and feeling totally self conscious; I decided to make a change.

My goal for the next little while is this:

To give a little bit less of a crap every day. To NOT care why people are staring and assume it's because they like my new hair color or my super cute t-shirt. To NOT care if some girl has a poo face on and NOT assume it's meant for me.

Life will be so much less exhausting every day! And I want to teach our little one that her self confidence and self worth is not determined by other people's opinions. It is made up of how SHE feels and how SHE thinks and is not up to any one else to determine. Besides the gentle and loving influence of myself and her daddy as we raise her.

So in the effort of caring a little bit less today...

The latest happenings...

So a week or two ago, I made a batch of pickles. I know practically nothing about pickles or the art of pickling. So essentially I googled and used the first recipe that I had everything for. Little did I know, I was making sweet pickles... which my husband hates! And considering I don't eat pickles, and only make them for sheer entertainment, well that wouldn't do!!

So yesterday, I tossed out all of the sweet pickles and started over! This time I really looked into recipes the night before and bought the remainder of the things I needed at the grocery store! Way to plan ahead me!

Lots of things were picked from our garden and ready to get pickled! Also... I bought the living plant dill and replanted it in the herb section of our garden. It's really late in the season, but I thought it couldn't hurt considering it was just going to sit in my fridge and die anyway!

In the middle jar is garlic, purple peppers, jalapenos, and habaneros. All from our little back yard garden! So proud!

Hy tasted the mixture last night and said that they had amazing flavor. We are both excited to see how they taste in a week or so when they have really sat and pickled!

It might seem silly, but Im learning that pickling like any other culinary experience, can be an art form! Every pickle brine has it's own character and does magical things over time! I'm really excited to use these on some Cuban sandwiches!

A few things

Here are a few pictures of some of the things that are coming out of the garden right now, and what we are making with them!

In this bowl we have: arugula, swan wing gourd (which deserves a post entirely of its own), purple peppers, banana peppers, green peppers, little cutie peppers, broccoli, jalapenos, and a few herbs in the bottom. Not bad just grabbing a few things for lunch, right?!

As a person I like to try to be able to do a little bit of everything. I love learning, and I want to know how to do EVERYTHING! So in this season of learning how to garden, I decided to learn how to pickle.

Not that I like pickled things. But you know... that's just who I am!

My first attempt I am pickling some cucumbers in a classic sweet pickle concoction. And in the top jar are two types of jalapenos and some yellow banana peppers. I do, on occasion, like a pickled jalapeno in certain dishes. So in a few weeks time, we will see how they taste! I plan on doing more pickling as the season gets closer to the cold bursts.

These little cuties I am so proud of! They are Danver half long carrots and they are growing like crazy! The reason I am so proud of them, is that these are the second batch that I planted. The first batch of seeds didn't take! Only ONE SINGLE CARROT started to grow! It was VERY depressing. But with effort and working of the ground, I decided to try again and planted another bag of seeds. These took incredibly well! And because of this, we have been able to have carrots with a few of our dinners! We usually do a sweet sautéed carrot and the little one loves them! We also just snack on them fresh from the garden! They are sweet and a tiny bit peppery, and completely addictive!

The giant pepper in the picture above is called a Big Bertha, and it was so tasty! With the next few that are picked, they are going to be stuffed and fried. Because I can.

The nuts on the counter are pecans from the neighbors tree, and when I make pesto (quite often) I like to use these local pecans instead of pine nuts. The bowl is filled with arugula and basil also for the pesto. Also two little carrot cuties, and a little onion that I added to the pesto. Also a wing squash gourd, funny things that they are. ( I will talk more about that particular plant in another blog, but in the meantime know that it was not added into my pesto!!)

There is lots more coming out, but this is a just a brief glimpse into what we have been munching on!

Fall/ Winter planting

 Now that my dear husband and I feel like we have a garden season under our belts and have learned A TON, we felt like we should go ahead and plant a fall/ winter garden. It only made sense. The fall weather in our town is warmer and able to have a bit of a longer growing season before the first freeze.

The first thing we did was till and fertilize the soil. Followed by another tilling and preparing the rows for seed planting.

After the ground was totally ready to receive seeds, I headed to a little nursery out in the middle of the fields. To get service you need to honk, but instead of immediately honking, I wandered around for a little bit.

The older gentleman who owns and runs it was very helpful in helping me to chose what to plant. It is my first fall garden in our new/old town, and I wanted to make sure that I was planting things that were going to survive and be hearty.

He suggested the following things: Brussel sprouts, leaf lettuce, radishes, spinach, turnips, and cauliflower.

In addition to the sweet meat winter squash that we already have growing...quite nicely if I do say. (There are a few others growing, but this was the largest as of a few days ago.)

So after we got our seeds planted; we sprinkled a thin layer of professional grade potting/ flowering soil on the top.

Then, before I could forget what the rows were, I needed to label the rows. At the time, I made signs out of cardboard, fully knowing that in 24 hours they would be destroyed because of our above ground watering system. But that gave me enough time to put together some sort of plan (in between being a toddler mom and ceo of running our family!).

Instead of spending money and loads of time making adorable little stick signs with cute graphics and colors, I found rocks from around our property. Time efficient and more ecological.

And then, because this is exactly who I am, I wrote on them with a sharpie.

 

 

I will update soon about how the rows are already producing!! (They started after 4 days. No kidding)

Frank

So sometimes after my husband and I plant in our garden, our little sweetheart decides to pull out the tags labeling what each plant is.

 

Such was the case of Frank.

 

Essentially Frank died. And two whole months later, the plant decided to grow like it was on fire!! Because so much time had passed, we no longer had any idea what the plant was!

 

So every time we would reference the plant it would go something like this...

 

"You know that plant in the top right corner over by the broccoli plants?"

 

"The dark green tall one?"

 

"No the short light green one."

 

You can see where I am going with this.

 

It is much easier to give these plants a name, instead of playing this game every time we need to discuss it! So begat Frank.

 

Also Frank ended up being a zucchini plant... a big one!!

 

This zucchini was lovingly made into zucchini almond bread today and did not die in vain.

The beginning (About me and this blog)

There are several reason I decided to start this blog! But I will get to that in a minute!

My name is McKenzi and I am a 27 year old wife, mother, pastry chef, dog-mom, aunt, gardener, world traveler, pianist, and generally weird human being! I love all of those things about my life!

This is me...

From the age of 11, I lived in a small town in (lets be honest here) the middle of the freaking desert. Before the age of 11, I lived in a moderately sized city and loved it. When we moved to this small town, I was appalled (if I had known how to be appalled at 11) !! Where are the stores? The mall? Not even a Walmart?!

Fast forward some time and after a year traveling internationally, I moved to the Vancouver/ Portland area to be with the love of my life... that guy I married 7 1/2 years ago! After almost 8 years of living in the city and doing the city thing every day for work; we finally had ourselves a little girl! Our choice was for me to go from full time working pastry chef- to full time stay at home mama.

Because of that choice, all of the things I had loved about the city, started to really not matter. The amazing food (that I never wanted to travel to eat anymore), the exciting night life (mama exhaustion), friends (45 minutes away), and the solitude of your entire family living 16 hours away started to make me feel quite down. Now... don't get me wrong, I was so utterly happy. But there were aspects of my life that just weren't right anymore.

So after a few months of going back and forth on a decision, my husband and I decided to move back to our small town lives! It was a HUGE decision that we finally made over the course of 2 days. 2 Weeks later... we were gone! It felt really sudden for a lot of people, but for us it was a long time coming.

That brings us up to speed!

So now instead of city life and constant dinning out... my entire life has changed. FOR THE BETTER.

In this blog I will share my love for gardening, baking, canning, small town life, and sometimes... our travels outside our small town!