Saturday 17 March 2012

Balcony Garden

It's been awhile since I posted, life's been busy! From looking for jobs to school work, just finding time to relax and take a breather is hard. Here's my latest project, which I amd quite excited about! I love to garden, growing things makes me happy, and this year will be my first year without a "traditional" garden, you know the one in your backyard. I'll be living in my apartment this year, all summer long, with a job, so that means no going to my parents place to plant my garden. Instead my boyfriend and I have decided to have a balcony garden. It's a first for both of us, but we simply must have a garden! Our balcony faces the west, and gets plenty of sunlight, so hopefully it works! We plan on having window boxes on the railing filled with tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, and flowers. Hanging baskets on the hooks from the walls with cucumbers and strawberries. A shallow plastic tote/storage container sitting on the table with flowers, onions, maybe some carrots and more lettuce. Finally my greenhouse with all of our tropicals will be beside the table. We've already started our lettuce in a hanging basket! With the warm weather we've been having, it's outside and thriving. Here's a picture of them at a week old!


I've also put my bulbs outside. Jeremy's (my bf) mom decided to try growing some bulbs in her greenhouse, and well they didn't do so well, stalks were short and they flowered un evenly, so guess what, free gifts! I have daffodils, hyacinths, and tulips. My two amaryllis' are outside too, now that they have finished flowering.


To top this all off, it wouldn't feel like a real garden without some wildlife, aka birds! So I put up a feeder, and already I have chickadees and a couple of finches visiting! It's quite exciting to see, and my cat's love the enterainment!

Saturday 24 September 2011

Introduction

Hello!

The purpose of this blog is kind of like a step by step cook book for me and anyone else reading. I'll be blogging about my cooking adventures, which will help me to remember any mistakes I make, or changes to the recipe that I should make. I am going to try to do a bit of everything, but I am trying to focus on money saving cooking like making my own spaghetti sauce so it's one less thing I don't have to buy at the store, meaning more money saved! I hope you enjoy my adventures in the kitchen!

-Nina

Canning Peaches

So today I finally got around to canning my second and third (and last, I think) batch of peaches. They had been sitting in my fridge, ripening and waiting for me for about a week, week and a half now! With school its hard to fit in enough time to can during the week though, so I had to wait until Saturday. Today I was all by myself canning, no boyfriend to help peel or quarter the peaches while I got the water boiling (for the jars) and the sugar syrup ready. No biggy though, it worked out well! The only problem I had was picking up 2 500ml jars out of the water once they were done processing for 15 minutes. I ended up dropping them twice (by accident of course) back into the boiling water which cause boiling water to splash all over my face. Good news is the jars didn't break and I didn't burn! I finally got those pesky jars out and they are currently cooling on the table. In total I have done 8 500ml and 1 250ml jars of peaches! I guess this means I'll have to get some vanilla ice cream to enjoy them with!

Peaches aren't the only thing I've canned this year. Here's a list of all the yummy food I have canned:

- 6 500ml jars, 12 250ml jars and 2 1litre jars of jam in the early summer/late spring (strawberry, mulberry and strawberry-mulberry)
-9 500ml jars and 2-250ml jars worth of dill pickle slices
-4 500ml jars full of bread and butter pickles
-3 500ml jars of salsa
-1 500ml and 1 250ml jars of spaghetti sauce (which was quite tasty!)

I still have 4-2 litre baskets of pears to can along with a bunch of tomatoes to make more spaghetti sauce and salsa and some shallots to pickle as well. Oh and I can't forget about my basket of pickles/baby cucumbers. I'm going to try my hand at gherkins! Of course I will be making apple sauce soon, which is always a favourite at holiday dinners!