The Mad Gardener of Bowlus

I managed to can 24 quarts and I have another six quarts using the refrigerator method. I processed the refrigerator pickles in a similar manner as the canned ones except without the final step of heating, instead I just put the jars into the refrigerator. Pickles produced via the canning method will last much longer than refrigerator pickles. Canned pickles will easily keep a year or more (depending how well they were processed) whereas refrigerator pickles typically will last only 2-3 months.

Not long ago I had a hog processed and had the butcher keep the lard for me. I had the lard ground as it saves the step of having to cut it up into small pieces! The process of rendering is simply melting the fat so that it separates from the rest of the "impurities" (pieces of meat, bone, or whatever else was inside the hog). Also heating and melting helps remove the water - while technically you can never remove all the water you do want to evaporate as much as possible.

Found this in my garden in the spring and it is called a single tree hook. It is where a horse's harness attaches to a single tree which allows a horse to pull a wagon, plow, or other implement. It also hardly qualifies as coming from an ancient civilization as horses were commonly used, in day to day life, in the early parts of the 20th century! Just serves as a reminder that while today we expect our online orders to be delivered, from the other side of the country, in two days that it was not that long ago that visiting your nearest large city would have taken that long!

Armenian cucumbers are a type of cucumber that is closely related to a muskmelon. It is a long slender fruit (having them a yard/meter long is quite common) although like most fruits/veggies they taste better if picked earlier. Not to mention myself and two boys can't eat something a yard long! On Thursday evening I did not notice a single plant with fruit on it, a few days later (Monday) I found several growing with one of them being a yard long! Needless to say I was quite excited! I cut up the smaller one for lunch!

Although we started eating them straight out of the gardens earlier this week I did my first major harvest this evening after work! Time to start snapping and break out the vacuum sealer!

An advantage of growing potatoes in straw/hay is that you can harvest them easily without disrupting the entire plant. Quite a bit of summer left so I can leave the rest of them in the hay until later!

There is a lot you can do with zucchini but one of my favorite ways is to eat it battered!

For this recipe you will need eggs, seasoning salt, olive oil (other cooking oils will work), and flour (I used my Gluten Free Flour Blend but back when gluten was still an option I used regular wheat flour.

I used 1/2 quart jars, made some brine with water, vinegar, salt, and sugar. Through in two cloves of garlic and some dill!

I will know in a week or so how they taste!

8 cups water
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup + 1 Tbsp pickling salt
6 cups distilled white Vinegar (5% acidity)

Put in hot water bath for 15 minutes.

If you don't love play dough you don't know how to love!

Here is my recipe for gluten free play dough. While play dough is not something that should be eaten it can still be be a concern for kids with celiacs as a single "crumb" of gluten can be a concern.

3 cups flour (see for the flour blend I use)
1/3 cup salt
1/4 cup oil
1 1/4 cups hot water
If your blend does not already have xanthan gum then add 1.5 teaspoons

Time for me to figure out how to make pickles, I have never done that before so this will be a new adventure!