Dehydrating Tomatoes

Growing tomatoes is a challenge every year here in Seattle- will it be warm long enough for them to produce fruit? So far I get very few ripe tomatoes, and a bunch of green tomatoes, but that's better than last year, when the plants just started flowering when the frost hit. This year we had a long Indian summer after a very cool spring and early summer, so it was a good year.... I'm also learning about hot spots in the yard, and propagation methods, so maybe next year jackpot?. Luckily, the tomatoes at the Community Orchard I volunteer at went wild. At the end of the season they were loaded with green and ripe tomatoes, which we divvied  up, took home and put in paper bags to ripen.

 I had a lot of fun trying out new recipes; especially from a book of Indian recipes titled: Gourmet Indian in Minutes. Most Indian food I've made takes hours, so the title was exciting.... and maybe a bit misleading, as many of the recipes relied on already cooked items, but overall, the recipes were delish and relatively quick.  After a bit, though, I was tired of tomato recipes and still had a bunch of tomatoes, so I decided to dehydrate them, as the freezer was full. 

A lot of people add olive oil; but in most cases, I'll be using them in recipes where I'm also sauteing something in oil, so I decided to skip it and just add some oregano and basil.

These are the prepped tomatoes on the dehydrator screen. These are cherry tomatoes.

When finished they looked like this:

They REALLY dried down to a husk, it'll be interesting to see what they are like when I go to use them in a recipe. 

What's your favorite veggie or fruit to dehydrate? This year mine was strawberries.

Side note: I changed the white balance on the camera between shots..... they looked more similar in camera... I'm still learning how to use the digital camera after all these years!

Getting ready for Spring by building a worm bin

I've been struggling with my composting methods since moving into my current residence about 1 1/2 years ago. First, I got a fancy rotatable composter.

 
I haven't found it to be too effective. Maybe I don't put enough dry matter into it; I don't know.

So then I was just piling stuff on the ground, which unfortunately, likely attracts rats and raccoons, not making my elderly neighbor next door very happy.

So today, with the help of Steve from the Seattle Permaculture Guild , I built a sturdy worm bin that should take care of the majority of my kitchen scraps and is a closed box. It was really pretty easy, or maybe Steve made it seem that way, but I think it's pretty easy with a few tools. Steve is a great guy and has been on the Seattle garden scene for a long time; helping  to start the first worm bins at Seattle Tilth, and he helped start the West Seattle Tool library among other things. Did I mention he builds geodesic domes, and makes fabulous ceramic tile pieces?

On to the worm bin..... we started with an old wood cabinet from Second Use , which sells recycled building materials.

Next we cut it about in half, so we had most of a box already.

We knocked apart the leftover pieces to use to complete the box. 

We put some smaller pieces in the opening to strengthen the corner and to have something more to screw the side piece to.  We found it better to use screws to attach certain pieces where hammering would have knocked it apart. You would have to judge which would be best depending on the materials you have and whether you are using a pre-existing structure or building it from scratch with new wood. I like the idea of re-using something that has been discarded and it's great to get this old solid wood. 

Next we added hinges.

Now I drilled holes in the bottom about 6 inches apart for drainage and air flow. on the front and sides I drilled just one row of holes.

this is a happy me with my new worm bin! I love that the old cabinet is made of solid wood that is sturdy enough to be a garden bench that can be sat on. I have dreams of painting some cool decoration on it; but for now, I'm going to start cutting up newspaper to fill the inside before adding organic matter and worms.

Thank you, Steve!

Beautiful Skies

Yesterday was a day of completeness. Both sunrise and sunset were magically delicious. This is what greeted me as I went out the door in the morning:

And this is how the day waved goodbye; the sun is an awesome star even when its' light only reaches me indirectly:

Corn Dolly

A corn dolly. I knew I wanted to make one of these when I was growing my corn, but I didn't imagine how beautiful these corn husks would be.

She is the embodiment of my own personal Fae, an assignment I was given by Shannon of Herstory , during a reading from Brian Froud's deck, in which she pulled a blank card as the space to create our own personal Fae. Intuitively, I'm tying this in with the Queen of Cups tarot card, which is my personal court card. She's usually depicted as quite domestic, but she has her wild side, as she's the human embodiment of Gaia, nurturing and abundant, but like her helper Calypso, doling out some storms when the air needs to be cleared. My dolly fae is made of Indian corn, half domesticated, half wild, bringing the best of both ways, knowing the benefit of a warm hearth and cultivatable nourishment, while retaining her wild strength, vigor and beauty.

I've saved the rest of the husks (Ok, I just had a tiny circle of corn) to use in my second attempt at natural dyes. The color of the husks is so pretty, I hope it will stay in the yarn, unlike the blackberry fiasco. The color was so pretty at first, with the blackberries, but just washed most of the way out; which led to a 2nd attempt with a different mordant, giving me a mottled, dull medium brown, my least fave color in the world. Which lead to more overdying attempts using hibiscus tea, roses and lavendar with salt, which was a slightly warmer color of still ugly brown..... which lead to my final desperate attempt to make this yarn something I would ever use, by overdying with red food color, the little bottles from the spice aisle. It's a prettier mottled brown with bright red tones that I'm going to use for my first sock knitting class next week at the Yarn Stash . I'll post some pics when they're done.

For an alternative image of the Queen of Cups, check out my friend Magi's Tarot of the Pomegranate

Other colors of mountain ash

I took a guided plant tour at the Arboretum last weekend and came across varieties of Mountain Ash that were white and pink. Anyone know if they are also edible?