New theme, new start

At the suggestion of Amy, I’m changing my theme to musing about the life I lead and the job I hold.  She thinks it’ll help me mellow out because I’m strung out on the kids.

Therefore, the new start.  No more gardens.  If someone can tell me how to change my title, I’d be grateful.

My job entails training mostly freshly graduated women in how to do non-invasive hormone monitoring.  Generally speaking, I work with a bunch of 22-24 year olds because for some reason we get mostly girls applying for the torture.  We ask these interns to come in and work for 3 months on reproductive conservation projects without much, if any, financial award.  Let us discuss this: 1: mostly women.  I’m fine with this.  In the past, we’ve had a few men and the women just get into fights over their claims of the single set of testes in the group and there’s drama and sometimes even tears.  Yes, I have to listen to blubbering, eager women who want letters of recommendations later in life talk about “how it’s not fair that Bobby and Gina went out last night, since Bobby pledged his undying love to me” crap.

2. We don’t pay them.  Some interns are lucky enough to qualify for a small stipend, but the requirements are so strict, most aren’t able to obtain funding.  I know there’s no way I would have been able to afford to work for free for 3 months- no way man.  I needed to pay off my student loans.  I have no clue how these kids are so financially stable that they are able to just live off of savings for that long.  Seriously, I spent any money I earned on living when I was their age, I didn’t have a savings account.  And by living, I mean eating out and going to bars, not just rent.  I had my priorities straight.

3. We ask these students to work with feces for 3 months.  At first, this seems unreal, but yes, we do work with poop.  The poop of very cool, endangered species, but poop none the less.  The students come in and learn the ins and outs of poop and all we can learn about the reproductive biology of a species just from the poop.  They crush it and sift it to a nice fine powder that floats gaily through the air and wafts into places like lab coat pockets, ears, and up the nose. Mmmmmmmm great fun.

We do ask a lot from the interns, but they take their pound of flesh from me as well.  My job is to take these students, who’ve barely ever seen a pipette in their life and ask them to wield one with ease and efficiency and to not break anything in the process.  It’s long and tedious, and I’m going to use this time to… discuss.. the phenomenon that is the endocrine lab intern.  I will doubtlessly wander off on tangents, but I plan to at least start on this thread.  I hope you enjoy the show.

How did Julie do this?!?!

Seriously, how did Julie (from Julie and Julia fame) manage to blog daily for a year?  I just listened to her book on tape on my drive home for my high school reunion 2 weeks ago. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I just celebrated my 10 year high school reunion.  It was a cute book, entertaining if nothing else.  The amount of butter used during her year-long attempt is staggering.  I also went to see the movie this past weekend with my mom and cousins – not really like the book, but again cute.  Meryl Streep did a great job, I forgot a few times that I wasn’t really watching Julia Child on the screen, especially when she was doing the old school tv shows.  Anyway, this woman, Julie Powell, decided to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year.  And at the same time she would blog about her efforts.  I can’t manage to update this thing 2x a month…

I told Lisa (lisa has chickens) that we should do the same thing as Julie – write a book about our blogs: a combination of us impatiently waiting for the other to post, her chickens, our gardens, our cooking attempts, Lisa’s wedding, helping plan it, our lives, etc.  You know, the same thing we’ve probably talked about before, at other times of our lives. Yet, the reality is that we’re both way too unmotivated to do this.  Any free time on our parts is spent on our respective projects.  Can we really add another? 

I’m sure we’ll keep you updated on our book process.  We’ll get to it by the time we’re 60 – at the same time we’re both retired and running our dream shop, a la ‘the epicurious cow/beas of bloomsbury’.  In sum: organic everything, savory and sweet foods cooked on premises, local produce, cows and chickens in the backyard, wine and beer selection, cool and different food items from random places, local cheeses, etc etc etc… Yesserie, we’ll do it! 

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Anyway, back to the garden.  Here’s my first Jet Star tomato harvest:

First harvest of the bigguns

Also, I should include the picture of the same tomato cluster I’ve included before – as ripened perfect tomatoes… I’m such a proud mommy.

So red

Do you remember how one of the first posts I talked about how I picked Jet Stars because they resisted splitting?  At least now they wait until they’re ripe to split, and it’s one out of every 5-8 that split.  At least that’s an improvement. 

The sad thing is that I picked these the night before I left for vacation to Martha’s Vineyard.  Chris got to eat the first ones.  Yet, he doesn’t really like tomatoes – he eats them because they’re good for him, not because the taste of garden-riped tomatoes is one of the best tastes on the planet.  Blasphemy, I know.  But I couldn’t let them just rot while I was away.  His comment on his meal: they were good, juicy, tangy.  I suppose it’s better than: Meh.

The post-vacation harvest:

Look at these beauties!  I picked so many veggies.  9, count em 9 jalapeno peppers!  I left three on the plant too. Lisa is supposed to be sending me a recipe to pickle my peppers so I can have them forever.  Yay pickled peppers – Lisa this is a hint for you, just so you know.  I also picked 6 Jet Stars, 2 giant marconis, and one ginormous green pepper. 

pretty little things

don't they look like a pair of elf shoes?

check out that pepper - it's the same size as my table salt container!

I have an amazing piece of land that yields me these wonders.  Pretty tasty stuff.

And now onto the artistic portion of the evening.  I took this sans flash in the fading light.  Feel free to ooohh and ahhhh over it like I do.

just after the rain shower

And that’s all.  Till next time!

I am a blogging laggard

Hello all,

The batteries in my camera have died and I have not managed to buy some more yet.  The sad thing is my garden is so pretty right now.  The Jet Stars are just starting to turn red.  It seems fate that the tomato bunch I took a picture of first for the blog are the ones turning red first.  YAY!!  I have an immense amount of grape tomatoes now – this weekend I picked a bunch for omelets and in the afternoon, picked newly ripened ones for a salad for dinner.  It’s amazing how fast they can ripen.  Granted, the ones I pick at night were partially ripe (read: orange) in the morning.  But I do have to share with you my revelation about grape tomato picking: the ones that are ripe fall off in your hands when you think about picking them.  This knowledge is very useful to me when I try to pick them after dark for a late dinner. 

My two bell pepper plants are producing nicely (and still flowering!) - they look totally different.  The Giant Marconis are slender and the other plant is producing typical sweet bell pepper fruits.  I’ve harvested some GMs already and they have a thin, yet very crisp and bright tasting flesh – it’s a bit different than the regulars.  The jalapenos man, WOW spicy! Lisa, remember how Grandma would send us jalapenos in the mail? You mentioned to me that they were the spiciest peppers wou’ve had.  I seasoned my eggs this morning with 1/4 tsp of chopped, seeded jalapenos and my lips were on fire!  My fingers were still burning, 36 hours later.  I’m impressed.  I do need to find a good use for them or give them away.  Can I freeze them?  Maybe slice them and freeze them single layer on a sheet and freezer bag them till needed?

My beans are past eating at this point. Any produced are very fibrous and not so tasty.  I should pull them, right?  I’m thinking of replanting and going for a fall crop.  What do you all think?

My volunteer tomato plants are officially cherries!!  They must be leftovers from last year.  They are sweeter than the grapes – more dainty.  Girlie tomatoes.  The grapes are definitely manly – so says me.  I don’t know why, but they are my male tomatoes – they spread out and take over. Don’t ask.  Makes sense to me.

I’ll add pictures when I get batteries.  Thanks for your comments!

Grrrrrrapes!

The Tami G grape tomato plants are ripening nicely.  I’m slightly impatient because I want them to turn, but I have to remember that I need them to develop in a slow, timely fashion so I can actually eat them all. 

pretty rainbow of grape tomatoes

Actually, who am I kidding?  Look at all of them.

one plant

other grape tomato plant

itty bitty ones that'll turn soon

Here, take a gander at the Jet Stars that I took a picture of for my first post.  Look at how big they’re getting!

the growing jet stars

Am I the only one who thinks of star trek/star wars when discussing jet stars?

You know what I’m not sure about?  (remember I am not a gardener) How big are the giant marconi (GM) bell peppers supposed to get before I pick them? 

giant marconi - still too small? just right? I feel like goldilocks...

And then my other, more generic sweet bell pepper plant is barely producing little pepper nubs right now, yet they are the same height.  The GM plant is near the outer edge of the garden and the other plant is located near the house – the GM plant probably gets more rain water.  Should I water my generic pepper to make up for the decreased access to rain water?   Any thoughts, loyal (few) readers?

To take a page from Lisa:  Nummies

I should preface Nummies with the fact that I am also not really a baker.  I don’t like how exact I have to be with it.  Cooking is more flexible than baking and I can fuss with things more.  I work in a lab and recognize the reasoning behind doing everything exact and following protocol – in fact, that’s what I LOVE about working in the lab.  I can always get the same results becuase I don’t change anything.  Yet, I do know from working there so long, what corners I can cut if I have to and what absolutely, no questions asked, has to be done in a precise manner or it all goes to crap.  I have not been baking long enough to know these tricks yet.  However, there are things i know I want to improve upon (like the vanilla and lemon you’ll read about below) that I try to jump in and do, yet they may not always turn out the best.  So, you also get to read about whatever forays into baking/cooking I attempt as well.  This way Lisa and my mom/dad can see visual evidence of what I’m working on and they can tell me how to improve. 

On to the real story…

I went to Costo last week and bought a HUGE container of blueberries because the 44oz container was the same price as a pint from the regular grocery store.  It was a stealbut now I need to eat them.  I put some in my yogurt for breakfast, but I wasn’t making a dent.  So, I made some random blueberry muffin recipe, pictured below.  It was a REALLY thick batter and called for a struedel like topping.  They didn’t rise very high and the batter itself wasn’t very sweet – I’m guessing the topping was supposed to compensate for that part… they fell apart easily – more airy less dense than the muffins from the store.  Who knows.  I’ll definitely be trying a different recipe in the future.  On the plus side, I made a heart-shaped one – look how pretty!

heart-shaped blueberry muffin!

And then today, I made blueberry cobbler.  Chris and I are going to have dinner with friends and I thought, hey I can bring dessert! (and it’ll include blueberries) So, I got this recipe off epicurius.com.  I figured that after my blueberry muffins failed a bit, I should try a more reputable recipe site.  I am skeptical about this recipe, but I also didn’t have a lot of time.  It’s cooling as we speak and then we’re out the door.  The recipe had 3 steps. 1. melt butter in 9×13 dish. 2. sift all the dry ingredients in bowl and then wisk in milk (to which I added vanilla, cinnamon and nutmet) to make batter and pour on top of butter. 3. pour blueberries (to which I added lemon zest) on top of batter. oh, and 4. put in oven.

Weird, right? The berries on top of the ‘cobbler’ ?  turns out that the blueberries sunk to the bottom and I got the resulting cobbler. 

blueberry cobbler

It looks a bit over-done but it’s because the middle of the crust on top was WHITE and I wanted to give it a chance to brown, so I turned the oven down a bit and left it in.  Next time, I’ll put tin foil around the outside for a bit in the beginning.  That’ll make everything brown evenly. 

I’ll post an update tonight about how it tasted.  I already think next time I’ll do it with less butter – it looks like poundcake up close…

Ok, I think thats it.  Off to dinner! Happy Sunday

 

My first tomato!

It’s official!  I ate my first tomato yesterday and it was AMAZING! See the pictures below of my second harvest.  The tomatoes are well on their way to greatness. 

First tomato!

 

Look at 'em go!

 

On their way!

As you can see by the amount of fruit on these plants I will need to find some friends to help me eat them.  I volunteered to give them to the zoo to be part of the animal diets, but they can’t use them…  Apparently they’d need to test the crop for lead and other contaminants before giving them to the animals and that isn’t cost or time effective.  We did a diet study of maned wolves and found that they do not enjoy the taste of hot house tomatoes (and won’t eat them) but they love garden-ripened ones.  It is very very sad that I can’t contribute to the animals’ happiness.

Starting to turn!

I’ll use this post to update you up on the growth and changes in the garden for the past week.

YAY! The tomatoes are starting to turn colors.  This is so exciting.  I swear an hour ago I was on the phone with my dad asking him if my tomatoes would ever turn red.  They’ve been sitting on the vine getting 6+ hours of sun, a good amount of water (not too much, not too little) and nighttime temperatures over 55°F, yet no color change – even yesterday.  Yet this morning – BAM! – and we have liftoff (so to speak). 

the first two brave tomatoes!

My sweet green peppers, officially known as ‘giant marconis’ are continuing to develop.

compared to last time's blurry little guys!

And the smallest pepper ever!

itty bitty

And then we come to the jalapenos… I”m going to have to make some serious salsa soon. Anyone have a different recipe idea for them?

spicy

And now on to the artistic portion of the program:

oooooooo

aaahhhhhh

Oh! and one of a garden friend

daddy long legs

thanks for playing

Zoo news

Again, I know this has NOTHING to do with the garden, but its the easiest way for family and friends to learn more about what’s going on where I work.

Zoo News: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Zoonews/?hpout+zn&xtr

Clouded Leopard babies

Not at all garden related – but one of the cutest things EVER.  I thought I should share this with you.  I encourage you to watch the video and listen to the radio segment.  These clouded leopard cubs are the first born at CRC in over 15 years.  They are so amazing.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105971473&sc=fb&cc=fp

First Harvest. WOOHOO!

The green thumb smiles gently upon my garden.  Please enjoy a viewing 

of my first harvest of green beans and a jalapeno.

Isn't it a pretty sight?

Ok, here’s a real one…

Baby jalapenos!

The very beginnings of sweet bell peppers

The jungle of green beans

Potted mint. I’m keeping these suckers from taking over the joint.

The Jet Star globes at ~2inches

grapes!

So, some background info about me and the blog.  I’m living in northern, yet western Virginia working for the National Zoo in their Conservation and Research Center’s endocrinology lab.  I am living at the research center, which makes my commute divine (read: 2 minute walk), but it also means that I am only allowed to convert 3 feet of land out from the sides of my apartment.  This explains why my tomatoes are growing right next to my air conditioner and the military-style siding.  I’ll include more pictures of the center at a later date.  The weather here seems to be perfect for gardening.  I actually planted late this year, in the first weekend of May.  I only had to water once in June, but Lisa thinks my pepper plants may be getting too much water, which is why they are 2 feet tall and just barely beginning to bear fruit.  We’ll see.  Above are some pictures of my pretty little plants.

Now onto the tomatoes.  I bought 2 starters.. is that what they’re called?  Whatever the correct term is, I cheated and went to the local garden/farm store and bought little plants.  Everything but the beans came pre-germinated. Since I have just a faint green thumb, it’s best to give these guys their best shot of success really.  Both of my tomato plants are indeterminent growth.  I didn’t know what that meant and no one I called bothered to answer their telephones so I felt that a 6′ determinant growth was WAY too big and went with indeterminent.  Silly, faintly green-colored thumb girl.  I’ll provide a picture of me standing next to them in a few weeks so you all can get a comparison for their growth.  So, the large species I purchased is the Jet Star hybrid – the quote that I found on the internet regarding this variety (after planting of course) is TREMENDOUS yield.  I will be up to my friggin ears in attractive, non-cracking globes.  I remember now why I went with this kind – last year all of my tomatoes (large and small) cracked while still green. I didn’t water them because it rained every 3rd day over the summer… I fertilized last year at the beginning, but that was it.  I don’t know what caused the cracking, but this year I’m attempting to circumvent the problem.  Ergo, the Jet Star for sandwiches, sauces, burgers, etc.  In addition to the Jet star, I bought one other kind: Tami G hybrid grape tomatoes. Silly me bought a pot with 2 plants and I didn’t have the heart to not plant them both, so again, ears in tomatoes.  They are HUGE plants already.  Pretty little fruits though.  Anyone in need of tomatoes?  Can I make sauce from grape tomatoes?  Maybe I should just set up a tomatoes only stand at the local farmers market.  They’re organic, I promise!

 

The Jet Star globes at ~2inches

 

Also, please be advised I’m working out all the kinks for picture size, etc.  I’ll get the hang of it eventually.  Thanks for playing!