You can have any vegetable you want…but how do you feel about beans?

Saturday is sort of turning into weeding and harvesting day around here.  Today’s haul?

I sure hope you like beans and cukes, because they are flourishing!  The cucumber wrapping itself around the bowl?  Twice the size of last week’s monster.  It weighs about 4 pounds.  Again, hiding in the leaves and just growing like some sort of genetic freak.  Tonight’s dinner will contain some form of Greek salad or maybe tzatziki.  I had a recipe for cucumber chocolate cake that’s supposed to be amazing but I forgot it at work.  Maybe I’ll whip one up Monday night.

There were so many beans that I broke them up into three sizes.  Wee lovely little French looking haricot verts, mediums that would be put through the bean Frencher, and bigguns that were chopped into 1 inch chunks.

All were blanched and are currently laid out on tea towels drying.  Once dry they shall be put in polythene (love the English) and popped into the freezer for nomming this winter.

Blanche ‘em, 2 minutes for Frenched, 3 to 4 minutes for larger ones, then pop them into the ice bath to stop the cooking.  Lay them out on towels to dry then freeze ‘em up.  I must admit to having a definite preference for Frenched green beans.  Super hot with a bit of butter/pepper/salt = heaven on earth.

Have you ever Frenched beans?  It’s kind of therapeutic and a bit Zen, once you get the right music playing.  Turns out that’s Justin Timberlake, Pussycat Dolls, Flogging Molly, and a bit of Bob Dylan.

Magic bean slicer is magic!

Ummm, and when exactly did I become all boobs and chins?  Oy, this aging thing is so not happening the way I envisioned it.

Happy Saturday everyone.

The things you see!

Driving home today I spotted this out front of a house up the block from us:

Pardon the crappy cell phone from a distance photo but, do you know what that is?  That is the sister toilet to the toilet we just got rid of a couple weeks ago!  It’s got a yellow bowl and a pink tank!  I’ll say that again, A PINK TANK!  Our old toilet was yellow bowl/almond tank/white lid.  Granted, this one wasn’t quite as flamboyant, but still, pretty spectacular.

I begged hubby to stop so I could take it home, ’cause we have, wait for it, A PINK SINK in the bathroom.  I won’t type what he said.  Let’s just say I was lucky that he slowed down long enough that I could get this photo.  So disappointing.  He just doesn’t understand me sometimes.

What?  This doesn’t make me weird, does it?

Then, after all your guests go home,

you find two huge slugs having sexay times on the side of your pool.

Awkward.  No, I don’t know what the stringy stuff is.  Don’t ask.

This huge guy was making his getaway, ‘zooming’ across the driveway towards the hedges.

What was it?  A slug key party????

Is it hot in here…or is it just me?

No, it’s freaking hot in here!  Sorry, delicate snowflake that I am, I don’t handle the heat well.  That is why I knit & crochet.  I can make clothes that will keep me warm.  I can’t knit anything that will keep me cool.  Right now I’m bordering on wandering around the house naked in search of any small breeze.  Not pretty folks, not pretty.

It went from a lovely 22 – 24 degrees Celsius to a whopping 32 degrees Celsius in about 18 hours.  Even the garden looks a little shocky and wilty.  I also found out why I’ve had no zucchinis in almost a week.  Yeah, that would be Stella the wonder dog.  She jumps from the deck into the squash garden and just eats and eats and eats.  Dog is crazy.  Now I have to figure out some sort of Stella gate to keep her out so I can use my new slicer on some fresh zucchinis.

Mr. B’s back is still all tweaked.  We did manage to get to the grocery store and the library today though.  Friday book day!

I was sure that I had already read this Michael Pollan book, but nope.  I must have been confusing it with a different one.  I haven’t had a chance to look through Sew What!  Skirt yet.  I’m hoping it will be inspiring.  Skirts are cooler than pants, right?  I also picked up this little gem at Lee Valley yesterday:

The Truth About Garden Remedies. I can’t wait.  All kinds of gardening urban legends and old wives tales.  Oh, and a Gardens West magazine.  Why?  Um, the article entitled War on Weeds.  Oh yeah buttercups and morning-glory!  I’m looking at you.  I was also smitten with those pretty chairs on the cover and was hoping the Mr. B might be inspired to make a couple once he’s feeling better.

I even cast on a new project. Damselfly had a lovely little handspun scarflette/kerchief on her blog the other day and I sort of stole the idea, tweaked it a bit, and finally dragged out some of my handspun to knit.

Okay, that’s all I got.  It’s hot and I’m melting.  Keep cool everyone.

New tools of vegetable destruction

I’ve been under the weather for the last week and Mr. B has hurt his back so we’re a pretty fine pair.  Today he wanted to see if he’d be able to drive well enough to be able to go back to work tomorrow.  Turns out no, but for the test we popped out to Lee Valley Tools.  Mr. B wanted a book on some sort of metal milling or something.

While there I spotted this.

It’s French and I’m pretty much guaranteed to give myself at least one very nasty wound with it.

Now, not only will I eat the babies of my vegetable plants, I will first prepare them into perfectly even little slices.  My first victim was a freshly picked cucumber.

Mmmmmm, cucumber sandwich.  Perfection!

We also spotted this rather interesting device at Lee Valley.

It’s a humane spider catcher.  No, no, I’m not kidding.  I’m quite smitten with this invention and may just ask Santa for one.

Tuesday, it’s the new Monday!

Yesterday was a stat holiday, (BC Day here), which was lovely.  I spent most of the day farting around in the garden and playing with stuff we had grown.  First I processed some beans for the freezer for winter:

Upon reading up on preparing beans for freezing I found out that the beautiful purple beans don’t stay purple when you cook them.  They go, wait for it, GREEN!  Disappointing!  So, instead of tri-coloured beans I have yellow and green and slightly darker green.  Sigh.  Oh well, at least they looked pretty when they were in the garden.

Then I learned a way to save tender herbs, (basil, sage, parsley, marjoram, thyme, oregano), for the winter.  These types of herbs lose a lot of their character when dried.  The NEW Vegetable & Herb Expert gives the following suggestion.  Chop up your tender herbs and place them in the bottoms of ice cube trays.  Top with water and freeze.  Once frozen keep them in ‘thick polythene’ bags in your freezer.

Ta da.  Thick polythene bags.  I love the English!  It really is a funny book, and parts of it are so rigidly English that I actually laughed out loud.  This little write-up in the herb section under garlic is my favourite:

‘If you are a beginner with garlic, you must use it very sparingly or you will be put off it forever.  Rub a wooden salad bowl with a clove before adding the ingredients.  Rub the skin of poultry before roasting and then you can try dropping a whole unskinned clove into a casserole or stew, removing it before serving.  If by then you have lost a little of your garlic fear, you can try using crushed (not chopped) garlic in meat, etc. as the Continentals do.’

Oh, one unskinned clove in a casserole or stew.  Mercy, mercy!  But seriously, vampires, you will do well in England if this is the average view of garlic in cookery.

It is an excellent book as far as gardening goes though.  Great illustrations and very well laid out information.

We also raided the tomato & basil plants yesterday for a nice little vegetarian appetizer before dinner.  Fresh sun warmed little tomatoes, basil leaves, and Mini Mini Bocconcini on a big plate, drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and a sprinkling of coarse salt.  Mmmmmmm.  Gorgeous.  And not a garlic clove to be seen!

Finally, the sweet peas are really starting to bloom.  Look at this little lovely, a two toned model!

Between these and the phlox, the yard smells amazing!