Noelle likes Good Food

Great things are happening in the garden. All my plants have started flowering and I am giddy with excitement.  These are my cherry tomato plants that are full of flower blossoms. A few okra on each plant are starting to grow. By the way, I didn't know this was how okra grew. How cool! The brandywine tomato plants are shooting up and we finally got cages around this morning to keep them supported.  For the last couple of weeks this "weed" has been growing in the bed I am going to use for the pepper plants. I have been lazy and have just been letting it grow until I need to transplant the peppers. One of our friends came over for breakfast this morning, and I was showing her the garden. I pointed to the chard, the tomatoes, the okra, and showed her the huge weed that I needed to deal with. In shock she said, "that's not a weed, that is a squash plant". I guess one of the squash seeds from the compost in the garden bed germinated and we now have a mys...

I love making sprouts. It took me forever to actually start sprouting. But once I did, and I realized how easy it was, I started making them all the time. They are very nutritious, as sprouting allows us to easily digest and assimilate all the vitamins and minerals contained in the seeds. They also are very tasty and are great in sushi, wraps, salads, sandwiches, stir-fries, and even just by themselves.  You start off by soaking your seed of choice overnight in water mixed with a couple tablespoons of either apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. The acid helps to break down the seed coating. Here I am using mung beans. I used 1/3 cup of mung beans and by the time they were finished sprouting they filled up almost the whole jar. So, make sure you have a large enough container. I have also successfully sprouted brown rice, chickpeas, kidney beans, quinoa, and lentils.  After it has soaked for 12-24 hours, drain off the water. Place a cloth over the top of the jar so the sprout...

Hey everyone! I can't believe I have only blogged once since classes started back in January. I was challenged in many ways, but it was a great first semester, and I finished my last final on May 5th. I decided not to take any classes over the summer, and will start back up in the fall. Since school has been out I have catered a wedding, worked a lot, and last week I had surgery. The surgery went really well, and I have just been resting and healing since then.  Now, onto the purpose of this post. Besides all the working and resting, I have been gardening. I don't know a lot about gardening. My strategy has been to prepare myself as much as I can through research and reading gardening books, and then do it myself and learn from my failures and successes. This year I started everything from seed and some stuff has done better than others.  Here are my pepper plants. I have had problems with little bugs on the undersides of the leaves and I am reading around to try and f...