Tomatoes!!!

Off to a slow start, but my first year of veggie gardening totally from seed is out the gate and making a good run!

I've already harvested my first few tomatoes. They are small, compared to grocery store and/or farmers market offerings, but they really pack a punch. They are SO tasty!

These are going to be SO awesome with grocery store cucumbers and a couple of onions from my garden. Just add a skosh of vinegar...

I enjoyed tiny little spoon tomatoes from the grocery store in my salads last winter, so I searched and found seeds a couple of months ago. I planted 20 seeds, and I've got four plants, one of which is beginning to blossom! Fingers crossed!

First peas weren't enough for a meal, but they made a great snack.

First beans weren't enough for a meal, but I stuck them in the veggie bin in the fridge until I had enough, and oh, were they heavenly!

We still have plenty of rhubarb. I bought strawberries and bananas from the grocery store and then cooked up some rhubarb.

Lizard is LOVING the strawberry banana rhubarb sauce with his plain yogurt every day. I just love to make him smile!

No red sunflowers yet, but still hoping. However, I had a very pleasant surprise last week... I put my amaryllises on the (very hot and very sunny) front porch each summer before I put them in the basement for three months in the fall. Sometimes I will get an unexpected blossom in the hottest part of the summer. I'm so tickled peppermint with this year's bonus!

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From the Garden to the Kitchen

For our second date, Lizard made the most delicious homemade chicken enchiladas. For our fourth date, I made my favorite gourmet salad, only to discover he did not like salad, particularly tomatoes (my favorite food in the whole world), and salad dressing was out of the question. We have spent our entire marriage with him eating plain lettuce or spinach leaves whenever I made a salad. Until now!

Lizard's favorite meal in the hospital was the southwest chicken salad, which he tried because that's what I had for lunch almost every day of our 14-day stay. He says I've addicted him to southwest chicken salad.

I'd enjoyed salads for lunch at work almost every day for the last 10 years or more. I'd been making a salad for lunch at home almost every day since mid-March. After my garden began to mature in about June, I made my salads with veggies I grew. Most of my salads are seasoned with Balsamic vinegar. No oil. Sometimes Lizard would join me, but he'd have just greens.

I had my best Colorado tomato crop this year. I have 12 plants this year, and only two of them aren't in pots, so I'm hoping I will be able to get a few more tomatoes once the pots have to come in from the cold on a permanent basis.

I didn't have enough tomatoes to take a laundry basket full to work to share, had that been possible, and there wasn't enough at one time for a full pot of spaghetti sauce, but I was able to make tomato salads all summer long. Last week was the first time I've had to buy tomatoes since June. (I'd brought in the potted tomatoes during our September 1 snowstorm. Even though I protected them, production dramatically slowed.)

Ever since we got home from the hospital, we've enjoyed together at least four salads a week. Lizard is eating salad, and sometimes with "dressing"! He doesn't care much for Balsamic, but he really likes barbecue ranch (which I make homemade) and green chili. I think my salads top what was available in the hospital, and Lizard thinks so, too. It's so awesome to make a salad with as many homegrown ingredients as I can, then have him tell me my salad is terrific!

I hadn't made my own black beans and black bean refrieds in a long, long time, so last week's batch was particularly delicious. One of the things I love best about making my own beans from scratch is one bag of dried beans makes about the equivalent of four cans of store-bought beans. This most recent batch was made with a bag of Women's Bean Project black bean soup mix. I used a third of the beans to make soup, which features a cayenne pepper from my own garden, a purple onion from my own garden, plus a handful of frozen veggies. I couldn't use my corn or green beans because I'm not sure my corn will make it past the next storm, and it's definitely too small to use right now. Even though I planted it two weeks early this year and protected it during the spring cold snaps! Grrr! And the bunny took care of all my beans and peas while we were at the hospital in August.

I was able to freeze an entire food storage container of black beans for upcoming meals. About 1.5 cups of beans are in the fridge for impromptu burritos and salads. I mashed the rest into what might be the best refrieds I've made to date. Seasoned with sea salt and garlic, plus one of my cayenne peppers from the garden and an onion from the garden. I use olive oil or avocado oil instead of bacon grease, but I did throw in some turkey bacon this time, and Lizard says these are the best refrieds he's ever tasted. I feel some homemade Enchiritos coming on!!!

We didn't get to drive over to Palisade for fresh peaches this year, but the grocery store had a few Colorado peaches. I dried one batch with ginger, cinnamon and cloves, and I dried a second batch with a sliced and diced Hatch chili, which spiced up the peach slices nicely and also filled an empty Mexican seasonings jar, which, of course, is now half gone already.

My little lemon trees at work have died. I thought I would be gone two weeks back in March. Now it's looking like we won't be back in the office until sometime next year. So I planted new little lemon trees at home and enjoyed lots of hibiscus lemonade over the summer.

One of the most fun things I did during the summer was putting fresh blueberries in EVERYTHING. They were not my homegrown blueberries, but I hope my bush will put out next year. I made fruit smoothies (with no sugar). I made healthy blueberry bread and muffin crowns (with no sugar). I made blueberry pancakes from scratch with flax meal, whole wheat I ground myself, oat flour, quinoa flour and hazelnut flour. Oh, yum!!!

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My Dyeing Days

My favorite color is blue, but avocado pits and skins have to be some of my favorite hand-dyed colors. I've dyed so many gorgeous shades this summer!

Temptation won, and I stuck the onion skin-dyed T-shirt and the hollyhock-dyed T-shirt into the avocado pit dye. I don't know yet exactly what I will get, but neither overdyed shirt will embarrassingly change colors under my arms on hot summer days. Or hot fall days... Plus, the shades of red rock are much more complimentary to my skin and hair color. Ha ha!


I also stuck my wood shavings-tinted cotton yarn into the avocado pit dye. I dyed but never wound this mess all summer long at least two or three years ago. Although the off-white shades were nice, well, temptation swept me off my feet once again.


Wood is a mordant, and avocado doesn't necessarily need a mordant, so I didn't have to do anything to the yarn but stick it in the avocado dye, which is about a fifth dip now. The colors will be pastel, but there will be more color than the wood gave. The following photos will show the difference in wet colors and dry colors. Dry colors will always be two to three shades lighter than the wet color. I dry the yarn (not in direct sunlight) after dyeing to help set the color.


dry cotton yarn after one week in avocado pit dye, fifth dip


wet prior to wash


wet after wash


dry and wound
I have some really nice shades of cotton and wool yarn and cotton thread to use up this winter. I think it takes almost as long to wind an overdyed tangled mess as it does to solar dye it!!! Four hours to wind those last two hanks!


I stuck one more fat quarter in a jar of avocado pit dye, too.


Finally, it was time to take my cotton dress out of the avocado pit dye. I allowed the dress to solar soak in the dye for nearly four weeks. I then wrung it out, poured the (cooled) dye into the flower garden, and hung the dress (not in direct sunlight) to dry until it would no longer drip (because the avocado dye can stain concrete)(and rock paths, for that matter, but we don't mind if the stepping stones get dark spots), then moved it into the garage to finish drying. The dress was a little stiff when I stuck it in the washer (that's normal), but our lavender Meyer's Clean Day detergent and dryer sheets will take care of that. The final product will be a softer color than this, and that breaks my heart, but I've decided I'm going to do this again next summer, and a new dress (maybe even short-sleeved...) will go in the dye first, and I won't take it out until I get this rich, delicious cinnamon color!






My little neighbors saw me stirring my long-sleeved cotton dress and excitedly joined me, wanting to help. I decided to pick up a couple of little white T-shirts the next day at Michael's, scour them (washing them with Borax and not drying them), then make the kids a dye jar of their own.

They were SO excited!


They came over every afternoon to stir their jar after school. I had planned for today's blog post to be the final installment of my online summer natural dye workshop because we could get an overnight freeze at any point now, and it could come without warning. I want to give the newly dipped T-shirts a chance to absorb some good color, plus, one of my little neighbors has been under the weather and unable to wring out one of the shirts. So we are waiting until good health returns so the siblings can work together. If we do get a forecast for an overnight freeze, I will pull all the jars indoors and park them near the living room window, which gets pretty good sun in the mornings.


I will show off my newest dress, the overdyed shirts and the kid's shirts in one week when I wrap up this year's natural dye adventure! See you then!



Linking up with Alycia Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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My Dyeing Days

After weeks of watching my yarn and thread simmer in avocado pit dye, I am finally ready to crochet! Just look at the luscious colors!


After letting all four hanks of yarn and one hank of size 10 crochet thread simmer for... I think it was about four weeks, but the most important thing is they soaked in the sun for a good long while. I strained the dye out into the flower garden (after the fluids cooled off, of course - no sense in boiling the sunflower roots!) and hung the hanks to dry (out of direct sunlight and where drips wouldn't stain the concrete). Two days later, I shampooed the yarn and thread, one hank at a time, with strawberry Suave (because it's cheap and smells good), then conditioned all, one hank at a time, with strawberry Suave, then hung the hanks to drip dry.

And now I have this luscious fiber just waiting to be wound into balls and then knitted or crocheted into something fabulous. Of course, I had to wind (and use) the thread first.






The polyester/cotton blend worsted yarn did not come out bad! I do believe there's a bit of stain on the polyester!!!




My fat quarters have been washed (in the washing machine with gentle lavender detergent) and dried (no heat in the dryer). I am very pleased with how they look. I'm excited to find the perfect quilt block pattern to experiment with them!






I have at least two more weeks of solar dyeing, according to the 10-day forecast. I still have pigment in my avocado pit jars. The avocado skins dye is incredibly dark. I might overdye one (or maybe even both) of the onion skin-dyed T-shirts (because then they wouldn't change colors under my arms when I perspire). I almost stuck them in a dye jar last weekend, but when I pulled them out of the box where they've been hiding the last couple of months, the shade still looks very attractive. I just have to keep in mind the shade will continually shift. They will look better in avocado... They will look better in avocado... They will look better in avocado...


I strained all of the dye out of all of the jars except the dark red pits on the right into a (clean) plastic pretzel jar, then filled the jars with rainwater one more time. I dunked the long-sleeved white cotton dress I bought from Dharma Trading in the jar. I stir this two or three times a day. It's been in the sun for a whole week now. I'm anxious to see what color the dress will be, but I think I'll leave it in there until the first overnight freeze. I'd like to get as dark a hue of that gorgeous reddish brown as I can get. The final color will be worth waiting for, I'm sure.






Linking up with Alycia Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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