Ton O'tomato...

See what I did there?

This week I'm interrupting regular programming to bring you our little tomato-fest.

And to be upfront, my new insane project isn't going to be finished anytime soon, so let's stop fooling ourselves okay? I know I try to fool myself into thinking it's already done.

So let's talk "matoes". No, better yet, let's talk TON O'TOMATO! Okay, I'll stop now.



Sure, you see the red ones, but if you look a little closer, you will a whole butt load of tomatoes that have yet to ripen. I see 6 almost ready to go, but if you look really closely, you will see at least another 10, if not more. However, there is probably another 10-15 that are hidden by the leaves. And this is only two freaked plants!!

I have already harvested, roughly, 30 tomatoes. Well, what do we do with 30 tomatoes? Eat'em, what else?

This is just my regular "Better Boy" tomatoes, we have a whole bunch of "Sun Sugars"on deck...



I'm picking anywhere between 3 and 8 of these a day.

So besides sitting on our sill ripening and rotting, what do we do with them?

Well, we likes that to-mate-a sauce on our 'sketti.

But in order to use said tomAHtos, we must get them ready. And to do that you must blanche them.

Scene: Late night at a seedy after hours club. The bar tender was finished cleaning up and needed to use the john. When he opened the door, his face blanched at the sight!

Yeah, something like that only mine involves boiling water, an ice bath and a blender. Huh, maybe that's what the bartender saw.

First, get some of these.



Grow'em or buy'em.

Boil some water...



(was this photo really necessary?)

Some ice water...



(sorry, I know this is getting painful)

And a blender. I'll skip that photo and save you all 2 seconds of your life you will never get back.

Oh and one of these...



So you don't scald yourself, unless you are into that sort of thing.

Drop the tomatoes into the boiling water and blanche for 60 seconds. Fish them out then drop them into the ice bath.



(I'm really sorry. I took a lot of photos)

Then after a few seconds, they are cool enough to handle.

The skin will come right off...


(guest appearance by Mr. Hand)

Then core them (yes, I have a photo of that as well)



Finally, drop them into the blender. (I really am sorry, yet another photo)



When full, let it rip!

And here is what you get...



A frozen jar of puree'd tomatoes. I took all these freak'in pictures and forgot to get a photo when I was all done. I quite literally ran out to our freezer and snapped a quick photo of it. Yeah, I'm so smart.

This is just one jar of 3. We aren't even close to being done. I suspect we will have another 10 of these jars (at least) when all the tomatoes are picked.

While we loves ourselves some tomato sauce, we also like...


Sun dried tomatoes (actually dehydrated. Honestly who has time to watch tomatoes dry in the sun for 3 days? Well, I guess I could catch up on a little reading while I got eaten alive by mosquitos)

Or...



Pico De Gallo. Yummmmm, this was sooooooo good!

So needless to say, we have tomatoes a plenty for a while.

Don't worry, I will be back next week with more misery regarding my insane project of death. :)

In the mean time, here are some photos from my garden!

Astors...


Zinnia's? (not sure, I'll have to ask the SO)


Morning Glories..


Rosemary...


And a teeny tiny Lantana (this little flower is smaller than a dime)


That's all for this week.

Remember, as always, Green is Good!

Cheers!

Why do I do this to myself?

So I have the bees, I put in a clothesline, I built a fence and a composter, raised bed gardens, install "monster" water tanks, moved the freakishly heavy shed (yes, I took everything out first) and now this. Ugh!!!



This is the side of my house. Stunning, huh? Yeah, it's really not all that. (the dead tree is my neighbors)Here's a list of things I need to do before this next project kills me.

1) remove sidewalk.

2) dig out the bushy weird ground growth in front of fence.

3) remove fence and replace with gated arbor

4) put in pathway

5) put in cow panel fence

6) install secret side project the zoning people don't need to know about.

7) put in pretty pretty flowers.

8) drop dead. :) Weeee!!!!

Just imagine me laughing manically as I write this list and realizing just what the &%$#@@ I've gotten myself into!!!

Well, the worst part, the very very worst part, the part that this whole entire insane project centers around that must be done first? Numero Uno? Remove that bizarre side walk.

Look back at the photo. There are a few things wrong with my lovely side walk. 1) it's drifting away from the house like a concrete glacier. (I'm into lists today. 1) think of stuff 2) write it down 3) create a list) 2) the drifting concrete if not dealt with promptly, could do damage to my gas line (when they built the house they put the gas line right through the middle of the side walk) and finally 3) if you look carefully at the photo, you will notice that the side walk bisects the gate. So technically, it's half a side walk. There were some real genius's at work when putting this thing in.

So first things first 1) scream out in aguish over having to remove a side walk.

Well, that's not much of a list. But really, after thinking about having to remove the thing, I had nothing else to add other than screaming.

Then I was off to the good people at Home Desperate to rent a concrete cutter. What's that you say? It's this thing straight out of a horror film...



The blade alone costs 75 bucks! It's coated with itty bitty diamonds. And no they don't rent blades...I asked.

All told, for a 24 hour rental 179 freakin bucks I will never ever see again. (That's with the blade)

Now when I first looked at my side walk, here it is again...



It's only 30 feet long...the longest "only 30" feet of my entire life.

Now if you don't know much about cutting concrete, which I didn't and only watched other people do, it's much like cutting tile, which I have never done but have watched other people do. You need lots and lots of beer, no wait! not that, although it helps, but water. Lots of water.

You want to keep the blade cool and it cuts down on it's wear. Otherwise I would be flying through blades quickly. Flying through blades? That's an image, huh?

I forgot to take photos of that first little block. My demo block if you will but we now join our hero cutting the rest.

First score the concrete...



one way then the other...



The photos eliminate the concrete water spraying up my leg and the entire time me being bent over with my forearms resting on my thighs while I slowly push the cutter through the concrete while my back screams obscenities at me in several different languages.

Each one of those lines I had to cut 3 times at 3 different depths. The concrete was 4 inches thick. Each "score" was about 1 inch deeper than the last. So first time 1 inch, second time 2 inches, and lastly 3rd time 3 inches. (Thanks to my co-worker David W. for the suggestion!)Then I went back with a block of wood and a sledge hammer and knocked them apart.

Here is a photo of a very tired and miserable SuburbanDweller...



Yes, those are sandals and yes, I still have all my toes. That's me, breaking apart the concrete after it had been scored. You will notice the gas meter behind me...



Note the crack in the concrete. That was a big help. I cut round it as best as I could without setting off an explosion. I'm writing this so I guess I didn't blow myself to smithereens.

After a long tiring day, of being soaked with wet gritty concrete mud up my legs, working out in the backing sun, and hauling around a 50 pound concrete cutter all day long, for which my back still hasn't forgiven me, I was done...



What will I do with all that concrete? Well, that was the reason I rented the concrete cutter in the first place. I cut them into blocks which I will use to block in some of my flower garden my back yard.



It's not pretty now, but after some "shaping" it will look a lot better.

I'm tired of saying and writing "concrete".

So that is part one of this crazy @ss project.



Now for a few picts..

My first tomatoes of the season...


These are sun sugar cherry tomatoes, I highly suggest you try growing some of these yummy guys next year.  (A helping hand by...um...Mr. Hand)

(My days as a hand model are long behind me)

And a few yet to be picked... (you can't tell in the photo, but these guys are as big as baseballs)


And lastly, a bee pict...



As always, Green is good!

Cheers!

Odds and ends...

Yeah yeah, it's a little late this week. This is just a few things before next weeks premier of the new project. Ugh.

First and for most, it's "skeeter" season. You know, these little &%$#@&&%s...



I'm a magnet for them. I have tried everything short of soaking myself in DDT to every possible natural repellent out there. However, no matter what I coat myself in, they love me. LOVE me. My siblings know full well of the famous "ear incident" when I was a wee lad. It was ugly.

So what's the point of this? Am I now going to promote some crazy @ss cure all repellent? No. I've given myself over to the beast. The winged demons have won. (hangs head in shame) I now treat the after effects. You know, the &%$#@ Bites!!!

We all know how much those stings just itch beyond reality, right? But honestly, when you have a bite, doesn't scratching one now and then feel oh soooooooo goooooooooooood. Ahhhhhhhh, yeah, that's the stuff. But what's left? An ugly mess.

So now, I use this...(no the company hasn't sent me a free case or anything. Not that I would turn it down. I would probably bathe in it. Hmmm, okay, a little weird)

It works. Let me say that again, IT WORKS! And like the old Brill Cream commercials, "A little dab with do ya!"

As soon as I feel the itch, I rub some on, in about 30 seconds, no itch. I swear by it. And it lasts. I find that I rarely if ever have to reapply it.

So this is just me Suburban Man - Dweller dude just passing a long a little friendly tip to beat the itch. :)

Now back to our regular programming.

Onions. We eat them and some people smell like them.

As I wrote last week, I pulled up a mess of them. I still have some fat ones in the ground that I will yank out this coming weekend.

But here is the process if you wish to preserve your onions. Pretty simple actually.

First grow some onions then pick'em...(or buy them)


You will know they are ready to pick when the tops fall over.

Let them sit about 48 hours in a dark place.

Wash them.

Cut off the stems and roots. (if you pick them earlier before the stems fall over, you can also use the stems in cooking. They are something like chives)


I know, big dramatic difference from the last photo.

Then peel them.


Naked onions.

Then mince in a food processor.

Here they are packed up and ready for the deep freeze.


Out of that bowl we got 5 bags of onions for future use.

Once frozen, you can just break off what you need for cooking. The flatter they are, the easier they are to deal with later. We packed ours a little full, so we will pay for that later. "Honey, have you a hammer handy?!"

I still have an equal amount of onions yet to harvest and they are much bigger so our yield will be that much more.

Now I have a special technique for dealing with the crying game. Wait, what? I'm talking about cutting onions! The popular belief is to cut them under running water. 1) it's a colossal waste of water 2) have you ever actually tried it in volume? 3) frankly, it's a real pain.

So how do I solve this perplexing matter?

Here is my secret. Swim goggles. That's right, you heard me, swim goggles. No weeping, no crying, no boo hooing. And I can guarantee you will never ever see a photo of me on here wearing goggles and cutting onions, but it works. Oh all right...



It's the pink what does it!

So that's it for this week! :) One of my 3 1/2 or so readers requested a few updated photos of my garden, here you go!

Tomatoes...


(This was taken last week. They are much bigger now.)

Egg Plant...


We pulled two huge egg plants off already. I have fried some up and froze them, in preparation for egg plant parmesan. (I have to wait until after we harvest our tomatoes).

The big plan will be: our egg plants, our tomatoes and our mozzarella cheese (I will be attempting to make mozzarella again. Wish me luck!)

If you look to the right of the upper egg plant...plant, you will see a little something growing. Yet another surprise plant growing from my compost. I think it's cucumber, but I'm not quite sure what it is yet. I'll include a photo of it next week.

The last of the yellow onions and the new red onions...


(That black thing is my 60% sun shade block. I put that on my new plants and plants that can't take the intense Texas sun at the height of the day)

Peppers and cucumbers...



They are still little things but I have a few peppers already and the anti-dog-with-a-thousand-teeth barrier works double duty as an impromptu trellis for the cucumbers. :)

Lastly, I leave you with a couple of photos...

Blue...



Purple...


(Thank you Mr. Hand)

And as always, Green is Good!

Okay, I think I'm buzzed...Part 4...

okay okay, enough with the bees...well maybe one last time then back to the garden and my other insane projects.

When last we were together, I showed y'all how I installed the bees. Well, that was 5 weeks ago. And how time flies.

This is what the frames looked like before I put them into the hive...


Here's what they look like now!



Quite a change huh?

Here's a close up...



If you look closely, you will see the white bee larva, the orange pollen and the caps of honey (located near the top of the photo)

Things are humming along. This week I added a "super". What is a super? Here's a photo...



The upper deep allows more room for the bees to grow and expand. The super will be for honey production. Right now, it just has a feeder in it. In a few weeks once the bees fill up the upper deep as they have filled out the lower deep, then I will add frames to the super and put a "Queen Excluder" between the "deeps" and the super. This will keep the Queen from laying eggs in there and only allow workers and drones in there to produce honey goodness. :)

The bees appear to be healthy and nothing weird going on.

However, here's a really good tip for anyone wishing to be a bee keeper. Always, and I mean always wear jeans that don't have holes. Yeah. about that...



and...



The first photo was a glancing blow, the second one...a direct hit.

So Imagine if you will Suburbandweller is inspecting the hive looking all cool in his bee garb, but suddenly, SuburbanDweller becomes all thumbs! And bumps one of the frame against the top of the hive.

The bees really didn't care for that too much. Suddenly about 30 bees (probably only about 10) swarmed out and started buzzing around me. I stood completely still, hoping they would quiet down. Nice little bees, nice little bees. Slowly, I reached for my smoker. I think they saw me.

Ahhhhh! Suddenly there about 3 bees in my pants. Here I am, still holding the frame, trying to shoo the bees away from my very exposed knee and to get the ones out of my pants and also trying to get the smoker! Oh for the want of the 3rd arm! Dancing on one foot. Trying to close the hole in my pants And trying to replace the frame gently back into the hive, the bees went in for the kill. Zing! The first one! Zap! The second one. Now I haven't been stung in quite some time. The last time was when I was about 20 and it was on the roof of my mouth! Yeah, Bill K knows all about that one!

So in goes the frame, out comes the smoke and I let them have it. I smoked the living heck out of everything that moved. Take that, you! It was a humbling experience. I had this very naive thought about me and the bees being buds. I feed them, they treat me right and all is fine in the world. But noooooooo, they have to be all protective of THEIR hive. Buggers. While my knee was still throbbing, I still had half a hive to inspect. I couldn't just leave it.

So I quickened the pace and tried not to P'off the bees any further.

I was happy to see they were developing comb in the upper deep...



And another shot...



This was a good sign.

So from now on it's just observing and hoping nothing infests or contaminates the hive.

My hive updates will be not as intense from here on out as I want to get back to my main focus of my blog. My garden. :)

What's going on in the garden? Lots...

I just harvested my first batch of onions (this is just under half)...



This photo of my eggplant is about a week old. They are about double this size now...(I have at least 4 that I have counted but I know there are quite a few more)



My peppers...



My cucumbers...



And as I special treat (I haven't mentioned them in a while) Potatos!



Yeah yeah, I know, only 7, but that's seven more than I had the last 3 tries! LOL I know now that I have to plant them a bit earlier, perhaps in late December. When the tops of the plant die off, that's time to harvest them. I thought they died off a little soon. The roots still had a ton of room to grow. So a bit earlier next year or later this year.

I did get a surprise out of my compost this year...



Acorn squash! This is the kind of surprise I really enjoy!

Lastly, one of my new readers requested a photo of my garden. I didn't get a chance this week, but I will be sure to include one next week. :)

In the mean time, here's a little bit more color from my garden.

Remember, Green is good. :)

Red...



Pink...ish...



Angry SuburbanDweller (very rare photo of yours truly)



Cheers!