Category Archives: Food

Six on Saturday – Some Success

A brilliant blue sky awaited this morning as I trundled out to view my seedlings. Despite a cold setback in December, things are coming along nicely at long last. A few successes and a few losses greeted the gardener. Situation – back to whatever passes for normal in South Florida.

Meet my only surviving rooted cutting of Mystic Blue Salvia. I am very proud and happy to have one more. I started with two plants, one passed on last year and the other has been flowering nearly non-stop since March 2021. I took six cuttings and only one took. I would love to know why?

I moved the Zinnia seedlings to a bigger pot to allow them to grow cut flowers. During all the jostling around plants with the freeze all the tags were lost, so I have to wait for the flowers to see what colors are left. About half of the Zinnias succumbed to the cold, dying at the base of the stem.

All the Dwarf “Sunspot” Sunflower seedlings made it through the cold. I covered them with a pillow case for two days. I am not sure what the other seedlings are though I am suspecting weeds.

This is a new variety of big red bell pepper, I have a couple of plants that are doing well. Last year I had heirloom South American peppers, designed for the heat. They were a bit weird, so this year I am trying the classic bell pepper. Hopefully, getting enough water on them.

Tomatoes, finally back in the garden. These are all cherry tomatoes. Lost Marbles, Sweet 100 and Yellow Pear, I think. Started from seed about a month ago. I have downsized to six plants this year. Last year I had nine and was overrun with tomatoes for a long time. The containers are all grow bags, reused from last year. The bamboo sticks are squirrel abatement. I have an idiot neighbor who feeds the squirrels peanuts – this gives them a maniacal urge to dig up any nearby container with nice soil and plants. This guy is obviously not a gardener and set to poison the universe in the name of lawn. Sigh.

The massive (bahahaha) culinary Ginger harvest. I watered this plant all summer and got two roots. The cost of the water probably exceeded the value of the Ginger at the supermarket. Unless these are phenomenally delicious, I won’t bother again.

That is my Six update. To see more SOS posts from the world over visit Jim at http://www.gardenruminations.co.uk.

Happy Gardening!!

Six on Saturday – October repeats

This is a familiar sight in my garden, the Nodding Hibiscus (Hibiscus malvaviscus). These flower during the cool season here, so I am happy to see them again. The shrub is gangly and virtually impossible to prune into a nice shape – but I love the flowers and keep them around. Another plus, they grow happily with little water or care.

Another cool season beauty is the Yellow Elder or Tecoma stans. I planted this last year as an 18 inch shrub – it is now at least eight feet tall. I am planning to tree form it. They don’t grow much more than ten feet and make a nice multi stem shrub. I am already getting seed pods.

I love these little reminders of pumpkins. They are the fruit of the Surinam Cherry (Eugenia uviflora). I won’t eat these (the taste reminds me of the scent of turpentine) – so they are left for wildlife.

New to the garden this year, a Blue Pea Vine (Clitoria ternatea). This has finally flowered after suffering a double bout of rabbit ravages – the vine was eaten to the ground twice and has bounced back. I think this is a double flower. I gave my neighbor seeds, hers has been flowering all summer and she has been making blue tea from the flowers.

I am in the process of baking a Keitt Mango and Blackberry pie. This is not from my garden, but grown in South Florida. A jumbo green skinned mango, this one is quite ripe and next to a cherry tomato. I am making a mini pie with vegan crust and used about half of the mango. They are very tasty and have a short season, I will be on the lookout for Keitt Mangos next year.

That’s my Six for this Saturday. Check out http://www.thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com for more posts from other gardens.

Happy Fall, Ya’ll!!

Six on Saturday- Dinner Plans

The produce in my garden is coming along and I am starting to think about eating it. This is meaningful. I have tried to grow salad greens for a couple of years. The rabbits ate the ones in the ground immediately, so I tried them in pots, too much shade. I put up a rabbit fence, something tore it down in the middle of the night, the jury is still out on what varmint to blame that on – whatever it is, they are big enough to knock over 7 gallon containers!

The arugula is the current focus of my fancy. I bought a planter on 24″ legs and placed it in full sun and voila, arugula – enough to make a favorite dish. Homemade pasta with corn and arugula. Fresh corn is usually available in South Florida in the winter, however, this January was so cold the corn was stunted and has finally become available. Here is the pasta:

The mangoes are forming fruit. They are pea-sized now and I should have a lot of fruit in a couple of months. This is a Pickering Mango.

It’s future destination – a Mango Pie. This is a Mango Papaya pie. It has lime and coconut in it. I also like Mango pie with blackberries.

I have been watching these Yellow Pear tomatoes for months. Planted in November, from seed in August. I have had a few tomatoes – they are really setting some fruit now that the weather warmed. It has been in the high 70s (F) for the past week or so.

The plans for these? Tomato jam with fresh herbs for my Tuscan bread experiment from yesterday. I spent a summer in Italy in college and you just can’t get this bread in the U.S. It is made without sugar or salt and I wasn’t convinced the recipe would work. It did, one bite and I was back in the Convent having breakfast with nuns nearby. (It was a Studies Abroad program housed in a Convent, I wasn’t a nun)

That is my Six for this Saturday. To see more posts, visit Jon at http://www.thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com. I will be in the garden dreaming up dinner.

Happy Gardening..

Six on Saturday – Fruit Harvest

We enjoyed out first Mangoes this week. We had one Pickering and one Nam Doc Mai Mango. Both were divine and worth the wait. The Pickering had a coconut taste and the Nam Doc Mai was sweet as well, without the piney taste I sometimes associate with Mangoes. This is the flower of the Nam Doc Mai.00100lrportrait_00100_burst20200509094313878_cover

Here is the fruit ripening.

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Finally, I had to pick one because the fruit was starting to split from the 20 inch rain deluge. Here it is ripe on the counter.

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There are still a few Pickering Mangoes ripening on the tree. I picked one and it shriveled a bit on the counter but was still very tasty.

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Also waiting on my first pineapple.

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Here is where the Nam Doc Mai ended up. As a side of Mango Salsa with Parmesan Crusted Salmon and Green Bean Salad. The Pickering Mango met a similar fate. I admit to having a considerable sampling of the two Mangoes while my husband wasn’t looking.

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Happy Saturday and Happy Gardening. To see more Six on Saturday posts, go and visit The Propagator http://www.thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com.

In A Vase on New Year’s Day- Unreal

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Some of the more tropical plants in my garden produce flowers that strike me as unreal. New Year’s Eve found me in the garden tending vegetables under a cerulean blue sky, wearing a sweatshirt and enjoying a bit of cool weather. December in South Florida can seem a bit dreamy. Beautiful beach weather for the most part, sometimes a bit foggy. Around town people can be seen surfing on the blue water… while pelicans dive into the river seeking a mullet for dinner.

It also seems unreal to me that tomorrow ushers in 2018! Where did the time go?

I can assure you that the flowers are quite real and from my garden. The orange, yellow and red flowers resembling Lobster Claws are from a Blanchetiana Bromeliad. The Bromeliad itself is probably 5 feet tall and 6 feet across, the flowers are panicle like affairs that are about 4 tall and maybe 18 inches wide. I had cut the whole flower, then realized there were ants living in the stem. Quick work was made of cutting the ant hill off and leaving it in the garden. The balance of the flower was placed in my big crystal vase, forming a swirling base for some other flowers.

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The orange firecrackers are from Firebush (Hamelia patens), big leaves are from a Shell Ginger (Alpinia zerumbet), the off white flowers from the mysterious Wireweed, the gift from Mother Nature that keeps on giving. Here is a close up:

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The crystal vase, a wedding gift from a dear friend. The bells, to ring in the New Year, a favorite family heirloom of mine – my father brought them home from India, where he served during World War II. I have no clue what they really are, but my mother always used them on her wreath at Christmas.

Since it is New Year’s Eve, my husband and I are preparing a special dinner. He is baking an Apple Pie, I am working on homemade Pasta for Smoked Fish in Creamy Tomato Vodka Sauce. The fish is Snapper caught and smoked by my husband, the sauce a decadent creamy vegetable sauce. For this we needed another flower arrangement.

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The centerpiece, in my mother’s Rose Bowl features Salvia: the peach Salvia is a seedling of the Tropical Red Salvia (S. coccinea) – there are named cultivars like this, however, this one is mine! The purple Salvia is Mexican Sage (Salvia leucantha). I had this plant as an annual further north and bought one late fall. It seemed annoyed, then started to flower. Orange flowers are from our Firebush (Hamelia patens). White flowers are Sweet Begonias (Begonia odorata), Dark red flowers are Shrimp Plants (Justicia brandegeana) and some Asian Sword Fern, there are also some Gallardia floating around in there.

New Year’s Eve dinner:

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Dessert:

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Happy New Year!!

 

 

In A Vase on Monday – Winter Wildflowers

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Oftentimes when I start my vase I have to decide between tropical and well, non tropical seeming flowers. This week’s decision was in favor of the non tropical which are in fact somewhat tropical. For some reason, even though I live in a frost free area populated with Mangoes and Birds of Paradise the climate is considered subtropical. My favorite Florida plant material author, Frederick Stresau, calls this area Tropic Florida. No one else does. I like the title.

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Tropic Florida is home to some amazing wildflowers, so amazing in fact they will take over. Last week I think Chloris was featuring Bidens, on her blog not the B. alba from my garden-a relative.  ACK, I have Bidens running out of my ears and can only hope I have pulled enough out. The onset of cooler weather brings the reseeding annuals out of their slumber and starts a new season of flowers.

The components of this vase are either native to Florida or something that just appeared in my garden. The hat is hardly necessary this time of year, but hand pruners are a must..

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The white flowers are Spanish Needles (Bidens alba) cute but annoying. The yellow daisies Beach Sunflowers (Helianthus debilis); red and yellow daisies, Native Gallardias; deep blues, native Porterweed; red spikes, Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea); the grasses flowing in the background, Muhly Grass (Muhlbergia capillaris).

The vase? A Portmerion canister I received as a wedding gift. Thinking I would complete the set I held onto it for almost 25 years.. The canister remains alone in my mother’s china cabinet, awaiting flour and sugar containers with similarly abandoned Botanic Garden pieces.

The first harvest from the garden, 12 green beans with a cherry tomato (one,very tasty)

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Happy Monday!

Garden Bloggers Foliage Day – Tropical Fruit

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Having spent most of my life much further north of South Florida, I enjoyed eating tropical fruit, but never knew what they looked like while growing. I have included tropical fruit trees and plants for shade and foliage in my new garden, the fruit is a bonus. Some of the fruit producing plants I have in my garden now I had never heard of – because, well, in my opinion, like many things you have to grow up eating them to appreciate the fruit.

Above is the foliage of the Sea Grape (Coccoloba uvifera).  This is a native tree that produces clusters of grapes in the summer that are mostly seed and taste similar to figs. Natives of Florida and birds like the fruit.

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This is Mango (Mangifera ‘Nam Doc Mai’) a Thai Dessert Mango. Delicious and easy to grow. The leaves were burned by Hurricane Irma.

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Silvery backed leaves from a Pineapple I grew from the top of a fruit bought at the grocery store. I have no idea what kind it will be. Pineapples are very easy to grow here and my new hometown, Jensen Beach was once considered the Pineapple Capital of the World. Here is a link to an article I wrote about how to grow pineapples  Link.

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This is a Rangpur Lime, grown from seed by my neighbor. Rangpur Limes have orange skin and are incredibly juicy. I believe these are not well known because they do not keep very well.

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This is a Papaya, I believe Hawaiian, although I won’t be sure until it bears fruit. I grew this from seed last year. Curiously, I sometimes see Papayas growing wild on construction sites. Papayas are native to South and Central America and a bit of an acquired taste. I like them in pork stir fry, bread and sliced.

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The new foliage on a Cuban Avocado tree. Cuban Avocados are the size of footballs and I had never seen one until landing in South Florida. The fruit is a bit sweeter and creamier than Hass Avocado and the rare avocado that is true to seed. A friend grew this for me with a seed from her tree, which she got from a Cuban guy!

The trees are integrated into my back garden along with vegetables and a native pollinator area. Everything but the Mango was grown from seed so I have a few years yet before I will taste the fruit.

Gardening in many cases is all about patience. Someday soon I will have some fantastic salsa and guacamole.

In A Vase on Monday-The Pumpkin Chronicles

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In a Vegetable on Monday, Part Two. My gourd collection from last week was looking pretty good so I decided to add to the arrangement with an heirloom pumpkin for Halloween. Today is Halloween in the US, traditionally the time to carve a pumpkin into a Jack O Lantern then go door to door seeking chocolate (or that is how I think of it).20161028_185146

This is a Jarrahdale Pumpkin, totally non traditional and it hails from Australia. My father was an enormous fan of pumpkin carving so in his honor, I carve a pumpkin every Halloween. I decided to research this one a bit to see if it was edible – it is, and reportedly has sweet, melon like flesh perfect for pies. My husband is regionally famous for his pumpkin pies – so I read on to find that I should roast the pumpkin for 20-30 minutes if I wanted to save the flesh and then scoop out the flesh and continue with my ‘decorative use’.

Upon the completion of the short roasting time, the shell had changed color a bit and the flesh was slightly softer, but not cooked, so I chiseled it out with a serrate knife, being careful to use my not so nice knife in case it snapped. The pumpkin looked a bit like a crocodile so I carved a mean face into it. The flowers may offset the meaness.

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Not so sure about the flesh, I just collected it and put in back in the oven to roast and set about arranging the flowers.

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Starting in the front, the yellow flowers are Beach Sunflowers (Helianthus debilis) the coral star shaped flowers are Dwarf Red Ixora, with a bit of Asian Sword Fern. The red and green leafless stems are from a Firesticks Pencil Cactus (Euphorbia tirucalli), red and yellow flowers are Parrot Flower (Heliconia psittacorum), red bell shaped flowers are from Firecracker Plant (Russelia), the grey foliage is from Flapjack Kalanchoes and a leaf from Split Leaf Philodendron (Philodendron selloum) completes the arrangement. The flowers are in a glass I put into the pumpkin, there is also a tealight candle in there, but I have mixed feelings about lighting it.

About this time, I took the pumpkin out of the oven, let it cool, had a taste and discovered it it really good and does taste of sweet melon – unfortunately, after all that I ended up with 1/2 cup of pumpkin puree. Pumpkin bread, anyone?

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Here is a much more traditional Jack O Lantern from years past, Happy Halloween!

A Plethora of Papaya

Fall is Papaya season in South Florida. My neighbor has a tree and has been sharing his bounty. These are Mexican Papayas, slightly less sweet than the more pear shaped Hawaiian Papaya – the latest one in my kitchen weighed in at 5 pounds. My neighbor uses a dehydrator to save them. Not being a fan of dried fruit, it is a challenge for me to figure out how to eat five pounds of Papaya with only two people.

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The first order of business was to bake some Papaya Raisin Bread, these freezes well and I will enjoy it for weeks. Click for recipe

The Bread:

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The bread used about 1/5th of the fruit. I decided to make a Grilled Chicken Salad for dinner. The chicken was marinated in balsamic vinegar, garlic, rosemary, olive oil and red pepper flakes. The salad was made with romaine lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, celery, fresh herbs, boiled eggs and yes, papaya. Divine. I had papaya and vanilla yogurt for dessert.

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Several times.

Faced with papaya overload and some pork chops in my refrigerator, I did some sleuthing online for another dinner dish. Aha, a stir fry -Thai Style Papaya Pork Click for recipe

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This was so good we made it twice.

And that was the end of the Papaya, all five pounds! Til next year.

Mangoes in Mass Quantity

July in South Florida means a couple of different things, heat, humidity and Mangoes. Lots of Mangoes. This year is a bumper crop. I am philosophizing the rainy winter produced many flowers followed by many fruits.

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Followed by many baskets of Mangoes, which I find irresistible.

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These are Haden Mangoes, from my neighbor the chef, who I suspect just eats his mangoes. I ate some of them, but my husband is not a big fan of plain and won’t eat them straight. So, I made a Mango Amaretto Cake. Not very pretty, but delicious. Last year my Mango effort included a Mango Rum Cake which I believe lasted longer due to its higher alcohol content. Something to consider if your household is not highly populated.

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After a few servings of the Mango Amaretto cake, I decided to take a more savory adventure with Mango Salsa for grilled fish (Pacific Swordfish in this case). The salsa is made with mango, red bell peppers, sliced green onions, cilantro, lime juice and honey.

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Great stuff, and I still had some leftover to have with my Blueberry Bread  from my lasr fruit overload and vanilla yogurt.

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Just when my Mango supply dwindled to this another basket was left on my front porch.

What to do? Bake some Mango Pecan Bread, of course.

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I used the same recipe as my Blueberry Pecan Bread and it turned out fine. This is not particularly sweet for a quick fruit bread but the resinous quality of the mango shines through.

On to my next culinary adventure in mangoland. Another neighbor gave me some Speckled Perch, a local freshwater fish. So, here it is – pan sauteed Perch in lemon butter sauce with Mango Tomato Sauce served with Parmesan Herb Rice and Sauteed Mixed Veg.

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Still have Mangoes. The only thing left to do is make granita. It can be eaten straight up, with vanilla ice cream, yogurt or vodka if you are feeling frisky.

The remains of the day and this is all I have left!

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Compost