Container Taters

Since I was a kiddo, I've grown potatoes. I'd find a gnarly, leggy, wrinkly one in the cupboard and I'd sneak it out back and plant it in my mom's flower bed, which she did not exactly love. She also did not love it when, once, in a digging frenzy, I accidentally cut the phone line to our house. Sorry 'bout that, Mom...

My sneaky potato past not withstanding, I feel like I've grown and learned a thing or two over the years about growing the mighty spud. Just today I put my latest, greatest idea for growing container potatoes into action, using a spankin' new compost bin, of all things.

It might seem a little weird to grow potatoes in a compost bin, but if you have a compost bin and have ever thrown a potato into it, I'll bet that you've noticed that the discarded 'tater sprouted like mad. They love the dark, wet recesses of the compost heap, and they produce the best when new soil or straw are regularly added to cover their growing vines, which is pretty much exactly how the ol' compost pile works. And so, I embraced my potatoes' love of the damp and dark of the compost bin and bought a new one expressly for the purpose of growing potatoes in it.

Here she is, the wonder bin-


This bin is actually meant to be 3 tiers high, but I'm going to wait for the vines to come up a bit before adding the 3rd layer, all the while covering them with soil/compost/straw as they pop through and keep on going until I have all 3 layers chock-full of taters. Note the netting on top. This is to deter my bottomless-pit chickens from climbing in and scratching and pecking my tater bin to death. My fingers are crossed that this will work, because we're using the same "bird netting" on all of our raised beds this year. I love my hennies dearly, but when it comes the the garden, they are like a plague of locusts and must be stopped from devouring the whole kit & caboodle.

I planted just 6 potatoes in the bin - 3 Yukon Golds (my fav), 2 Yellow Finn and 1 nubbly-old Russet that we had in the cupboard. I'll be interested to see how much my 2 lbs of seed potatoes yield. As I do with pretty much everything I grow, I'll do my darndest to keep track of the pounds harvested to give myself (and you) an idea of what kind of return on investment can be expected for the relatively little time and trouble required to grow potatoes. Check back in August for a progress report.

March comes in like a lion...

...and continues to mercilessly whip your butt Kung Fu-style until you collapse from exhaustion.

Spring seems to have finally sprung in these parts, and there has been plenty going on around here, I just haven't taken the time to write a post about any of it. My itemized list of excuses, in a nutshell -

a) I've been on a self-indulgent napping spree that I am reluctant to give up. Ever.

b) New bunnies. New bunnies that like to escape. New bunnies that had to be wrangled from within a clump of prickly blackberry bushes with the help of my 6-year-old and hubby's salmon net. More than once.

c) Dandy mania. I have literally filled a gallon ziploc bag with dandelion petals. Just the petals, people. Do you have any idea how many hours it takes to pluck a few hundred dandelions? Well, neither do I, but it's a lot. All I can say is, this dandelion wine had better be as fan-flipping-tastic as everyone has told me it is, because it takes umpteen hours just to make a single gallon.

d) Birthdays, birthdays, birthdays. The months of March and April are what we refer to in our family as "birthday season". It starts on March 1st and keeps on with an average of 2 birthdays per week through mid-April. I feel like I'm spending half of my life shopping for gifts at Wind Up Here and/or sitting amongst a gaggle of screaming, sugar-loaded children at Chuck E. Cheese.

e) The Garden; she calls. So far we have peas, kale, chives and horseradish in the ground, soon to be joined by swiss chard, strawberries, potatoes and lettuce. The hubster put in two new raised beds just today, into which we will - eventually - be planting tomatoes and cucumbers, per the ol' garden plan. We have a lot of ambition about adding to the form and function of the garden and yard this coming spring and summer. Time will tell if we have enough time and energy to pull it all off.

So, basically, it's the same old-same old. Long spans of utter laziness interspersed with brief, frenzied activity, with little sprinklings of wine and chocolate throughout to make the whole mess tolerable.

The menagerie grows...

...by two! Introducing the newest critters to join our circus, Cinderella & Goldie.



Liv & Goldie -


Scarlet & Cinderella -


I've been mulling over adding bunnies to our brood for a while now, and with the hubby's blessing, decided to finally go for it. The girls are madly in love with them already and have vowed, sworn on their very i-dogs and littlest pet shops even, that they will attend to their bunny's every need, and that mom & dad won't be left taking care of them alone. We'll see... but in the meantime - CUTE BUNNIES!

Spring Fever, where are you?

If you've ever read this blog before, you are no doubt used to my complaining about the weather. Well, I'm at it again, brace yourself.

Like a lot of folks in the Northwest, I get a touch of the ol' Seasonal Affective Disorder around this time each year when the weather isn't winter-winter weather anymore - falling snow and white-dusted evergreen trees - but instead it's BLAH winter; cold, soggy with overnight frosts spaced just far enough apart that you start to think Maybe I can plant out my... ZAP! Think again, says Mother Nature. Bwahaha!

Recklessly hopeful in spite of knowing better, I've gone ahead and planted a few things out, namely peas from seeds and starts, and a few red kale from starts. I've also started some greens indoors under my grow lights. They're up and growing well. They have faith that spring is coming. Maybe if I crawl underneath the grow lights myself and bask in their twitchy, faux sunshine, I too will wake up hopeful and energized for a new season.

In the mean time, it's all the coffee I can imbibe, vitamin supplements out the ying-yang and sheer stubbornness that are keeping me going through this gloomy, seemingly endless Winter, trudging slowly on toward Spring.

Granola Giveaway Winners!

Congratulations to Michelle from All Home Cooking. All Year Long. and Sarah at All Our Fingers in the Pie, our winners for the first ever Great Granola Giveaway. Ladies, please email your addresses to pisces chick 99 at gmail dot com and I'll send your goodies on their way.

I hope to have another of these contests soon, and next time I plan on trying to find more "ingredient-y" type goodies, since most of my peeps prefer to grow/cook/brew/bake their own tasty treats. In trying to put together an appealing lot of Pacific Northwest num-nums, I learned a few things about myself and the food of my region -

a) If you can't ship a Big Tom's burger, a Puyallup Fair Scone, an ETG mocha, an alder-plank grilled fillet of king salmon, homemade rhubarb wine or a caught-that-day homemade crab cake (YUM!), how can one effectively communicate the bad-but-oh-so-good food of the Puget Sound region?

b) Many of my favorite Olympia/Puget Sound foods are only available when the Farmer's Market is open, which around here, is not until April. D'oh!

c) In shopping for the Northwest's greatest hits, I kept bumping into the same 3 things - coffee, candy and alcohol. Lest you've never visited my humble stomping grounds, let me just say that the weather leaves the people of my good city seeking a little "boost" of one sort or another. Therefore, even though coffee and chocolate can no-way-no-how be grown in this climate, our love, nay, NEED of the caffeine & sugar have elevated coffee roasting and candy making to new heights 'round here. The notable exception: Aplets & Cotlets, which I have, despite my better judgement, included in these prize packages for the winners to judge for themselves.

So stay tuned for more goody-bag giveaways, most likely in late spring and early summer, when the garden is beginning to produce and the farmers markets are bustling. Again, congrats to our winners - enjoy! :)

Pay it Forward ~ Granola Giveaway!

Inspired by the "pay it forward"-style giveaways on some of my favorite foodie blogs, I have decided to do the same. Ergo - The first ever Great Granola Giveaway!

Here's how it works - I have two prize packages up for grabs. To enter to win you must simply leave a comment on this post, specifying which lot of goodies you'd prefer. Followers of the blog will be entered twice! This Friday I will use random.org to help me choose my two winners and will send your northwest-themed goodies on their merry way to your neck of the woods. Simple! Fun! Yummy! However - there is one catch...

If you are one of the winners of the giveaway, you too must agree to host a pay-it-forward style giveaway on your blog, featuring selected goodies for your region and/or a few of your favorite foodie delights. By entering you agree to these terms so that the merry sharing may carry on infinitely. :)

Here are your prize packages-



Numero Uno contains: 1 pound of Batdorf & Bronson's "Dancing Goats Blend" whole bean coffee, 1 box of Cougar Mountain's "Apple & Walnut" cookies, 1 Seattle Chocolate's "Pike Place Espresso" dark choclate truffle bar, and one jar of Blueberry jam, made by yours truly.



Numero Dos contains: 1 tub of Tom Douglas' "Rub with Love" salmon rub, 1 bottle of Anna's Fireweed honey, 1 Chehalis Mints "Chocolate Espresso" bar, 1 jar of my extra-thick homemade applesauce, 1 jar of my favoritest-ever "Summer Solstice" homemade jam, and one jar of my infamous sauerkraut. ;)

I may add to these lots as I think of/find/make new local goodies. In the mean time, leave your comment and/or follow this blog to enter to win. Remember that you must have a blog and be willing to host a giveaway of your own to be eligible to win. Thanks for reading & Good Luck!

Update: Bwahaha! I just realized that I had forgotten to throw some Almond Roca and/or Frangos in with the packages as I had intended. So the actual goody pack that you receive will have one or both in addition to what I've already listed. And if I'm feeling particularly saucy/mean, I might just force some Aplets & Cotlets on you too... ;)

Enter the Lion

We've had an odd mix of weather here in Western Washington these past few weeks. Torrential downpours interspersed with gorgeous sunshine and freezing overnight temperatures. Mother Nature's seasonal schizophrenia has tricked many a plant into popping up early, only to be zapped by frost. Of the nettles, daffodils, fiddleheads and dandelions, believe it or not, the one that I am most excited about this year is the much-maligned dandelion.

The dandelion, or Taraxacum Officinale, is so named because once upon a time, the raggedly-toothed leaves reminded someone of a lion's tooth or dent de lion. Like pretty much everyone else on the planet, I've hated them with the fire of a thousand suns for as long as I can remember. But if there's one way to change my tune about a plant, it's to tell me that it is not only edible but can be made into wine. Viola - instant dandelion fan!

Having been long-since sold on the sheer delightfulness of dandelion wine (described by many as "sunshine in a bottle"), I've been keeping a sharp eye out for the appearance of the first yellow menace. I found my first few just today. So far, they are only growing on the south side of the house which tells me that I caught them nice and early in the season - woohoo! And so, I pluck a few dozen flowers and sit down to the larger task of separating the petals from the greenery. This takes forever and a day, of course, and yields an amount so paltry that it won't even register on the scale. Hooboy I've got a lot of dandy-pickin' in my near future. I've already enlisted the kids to help me with the next batch of blooms. Wrangling my kids into helping me make wine - I've got the Mother of the Year award practically sewn up!



Fortunately for me, the recipe that I am using calls for a volume of petals (6 cups!), rather than a weight or I'd need to be picking weeds 'round the clock. As it is, I'm kind of eyeballing my neighbor's yards for dandelions. If I play my cards right, in addition to Mother of the Year, I can also be that-weird-lady-who-steals-weeds.

Right now I only have about a cup of petals, so it'll be at least a week before I can start my wine, but when I do, I'll be sure to post details & pics of the process.