I was going thru healthy and light recipes for the month of May and stumbled upon this genius idea
Whoever thought of it should get a huge pat on the back. There are so many recipes for deviled strawberries it’s crazy.
First you hull out the strawberries making a spot for the filling to go then you slice a tiny bit off the bottom of the half so it lays flat
I chose one and made it this morning. I only made half the amount of filling and still had some leftover.
The recipe calls for cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, heavy cream and I added a little lemon zest and a tiny pinch salt,
Cheesecake ingredients
That’s not healthy you may be saying but you aren’t using a lot of any ingredient and each strawberry gets about 1/2 teaspoon of the “cheesecake” filling.
So, unless you eat 50 of them they are a light and tasty dessert option for the spring and summer.
I immediately began thinking of different variations you could do with the “cheesecake” filling or even just flavored whipped cream.
Most recipes call for a sprinkling of graham cracker crumbs but I didn’t have any on hand.
Gluten free ones are expensive and not worth it.
I did crush up a Trader Joe’s GF chocolate chip cookie because I always have those in hand.
I haven’t really started thinking about what other fruit you can do this with but just while typing this I thought of ripe peaches or plums.
As I was packing up what didn’t fit in my nana’s deviled egg platter I thought hell, you can half strawberries, put the cheesecake filling in a separate container and just dip them it!
Then I thought if you didn’t want to dick around making deviled strawberries you could put the filling in the center of a platter and spread out strawberry halves.
The crumbs you can top it with is also endless possibilities.
Marty and I sampled a couple of the strawberries and I gotta tell you. They are very good.
Here is the recipe I used. Yes, there are healthier ones but I chose this one since it was one of the first ones I saw.
The garden expansion is almost complete, we still need to order mulch and spread mulch all over the different garden beds.
The garden is 90% in with the exception of the four varieties of tomatoes, eggplant, and two types of peppers.
Those are set in their spots where they will be planted, hardening off.
I did see the temps will dip down to the 40s next week so I am holding off until then.
There doesn’t seem to be any frost in the next couple of weeks, which is good for everything that is in the ground already.
As you can see from the top photo I have tomato flowers on two plants! This is a major achievement for me!
I planted three varieties of winter squash, butternut, mini butternut, and acorn.
I also didn’t listen to what people said as far as planting melon, they are a waste of time.
We wanted to try to grow cantaloupe which if it fails will only cost $1.49.
If it produces sweet and juicy fruit it will save us a nice chunk of change.
I also planted green beans in the blue half barrels along with cucumbers.
I built the trellises for the squash and melon beds and the teepees for the cucs and string beans.
The beets and carrots have popped through the soil along with radishes I just planted last week! Woo-hoo!
My potatoes are growing! It’s amazing to watch. I hope I get a lot!
Two are slower than the others.
I didn’t end up planting any flowers on Mother’s Day because I saw the temps were going to be in the 30s. And they were.
Almost all of my flowers are planted with the exception of a few.
Wowzers! 💜
My petunias are stellar! I am so proud of them! Actually, I am proud of everything since I did it all from seeds.
Now fingers crossed my veggie garden has a good harvest and decent yields. 🤞🏼
I planted all of my herbs and potted up some gorgeous basil.
The lettuce and greens are coming along nicely and should be ready to eat next week.
Lettuce, arugula, and spinach
The head lettuce that everyone advised again is doing good. To me it’s an experiment I wanted to try.
Head lettuce
I moved the pots of sunflowers around the garden spaces. They are getting big!
I also have a lot growing in the greenhouse to transplant in the sunflower patch. If I did them from seed in the patch the birds would get them when they are too small.
Only a few things left!
I am pleased with the progress of the expansion. I also have been working a lot in the beds in the front of our house.
This week, I planted a lot of beets. I grew them last year and was mildly successful. I now know I didn’t thin the beets out enough and ended up with small beets.
Small beets that tasted fantastic that is. That was when I decided I had to plant our beets the correct way this year
In the meantime, I found a package of beautiful beets packaged beautifully at a market in my way home from a doctor’s appointment.
I was searching for beet recipes and I found tons. I also watched some recipes on YouTube.
I made a roasted beet and feta salad on greens with crushed praline pecans and raspberry vinaigrette to go with steak on Friday night.
Not the greatest looking photo of our dinner because of poor lighting but it was very good. I rushed taking the picture because I was starving.
I used the rest of the beets I roasted and made Harvard beets as a side dish tonight.
Harvard beets are such an old school side dish that is delicious! I am here to remind or introduce them to people.
While the beets are very healthy for you this dish does have a lot of sugar in it.
I’m sure there are healthier versions if you are watching your sugar.
Harvard beets, aren’t they sexy?
I watched a woman make Harvard beets with a twist, she added freshly grated ginger and orange zest! Yum!
I never had Harvard beets before but I have heard of them. The sweet and sour sauce is just that.
If you used pineapple juice instead of water in the recipe you would have a Chinese sweet and sour sauce.
I followed a classic Harvard beet recipe because I wanted to taste the real Mc Coy.
The recipe calls for sugar, cornstarch, water, vinegar, cooked beets, salt & pepper.
It took me less than 10 minutes and that included peeling and slicing the beets.
I read somewhere a long time ago that washing or rinsing your strawberries doesn’t remove pesticides and other yucky things.
What I didn’t know was you need to soak your strawberries.
At a neighborhood gathering at our friends next door, a new neighbor told me about soaking your strawberries in a solution of vinegar and water.
I asked Dylan to tell me more. He said when you soak your strawberries in a 3:1 solution of water to vinegar it removes mold spores, bacteria, and pesticides.
He went on to say after you soak and dry your strawberries, they keep longer and taste sweeter.
Really? How did I not know this? Probably because before last year I didn’t eat a lot of fresh fruit.
I know, I know but in my defense, I was on a low residue diet for years because of my ulcerated colitis.
Last year, I got the all clear to eat anything I wanted to since I was in remission!
Last summer, I ate more fresh fruit than I had in my whole life. Marty and I couldn’t get enough fresh peaches, plums, cherries, melons, and berries.
On Tuesday, I mixed up to he vinegar and water solution and soaked the strawberries I bought on Saturday.
I was disgusted when I saw what came off the strawberries that collected in the bottom of the bowl. Yuck.
Shit, I was eating that. Ew.
After I soaked and dried off the strawberries I put them back into the fridge.
That afternoon I tried a strawberry. It was smooth and tasted delicious. It tast d clean. Yum!
I looked up the percentage of average people who knew to soak their strawberries in vinegar water.
Not many average people knew about the soaking. Well that made me feel a little better, but I don’t like being average.
Let me know if you soak or don’t soak your strawberries. Have you heard about the vinegar and water thing?
I was very late to this party but better late than never. 🍓
Growing up Mother’s Day was a big day for my mother and her mother, Nana.
Oh, there were corsages, gifts, getting dressed up, and dinner out. That was when I was little.
As I got older the corsages were no longer a thing. My father would buy two gifts for my mother, one from him and one from me.
Eventually. the second gift he bought came from me and the other child they adopted. It was always jewelry I think.
My father never gave my mother a Mother’s Day card so I had to make one every year.
Eileen would always ask my father the same question every year as to why he didn’t give her a card.
My father’s answer was simple, “Because you aren’t my mother.”
As I got older and had a job I told my father I could buy my own Mother’s Day gift for my mother.
All of my gifts were never right if they weren’t jewelry or the right kind of jewelry.
That’s how all the gifts I ever gave her were received. Wrong. Believe it or not my mother-in-law was the same way!
When I became a mother I had a simple wish, I wanted to go to a nursery and buy some flowers to plant.
As a stay at home mom, I was with our kids 24/7. I needed a break sometimes but never asked for one.
My desire on Mother’s Day was always the same, go to a nursery to get flowers and have Marty “babysit” the boys.
Now I think it’s ridiculous I felt like I to ask him to babysit his own children!
Back then, I felt that since I wasn’t working a real job, I didn’t deserve time alone. The kids were my responsibility 100% of the time. That was my job.
I know now that kind of thinking was fucked up.
It was a branch off the “I’m not worthy tree” I experienced growing up, always having to be perfect and be a good servant since after all, my parents adopted me.
I owed it to them. I owed it to Marty. I definitely felt like I wasn’t worthy to have anything I truly desired, even if it was an hour or two here or there.
My mother is the one who made me feel and treated me that way and used that in all of her guilt trips and manipulation until she died.
The branch growing off that “I’m not worthy tree” was that I felt guilty doing anything for myself since Marty was the bread winner so I could stay home and raise out boys.
I did get my wish to buy and plant flowers. It rained on many of those Mother’s Days. I didn’t care I would be outside for 2 or 3 hours with a raincoat on planting my flowers.
I was able to breathe while I was planting the flowers. It was my time of zen and joy. I throughly enjoyed that time alone.
I always planted petunias because they are one of my favorite flowers. I loved dead heading the spent blooms every night while sipping wine.
I took very good care of my flowers every year. They made me smile and made the outside of our home beautiful.
I haven’t done the planting flowers on Mother’s Day thing since the kids grew up.
Yes, I always plant flowers in the springtime but not on any one particular day anymore.
I didn’t think about that until today. I had mixed feeling about it. Sad, relieved, nostalgic, and bittersweet feelings.
As for my petunias this year, I started my own from seeds and they are better and bigger than any I ever purchased from a nursery! Yay!
However, nothing will ever beat those petunia hanging basket I had a few years ago. They were amazing.
Marty didn’t like them because they blocked his view from the front porch. Everyone loved them almost as much as I did.
This story is about me being the unlikely homesteader in a very Irish storyteller way again.
My first story was when Sam told me the piece wasn’t really about gardening. Oh, but it was my man-child.
Each of these stories in this series will keep explaining how I got to where I am today.
What started when the kids were little as an idea to get a little me time and beautify our home turned into something that I cherished each year.
It was so nice having some quiet and peaceful time but now I realize how much I enjoyed having my hands in the earth.
I loved watching my flowers grow. It wasn’t a task to take of them like all the other things I did.
I found it to be like a ritual to me during the spring and summer. Then the first frost would come and it was all over until the following year.
When I was ill with my lung disease two years ago, I wanted to start doing things that brought joy to my life.
I could have chosen anything, but the first thing I thought of was gardening.
This year I’ve spent hours and hours by myself starting seeds and all the other things that go with growing your own garden plants and flowers from scratch.
My favorite time is in the greenhouse or the garden. I get the same feelings I had while planting my flowers on all of those Mother’s Day’s.
My petunias that I grew from seed!
I never would have imagined that I would be a real gardener and not just a mom who liked planting flowers and got a little time off.
Everyday I can’t wait to get out there and explore and check up on everything outside.
I’m so proud of these beautiful purple petunias!
It’s become a ritual for me that I don’t have to wait for only once a year. It’s my life now.
Today, I decided I am going to plant some of my flowers again on Sunday, Mother’s Day and bring that tradition back. ☺️
This has been a very productive week for my gardens. It’s Sunday and today Marty helped me finish filling the six galvanized steel 8×2 raised beds.
The garden’s expansion project was a lot of work, everything was harder and took much longer than I first thought.
I had to keep reminding myself that this was the only time we have to do most of these projects. The garden expansion project is 90% done. Whew!
We began working outside and the rain held off until about 1:30 pm which gave us enough time today to finish up this part of the project! Yay!
After doing some more research on companion gardening early this morning, I realized that potatoes should not be grown near brassicas, tomatoes, or squash.
Broccoli & brussel sprouts are in the brassica family, tomatoes, and squash is what is going in the new garden area with the potatoes right next to them.
Marty moved the potatoes for me to a perfect spot that isn’t near anything else.
That’s the good news. There was some bad news this week but I acted quickly and remedied the situation in afternoon.
Aphids invaded the greenhouse this week. Like I said in my “Close Call” piece, I know my seedling plants like I know my own kids.
On Wednesday, I noticed some of the eggplant’s and the hollyhock’s lower leaves were turning yellow and dying. The eggplant was located next to the brussel sprouts and broccoli.
On Thursday morning, I decided to inspect the eggplant closely and then I found those green little bastards.
“Oh, fuck!” I said loudly. Marty asked what was wrong and I told him the plants have aphids. He didn’t have any idea what I was talking about.
I had to wait until after production before addressing this invasion which was difficult for me, but work comes first.
Marty set up a folding table for me and I emptied out all the plants with aphids. Eggplant, broccoli, brussel sprouts, hollyhocks, and bell peppers.
I cleaned the aphids off each plants using the sprayer attachment from our outdoor shower.
Next, I checked all the other plants in the greenhouse and they were all aphids free.
I looked at the weather and decided all the perennials I started from seed back in February were ready to be transplanted especially with 5 days of rain in the forecast.
I also made the decision to transplant the brussel sprouts and broccoli into their new raised beds.
I made sure each broccoli and brussel sprouts sprout plants were free of any aphids before putting them into the beds.
Next, I installed low tunnels to attach insect netting to these brassica beds.
The tunnels and netting were smaller than I thought but are fine for now. I have to get taller tunnels and some bulk shade cloth before the brussels grow taller.
I think the broccoli will be fine but will may need shade cloth as well.
My new first year perennial garden which is located on the front side of our house is a work in progress.
I transplanted lilies to the area in front of the picked fence in the fall when Marty removed the lawn and prepped the area for me.
I grew hollyhocks, lupine, delphinium and foxglove plants from seed and planted them in between the lilies.
I know most of them won’t product blooms this year, but you have to start somewhere right?
After I transplanted all the plants, I used my half-moon edging tool to create each bed. Now, the bed is ready for mulch.
I also planted all the echinacea plants I started from seed in the front perennial beds I created last year and a few in the wildflower garden.
A couple of days later I said, “fuck it” and threw down all of my wildflowers seeds from my own garden and from my friend Ann’s garden into the wildflower garden.
Ann sent me her seeds for Christmas which was such a nice gift. I sent some seeds to her for her bday in February.
We are now both parts of each other’s gardens which I love!
As far as the rest of the greenhouse plants go, I surrounded the eggplant with marigolds and herbs that aphids don’t like.
I am still finding a few on each plant and remove them every morning.
The tomato plants are still recovering from the too cold water incident but will make it. It definitely stunted their growth a bit though.
The sunflowers I started are getting tall and I have noticed with both my tomatoes and sunflowers the leaves change at night.
I never noticed this before because who the hell goes out to their garden in the dark to look at the plants leaves?
The tomato plants leaves close up and inward and the sunflowers turn down. I can’t believe I even noticed it but it’s hard not to.
When I take the girls, Nelly & Roxy out for their bedtime pee I always go in and “tuck in” my plants at their bedtime.
Yes, I am over the top but they are my babies after all.
I planted snow peas on Friday and started germinating two types of beets, two types of carrots, and parsnips seeds.
The root vegetable beds are ready for them as soon as the seeds produce sprouts. It’s very exciting.
This week I am considering planting some of the flowers and herbs into pots and move them out of the greenhouse as well.
There is more room in the greenhouse so I can spread things out a bit as the flowers are getting bigger.
My wave petunias have actual flower buds that are almost ready to open!
This is very exciting especially since the last few years I haven’t been as successful as far as wave petunias go.
Those I got from nurseries that’s why I decided to grow my own from seed this year.
Another week another update. The upcoming week has a lot of rain in the forecast but decent daytime and nighttime temps.
The heater has been turned off in the greenhouse getting the plants hardened off for when the time comes to transplant everything outside.
I go to bed pretty exhausted these days but it’s a great kind of tired. I am getting stronger everyday too.
Building my strength back after being ill for a long time has also been a challenge but I am working my hardest in everything I do.
Just before the rain started after gardening, I went into the pool since Marty installed the stairs.
Swimming? Yes. The water is now 86 degrees and felt great diving under the water and swimming again!
Having a heater for the pool was a must for us and worth every penny. We can swim from now until October! Yay!
Have a great week everyone and local people stay dry. ☔️
