Gorgeous and Thrifty Blooming Gardens In the Pacific Northwest

One of the plants that makes the coastal northwest beautiful in spring is the evergreen rhododendron. In my microclimate, the majority of our rhodies bloom in May. We do have a couple of early varieties which bloomed in April, but the vast majority of rhododendrons blossom in May each year.

Rhododendrons come in pinks, purples, reds, whites/ivories, oranges and yellows. Our house came complete with a red, a white, and a purple rhodie when we moved in.

Since then, we've added several more, mostly in shades of pink and cream.

This is the rhodie that we can see from our bedroom window. The tight buds are a deep pink, opening to pale pink. Although I started with just this one of this variety, I now have 2 additional clones. (See below how I did that.)

On the other side of the yard is this more salmon-y pink rhodie.  The tight blooms are close to a salmon pink crayon in color, opening to a peachy pink blossom.

In our front yard there's a hillside with several different rhododendrons. This white one has yellow centers in each blossom. This particular plant came with the house and is now huge, like a tree with low-growing branches (some touching the soil). These low branches would prove to be beneficial to us. More on that in a bit.

This rhodie is smaller in total growth with smaller leaves and smaller blossoms. This one is a delicate pink. We added this one to the front of the hillside about 15 years ago.

This purple rhodie, like the previous white one, came with the house and property. It is also huge and tree-like, creating a dense screen between our front yard and the neighbor's. And like the white one, it has low-hanging branches which proved to be beneficial.

In actuality, this rhodie is a true red, not dark pink. It came with our house, too, on the hillside. Originally, there were 3 huge rhodies on that hillside, a white, purple, and red.

Although this simply looks like a white rhododendron now, before the blossoms open, they look like a very pale blush pink. 

The garden seating area we developed on my birthday in April contains a 3 of these white rhodies. I propagated these from low-hanging branches on the hillside white rhodie mentioned above. The branches were resting on the soil, so I used a simple layering technique to promote rooting on the woody part of the branch.

This article on Gardening Guru explains the simple layering technique. Basically, you skin a very small portion of the branch where it will contact the soil. Then you mound moist soil over this portion of the branch, leaving the green growing tips above the soil. It took our mother plant about a year to develop roots on the branches I layered. I then cut the rooted part of the branch off the mother plant and potted in moist soil and kept in a partially shady spot where I could keep an eye on it and water it as needed. Within two years I had a healthy baby plant (actually 3 healthy baby plants) to transplant into the soil where I wanted this kind of rhododendron.

We've used this technique to propagate a dozen or so rhododendron baby plants to add to our landscape. It's simple, works most of the time, and costs nothing. Now that's a bargain.

A New-To-Me Book From the Library Book Sale

Our local library takes in donated books specifically for selling to raise money for programs and new books to lend. The book sale is on-going and always has a few new books. Books are $1 and magazines are 25 cents.

This week, my daughter spied this wonderful 1960 McCall's Book of Everyday Etiquette. She bought it for me, as she new I would like this one. Vintage anything to do with homemaking is right up my alley.

Since we're planning a brunch on Mother's Day, I thought I'd consult the etiquette book for tips. First of all, the suggested time is between 10 and noon and most often on Sundays. A brunch is typically hosted by "late-rising people for their late-rising friends."

It's expected that guests and hosts alike will not have had much to eat beforehand, so the menu should be heartier than a standard breakfast menu. 

The atmosphere for brunch is decidedly more relaxed than that of a luncheon. It's okay to serve the meal buffet style and may be eaten at a table or in the living room. Any serving is done by either the guests or the host/hostess, even if the household employs a maid (ha ha, I gave the maid the day off). Coffee and/or the main dish may be served by the host at the table, even if the remainder of the menu is served buffet style or family-style. Alternatively, all of the foods may be served family-style at the table.

Okay, so how am I doing with our plans for Mother's Day. First of all, we'll be having our brunch around 1:30. I like to go to church in the morning beforehand, and my son and daughter-in-law are a tad too late-rising to make it to a 10AM brunch. We all will have had very little besides toast and tea or coffee before church, so our menu will need to be substantial. 

Here are some menu suggestions from the book:

"You usually start with some fruit or fruit juice. Next is the main course of something like creamed chicken on toast, fried apples and bacon, mushrooms and chicken livers en brochette, waffles and sausages or scrambled eggs with fried tomatoes. Anything that isn't a bread itself, such as waffles, should have hot bread served with it -- biscuits, muffins or the like. Serve several kinds of jams, jellies or marmalades and make quarts of coffee."

Our actual menu:

I have frozen orange juice concentrate for orange juice. We'll also have sliced assorted melon (I'll buy one of those melon bowls that usually contain cantaloupe and honeydew). My daughters will be cooking the main dishes, so I need that to be quick and easy for them. I'm considering a peppers, onion, sausage, and egg casserole for one main and sliced ham for the other main.  As suggested by the book, I'll have a homemade blueberry coffeecake and some croissants (brought my by son and daughter-in-law) on the side. I will get out a couple jars of homemade jams and preserves for the croissants, likely raspberry and rhubarb. 

We don't all enjoy coffee. So I'll also provide some sparkling water, and two pots of tea, one black, and one herbal. And because no meal would ever be complete in my house without a dessert, I have a plan for a trio of small desserts: chocolate-covered strawberries, scratch shortbread (using the mold my daughters gave me 2 years ago), and mini (shot glass size) refrigerator cheesecake cups (using up leftover cream cheese, some gelatin, milk, vanilla, sugar, and graham crackers, then topped with berries -- I need to find an actual recipe).

Cloudy and cool at best, rainy and cool at worst for our weather this Sunday. We'll do Mother's Day brunch indoors. I like the idea of a casual meal in the living room. We really don't use our living room enough. So I think I'll cut some lilacs from the garden for the coffee table, have my daughter set up a nice music playlist for the google home, and we'll get comfortable in the living room. And we will definitely be doing this occasion buffet-style. There. Our Mother's Day brunch is all planned.

How about you? Will you be doing anything special for Mother's Day? Do you do any of the cooking for your own Mother's Day, or do you let other family do the work? Or do you prefer to go out for a special meal in a restaurant? Happy Mother's Day to all mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, and motherly girlfriends.

Mother's Day Dessert

This is peak season for strawberries coming from California. The strawberries are large and sweet right now. Two weeks ago and again last weekend I had my choice of Mexico strawberries or USA (California) strawberries for the same price at Walmart. The USA strawberries looked so much better (more red and larger) than the Mexico ones. So I went with the USA ones on both occasions.

I made a batch of just over a dozen chocolate dipped strawberries when we celebrated both my and my husband's birthdays in late April. I sent the last of the chocolate-dipped berries home with my son and daughter-in-law that evening. As they were driving away, I promised my household members that I would make more chocolate-dipped strawberries just for us.

Last Saturday I went back to Walmart and found the same great USA strawberries. So Sunday afternoon I made a smaller batch (just 8) of the treat for my husband, daughters and myself.

I particularly love very dark chocolate. Semi-sweet chocolate chips are around 50% cacao, which really isn't that dark. So I mixed unsweetened baking chocolate with semi-sweet chocolate chips in a 50/50 ratio to make about a 75% cacao for dipping. 

Eight large strawberries used about 3 ounces of chocolate in total, costing about $1.50 for the chocolate. I used about 2/3 of a 16-oz container of strawberries (the 8 largest berries), costing about $1.72 for the amount used. My cost for 8 large chocolate-dipped strawberries was about $3.22.

Meanwhile, our local Safeway is advertising chocolate covered strawberries, 8 to 9 count, for $14.99 for a package. Melting chocolate in the microwave then dipping berries is about as easy a dessert as someone could home-make.

I saved over $10 by putting in about 15 minutes of work.

Just sayin' in case you're looking for a quick and easy dessert for this coming Mother's Day. I know I'll be making more for Sunday's brunch with my family.

I hope you're all having a good week.

Update on the Cream of Asparagus Soup

About a week ago I posted about a cream of asparagus soup that I made with the tough asparagus ends. Even after pureeing in the blender, it had short fibers all throughout. And thanks to the comments in that post, I was reminded I had a food mill that I could try.

So, in the photo above this is the soup as it was initially made. You can kind of see some of those short fibers.

This is my food mill. I use it each year to make applesauce. The holes at the bottom are larger than the holes of a mesh strainer. By turning the handle, the angled metal blade pushes the food through those holes, leaving whatever fibrous residue won't pass through.

I ran the string-filled soup though the food mill. The process took about 3 minutes of turning the crank. 

When finished milling the soup, I had about 2 tablespoons of strings left in the food mill, which I discarded.

The resulting soup was string-free and delicious. 

My take -- it's possible to make a creamy soup from those woody ends of asparagus using a food mill.

Thank you to the unnamed friend in the comment section for this suggestion.

Walmart Shopping With My Husband

Happy birthday to Kris, and happy Cinco de Mayo to everyone else!

Five full bags of groceries
I bring my own bags, ones from when they were free.
Bags are now 8 cents each.
I keep reusing the old ones,
patching with duct tape when they get holes.

This is what $66.64 will buy at our local Walmart. The other day we were seriously short on produce and a few other things. 

My husband came with me to Walmart, and we had several discussions while shopping. As you might guess, one topic was the high cost of some types of groceries. My husband asked about crackers and chips. I told him that I can bake a loaf of bread for half the price of the least expensive crackers. My loaf of bread would likely last twice as long as a box of crackers in our house, perhaps providing twice as much food value as the crackers. So for half the price, I can make double the amount of baked grain food. Now bread and crackers aren't the same thing. But we both decided that we get a similar experience eating crisply toasted slices of bread as compared to saltine crackers.

As for the chips, my husband's preferred chips are tortilla chips. The large bag of corn tortillas weighs just over 4 pounds and costs $3.98, a little under $1 per pound, or about 6 cents per ounce. The least expensive tortilla chips are about $2.56 per pound, or about 16 cents per ounce. I can make baked tortilla chips for my husband, brushing a small amount of oil on the tortillas then oven-baking for a few minutes, still keeping my cost per pound well, well, well under $2. We discussed how we prefer freshly-made tortilla chips over the bagged ones. We control the salt, and warm homemade tortilla chips are like the baskets of warm tortilla chips served in restaurants.

I also pointed out to my husband that by sticking to basic foods, for the most part, allows us to eat a wider variety of (and I think healthier) food on a budget.

So, my $66.64 bought us a lot of fruits and vegetables, a few "treat" foods, like the strawberries, uncured all-beef hot dogs, and the turkey snack sticks my family enjoys. I also bought an 80-ct bag of corn tortillas, so my husband can have some of his favorite home-baked tortilla chips. And I bought a can of frozen orange juice concentrate to have this coming Sunday for Mother's Day brunch. Orange juice has become a "luxury food" in our house, at $2.86 a 12-oz can. I stuck to Walmart's house brands for most of the packaged products.

Here's what $66.64 bought:

80-ct corn tortillas

1 can frozen orange juice concentrate

1 shaker onion powder

1 shaker garlic powder

1 lb sharp cheddar cheese

small bag frozen corn (12-oz)

large bag frozen broccoli cuts (32-oz)

large bag frozen peas (32-oz)

2 packages turkey snack sticks

1 lb all-beef uncured hot dogs (8 hot dogs)

two 3-lb bags apples

1 lb strawberries

5-lb bag red potatoes

5-lb bag carrots

3-lb bag mandarin oranges

1 bundle celery

1 green pepper

4 large Roma tomatoes

almost 3 lbs of bananas

1 head of cabbage

16-oz jar organic natural peanut butter'

Of course, there's no milk, butter, eggs, sugar, or other high priced foods, and very little meat. But still, my thinking is if you stick to basic foods, you can have a lot of variety for the money.  And my produce-hungry family members have a lot of fruits and veggies to choose from everyday to add to their lunches and snacks.

A Simple Cinco de Mayo Supper for My Family

I know, not quite Cinco de Mayo. But we'll be in the Mexican food eating mood this whole weekend. Tonight I made a very quick and easy Mexi-meal. I had been busy in the garden all afternoon, so simple it needed to be.

I thawed 1 container of scratch refried beans and 1 container cooked brown rice, plus a package of ground beef. I harvested the first of our lettuce and some green onions.

I had about 30 minutes to get dinner made and served, as one daughter had a meeting tonight. This worked really well and everyone loved it.

Steamed (previously frozen) brown rice, topped with a scoop of refried beans (made and froze earlier in the week), and some freshly-cooked Mexican-seasoned ground beef. On top of all of that was a generous dollop of homemade salsa (from last summer). The ground beef was the most time-consuming part of making this dinner. As sides we had small garden salads and tangerines.

A delicious, quick and easy Cinco de Mayo supper. We have some leftover cooked beef and a scoop of beans remaining. I'll use the two in a small tamale pie this weekend. If you've never made a tamale pie, that's another simple Tex-Mex meal -- a Tex-Mex filling (seasoned meat, beans, corn, tomatoes, and any veggies that sound like they would "go") topped with cornbread batter and shredded cheese, then baked until the cornbread is thoroughly baked. A favorite of my kids from their childhoods. 

Have a wonderful weekend!

I'm not giving up just yet . . .

Doesn't this look divine? Homemade cream of asparagus soup,

made with the ends of our Easter asparagus.

I sliced the pieces lengthwise and simmered them in water until soft.

Next I pureed them in the pitcher blender, added milk, onion powder, dried thyme, black pepper and salt. I thickened the soup with a slurry of flour and water. At the very end I swirled in 2 tablespoons of butter.

Don't you think this would be wonderful? Looks can be deceiving, however. I call this "cream of dental floss soup." The entire batch has short little bits of floss-like fibers throughout. My family thinks it tastes wonderful, but agrees the texture is off-putting.

But I'm not giving up yet. If it has "texture" perhaps I just need to lose that texture amongst other textures. My thought is to use this soup as a binder in a rice and chicken based casserole, one that also has some diced celery and perhaps some diced red pepper. I'll use brown rice, which adds more texture than white rice. And I'll give it a cheese and crumb topping. 

It isn't so much that I don't want to throw away costly food, as the asparagus ends were something most people discard anyway. And the rest of the ingredients were budget-wise too. It's the time and effort that I put into making the soup that I can't seem to just let go of. And that is what's driving me to use a soup that we simply didn't enjoy.

Have you ever cooked a dish that you didn't care for, then remade it into something else, hoping it would be better enjoyed in a new rendition?

In any case, I try to use every last bit of food in our house. And I'll try to use this highly textured soup in one way or another.

Bean Efficiency

We've been shying away from using beans in everyday dinners for several months. Then at our most recent hot dog cookout last Saturday, as I was putting out side dishes, I had a thought that baked beans or BBQ beans would be so good with that meal. And I've often thought how quick and easy bean and cheese burritos would be to make on a night when I needed a meal on the table in a hurry. But alas, cooking beans from dried requires advanced planning.

On Monday afternoon I was restocking containers of dried foods in the pantry, and I saw that the pinto bean container was about empty. This was the end of the previous sack of pintos, and I have a replacement sack of pintos ready to be opened. So I decided to cook up all of the older pinto beans and prepare them in a couple of ways that my family would enjoy.

And that's what I did. I cooked up the pintos, refrigerated them overnight (I got a late start cooking beans on Monday), then today I made enough refried beans for 3 family meals of burritos or beans to go on nachos and 2 family meals of BBQ beans to have with a hot dog cookout or to serve with cornbread and salad/fruit for a simple supper type of meal. I've now got 5 family meals of cooked and seasoned beans to help ease us back into putting beans on our meal rotation.

I know, a lot of folks cook up lots of beans at once and can or freeze those cooked beans. I just haven't consistently been one of those people. So this was my version of cooking beans once to eat for several meals.

The Menu Journal

chocolate-dipped strawberries for dessert at last night's gathering

I have this mini notebook that I've been using to record holiday and large gathering menus. I write down on one page the full menu and on the opposing page things I could have done differently or any opinions I had about how the preparations went.

The notebook itself was a freebie notebook I received when doing kitchen help at a tea. It really is tiny, about 3 X 4 inches, the kind that looks like a composition book, if you know what I'm talking about.

There's just enough room on a page for a menu or hints and tips.

I sometimes include whether something was a packaged product or pre-seasoned by a manufacturer, frozen or fresh, etc. Occasionally I add shopping lists, if a dish or recipe is particularly complex or requires unusual ingredients (like a spice I don't normally have on hand).

I began recording this information a couple of years ago, as I would frequently have post-thoughts about a gathering that I wanted to remember. An example, yesterday my son and daughter-in-law came over for a family dinner to celebrate my husband's and my birthday. I served a turkey breast, among other things. Afterward, I thought I should have looked through my jars of homemade preserves to find a spicy or herb-y preserve that would compliment the slices of turkey, something like the rosemary-rhubarb preserve that I make in early summer some years. I also might note if a menu was relatively easy to do.

I look through these menus when I'm planning another dinner, lunch or brunch. I know I can just do the whole thing again, or I can take parts of one menu and combine with parts of another. Having these lists and tips makes the whole planning thing so much easier. 

I keep the menu journal right alongside my most used cookbooks. Someday, perhaps my daughters will enjoy leafing through the various menus as they plan their own family celebrations.

Happy Friday!

The hens were generous today. They gave my daughter two eggs. My daughter wasn't expecting very many eggs. So this has come as a surprise. The hens are sweet and funny.

I didn't grocery shop this week. Maybe you can relate -- when we have a big holiday meal, we often have so many leftovers that there is no need to buy more groceries for a week or more. In fact, I haven't gone anywhere since last Sunday's church service. Now that feels odd to think I didn't leave the neighborhood. The furthest away I went this week was a few houses down from us to visit with the chickens while my daughter added feed and changed their water.

I've continued working in the vegetable and flower garden. Today I planted half of the tomatoes. I'll hold back the other half for a week, as a just in case measure, just in case we get pouring, cold rain, or the critters do damage. I've been planting flower pots with seedlings that I started indoors. This year I started petunias, violas, marigolds, and nasturtiums for flowers. The begonias over-wintered in their pots in the garage. I brought them outside a couple of weeks ago, and they are just now beginning to break the soil.

Today's post isn't just wandering thoughts. I also have a question for you. How do you feel when your grown children give you an expensive gift, or an expensive-for-them gift? Sometimes one or a couple of our kids will give us something that we feel costs more than they should spend on us. We want them to save for their futures. My two daughters bought some glassware for me for Easter. I saw them in the store and thought they were lovely. But I also noted the price tag per glass. They're not super expensive, just expensive for my daughters' stage in life. Oh but they're lovely and go well with our spring dishes. Anyway, I've had a difficult time with this gift. How does it make you feel to be on the receiving end of your grown children's generosity?

I can't believe we're up against the weekend already. What will you do to make this weekend beautiful? I plan on taking a long walk to see all of the neighbors' spring flowers and flowering trees, having a cup of coffee outdoors in the morning, baking a batch of rhubarb muffins, and potting more flowering seedlings on Saturday.

Dinner was exciting at our house tonight

The elderly hens that my daughter is caring for have given us 4 eggs so far. I used all 4 eggs in a Denver frittata, basically a Denver omelette baked in the oven.

The yolks were darker colored and more mounded once cracked into a bowl, as compared to grocery store eggs. My husband thought the eggs tasted richer. We all noticed how yellow the egg part of the frittata was.

The hen with the issue appears to be improving slightly, without any extra care from my daughter. Between my daughter and I we know exactly zilch about hens. Thank goodness for the computers, both for finding information and for the ability to email the hens' owner while they're traveling.

Last night's dinner was also exciting, but for a completely different reason. Yesterday was my husband's birthday. In our house, the birthday person gets to choose what we're doing to celebrate, including what's for dinner and dessert on the birthday. My husband chose Mexican food and a Rice Crispy Treat cake for dessert. Yesterday wasn't the big celebration. It was just the four of us. Our big joint birthday celebration will be this weekend, with our son and daughter-in-law joining the four at home to celebrate both my husband's and my birthday. My husband took time off work for part of the day yesterday. What he really wanted to do was go to Value Village, then play a board game in the afternoon/evening. We are so easy to please in our household.

I've been getting the vegetable garden planted this week. Monday I seeded the carrots. Yesterday I planted the kale seedlings that I started indoors. And today I planted the cabbage and Brussel sprout seedlings (also started indoors). I will need to keep an eye on the garden this year. I saw 3 rabbits on our property this morning. Although some of the garden beds have wire fencing, a couple of them do not.

Have you had the opportunity to eat very fresh eggs before? What's been your impression of fresh eggs compared to grocery store eggs?

How was your Easter?

Our Easter was pretty great. Church, cooking, cleaning, games, eating, clean-up -- a long day from 5 AM to 10 PM.

The menu was pretty much as I'd posted about, with the addition of fresh strawberries that I found at a good price and fresh mango that my son and daughter-in-law brought. I sent our guests home with lots of leftovers. Still, we have quite a bit of ham left. 

Tonight I made toasted ham and cheese sandwiches on some leftover homemade dinner rolls. Very yummy! Tomorrow I'll pull as much of the ham off the bone as I can to freeze, then make ham stock with the bone.

Although I washed most of the dishes last night, I still had a lot of clean-up to do today. I'm tired from Easter and I'm a bit distracted today. 

One of my daughters has a chicken-sitting job for a couple of weeks. The "ladies" are older and perhaps not laying as much or regularly. 

But my daughter has collected 2 eggs this week. One of the hens is having a little issue (that's what's distracting me this afternoon). My daughter has emailed the woman who owns the hens. However, they're out of the country and my daughter hasn't heard back from them yet. 

I hope to have more energy tomorrow. How was your Easter?

Easter Blessings

 

Happy Easter, dear friends! Wishing you a blessed day.

Our Easter Table is Set

(sorry about the poor indoor lighting)

The dyed heirloom tablecloth and napkins from my great-grandmother, a center doily from my grandmother, the ecru luncheon placemats from my mother, the mid-century china from my mother and father -- all ready for Easter dinner.

Under the napkins are pink glass dessert/salad plates from Value Village. Pink/ecru is my color theme this year.