Wordless Wednesday

Dirty Rotten Slugs!

Last time we weeded we noticed a lot of holes in the leaves of our pepper plants. We couldn't figure out what in the world was eating them. Photo Dude and I went out a few night later around dusk and I noticed that there was a SLUG! on one of the leaves. We had found our culprit. We did a search online to find out how to get rid of these pests without chemicals since we are trying to garden organically. One website suggested to make a trap using a jar with corn meal in it. It seems that the slugs eat the corn meal and it then kills them a bit like a seagull and rice I guess. I don't really want to kill the slugs but I also don't want them in my garden. Photo Dude put together the slug trap and it seems to be really working! We haven't noticed any new holes in our plants since putting it out there. This is a photo of the slug trap. You can see one slug in the jar and another outside in the spilled corn meal. The same website also suggested using buried cups filled 80% full with beer because the slugs are drawn to the liquid and then I think they drown. We have been getting so much rain that this system didn't seem to be a very good one for us. But the idea of drunk squirrels running around could have been hilarious! If you have any suggestions to deter slugs or other garden pests I would love to hear them!

Fun Food Friday: Vegetarian

Welcome to the very first ever Fun Food Friday!!! Hosted by Alisha G.
My goal is to every Friday post at least one recipe from the week. I may post more than one or link to my flickr account with extra food goodies and recipes. Especially for ones that I don't come up with on my own. So for the first ever Fun Food Friday, I will be posting a super easy veggie salad, and vegetarian chili with cornbread and strawberry shortcake for dessert. This is sort of an entire meal. But these recipes are so simple and easy that I can post them all at once. I will keep the amount of photos to a minimum and keep the recipe with the photo for ease. SO! On with the food!

First up is my super simple easy, veggie salad.

Recipe:
Mine here has
1can drained and rinsed Black Beans
2c frozen(thawed) corn
1 whole seeded and chopped Green Bell Pepper
1c shredded carrot (from a bag because I am that lazy)
2c halved cherry tomatoes
and enough Fat Free Zesty Italian dressing to coat.

You could easily add more or less of  veggies take out what you don't like or add in things like diced red onion a bit of garlic, celery, black olives, etc etc. This salad is only limited to you imagination.


For my next recipe I give you my all in the pot Vegetarian Chili.

Recipe:
This chili has just about everything but the kitchen sink!
Using baby portabello mushrooms as the base you can build on this and add anything you like.
Mine has onion, carrot, green pepper, corn, 1can diced tomatoes and chillies,1 jar chunky salsa, chili powder mix(from the seasoning packet aisle), black beans, zucchini, lima beans, and tomato paste.

Add a little cheese and sour cream and you have a super filling meal! You can add any kind of veggie you like or don't like.











No chili is complete without cornbread! This is super simple!
Recipe:
I used Jiffy Mix and replaced the milk (I think it was) with vanilla rice milk. You could also use soy milk. This turned out amazing!

No dinner is totally complete without a delicious dessert! So how bout classic strawberry shortcake but lighter and with less calories? Simple easy angelfood cake from a mix to replace that shortcake or the biscuit.

And strawberries mashed with stevia! you can add as little or as much as you like to make this sweet. You could even use honey or agave. Or nothing at all!

Top it all off with some delicious light whipped cream (or you could make your own) for a delectable light dessert!




That's it for today's Vegetarian Fun Food Friday! Hope you enjoy your day!

Garden Update

I can't believe it has been three weeks since Photo Dude put our new garden in. We have had absolutely ideal conditions for planting. There have been lots of great rain storms coming through about every day so we haven't needed to water the garden at all. I'm sure as the summer goes along we will have to start watering but until then I'll happily take Mother Nature's help. Today was the first day that we really needed to get out and weed. Photo Dude has gone through a few times and pulled up more of that stupid rhubarb that we thought (hoped) we had killed off. The kids seemed really excited about weeding until we actually got out there. Jack took off right away to play with his toys and one of the neighbor boys came over to play with him. It was probably better that way. Molly helped a lot and got into spots that we had a harder time reaching. She is going to be a great help when harvest time comes and the plants are even bigger than they are now. We unfortunately lost two of our tomato plants to unknown reasons. And since they hadn't been individually staked we won't know which ones they were until the rest come in. We also lost most of our pea plants only one of the four is still a viable grower the others were just dead sticks. We weeded for a while and then Photo Dude got out a claw looking tool to break up the soil a bit. We've had so much hard rain that the ground had a hard top layer. Our soil is also fairly clay-ish so a little aeration was needed. Almost everything has done amazingly well. As we tended the plot we started talking about what we would do differently next year and we are thinking of doing some raised beds because this has taught us that it is really easy to plant too deep to reach everything. But look at this our very first tomatoes are starting to grow! This is the Fourth of July tomato that we planted first. It is huge! I think that it is definitely going to live up to the promise of ripe fruit by early July. Our pepper plants are starting to get flowers so we have high hopes for them as well. The squash and cucumbers are growing very well with big gorgeous leaves but no blooms yet. The green beans are growing but they don't seem to be getting as big as the others. I don't remember having them in the garden when I was growing up so I have no idea what to expect from them. Thanks for taking a peek at our garden and I would love to hear what you guys are doing in yours or even if you have any tips for us to keep our little plot going strong. Have a wonderful day!