Prepping for the Big Move

So last you heard was the big engagement. Now, it's time for the big move. I have 21 days to pack up and move into JR's condo in beautiful Virginia. It's going to be tough (seriously you should see how much SCHTUFF I accumulate), but someone's got to do it.

The combining of the households is requiring a storage unit, because it just doesn't make sense to get rid of a perfectly good bed (the crappy bed frame, yes, the bed, no) and my perfectly good IKEA chair bed (also amazingly comfortable). So we've been packing boxes for a few weeks, separating things that are going to his place and things that are going into storage, while also getting my place in tip top condition so that I get my deposit back (I have a lot of things I want to buy with that deposit).

The combining of the household is also requiring an incredible amount of new storage over at JR's. Let's just say "WALL OF BOOKSHELVES" together! Now a little quieter we'll say "wall of miss-matched bookshelves." We have IKEA bookshelves ranging from Beech to Dark Brown. We'll see how it works...

In the meantime, we've been prepping for the wedding and cooking and I have been steadily researching plants to grow in next year's garden.

Right now all we have left in the pots are Silver Rose Garlic (which are growing quite nicely, we should be able to harvest a couple in the next few weeks) and some China Rose Radishes that are really FREAKING stubborn. I thought anybody could grow a radish! I planted the seeds when I supposed to and everything, but those DAMNED Radishes refuse to plump! We'll try again in early spring to see if maybe the spastic freezing is what's stunting their growth, but who knows.

So next year's garden (let me tell you JR is ober psyched about the new planters coming to his porch - emphasis on the ober) is going to be bigger, we're going to be moving some planters up onto the balcony railing to improve light-reach, and we'll get a few bigger pots for the balcony floor to grow some really tasty things.

The key to next year's garden is going to be edible. Everything will be edible. EVERYTHING (okay maybe some marigolds wont be, but everything else is edible). Burpee.com has become my new favorite website. I visit it basically every 20 mins. Who knows if there's a plant that missed my eye before! I have to see! I HAVE TO KNOW!

So! Next year's garden, I'm thinking:
Chives
Oregano
Basil
Scallions or Onions of some kind
Born to Be Mild Jalapeños
Cayenne Peppers
Sweet Flavorburst Hybrid Peppers
Bush Belle Hybrid Peppers
Container Corn (This is a thing)
Baby Boomer Tomatoes
Shooting Star Eggplants
Peas in a Pot
Caracas Carrots
More Silver Rose Garlic
More China Rose Radishes
&
Pineberries (currently have a plant to see if it can weather the winter, so far it's doing fine!)


I think we're going to need a bigger balcony....

Snapper Time - Cooking Post

We had a literally the laziest past weekend, ever! Aside from JR scoring a great deal on a MacBook Pro at Best Buy (Black Friday in July anyone?), we pretty much just lazed about playing Rogue Legacy and watching Celebrity Ghost Stories (my choice, not his). I like it okay?! How can you not want to watch Tom Green tell you about the night he spent at a haunted museum, complete with re-enactments? 

YOU CANT!!!!

Okay, maybe you can, but then we need to re-evaluate our friendship... or non-existent friendship if I don't know you.

Any way.

So we did a lot of cooking this weekend and one of my favorites we made was beer marinated red-snapper with a toasted coconut topping. We started out with a gorgeous filet of quality snapper from our local fisherman's market, aka the Harris Teeter. I really don't know why they put that paper on the outside, they're not fooling anyone.

Then we filled a 13x9 pyrex with Bud Light - Platinum, because we had it in the fridge (Only top shelf American lager for us *awkward wink*), and the other option was an apple wheat, which probably wouldn't have melded with the coconut. 

Sliced the filet into single portions. 

And popped them, flesh-side down into the beer. 

While those were doing their Rumors-tango (as I like to call all booze-filled adventures), I started toasting 1 full cup of sweetened coconut flakes in a cast-iron skillet. Excuse my upside-down picture, but I'm not changing it. 

When the coconut had a gorgeous, golden-brown color, I popped them out of the pan (I'm not going to tell you how long it took, because, one - I dont remember, and two - you should be watching your food as you cook it), and let them cool/harden up in a bowl. 

After that I flipped the fish so that they were scale-side down so that that side had the opportunity to really soak up the bad-decisions, then I started our side dishes (some roasted baby corn and spicy corn and yeast rolls, because who doesn't love yeast rolls?!). Once I started the sides and the cast-iron skillet was cooler, I cleaned out the remainder of the coconut from the skillet, did a circle of EVOO, to coat, then heated it to medium-high. 

Unfortunately, I didn't think about taking a photo until I was in the middle of eating, so everything else is basically just instructions on fish cooking. 

After the fish have marinated for 30 minutes, total - 15 minutes on each side. Pat the filets dry. (I added a dash of cumin and paprika and some garlic powder). Then when the skillet is good and hot drop them scale side down. cook till you see the color on the side change from translucent to opaque about 3/4th of the way up, then flip. Cook another few minutes until done. 

Top with toasted Coconut, and Voilá! Near - instant delish! We had some pineapple to go with it, and it was amazing! Sorry for the gross picture, but if you wanted to see it finished, this was all I had... oops! I'll remember to take better pix the next time! 

It wasn't until we'd put everything on our plate that we realized everything was yellow/white... Probably the most boring color combo ever, but everything was pretty taste-tastic!

Happy Cooking! 

Stay tuned every Monday and Thursday for new posts!

The Great Memorial Day Plant Project (Part 2 of 2)

WOW so after all that work and trust me... it was a LOT of work, I thought I'd show you the fruits of JR and my labor. Look how well the light purple and turquoise pots go together. The marigolds look gorgeous. We picked out a lot of the ones with buds on them so that we will have blooms for the next month or so. 

That's my lesson number one for this post. When buying plants from the hardware stores or flower shops or nurseries, always make sure you have an even amount of disbursement of blooms and buds so that you'll be able to experience the beautiful flowers for months to come. 

Bought a new chive plant since the ones I'm growing from seeds are taking a while, and it came with an awesome bonus of oregano!! How cool. Hopefully it's not cutting off the root supply. 

We also cut apart the jiffy cups with the most growth and planted them! The empty cups closest to us had no growth in them at all, so JR planted some Cosmo seeds... We should have a steady rotation of plants as everything is growing (and dying, because hello, have you met me?)

More of the replanted jiffy cups, you can see the cup shape in the larger pot... clearly, we were really concerned about hiding them. 

So the rest of the post is just a lot of pics of the garden in all it's new glory. 

SO MANY SEEDLINGS!!!! Let's see if I can grow them into adults!

Another pot of low-light plants. 

Here's our low/no light plants, hidden behind the chaise lounge. I love the big green/pink plants.
We used to have some when I was growing up in Beaumont. 

I AM SO EXCITED FOR THESE PEPPERS! I LOVE CUBANELLE PEPPERS! 

The upper pot is a 8 in pot from Home Depot and then the plate is a STEAL from Ikea at 69cents.
They were in the As Is section of the store, so we bought two to put under the part light plants to give them a bit more interest in contrasting colors. 

Look I have a Thriller, a Filler and Spiller. Just call me Betty Container-Gardener

JR had to clean up all the dirt I dumped off the patio...

He was a great sport about it though. 

This is definitely a great cross section of what's going on on the porch. You can see the pepper pot (Haha! Pepper Pots!), which are up on the stool we built. And underneath you can see the corner of our part-light plants. In the large purple pot you can see marigolds and verbena and a firework plant that I've had now for 3 years... there used to be more of them... but like I said earlier, we're rotating plants that die...

Lesson number two I learned - PLANT FOOD.

PLANTS LOVE PLANT FOOD.

This might seem a bit like common sense, but here's the lesson. Follow the instructions on the label, but also on top of regular watering according to instructions, buy a spray-water bottle and fill it with a mixture of the plant food and water. Spray it on your plants in the morning and watch how happy they look by mid afternoon. Seriously.

The Great Memorial Day Plant Project (Part 1 of 2)

So I had quite a grand plan for all of the plants after the craptastic roofers destroyed all of my poor little babies. So JR P.I. and I went to the Home Depot first thing after work on Friday and replaced all the plants and bought quite a few new ones. 

You see on Friday I had this brilliant idea to really tie all the random pots on the patio together. I was going to PAINT THEM ALL. As you can see in the above picture we had already bought a turquoise patio table from Target about 2 months ago when we first got on the plant kick (by we - I mean I). So I thought OMG, WE NEED TO PAINT ALL THE POTS THAT COLOR. 

Then I was like that's a lot of turquoise... so... what goes with turquoise? Light purple of course! 

We literally spent all weekend spray-painting pots and replanting. There is a very unsightly spray-painted-turquoise-box right at JR's front door, because I'm just not the best spray painter. seriously. I once spray painted with two of my sisters in college in an enclosed basement, because ventilation just didn't dawn on us. We spent the next 30 minutes eating everything in my apartment and laughing uncontrollably (I'll let you surmise why). 

Miracle Grow - It's everywhere you want to grow!

Totally worth it though, because that ugly green color was not cutting it. I also really thought that it would just make our patio the best patio on the "block."

P.I. picked a peck of peppery pepper plants

And remember how I was talking about starting to grow peppers? Yep... We picked up pepper plants too! A cubanelle (totes excited about that one), a serrano, an anaheim, and a sweet banana pepper!

THEN on top of all of our plant buying we drove down to the Woodbridge Ikea and picked up a few of these bad boys. 

Oh? You're not intimately acquainted with the Ikea catalogue like myself? Well it's one of these!

Still confused? It's a stool!!! We literally drove 30 miles away to pick up 3 cheap-o (yet sturdy) stools, because everything was so expensive around town. 

JR and I put together two of these little stools so that the pepper plants were up off the porch and getting more light, because pepper plants need a heck of a lot of light. So these just got them right up off the porch, and I highly recommend them. They were only $6.99 at the Ikea. 

The two plants in the giant purple pot are what remains of my "Lisa" plant and the
destroyed marigolds courtesy of the roofers

See the pepper pot stays up on the top and the part-sun/no-sun plants go underneath. Some people might think it hides the Gerbers but I really think that when you're sitting down on the chaise lounge that you really can see everything. 

I'll show you more updates in the next post!

What the Dill?!

I'm MAD! 

And so is JR...

Something has happened to the Dill! 

What the Deal?! 

What was once beautiful and flourishing is now sad, decrepit and dying. 

I have a feeling it has something to do with the massive amounts of water from a couple weekends ago, but I'm not sure.

Anyone else a fellow herb gardener? Anyone have any thoughts? Cause I'm in a pickle! 

Should I try to revive this little tender plant? 

Or should I just pull it up by the roots and let it go, with a quick a rip of my hand?