Home Cured and Smoked Pastrami

Beef brisket cured for a week then generously covered with freshly cracked pepper and coriander.

Smoked for 5 hours at 235 degrees F.

 Wrapped and steamed for two hours to get completely tender.

 Slice and enjoy.

 I have  been having pressed sandwiches with home made aoli, mustard, mozzarella and pastrami.

 Vacuum pack the rest for later before I eat it all in one setting.

Garden Update

Tomatoes Everywhere

These are the volunteers from last year.  They are still doing very well and I have started to trim to tops so they won't go too wild.  The front row especially has a bunch of tomatoes set.  The back row does too, but they are a little leggy because they don't get as much light.

These are the cucumbers.  They are doing very well now and there are quite a few set.  You can see the string they are trained to climb up.  They take less room that way and also, it keeps them out of the dirt; easy to find and pick the cucumbers.

These are severely pruned plants.  I should have taken before pictures.  They were completely grown together.  They weren't getting any light or air.  So I trimmed up the bottoms to the level of the first tomatoes to give them a little extra vigor to the fruit and kept the leaves out of the dirt, which helps keep them healthy too-- mildew, etc.  I also thinned out the spaces between and cut the tops.  I didn't cut the tops last year and they just grew and grew.  The yellow pear ended up being about 13 feet tall, although doubled over.  I'm going to prune this year and see if I can't keep them in a little better control, but still keep them producing.

I love the way these look.

This is a strange thing.  This is a regular leaf that has been trimmed.  From the place where it was trimmed it is growing a new stem and you can already see the flower bud starting.  I have never seen this before, but have noticed it on several plants this year-- trimmed and untrimmed.  This is not the only strange thing.  I have also noticed that when a stem with blooms on it doesn't set any fruit (all the blooms fall off) that the stem, which is very different from regular growth, turns back into a regular stem and starts growing again.  I also pinch off the suckers too.  This year new suckers have grown back over and over again.  These heirlooms never cease to amaze me.  They really want to grow and produce.  They are much more vigorous than any hybrid I have ever grown.

June Garden-- Yellow Crook Neck Squash is the Star

On the left is a picture from a week ago.  The picture of the right was from yesterday.  They are really grown.  Scroll down the pictures a few and you can see that I picked several small squash for a stir fry. They put so many on that they needed thinned out or they would have just fallen off.  I didn't want to let them go to waste.  This is a very old French variety that is so good.

It's hard to tell, but the leaves on these guys are about a third larger than a dinner plate.  They are huge. When you go out in the morning they have all the blooms wide open.  It is a very intense orange and very showy.

Here are those beautiful blooms.  You can see them small squash attached.  For perspective, that squash is about the size of a small pickle.

 Below are the string beans.  Look below and you can see I picked a double handful for the stir fry.  

A little onion and mushroom added to the squash and string beans and it was really good.

This is a picture from a couple of weeks ago of the suckers from the heirloom tomatoes.  They are anywhere from 8 to 12 inches long and have just been soaking in water since they were clipped.  They sprouted roots and so yesterday I planted them in big cups.

Here they are in the cups.  I will leave them here to further root out for another week or two and then give them away to people for their gardens or containers gardens or whatever.

This is the side garden that doesn't get all the sun the main garden gets, but it is enough that tomatoes still grow.  These in this area are all the volunteers that came up from last year.  I transplanted them here.

This is the main garden and the tomatoes here, that get full sun, grew almost three feet in the last two weeks.  These plants are a little over four feet tall now.  They were started from seed in the house in February.  They got a late start this year because of the cool spring, but they are coming along nicely and have lots of tomatoes set now.

You can see how big the tomatoes are below, but can also see how nice the French Marigolds are doing.  About every other one has a bloom now and everyone has many buds.  In about a week they will be in full bloom.

There are plenty of tomatoes set.  This particular type was one of my favorite last year.  It produces tons of plumb shaped fruit that are about the size of a golf ball.  They have a very firm, think flesh.

In the foreground you can see that I finally got around to replanting some cucumbers.  These are regular cucumbers, and I'm not very happy about it.  They last several years I have been planting a white pickling type that I really like.  They were killed in a cold snap this spring though so I bought these.  My wife likes this type better so I decided to indulge her-- for one season only.

Here is a better picture of the new cucumber plants.  We'll see how they do and how I like them. 

Love the smell of the French Marigolds.  When I weed the garden, I pinch their leaves and the fragrance is great.  When they are in full bloom, they don't need any help; you can smell them around the block.

This is the lemon Thyme that I planted about three years ago.  It comes back every year and I really like it.  It is perfect for soups and stew, on chicken, etc.  Above the Thyme you can see the thick mulch where the garlic was planted.  I actually over mulched and hurt their growth.  I should have taken most of it off in the spring.  Live and learn.

This is peppermint.  I just planted it.  This stuff will take over your garden, so be careful.  What I did, that is supposed to work, is cut the bottom out of a plastic container and plant the mint in it.  This restricts the roots so it can't spread and take over.  We'll see.

This is the onion patch.  I learned recently that if I want them to get big bulbs like I buy, I need to plant the starts 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost.  I planted these much later.  So, I harvested a bunch of pearl onions.  Still good.

This is the neighbor's Lantana poking through to the garlic patch.  Lantana is about the only thing I know I'm allergic to.  When I was a landscaper I planted hundreds of these and the oil off the leaves always gave me a rash.  I avoid them now. 

Here is the pearl onion haul and some garlic I picked yesterday.

I haven't posted anything on the espaliers for a long time, so here are some new pictures.  My other neighbor put up and new fence, so I had to take down the wires, etc. I originally set them up with.  I improvised set them back up again.  The bottom branches are set now and have no support.  The upper branches are still braced.  Eventually I will train all the little branches off of each of the main branches so that they are about eight inches long.  It will kind of look like a weird pin cushion, but will be very productive that way.