2010 Vegetable Container Garden

We have always wanted to try our own vegetable garden and this year we are going to give it a shot. We dont have space for a garden so we are doing it in containers. We found a book that explains self watering containers, and knew this would be perfect for us. Once we realized how much water vegetables need, we realized thats why we have never been successful in the past. Hopefully with the help of these self watering containers we will have better luck.

First of all I will quickly explain what a self watering container is. Basically, it is a pot with a fake bottom that has a water reservoir below it. There is an opening in the bottom, or a tube that sticks up, which allows you to fill the reservoir and this encourages the roots to grow deep to get the water.

We planned on trying to grow basic stuff like tomatoes, Herbs, and peppers, but that quickly changed once we saw all the vegetables at the garden center, and it changed even more when we visited my parents and they sent us home with more. We now have broccoli, peppers, lettuce, cabbage, squash, cucumbers, zucchini, arugula, tomatoes, eggplant and onions. Here are some pictures as of this weekend.

This is our herb pot, it contains parsley, chives and cilantro.

These are white onions, once we put them in the pot they really began to grow tall. I cant wait to see how they turn out.


The pot on the left is our broccoli and on the right is arugula and a pepper plant.

On the left is 2 more peppers and on the right is more broccoli and some basil.

There were so many onions in the pack we did plant a few in the ground. Who knows if these will survivie.



This isn't a vegetable, but its a rose bush my granny gave me when Rod and I got married. This thing grows like you wouldnt believe. If I didnt trim it, it would be taller than the house. Last year I cut it back and it didnt do so well, and I was afraid I might have killed it, but this year it is growing strong as ever. I can't wait to see how many blooms it makes this year.

This also is not a vegetable, but I had to post this one too. This is a mum that Mike gave us a while back. I thought we had lost it but this year we fertilized it and it is taking off like crazy. I look forward to this one blooming in the fall.

Best Burgers Ever!

Lamb is expensive, but it is worth it. Easy Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 Pound of ground Lamb

Teaspoon of Oregano

Breadcrumbs

1 egg

Salt and Pepper to taste

Crumbled Feta Cheese

Half cup of diced Cucumber

Plain Yogurt

Half a teaspoon of fresh or dried Mint

Burger Buns

1. 1 Pound of ground Lamb

2. Mix Lamb with half a beaten egg, breadcrumbs, Oregano, Salt, Pepper and crumbled fetta cheese.

3. Make in patties

4. Grill!

5. For sauce, combine Yogurt, Mint and cucumber and drizzle on Burger

Date Nut Crunch Balls - Mama's Christmas Recipe

8 oz pitted dates (buy chopped and dusted in sugar)
1 cup brown sugar
1 stick margarine
2 cups rice crispies
1/2 cup nuts (use favorite type like pecans)
1/2 cup coconut

Mix dates, brown sugar and margarine in pan over low heat for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and add rice crispies, nuts and coconut. Stir until well mixed. When cool enough to handle, roll into balls and drop in pan with powdered sugar and set aside.

(Rods favorite, Not Cliftons Favorite)

Glamour Cookies (or Cranberry and White Chocolate Christmas Cookies)

1c all-purpose flour
½ cup super fine sugar
½ tsp baking powder
1 egg
1 cup rolled oats
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 stick plus 1 tbsp soft butter
½ cup dried cranberries
½ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup roughly chopped pecans
¾ cup white-chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine flour, baking powder and oats in a bowl.
In another bowl, beat together butter and sugars with an electric mixer until creamy.
Add egg and vanilla.
Beat in dry ingredients.
Fold in cranberries, pecans and chips.
Roll tablespoonfuls of dough into balls and place on a baking sheet lined with tinfoil.
Flatten each ball with a fork.
Bake for 15 minutes or until pale gold.
Let cool on a rack.
Drizzle cookies with melted white-chocolate.
Makes 3 dozen.

Nat's tips:
Cookies tend to take less than 15 minutes--usually between 11-13
minutes. They seem to keep baking on the foil but you can't move them
off the foil for a few minutes so better to pull them out a tad undone.
I used cherry crasions.
I buy extra white chocolate chips for the melting and drizzling.
I usually double the recipe.

(I have not made this recipe yet but just saved it here so I could try it one day. Thanks Natalie for sharing on facebook!)

Honeycomb

Ingredients:

1 cup of castor sugar (or normal white sugar will do)

1 tablespoon of water

1 tablespoon golden syrup

1 teaspoon bicarb soda (sifted so it has no lumps)

Grease a lamington tin with butter.

Place sugar, water and syrup in a large saucepan.

Cook, stirring over low heat until the sugar has mostly dissolved (sugar will not completely dissolve).

Raise heat – bring mixture to the boil.

Lower heat – simmer until mixture is a rich golden brown – about 10 mins. Don’t stir during cooking, but be careful it doesn’t burn. (At this stage, if you drop a little bit of the mixture into cold water it should be brittle – that’s also a way to tell if it’s ready).

Add bicarb soda – using a wooden spoon, stir quickly until combined.

Continue cooking until mix has risen to top of saucepan – about 1 min (this is why you need a large saucepan).

Take off heat. Pour into the tin. Do not flatten or stir the mixture. Mixture will drop slightly after being poured into the tin.

Leave at room temperature to set.

Break into pieces.

EAT!!!

--This recipe is from Rod's sister Jo. I tried 3 times to make this and it failed each time. Maybe I can get her to show me the next time we are together.

blue berry cake

1 box duncan hines golden butter cake mix
3 eggs
3/4 cup crisco oil
1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup sugar

Mix all ingredients together and beat for 2 minutes
bake in 3 layers (greased and floured) pans
375 degrees for 15 minutes

frosting
1 8oz cream cheese softened
1 cup sugar
1 stick margarine softened
2 tsp vanilla
1 8 oz coolwhip
1 can blueberry pie filling

beat cream cheese, sugar and margarine until smooth and creamy.
Add vanilla and coolwhip and beat well

On cool layers use 1/3 frosting on each layer
adding 1/3 can of blue berry pie filling to top of each layer and
repeat for each layer

cake must be kept in refrigerator, gets better every day.

Kayaking the Upper Toccoa River

Second trip onto the Toccoa, this time in the Aska Adventure area where the Toccoa river runs into Lake Blue Ridge. Dam release times will have no affect on a trip on this portion of the river, only the natural precipitation that will change the river-scape.

Again, finding information on drop-ins and take-outs is difficult, especially if you do not have two cars and need to find a convenient trip possible with one car and biking between locations. After a bit of investigating and scouting, we found a great trip that we believe that we can still improve upon now that we have a better idea of the area.

Expect more info and map here soon of drop in and out locations.

In summary, we put in a Sandy Bottoms and took out near Tilly Bend. What this equates to is a 6 mile paddle with only an easy 2 mile distance between the put ins and take outs.

Sandy Bottoms is a Forestry Service maintained park that is actually the official end of the 13 mile Toccoa Canoe Trail. It has a $3 parking fee. We dropped the kayaks and gear at this location, and then drove back to Tilly Bend. Here, we parked on a pull-off on the road, then road our bikes back to Sandy Bottoms. There was some uphill sections at the start, all on dirt roads, but was a fairly easy 2 mile ride back. In this general area, we believe we might have used the wrong location to take out, so there might still be a better location that we hope to discover soon.

Immediately from Sandy Bottoms, you will hit class I rapids and shoals for the majority of the trip. The water flow is brisk and we passed many people simply floating down in tubes. We did scrape bottom a few times on the shoals and rapids, but the river level is generally deeper than the lower Toccoa when it is not running dam water. The 6 mile river as it winds through the hills with the blooming wild flowers is also beautiful. You pass few houses till you reach the end and closer to the lake.

There were three notable rapids. The first was a series of shallow water falls that look more intimidating than they really were. The second, which we later found out was a class II+ was a lot of fun, and probably the limit of what our kayaks could do. My first attempt and I was quickly thrown out into a deep washing machine (note - it would have been nice to have been wearing the PFD that was tied to the back of the kayak...). When I finally got to the surface I was lucky to be able to quickly grab the kayak as I was tossed over the second drop over some rocks. The water was moving pretty fast here so it took a while to paddle to the side and get back into the kayak.

Apart from losing my sunglasses, I was no worse for wear. Traci on the other hand looked like a pro and had no issues going down the rapid. We both climbed back up the rocks and did it again. This time we both tipped and I lost my water bottle and Traci lost her sunglasses and hat.

Found hat and water bottle down the river, but sunglasses forever gone.

The last rapid called BFH (you'll know why when you see it) was fun and fast and emptied into the lake. Here we had around a 1 hour lake paddle back to the take-in point. This was OK and afforded us some much needed exercise, but after the fun of the river, I would like a shorter lake paddle - will investigate a closer take out to shorten the lake paddle.

Kayaking the Lower Toccoa River

We finally scouted out out first paddle trip on the new kayaks. There are many resources on kayaking the Toccoa, unfortunately, its very difficult to find and usually only one part of the story. The Toccoa exists before and after Lake Blue Ridge Dam. The Upper Toccoa which releases into Lake Blue Ridge is not dam controlled waters, while the Lower Toccoa that releases from Blue Ridge Dam is dam controlled. There are a few things to consider before planning a trip:

1. Dam release times and how and where that will affect you.
2. Put in and take out locations.
3. Transportation from those locations.

First, dam release times are critical depending on the type of trip you wish to take. If the waters have not been released from the dam into the Toccoa, you will have a much slower trip, the river will be very shallow in parts meaning that you will scrap the bottom every now and again, plus you will need to paddle to reach your destination.

Our first trip down the river from Curtis Switch was without any flow waters. The first mile probably contained some of the most shallow sections, and we both found ourselves stuck on rocks several times. You really need to navigate around the shallows, but there is no avoiding hitting bottom. That said, we had heard it would be a terrible trip without the water flowing to its maximum, but minus a few frustrating moments, it was a very enjoyable trip and a nice learning experience. I would to it again.

To do a Dam Release trip you will need the release information from the TVA, an understanding when this flow will reach your put in, and when the flow will reach your take out.

The TVA published dam releases with around 24 hour notice. To find the release information for the Toccoa:

1. Visit www.tva.org
2. Select Reservoir Info on the left hand side of the page
3. On the Choose a Reservoir drop down, select Blue Ridge
4. Select View Info

Under Releases you'll see the release dates and times. It is only being released for a particular date and time if the generator is set to 1.

For a trip leaving Curtis Switch, you need to wait 3 hours after the release times before putting in. It takes 2 hours for the flow water to reach Curtis Switch, then you want to wait a little bit to ensure they get in front of your kayak, else you'll paddle faster than the release and hit bottom.

With release waters, it took us about one and half hours to reach Horseshoe Bend Park. This was a little bit more than half hour than without the flow waters. The trip is faster, and you wouldn't have to paddle if you didn't wish, but unfortunately, there were very little rapids or excitement. I would prefer to paddle the upper Toccoa in the Aska Adventure area, but still a pleasant trip with nice sights.

Running in Birmingham

While travelling in Birmingham, I have found a great running trail, between two different Marriott branded hotels I have stayed at. The running trail is along the Shades Creek Greenway in Homewood.

The trail has two main entrances, near an exit from Highway 31, and Interstate 65. The trail winds along Lakeshore Drive (it changes name I believe) and a creek, between a soccer part and a shopping center. I've seen people continue running, so I assume it continues somewhere.

Map to Area

Pats Kountry Kitchen

After our afternoon muddy mountain bike ride, Traci and I had built up an appetite. We wanted to go back to Good Fellas, but they were closed, which made for a good opportunity to check out Pats Kountry Kitchen. Southern Food. Filling and how can you go wrong? Well, misspelling country should have been our first sign.

Its was a large diner, but much of it was roped off due to its new Sunday hours and really only being partially open. Another warning sign. Traci ordered Chicken 'n' dumplings, and I ordered some country fried steak. Again, easy southern food and we were not concerned at this point.

The meal quickly went down hill as soon as it arrived. My 'steak' looked and taste like a frozen meat patty with generic breading and a horrible gravy sauce. The veggies were out of a can, and the fried okra was also from the frozen isle. Traci's Chicken and Dumplings were actually good, but the veggies were also out of a can, and the fried squash was also from the packet.

Google Map

Very disappointing, with the only 'highlights' being the biscuits and the Chicken and Dumplings. We should probably give the place another chance one day, but why bother when we love Good Fellas that is even closer. Sorry Pat, learn to spell Country. Its not cool to be Kountry.