Week 19 + extra Baking

Anniversary Dinner at Pastiche.

Totally, completely, totally pregnant. That sweater is cute for pregnancy, but you can tell it's not meant to cover a bump.

The garden! I made good on my threat and pulled the unproductive squash. Now the eggplant have room to breath.

Good thing, too!

These are still going.

See those tiny nubs on the stalk? Those will become the Brussels Sprouts.

This is what happens when you want brownies so bad, you don't even bother to correctly fold the parchment in the pan. You just scrape the batter in and wait anxiously for brownies. They were truly, truly fantastic. I highly recommend the recipe linked above. I added a cup of walnuts because brownies without walnuts are sad.

Gardening update

Brian and I took a tour around our garden last night before he went out for Kopp's custard. (The second time this week. I love being pregnant!) I had already noticed an issue with one of the tomato plants out front and then saw an issue with the squash in the back. So while he was out to Kopp's, I did some investigative googling. A gardener/blogger turned me onto a Minnesota Ag Extension website, helpfully titled "What's wrong with my plant?" You pick your plant, then scroll down a list of diseases with pictures and pick it! It's like WebMD for your garden. That's the good news.

The bad news? The squash have powdered mildew and the bush tomato out front has verticillium wilt.

I'm going to pull the squash since they aren't producing anyway. Part of the issue with powdery mildew is crowded plants, which makes sense because everything is too crowded in the back planter.

Yucky mildew that I don't want spreading to my Brussels Sprouts!

I'm going to trim the diseased part of the tomato and fertilize this weekend. There's not much I can do, but it doesn't seem to have spread to the juliets and sunsugars, which is great. It spreads in the soil, but some tomatoes are resistant. VW is a cool-weather issue so I'm not surprised seeing it now. I'm grateful it's not late-blight.

The fruit of the tomato is still fine. I'll give it until it completely dies.

In the back I'm going to pull the two squash plants and the bell peppers. That should help free up some room. Then I'll work some of my compost and fertilizer into the soil and give everything a few weeks before starting some kale for the fall. I especially don't want the mildew spreading to everything else, so it's got to go!

Baking Tuesday, all the scones

Last week's: Graham Nuts, from Good to the Grain

There aren't more photos because they didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. The "cracker" was too thick and therefore I over baked it. When I put it in the food processor to process into smaller pieces it became graham dust. My sainted husband ate it anyway and declared it really good and just like Grape Nuts. I'll try it again, especially because I have a ton of Graham flour. 

Dough.

Scones.

I had an unexpected windfall of raspberries last Tuesday, so I also made the Whole Wheat Raspberry Ricotta Scones from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook. Very good, but slightly doughy inside and did not keep well beyond a day. I'm guessing user error. 

Baking Tuesday treat last night. Sparkling apple cider in a champagne glass.

This week's recipe, from Good to the Grain.

The set-up. See the huge bag of graham flour?

It creates one more thing to clean, but I love sifting the dry mix. It makes such a difference.

Wrapped up in the fridge. If Baking Tuesday consists of scones, I'd rather bake them fresh on Wednesday morning.

Early Wednesday morning hot scones!

You can see the bits of darker color in the scones above. That's the blue cheese, which was a very pungent Buttermilk Blue from the Roth Kase dairy here in Wisconsin. Which, now that I'm researching it, is made with raw milk...whoops! I'm hoping the fact that I put it in a baked good negates that? The scone itself is very sweet from the graham flour and honey. The dry mix only has two tablespoons of white sugar but I'm not sure it even needs that. The sweet mixes with the very savory tastes of the blue cheese and onion jam for a delicious scone almost too strong for breakfast!

Week 18 Update And a Trip to the County Fair

This past Saturday Brian, my parents and I headed to the Ozaukee County Fair for our fill of fried food and animals. Mom and I managed to avoid the fried food, opting for baked potatoes and fresh ice cream. Then it was off to see the sweet farm animals!

Sleeping Ducks

 This chicken was only $10, but Brian wouldn't let me bring it home.

There was a bunny to pet.

Snuggled up pigs

700 pound pigs!

Scared baby cow

Brian and I bought this book for our future kid. We want them to love farms as much as we do.

The John Deere station had tons of clothes, toys and books. If only we knew what we were having, we'd have totally gotten into the onesies. They were adorable.

18 weeks. Definite bump. Also, those pants don't really fit anymore.

18 weeks on the garden. 

The squash plants you see overrunning everything are winter squash- butternut and acorn. So far, no signs of female flowers. Considering how long it would take for fruit to set and grow, especially with the cool weather we're having, I'm tempted to pull them this week and find a fall crop of veggies to put in. Definitely kale, maybe something else as well. The same with my bell peppers. They're just flowering this week and we're supposed to get down into the 50's at night for a week or so. Way too cold for peppers. So the bell peppers and squash plants are not long for this world. I know I said that last week, but this week, I mean it!