Gotta get the nursery ready

So after the garden show it was off to grab a bite to eat and then head over to Humber Nursery. This place is huge and I have been a couple times when visiting Talia's parents but that was always in the summer when they had a ton of stuff around. In the winter it is far more subdued and quiet. I think we ran into about 3 other people while we wandered around.

Tashy was in search of some pots for her herbs, I was in search of my lights and some herb plants (bay tree and rosemary bush), and Talia was looking for a new ornamental plant to replace a cactus that has recently passed on.

To make a long story short, Tashy found a cool plant for her bathroom. its a vine of some sort that had really cool white and light green leaves. She also found some really cute pots that match her décor really nicely.

Talia sadly didn't find any plants that jumped out at her. She was really tempted by some air plants but they require a lot of sun and we don't really get good light.

I was thankfully able to find everything I needed.

They bay tree turned out to be very nice. I don't cook with bay very often when when I do I would like to be able to use fresh instead of dry.

I had to repot him. I am seriously running low on soil >.<

I also found 2 different rosemary bushes. One was really cheap but not very bushy and the other was really bushy but not very cheep. I eventually decided to go with both and I would use the bushy one for cooking (we use a lot of rosemary) which I attempt to get the non bushy one more busy.

The small non bushy rosemary had the most beautiful flowers on him but I was worried that having the flowers would mean the plant would go to seed and now do well if I started cutting him. After a little research I found out that's not the case and that rosemary will grow no matter how much you cut as long as there are some pine needles left.

Another thing hat Talia found were the ceramic spikes I was hoping to get made by Earth Works Pottery.

(sorry about the blurry picture)

These spikes are designed to be used with plastic water bottles and are by no means as nice looking as the all ceramic ones would have been but hopefully they will work for now. I picked up 4 to try but I only have 1 bottle right now. I am a little concerned with how quickly the water will drain and if it will swamp the plant so I am trying only a single pot right now. My sad mango tree (most of him died because I accidentally left him too close to an open door) is going to be my test pot for now.

The final thing I was able to find were my 18 inch lights. They were kind of expensive ($39.99 each) but hopefully they will work.

I picked up 2 to try but after assembling both and hanging them up I have found that one of them appears to be damaged. I have switched bulbs to see if it was the bulb. It wasn't. I have switched power plugs to see if there was a short in there. There wasn't. So now I have to go back to Humber Nursery and either get a replacement or get my money back.

One bulb will do for now but it's not ideal because the herb pot is not getting enough light. One the up side I can now move the lights I was using there into the living room where they can be used for the large pot plants.

After all the running around today and the late night last night both Talia and I are whipped. Gonna go spend the rest of the night looking through seed catalogs and reading my new organic gardening book.

~(' ')~

Home and Garden

So with all the gardening that Tashy and I have been doing it isn't surprising that we all wanted to go to the International Home and Garden Show.

Lots of amazing floral arrangements but this was by far my favourite.

One product that seems really popular this year (We also saw it later at Humber nursery) were crazy led trees. Some of these were interesting but I don't see where I would ever put them. It did remind of of a Christmas story that Lisa tells often so I snapped a picture to pass on to her.

"Hey Lisa, you think you dad will want these for the holidays?"

As with all the home/garden events in Toronto there was the rock balancing area. It always amazing me at the ability of the people that do this but I have to wonder why they bother doing it?

And of course there had to be the comically large Muskoka chair. This one if for you Sarah. To match the pic we have of you ;)

Tashy started to slide backwards while trying to get up

After wandering through the entire event we decided there were some things we just had to get. Sadly I didn't take pictures at the show but I have some from when we got home.

First off was the beetle larva fertilizer by a company called Better World.

I had first heard about this stuff at the herb seminar 3 weeks ago and I have been very concerned about the nutrient content in my pots the last little while. Especially since starting to read my organic gardeners manual book. They had a 1L bag on sale for $25 so I decided I wanted to try it.

I have also been a little concerned about my worms because they seem small and they aren't really eating food as quickly as I was expecting them to (from all the readings I have seen online). One of the possible causes was a lack of the bacteria that actually does the decomposition of the materials. After talking to the sales guy for a few minutes I got the idea that perhaps by adding a small amount of this into the worm bin I could actually increase the around of good bacteria in the bin and speed up decomposition. This is possible because the fertilizer is kind of like probiotic yogurt in that all the bacteria that helps to make it are still alive (but dormant).

The next amazing thing that we found (and probably my favourite booth of the day) was a mushroom saver ceramic pot.

This pot was made by a very friendly lady who runs Earth Works Pottery. This little pot is a decient sized pot to keep mushrooms in before you use them. The pot goes in the fridge and helps to regulate the amount of moisture so the mushrooms don't get slimy and gross or dry out and shrivel up. The Lady was telling us how she tested it with a bad and found that the mushrooms lasted much longer compared to a simple paper bag.

The pot is simply a nice unglazed pot that allows excess moisture to be wicked away from the mushrooms or provide more moisture when the mushrooms start to dry out.

As I said this was by far my favourite booth because there were so many cool items there and they were so amazingly well made that I just wanted to buy them all. Included in this were a cool salt jar, a cake cup with recipe right on the cup, ceramic wine glasses that are supposed to neutralize the acids in wine and make it a smoother drink, adorable brie baking trays, and even baked apple trays that were the most amazing dish to serve single portions of baked apples to guests. The really nice thing about the owner (Barbara Taylor) was that she was friendly and talkative. I spent a good 10 minutes babbling on about wanting to get unglazed ceramic water spikes that I could use to water plants with. I may just email her later to see if I can get those custom made.

Another cool booth was that of Humber Nurseries. They aren't the greatest nursery that I know of but the are very large and they have a really good selection of things to buy. The booth at the show didn't have much, just a lot of seeds and fertilizers. But I did find something I was looking for. I seed starting mini greenhouse.

Now if you have paid attention to my pictures from a couple weeks ago you will probably be wondering why I was looking for this as I got almost the exact same thing from my herb seminar. What my herb seminar lacked was the clear plastic cover and I am hoping that this can be used to help deal with the fact that no matter how much water I give to my plants, by the time I get home the plants are dry and wilting. I am fairly certain that of the 9 herbs I planted at the herb seminar I have none left. The few that did sprout wilted and died and the others either dried out and died before emerging from the soil or rotted because I was putting so much water on them. I am hoping that if I keep this lid on the plants during the day and take them off at night it will keep them moist enough to grow but not damp to the point that they rot. We will see.

One of the other interesting things I found at this booth was a full mini greenhouse kit which included a light, a bunch of fertilizers and things and a large (larger than the above one) green house. The thing that I was interested in was the 18 inch grow light. I have been looking everywhere for one of these so when I went up to pay for my mini greenhouse I asked it they sold the light separate and it turns out they do! This got me wanting to go to Humber nursery and Tashy seemed ok with that so we added a trip to our scheduled events.

So that was the end of the garden show. Over all I would say it was nice (especially if you are into growing bulbs or orchids) but a little expensive at $15 a ticket. The think that bothered me the most is that for a "home and garden" show there was surprisingly little home or garden events. The garden section was decent  about 1/3 of the total space but the rest of it was all hot tubs and automatic windows and stuff that I really don't like.

~(' ')~

In the Barn house

So this weekend was going to be busy from the beginning. Last weekend we were told about a new farmers market that we wanted to check out. Then there was the International Home & Garden show that Talia, Tashy, and I all wanted to go to, and then there was the usual stuff. Oddly enough it seems like the usual stuff is what got cancelled but let me start from the beginning.

Wychwood Barn Farmers Market:
Up bright and early at the crack of 7 to get ready to meet up with Tashy. Since the farmers market isn't that far down town Tashy said she would drive us there because she also wanted to check it out. Driving was no problem although waking up was because we stayed up way to late last night. When we got there we started looking for parking which was an adventure because there was no parking lot like we were expecting. It was just local street parking and with the snow we have been getting for the last couple of weeks that was hard to find. Any place that didn't have a car in it most likely had a snow pile from the plows. Eventually we found a spot and walked over to the barn.

Once we were in we were greeted by a friendly atmosphere and a fairly lively market. It isn't as wide as the St. Lawrence Farmers Market but it is a bit longer. All in all I would say its about 75% of the size of St. Lawrence.

There were a couple of people selling produce but by large most of the people were selling pre-made goods like pies and bread. Now I love pre-made goods from time to time but when I go to a farmers market I am there to get food for me to cook with. This kind of made me sad :(

One of the many happy produce sellers :)

gotta spread the love :)

We were able to find cheese, eggs, leeks, lots of roots and tubers, and even a really nice lady selling olive oil that was cheaper than at St. Lawrence.

One booth that deserves special mention was this really nice couple that sold really amazing looking wood serving boards. These are hand finished with sandpaper and a nice coating of beeswax to protect the finish.

Now I call these serving boards because they are just too nice looking to cut on them. Also, because they are finished with beeswax they can still soak up other flavours if you were to cut and nick the surface. The couple were saying to can cut on them and then just sand then down and rewax them but I just love them so much I don't think I could ever risk damaging the board

So after much hemming and haa-ing Talia and I decided that we just had to get one of these boards. The one we settled on was a nice black walnut board around the size of the top board above. Very pretty to look at and its going to be serving the most amazing bread ever from now on :)

One other cool booth there was an organic seed seller called Urban Harvest. Depending on how much of my garden I give over to tomatoes I may go and get new seeds from her.

My over all impression of the market is that it is kind of lacking. Part of that is obviously the fact that it is winter and there isn't much growing right now, but even that aside I found that everything about at least $1 more expensive than the matching item at St. Lawrence. I look forward to returning in the spring, summer, and fall, but for the remainder of the winter I think we will be going to St. Lawrence.

Note: To prevent this entry from getting too long I am going to split it up into multiple posts.

~(' ')~

the first time I ever Waxed

So after 3 long days I finally felt that my cheese was ready for waxing.

The waxing process itself is pretty simple. I started with using the brush for the first block but after that I tried the dip method using tongs. After trying to dip a couple in I decided that I preferred the brush method and finished off the rest with the brush.

To save myself from having to try and clean up a pot full of wax I decided to use an old tomato juice can that I had saved for just this occasion. I was also a little bit concerned about having the can sit on the bottom of the pot even if the can was surrounded by water so to lift it up I went out and got a $7 vegetable steamer that had a removable stem

Then all I had to do was put the can on the steamer and fill the pot with water.

  

I got a 1lb package of wax from the New England cheese making company and cut it in half so it would fit in the can

Then I sat back and waited for the wax to slowly melt.

This is the first clock of cheese after I had done one coat of wax and after I had done 3 or 4 coats.

I also wanted to try using tongs since I though it might be easier but after a couple of dips I found that the wax was too slippery to hold onto my clock of cheese (in my opinion)

All 6 blocks coated in wax :)

In order to remember what type of cheese and when it was make I wrote down and waxed a piece of paper to each block

Cheddar (Farmhouse)

Made Feb 17, 2013

Waxed Feb 21, 2013

~(' ')~

My forest

My first hard cheese

So as promised I am working on making my first hard cheese. The easiest of all the hard cheeses, a farmhouse cheddar. This is a basic cheddar that ripens in about 4 weeks. So far I have experienced only a single hiccup.

After heating the milk to 90F I tried to see if I could keep the temperature there by turning the stove to its absolute lowest. Unfortunately this appears to have kept heating the milk until it reached 100F. At this point I just took the milk right off the stove and just let it sit. I am a little concerned because I have already added the culture which means I may have killed the bacteria that makes the cheese. We will see.

I have to say, I really like the cook book stand. I have used it earlier when making a mushroom soup and now with the cheese and it works fairly nicely. I still have to crease the spine of the cheese book because it was much thinner than my other cook books and was curling more but hey, books are meant to be used.

Time to go and add the rennet. Be back in a jiffy.

Rennet is it, unfortunately the temperature is still really close to 100F. Lets hope that it will form correctly.

One thing I should mention is that I am actually using 2 different types of milk. Yesterday I picked up a back of 3.25% homogenized Irrestables milk, and then this afternoon when I started making the cheese I saw how little the culture was and really didn't want  to try and split it in half so I asked Talia to pick up another bag of Lactantia brand milk.

Now to wait another 45 minutes to see how it turns out.

So after 45 minutes I checked for a clean break like the recipe says and sadly it didn't look particularly good. Next time I think I have to add a little more rennet.

Despite that I went on to the next step which is to cut the curds and then slowly heat them using hot water until it gets to 100F.

The concern in this step was that the curds were already at 100F or very close to it. I stirred the curds around in while the pot sat in hot tap water and I did see the whey separate somewhat but not nearly as much as when I have made mozzarella in the past.

After heating it for 10 minutes or so I poured the curds and whey into a colander with the cheese cloth and wrapped the ends together..

Now the curds have to drip for about an hour until they stop dripping and then its pressing time. In order to drip I simply grabbed a dowel and put it over the large pot I used to heat the milk

To be continued in about 1 hour :)

So how that the cheese has drained for about 1 hour I had to break it apart and salt it. After salting it was time to press the cheese. That was were things started to get difficult.

Initially I thought that I could just weigh it down with barbell but that didn't really work. Thankfully Talia came to the rescue and figured out something that would work for 10lb and then 20lb but when we got to 50lb thats when we started having fears of sleepless nights.

My version of the 10lb weight but this didn't stay up long

Talia's 10lb solution. This worked out quite nicely.

Talia's 20lb solution. The cheese mold was put into a colander and a flat pot lid was put on that. Then 10lb were ,hung from each side of the stick. 

For the 50lb Talia was worried that the pot lid could be damaged so we didn't want to set it up this way.

First we tried flipping the pot and putting it on top of the cheese mold.

This had us all scared to go to sleep. so after about 10 minutes we decided to try another tactic. In this version I put the cheese mold into one large planter pot and then put the second planter pot on top of that and filled the upper pot with lots and lots of weights.

Now it has to stay there for 12 hours. My next purchase WILL be a cheese press.

Edit: After searching around the web for a bit I think that I will be making this type of cheese press. I may even be able to make it tomorrow if the dollar store is open and I can pick up some cutting boards.


Edit: Monday morning. Just a quick update, this is what the cheese looked like when it came out of the press this morning. Now it has been turned over and will come out tonight at 20:30 to start drying and forming its rind

~(' ')~