newspaper seed pots.

I spent this morning making 72 newspaper seed pots. I then filled them with dirt and planted tomatoes, tomatillos and orange habanero peppers! I have all of my gourd seeds soaking overnight and I'll put those in the seed pots I'm making now. I have hundreds of these things to make...yipppee.

pickling peppers

One of the things I miss the absolute most of my home country is simple pepper sauces and Louisiana style hot sauces. I have, after a year, decided to try my hand at making my own. I started with the simple one first. After buying 3 types of varying heated peppers at the market, I consulted my Southern Momma and she gave me the simplest of instructions:
wash peppers
put in jar
boil vinegar
add a little sugar
pour over peppers & cover in jar
put on lid
let sit for 2 weeks & enjoy!!

I can't wait two weeks!!! Wahhhh! They look delicious!

**UPDATE**

The pepper sauce tastes good at 1 week, tastes a million times better after 2 weeks and tastes freaking glorious after 3+ weeks! Tastes exactly like my grandmothers! Woohoo!

Huge chile tree!

In our not so giant courtyard is a really giant pepper 'bush' (it's more like a tree!). I am not sure what kind of chiles they are. I've cooked with them and eaten them raw and they are muy picante!! The closest I can get to figuring them out is thinking they are: Capsicum Pubescens. A Guatemalan variety perhaps.

a great summer snack!

Pineapples are so affordable right now! And they are so refreshing on these super hot Florida days!! We've been buying them whole, last time we were at the bodega they were 2 for $3!! Zach cut them up for us today. We squeezed fresh lime and liberally sprinkled hot red pepper flakes all over the chunks! So sweet and delicious!! Yum!

We took it in the car today for a snack on the way to the thrift store.

Starting a hay bale garden.

I did the research and decided on making a hay bale garden instead of building a raised bed garden or do a container garden here at the warehouse.

Zach's family gave us 6 bales to start with!! Yay, for awesome familia!!

We are using organic bone meal to speed up the breaking down of the bales which is the first step to creating a hay bale garden.

We'll be ready to plant the seedlings and sow the seeds this weekend!

Mike will accompany us every step of the way! He loves his new job guarding the warehouse and fenced in lot. He's an official lot dog. You can see our little composting sections behind and to the right of the bales. We started those when we first moved in, it's great they had a head start on the garden. It isn't suggested anywhere but, we are going to experiment by having squash and other creepy crawler vegetables grow out of the side of the bales, especially the ends! We'll see how it goes. We are pretty excited about the whole garden.

Here's what we are planting:

Tomatoes

Hot Peppers

Chinese Broccoli

Chinese Celery

Celery

Arugula/Mizuna/Red Mustard/Curly Endive

Collards

Squash

Lettuces

Rape

Swiss Chard

Cherry Tomatoes

Behind the bale garden on the chain link fence we plan on having beans run amock!!! We have our fingers crossed that they'll provide a nice privacy fence for us this summer. We are going to grow these in containers.

a special sorry package

Very recently my honey bunny and I spent the night at one of his besties house for the night. We had to use his truck for an errand whilst we were there. Once we got home (about a 2 hour drive) low and behold, we realized we had the bestie's truck keys, whoops!! So we packaged them up quick in a priority mailing envelope and seeing as how it was a flat rate envelope we decided to make him a super special sorry package! One of the first things we made for it was a buch of jalapeno peppers with little labels on them that said SORRY!. We thought we were just so clever and so funny and we just knew we were going to get the best reaction. We did not. Look at our SORRY! peppers....aren't they just the cutest sorry things you've seen?!?!?