Gator Pam

Rabbit Rabbit! Rabbit!!

Update on my raised bed garden.

My landlords son’s birthday is next week, but my landlords are going to visit him this weekend. I generally bake some sort of goody for his birthday. This year it is This Old’s Instant Pot plain New York cheesecake with homemade strawberry glaze and strawberries. It will chill overnight and go up with my landlords tomorrow. I increase the recipe for an 8”x3” push pan, but the recipe is written for a 6”x3” pan. Jill gives directions for increasing the size for different diameter pans to keep the thickness consistent.

Rabbit Rabbit! Rabbit!!

Rabbit Rabbit! Rabbit!!

Baruch Dayem ha’Emetz Blessed Be the True Judge

I then started a Passover adapted version of Joanna’s Sausage Kraut in the crockpot for tonight’s dinner. I forgot to show the apple and dried cranberries in the photo above, so I took this shot before combining. Well, at this point I’m being limited on uploads, so I guess to be continued later…

Last Saturday night was the start of the eight day festival of Passover. Saturday night I went to the local CHABAD for first night Seder, but I made second night Seder for the three of us and have been doing a lot of cooking ever since. Besides the ritual foods, the meal Saturday night started with a hard boiled egg (in salt water for me), followed by jarred gefilte fish with ground prepared white horseradish. Next up was chicken matzah ball soup made with the poultry bone broth I make in the Instant Pot. The main entrée was a 17 pound turkey I received from a food drive last fall and kept in the freezer. That’s a lot of turkey for the three of us; I usually do a 12 to 14 pound bird instead. But it’s what I was given, so I used it. Here it is after a three day dry brine. For Thanksgiving I usually do Alton Brown’s Good Eats whole roast turkey, but for Passover I like to change it up a little. I went ahead and butchered the bird into the leaping frog style, which barely fit on my three quarter sheet pan, and followed Alton Brown’s method for spatchcocked chicken for roasting. Here’s the bird right after I butchered it. The leaping frog style is much easier than spatchcocking, and you don’t lose the back bone. I made a garlic and herb compound butter I rubbed under the skin, brushed the skin with extra light olive oil (I decided next year I’ll also rub the skin with some lemon juice before applying the oil), and seasoned with fresh cracked black pepper, sweet paprika, granulated garlic, onion powder, and dill weed. Since I had dried brined the bird, I didn’t add any additional salt. Being Passover I couldn’t really use any premade rubs, due to potential ingredients which could be kitniyot, so basic seasoning it was. Roast for half an hour at 425 to start getting the skin crispy… …and then roast at 360 until a probe thermometer registers 161 degrees. Those pop up thermometers don’t pop up until the breast meat is a good 185 degrees, at which point for our taste it is bone dry. The turkey was sliced and served with homemade garlic mashed potatoes, homemade giblet gravy made via Chef Alex Guarnaschelli’s recipe which uses roasted onion and garlic that’s puréed to thicken rather than any type of starch so it’s perfect for Passover, honey and maple glazed with dill weed carrots, and the Sefardi charoses I made for the ritual portion as a replacement for cranberry sauce as it is made with dried fruit, including dried cranberries. Dessert that night was a noodle kugel that I made with kosher for Passover gluten free wide egg noodles and crumbled coconut macaroons in place of graham crackers for the topping. I was too busy preparing Seder on Sunday to stop for lunch, so I didn’t start doing any Pesadik (Passover) lunches until the first day Chol Hamoed (intermittent day) on Monday. That was a quick and easy childhood favorite: a gefilte fish sandwich on matzah: It consists of butter spread on matzah, a sprinkle of kosher salt, TempTee cream cheese, Passover prepared ground white horseradish, and sliced gefilte fish. Not the prettiest dish, being white on white on white. But it’s tasty! Monday night I went to see Jon wand The Band Geeks in downtown Seattle. I made the decision to get naked chicken wings and adopt a “don't ask, don’t tell” attitude towards what type of oil they were cooked in. Tuesday I made my grandma’s recipe for matzah meal rolls, and then used some of the turkey from second night Seder to make a sandwich. Since commercial mayonnaise tends to be made with soy oil and mustard, two items disallowed on Passover according to the tradition I follow, I made a cup of homemade mayonnaise and used that. The sandwich consisted of the matzah meal roll, mayonnaise, Sefardi charoses from Seder, turkey, and some warmed gravy from Seder. Tuesday night I think I just did a matzah board with butter and cream cheese for dinner. Lunch was pretty filling. I did make a cauliflower tabbouleh-style salad to refrigerate overnight to serve for dinner on Wednesday. Wednesday’s lunch was almost a repeat of Monday’s, although since I had the matzah meal rolls I made the gefilte fish sandwich on that instead of on matzah. I spent the day Wednesday making more sweets to see us through the rest of the holiday. Yerushalayim Chocolate, supposedly a Kosher for Passover version of Dubai Chocolate. I wasn’t happy with how they came out, but I have some changes in mind to implement for next year. Chocolate Dipped Coconut Macaroons And Matzah Caramel Crunch Wednesday’s dinner was the rest of the matzah ball soup and the cauliflower tabbouleh made the day before. Thursday’s lunch was more of the cauliflower tabbouleh. Dinner last night was a turkey tetrazzini made with kosher for Passover gluten free fine egg noodles and diced carrots, as peas are considered kitniyot and are not allowed for Passover. No photo, but it came out pretty good. Today I started off by packing up the 10 cups of turkey left for the freezer. I usually package in two cup measure, but we had so much I went ahead and did three and a quarter cup measure for future casseroles. To be continued…

Can anyone use some Torrid Cash? I received $350 in Torrid Cash I have no plans on spending. It has to be used by this Monday.

I’m trying something new in my raised beds this year. I was gifted a two year old artichoke transplant by one of the former food bank garden coordinators at Marymoor Community Garden in appreciation of my help last year with watering some of the food bank beds. I always thought our garden here on the Eastside of Seattle was considered 8b. But apparently the garden has its own microclimate of zones 6b - 7b. I’m hopeful putting the artichoke out now isn’t too early for it. I’m waiting for the garden’s delivery of compost to put a nice layer on top of my beds. I’ll then install my ollas, transplant my tomatoes, and cover everything with dried leaf mulch. Then it will be fertilize, weed, and wait for harvest. The artichoke as I received it. Measuring out the planting hole. Confirming the depth and width of the planting hole before fluffing out the roots. The artichoke in its new home. I hope it will be happy and thrive there.

Rabbit Rabbit! Rabbit!!

I had my most recent annual physical in mid December. At that time, my weight has been the highest it has been since before I started keto, my blood pressure was slightly high, and my a1c test for my type II diabetes came back over 7 again, which it has done every three months for the past two years, even with the diabetic and high blood pressure medication I am on. A couple of weeks later, around New Years, I started seeing the ads for the “natural Ozempic,” as one tends to see weight loss ads at the start of the year. I mostly ignored them, but my curiosity finally convinced me to watch one, which said there was a simple three ingredient recipe that could be easily made and taken daily to help weight loss and blood sugar. So, I watched it. Of course it was for a pill that was being sold, but I decided to do some searching and see if there was anything that could made at home. I had heard of the anti inflammatory benefits of ground turmeric in the past, so I looked to see if there was anything that could be made at home that could at least help. I found some articles which claimed the combination of ground turmeric, ground ginger, and black or cayenne pepper has been studied and found to be beneficial in some participants. I decided to add each to my two cups of coffee each morning. I started off with a quarter teaspoon of ground turmeric and an eighth of a teaspoon each of ground ginger and fresh cracked black peppercorn into each cup of coffee. This is in addition to the half a teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon I have put into each cup of coffee for the past decade or so. The combination is reminiscent of chai in my coffee, but it’s not totally unpleasant. I made no other changes to anything in my daily routine. At the end of January I had a follow up hematologist appointment, and was surprised to see my weight was down five pounds since my physical the month before. I seriously expected it to be up a few pounds, as had been the trend for the past year or so, as well as having just gone through the holiday season. The next week at the start of February I increased the amount of ground turmeric, ground ginger, and ground black pepper, basically doubling each, so I was now having a teaspoon of ground turmeric, and a half a teaspoon each of ground ginger and fresh cracked black peppercorn daily in my coffee, as well as the teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon. Again, I changed nothing else in my daily routine. Today I had a three month diabetic follow up at my primary care physician. My weight is down another seven pounds since I saw my hematologist at the end of January, my blood pressure was 113/75, and my a1c was 6.7, the first time I’ve been under 7 in a couple of years. I know, it’s very gradual and possibly very circumstantial, so I’m probably being silly to be hopeful about this. I need to stop the turmeric, ginger, and pepper for the next couple of weeks, as even western medicine admits that turmeric is a blood thinner and I have a procedure coming up the first week of April. But, trust me. Once the procedure is finished, I’m going to be adding them back in for as long as they seem to benefit me.

Eight different varieties of tomatoes, two in each pellet and two pellets of each variety. My two raised beds have room for 16 plants total, so I hope to get two strong plants of each variety to transplant in eight to ten weeks. If I wind up with more, I’ll offer them to friends or at a seed and plant swap. This is still all experimentation for me. Last year I started seeds I saved from the previous years San Marzano-style tomatoes, which were planted with other varieties in the same bed. The plants grew and produced, but I think they were smaller overall than the Roma tomatoes I had saved seed from, so they may have cross pollinated with the other varieties I grew. I’m growing two plants from Roma seeds I saved last year from the smaller tomatoes. We’ll see how they produce this year.

We have germination! I just got this set up yesterday, and even as compact as it is, it’s precariously balanced where I had room for it. Hopefully I can find a board the perfect width and length to give it stability.