Chocolate Box Cottage Diary, Volume 2
Week 41: October 15, 2022

Continuity from one garden season to the next depends on saving seeds. I think of our garden as a modern day Victory Garden. We grow not only food, but seeds. Have you ever thought about this?

Walk with us this week as we, mostly me but Sam is always willing to join in, gather many kinds of seeds: veggies, flowers, and herbs. Add in couple of planting tasks, but not garlic yet as weather is in the upper 80’s.

Seeds drying and awaiting packaging on the antique hutch-turned-seed-saving-station.

1. I love marigolds! I am always looking for a paler white marigold. This year’s candidate was Kilimanjaro.
2. It’s not looking like my Schwarzenbeeren will have a chance to ripen fully on the plants, so I gathered fallen berries and hope they will ripen indoors so that I can extract seeds.
3. Mexican sour gherkins, popularly called cucamelons. I gather the fallen fruit and allow them to age before extracting seeds.
4. In the craziness of the last 2 weeks I neglected to bag the Chocolate Cherry Sunflower heads; the birds left me with few seeds.

A strawberry moment with my sweetheart hand threshing fennel seeds with our backs against an oak tree. Our original start with fennel came from a lone volunteer by the side door at Oregon State University Extension campus. I planted the few seeds I gathered once and they came back year after year, blessing us with an abundance of wonderful anise-flavored seeds for flavoring Italian dishes, breakfast sausage patties, soups, and more.

Separating actual seeds from chaff requires creativity. Since I work with small batches of seeds, as with this harvest of chive blossoms, I am always trying different techniques.

Another small harvest of Zloty Lan chamomile flowers to dry for tea.

A wonderful gift from a garden friend: 15 plump, fresh pawpaw seeds! Pawpaw seeds planted in large “nursery pots” will grow and later be divided into individual pots.

View of our vintage A-frame greenhouse through the back side of the garden teepee and the echinacea bed.

Despite its name, Jyunpaju Okinawan Pure White bitter melon is almost sweet and so delicious! A new vegetable variety for us at Chocolate Box Cottage, and a keeper.

The sum of the 2022 grape harvest. The birds left us not a single grape.

Indoor garden

These Pesto Party basil cuttings developed good roots and are ready to pot up for the kitchen window garden. We will be able to harvest fresh basil leaves in small amounts all winter.

New video

How to Use a Steam Juicer – Make Your Own Elderberry Juice Are you wondering if you really need a steam juicer?

The answer may surprise you!

Not just for kitchen maximalists, the large preserving tool known as a steam juicer may earn its place in your preserving kitchen even though it is a one-job tool. Because it does its one job so well.

Turn a large bounty of fresh fruit into delicious juice with a steam juicer! I show you how, using elderberries as an example, but you can juice many other fruits. Watch the video to learn how!

Samuel’s projects

Sam continued cutting brush in an ongoing effort to evict the bears that were camping in our henyard. It spoils the view, but the bears have got to go.

The brush pile grows – and so do the ducklings! Mama Sadie, a silver muscovy hen, hatched two babies and they are darling golden balls of fluff.

Sam dares the  bears to figure out this “new” latch on the henhouse door.

Every weekend morning, my husband brings me a perfect cup of tea. I am blessed to be married to this man.

In the kitchen

Homemade pizza margherita on whole wheat crust with regional smoked mozzarella, garden tomatoes, kalamata olives, and and fresh basil.

Home-canned Mexican-style crushed tomatoes join soaked and cooked pinto beans and ground beef for taco salad. Yes they’re yellow! Dad’s Sunset Tomato is a great yellow fruited tomato.

Stirrum, a simple German-from-Russia supper dish, is good any time of day. It is basically a pancake batter that is stirred while cooking. Tasty topped with your favorite jam or Homemade Maple Vanilla Syrup.

Aztec Quinoa Salad is a dish that is cheerfully delicious and filled with color and flavor.

Everybody has their favorite recipe for Chocolate Chips Cookies. This is ours: over-sized, but not too much, soft, and studded with chocolate chunks.

Sam’s truck has been parked at a local mechanic shop for 2 weeks, awaiting a specific repair that he is not equipped to perform. This means we are down to one vehicle and I have missed seeing my Mom the last two weeks.

Painted Desert Sheep

The mechanic’s estimate is high; we are selling our small flock of Painted Desert sheep to help pay the bill. I am reminded how wonderful it is that Sam is able to fix almost anything and of all the money he has saved us over the years repairing appliances, fences, the greenhouse, water systems, and the kids’ cars as well as our own. Factor in all of the things he has built; everything from a woodshed to animal cages to a recipe box for me, and well, he’s priceless.

UPDATE: sheep have been sold.

So in spite of the losses we experienced this week, we both know without a doubt how fortunate and blessed we are.

Bookshelf

For the beginning seed saver: Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth.

For the nostalgic home cook: The Pioneer Lady’s Country Kitchen by Jane Watson Hopping.

Blessings and hugs to you, friend.

Michele and Sam

Chocolate Box Cottage Diary, Volume 2
Week 40: October 8, 2022

Our apple crop was very minimal this year, due to late spring frosts. The wormy and windfall apples, when trimmed, make wonderful apple butter.

You can find my jewel of an apple butter recipe here and I have been sharing tips my Facebook page Chocolate Box Cottage, if you care to follow along!

Bears

Once upon every morning, Goldilocks (that’s me) went out to let the chickens and ducks out of the henhouse. She walked down the sloping lawn, past the greywater stream; daylily bed on one side, cattails and mint on the other.

Reaching the henhouse, she turned the small wood latches that held the small door closed, and it became a ramp. Out trooped dozens of feathered creatures: chickens and ducks of all colors were happy to greet the sunny October morning. Goldilocks took care of the chicken chores and started back up to the house for her own breakfast, taking a slightly different route.

On her way, she encountered a giant pile of… scat! Logs as big around as her arm and very orange! Goldilocks is a smart cookie and she knew this was not the work of the neighbor’s dog, who uses the yard as a pottying ground. She had her suspicions but waited until the Woodcutter got home and confirmed it: a bear.

A few mornings later, Goldilocks found “someone” had carried a feed container over to the duck pond. The container lay on its side, ripped open. Large claw marks were visible. The perpetrator was long gone. She scooped up as much feed as she could salvage, fed the chickens and ducks, and took time to snap pictures of a pair of newly hatched ducklings and their mama. So cute! But it felt a bit eerie, knowing that a bear had been in the same spot only hours before her.

The Woodcutter noted the new evidence of the bear when he got home that evening with a grim jaw. He stomped around the yard in his big boots until he located bear tracks behind the duck pond.

Then his jaw turned even grimmer. The Woodcutter found a cozy spot where the bear bedded down during the day. It was in the henyard behind the wild blackberries, not 15 feet from the henhouse and about 100 yards from the house. No wonder Goldilocks felt shivers when she opened the henhouse and took pictures that morning!

The Woodcutter took a weedeater to the beautiful and scenic cattails that rimmed the duck pond, as well as the blackberries. The Woodcutter rigged up lights and stayed up to watch from a chair on the front porch. The second night not one but two bears showed up shortly after he and Goldilocks closed up the henhouse for the night.

The bears prowled around looking for free food. Not finding any, they thumped on the walls of the henhouse in frustration and eventually left.

The Woodcutter resorted to more drastic measures and took a chainsaw to the tougher brush, clear-cutting the entire area to stubble. He also bought a bear tag, just in case.

The end? We’ll see.

Multitasking

I pushed the envelop when it comes to multitasking.

In full squirrel mode preserving foraged elderberries. The stove was busy: the steam juicer was juicing elderberries, a pot on the back burner was cooking dinner, steam canner was processing elderberry juice in quart jars, and the tea kettle was kept hot to add hot water to anything that needed it.

Oh, and I was making soap. Without thinking, I reached through the steam given off by the tea kettle (lid was open) and jumped. My skin was melting. I quickly filled a nearby bowl with cold water and submerged my arm. Burn is on underside of my arm. It was so painful I barely slept for several days.

Somehow I kept moving. Got dinner on the table, finished the elderberries, calibrated my soap thermometers and made soap. I poured the batter into a silicone-lined mold.

A few days later I cut the olive oil based loaf into bars to cure. The 3-sided wooden box contains grooves for cutting, which is accomplished with a bench knife.

Ramen noodle makeover. I use a countertop vegetable spiralizer to create a healthy version of a popular junk food. “Noodles” are made of zucchini and potato, seasoned and pan-fried.

Finished dish of Spiralized Veggie Ram is topped with bacon, Parmesan, and minced purple basil. Serve with a vegetable ferment, such as kimchi and a fresh veggie for a veggie-centric take on a popular junk food. So, so, so good.

Also check out my recipe for Zucchini Butter Spaghetti.

Two good deals at the grocery store this week. Bosc pear’s papery brown skin camouflages a creamy white, crisp, perfumed interior. And who can resist a gigantic cauliflower, especially purple? Not I. I turned one head into 4 meals, making it a good deal, too.

Bookshelf

If you would like to delve into soapmaking, I highly recommend Simple and Natural Soapmaking by Jan Berry! So many fun and creative ideas that are tested and proven. She includes sections on using herbs, fruits and veggies, honey, natural colorants and essential oils and fun embellishments with swirls, stripes, and stamps. Good section on troubleshooting common issues is included.

Have a good week and thanks for stopping by Chocolate Box Cottage!
Michele and Samuel

This post contains links to products and vendors I use and appreciate for their quality and usefulness. Some are affiliate, some are not. I may earn a commission from qualifying purchases when you use the links I provide; this does not change your price.

Chocolate Box Cottage Diary, Volume 2
Week 39: October 1, 2022

Sadie was delighted to hatch 2 ducklings at last! They peep adorably, reminding us of squeaky toys or tiny yellow dumplings.

By the second day, mother Sadie had introduced her ducklings to the wide outdoors.

They are so incredibly soft and fun to hold! The parents, Sadie and Sylvester, were a gift from a dear friend, Sarah Fullerton. I love her (and them) so much!

The calendar page has flipped to October and the antique hutch serves as a seed saving station.

Seed saving and preserving continue in earnest and so does the sunny weather, which means more of the same ahead this week, even though pumpkin spice and sweater weather messaging are strong!

New video

Soft Scrub Cleanser “Goop” + Scouring Powder | 2 Homemade Cleaning Products

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to keep a clean house! You can make your own cleaning products from grocery store ingredients. They are simple to make – and they are effective. Let’s start building your DIY cleaning tote today. Follow along and make 2 products in about 5 minutes that will save you time and money, not to mention all the extra packaging that won’t be going in the trash.

Do the next thing

It was a week of connecting with reality. We are still adjusting to the loss of little Charla (our sweet little dog loved and shared by Miriam and me.) Trips to the garden without Charla at my heels feel strange and…solemn. But to the garden I must go, there is still (thankfully) much food to be harvested.

And so I harvest more seeds, cut up precious windfall apples for apple butter, watch roots form on my kitchen window basil cuttings, and continue my herbal medicine making. Doing the next thing is good medicine.

It’s a beautiful thing to turn imperfect fruit into something perfect, like apple butter. When the wooden spoon stands up in the crock, it’s done.

I wash dishes, clean messes, and mop floors. Keeping a Crock Pot or a broth pot going is a comfort.

I gather greens for the bunnies, chase ducklings, let the chickens out in the mornings and close them up at night, even as I stumble over large, irrefutable evidence of a bear in our yard.

We first grew Musquee de Provence pumpkins in 2005 and were immediately smitten. The voluptuous fruit, weighing 10 – 25 pounds (4.5 – 11 kg) are born generously on rambling vines with lush heart-shaped leaves. They start out deep forest green and ripen after curing to a gorgeous bronzy chestnut color. Cut pumpkins exude a sweet melon aroma!

Boiling water in the bottom chamber of the steam juicer causes the berries to release their juices. Elderberry juice, fresh from the spigot, quart after quart.

Half a gallon of raw a2/a2 milk becomes clabber for baking and sour cream, with fresh milk for drinking and cream for my morning cup of tea. A loaf of bread thaws in preparation for apple butter.

Garden teepee

Join me for tea? Would you guess the tea service is mix-and-match from the thrift shop?

In a year when the garden struggled due to weather, the teepee was a very pleasant surprise. It grew and it throve and it was a delight to watch.

Comfort food

And I make soup. Ahhh soup.

We finished the week with a pot of Mexican Chicken Tortilla Soup made with garden veggies and herbs and home-canned tomatoes.

And through it all, Sam is wonderful. Sam goes to work, comes home, does chores. Daily offering to help and finding ways to do so. Life is good.

Thank you for reading! You are part of the goodness in my life.

Bookshelf

One last thing. I can’t leave you without sharing book recommendations with you! These two are excellent for seed savers.

Beginner book: Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth. This is the book I started with and relied on for over 20 years.
Advanced book: The Seed Garden by Lee Alan Buttala and Shanyn Siegel.

Check my favorite online seller of used books using my sharebooklove link. Click the highlighted link in the previous sentence and then type the title of the book into the search bar when you get there. If they don’t have it in stock, create a wish list and add this book to it. Using my link earns us both points towards free books! Thank you for supporting my business, I appreciate it.

Blessings to you, friends.
Michele and Samuel

* This post contains links to products and vendors I use and appreciate for their quality and usefulness. Some are affiliate, some are not. I may earn a commission from qualifying purchases when you use the links I provide; this does not change your price.