Getting things ready for the next week: cooking and gardening

| gardening, kaizen

Tired! Did lots of cooking and gardening today. We went into full process-the-community-supported-agriculture-box mode today. I made pesto from the basil in the box (supplementing it with basil from our garden) and another pesto from green garlic. Chopping up the green onions and freezing them means more convenient soups later on. A quick stock made the most of the woody ends from several breakfasts’ worth of asparagus. W- prepared six packs of chicken leg quarters (shake and bake, jerk chicken marinade) and stirfried lots of vegetables. We packed maybe 36 lunches – a few in the fridge, and two neat columns in the chest freezer.

I also put in the drip irrigation system for the backyard. Well, most of the backyard. There has been some attrition among the 1/4″ irrigation fittings, so I set up only the vegetable garden near the house. Home Depot didn’t have the parts I wanted, but Lee Valley has them, so I might pass by one of these days to pick those things up. After I put in the soaker hose, I mulched the strawberries to keep the fruits off the soil. I also put up nets around our blueberries to see if that will improve our chances of actually enjoying them ourselves. We’ll see – there are some serious-looking squirrels around here.

Planted a few more square feet of beans and some lettuce. It’s been cool lately, so maybe the lettuce still has a shot. Saw my first pea flower! The tomatoes aren’t doing too well, though – they’re still scrawny. I’m sure we’ll get plenty of tomatoes in our summer share box.

Tired, but happy. We’ve gone through most of our vegetable box, so I’m less worried about wasting it. We’ve got frozen lunches. We’ve got salad plans. Next week should be a little smoother, and the next week after that even better, and so on.

Decision review: Packing lots of chores into Friday evening worked out. With the laundry finished, I spent Saturday downtown. Might’ve been a good idea to have my massage after the cookathon/gardenthon, though!

And people wonder why I don’t dread Mondays… ;)

2011-06-12 Sun 21:01

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