Jelly-In-The-Middle Muffins - Vegan, Whole Wheat

Here in Laveen, we have quite a wonderful gardening group. If you are on Facebook you can find us there (https://www.facebook.com/groups/161227934003355/) talking about everything from desert native plants to exotic food plants, and occasionally recipes we make with them. We often share the food we grow, and although so far this season my garden has not has a lot of luck, I have high hopes for next season. And in the mean time, some of my neighbors sell or give away their locally produced foods. Today Patch made these awesome muffins and at my request she used the strawberry jam one neighbor gave me, and another kind from another, and locally produced cherry & fig preserves as well. They are SO GOOD!

Originally the recipe came from an old cookbook we have in the cupboard called Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, but we altered it to be vegan since I'm allergic to eggs and milk doesn't seem to be reacting well with my stomach again these days. Right now Patch is also making a version with cheese and Jalepenos which I bet Milo could easily make vegan by using his Treese. I don't know if that's the right spelling, but it's a vegan "cheese" product he really likes :) Check out his Vegan Meal Adventures (https://www.facebook.com/keepingvegan) some time for some awesome recipes using it. In the mean time, here is the Vegan Jelly-In-The-Middle Muffin recipe Patch and I came up with:

Tips:
Start the chia seeds soaking before you do anything else, that way they are ready when you get to them in the recipe
Do not use baking cups on your muffin tin with these, spread veggie oil or veggie shortening (like the thick coconut oil) in the tin instead

Ingredients:
Egg Replacer:
3 Tablespoons water & 1 Tablespoon Chia seeds

Dry Ingredients:
1 & 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 & 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

Liquids:
3/4 cup Almond Milk (or your favorite milk replacement)
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Jelly:
12 teaspoons of your favorite jelly

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
Mix 3 Tablespoons water with 1 Tablespoon Chia seeds in small bowl and set aside for about 10 to 15 minutes to soak which will replace 1 egg (ground flax seeds can also be used for this)
Mix dry ingredients (1 & 3/4 cups whole wheat flour, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 2 & 1/4 teaspoons baking soda) and make a well in the middle
Mix egg replacer after it holds together in a consistency much like egg with 3/4 cup Almond Milk (or your favorite milk replacement) and 1/4 cup vegetable oil and pour all at once into the well in the middle of the dry ingredients.
Stir until mixture is just moistened (Do not over stir, batter will still be lumpy)
Lightly grease muffin tin (coconut oil might work for this, we use walnut oil,
Pour into muffin tin
Place 1 teaspoon of jelly on top in the center of each muffin, and it will sink inside as it bakes
Bake in a 400 degree oven about 20 minutes or until golden brown

Makes 1 dozen medium sized muffins (not the bite sized but not the large over sized ones either)
Edit: The butter you see out was used to grease the tin for the original batch which Patch made following the original recipe. Later, I helped her edit the recipe to make it vegan, and after that, she made a 3rd batch with jalepeno and cheese to have later with dinner.

Bare Simplicity

Recently I have begun a second blog to explore simplifying our lives. I may eventually move my adventures in cooking there as well, but for now I am keeping up the two blogs. If you wish to follow my adventures in DIY-ness, building community, local shopping, green/energy saving trial and error, growing our own food, organizing, paring down, tiny houses and the like, you can find my posts on Simplicity at baresimplicity.blogspot.com I suspect some of you will enjoy the article about harvesting our own Aloe.

Peppers are delicious

This week seems to be focused on peppers. Our Jalepeno plant finally flowered and started growing some Jalepenos! And the same day, I bought 6 banana pepper starter plants and transplanted them to the raised bed on the southwest side of our yard and fertilized them all with fish emulsion.

The next day, I found the fish smell was apparently too tempting for our dogs. I assumed it to have been the little chihuahua, but apparently it was the terrier mix, Pepper. Carlie had seen her doing it, but had just thought she was eating one of the cherry tomatoes and hadn't checked. Carlie is not really a tomato fan, so I guess it wasn't as distressing to her as it would have been to myself who has been caring for the plants, or Patch who LOVES tomatoes. However it was not a tomato she was eating, it was a pepper plant she was knocking over.


Glad I found it soon enough to rescue it! Now it's planted with the banana Peppers and they seem to be perking up for the most part. One lost all it's leaves, but the others seem to be doing OK. What a relief!

Finally, I planted some bell peppers and some Chinese hot peppers that have a bit of a bell shape with hot flesh and seeds, but also have sweet wings on the sides. Those should be interesting to try. I'm not much for hot peppers, but Patch and Carlie are, so I thought it would be fun to plant some. Besides the planting calendars all say it's a good time for peppers in our area, so hopefully we'll get some good results!

Recently I discovered a delicious way to use bell peppers. I sliced them into 4 scoop like portions, filled them with a mix of herbs and small lettuce leafs like arugula, and sprinkled them with almonds. YUM! And today I added heirloom tomatoes (the multi color kind) and smoked gouda, and put it all on a piece of sourdough. WOW! The flavors are amazing. It's a pepper kind of week!

Growing our own food

Over the last few years we have been learning to grow our own food. Patch and Carlie do the heavy lifting, and in the past we sort of let Patch try her hand at farming, but this year I have gotten more involved. I am dedicated to growing more produce to make it less expensive to eat healthy foods, and also because then we know exactly what goes into our food rather than wondering when it's from a store.

On top of that, it's really satisfying to eat something which you have nurtured and worked hard to grow in the desert environment of Phoenix, AZ. So this year we are having some good success with an Artichoke (above left) a tree which is 1/2 peach and 1/2 plum and will soon have some great peaches for us.  Beneath the shade of the peach and plum tree are 4 pots of berries which we thought we had lost due to too much sun, but after moving it under the tree and watering it by hand they have begun to revitalize!

This year we planted cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic and jalapenos in pots for the first time, and grapes are growing up a trellace outside my bedroom window which will be delicious AND help provide much needed shade and protection from the heat in a room which gets more than it's fair share of both.  Not far from the grapes grows a nectarine tree which was just planted this year. We should be able to pick it's yummy fruits in about 3 years.

We would like to also harvest our own eggs (like they are talking about tomorrow here: http://www.phoenixpermaculture.org/events/raising-chickens-in-your-backyard-6) but suspect our HOA is against it. We will see. But because we are trying to live as sustainably as possible, we are investigating methods which use less water, provide more protein, etc. Currently we are doing a lot of container gardening as shown above, and there are 2 raised beds which are not yet in use this year, but which will be planted soon with whichever seedlings make it. We have been making our own compost and striving to grow organically, but I would like to improve this and make it a  more sustainable circle of life through a process called Aquaponics. I've joined a few aquaponics groups such as this one: http://www.phoenixpermaculture.org/group/aquaponics and have been investigating. I even wrote to gardenpool.org to see if we can get a tour and learn about their successful aquaponic efforts in Mesa, AZ. We hope to use the back yard farm skills we are learning along with green building practices to create a more sustainable food source for our house, and probably enough to share with others.   I will post here as we continue learning as we grow.

It's a start

The other day Carlie and I stopped by the Fruit and Bread Barn, and they gave us some empty fruit pallets which make some great starter boxes with a bit of ingenuity and working in the dirt, I'm looking forward to seeing plants start growing all over the place in Phoenix! To start with, we are working on raised beds at some friend's place on 1st Ave. We just call it the 1st Ave House.

Michael D. brought some compost soil, Tamara brought some recycling bins, and we brought the starter boxes. Tammy cut three bins apart I believe. One she cut the bottom off, and left the top so it became a composter. I don't have a photo of that right now, although I did take pictures with my nice camera, I haven't uploaded them yet. For now you can check out the 1sts Ave garden of past, present and future in this video where Mellow and John gave me a tour. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/21018943

After some urban hiking around Phoenix (John walked and pushed my chair, thanks John!) where we picked up some trash, talked with locals, etc. We came back to the house and did some night gardening. Here's a starter box full of sweet corn kernels.

It's not yet a full garden, but it's a start!

Fruit and Bread Barn, help wanted and more on urban potato farming

You all may get bored of me talking about planting potatoes by the time I finally manage to do it, but at least you'll get pictures and a clear story of how it works out once I try a few methods of urban potato farming. I'm going to try multiple types.

We just got home from the Fruit and Bread barn. Unfortunatly they threw out the potatoes I was going to plant. They were a buck per bag of fingerling potatoes that had eyes all over them but were otherwise fine. Edible sitll if you cut off the eyes, or perfect for planting. If you haven't tried fresh grown potatoes, they are sweeter and earthier tasting than the bland store bought ones usually are. Fingerling potatoes are something I really enjoy, so I was thinking I'd buy 2 bags and plant a few different types of potato gardens. One set at my house, one set at 1st Ave house, and one set at another undecided location, then compare the results over time.


"That's too bad!" I said, "They were perfect for planting" "Huh, people don't usually think like that." She replied. Well... sometimes people need a little help to be aware of such things. I probably would not have thought of it that way if I hadn't been talking with local urban gardeners a lot lately and looking for cheap, organic produce or seeds that would grow well in Phoenix and could be grown by urban gardeners in small spaces. Next time they should put a sign up with them that says that, "Perfect for planting!" because yeah sure, you can buy any potatoes, treat them right, and they'll grow eyes and soon be ready for planting. You can, but those were cheap and ready! Oh shoot, I just had a thought that I should have asked where they disposed of them I probably could have picked them out of their compost pile for free. Maybe I'll go back tomorrow and ask :D

On a successful note, we did manage to get every fruit and vegetable on my list for the various meals we will be trying in the next few days. Plus they had some great day old bread which is going to be perfect for toast and paninis, and one of the recipes I found was for paninis. Plus we got some delicious looking preserved cherries from a small orchard grower. I am going to use them on lamb rib chops which I've heard called Lamb Lollipops. After I try the recipe I'll let you know how it goes and pass it on. They put the whole of what we bought into a box that fruit probably had been delivered to them in, and which I will use to put starter soil in and start a bunch of seeds growing and ready for transplant.

P.S. They also had a notice up that they're looking for a full time employee. I wish I could work full time there, it would be a job I'd really enjoy, especially if they'd let me play in their garden and care for their compost. I know that sounds odd, but I do enjoy those things and it would be great to get paid to do them. Plus it's such a small and local store that would be a neat atmosphere I'd think. If you're looking for work and this sounds up your alley, they're on Baseline near 24th Street just down and across the street from PetSmart. I didn't ask about what the job entails, so you'll have to do that on your own

Urban and Mobile Gardening - Potatoes

We've been growing fruits and veggies in our backyard as much as we can since moving to Arizona. Ironically, we had citrus and herbs in LA, but that's about it. One thing we've never tried to plant is potatoes. But since getting together with some other urban gardeners, I've discovered some neat techniques for planting potatoes like verticle potatoe gardens that start out as just a 2 foot by 2 foot box of 2x4's filled with dirt, potatoes are placed in the dirt, and when the sprout grows above the top the dirt, another box of the same size is placed on top and dirt is added, and so it continues. Much like #6 in this post:  http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/7-ways-plant-potatoes?page=0,5

This is the method I'd most like to try, and I think it could be made using scavenged wood pallets and the like. Tomorrow we are going back to the Fruit and Bread Barn, and we will see if the fingerling potatoes we spotted there the other day are still around. Unfortunately they were unable to take our debit card so this time we're going to bring cash.

P.S. Was up too late with the kittens (bottle feeding) and overslept this morning when Carlie and Patch took over feeding for a while, so didn't get to the store *sniff* BUT some friends stopped by and they're going to this place that sells compost and potting soil in large amounts for less money and some huge sturdy bags you can use as raised beds that are only 5 bucks each!!! I'm super excited!