Sorry I haven’t been around much lately, my work schedule is taking up most of my time. I do read FR at work but I’m not allowed to actually log in from there.
The first time I ordered seeds from the government seed bank, they sent them to me without a fuss. This time they wanted me to prove I was really doing research with them and not just growing them for fun. Well, I think research is fun, but I did explain to them how I’m testing things for resiliance and trying to breed sturdier, hardier plants. They agreed to send me some of the seeds I requested.
As for the rest of the seeds, I discovered that http://www.etsy.com has a seeds section! Lots of new seeds to try there that aren’t in any catalog :)
I’m trying to plan out my garden for this year. I still have squash from last year, and it’s still rock solid. The problem is, as much as I love growing squash, I’m not so fond of eating it! I have some recipes that are tolerable, but I’m still looking for a really good one. I might get some wonton wrappers and try squash dumplings. I can’t roll out dough or I’d make it from scratch.
Sorry if I’m rambling and mistyping stuff, my nighttime meds are starting to kick in. That reminds me, I still need to find skullcap seeds! Best remedy fr twitchy muscles that I’ve found, eve if it does turn me into a pumpkin every night :p
I bake my winter squash, put it in the blender to puree it and then use it in pumpkin breakfast or coffee cake. I use this to extend my coconut and almond flours for my kids that are gf/cf. If you use the stevia powders to sweeten you could make a gf/cf/low carb snack cake that’s high in protein (I use 8 or 10 eggs per recipe but I have chickens so YMMV) and doesn’t run my blood sugar to the stratosphere.
I’m sure there are more recipes out there.
This breakfast cake is pretty much what my kids eat in the fall/winter/spring. Slice it, toast it with some butter and yum. I’ve put pecans/walnuts and the occasional chocolate chip in it. It’s also good with store surplus bananas if you can find them.
Put the dough in a pasta maker.
Well, I tried the squash dumplings today, not worth the work. However, I also tried mixing some squash right into the noodle dough, and that was pretty good. The noodles are drying now.
(I also went online and figured out what I’d been doing wrong with my pasta machine. Every time I had tried to use it the noodles came out wrinkly and torn, but this time they came out nice and smooth. Hurray!)
I was hoping to save the seeds from those squash to sell, but every single seed was sprouting inside the squash! Good thing a got seeds from 2 already.
Usually I do my big seed inventory in December, and order seeds in January. This year I’ve been too busy at work to do my big inventory, and I’m still working on my list of what to order. For a while at least I’ll have Mondays to myself to work on stuff. I convinced my boss to let me trade Mondays for Saturdays because of how hard it is for me to deal with the background noise during the week. I have hyperacusis, and I’m supposed to have a special headset to help with that, but the order is taking forever to get through all the red tape. 4 months and counting!
But, with no family at home on Mondays I can actually get stuff accomplished now. Such as making noodles out of my home-grown squash :)