Oven: 375F
Dough: Original Nestle Toll House CCC
2 1/4 flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 1 cup=2 sticks of butter, 3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, 2 large eggs, 12 oz chocolate morsels.
mixing dry and wet separate before slowly combining.
this recipe produces cookies on the buttery side. the cookie eats soft but get crisp over the next few days which comes with a tendency to break/rip apart.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
The Yard
We have spent short spurts of the past two weeks preparing our yard. We have owned this house for four years, lived in it for two, but we have not yet gotten the yard really figured out. It has been kind of great, actually, to have it unfinished, because you can do a lot of things with junked up space that are almost impossible in a finished landscape.
When we first bought the house, we spent a day with a chainsaw and a bobcat pushing over and cutting up most of the trees we didn't think we wanted. In the process, we apparently cut down a few muscadine vines--a fact that broke my heart when I found out. It was one of many naive moves we made in early construction. This process left us with a back yard full of stumps and logs, to which we quickly started adding scrap piles.
The next spring I happened upon a sale on fruit trees at Big Lots ($13.95 each), and I just couldn't resist. I ended up with two peach trees, two pear, an apricot, two cherries, and a five-in-one apple. I sort of scattered them around the yard and hoped they would live until I could figure out where to put them more permanently.
That summer I also took advantage of our empty space and built three very ugly raised beds in which I planted tomatoes, cucumbers, and a host of other vegetables that never really came up. I filled the beds with "top soil" from the sand and gravel store. This turned out to be a heavy mix of red clay and little rocks. Whenever I watered it, it crusted over so badly that the water would run off and form pools in between the beds. I grew more weeds on the ground in between than I did vegetables in the beds.
I have never had much interest in gardening, but I love the idea of getting more vegetables than you can eat without having to pay for them. I realize that I probably spent more on supplies for the garden than the value of the vegetables I was able to pull back out, but that kind of "pay it forward" money never registers in the equation come harvest time. Regardless, I did end up with a summerful of tomatoes. I guess it just goes to show what hot wet summers will get you, even with little care and bad soil. And this year, I didn't need to build the beds, and I am starting the plants from seed, so I am barely spending any money at all. (Please ignore the $18 I spent on seed-starting trays and peat pellets and the $20 I spent on seeds.) But I am getting ahead of myself.
Of course I way jumped the gun and planted the seeds at the beginning of February (hoping for and early spring.) I did it partly as a temporary solution the misery of winter, but I still think it was a gamble worth taking. So far I have a few trays of very leggy sprouts, but maybe some will survive, and then I will have beets and brussel sprouts a few weeks before anyone else. Of course I also planted WAY too many of everything, but I stand by this dubious decision too. Chances are many will die, so it won't end up being too many. Besides which I have never subscribed to the conservative gardening metric that you should only grow what you think you can eat.
We are already signed up for a CSA this summer, so I only planted vegetables that I hope to can. I am imagining cases and cases of pickled beets. I don't think I have space in my beds for everything, but that is one of the joys of my unfinished backyard.
This weekend Hollie and I transplanted as many of the seedlings as we could find containers for. The leeks got the star treatment because their seedlings look the healthiest. Sebastian brought home a bucket of cow manure from the farmer who picks up the spent grain at the brewery. I think it is a charming circle.
We also finally figured out the permanent spots for most of those fruit trees. Our transplantation method is decidedly low tech, but it seems to be working. We'll see if they make it through the summer. I just keep reminding myself that they were $13 at Big Lots so I don't get too attached.
We moved a peach, a cherry and an apricot to the southern border of the yard. They are in full sun for now, but we'll see what happens when they build on the lot next door. Another two, a peach and a pear, landed at the perimeter of the driveway (or what will become the driveway when we get that big pile of dirt out of the way.)
So the plan for the next few weeks goes like this: Next weekend we offer a six-pack of beer to anyone willing to load up a wheelbarrow full of dirt from the pile if the driveway and move it to the backyard. We hope that three or four cases of underfills should get the pile taken care of. Then we spend Sunday using our scrap wood piles to build a chicken coop trailer.
Once the coop is finished, we load the remainder of the scrap onto a truck and take it to the dump. Then we borrow a rototiller and turn the whole yard under. Then we plant the whole yard with watermelons and sweet potatoes. Hundreds of melons and potatoes. Melons for everyone. Yay.
The final step is planting blueberry and artichoke bushes on the southside of the house. I am not sure that artichokes grow well in North Carolina, but they say they grow in Zone 7. Also I am not sure they are good looking, but come on! Artichokes!
When we first bought the house, we spent a day with a chainsaw and a bobcat pushing over and cutting up most of the trees we didn't think we wanted. In the process, we apparently cut down a few muscadine vines--a fact that broke my heart when I found out. It was one of many naive moves we made in early construction. This process left us with a back yard full of stumps and logs, to which we quickly started adding scrap piles.
The next spring I happened upon a sale on fruit trees at Big Lots ($13.95 each), and I just couldn't resist. I ended up with two peach trees, two pear, an apricot, two cherries, and a five-in-one apple. I sort of scattered them around the yard and hoped they would live until I could figure out where to put them more permanently.
That summer I also took advantage of our empty space and built three very ugly raised beds in which I planted tomatoes, cucumbers, and a host of other vegetables that never really came up. I filled the beds with "top soil" from the sand and gravel store. This turned out to be a heavy mix of red clay and little rocks. Whenever I watered it, it crusted over so badly that the water would run off and form pools in between the beds. I grew more weeds on the ground in between than I did vegetables in the beds.
I have never had much interest in gardening, but I love the idea of getting more vegetables than you can eat without having to pay for them. I realize that I probably spent more on supplies for the garden than the value of the vegetables I was able to pull back out, but that kind of "pay it forward" money never registers in the equation come harvest time. Regardless, I did end up with a summerful of tomatoes. I guess it just goes to show what hot wet summers will get you, even with little care and bad soil. And this year, I didn't need to build the beds, and I am starting the plants from seed, so I am barely spending any money at all. (Please ignore the $18 I spent on seed-starting trays and peat pellets and the $20 I spent on seeds.) But I am getting ahead of myself.
Of course I way jumped the gun and planted the seeds at the beginning of February (hoping for and early spring.) I did it partly as a temporary solution the misery of winter, but I still think it was a gamble worth taking. So far I have a few trays of very leggy sprouts, but maybe some will survive, and then I will have beets and brussel sprouts a few weeks before anyone else. Of course I also planted WAY too many of everything, but I stand by this dubious decision too. Chances are many will die, so it won't end up being too many. Besides which I have never subscribed to the conservative gardening metric that you should only grow what you think you can eat.
We are already signed up for a CSA this summer, so I only planted vegetables that I hope to can. I am imagining cases and cases of pickled beets. I don't think I have space in my beds for everything, but that is one of the joys of my unfinished backyard.
This weekend Hollie and I transplanted as many of the seedlings as we could find containers for. The leeks got the star treatment because their seedlings look the healthiest. Sebastian brought home a bucket of cow manure from the farmer who picks up the spent grain at the brewery. I think it is a charming circle.
We also finally figured out the permanent spots for most of those fruit trees. Our transplantation method is decidedly low tech, but it seems to be working. We'll see if they make it through the summer. I just keep reminding myself that they were $13 at Big Lots so I don't get too attached.
We moved a peach, a cherry and an apricot to the southern border of the yard. They are in full sun for now, but we'll see what happens when they build on the lot next door. Another two, a peach and a pear, landed at the perimeter of the driveway (or what will become the driveway when we get that big pile of dirt out of the way.)
So the plan for the next few weeks goes like this: Next weekend we offer a six-pack of beer to anyone willing to load up a wheelbarrow full of dirt from the pile if the driveway and move it to the backyard. We hope that three or four cases of underfills should get the pile taken care of. Then we spend Sunday using our scrap wood piles to build a chicken coop trailer.
Once the coop is finished, we load the remainder of the scrap onto a truck and take it to the dump. Then we borrow a rototiller and turn the whole yard under. Then we plant the whole yard with watermelons and sweet potatoes. Hundreds of melons and potatoes. Melons for everyone. Yay.
The final step is planting blueberry and artichoke bushes on the southside of the house. I am not sure that artichokes grow well in North Carolina, but they say they grow in Zone 7. Also I am not sure they are good looking, but come on! Artichokes!
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