Farm Charm

Last week, on a beautiful sunny day, we drove out into the country.

 

Fields of wild goldenrod flashed by as we neared our destination:  Stream Cliff Farm.

Stream Cliff Farm is Indiana's oldest herb farm, a beautiful old homestead surrounded by gardens.  You can purchase flowers, herbs, and vegetables, browse the garden notions shop, or have a nibble at the small tea room.  Classes are taught at Stream Cliff Farm, everything from cooking with herbs to watercolor painting to making a proper container garden.

They have a lot of practice.  Charming containers were everywhere, full of all sorts of nodding flowers.

Ahhh...I love dahlias.

Window boxes of all sorts of greenery...

...and flowers.

There were winding paths through the gardens.

I got a lot of ideas for my future garden.  I love the restful, overgrown green growth, punctuated by bright flowers.

Who needs a lawn?

Hostas are great for shade areas.  They come in every shade of green and even spike up flowers at certain times of the year.

In a small pond bordering one of the paths, little frogs sang.  Lots of flowers grew in the boggy soil.  These yellow flag irises are great for ponds.  They grow right in the water!

Birds flitted above us, unseen.  These little birdhouses were so charming and clearly provided a nice home!

Next to the old homestead was an open square full of flowers for sale.  While Todd took a little break...

...I enjoyed the view!  I liked looking at the flowers, too.  :) 

Tall alliums, which bloom in both the spring and the fall...

Tables of herbs, with a few dahlias tucked in...

Clematis vines climbed on trellises everywhere! 

Green hydrangeas...one of my favorites.

Lots of pretty cottage garden flowers like foxgloves, too.

Baskets sat on low stone walls.  It was all so beautiful.

We saw animals, too.  Goats, and chickens, and roosters!

We wandered through the various greenhouses.

I didn't mean to buy anything, but I just couldn't resist!

I bought lemon verbena, lady's mantle, nicotiana, and lupine. 

After shopping, we ate at the tiny tea room next to the greenhouses.  Many of the dishes were made with fruits and vegetables grown on the farm.  I had a lemon square with lavender buds in the pastry dough.  Todd had a thick slab of hummingbird cake with an edible flower embellishment.

It was just perfect.

Speaking of perfect, I stumbled across a recipe recently that is pretty close to it!  I love pancakes, but don't usually take the time to make them.  I wouldn't want to buy a store mix, so I usually just go without pancakes.  But I found a great recipe that allows you to pre-mix and freeze the bulk of your pancake ingredients, and just add a little milk and yogurt when you're ready to eat them.  Suffice it to say, I've had pancakes three nights this week!

Healthy Pancakes
Modified from Eggs on Sunday
Makes 80 small-ish pancakes

Ingredients
4 cups of whole wheat flour
1 cup of white flour
3 1/2 cups of old-fashioned oatmeal
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons baking powder
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 cup vegetable oil

Directions
Combine your dry ingredients in a stand mixer and gradually pour in the honey and oil while the mixer is running.  When it's fully incorporated, you can seal it up and put it in your freezer.

To make 8 medium-sized pancakes:
1 cup of pancake mix
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 egg

Mix everything up and cook on your griddle!  I frequently halve this recipe to make 4 small pancakes by mixing up 1/2 cup of pancake mix, 1/4 cup of milk, 1/4 cup of yogurt, and no egg.  The pancakes are so flavorful and full of healthy grains.  No preservatives here!

With this recipe, you're just 5 minutes away from healthy pancakes.  I really hope you try this recipe soon!

Have a great week!

Container Crazy

I have a confession:  I have not been knitting.  I have not been baking or even cooking much.  A pile of library books is staring at me accusingly because I haven't given them proper attention.  I can't help it...every spare second I have, I'm studying gardening books and catalogs.   I'm visiting garden centers and plotting spaces in my 'someday' garden.  At night, I dream about flowers.  I'm completely obsessed.

How can I help it, though, when I get so much pleasure out of my garden?  I love digging in the dirt and finding creatures like this asiatic garden beetle (Maladera castanea):

Now, these are major pests and do a lot of damage to perennial plants...but I'm so happy to see insects after a long winter that I'm turning a blind eye.  I love seeing earthworms, too, and these funny little brown worms that remind me of tiny snakes: 

I also caught up with a daring jumping spider on our back steps.  They have the best vision of all spiders and are incredible jumpers (up to 50 times their length!!), so I hesitate to get too close.  This spider is a male...you can tell because of his iridescent chelicerae  (a much nicer word than fangs!).

I have company, too, with the almost domesticated squirrels around here.

Of course, I have my intrepid dog...

...and my dignified cat...

...to keep me company, too.

This week, it was time to put the first batch of seedlings into the ground.

I spread them out in the garden.  They always look so little and naked at this point, but they grow really quickly.

Even though I have planted thousands of seeds and am putting seedlings in the ground...even though my perennials are starting to come up...and even though we might be moving soon, I just can't help buying things at garden centers.  This week, I got a nice variety...some ranuculas, lavender, lemon thyme, creeping jenny...

...and a flat of vintage mix stocks, which I'm really excited about.

I also picked up some dahlias...

...daisies...

...dianthus...

...and a maidenhair fern "Little Lady"...which I adore.

I potted everything up.  I've got plans for a really big container garden this year!

I also harvested some radishes from our garden, which was incredibly satisfying.

I started some more herbs and veggies from seed:

...and got those stocks in the ground!  It was so lovely to plant them, because they have what is referred to as a 'sweet, spicy' scent.  I planted them next to my purple blooming sage bush, which also smells amazing. 

They're small now, but they'll reach almost 2 feet high by mid-June!

My lilacs are done for, but my columbines are still blooming.

This is just one patch of them.  I've never had them bloom so long, or cluster so thickly!

Reluctantly, I've torn myself away from the garden from time to time to try some new recipes.  I made cream puffs recently.  I'm not a big pastry fan, but, well, Todd...

Basic Cream Puffs
Adapted from Joy the Baker

Cream Puff Ingredients:
1 cup water
5 1/3 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 to 5 large eggs

Whipped Cream:
2 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Chocolate Ganache:
4 ounces milk chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon light corn syrup

Directions
Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.  Then, in a sauce pan, combine water, butter, sugar, and salt.  You're going to cook your dough!  It's referred to as pate a choux.  Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium heat and stir until butter is melted.  Lower the heat a bit and then add your flour.  Combine and continue stirring until the mixture becomes thick and forms a mass.  You're going to cook the dough for about five minutes, stirring constantly.  Moisture will evaporate, allowing the dough to absorb more fat when you add your eggs...yum!  When your dough smells nutty and is steamy, you're done.

Now, transfer the dough to your mixer and beat on medium speed for about a minute.  Add 4 of the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.  The mixture should be thick, but pourable.  If not, beat in the fifth egg.

Ladle this mixture into a pastry bag or a plastic bag with the tip cut off.

Pipe the dough onto your greased cookie sheets.  The circles should be 1 1/2 inches across and almost an inch tall.

Bake for about 10 minutes and then reduce heat to 350 degrees.  Bake for an additional 15 minutes.  Watch them carefully...my oven runs hot, so I only baked mine an additional 5 minutes after reducing the heat to 350 degrees. 

Make the whipped cream by beating the cream and the powdered sugar until combined and then adding the vanilla.

 For the ganache, heat the corn syrup and cream until simmering, and then pour over chocolate.  Stir until melted. 

Take your baked cream puffs...

...cut them in half, and layer them with strawberries and whipped cream.  Top with ganache.

 

Enjoy!