What'll Cool You off on a 95 Degree Day?

On Sundays, Tricia always cooks an extra-special meal.  After church, the boys come over to the house and we set the table in the formal dining room with the nice china and silverware and sit down for an old fashioned Sunday lunch.  We take time enjoying the food and each others' company.  After we've cleaned our plates, I put the coffee on and we enjoy a cup or three of good coffee with a nice piece of chocolate or a cookie to go along with it.  Simple pleasures.  

I walked out the back door for a minute.  It's hotter than a two dollar pistol outside.  I walked back in and thought, "Let's make some homemade ice cream!"  Nothing cools you off like a delicious bowl of ice cream.  I heard on the radio this week that the #1 flavor of ice cream sold in the US is vanilla.  #2 is chocolate.  Either of those would be good.  But, then the little flywheels and gears in my head started turning.  How about some homemade BLACKBERRY ice cream?  Our two blackberry canes are producing now.  We've been eating them right off the bush.

The bushes are thornless and they produce really nice berries.

After a short hop, skip and a jump out the back patio to the blackberry bushes, I filled a coffee mug with berries.

I crushed up the berries with a spoon in the bottom of my mug.  Sun-heated blackberry juice and pulp filled the bottom of the cup.  After pouring the ice cream mixer in our little ice cream maker, I emptied the muddled berries into there as well.  We flipped the switch and the maker came to life, paddles turning through Clarabelle's cream.  Fresh cow's milk and fresh berries.  Can it get any better?

We continued to visit until we heard the ice cream maker struggle to churn through the thickened ice cream.  Yep, it's done!  Homemade blackberry ice cream.

Cold, smooth, and creamy...

What a delicious way to cool off on a hot summer day.

Soaking Okra and Checking out the Side Yard

My wife and I often talk about how strange it is that some years certain garden crops just absolutely produce so much that we can't eat or store it all.  We share the bounty with family and friends.  And then other years, when we do everything exactly the same, we experience crop failure or the crop may produce, but not very much.  It is very odd.  We try to examine the inputs to see what happened so that we don't repeat the error.  Oftentimes, we can't find what went wrong.

Last year our okra crop was lackluster at best.  The year before, we discovered a recipe for "Oven fried Okra" and this was a game-changer.  Previously, we ate okra primarily in gumbos or cooked down with tomatoes and onions or we had an okra curry recipe that we enjoyed.  The oven fried okra with panko bread crumbs was a favorite of ours and we ate it often.  

Okra is normally a big producer.  You have to pick it every day as it grows faster than kudzu.  Last year, our okra failed - big time.  We have no okra in the freezer.  This year things will be different.  This weekend I readied the seed.  I'm planting three of our favorite varieties: Clemson Spineless Okra - this is our old standby.  Dependable.  Hardy.  Prolific producer.  Next, we have Burgundy Okra - this variety is burgundy in color.  We like things with color.  It doesn't produce as much as Clemson and when you cook it, the color fades, but it it a nice variety.  Finally, we have Beck's Big Okra - a short, fat, variety with a number of ridges on the pods.

When I say 'readied the seed,' here's what I mean:  Okra seed is tough.  It is hard as a ball bearing.  If you would just put it in the ground, it would take a while for the seed coat to soften and germination to occur.  I began soaking my okra seed in warm water 24 hours in advance of planting:

By soaking the okra seed, you are jump-starting the germination process.  It speeds up the process and allows you to see sprouts in a couple of days after putting them in the ground.  After 24 hours, the seed is soft and the hard coating is swollen and coming off.  I dropped them in the ground.  In no time at all, okra sprouts are popping up out of the ground!

We will check back in on the okra later.  For now, let's mosey over into the side yard.  Right next to the Irish Potato patch, I have some Thornless blackberries planted.  The two varieties I have came out of Arkansas and are named after Native American tribes - Navajo and Arapahoe.  We've been pleased with these plants.  They produce berries almost as big as a man's thumb!

As you can witness from the photo above and below, they are full of flowers.  It won't be long before we'll be picking the sweet berries to eat!  One thing on my 'to - do list,' is to take some cuttings and plant more blackberry bushes to expand our berry territory.

Finally, the muscadine vines have put on lots of leaves, displaying a hopeful start to another good producing season.  

My camera wasn't focusing in right, but I believe you can still make out the tiny clusters of muscadines in the photo below.

We are hopeful for a good crop this year.  Regardless, we'll have a good time in the outdoors soaking up vitamin D and enjoying nature.