Yep, today’s been a pretty good day for me. I enjoyed working in the garden, enjoyed getting ready for Halloween, had a pretty good day at the range and enjoyed a sumptuous meal of BBQ “Crazy Yellow Chicken” with pinto beans, corn on the cob and special rice with tortillas.
This is a nice picture of a selection of squash for sale at our local farmer’s market. They make a decorative addition to a holiday table or centerpiece.
This is how Damsel’s appetite goes: soup, sandwich and shooter.
She got a new toy this week and just loves it! Actually two new toys – more on that later . . .
These lemons are quite large, measuring 4 inches (10 cm) long by 3 inches (7 cm) wide. Now, this wouldn’t be weird in itself, but the tree that they’re growing on is only 40 inches (1 m) tall! These are destined to be used in my favorite lemon bar recipe in about a week.
Really! Since we are trying to flex our power this summer, we don’t run the air conditioner. And instead of lighting the oven in a warm house, we have been cooking outdoors a lot. We can do much of what we used to do in the oven in our outdoor BBQ.
A pizza stone with a layer or two of aluminum foil under it heats up quite nicely in the BBQ with the lid closed. We prepared our pizza dough and transferred to the stone. We then added the rest of the toppings and cheese, lowered the heat and the BBQ hood and cooked the pizza to a bubbly perfection.
Not really — the produce from this vine is called Yard Long Beans — also known as Asparagus bean, dow gauk, Chinese long beans, Peru bean, and Snake bean. The flowers are pale, delicate little things about the size of a thumbnail or just a little bigger. This photo was snapped in our garden this morning. The little beans rising on the left are about an inch long (~3cm), but they will be as long as your forearm (Cap’n says a cubit??) in a couple of weeks when they get picked.
I found this on Farm and Garden:
ASPARAGUS BEAN
History, definition & classification
The asparagus or yard long bean originated in southern Asia and is now grown extensively in Asia, Europe, and most recently, the United States. These unique beans grow on twining, delicate stems with a tenacious root system. The plants bloom in mid-summer with a pair of large white or purple flowers. Once pollinated, the flowers are followed by tiny dark green beans that reach a foot long in only a few days. The beans can grow up to three feet long, ripening to pale green and inflating as the red or black seeds ripen.
Although they resemble pole snap beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), asparagus beans are more closely related to southern cowpeas, Vigna unguiculata. Asparagus bean, Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis, is called dow gauk in China, sasage in Japan, and Chinese long bean or yardlong bean in Europe and the United States.
Now is the time of year that our backyard starts producing fruit and veggies, most of which reach our table one way or another. Among the beans, peas, squash and melons, none are more colorful as they ripen on their vines as the strawberries. They look so tempting that sometimes I’ll wash one and split it with the Cap’n right in the garden! This one was particularly sweet and delicious.
