Our garden isn’t big, but it’s already full of things. Over at the PPK forums there was a thread about what people were growing in the garden this year and it got me thinking about what exactly we have in our garden. Here’s what I posted over there. You can check out my gardening set on flickr here.

We have:

• Tomatoes – 6 different kinds (yellow, a small bush tomato, a type called ailsa craig, a black tomato, cocktail tomatoes and an unnamed ‘normal’ type)
• Pumpkin – Mars and Crown Prince
• Yellow courgette
• Peas – marrow fat and normal
• French beans
• Runner beans, 2 types
• Sugar snap peas
• Swiss chard, rainbow colours
• Carrots, mixed colours
• Spinach
• Beetroot
• Cucumbers – growing up a trellis
• Rocket/aragula
• Lettuce (3 types + asian mixed lettuces)
• Potatoes – planted in a container, probably just enough for one meal or two
• Eggplant – one plant
• Rhubarb – 3 plants
• Raspberries – one cane
• Strawberries – huge ones called maxim and no-name ones
• Wild strawberries
• Physalis – one plant
• mint – apple mint, morrocan tea mint, pepper mint and normal mint
• basil – thai, purple and normal green
• dill
• parsley
• spring onions
• thyme – normal and lemon thyme
• sage – normal and pineapple
• lemon verbena
• rosemary
• marjoram
• oregano
• chives

and the most awesomest thing ever, a cherry tree!

We’re also growing flowers, like poppies and a mix of summer flowers from seed (for cutting and putting in vases). I have a small maple tree in a pot that I dug up from outside. It’s only about a foot tall.

and I think that’s it.

It’s our very first garden and it’s amazing so far. Some things have died on us, like the chilli pepper and the bell peppers. No luck there, I might buy a few plants of those. We’re growing a lot of stuff in containers and pallets (making raised beds). We have many big pots and a small greenhouse.

I’m loving it and I’m already looking forward to moving to a house in the future.

I’m getting married in just over a week! So now everything is about baking, cooking and making sure everything will work out. We’re having a nice small dinner with just our closest friends and family and I’m really looking forward to it all.

Today I went shopping for food with my mother. I bought most things we need for the food, except for vegetables, and then bought extra things. How can I say no to an apple mint plant for the garden? Or a wild strawberry plant? I simply couldn’t! In about a week we’re going out again to get fresh vegetables and the last few things we need and then we’re set to go.

The afternoon was spent baking two types of cookies. For dessert we’re thinking a little buffet with cookies, cake, a nut tart and cinnamon buns. Coffee and tea to go with it.

I posted the recipe for the jam cookies here. The other recipe is not my own, but it already exists on the net so I figured a translation into English would be fine.

Chewy chocolate cookies: Makes 30-40 cookies.

• 100 grams (3.5 oz) baking margarine
• 100 ml (1/3 cup + 1 tbsp) caster sugar
• 2 tbsp golden syrup (I guess corn syrup or maple would be fine too, although maple would be tastier!!)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 200 ml (1/2 cup + 1/3 cup)  flour + possibly 2 tbsp extra
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder, sifted
• 1/2 tsp baking soda  (bicarbonate of soda)

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350F). Cream together margarine, sugar, syrup and vanilla essence. Sift in flour, cocoa powder and baking soda and quickly work together to a dough. Put parchment paper on a baking/cookie tray. Divide the dough into two pieces and make two rolls about the length of your cookie tray. Put rolls on the tray and flatten them a bit with your hands. Use a fork to make nice grooves and to flatten more. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes. Don’t overbake them! Let them cool on tray for just a minute or two and then cut them diagonally into about 2 cm/about 1 inch strips while still warm. If you cool before cutting you’ll end up with cookie crumbles. Leave on tray until completely cool.

Recipe in Swedish can be found here.

Just a quick note to mention that I also have another blog. It’s called queen size and is about me and my fat arse

http://emmiekjellberg.com

Doris is telling you to go over there! She loves her chubby ’sister’.

(It’s my mum’s dog)

Today is my 24th birthday!

We’re celebrating by going to a flea market this morning and selling things and later this afternoon my friend Maria will come by for a bbq! Should be good times

Picture by Jake Belluchi used with permission under a Creative Commons license

Yes,  this is another gardening post! Basically, planning our garden is all I think about right now. We eat sandwiches and fries and talk about gardening rather than plan and cook good food. Anyway, gardening supplies can be quite expensive and on our tight budget we just can’t afford to buy all kinds of expensive pretty crap. So we browse the internet, think a lot and come up with smart solutions.

I know what you’re thinking, ‘why is she showing me a stack of newspapers, and where can I get that snazzy keyboard?’ and I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on. Basically this is a stack of folded newspaper sheets which magically (using the power of origami) turns into practical and environmentally friendly plant pots for your seedlings. I found a great tutorial for making these at VideoJug posted by Tiffany at No Ordinary Homestead. Check it out!

This is what they look like unfolded. Stand them right next to each other so  they support each other in a tray in the windowsill and when your plants are big enough to be planted outside you can just pop these right into the ground. Easy peasy.

Also, Alex and I made this greenhouse today using cheap items from my favourite store IKEA.

It’s a cheap shelf for garden use with a shower curtain stapled on to it. We only paid 91 SEK for all of this while a greenhouse of the same quality (plastic plastic plastic) from a shop would be about 500 SEK. Win! I thought this up all by myself, I am both pretty AND smart!

The shelf we used is called HYLLIS and costs 79 SEK / $14.99 / £5.86. The shower curtain is called NÄCKTEN and costs 12 SEK / $1.79 / £0.87.

We’re also using more of those shower curtains to cover our raised beds as they’re very cheap compared to the plastic covering you can buy in most gardening stores.

I haven’t mentioned (not here at least)  but Alex and I are growing a garden this year. We moved out to this flat in the beginning of december and since we have been dreaming of and planning on making our own garden. I think it’s a bit symbolic as well, we’re getting married in May and growing a garden together. Make gardens, not babies, is a great slogan for us to live by.

These last few days we have been buying seeds and thinking of what bushes to get and, wow, the list is long.

I’ll just dive right into it and tell you what’s going in the garden (that I know so far!)

Thyme, marjoram, parsley, basil, oregano, lemon basil, chives..

These are small basil seedlings.

As far as vegetables go:

Tomatoes, spinach, multi coloured swiss chard, mixed colour carrots, zucchini, broccoli, 3 types of lettuce, brussels sprouts, 2 types of haricots verts (to climb up a trellis) and one type of low growing sugar snap pea.

Are we missing something important? We don’t want to grow potatoes and onions because thay’re so cheap to buy in the store and they take up a lot of space. I am all open to suggestions!

I planted a nice little cherry tree yesterday, it took a lot of digging, and apparently we have lots of clay and many big stones. I’m sore all over today but it was definitely worth it. Other than that, we dug up a flower bed, planted a few daffodils (I don’t like them, but Alex does), planned out where we’re having different bed for vegetables and cleaned the yard a bit.

We looked at different berry bushes as well and I think we’re going to get raspberries and blackberries and possibly black currants. Oh and I want a blueberry bush… and lots of strawberry plants.

Here’s me! Tired, dirty, hungry.. but incredibly happy about having planted the cherry tree.

What do you guys have in your gardens? What’s your favourite thing to grow? What vegetable do I have to try and make space for?

A while ago my sister and her boyfriend came over for a visit. We had lunch and then cupcakes and had a really nice time. We played some Donkey Konga on my old friend the Gamecube and as always I kicked ass.

For lunch we had Jamaican Tempeh Patties but with extra curry (always a bit extra!) marinated beans and mushrooms, a green salad, cilantro yoghurtand olives. It was all good! You can see my sister, and her boyfriends arm!

And afterwards we had tea in the livingroom, and these delicious cupcakes. They’re carrot cake cupcakes (no raisins, yuck!) w. pecans and walnuts and topped with cream cheese frosting and some lemon zest. So pretty! And so tasty! Se my cupcake liners? They have cherries on them, so cute.

We’re going into Malmö tomorrow morning to see Smoothie from the PPK, Jojo from the same place and Melisser and Ryan! Woo. I have cookies in the oven and a whole day of good fun ahead of me. What else do you need really? We’re planning on going to a few stores (Astrid! Kina Center! Gray’s American Store!), have some good food and wander about Malmö enjoying the day. Hopefully there’ll be some coffee or tea at some point and preferably lots of chit chat. In the evening is the sneak peek opening of the new veg restaurant in Malmö, Astrid och Aporna – kök and hopefully that will be fun too. I’m really looking forward to going there for a proper meal sometime, maybe on my birthday in April

Just about 2 weeks ago was my vegetarian anniversary. I’ve been veg for three years now and it’s as good as ever. On the very same day was my 2 year blogiversary, yay! Congratulations little blog.

We’ve also had plenty of snow since I last updated this blog. But now it’s spring with flower buds beginning to peek out everywhere and snowdrops in full bloom. Say bye bye to the baby snowman!

My mother had to put her dog Tösen to sleep today. A few days ago she found a hard swollen lump near her tail and took her to the vet today. Turns out she had cancer and was full of tumours.

When Tösen came to the family she was given to us by a friend who had rescued her from some drug abusers who beat her and treat her really badly. She had moved around a lot and had had many different owners. During her puppy years she was constantly left alone, was beaten and kicked and badly mistreated. Mum made a promise when she got her that she would never let Tösen move to another home again or ever be in pain. And so when she was told that she’d die within a few weeks anyway, in pain and worried, mum took the decision to let her die right then and there. She was given a shot and fell asleep being petted and hugged, eating her favourite treats.

I will miss her like crazy, during hard times when all I wanted to do was cry she’d sit beside me, paw and head in my lap and try and make me feel better. She was the smartest, kindest dog I have ever had the privilege to know and I love her deeply.

I swear I will never bake any other bread than this again. Don’t hold me to it though, because I’m actually already eyeballing a recipe for a no knead, whole grain, fruit and nut bread that I really want to make. It will require a trip to the store though, so not now.

Anyway, I know this bread has been making the rounds. Everyone has blogged it and those who haven’t wish they had. I didn’t actually get around to making it until yesterday even though I’ve wanted to for ages. I’m not the kind of person who usually plans her baking ahead of time, unless it’s for some grand event, so I’m going to say that’s why I hadn’t made it until just now. It takes many, many hours of rising.  I recently found the quicker version of this bread though and that helped me spring into action. It’s so good! The crust is amazing! The taste is awesome! It takes barely any active time! I could go on forever… still, it will take a good 6-8 hours of rising, and then another hour of proofing, and almost another one of baking… not to mention the time it takes for it to cool enough to eat. It’s almost torture.

The recipe for the quicker version is here. The only thing I did differently is that I used flour instead of oil to keep the dough from sticking to much. I floured my work surface well and let the dough proof for an hour with more flour sprinkled on top instead of the suggested method of misting it with oil.

p.s. This is the second loaf of this bread I have made in two days. It’s that good.