Sedici Foto

Remember those mushrooms that I took pictures of a bit ago? Well, they erupted into this area underneath our little shaded square of grapevines where the pear tree use to be.

Bigger.

....And Bigger....

My venus fly trap. It's cute right?

...Too bad it's dying. Mom re-potted it in soil, not realizing that soil burns the roots of the plant, and kills it. They like peat moss instead.

As a result, most of the heads are turning like this. Black and necrotic. =[ I'm going to swing by Stein's tomorrow and find some peat moss. See if I can't fix the poor Senor Flytrap. Speaking of plants....

I've been planting some seeds. Different flowers as you can see.

As you can see, they are coming up quite nicely. Those pictured here are zinnia's.

Last weekend we worked on making some malazani. It's an Italian sort of pickled eggplant. I don't have the full process below, as it takes at least two days, and as was out and about yesterday evening, I didn't get the rest of the photos. We are to do more soon, so I'll make a post dedicated to the process, and if you're REALLY interested, message me.

To begin, you peel the eggplant.

Hold the peels off to the side. There's a couple things you can do with those based on preference.
You will be cutting the eggplant into french fry shapes, and throw them into a vinegar mixture to soak. Like I said, I'll do a dedicated post at a later time, and that will have the vinegar mixture. You have a few choices at this point.

The peels to may cut into the same shape and throw into the mixture, or deep fry separate. If you include them in, the final product is slightly more bitter, and chewier, and if you cook them deep fried, the are to be salted, and are excellent. We fried ours.

You will be placing a plate on top of the eggplants in the vinegar mixture. The goal is to have the eggplant entirely submersed in the vinegar mixture, which kills bacteria, and gives the eggplant its flavor. As eggplant float, the gallon wine jug filled with water served as your weight, to keep them entirely submersed. This you will leave to soak overnight. The rest will be posted once I have pics of the rest of the process.

Have you met Finn?!

He is my FANTASTIC cellophane delta tail Betta. Barely recognizable in that hue.