New England native, Florida resident. Blogging about boating, beach-combing, gardening, camping, and knitting. Work for Zazzle as a designer since 2008.
My vegetable garden is failing, but that may be good for the beneficials and butterflies. By letting vegetables flower and go to seed, they might attract interesting creatures. I’m becoming familiar with the bugs that visit the garden and learning the good (beneficial) from the troublemakers. Nature is the way it is for a reason and I rarely like to interfere.
Because it’s tough to grow vegetables in Florida summer months, I’ve let my cherry tomato vines grow to produce only a few little tomatoes which mostly keep the cardinals happy. They pick through the skins to get the seeds! Myfennel is once again tall and I’ve found that it has become a nursery for the Swallowtail butterfly.
Fennel Flowers Become A Swallowtail Butterfly Nursery
Many tiny worms on a fennel flower head
I’m not eating my fennel because it is often home to eggs and worms of the Black Swallowtail butterfly. I’ve seen the butterfly land to deposit eggs, but seldom spot the eggs.
As I scouted the plant (it’s taller than I am) for signs of worms, I noticed that the flower heads were full! Nearly every flowering part of the plant held larvae in some stage. And near the bottom of the plant I found one large caterpillar who has managed to avoid becoming bird food.
Parsley worm which will become a black swallowtail butterfly
It used to be that the Swallowtail would lay eggs on my parsley. I documented thestages of the Black Swallowtail, eggs through hatching, on a previous post. Now that I have begun to grow fennel, I think the butterfly likes using it better than the parsley to deposit her eggs. This could be due to the flowers and the large size of the plant.
Who doesn’t love a butterfly? They don’t live long lives, but serve a purpose as pollinators and as a meal for birds and lizards. I really hope to see the lifecycle of these little hatchlings continue.
Update on the caterpillars
I have read that these types of crawlers don’t appeal to birds, the cardinals say otherwise. Each day I found fewer and fewer caterpillars feeding on the fennel. I first counted nearly 50 worms! But the following day I saw only about half that number. Now I find NO caterpillars at all left on this plant!
Cardinals are the birds I see most in my garden and I have witnessed their cherry tomato thievery. They are also very good about cleaning out the bugs – including butterfly larvae. But, that is nature for you. I will see no new butterflies but the birds are very well fed.
Beneficials (and Baddies) I’ve Seen
Beneficials, or good bugs, will remove unwanted pests from the garden. A year or so ago I found manyaphids on my squash, hibiscus, citrus and in other places. I also saw little black and red bugs. Because I didn’t recognize the bug I looked it up online. Come to find out it was ladybug larvae. It was there because of the aphids, which are it’s food.
My next-door neighbor recently told me that she was trying to kill “black and red bugs” in her garden. I warned her that they might be beneficial ladybugs.
You want beneficials in the yard and garden. They keep things in order naturally. If my neighbor kills her “black and red” bugs she will be doing more harm than good.
After larvae eats… attaches to leaf and curls up. It will change and become an aphid-eating ladybug!
With the internet close at hand, we can easily look up insects and find out which they are, harmful or beneficial. It’s worth knowing if you want harmony in the yard.
More beneficial bugs you may encounter are the Assassin bug (this one can sting a person), bees and butterflies (as pollinators), parasitic wasps, lacewings, and many more.
The truth is that we usually must see a problem before we see a beneficial. If the aphids (or other pests) are not present, neither will the good bugs come to stay.
Although it seems like you will be slicing and layering forever, this recipe does not take many vegetables at all so slicing was minimal. I used 2 very small summer squash, 1.5 small zucchini, 2 medium size tomatoes, and half (or less) of a large eggplant. I thought about digging out my mandarin slicer, but I really didn’t need it.
Most cooks used a large pan of some sort to create this dish. I decided to use three small round pans (about 6 inches across) because I am the only one who will eat it and I can freeze one of the servings.
What is Ratatouille?
The word “ratatouille” brings to mind that Disney cartoon about the mouse in the French kitchen helping a new young chef learn to cook. The dish for which the movie is named, is made of vegetables, usually the type that are harvested at around the same time in summer. This could mean all sorts of vegetables were used, and way back when, they probably used whatever was in abundance in the backyard garden.
I don’t know about the old original ratatouille recipes, but these days you see the dish as sliced and layered colorful vegetables. Because of this, all the various veggie flavors mingle while they bake. I was very happy with the outcome and ate it with some leftover noodles.
I sprinkled spices on before covering and baking
My own homemade sauce is my favorite, but this time I used store bought, low sodium, organic spaghetti sauce to save time. One medium size jar worked well to divide up between three small pans. I did sprinkle a little sugar on top of the sauce because the store bought sauce was not sweet enough for my taste.
I oiled the pans, then divided the sauce into each of the three pans. The sliced vegetables were layered on a plate (a few at a time) and then plunked into the pan. Once the pans were full, I tucked the remaining slices into the center and to fill in around the edge.
Vegetables to Use
The eggplant I bought was huge, so I cut each slice into fourths for layering. First I salted the slices and let them sit in my colander for about 20 minutes. This gets the bitterness out. Rinse the salt off before using. A Japanese eggplant, which is long and skinny, would probably work better.
I used 2 small yellow squash and only 1 and 1/2 zucchini. Since I only had small tomatoes, but not Roma, I cut the slices (from 2 small tomatoes) in half. The large eggplant slices I cut into fourths but only used about half the large eggplant.
Other vegetables that would work are thinly sliced bell pepper and onion.
Topping the Veggies
The original recipe I found said to add the herbs and oil after baking, but I sprinkled herbs over my slices before I covered them with foil to bake. It didn’t make sense to me to add all that nice flavor later on. Once the food was baked, I added nothing except a tiny bit of salt (because I add no salt when baking).
My Baking Time Was Reduced For the Smaller Size Pans
I used three small, round baking pans and baked them at 375 for 30 minutes, not 40. (They are covered with foil for the first baking sequence.) Once they were uncovered I baked them for an additional 10-15, which is less time than the 20 minutes suggested. My pans were small, so that makes sense. Just watch your baking time if you use smaller dishes.
Ready to cover and bake.
If you have a garden and can grow all these vegetables, your meal will be super cheap, and fresher than most. No wonder peasants were known for creating this dish! I wonder if they waited all year looking forward to tasting the first Ratatouille of summer?
I’ve seen some Ratatouille recipes baked in cast iron, but with the acidic tomatoes and sauce, I would use something other than cast iron. This recipe would work nicely in a pretty covered casserole dish. Or individual serving dishes / small cake pans like I used.
What to Serve With Your Ratatouille
Ideas for serving and eating the finished vegetable dish.
Serve over rice or noodles as a vegetarian dish.
Cook ground beef to combine with the tomato sauce to use as the base.
Make garlic bread (softened butter, minced garlic, parmesan cheese mixed and spread on bread and broiled to golden brown). Bread and ratatouille would make a perfect meal!
Serve Ratatouille as a side dish to any type of meat / fish, or in addition to a salad or other vegetable.
It’s awesome with macaroni and cheese! I liked it so much that the second time I made this recipe I put mac and cheese in the bottom of the pans, then the sauce, and vegetable layer.
Bon Appetit
Ever since I found Ingrid’s Produce just down the street I have been a veggie cooking fool. Over the weekend I made a scrumptious tomato soup with fresh ingredients.
Fresh vegetables are difficult to find, or have been for me. You may think that a sunny, hot place like Florida would be full of wonderful produce, but that is not the case. Apparently it is too sunny and too hot. I’ve tried to garden here without luck. So the local Florida growers who are able to supply beautiful peppers and tomatoes like the ones in my photo here, make me feel grateful. Now that I have found some luscious produce, I will make homemade tomato soup from scratch.
Searching For a Tomato Soup Recipe
If you have ever searched online for any type of recipe you know how overwhelming it can be to find a good version. Food blogs are popular and in many cases copies of other food blogs. In other words the writer has never made the food themselves. Food photos are available for free and to buy, so anyone who wants to can pretend to be a foodie. There is money in the advertising and if you notice, most food blogs have many ads and popups everywhere. For this reason I have been wading through blogs featuring tomato soup recipes to find what I want.
My soup will be made entirely from fresh ingredients, as opposed to canned, and all I need to know is what basic additions to make to the obvious one.
Here’s a list of the ingredients I will be using:
Fresh, delicious tomatoes (thank you Ingrid’s Produce)
bell peppers (yellow orange red and green)
chopped onion
garlic, finely chopped – about 6 cloves
vegetable broth (my own from the freezer)
basil, parsley (from my garden)
celery
heavy cream
sugar (cuts down the acidity of the tomatoes)
Putting it All Together
My plan was to roast the peppers on the grill and remove the skins. That didn’t work out too well because they didn’t blacken enough and the skin didn’t come off. Today I will roast them in the oven and try again. This worked, and I peeled the skin and chopped the pepper pieces to add to the vegetables in the pot.
Broiling the peppers to remove the skins
The 12 tomatoes will be blanched in boiling water and then the skin will be removed.
While the water heats to boiling, cut “X” marks in the bottom of each tomato. I read somewhere to do this and it greatly helps when peeling off the skin!
Boiling water to blanch the tomatoes
Use a big pot, like a dutch oven like mine, and bring the water to a full boil. Use a slotted spoon or some large scoop to put the tomatoes into the boiling water. They only need to be in the water for 30 seconds to a minute – seriously… Get them out when they look wizzled. I did all my tomatoes at once, but I should have done 6 at a time.
Be sure the ice water is ready so the tomatoes can go directly in when they come out of the boiling water. I needed a bigger bowl for this! All my tomatoes barely fit. As you can see, the skins have split and are ready to be peeled. Start at the bottom where you made that X and they come right off.
Boiled tomatoes need an ice bath
While I waited for the water to come to a boil for the tomatoes I chopped the roasted peppers, celery (3 stalks), whole onion, garlic cloves (around 6), and put them into the broth in my dutch oven. I used my big 6 quart Lodge pot because my LeCreuset pot was too small.
Save Your Own Broth
By the way, the broth I used was saved in my freezer from previously cooked vegetables. Don’t dump that vitamin rich water down the drain when cooking beans, peas, carrots, asparagus, etc., save it in the freezer in a large container and add to it as you boil veggies. It can be used in soup, stew, gravy, chili, and whatever later on.
Finely chopped veggies simmer in broth
While the vegetables and broth simmered, I chopped up the tomatoes. I’m not sure they really needed to be chopped, but I did. I coarsely chopped them and removed the top stem area, and then added them to the other veggies in the pot. At this point I added chopped parsley and basil from my garden and other herbs from my spice rack, including a tiny bit of salt and some black pepper.
Tomato skins are removed and they are ready to chop
I almost forgot the sugar, so added a couple tablespoons to the mix. I always add sugar to homemade tomato sauce and it helps with the flavor. Then I let it simmer for 3-4 hours. I didn’t time it, but I figured the softer the vegetables the better.
I simmered all the veggies for about 3-4 hours.
Cooling, Blending, Straining, and Reheating The Soup
Once I had let the pot of vegetables cook a long while, I turned off the heat and began to cool the food. I used a pyrex measuring cup to scoop out the hot mix and put it into large bowls which I set on a wire cooling rack. Once the soup mixture was cool, I used the measuring cup to pour small amounts into my Oster Blender.
From there I poured the blended soup through my colander which has the perfect size holes! I had no idea how this would work out, but since I had removed the skins from the peppers and tomatoes, all that was left was the tomato seeds. And my yellow colander caught those! So use something with holes large enough for the sauce to easily pass through, but will catch the seeds.
I repeated the process of blending and straining the seeds until all the soup was back in the same dutch oven. I reheated it and then added some heavy cream (this lightens the color of the soup to more orange than red). I didn’t measure, just poured, but probably a half a cup or so. I’m considering using yogurt or Kite Hill non-dairy yogurt next time.
Reheating the soup and adding some heavy cream
I’m pleased with the taste and I know exactly what is in my homemade soup. Because I am the only one who will eat it, I filled several small freezer containers which I labeled and froze. Grilled cheese and tomato soup for supper tonight! Can’t wait.
Yum… this was my supper!
Making this soup was time consuming. Between chopping all the vegetables and doing the tomatoes then cooling, blending and reheating it took some time. But I love homemade soup and this is worth making again.
Use common sense when looking for “recipes” online. Some tomato soup recipes called for flour or canned tomato paste. Sometimes a few good recipes will give you ideas and when combined, you get a stunning result. I wanted fresh ingredients only, and I believe I have achieved that.
Done and ready to freeze!
Butternut Squash Tomato Soup
When I visited New Hampshire last Fall, the Fiddleheads Café, in Hancock featured butternut squash tomato soup on their menu, which sounded so good! Unfortunately they were out of it the day I wanted some, so I decided that one day I would make my own. Since then I have been searching my local Florida area for good tomatoes to use. Most tomatoes here taste like nothing. Once you eat garden fresh tomatoes it really does spoil you. I gave up on making soup because of that.
Just the other day I discovered a fresh produce store just down the road from me. And the tomatoes are fresh and tasty! The owner also had little butternut squash, so I bought two. I love the size because I can’t eat a whole, large squash myself. Now I am thinking about adding some to my soup.
I love the small size of this squash
Update on the squash. I baked them both and wasn’t happy with the flavor. They tasted like they needed more time to grow! So maybe that is the case. I ate the squash and did not add it to my soup.
I’m thinking that I could cook some squash (a larger, more tasty one) and simply add it to my already made tomato soup. Why not?
May is here and it’s muggy in Florida. The AC is on day and night now. Even when it’s “cool” the humidity makes being outside less than fun. The worst is yet to come, but it has begun.
First, a Nice Surprise in The Garden
The caladium is coming back!
As I was checking on my front garden, there it was…the caladium that had disappeared and was presumed dead. In fact both the pink and white leaved varieties were popping up through the dirt. They had both disappeared on me and I was mad that they died off so quickly. (See my post when they were first planted.) The impatiens which I planted at the same time are gone.
The white-leaf caladium is coming back
I’ve never grown caladiums but they look so nice against the green of the yard. Their big arrow-shaped leaves. Even though I watered them and they seemed to be growing well, they began to die. Or maybe they go into hibernation for the colder season. I need to look that up… hold on.
Okay…. They do go dormant so my caladiums were just doing what caladiums do. I never knew that! Although I have lived in Florida for many years, I just learned something new about my landscape.
Travel the Yard With Me
The garden beneath the oak was already there when we moved into our house a few years ago. It had become overrun with weeds, but now it contains my rubber tree which I propagated a while ago. I’ve discovered that rubber tree cuttings grow very well outdoors. Look at that sucker… isn’t it beautiful? I’m noticing that many big rubber trees are doing quite well in the landscape in my area. I’ve propagated a few more which I will plant sometime soon and write about them.
My newly propagated rubber plant is doing nicely
The orange flowering hibiscus was trimmed back at the end of April and now it is filling out nicely. Buds are forming, and it will be covered in blooms soon. I want to keep it trimmed away from the house so maybe it won’t get those nasty fuzzy whiteflies it had last year.
Trimmed hibiscus is filling out
Hydrangea For the Yard
When I bought this little hydrangea plant it had some buds. They popped open with beautiful big flowers of blue and purple. Now the flowers have faded to that lovely shade of green I love to see on hydrangeas. (See more photos of the blooming timeline here.)
The potted plant was recently removed from it’s pot and put into my front garden. I’ve had to water it every day and still it tends to droop. It never gets direct sun, but I am unsure of how well it will do during the very hot Florida summer. Look at those green flowers! Never deadhead hydrangeas. Wait and watch how the flowers fade to new colors and eventually they should dry up on the stem. They are interesting when the blooms have faded too.
My blue hydrangea flowers have turned green
In the woods next too my house the white-flowering Elderberry bush / tree is looking wonderful. These flowers will become berries soon. I’ve read that this is a poisonous plant but mostly it grows in swampy areas and not in the yard. The land slopes down around my yard and this Elderberry grows in that uncleared lot. I don’t pick the berries, but some people do and make jam, wine, and pies. Taking chances eating wild stuff is not my style. I would definitely need more information.
White Elderberry flowers
This magnolia tree is growing in the front yard of a house I pass on my morning walks. I have always loved magnolias. As I pass this house I can smell the aroma of the blooms. It’s got me thinking …. maybe a magnolia tree needs to live in my yard.
Flowering magnolia tree
The little palm tree pictured below is a new addition to my yard. It was growing next to the house near the walkway to the door. That location was ridiculous. It never got full sun, and if it had grown tall, it would have blocked the walkway to the front door.
So we dug it up and put it out in the yard where the croton planter used to be. When my crotons froze, and my son chopped up the stump it sat on, it became clear that something needed to be done.
I believe this is a Pygmy Date Palm and many houses in the neighborhood have them growing in their landscape. I’m hoping this one will grow nicely now that it’s out in the sun where palm trees should be (although I’ve read that this one can take shade). Once it grows taller it will be nice. A baby tree is growing out of the base.
Little palm tree moved to a better location
My son and I began a new garden bed along the front of the house. When I lived in New Hampshire I always put down newspapers to block the weeds and grass before adding dirt. I’m doing that here, but I’m not sure how well it will work with these Florida weeds and tough grass. I plan to write all about it on another post. Plants won’t go in until next Fall.
Getting the ground ready for a new garden
I hope you are having a good May wherever you live. In the northeast, May was a time for dealing with black flies but it also meant that vegetable planting time was just around the corner.
Many years ago when I began blogging I started a Google blog. It was difficult. I went to WordPress and found it much easier to understand, although I had a lot to learn.
Now WP has given us the Guttenberg blocks to use whenever we write a post. I hate it. I have a simple site, without wanting to deal with plug-ins or css or whatever people with experience use to “fix up” their blogs. I’m not a technology wizard, I just want to blog – quickly and without problems.
Now I will go to add a “block” and will have to add the block on top of the block I just wrote because no little “+” will appear where I want it.
Sometimes I will highlight something to make a link and the linking ability will show up right there – at other times it appears all the way at the top of the page! ( Learned how to fix this: uncheck “top toolbar” – use dropdown to access in the top right corner)
Twice now I have tried to schedule a page to post later and boom… it goes live.. right then! Why? I couldn’t tell you. Sometimes the entire right hand side with page settings completely goes away. I can’t make it come back.
Sometimes the “featured image” block doesn’t work. On one of my blogs I can never see the Preview of the page. I get an “Oops, that page can’t be found”.
Adding photos means add descriptions to the right of the page, but it isn’t saved in the media area, so it has to be done twice to the same image, if I want to save it in my media. And so on….
I’ve been writing using the stupid thing for a while now and I still hate it.
I think it makes double the work, triple the aggravation, and makes writing my blogs a lot less fun these days. I was doing fine with the old WP. Now every time I blog I feel like I am in a class where there is no teacher and I have to fend for myself to figure out how to create a decent blog page. A lot of the time I am winging it.
I know I can go back to the old editor, but if I do, and have to make changes on the page, it seems to want me to convert to the new editor. It’s all awful. For people like me, who just want to share their hobbies or local happenings, blogging shouldn’t be a chore. Now it is.
Today I wanted to make a peach pie. When I shopped at my local Publix, there were no peaches so I bought nectarines. I also bought some apples while I was there. Often the produce I buy at this store is not all that great, but I was hopeful.
So I mixed the flour, sugar and cinnamon and then went to cut the nectarines. They were hard and dry. I couldn’t use them. I had 3 apples. I thought maybe I can make a small apple pie instead. One apple was okay. One apple was partially brown inside and the other had only a small spot of brown. They did not look great, but I salvaged around 2 cups of slices. This was not enough for a decent pie so I wrapped the filling with one piece of dough and baked it that way.
My apple turnover concoction
Sometimes we must improvise. Since this was a total change in plans to begin with I used coconut flour, brown sugar (only a little), and some real maple syrup for the filling. I dotted it with butter and wrapped the filling with the bottom crust. I’ll freeze the other crust for a later time when maybe I can find some decent fruit.
Back to my title question. When I moved from Florida to New Hampshire one of the things I missed most was shopping at Publix. Since my return to the South, I have been quite disappointed in the stores. Things are different these days.
First of all, Publix stores are all different. Some are large, and some are set up similarly and some are confusing to me when I enter. But the most disappointing thing is the produce area. Only the New Smyrna store, on state road 44, had good produce. It has been under construction for many months now and I can only hope the produce there will remain good once it re-opens. My fingers are crossed.
October 2016, shopping for Hurricane Matthew at Publix in Deltona, Florida
Publix is still pretty good at getting you out the door fast. Usually every store I’ve shopped in opens registers when lines form. They were great when we were all shopping for the hurricanes (photo above)! The lines were long but every register was open.
When my kids were little that is what drew me in. I was willing to pay more for food (compared to Winn Dixie) to have a quick check out.
But my local store in Edgewater is disappointing. I’ve found food which is out of date. Right now I have a jar of fresh oysters in the fridge which is bulging at the top and bottom. The expiration date is 5 days away, but that container doesn’t look good. It looked fine when I bought it, but what’s up with it now? I don’t take risks with food so I won’t be eating oysters.
Oysters
My son often orders sliced meats and cheeses for pick up and has gotten the wrong cheese twice! It’s pre-sliced and wrapped, which is fast and easy, but when you get home you want to see that you have the correct item!
I do like the cashiers and baggers in Edgewater. They are friendly, talkative and mostly bag my groceries with care. I usually leave the store in a good mood even when shopping is not exactly a pleasure. The bakery is a nice area as well, although I try to avoid eating that type of food. Their Brioche loaf is amazing and I can’t pass it up.
For now I will stick to buying frozen fruit and vegetables whenever possible and continue to check expiration dates carefully. Hoping for happy shopping days ahead when the New Smyrna store opens this summer. Until then, I can’t help but wonder what has happened to Publix?
Hydrangeas Blue 