Sunday, December 19, 2010

Garden 2011 Plan

I broke down this morning and sketched out my garden for next summer. I've already received four seed catalogs (two of them came before Thanksgiving). Seed catalogs are kind of like Christmas decorations at Hobby Lobby: they come earlier every year!

When I say I "sketched" my garden, it really means I drew it in AutoCAD. I'm a nerd. But it's easier than drawing it on graph paper. I already have my 2009 and 2010 garden in CAD so it's just a matter of copying over the bed layouts and rearranging the plant spread circles.

According to the drawing, next year I will have:
8 tomatoes (so hard to only have 8!)
18 peppers and eggplant (This is difficult too!)

So now I have to decide which varieties to plant.... I have leftover seed from last year that I will re-use. Black Cherry, Amish Paste, Thessaloniki and Cour di Bue tomatoes. Several types of peppers and eggplant. Before I know it I will need to start my seeds!

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Christmas Cookie Baking

I thought I should make some notes about cookie baking as I think this is what I will do for the menfolk presents unless I hear they dislike cookies.
This year I bought cookie boxes instead of the bags I used last year and decided to give everyone an assortment instead of all one type of cookie.
I made one batch each of chocolate toffee shortbread (from Farmgirl Fare's blog), chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin (both from Grandma Ettling) and chocolate crinkles. This was for six boxes of cookies (Gabe, Dad, Daniel, Troylee, Collin, Tom).

I used:
butter (2 boxes)
leftover bag of powdered sugar
flour (about half a bag)
white sugar (about half a bag)
brown sugar (about half a bag)
quick oats (about half a canister)
eggs (a dozen)
vanilla (about 1 oz.)
bag of toffee bits
baking chocolate (half a box)
raisins (about half a bag)
Plus the other odds and ends necessary for baking such as baking powder, baking soda and salt, but I always have those on hand and didn't feel the need to count them.
I was prepared to make white chocolate chip/pecan and peanut butter cookies but had enough.

For future reference,
Chocolate chip 6 dozen
shortbread 2 dozen
oatmeal raisin 3 dozen
chocolate crinkles 3 dozen
It should also be noted that I use a cookie scooper that is 1 1/2 Tbsp so I have consistently sized cookies.

There are about 2 dozen cookies in each box.
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