Its Freezing Outside... so its a Basement Project Day.

A month or so ago I lifted up the edge of the vinyl flooring I put down in the back room of the basement where we put the dogs when we have to be gone for a while.  It wasn't pretty...  Rest of the flooring I put in down there were the snap together plastic tiles that are marketed for garages.  They work great in that they sit up off the floor so there is air circulation under them, and some of them are actually vented - in areas where I have water supply in case of spillage.  But I didn't want to use those back there for the dogs cause there are cracks... so if by chance they had an accident and didn't do it on the potty pads we put down for them...  pee seeps into the cement and dries up - nasty!  So my thought was a solid piece of vinyl - worked great, except didnt think about the floor being damp in the humid months under there... so guess what I found when I lifted it up last month.....mold.   Yet another new project was added on my list!  So I hit the drawing board (aka Google) to find solutions to my problem.  Still needed to use the vinyl - but I needed it to breath under the flooring.

Half of the floor flipped back and cleaned off.

First thing was I had to remove everything from the one side of the room to start.  I pulled back and flipped it over the other half of the room.  With my spray bottle of bleach water and roll of paper towels I was ready for combat!  I sprayed everything down good - let it stand for 10mins and wiped all the nastiness off.  Now some of it wasn't mold but effervescence as I did seal it with a Radon sealer before I did the flooring so the sealant pushes up lime and stuff as it reacts in the cement.  I repeated this 3 times waiting each time after spraying to let the bleach react and kill any mold spores.

What the part I haven't got to looks like...  blah!  The white is just mineral deposits tho - nothing bad,
but the darker stuff is mold. 

I also sprayed down the cement good with bleach as well, I'm letting that just soak in, once I have the flooring all cleaned and dried I will roll it up then move it out of there.  Once that is done I can rinse the floor with clean water (luckily there is a floor drain in the room) and will repeat with more bleach water and scrub it and rinse and let dry for a few days with fans blowing over it.  I used a tidy-cat bucket to throw away the dirty wet paper towels since it has a snappy lid to keep it sealed. 

My Supplies - this is that other flooring used in the other part of the basement.

 I found a company in Canada called SuperSeal who make a whole bunch of dimpled materials - some that you may have seen on TV if you are like me and watch HGTV/DIY channels - larger version of this is used on the outside of basement walls to waterproof and create channels for the water to run down thru.   They sent me samples and when I was ready to buy I went back on their website (www.superseal.ca) and they advertised that they now sell some of their products at Menards - PERFECT!  So I went and purchased a roll couple weeks ago and today just seemed like a great day to start on the project.

Tried to get photo so be able to see the dimples on both
sides of it allowing the cement and the vinyl floor to breath.

Once I get the floor all dried out I will lay out this subflooring down and then put the vinyl flooring back on top of it.  I'll keep an eye on it but I think this should allow enough ventilation of the cement to keep this from happening again.  This product will also probably make the floor a little softer to walk on as well and maybe keep the floor warmer for the dogs since it has the air space as insulation from the cold cement floor.  

I couldn't end this post without a gardening update....  Many of my peppers are getting their 1st set of real leaves.  Peppers do grow slowly so happy they get an early start in the basement.  Have a few varieties tho that have yet to germinate - one being the new variety I was most excited to try - not sure what the dealio is - will have to try to start some more and see if I have better luck this time.  

I have a massive case of Spring Fever!!!

.....and the only medication is planting some seeds!!!  I started a tray of 23 different varieties of peppers on 2/3/2013.  Not every variety has germinated, but I have a good amount of baby pepper plants!  Its so much fun to go down to the basement daily and check to see what has changed.  I have set up my time lapse camera which is taking a photo once a day, so I'll create a video from that in a month or so.  Here is some photos of the peppers as they are today (2/12/13).

About 75% of these are hot peppers.  =)  My gardening friends on Your Garden Show didn't
nickname me "Pepper Queen" for nothing last year...  have to work hard to keep my title!!

These are bell peppers - King of the North (green ones on right) and Black Hungarian (darker one on left)
King of the North is supposed to be a great heirloom for us Northern pepper growers.

Love this macro lens photo of the Lemon Drop hot pepper.

My seed purchases this year came from 2 sources:  the D. Landreth Seed company which is THE oldest seed company in the US (1794!) and almost went out of business so was doing my part to help keep a part of American Gardening history alive (www.landrethseeds.com).

Landreth seed order

My biggest seed order was my fav Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co.  (www.rareseeds.com), their annual seed catalog is gardeners heaven... and a great coffee table book with all the great photography of rare varieties in it. 

Baker Creek seed order

  

Today was a nice sunny day with high temp of about 40, so walked around outside trying to find signs of Spring - which is 35 days away!

Tulips

Columbine starting to show new growth!

Lilacs budding out.

Forsythia buds

Narcissus/Daffodil  and Glory-of-the-Snow in the back

Weeping Pussy Willow has catkins already

 

Chives coming back by the back door

Sedum starting to pop their heads out.

The next project I will have on my hands is to add wooden sides to the rest of my garden beds.   I will be removing more wood panels from the red barn to use, hopefully that will give me enough so I don't have to buy more boards.   Its still really wet right now, so will have to put down lots of newspaper in the paths if I try to start digging the sides.  I need to thrown on some cover crop seeds (oats & field peas) for the beds that will have the later planted crops like peppers and tomatoes.  

2 beds have the sides, 7 more beds to go...

The celery made it thru this winter with flying colors in the cold frame!!  I had chopped it all down to the ground so it actually grew quick a bit in there!

I was super happy that I had no issues with the winds taking off
the tops of the cold frame, surprised actually!

Found one of last years oregano plants made it thru the winter without any protection!

Wish I could say that the rest of the winter would be nice and sunny with temps in the 40's like today, but I know better.... in fact I wouldn't be surprised if we still get more snow (grh).  But seeing the changes in things outside make me know Spring is indeed near, and I can't wait to be busy working in my yard till its dark out with lots of dirt under my nails!  Its the time of year I look forward to the most!  The rebirth of things that once looked dead, and even more so, the rebirth of my soul. 

Peppers Peppers Everywhere!

This weekend was all about using up some peppers before they started to go bad out in the garden.  One bad thing about having a garden so big is not having the amount of time needed this time of year to get everything used up, and I HATE to waste!

Saturday I spent the day making some homemade pasta sauce to be later used with stuffed peppers.  I turned out great but needed about 24 hrs straight of simmering to get thick enough.  I used my victorio strainer to process the tomatoes - its so awesome.  You don't have to blanch and remove and skins, and all that you are left with is seeds and skins.   I strained the meat/juice coming out so the sauce would start out thicker than normal.  The juice I boiled to make homemade tomato juice. 

Future sauce....

Straining....

Out of all the maters, this is the only waste... skins and seeds.

Once I got the sauce started, it was time for poppers...  and boy did I forget how long these things take!  The longest (and most tedious) is halving and deseeding all the peppers!  I have found that using a grapefruit spoon is the best tool for deseeding!

Lots of peppers...

At least it looked like I was having fun... with sexy rubber gloves and all!

My assembly line... 
halved peppers, then cheese filling, then egg, then crushed cornflakes. 

The final product... oh so so yummy!!

I made 6 cookie sheets full - at that point I ran out of the cheese filling ingredients.  We bought more the next day (and actually that is what I will be working on when I'm done writing up this blog).  I didn't finish the poppers till 1am with cleanup & such.

Recipe is (I normally do a double or triple batch).  I think even with single batch you need more than 15 peppers...

Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 (8 ounce) package shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 15 fresh jalapeno peppers, halved lengthwise and seeded
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 tablespoon milk
• 1 1/2 cups crushed corn flake cereal

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a medium baking sheet.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together cream cheese, sharp Cheddar cheese and mayonnaise. Stuff jalapeno halves with the mixture.
3. Whisk together eggs and milk in a small bowl. Place crushed corn flake cereal in a separate small bowl.
4. Dip each stuffed jalapeno half into the egg and milk mixture, then roll in corn flake cereal to coat.
5. Arrange in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet. Bake in the preheated oven 30 minutes, or until filling is bubbly and lightly browned.

Sunday morning I started out making some hot sauce.  I started with a Jalapeno hot sauce using the green jalapenos that were too thin or short to be really good for poppers.

Sauteing with the onions and garlic.

After they were doing cooking for 20mins with water.  Water is pretty much gone at the end.

After blending it all up and added the vinegar.

ready to give away as gifts...

I doubled this recipe as well since I had so many I needed to use up.  I fill 4 1/2 pint jars which I canned/sealed - one left over not completely full that we just put in the frig to use now.

Ingredients

    1 teaspoon vegetable oil
    20 fresh jalapeno peppers, sliced
    3 cloves garlic, minced
    1/2 cup minced onion
    3/4 teaspoon salt
    2 cups water
    1 cup distilled white vinegar

Directions

    In a medium glass or enamel lined sauce pan over high heat, combine oil, peppers, garlic, onion and salt; saute for 4 minutes. Add the water and cook for 20 minutes, stirring often. Remove from heat and allow mixture to cool to room temperature.
    Transfer the mixture to a food processor and puree until smooth. With the processor running, slowly add the vinegar.

Next I made stuffed bell peppers to freeze for winter.  I was searching for a different way to make them this time (vegetarian recipe) and came across a couple that we want to try.  I was gonna do one batch of one, and another of the other - but after making the 1st batch I had so much stuffing left over that I just did all 17 peppers with the one recipe.  Was super easy and oh so good!

Peppers fresh out of the oven!

We made some mashed potatoes from the garden potatoes to go with dinner... you can't eat stuffed peppers without mashed potatoes... I think its a law or something!

Dinner was so good!  We even added some of the 1st hot sauce to the taters & pepper!
The pasta sauce turned out wonderfully as well!

The recipe for these peppers is:

Ingredients

• 1 cup uncooked white rice
• 1 (15 ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 4 green bell peppers
• 16 slices Swiss cheese
• 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. In a saucepan bring 2 cups water to a boil. Add rice and stir. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
3. Combine cooked rice with black beans and chili powder. Cut the tops off of the peppers and remove the ribs and seeds. Spoon about 2 tablespoons of the rice and bean mixture into the bottoms of the peppers. Lay a slice of cheese on top and repeat 3 more times, ending with cheese on top.
4. Bake in preheated oven until peppers soften, about 45 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, heat tomato sauce in a small saucepan over low to medium heat. Slice peppers in half, top with tomato sauce and serve. 

The 2nd hot sauce I made was with the red jalapenos.  This one I have sitting in my frig in a quart jar now with a note for me to remember to strain on Sept 25th.  

 

This last one just looked so perfect... reminded me of the Chili's restaurant logo

After it cooked and cooled down...  right before I blended it.

recipe for this one is:

Homemade Tabasco Style Hot Sauce Recipe

Because the chiles are not aged in oak barrels for three years, this will be only a rough approximation of the famous McIlhenny product. You will have to grow your own tabasco peppers or substitute dried ones that have been rehydrated. Other small, hot, fresh red chiles can also be substituted for the tabascos.

1 pound fresh red tabasco chiles, chopped
2 cups distilled white vinegar
2 teaspoons salt

Combine the chiles and the vinegar in a saucepan and heat. Stir in the salt and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, cool, and place in a blender. Puree until smooth and place in a glass jar. Allow to steep for 2 weeks in the refrigerator. Remove, strain the sauce, and adjust the consistency by adding more vinegar if necessary.

Now with all these peppers cooking in the kitchen - it sometimes got a little hard to breathe in there... I think Alexander was trying to save himself....

I was gonna also make hot sauce with the serrano peppers today as well - but just ran out of time.  Luckily I hadn't picked them yet.  Wanted to make sure I used up the jalapenos since they were all picked already.  I'll have to make that sauce something later this week.