Over the weekend I found myself having to slow down and take it easy more than I really cared to. It seems the pesky head cold I recently got over decided to settle in my left ear and by Friday night I was dealing with a fever and quite a painful earache. And I thought only children get earaches! Ha! This one sure did force me to take it easy. As of today I am feeling quite a bit better thanks to some needed downtime as well as some homemade herbal preparations.

Nearly every year I make an herbal oil out of mullein flowers, garlic, and calendula flowers. Who knew this year I would be the one needing the oil! { For some great info on making herbal infused oils be sure to check out this post found on the Mountain Rose Herbs blog.}

Throughout the weekend I placed 3 drops of my oil in my ear four times a day. I really should be treating both ears but am not (hope I do not regret this.) Within about 24 hours of using my herbal eardrops I noticed a significant difference in my ear. I am going to continue the drops for a few more days to make sure everything clears up well.

I should add that as well as using the herbal eardrops I have also been drinking large quantities of liquid which includes herbal teas made from anise seed, thyme leaves, elder flowers, lemon balm, and echinacea root. All of these herbs are good for congestion as well as the immune system. I know the earache stems from congestion building up so it is very important that I focus on ridding myself of it. On top of all of this I have also upped my Vitamin C intake to also help support my immune system (which has obviously taken a beating this year!)

I intentionally moved at a slower pace all weekend to force rest upon myself. This has not been an easy thing for me to do lately as there has just been so many things piling up needing my attention. I tried to focus on my knitting and spinning. I finally got back to work on Ariella’s sweater and made some progress on it. I also got a little bit caught up on my reading that I have fallen way behind on. And I was finally able to finish spinning up this yarn that I have been desperately trying to get around to finishing.

Isn’t it pretty? It is 4 ounces/210 yards worth of superwash BFL that I dyed with cochineal prior to spinning it. I decided to 2 ply it and am glad I did for it looks so lovely. It is about a sport weight and I am thinking it might make a really lovely pair of fingerless mitts. I so badly need a pair of fingerless mitts! My hands are always so cold. It seems I am always knitting some for everyone else, now I think it is time I knit myself a pair!

Hope everyone is well and healthy. Are you as anxious for spring to get here as I am?

XoXo, Cynthia

The other night I made our first real meal from the garden for this growing season and let me tell you it was so good! Some of you may remember that I planted a ridiculously large amount of garlic last year. (What can I say? We really like garlic in this house.) Well, all that garlic has been busy producing scapes. A scape is the technical name for the flower stalk that garlic will produce. It is important to remove the scape to encourage the garlic to put its energy towards growing the bulb- not a flower.

A few days ago I went out to the garlic patch armed with a basket prepared to snap off all those garlic scapes that were twisting and turning in a strange way towards the sun. I knew exactly what I was going to do with them too.

While blog surfing one night I came across the most delicious sounding recipe using garlic scapes. I was incredibly excited too seeing that I had so many scapes to try and figure out what to do with. The recipe was for a super simple garlic scape pesto. I just used the recipe as a guide and pretty much did my own thing. You can find the original recipe at the always hunger provoking blog, In the Kitchen and on the Road with Dorie.

What I did was roughly chop a large handful of my freshly plucked garlic scapes- probably around 30 or so. They went into my food processor along with 1 cup of slivered almonds and roughly 1 cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese. I then turned on the food processor and let it chop up those three ingredients. Then I gradually added about 1 ¼ cups extra virgin olive oil while the machine was still running. Once the olive oil was nice and mixed in I tossed the pesto with some just cooked and still hot pasta.

This was by far one of the best dishes I have made in awhile. Everyone devoured it and was sad to see it gone. My husband called it our once a year dinner and declared it extra special because the garlic scapes are here and then they are gone. They do not keep producing like tomatoes do. One must truly savor this dish as you will not see it again until next year.

Now that we have had our first official meal from the garden I cannot wait for the zucchinis, beans, tomatoes, corn….I am getting hungry as I type!

Prior to making the garlic scape pesto I had really only thought to use the scapes in stir fries or salads. This recipe really opened some doors for me when it comes to using them in dishes. Have you found any interesting uses for garlic scapes? If so I would love to hear about them.

About two weeks ago I finally got around to planting the garlic I ordered and posted about a few months back. I ended up enlisting the help of my 9 year old son and together we got it knocked out fairly quickly. We actually had a lot of fun planting it together and it makes me laugh when I think about how reluctant he was about it all at first. By the time we were through planting all 3 varieties of garlic he was ready to plant a little patch of his own. I ended up ordering a little more than I actually had room for so I told him he could plant a few in a pot for himself.

Even though we only planted the nice big cloves to ensure nice big heads of garlic I still had more than enough for my 75 square feet that I set aside just for garlic. Some of you might remember me writing about planting two cover crops of buckwheat just for this planting of garlic I had planned.

I am impressed with the results of my cover cropping for this little patch of garden. This spot is part of an area that was turned into a veggie garden just this year and the area set aside for the garlic only had the cover crop of buckwheat growing in it all spring and summer. Before planting the garlic my son and I cultivated the soil a little to help loosen it up and make it easier to plant the cloves. I was so pleased to see just how much more organic matter this soil now contains. It looked as though I had just mixed in a large amount of compost! Now, if only the buckwheat could turn rocks into soil then I would be all set! (The rocks in this veggie garden are infuriating! I usually use a bulb planting tool to plant garlic but that was impossible to use with the amount of rocks in the soil. In fact I am a little concerned how this insanely rocky soil is going to affect my crop of garlic.)

Planting only the nice large sized cloves left me with lots of little mediocre cloves. I suppose we will just eat some of them but I thought it might be kind of fun to plant a few of them in a pot and grow them indoors this winter. The greens are edible and can be used to top baked potatoes, soups, etc. In fact I have so many left I might just pot some up and give them to friends and family for a little gift.

You won’t be finding any vampires around this house anytime soon!