Big Long HUGE List of #ALA2013 #Authors in Chicago: Better Late Than Never!

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The Beekeeping Librarian will continue to have posts, photos, and resources pertaining to gardening, urban homesteading, beekeeping, and cooking. Library-specific posts and things for librarians can be found at the new site.  

Did I Mention I Was Impressed by the Salt Lake City Library? @SLCPL

This post has been moved to a new location at melodycondron.com.

The Beekeeping Librarian will continue to have posts, photos, and resources pertaining to gardening, urban homesteading, beekeeping, and cooking. Library-specific posts and things for librarians can be found at the new site.  

OMG It's May (Not Ready)

It's May & I am planting things, as well as buying fresh local produce at the farmer's market. Wonderful, right? Well, yes, but it also means that I am feeling GUILTY that I still have vegetables frozen and stored from last year. I am on a mad dash, or at least a motivated saunter, to eat what is left.


I planned to make a quiche this weekend and noticed I still have bags of shredded zucchini in the freezer. Shredded zucchini quiche... why not? I decided to add half of a fleshy heirloom tomato that I had not finished, plus some of the tiny garlic that I had pulled out from the garden and some fresh basil from the plants I have not put outside yet. Add shredded provolone and feta (because those are the cheeses I had on hand), and suddenly I had an Italian-style quiche. For the custard I used a basic 3 eggs, 1 cup of milk, 3 tablespoons of flour, and a dash each of salt and dry mustard (45 minutes at 375F). It was delicious!

Before & after:

And here's what I did last week with the last of the acorn squash. Stuffed acorn squash is one of my favorite things in the world. I had fresh herbs from the garden already and it was delicious--the squash was still very sweet. I was so impressed they lasted the whole winter.

A few more squash and a little more shredded zucchini to go. I should make muffins.

The Garden Year Begins!

 

 The Waukesha Community Garden - first week of April 2013.

 

 First hops shoots of the season: all four plants are up as of the first week of April.

 

My community garden plot: 20'x35'~ish.

Montana Library Association, April 17-20 in Missoula, MT! #MLA2013

This post has been moved to a new location at melodycondron.com.

The Beekeeping Librarian will continue to have posts, photos, and resources pertaining to gardening, urban homesteading, beekeeping, and cooking. Library-specific posts and things for librarians can be found at the new site. 

ALA Midwinter Seattle Dining Planner! @alamw13 #alamw13 #alamw #vegetarian #travel

This post has been moved to a new location at melodycondron.com.

The Beekeeping Librarian will continue to have posts, photos, and resources pertaining to gardening, urban homesteading, beekeeping, and cooking. Library-specific posts and things for librarians can be found at the new site. 

A big, linked list of #authors at #alamw13 : Who Shall I see?

This post has been moved to a new location at melodycondron.com.

The Beekeeping Librarian will continue to have posts, photos, and resources pertaining to gardening, urban homesteading, beekeeping, and cooking. Library-specific posts and things for librarians can be found at the new site. 

2012 Year End & Winter Reads

It has been a long year: with two gardens, a full-time job and starting graduate school I have not found much time for blogging. I am also on the Montana Book Award committee, which has kept me from reading my mainstays of gardening, alternative architecture, brain research, and cooking books. While I cannot comment on nominated award books until after judging in February, I can tell you that Montana has a lot of fantastic writing coming out right now! I am pleasantly surprised at the variety of subject-matter, especially since it will contribute nicely to my Dewey Lunatic Project.

At present, the books I am reading over the winter that aren't award nominees are short and/or related to function more than enjoyment. I won't bore you with the travel guides I have out for ALA Midwinter in Seattle (although you can expect a Seattle-planning post some time soon). Here's a list of some other things I have been reading:

Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn - The author of previous favorites Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter and the absolutely awesome Shelter, Kahn's books are always full of beautiful pictures of alternative building projects that make me so envious I could die. Tiny Homes is no exception. Kahn's Shelter may be the book that got me interested in alternative architecture in the first place when I first acquired it as a teenager. Tiny Homes would have done the same thing, had it existed. An oversize format, back stories of the architects and builders, and, again, fantastic photos of fantastic tiny homes all over the nation made me skip the library and go straight to buying this one. 

Imitations by Robert Lowell - Ah, poetry. It is what you can read when you don't have much time and just need a little bit of something (hopefully) good. I re-read Imitations recently since I am a fan of confessional poetry and had not picked it up for a while. Perhaps because it is a re-read or perhaps because I am older, I don't feel like Lowell has the same impact as he once did. Some of the poems feel inaccessible and impersonal, unlike Plath and Sexton who still blow me away with their deeply personal work. It was good to re-read, though. I particularly enjoy the poem, The Landlord.

In progress: Urban Pantry: Tips & Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable & Seasonal Kitchen by Amy Pennington - Small and short, I picked this book up from the library and was pleased with its brevity and functionality. It is mainly a short cookbook, but it focuses on using the ingredients you often keep in the pantry along with seasonal eating opportunities. A lot of the recipes are basic and some are preserving recipes. I also enjoyed the tips on what should be in your pantry, since I always feel like I am one ingredient short of the meal I am trying to make. I will say, though, that her suggestions in the "Wine, Vinegar & Booze" section ask for more than I am likely to provide since cognac is not usually on my shopping list. The other lists seem more reasonable. Or maybe I should start cooking with more cognac?

Just Started: The First Twenty Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer by Gretchen Reynolds - Recommended by my mother, I am intrigued by Reynolds' coverage on exercise research and what that means for working out correctly. Like The Science of Yoga, which I read earlier this year, I like knowing what the research says so that I am making good choices with my workouts.

End of a Long, Great Summer

I have been lax in writing, because I have been gardening two gardens all summer. I have also just started graduate school (MLS). Busy times, and I can barely keep up!

Here are some photos of this year's two gardens.

And here are some of the highlights & info from the garden:

• The Waukesha Community Garden grew very well, and having a water system on a timer worked out since I could not guarantee when I could get to the garden. I ran the timer every other morning at 4 a.m. for two hours, rain or shine. 
• The three sisters squash/corn/beans worked okay. The squash are all huge and they love it, and the beans, too. The corn struggled. That may be the corn variety, the fact that the starts and seeds I planted all struggled early on (wind and harsh sun). Also, the beans and squash do drag them down a little. So, the corn are a little straggly and not as tall as the neighboring plots'.
• Pinto beans did fantastic at the Waukesha, but the cowpeas never flowered and so never seeded. 
• Oil sunflowers (two varieties) are all 8' - 10' tall and doing fantastic.
• Quinoa and amaranth were difficult to know when to pick. Amaranth has been picked, quinoa is still there and I hope to catch it before it drops. From everything I have read, it is not ready--the seeds are not hard enough. But we are quickly approaching the end of the season!
• At the home garden, yellow pear tomatoes and Tess's land currant tomatoes were the clear leaders--both are small tomatoes and were extremely prolific. 
• As always, summer squash ran gangbusters at both gardens and I have loaves or zucchini bread in the freezer next to bags and bags of shredded summer squash.

Saving Seeds by Robert Gough

The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds: 322 Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, Flowers, Trees, and Shrubs by Robert Gough

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What a helpful book on seed saving! Seeds of change is still my go-to, but this book have a concise description of seed-saving practices for most plants you might want, and it includes ranges for how far you need to keep plants from similar varieties to maintain the lineage. Very helpful, and also nicely laid out.



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