Easter eggs and Eggbake!

Easter is always a great time for family and fun.

Our family has a great tradition of extravagant Easter hunts. This year we ended up everywhere from an Arcade (where we had to earn at least 500 points to get our next clue), to a Cajun/Creole lunch stop. It was a great hunt this year, as always. Skee Ball is a favorite of SisX's!

Another tradition is dying Easter eggs. Even though we are in our 20's we still like to color and embellish the eggs, then we make them into deviled eggs for the guys to devour.






I picked up an egg kit to make "Monster Eggs" and another for "Mustache Eggs." Check out the super cute results below!




Another superstar for the weekend was a couple of Breakfast Eggbakes I made.
This was only my second time attempting a breakfast casserole like this, and I was modifying the recipe so I was kind of nervous about it.

Overnight Sausage or Bacon Eggbake:
- 2 1/2 to 3 cups seasoned croutons
- 1 lb. spicy pork sausage (or bacon)
- 6 or 7 eggs
- 2 cups milk
- 1 can cream of mushroom soup
- 10 oz. frozen, chopped spinach (thawed and squeezed of all water)
- 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 cup shredded monterrey jack cheese
- 1/4 tsp. dry, ground mustard

1. Grease 9x13 pan with butter
2. Spread croutons on the bottom
3. Cook and crumble sausage (or bacon) on top of croutons
4. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining ingredients
5. Pour over the top of the croutons and sausage
6. Level, cover, and refrigerate overnight
7. The next morning, preheat oven to 325 (deg F) and bake for 50-55 min
8. Insert toothpick to make sure it is cooked all the way through
9. Let sit 5 min to solidify
10. Serve, and graciously accept praise 

I also made a vegetarian option, which was a combination of a couple of recipes...

Overnight Veggie Eggbake:
- 2 1/2 to 3 cups seasoned croutons
- 2-3 cans of artichoke hearts (drained and roughly chopped)
- 4-5 med. garlic cloves, diced
- 1/2 cup green onions, diced
- 6 or 7 eggs
- 2 cups milk
- 1 can cream of mushroom soup
- 10 oz. frozen, chopped spinach (thawed and squeezed of all water)
- 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 cup shredded monterrey jack cheese
- 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 Tbs dried thyme
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp dried parsley
- 1/4 tsp pepper
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp. dry, ground mustard

1. Grease 9x13 pan with butter
2. Spread croutons on the bottom
3. Chop and spread artichoke hearts over croutons
4. Saute` garlic and green onions until fragrant (about 5 min?)
4. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining ingredients and add garlic/onion mix
5. Pour over the top of the croutons and artichokes
6. Level, cover, and refrigerate overnight
7. The next morning, preheat oven to 325 (deg F) and bake for 50-55 min
8. Insert toothpick to make sure it is cooked all the way through
9. Let sit 5 min to solidify
10. Serve, and graciously accept praise

I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of the egg bakes, but they disappeared so quick! Besides... casseroles aren't meant to look good, just taste good!

Planting Peas!

This always happens... I bought the wrong type of seeds.
Well, I did and I didn't. I wanted sugar snap peas, but I didn't do my research.

Having never grown sugar snap peas before, I didn't realized they were a vine rather than a bush. Oops.

So I quickly improvised a support structure with materials I had on hand. A couple poles and some chicken wire later, and we have a passable pea support. Whew, that was a close one!

Since peas are a spring crop I went ahead and planted them when we had a week of 40-50 degree weather. It seemed like Spring was finally on it's way!

Eva was very helpful as usual, trying to lick my face as I was trying to get a few photos, so she usually gets captured in the pictures.

Here you can see the improvised pea support, and the furrow I dug to plant the seeds. As I was planting, I spilled a few seeds and Eva was kind enough to swoop in and clean up my mess, crunching on a dried pea seed before I scooped up the rest. (Oy!)
She always keeps a close eye on what I'm doing!


Eva has been loving "Spring" and has chased after a couple more rabbits. So far they have evaded her by scooting under the fence just in time. I can't decide if I actually want her to catch them. It would mean no more rabbits eating my garden, but on the other hand I don't want her killing things and I would have to clean it up. Either way I don't want them around, so I have done my best to fix the hole in the fence and fill in their burrows under our shed. I kind of feel like Mr. McGregor from Peter Rabbit....

Anyway, the shallots (left) and garlic (below) have sprouted! They are 4-6" tall already, but I keep straw around them to *try* and protect them from the frosts.








I just sprinkled some Nitrogen-rich fertilizer to help them produce more leaves. More nitrogen = more leaves = more energy from the sun = larger bulbs! But you don't want to apply that kind of fertilizer past the first week of May because then the plant will focus on growing leaves instead of tasty bulbs.


... then the next day it snowed. Ah well, that is the life of gardening in April.

Seedling light

When we re-did the master closet, we ended up replacing the florescent light because it didn't have a cover. Well, I have re-purposed it, using only scrap materials from my basement!

Please note: This project contains minor electrical work. Do NOT attempt any electrical projects unless you are 100% confident in what you are doing! (Even then you may want to have someone else who is 100% confident looking over your shoulder!)

What I needed was a light for my seedlings. New seeds planted need a lot of light, and if they don't get it they become "leggy." No, they don't grow legs... they become long, and scraggly. (See here for a picture) Basically, they are using all of their energy, trying to stretch and get closer to the light. This causes long, narrow, and weak stems. 
The biggest way to prevent leggy seedlings is to provide them plenty of light, and maybe even a little breeze.

Ok, so what kind of light and how much? Florescent, and as much as possible!
Why florescent? Because it's cool! No, literally... it is a cooler temperature than incandescent bulbs. The light needs to be placed just 1 to 3 inches away from the plants, so if the bulb is too hot your seedlings will be toast!

Ok, Eva's bored with this... onto the project:

Using some scrap wood from the basement I built a basic frame structure to hang the light from. I even found some light-fixture chain left over from the previous owner. I looped it over so it could be adjustable as the seedlings grow. I was rather proud of it... until DH (Dear Husband) said it looked like a torture device.  :(

Eh, he has a point... but it is tough to make a utilitarian, industrial light stand look pretty.

Originally it was mounted to, and wired directly into the ceiling. Obviously I can't just stick the exposed wires into the wall socket, so I needed to connect it to a plug.
I was fearing that I would have to deconstruct an extension cord, but believe it or not they actually sell exactly what I needed... one end with a prong plug, and the other with the exposed wires! Perfect!

Ok, here is what you don't want to do unless you know EXACTLY what you are doing. There are three wires sticking out of the cord: a black (positive), a white (neutral/negative), and green (ground).

So I connect the white and black wires on the cord, to the white and black wires on the light. Check.
Then I connected the green wire to the copper "ground" wire I attached to the light.
I used "heat shrink tubing" to insulate all the connections and keep them together. Basically it is a fancy plastic/rubber sleeve you put over the exposed wires, then heat it up so it shrinks into place.Now no wires can touch that aren't supposed to!






Then the big moment... plug it in, and pray it doesn't explode!
Kidding... (mostly)

It works!
Don't worry, inspector Eva is on the job making sure everything is up to muster. Now I can get on with planting Spring seeds!

Germinate!

Why would I buy seeds when I have some from last year?
Turns out that the longer a seed sits in storage, the less likely it is to germinate. Yep, seeds have a shelf-life too.

All seeds have a different germination rate (the % that will sprout if they are all planted). A type of seed may start out with an 80-90% germination rate, but if you keep them a year that could drop to 50%. You can still use them, you just need to plant twice as many as you normally would. Some seeds are just more difficult to get going (like rosemary) and those are easier just to buy as young plants.

So how do I tell if my seeds are still viable? Plant them of course! Well, sort of.
I didn't want to get them confused with one another, so I created a "grid" of sorts to keep the seeds of different types separate. I drew out the grid on a piece of paper so I knew which seeds were what kind.

Here is a great example:
I had two different types of green beans from last year. (FYI, I failed miserably at trying to grow them last year... multiple times.)
This type of bean did pretty well with 4/5 seeds sprouting, making it an 80% germination rate.

The other type? ALL of the beans turned to icky mush that started to mold. Ewww. No wonder I couldn't grow anything with those!
This is just a perfect example of why you want to test your seeds and buy just the new ones you need!

Oh! I also promised to share when my Amaryllis bloomed... here it is! This year it had 4 flowers all at once and really brightened up the dining room. It came quite a long way from the albino plant I pulled out of the basement!