WEEKLY MENU 08.27.23
The Weekly Menu 08.27.23 is the last menu of August, and we’re talking about sunflowers in commemoration~
It’s a little hard to believe that the Weekly Menu 08.27.23 is the last one for this August, but there it is. Next weekend is Labor Day already! As we’ve waxed poetic before, we don’t have anyone going back to school this year, but we’re still at the effective end of summer. I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready for it to be over for many reasons, but one of them is that our farming is not complete yet!
I’m not going to lie – we are far from professionals at this growing things from seed business, Bert being the Plant Whisperer notwithstanding. As we discussed in the Weekly Menu 04.23.23, we were willing to give it a try with something easy – sunflowers.
The beautiful sunflower is also the star of the Weekly Menu 08.28.22, not coincidentally, and there are some really neat things about them there. My favorite is that they follow the sun. I really wanted to see that. I love pink, and ordered some pink sunflower seeds from Etsy. We planted them when we deemed us past the last frost.
And we waited.
Nothing happened. Around that time, we noticed that there were a ton of bunnies in the back yard. They were scrawny, but really plentiful. And not too worried about us being in their place. They frolicked, ran around chasing each other, and, we presumed, ate the seeds I was so excited about. Bert, being the plant whisperer, did not take that lightly. He bought three new packets of seeds, and planted them. He was already in charge of watering, so he took the lack of any shoots (at all) personally.
Shockingly (not so much, really) we pretty quickly saw that the dirt was disturbed, yet again. So Bert took action: he bought three more packets of seeds and two good sized jars of cayenne pepper.
Cue villain sounds and hand gestures.
Finally – after a solid 8 days of waiting and applying cayenne pepper copiously, we had shoots! I looked them up on Farmer Google to confirm, and we had a brief moment of joy, followed by even more cayenne pepper sprinkling.
Bert was sitting outside one evening, and realized that the seed-eating culprit wasn’t the bunnies after all – it was the chipmunks that live in the downspout! (Yeah – I probably wouldn’t set up house there either, but they apparently like a roof over their heads, rain showers be damned.) The cayenne was doing it’s job though, and although I would have liked to see some chipmunk sneezes, they took dinner elsewhere.
The problem? Three plantings put us behind a bit. We see actual sunflowers all over town, but in our backyard, we are still growing. Growing fast, but I’m not sure if we’ll see flowers before fall takes over. Here’s where we are now:
They are about 4 feet tall, and they actually have buds, although you can’t see them. I’m not sure we’re going to have to harvest the seeds, but I am holding out hope.
Weekly Menu 08.27.23
We don’t have any seeds yet, but when we do, I might make this recipe: Healthy Sunflower Seed Brittle. I do think it would take me a while to peel all those seeds. I also don’t know how “healthy” a recipe is with two full cups of sweetener, but it sure would be tasty.
The Weekly Menu 08.27.23 starts us out with a repeat (and requested) main course in the Unstuffed Spicy Tomato Basil Shells with Whipped Ricotta. We loved it the first time we made it, and tried the fabulous whipped ricotta with Chicken Fra Diavolo a few weeks later. The less creamy original recipe was deemed a better match for the whipped ricotta. (Affiliate links follow, see Disclaimer Page for details.) The Chicken Fra was delicious, but the ricotta made it too rich.
The whipped ricotta was ridiculously easy: I used the chopping cup on our stick hand blender and it worked a charm. We also have the Magic Bullet, which would have worked fabulously too.
We’re starting the Labor Day Weekend on Friday with a “Bring Your Own Lobster Dinner” for a fun outdoor picnic. Fingers crossed that the weather cooperates. A friend of mine said that this has been the “Septemberyish” August ever. Which is so true!
