Tag / calamansi

by princesshotflash

My Citrus Nursery

After a watering

Haha! In my dreams. I’ve been raising variety of citrus from seeds since last year. It’s always fun to see the seeds germinate and the tiny leaves to into little leaves and then move into little pots then to the next size.

  • germinating seeds
  • tiny leaves sprouting
in my mom’s kitchen

First of my trees are from my mom’s calamansi and kumquat trees. And I have variety of miniature calamansi from our neighbor, blood oranges that bought from Kokua market, Meyer lemons from my sister and local lemons, one from a miniature tree.

Top row l to r: Mom’s plants with (a bad slug); Middle row l to r: kumquat, mini calamansi, calamansi; Bottom row l to r: empty pot, mini calamansi 3x (the last pot on the right is a survivor of a slug attack)
my cherished blood oranges

Not sure what I’m going to do with all of these little trees but a few of them will move along to our new house once we find it. And who knows how long these trees will take to fruit. The process is fun.

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by princesshotflash

Mom said

“I want you to take a picture of my irises in the back. They are in bloom.”

Irises

Mom wanted the 2 buds in the shot
close up
other bunch

And like a good daughter, I took the pictures. Yes, pictures. I even took more than one. The crazy daughter I am, I took pictures of the flowers in the back. And yes, the irises are beautiful but there are other beauties back there, too.

Orchid

Not sure what these are called but they are quite striking.

Joe McGyver

Can’t be in the backyard with seeing a gadget that my dad, Joe McGyver, made up. This is a papaya picker when they had a very tall papaya tree. Made with items around the house. Now hidden by the calamansi tree.

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hand woven wire basket

Speaking about calamansi, that was the whole reason for being in the back yard, to pick and prune the calamansi. I got out the rickety wooden ladder and climbed up to prune the branches that were leaning into the neighbors yard and one that were too high for use to reach. I did cut away a few branches with flowers on it. Oops! Mom thought the pruning would help the tree produce more fruit. Not that we need more.

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our bounty

Here’s our small papaya tree with fruit on it. Mom said that it isn’t really doing well and not sure if the fruit will do well.

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More flowers

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Akulikuli came to mom’s garden by way of Uncle Robert. She is always getting plants from him. This flower in made into leis–beautiful pink lei. I got on from for my HS graduation many moons ago.

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Anthurium patch with this unusual bloom. Kind of a plum color not your usual red.

 

by princesshotflash

A Backyard Interlude

Just a little interlude between my baking and jamming for the holidays.

My parent’s backyard is a combination of dad’s workshop (what is left of it), mom’s flowers, fruits, and veggie garden. It’s a mish-mosh of mom crazy plant collection combined with dad’s McGyver skills of the gardening ware of plant hangers, cement tiles handmade by dad, and many kinds of pots, handmade, recycled and store-bought.

Dad’s workshop and old projects

Dad’s MacGyver Rotisserie for his hulihuli chickens
love these oil cans
Popular Mechanic project
old metal chests fill with what left of dad’s workshop

Greenhouse

potting bench
homemade trellis
plants in the greenhouse
multi-tier plantings
anthurium plants
love the transition from light green to light pink

Citrus

Morning harvest of Calamansi
Calamansi tree
fruit on the tree
Kumquat
papaya with flowers
green eggplant
beet seedling
waiting for the lettuce
kale plant from my Uncle Herman garden

 

by princesshotflash

What I want to make : two

Since I got back haven’t had a chance to cook or back. One, lazy and still not in sync with my work schedule and living schedule. Two, it’s too hot and humid for me. I’m just melting. But I need to start and suck up being a sweaty mess.

Meals for Mom and Dad

Looking for meals that I can cook for my folks. A few food restrictions to adjust to–Diabetic and blood thinner. I think they need a bit of more spice in their diet. I’ll try a couple of the meals I made for friends in the past year: Fish Stew and Spicy Lentil soup

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The Fish Stew I made for the Hawaii girls

I want to try out some new recipes but it’s so hot in the afternoon. I decided to use mom’s crock pot while awaiting the arrival of my favorite kitchen appliance–my electric pressure cooker. Thought chili in a crock pot would be easy and plentiful so we can share what we made with a few of mom’s friends. Found this recipe that I’d like to try https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2017/01/11/slow-cooker-taco-spice-chili/. I like this recipe because it has sweet potato, corn, and black beans with an added bonus of quinoa. I’ll think I’ll try it this week.

Jamming

I’d like to try out that mango jam recipe again but I think I missed mango season. I will just have to make what in season or what my parents want to have. First up, Kiwi Apple jam as requested by my mom. It’s her favorite.  I’ve been making this recipe so long that it kind of morph into my own. I’m having my parents do the prep on the kiwi and apple and I’ll do cooking up.

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The spices make this jam-cinnamon, ginger, and clove

I’m also getting some Calamansi limes from a friend so I think I can make up a lime curd soon. Calamansi is a little lime with orange inside. It’s tart and fragrant. I use  Ina Garten recipe that I’ve made 100s of time change out the flavor from lime to lilikoi to grapefruit to raspberry. Just a slight adjustment to the sugar depending on how sweet the fruit is. I think adding the zest of the citrus makes the jam taste so good. This is mom’s favorite. I love the grapefruit and turn into a grapefruit curd tart.

Sweet Breads

My parents like a little snack in the evening. I always had bananas in my freezer so I could whip up a smoothie or a loaf of banana bread on short notice. Here it’s a little different. No bananas in the freezer because they eat almost every day. Also, they eat apple bananas which are firmer and tastier. Not sure how it will influence the texture but flavor will be great. Might need to look for another type of sweet bread. Carrot? Zucchini? Hmm. Need to think about it.

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chocolate marbled banana bread. Delicious

Here’s one that I made this year. Everyone liked it. And it looked great. A smittenkitchen recipe.