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| Red shouldered hawks |
After very hectic three weeks, finally I am able to come up for air a bit. 😊 In two lab courses, now I have assignments for the next 4 weeks. I still have to prepare weekly quizzes, but having labs ready is a big relief.
As my work load goes down, I had time to tend to the garden. I dug up sweet potatoes. It was a very satisfying experience. I didn't expect to have that many. Now I'm looking up sweet potato recipes. 😀 What is your favorite sweet potato dish?
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| Sprouts from a store bought sweet potato turned into a huge vine, and gave me a bunch of potatoes! |
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| Papaya |
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| Carrot & cauliflower soup (left), cannellini bean soup (right) |
My exercising routine completely disappeared. I really have to start exercising again, but I find one reason or another to postpone it. The latest excuse is crochet. I learned how to do a very basic granny square, and have been making squares without any plan for them. 😁 I still don't know how to change color, so the squares are all in solid light yellow.
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| Making granny squares |
Today is Mom's birthday. She is 69 years old now. Last night I called her because they are 9.5 hours ahead. I use Facebook Messenger to make video calls, so I changed the settings on my video to add stars and a crown on my head and sang happy birthday. It made her laugh. 😄
I'm not sure when I'll get to visit Mom and sisters again. COVID is spreading again in Sri Lanka, and there's no improvement here either. I really hope everything will be back to normal by next summer.
Take care everyone. Stay safe.
XXX
Nil
That must be hard not to get to see your mom and sister. It's a good thing you did all that traveling when you could. Excellent job on the granny square. It looks so neat and precise. Your gardening skills are impressive!
ReplyDeleteYes, Stephanie. I hope things will be back to normal sometime next year. I used to visit my family every 3 years or so when I was a poor grad student. So, being able to visit them every year has been a luxury.
DeleteI make a kind of 'hummus' but with roasted sweet potato instead of the chick peas, which upset my stomach.
ReplyDeleteThank you earthmotherwithin for the great idea. I love regular hummus and will try sweet potato version soon. :)
DeleteGlad to see you come up for air! :D Happy birthday to your mother! Tomorrow would have been my mother's birthday! Your garden is doing so well! Your sweet potato vine has done so much better than mine! All I can say is mine is still alive! It has about 25 leaves but hasn't flowered or formed any sweet potatoes or anything. The garden cats seem to like to sleep on it! My moringa plants lost all their leaves so I don't know what is happening with them, either! Your granny squares look good and you can sew them up into a shawl or a blanket after you are done. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Bless:)
DeleteI wonder why your sweet potato vine is not growing well. I never fertilized mine, and watered only when it started wilting. I'm a lazy gardener. For some reason, probably because of rain, it grew well. It was the white type, not the common orange type.
In cold months my moringa trees have spotty leaves and then lose leaves. They start growing again when the weather warms up. Is it cold in your area now?
I'm thinking of making granny squares in two more colors, and making a blanket. :) Not sure how ling it will take though.
Hello Nil, welcome back. You've been busy, and you're garden's looking so good. It must be really hard not to be able to see your family.....my son's partner is from Kolkatta and she's very worried she can't get the there to see her family.Hard for so many.
ReplyDeleteThank you Nanette :)
DeleteI hope your son's partner's family members are safe. COVID is really spreading in India.
I'm sad that you can't get to se your Mum but Happy Birthday to her and this will lift at some point.
ReplyDeleteThe photos are amazing!
xx
Thank you Joy. :)
DeleteThe papayas look so healthy, enjoy them! I like plain sweet potatoes, just microwaved or boiled, and then sliced with some butter and salt.
ReplyDeletePriscilla, I made baked sweet potatoes and had them with butter, salt and a bit of black pepper. It was really good. I wanted crispy skin. Next time I will microwave - it sounds much quicker. :)
DeleteWelcome back Nil. The crochet squares are looking good. I have no idea how to change colour though so you'll have to wait for someone cleverer than me to help you!
ReplyDeleteThank you Eileen.
DeleteOne of these days I need to learn how to change colors when crocheting. So far I have been making everything in solid colors. :)
Happy Birthday to your Mom, Nil. I'm glad you were able to make her laugh on her birthday. I cannot get over how loaded your papaya tree is! It is so neat. I hope your guava plant is very fruitful for you too. We made soup this week too as it's turned very cool here. I made a broccoli and carrot soup. Your soups look delicious. I hope you have a good week and am so glad to see you back posting.
ReplyDeleteThank you Belinda. :)
DeleteIf you lived nearby I'd give you several papayas. I have too many. :)
Broccoli and carrot soup sounds delicious. I could never get broccoli right in soups.
It is nice to read that you are finally able to get ahead of your obligations at work. I still cannot grasp how a lab class works remotely. Your crochet work looks perfect to me. So good to "see" you once again.
ReplyDeleteThank you Anita.
DeleteLabs are so difficult to do remotely. In one course we have a lab kit. It comes with labs, but they are too difficult for students, so we have to write our own. At least students have equipment.
In two other courses most labs are simulations, and I try to write labs so that at least some can be done with household materials. Next semester we plan to use lab kits for these courses as well, but kits are somewhat expensive for higher level courses.
We like just baked sweet potatoes with a dab of vegan butter most of the time... but we also like sweet potatoes cut into chunks, put into a baking dish, sprinkled with cinnamon, and just as they get done, toss some mini marshmallows on top to brown. That's a favorite dish of our family's for holidays! I think all of us want to travel to your house and have some of your soups now LOL! Be blessed, Nil! ❤️
ReplyDeleteDiana, I baked sweet potatoes and had them for lunch today with butter, salt and pepper. :) It's very good.
DeleteI also harvested sweet potatoes. My favorite things to do with them include hummus, lentil and sweet potato curry, and then just cutting them into cubes and roasting them. I also like sweet potato leaves and usually saute them with eggs for breakfast.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday to your mom... hopefully you'll get to go there and visit next summer.
Thank you for both sweet potato recipe ideas and for birthday wishes for Mom, Julie.
DeleteI never thought of adding sweet potato leaves to eggs! What a great idea. I like to add greens to my meals whenever possible.
I hope your classes are going well. :)
Welcome back Nil, it was so nice to find a new post with all the photos of your garden bounty. We really like sweet potatoes and roasted is a favorite way to serve them as a side dish and I like them mashed vs. white potatoes. You could also make sweet potato soup, which I have never tried. But this week I will be making butternut squash and also chicken soup as it's the season. Belated birthday wishes to your mom and hopefully you will be able to visit your family as we also miss seeing ours and they only live in various states.
ReplyDeleteThank you Beatrice. It's really hard for everyone not seeing their loved ones. I'm glad there are video chats though. A decade or so ago it would have been either letters or phone calls. I wonder if Skype was there a decade ago? I don't even remember. Technology is evolving so fast.
DeleteI like soups, so I will try sweet potato soup soon. I make butternut and carrot soup with a bit of coconut milk, and it's a really creamy soup. :)
looks like you have been cooking up a storm! sweet potato fries are a fave for me:) and i never knew you could eat the leaves. sad to hear about sri lanka's covid rates going up. when will it ever be over?
ReplyDeletetake care
sherry
I eat more when I’m at home Sherry. 😀 So I cook a lot, and my grocery bill is high after I started working from home.
DeleteNil, I was thinking the other day that you had missed your annual trip to see your family. Hopefully next year will be better.i often make sweet potato chips.
ReplyDeleteYes, Chel. I had plans to attend a friend’s wedding in India, and a school reunion in New York as well. Everything changed because of this pandemic. 😔
DeleteHi Nil, I love the potatoe, sweet or otherwise. I have started a sweet potatoe in water, and in the spring, I hope to plant some slips. They are supposed to be very good for us. Your crochet project is coming along nicely. Solid colors are "usually" my choice. Sometimes the pattern gets lost if the yarn is varigated. But it works lovely for trims, or if you just don't care about the stitch pattern.
ReplyDeleteFaith, I'm sure your sweet potatoes will grow well. I find it they are easy to grow. :)
DeleteI make a soup with a cooked sweet potato and I use a chunky salsa with it.( recipe on my blog) I love using my pressure cooker for soup too. All your photos are great and it must be fun to eat the food you grow. It is sad that you can't see your family because of Covid..
ReplyDeleteJudee, I will check your blog for the salsa recipe. Thank you.
DeleteI've been eating lot of sweet potatoes lately. :)
It is so hard to be away from family, Nil, and even more so when we worry about them being safe and staying well. I hope the time when you can see your family comes sooner than seems possible right now.
ReplyDeleteI adore sweet potatoes. I love them roasted, in salads and even make a chocolate cake with them too! Meg🤗
Sweet potato chocolate cake? That's something completely new to me! Sounds delicious. I love anything with dark chocolate. :)
DeleteNil,
ReplyDeleteI've only come up for air now and this was a great post to read. It's wonderful to see how much living you're doing now that work has eased a wee bit for you. The produce from your garden is amazing and I can imagine how happy that must make you. Off and on, I do buy us some Japanese sweet potatoes. We just boil and eat them and the simplicity of it is a real treat. We can't have them more often as they are very expensive. We can hardly get any papayas for ourselves as the wild monkeys that sometimes roam the neighbourhoods often beat us to it and it is frustrating for my husband especially since he's the one trying to grow them. We grew beans again and the vines yielded a bountiful harvest which has helped a lot on busy days.
I'm sorry you can't make that trip home, Nil. I enjoyed reading about your trip home the last time. It looks like life is going to take a long time to get back to what it was before - if it ever does, that is.
We're watching the US elections closely. We're not Americans but in our hearts, we have already voted too. How crazy is that?!!
Caitlynne,
DeleteI looked up Japanese sweet potato and Google says they are more nutritious than regular sweet potatoes. I've never had any.
I'm sorry to hear about the wild money problem. My parents had the same problem several years ago. A group of monkeys used to come to the yard often and destroy everything. They even broke a part of the roof by jumping on it. After neighbors started cutting trees and building houses closer to each other, monkeys stopped coming.
I wonder if you could cover papaya with some type of mesh. My mom covers fruit with cloth to protect from squirrels, but I think monkeys are smarter than squirrels. :)
I tried growing beans many times, but aphids destroyed everything.
I think most around the word are watching the US election. Some of my Australian friends even watch the debates live. Hehee I can't blame them wanting to amuse themselves.
I will suggest the mesh to my husband; it might get us at least 1 papaya! The monkeys are roaming our neighbourhoods because their natural habitats close by have been encroached upon - logging, plantations etc. People's greed sure have no bounds. For that, we have to tolerate the damage they inflict on our gardens. And oh yes, I know all about their roof-jumping antics too - that can scare the liver out of me, I tell you.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry beans didn't work out for you, Nil. I wonder if there are any old farmer remedies you could try? The aphids kept out of our bean patch but they live at will in our roses and gardenias!
I hope November brings us all some good news. Everyone needs it.