Hello everyone! First an update on the garden.
I got a new tomato plant, and there are a lot of tomatoes coming in. But the first couple that I picked were rotten on the bottom.
I was able to cut the rotting bottoms off, but it didn’t give me much tomato to work with. I looked online, and I found that it is called blossom end rot. There are a couple of causes for this, one of which is inconsistent watering. I bought the tomato as a plant instead of growing it from seeds, so I don’t know the history. Another cause is too much nitrogen. I have been feeding my vegetables with a nitrogen-rich fertilizer, so I cut that out for the tomatoes. The new crop seems to be doing much better, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
My cucumbers are disappointing as well. The blossoms look great, and I get a little baby cucumber about 2 inches long, then it shrivels up and dies. I read up on this as well online. There are both male and female flowers on each cucumber plant, and being in the lanai, the female flowers aren’t getting pollinated due to the lack of bees and other bugs. I tried manually pollinating the flowers, so we’ll see what happens.
I had lost my initial radish crop, probably due to overcrowding and lack of sun, but I had a lot of seeds left, so I tried putting them in a separate container. They look really lovely, and they should be ready to pick in a week or so.
My peppers are also ready to pick, but they look so pretty on the bush, I’m letting them hang around longer than I should. Other than that, we’ve had steamed beans and a ton of salads, so the garden is really paying off.
But now back to the kitchen. My husband had to go out of town on business for a few days, and I hate to cook for myself, however I do love Mexican food, and my Serrano peppers needed to be used, so I had a couple of nights of quesadillas. My quesadillas are flour tortillas filled with gooey melted cheese and anything else I have in the house. A lot of people add cooked chicken or beef to the quesadilla, but I prefer the cheese alone. You can use corn tortillas, if you prefer, but I find them to be a little heavy. I went out to the garden for the pepper, kale and tomato (this is when I discovered the blossom end rot, but there was enough tomato left after cutting off the bottoms to use for the quesadilla). The peppers were pretty spicy hot, so if you want to cut down on the heat, remove the seeds before adding them to the quesadilla. You can also substitute a less hot pepper, such as a poblano, which is really tasty without adding extra heat. Quesadillas are incredibly quick and easy to make, very economical and delicious to eat. Here is the recipe I used:
Quesadilla
Ingredients:
1 flour tortilla
Sharp cheddar cheese, grated
½ Serrano pepper, chopped
Tomato, chopped
Kale leaf, chopped
Instructions:
Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat. Put the tortilla into the skillet and flip it over every few seconds to heat it up. Once it gets good and hot, it will puff a bit as pockets of air form within the tortilla. These puffs will start to brown quickly.
Sprinkle the grated cheese over the tortilla. As it melts, sprinkle the pepper, kale and tomato over half of the melting cheese. Fold the half of the tortilla with just the cheese on it over the half with the pepper, kale and tomato, just like an omelet. Remove from the pan, and it’s done!
If you are using this as an appetizer, or if you are sharing, you can cut it into 4 wedges (I like to use a pizza cutter when cutting). I must admit that when I’m alone, I just pick it up and eat away.
