Autore: Bee Happy

Finally our banana plant has found the right spot to grow: in between 2 olive trees, sheltered from the wind but in full sun. It did take us a while finding the best place  but now that we found it, the banana is growing fast. Normally it takes about 9 months to grow up and produce a bunch of bananas. What about that! This would mean next year we’ll be having some bananas 🙂 . As they do best when planted in groups rather than as single specimens hopefully around the base of this one, soon we’ll see some little baby plants pop-up. 

This way Tarzan & Jane of Pellegrino can swing through their jungle of banana plants and olive trees harvesting the bananas necessary for preparing a delicious banana bread 😉 

• Heat the oven to 175°C. Grease a 23 x 12.5-cm loaf pan with butter or line with parchment paper.
• In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
• In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the mashed bananas and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture until combined.  Do not overmix.
• In a bowl mix half of the cake batter together with the Nutella.
• Spoon the plain batter and Nutella batter alternately into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for about 50 minutes. Test whether the bread is cooked, when a cake tester comes out clean the banana bread is cooked. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for about 10 minutes, then remove the loaf from the pan and set on the wire rack to cool completely.
• Enjoy!

Our eggplants are growing great, 3 weeks ago the plants began to flower now little fruits are appearing. I didn’t know that an eggplant is actually a very tender perennial grown as an annual. For that reason I hope we can save the plants for next year. The eggplant is a member of the nightshade (Solanaceae) family to it is akin to the potato, tomato as well as the tomatillo and chayote. Although the eggplant is used as a vegetable it is really a fruit. The English actually gave the fruit the name of “eggplant” referring one one varieties shape which was similar to an egg. In a large part of Europe the eggplant is referred to as an “aubergine” and Italy it is called melanzana.

As it is almost Ferragosto we’re busy planning a family evening around the fire pit with in addition the use of the outdoor wood oven. Next to some focaccie for sure grilled eggplant will be on the menu. This time I want to try the recipe below to see of it really will come off crispy brown on the outside, creamy sweet on the inside, and full of flavor.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons fine sea salt (plus more for sprinkling)
• 250 ml warm water
• 2 liters of cold water
• 3 medium eggplants
• olive oil

Preparation:

• In a large bowl, dissolve the 2 tablespoons of salt in 250 ml of warm water; stir until the salt is fully dissolved. Add 2 liters of cold water. Set aside.
• Cut the eggplant into slices (either diagonal, crosswise, or lengthwise).
• Place the slices in the salted water. Weigh them down with an upside-down plate, and let soak for at least 30 minutes or up to an hour.
• Drain the eggplant and pat it dry with paper towels or a clean kitchen towel.
• Lay the slices on a large baking sheet or tray. Brush one side with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.
• Place the slices with the oiled side into the wood oven for about 5 minutes. Take out of the oven.
• Brush the top sides of the slices with oil and sprinkle them with salt. Turn the slices over, back into the oven and cook until the eggplant is very tender; about 5 more minutes.

Recipe: thespruceeats.com

It’s the time of year that peaches are in season. Originated in China the fruit arrived in Rome in the first century AD. The fruit had already spread throughout the Mediterranean Sea basin thanks to Alexander the Great. This very popular and delicious stone fruit, what a collective name for various fruits with a hard stone pit, is like apricots in season from May to August.

At this moment one of our fridges seems to turn into a nursery for seeds. The “babies”, 5 apricot seeds and 8 peach seeds, are sleeping in their beds covered with soil. 

Next spring I’ll wake them up and hopefully they will grow fast. Let’s wait and see if this method of David the Good works 🙂 .

Next spring sounds a long way off, but before you know it the time has come. For that reason we’re kicking off a ‘Daily Special Deals’ series, starting 23 August 2020. Don’t miss out the opportunity to grab a holiday bargain!

 

Lavender and bees are very good friends! Bees love lavender in bloom, so having some lavender plants in your garden and let them bloom as long as they want, will result in bees saying ‘thank you’ . You’re helping them in their ‘mission’ to sustain their hive and produce honey.

That’s why we had our lavender bloom. But their comes a time the lavenderplants needs to be cut back. Cutting back the flowers isn’t that difficult as you can see Jane Edmanson explain in the video.

This morning I took my pruning scissors. For a moment my thoughts wandered back in time. A couple of years ago we had a wonderful lavender in the garden of Lamia Pellegrino which needed to be cut back. Not that difficult!? Long story short: the plant didn’t survive 🙁 The good thing of the whole story is that I learned a lot of my mistake. We now have 2  great looking plants and about 8 little ones to be planted this autumn along the lane we’re constructing.

I started cutting back the lavender flowers that had bloomed. The smell is fantastic! I’ll be using the flowerbuds for this year’s lavender soap. A quick calculation tells me that, from preparing the lavender infused olive oil to making the soap, the bars will be ready for use around november/december. So just in time for Christmas! Thinking about Christmas: there’s hardly any chance that Santa is going to skip the delivery of Christmas gifts for those who will spend their Christmas at Lamia Pellegrino 😉 . 

 

Do you know how much fruit one eggplant aproximately produces? In case you don’t, neither did we at the time we bought “some” plants. After putting them in the ground, I was curious to learn more about this vegetable so I decided to do some research. If I had only done that before buying them! Our plants are doing great, by now they start to show us some amazing flowers. It still takes a while before we can enjoy our own grown eggplants but when the time comes and everything goes the way it’s supposed to go, we’ll be having a lot of eggplants. One plant will hopefully give us about 5 pieces of fruit and we’ve got 100 plants so you can do the math 😉 . Maybe it’s time to think about building a little stall so we can sell some of our naturally grown eggplants 😉 . To be continued!