Please help our neighborhood!

Tell City Commissioners “NO” to Sale of Northwest Park
(Time is of the essence. The City’s budget workshop is July 1, 2008.)

City of Tallahassee Commissioners are holding a budget workshop July 1, and the NW Park is again on the chopping block.

The NW Park is a 78-acre parcel owned by the City of Tallahassee and is bordered by Fred George Road on the north, Mission Road on the west, Settler’s Creek neighborhood to the south, and Settler’s Springs neighborhood to the east. The NW Park was purchased by the City in 1995 from Susan Cavanaugh to satisfy the need for active park facilities in this area and to meet commitments from previous annexations in this quadrant.

The site included adequate land for the construction of a stormwater facility to accommodate runoff from the Mission Road widening project, as well as future park amenities. To date, only the stormwater pond has been constructed.

In 2005, the City attempted to sell the NW Park to a private developer to build multi-family residences on the site. Fortunately, citizens in this area, as well as folks from the Sierra Club and the Tallahassee Council of Neighborhood Associations, put together a grassroots campaign that convinced the City Commission to not sell the land. Construction was slated to begin in 2009, but now the City wants to sell the NW Park AGAIN.

The northwest quadrant of the city is densely populated with young families, and is severely lacking in park facilities.

Unless you get involved, it is likely that that the NW Park will be sold to meet short-term budget shortfalls. However, the loss of the NW Park is forever.

Please contact your City Commissioners either through e-mail or telephone calls to let them know that you oppose the sale of our promised NW Park for multi-family residential development, which will leave us with more children with no city park.

Please forward this message to anyone you think is interested in saving the NW Park, and email the City Commissioners to: CityComis@talgov.com or 891-2000.

Easy Peasy Cakey Cookies

Hi there! Today is Wednesday even though I've been wishing it was Friday all day long. Summer makes me not want to work. I feel like I should be at the beach/pool/park/movies/anywhere that isn't an office. Oh well, what can you do? Come home and do fun things, that's what. My fun thing tonight was baking some cookies. These are amazingly easy and can use whatever you have around the kitchen. Tonight I used walnuts but any kind of candy, dried fruit or nut should work just fine. So without further adieu:

Easy Peasy Cakey Cookies
1 box of any kind of cake mix (tonight I used butter cake)
1/3 cup of oil
2 eggs
1 TBS-ish cocoa powder
A handful of nuts/chocolates/dried fruit/pretty much anything good in cookies

Bake at 350 degrees for about 10-12 minutes and let them cool on racks. Things really don't get much easier than that!



Oh, and I dusted them with a bit of extra cocoa powder. These cookies are tasted, tested, and approved by Joe.

Peter Piper Picked A Peck

Of these guys! Today I pickled a couple of batches of banana peppers. I used my Aunt Karen's recipe so they should be delish! Also, today I pulled out all my cucumber plans (they were mostly done producing) and put in okra and white eggplant. I also shifted around some of the herbs since it's getting quite crowded in the herb box. I'm planning on pickling some cucumbers later this week, since I have about a million (and we don't want them to go to waste!). So stay tuned for more canning, pickling and preserving!

Aunt Karen's Pickled Peppers
Lots of tasty peppers, I used banana peppers
4 cups vinegar
2 cups water
1 tsp salt per mason jar
1/4 tsp garlic powder per mason jar (I also added some fresh sliced garlic)
1/8 tsp alum

Sterilize your mason jars-I boiled them, though I know some people just run them through the dishwasher. Bring the vinegar and water to a boil. In the meantime, fill your jars with the peppers, salt, alum and garlic. Pour the vinegar mixture into the jars until there is only about a 1/4 inch from the top. Screw the lids on real tight and let the jars hang out on the counter. The lids should pop, letting you know they're sealed. It's okay if they don't pop, that just means you have to refridgerate them.

And here they are:


Tasty and delicious!

Yummo Rye Bread

Oh no, can't talk, in the middle of reading two books for a test on Tuesday, yuck. Here's the bread I made for dinner on Friday (Friday was German night: bratwursts, sauerkraut, potato salad and rye bread.) Very tasty and very easy, I got the recipe from :
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/004274georges_light_rye_bread.php

This recipe makes two tasty loaves, one I made with caraway seeds and one without.





Back to the books!

El Jardin

Cucumbers galore! We've got tons and tons and tons. Our garden is so very happy! Here are a few pictures:



Main bed: Cucumbers, onions, banana peppers, green bell peppers, cayenne peppers, and patio tomatoes


Herb garden: Valerian, sweet basil, mint, rosemary, greek oregano, lemon thyme, dill, chamomile, lemon balm and chives


The plant birthing room, currently seeding zinnias, flax, sunflowers and marigolds

Quick Caraway Bread

Sure is tasty! This morning Mom and I toured UF's Agricultural Extension Office (which just a fancy way of saying a very large garden) and I got a native blueberry plant! I look forward to eating the tasty berries next spring. Joe put a hammock in the back yard. We ripped out a bunch of poison ivy. I seeded/planted a bunch new flowers AND a new hot pepper! What a terribly productive Saturday! Since it's getting pretty toasty outside we've retired to the relative cool of our un-airconditioned house to read and try a new bread recipe:

Quick Caraway Bread (courtesy of The Friends of Prince Memorial Library Cumberland, Maine)

1 1/2 cups flour
1 TBS baking powder
1/4 cup plus 1 TBS sugar
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
2 TBS caraway seeds
a pinch of salt


Combine first three ingredients, cut in the butter. Add additional ingredients and combine (not too much, though!) Bake at 350 for 30ish minutes. How easy is that? I'll be revisiting this recipe with some fresh dill in the future.

Yummo!


Sliced and buttered!

Reaping the benefits...

Of our wonderful garden! Tonight's dinner was 2/3 things we grew! Stuffed banana peppers, polenta with bacon and motzarella and a cucumber wasabi salad.

Look at all these banana peppers! These are just from the last two days! Holy smokes!


And a giant cucumber!


And the final products:


Stuffed Banana Peppers:
Bread crumbs
Boca (or beef, sausage, chorrizo, whatever!)
Yellow onion
Sage
Celery
Salt and pepper
Banana peppers

Finely chop and saute the suffing ingredients, carefully core your peppers and discard seeds. Stuff the peppers and bake at 450 for 15-ish minutes. Yummo!