Pickled Carrots and Onions

A friend has been asking if I can make the pickled carrots that they serve in Mexican restaurants, so this weekend I gave it a shot.  I used this recipe from Food.com.  I haven't had these carrots myself, so I'll have to wait to see what my friend thinks!

Since I was pickling, I decided to also try making sweet pickled onions like some I had last summer.  I used this recipe from Heather Christo, and they turned out great!  I was very tempted to eat the entire jar when I opened them this afternoon ...

Please note - these have been jarred, but not processed.

Cold Frame - Spring 2014

I know a lot of people have been wondering how everything in the cold frame survived this brutal winter.  We had temperatures as low as -20 F, and I was a bit worried about what was in the cold frame.  I was afraid to even open it to see, but on a warm (read: 2 degrees) day, I checked it out, and everything looked great!  We even finished up the lettuce on one of the single-digit days.

You're probably thinking to yourself, "what on earth are those newspapers?"  Well, I was trying to preserve my cabbage.  FYI - it didn't work.  Once the weather warmed up (read: 10 degrees), I chucked them in the compost.

Here's the coldframe today! 

I have garlic coming up that I planted back in November and spinach, lettuce, and radicchio that was planted in early March.  It was supposed to go in in February, but it was just too darn cold to be out there!  The rosemary lasted really well over the winter; this is the first time it's lived more than one season!  I have to transplant it back into the garden proper.

However, some little animal of some sort has gotten in there, as I found a hole as well as droppings.  Except ... I have looked all over the Internet, and I can't identify who the droppings belong to.  Nothing was eaten, though, and I removed the scat so that it wouldn't contaminate the garden.  But ... I need to figure out what was in there!