Monday--

The snow the weather people promised has come in and right now it looks like we got about 2.5 inches. The skies are supposed to clear a bit before the next round comes in late tonight or early tomorrow and the temps are supposed to go back up to unseasonal levels.

Busy morning so far. Mixed up some sourdough starter which is now on top of the freezer catching what ever wild yeast and lactobacilli might be floating around. The last time I used sourdough starter my recipe called for using yeast to start it. All the sources I found so far said "No, no, no!! That isn't real sourdough." So I thought I would try their way and see where it goes. I cut an empty gallon juice jug to form a micro-mini greenhouse. I can't use the covers of the seed starter because my labels are too tall but I think some of the spinach could use a moister environment. One of the lemon verbena is showing some new leaf buds. When those come out I will trim it back a bit. I cut back my pot of oregano a couple of weeks ago and checked out the sprigs I put on a plate in layers alternating with paper towels. Both my dehydrators are stored for the winter. I simply don't have the room to leave them up in the slack season. But this worked very well. I stripped the stalks of the dried leaves and chopped them in the Ninja. After that I decided to try putting the dried egg shells through the Ninja as well and it worked very nicely. Normally I put the dried egg shells into the compost barrel but the Ninja made a nice pile of chopped shells that will go very nicely in the gardens straight away.