Falafel Recipe

I recently harvested a good amount of parsley and now I need a recipe that calls for it. I have four bags of parsley (and more in the garden) and I would hate to just use it as a garnish.

One recipe that I've found that uses a lot of parsley is falafel. Conveniently, I have a book here at home titled "Great Tastes Vegetarian" published by Bay Books in 2009. I got it at Borders for $3.99. I wanted to get into more vegetarian dishes--I'm interested.

On page 33 there's a recipe called "Falafel With Tahini Yoghurt Dressing." Sound good? Yes. So I'm going to try it. It calls for five, that's right, five handfulls of parsley and to me that's fantastic. I need to use this parsley up or it'll go to waste.

Problem: there are two ingredients that don't really quite look familiar. The first is Greek-style yoghurt. By the way, I don't spell yogurt with an "h" that's how it is in the book. And the second is tahini.

Turns out that both of these ingredients I may have to make at home if I can't find it at the store. Lovely, right? So I have recipes within a recipe.

Well, I'm going to get started on my recipes within a recipe.

Fire Resistant Garden

Recently I learned that Novato Fire District 63 has done something that I think is really cool--they planted a fire resistant garden. Most gardens need to be watered almost every day, but Garden Project Manager Forest Blue explains there are plants that are drought friendly and there are ways you can put together a fire resistant garden. Of course all things will eventually burn; however, certain plants are less flamable than others. I'm really considering traveling to Novato just to see the garden.

Parsley Flowering

Earlier this year I purchased two parsley plants to grow in my garden. I read somewhere that it is great for attracting benneficial creatures. To my surprise they have grown quite a bit since the day I purchased them. Further, the parsley plant has grown what looks to be flowers at the tip of these really thick stems.

On the internet I have found several discussions in regard to these flowers. Apparently, it is best to cut the flower stems off as the continued growth will cause the parsley to taste bitter. I've already done this in the Spring, but the flowers have grown ten fold since then. I wonder when the flowering period will cease.

Introduction

Well, this is it! I'm obsessed with gardening and am on a journey to learn as much as I can about plants. The internet has been such a great help so far and I want to be able to contribute.

Most of what I'll be doing here is reporting my findings on the plants that I grow. I may include a project or two that involves constructing a rain barrel, for example.

One of my bigger goals is to reduce waste and spending as much as I can (i.e. my rain barrel project I hope to conquer).

Anyway, hope you have a good day. I'm going to get started now as I am eager to begin.