October Beauty Project and the PERFECT Tea-Time Treat!

Good morning, everyone. I'm so happy to see you again, and I hope you are all doing well. It is a gorgeous fall day here today. The air is crisp. The leaves are changing color. Some of the leaves are already falling from the trees. Anyway, it's a good day to be outdoors, and that's a good thing because I need to get started cleaning up my herb garden. I also have some other home beautification projects I want to tackle, one of which is making a flower arrangement for the parlor. And as a reward for the work, you and I are going to make some delicious granola cookies that we can enjoy for afternoon tea. So let's get started on the herb garden. Now I know these petunia hanging baskets are definitely finished. So I'm going to put these in my basket over here and I'm going to chop up the roots and the stems and this will all become gorgeous nutrient-dense compost that I can use in next year's garden. Another petunia. I hope where you live your weather is as nice as mine is today. As I said earlier, there's no humidity. I mean, the air is crisp. This is my kind of weather. This geranium is also finished for the season. In it goes. I'm cutting up the stems so that they compost more easily. The smaller the pieces are, the easier they decompose, or I should say the faster they decompose. And I have some zinnias over here in a pot, they are definitely finished. These were dwarf zinnias that performed shockingly well during the summer. I just had to remember to keep them watered. And I have another petunia over here, but it's still blooming, so I'm going to let it keep going a little longer. And we can put this in the compost right now. I'm going to try to do this without making a great big mess. Be careful, Avery. You're getting dirt all over you. Let's see if I can pour this. Now we can start removing some of the plant matter from these beds. For instance, these collard greens, I've enjoyed them, but right now they are, well, they've been skeletonized by insects. And the stems are like tree trunks. I'm going to chop this up over here on the table. Now so far I'm only adding nitrogen to my composter. I will have to add some carbon and a good source of carbon is like paper or newspaper or cardboard and definitely autumn leaves. Let me know if you compost at your home. I know there are these nifty kitchen composters. They're electric, and they're also, I think they're called worm composters. There's a lot of different composters on the market, but do let me know if you are into composting. I may need a chainsaw for this. Unfortunately, I do not own a chainsaw. Let me see if I can pull this whole plant up. No. Boy, collard greens are like trees. delicious trees. I like to cook the leaves in my instant pot with a little chicken stock, salt and pepper. They're so delicious. I'm getting some good exercise today. I'm very happy with how rapidly this material decomposes in this rotating composter. I come out every day or maybe every other day, and I give it five good spins. And that keeps air in the mix. And air, or airflow, is an important component of making compost. Now, I have some celery over here that had some kind of fungus on it, so I'm going to pull up the plants, but I'm not going to compost them. So the infected celery that I just pulled will not go into my composter. I'm going to take this somewhere else. Next, I need to deal with all of this basil. Now, I've already preserved a ton of these leaves, so I don't need any additional basil right now. Plus, the plants have gone to seed. Oh, and I see some beautiful, right, bell peppers in here, yay! That's a nice surprise. I also see a great big weed growing in here. Now, my composter is full, so I'm going to go ahead and chop up this basil and just leave it in this basket until the other stuff we put in the composter has broken down. That won't take but a week or two, and then I can add the basil. Or, if I can afford it, I will buy another Sun Joe composter. Now, I'm going to leave all of my chives here because they are still in good shape. They can take a few hard frosts, but before winter spells their end, I will cut all of them down and turn them into glorious chive pesto. It's one of my favorite things. I need to grab a basket because we have some bell peppers and some jalapeno peppers to harvest. Oh no, perfectly ripe bell pepper that some insect got into. This will go in the compost. How do you look? You look gorgeous. This is a keeper. Then I have some green peppers you can add. Peppers perform really well for me this year. What do we have on you? Anything to keep? Just some teeny tiny peppers and one pepper that's already rotting. This can go in here. Now this plant has some perfectly usable green peppers, so we are keeping them. More good-sized bell peppers. It's too late in the season for these peppers to ripen to red, so I will just use them as green. And some big, well this one's been bitten into. This one is gorgeous. Oh, wow. Holy cow. Look at these. These are great. Well, this was a surprise harvest. These are the romaine plants that you and I started from seeds. I sowed the seeds much too thickly, and then they were shaded out by the bell peppers. So now they can have some sunlight and hopefully reach their full adult potential. And then, And finally, I have jalapeno peppers. Ooh, and I see one more bell pepper in here, too. I sure planted a lot of bell peppers. So these are jalapenos, many of which have fully ripened to red. Here's another bell pepper. And someone once told me that if a jalapeno ripens to red, that it will be, like, super hot. but then someone else told me that's not true. So what say you? Well, the red peppers that I harvested here all feel really soft, so I'm not going to keep them. Look at all of the red ones, but these are not soft. Well, I think I am going to gift these perfectly ripe, perfectly firm red jalapenos to someone who likes, well, to someone who loves jalapenos, both mild and hot. So the nice thing about jalapeno peppers is that you do not have to blanch them. You can simply pop them whole into a Ziploc bag and freeze them and then use them whenever you need jalapeno peppers. And that's what I'm going to do with some of mine. The green ones I will keep, the red ones I'm going to gift. Well this turned out to be a larger project than I anticipated and it had one very pleasant surprise, all of the peppers. So this completes phase one of my herb garden cleanup. Phase two, for phase two, I will cut back all of the lavender and I will harvest the carrots, or I might leave them in that bed to overwinter. I had great success with that last year. and I will harvest the chives and the parsley and then I will cover each bed with a thin layer of chopped straw. Now I'm going to bring my peppers into the kitchen but I'm not going to process them today because I really want to run over to Tierra Farm because they have the best maple syrup. They also have some maple granola that I want to check out and then we also need to go to the flower store. So we are heading to Tierra Farm and the flower store, and I hope to be able to show you some of the fall foliage in my area. We are not quite at peak season for fall foliage yet. We're getting there. Tierra Farm is my favorite source for organic fair trade coffee, tea, nuts, oats, and more. All of their products are sold in compostable bags. It's an environmentally friendly store. Maple syrup is one of my favorite fall flavors. Today at Tierra Farm, I'm buying maple cinnamon granola that we will use for cookies and various nuts flavored with pure organic maple syrup that I can enjoy for snacking. I will also buy a bottle of pure maple syrup. Then it's on to the flower shop. Fortunately, the shop security guard is here to greet us. Well, that was a fun outing. I love seeing the fall foliage on our drives. And here are the flowers. And by the way, I did put on a fresh apron. I have a lot of these black aprons and I have them linked in the description box below if you are looking for inexpensive but very, very durable aprons. Now, I want to put these flowers in water for now, and they can sit here. We will arrange them after we've made our granola cookies. Put you over here for now. And I'm going to save this paper, because I will use it to protect my workstation when we arrange the flowers. There's something about autumn that just suggests the use of maple syrup on almost anything and everything. So the granola cookies we're going to make today will be made with maple granola. Let's see which ingredients I need to put together. So the recipe I'm following for these granola cookies is from The Joy of Baking. And I will put a link to the recipe in the description box below. I need flour. The recipe is written out in both cups and grams. I like to use grams whenever possible. These cookies offer the perfect balance of savory and sweet. To make them, I first whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Then, in a standing mixer, and working with one ingredient at a time, I beat together softened butter, white sugar, brown sugar, a whole egg plus an egg yolk, and pure vanilla extract. Now we can beat in this organic cinnamon maple granola. Granola smells fantastic. We need to slowly beat in the granola. And finally, we beat in the flour mixture. Okay, and my oven has preheated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. She says if the batter is very soft, to go ahead and refrigerate it for 30 to 60 minutes. Let's see what the consistency is for this. I think this will work. I think we can go ahead and form the cookies. I'm going to make some mighty big cookies. And I'm not going to make all of these cookies today because I'm afraid I would then eat all of them today. So I'm going to do, I think half of this dough and then I will freeze the remaining. form these into balls and then we need to flatten these cookies just slightly. Now she says if desired, sprinkle a little granola on top of the cookies. I do desire that. And then these go into the preheated oven for 14 to 16 minutes. While we're waiting on the cookies to bake, I'm going to scoop out my leftover cookie dough and put it in a freezer container and then pop that container into the freezer. So the flour store had a lot of what I would call fall colored stems. I mean gold and various reds and various, I don't know, vermilion colors, but I kind of wanted to use summer colors. Flower preservative, always important. I hope I bought enough flowers for this arrangement. Looks a little sparse to me, but I still like it. And we will move this to the parlor later. For now, we can enjoy it right over here. I'm going to clean up, and by the time I finish cleaning up, I think our cookies will be ready. Oh my goodness, these cookies are... It's my dog. These cookies are enormous, and that's kind of nice. Oh yeah, they are done. I'm going to let them cool on the baking tray for about five minutes, then I will transfer them to cooling racks, and while the cookies are cooling, I'm going to go practice piano for an hour, and I will meet you back here. We can brew some tea and test out these cookies. While I'm waiting for the tea to brew, I wanted to tell you that while we were shopping at Tierra Farm, the director there said he could put together a box of everything maple for my viewers. And let me show you what you get. It's a nice package actually. They always do nice wrapping there. It happens to be everything I bought today. Organic maple glazed mixed nuts, yum. cinnamon maple granola. Again, yum. This is what we use for the granola cookies that we are going to try in just a bit. Organic maple glazed pecans or pecans. You say pecan or pecan. There's a lot of stuff in here. Organic maple cinnamon walnuts and a good size bottle of pure maple syrup. Now, He told me that the retail for all of this is $89.32, but for my viewers, you get this for $70 plus free shipping. So that's quite a savings. And any one of these would make a terrific host or hostess gift, or you could use them in cooking or for snacking. If you like to host cocktail parties as I do. You can pour the nuts into an attractive bowl and offer them along with the cocktails. So if you are interested in this, and why wouldn't you be, I will put a link in the description below the video. And to see the full description, you simply click on the title of the video. Now let me fetch my tea. It's time for a taste test and some tea. This is Darjeeling, which I also buy from Tierra Farm. This sounds like an ad for Tierra Farm, but honestly, it is not. I just love everyone who works at Tierra Farm, and I love their products. Everything is fair trade and organic. Delicious, as always. No milk for me today. I don't want to dilute the tea. And now, granola cookie made with the maple cinnamon granola. So the cookie is definitely crisp on the edge, and it's soft in the middle. My dog just joined me. You have a definite sweet tooth, Avery. These are just heavenly. I could enjoy these for breakfast, for a mid-morning snack, for lunch, or for tea time, or for dessert. Speaking of which, my friends Becky and Alvin are coming for dinner tonight, so I need to get cracking on making dinner for them. And for dessert, I'm pretty sure we will polish off these granola cookies. And I want to thank you so much for spending time with me today as we tackled the garden beautification project. And we shopped at the flower store and at Tierra Farm. And we made these stunningly wonderful granola cookies. I will have another video for you in just a few days. But I can put a couple of my other videos at the end of this one that you can watch between now and my next upload and until then please treat yourself very very well try these cookies and i can't wait to see you next time bye for now friends you want a little piece of cookie