Linda Ly's Blog, page 8
October 29, 2018
Avocado Green Mattress Review: My Thoughts 1 Year Later
I’m obsessed with home renovation and home buying shows on HGTV.
But every episode always has a happy ending, and there are plenty of times when I wonder how the people on those shows feel one year later, or how they’ve changed things up once the cameras left the premises.
How did they decorate after all the props were taken away? Did they keep the paint colors the same? Do they still love the flooring/furniture/windows that they chose/bought/installed?
I wish every show had a “One Year Late...
October 23, 2018
My 10 Most-Asked Questions After 1 Year of Living in Central Oregon
I can hardly believe it myself, but as of this month, I’ve been living in Central Oregon for one year!
You might recall that my family and I relocated last October from Los Angeles to Bend, a move prompted by our desire to put down roots in a place that felt like a better fit for our lifestyle.
After Gemma’s birth, we reprioritized what we wanted for our future, and that was a slower pace, a safer community, better public schools, and being only minutes away from all the things we loved to d...
October 14, 2018
4 Ways to Pickled Green Tomatoes
Author’s Note: I wrote this post back in 2011 and since then, it’s been one of my most popular posts on Garden Betty, amassing over a million pageviews and hundreds of comments. I figured it was finally time to update it with new pictures from my garden in Central Oregon, as well as a printable recipe card (a feature that’s been a long time coming on this site!). The original story behind the recipe brings back good memories of my old garden in Southern California, so I’m leaving the rest of...
October 9, 2018
A Fall Garden Checklist for Maximizing the Season and Winterizing Your Yard
This post is in partnership with 3-IN-ONE®. All thoughts and words are my own.
Is it just me, or does it feel like fall chores vastly outnumber my spring garden checklist? Maybe it’s because I’ve moved to a climate that actually freezes in winter, so there’s a lot more to do to “batten down the hatches” this time of year.
We’re tidying the greenhouse, piling up the compost, and putting away the majority of our planters, trellises, and tools to give the garden a good rest. It feels...
October 7, 2018
A Guide to Saving and Storing Seeds
Seed saving is one of the little joys of gardening. Now that we’re nearing the end of the season, my kitchen counter is lined with tea towels and saucers of all sizes, with seeds of all kinds spread out to dry. Still more fruits, vegetables, and seed pods are sitting in baskets or paper bags, waiting to be extracted, washed, dried, and...
M Y B O O K S
The New Camp Cookbook
offers over 100 modern recipes for campers, road trippers, and adventurers, plus practical tips...
September 30, 2018
A New Book Is Cookin’
It’s been quiet on the blog this summer. Though I wish it was because I was out exploring (there was a little of that, but not nearly as much as I would’ve liked), I was hunkered down at home, building fire pits and fires in my backyard, cooking and shooting five recipes a day with a toddler...
M Y B O O K S
The New Camp Cookbook
offers over 100 modern recipes for campers, road trippers, and adventurers, plus practical tips for building a cooking fire, setting up a ca...
August 3, 2018
Tomato Leaves: The Toxic Myth
Maybe it was my Asian upbringing that taught me never to waste food, as my family used and ate every part of the vegetable, fish, chicken, pig or cow that we brought home. Or maybe it’s my ever-growing curiosity when it comes to food from the land… but when I walk around the garden, looking at all my lovely plants, I always think, Can I eat that part?
And by “part,” I mean the unconventional parts of the plant that you typically don’t think to eat. This was how I came to love artichoke stem...
June 22, 2018
A Guide to Curing and Storing Garlic
You waited seven, maybe nine months, for all that homegrown garlic to finish growing. Now that you’ve dug it all up, you want to savor it for as long as possible until the next garlic crop is ready.
This is when curing becomes your friend.
Curing is the process of letting your garlic dry down in preparation for long-term storage. Curing and storing garlic allows you to enjoy the flavor of your summer harvest well into winter… and one of my favorite things about garlic is that it still stays...
June 19, 2018
It’s Almost Summer! Here’s An Update on the New Garden
I’m going into my fourth season in Central Oregon soon, but only my first as a gardener. (Side note: Whoa, eight months already? Where has all that time gone?!)
If you’ve been following me since my move from Los Angeles to Bend last fall, you might remember that we’re currently in a rental home while we continue to explore all the neighborhoods here and settle into our new town. (Which, by the way, has been an absolute blast. You can see some of our local adventures on my Instagram, and I’ll...
June 8, 2018
Broccoli Leaves Are Edible
… As my veggie-loving pug will tell you!
Most people don’t realize that broccoli leaves are just as edible as the broccoli head itself. And I can’t blame them, since store-bought broccoli comes in a neat little package with only a few tiny and uninspiring leaves stuck to the head.
Unless you grow them yourself, you never see the massive greens that broccoli heads spring from. On my Romanesco broccoli plant (Brassica oleracea ‘Romanesco’), which grows larger than your everyday broccoli, the m...
