Welcome!

Welcome to From Seeds to Sensational! Follow me along as I plant, grow, harvest, cook and enjoy my own home grown food. Let me introduce myself. I am a gardener and a cook. I've been involved with both all of my life.

As a young girl of the 70's I wanted an easy bake oven to make lovely little goodies in. When I asked for one, my mom told me "Why do you need one of those when we have a perfectly good oven in the kitchen, just clean up after yourself." I was flabbergasted that I was allowed to make something, on my own at 12 years old. I was in heaven! I immediately went in the kitchen and found a chocolate cake recipe from my moms Golden Betty Crocker Cookbook and went for it. From what I remember it turned out great and I was on my way. At 12 I learned how to make cheese sauce from scratch-No Velveeta cheese- for Holidays. It was the only way my mom would let me eat it without the broccoli that I hated. I had some disasters like the spaghetti sauce I made that had 1/2 cup of oregano in it because I miss read the directions. Yuck! At 12 I was in charge of starting dinner before my mom got home from work and by high school we (my brother, sister and I) were baking and decorating our own birthday cakes. I wasn't the best cook but I have learned a lot since that first chocolate cake. Now as a mother of my own children I am looking for better, more nutritious food.

We always had a garden in the summer as did my grandparents and pretty much the whole neighborhood. Home grown tomatoes were what I ate every day in the summer. August afternoons would be for canning the tomatoes and cherries that we would be saving for winter. My mom's mom made pickles of every variety and my dad's mom grew raspberries that she would make into the best jam. My mom would make these monster whole wheat bread loaves that we would devourer with melted butter and Grandma's jam. When I got married I wanted a garden of my own. We have had gardens of varying success until we moved to our one acre home 7 years ago. That is when the idea was formed that we could be pretty self sufficient here. We planted fruit and citrus trees and grape vines, marked out and started a vegetable garden, and started raising chickens for eggs and sheep for meat.

When you start to have a whole lot of something, eggs, summer squash, figs, you find lots of creative ways to use or preserve them. That is what I am hoping to share. Like when to start garlic, how to grow it and what to do with it. Since I live in Southern California that is where the focus will be. We are luck to be able to grow produce year around. I've not had a winter garden yet, this year will be my first attempt. My summer garden is abundant and I have lots of tomatoes to work with.

So I invite you to follow along and share in the fun. I always appreciate comments and new ways of doing things so share your ideas as well.