Garlic Powder, Bean Burgers, and Double Digging

I've been busy the last couple of days. I ought to put all this in a couple posts, but I'm just going to get it all out quickly. This morning I started the process of making garlic powder. I sliced some garlic thin with the mandolin and put it in the dehydrator. I'll grind it up once it is dry. I used up the last of last year's garlic powder yesterday when I made some chicken and mushroom marsala. So it really had to get done.

Black beans and onions from the garden.

Also in the kitchen I made some bean burgers. I doubled the recipe though and used a bit more mushrooms and about twice the cilantro. Somehow I forgot to photograph the cilantro and it didn't get added to the tally.

I froze the burgers uncooked.

I did cook up one for lunch. I just love these bean burgers. They are so tasty. They don't hold together as well as your typical tvp veggie burger, but I like the texture. As you might suspect, that is not ketchup on my burger, but my homemade plum sauce. Maybe I will end up using all those black beans I harvested this year. Just the plain black beans were so yummy before they were put in. I still have a lot of mushrooms, so maybe tomorrow I'll make a black bean, mushroom, and beef soup.

I have no photos of the real work I've been doing in the garden. It is pretty boring to look at. Empty beds with compost spread on top. But I have been working. I decided when I started the garden that I would double dig one of my double beds each fall. I got one half done yesterday and the other done today. They were both spread with freshly sifted compost. I also spread compost on two more beds. One of the beds was the zucchini and cucumber bed. I decided they were through for the year. I did pick more cucumbers before ripping them out. Cucumbers in October is just weird, but I'm not complaining. I've enjoyed the long season.

I've got to get the rest of the compost sifted and out of the bins. I've got about two weeks before the big leaf fall. I've done two and a half of the bins and I have one and a half to go. Sadly I don't have many spots harvested to put it. My lettuce is all bolting now, so I'll probably be ripping that bed out next. My cabbage bed is getting harvested slowly. As is the carrot bed. I won't pick the last of that until November once the ground gets close to freezing. Not much is actually growing anymore. I went out just after noon today and the garden was in total shade. When I left at three it was still in total shade. I think it gets a tiny bit of sun at the beginning and end of the day, but very very little at this point. The sun is behind the trees and the neighbors' houses. So it is the end of the growing year, if not yet the harvesting year.