Eggplant Many say it is not needed, but for many dishes, I still soak sliced up eggplant in a strong saltwater solution for several hours in the fridge. The water will be discolored after soaking, sometimes just a little, other times it will be black as ink! This soaking does take away bitterness. I enjoy many dishes with eggplant, but a great tasting starter is Peel skin from eggplant slice (either discs like potato slices of bits like French fries (I like FF method best) Soak in saltwater solution in fridge several hours minimum (I usually place a saucer on top to push all eggplant under water) Drain in colander Dredge in flour to coat (I usually put flour in ziplock bag add slices and shake and turn) Lay on plate or cookie sheet Make a simple batter 1 egg to 1/3C water and 1/3C Flour, mix together until smooth. (I usually scale to amount I am making) Drop a few pieces of the floured eggplant into your bowl of batter to coat, remove from batter and place directly in hot oil to deepfry. Cook until a nice golden brown (You will need to turn as it will float to top while cooking) Remove from fryer, place on cookie sheet covered with paper towel to absorb excess oils, salt and eat....... Have had many people young and old alike eat this not knowing what it was and love it, yet most of these people say eeewwww to eggplant! Battered and deep fried is not the healthiest way to enjoy this, but it is a great way to get accustomed to it's taste! Healthy or not it is a real favorite for several generations in our family!

😊 I only use the eggplant to make Mediterranean dishes ( you probably havn’t heard or seen) one dish is made with roasted eggplant on fire then mashed and sautéed with garlic, turmeric, tomatoes and eggs, has a smoky flavor and aroma to it. ( another dish is with sauted eggplants cooked with lots of garlic, tomatoes, dried mint, turmeric and a dairy product called Kashk. Also eggplant stew with lamb...all are very delicious. I’m more used to cooking with the long skinnier eggplants ( less seeds).

I've seen similar bite marks on a few of my green beans. Was maybe one out of 50, now a bit more with the weather warmer. Are you seeing a lot of them to a point it affects your harvest? Because I never used insecticides on veggies, there're always small insects such as small grasshoppers, flea beetles, cucumber beetles, ladybugs, etc on my pole beans plants. So the bite marks could be from a number of insects. Because the population of insects is not out of control and it doesn't affect my harvest, I just throw away the marked ones and learn to live with the bugs. But if I must guess, I'd say the bite marks on my green beans are from those small grasshoppers that sucks on the green beans all day long OR the occasional cucumber beetles :-)

Hello fellow Hedychium lovers. I live in z8 Oregon. I have grown different Hedychiums for years. The most dependable bloomer here is "Tara" It is a H. coccineum variety.It blooms for about a month every August with light orange blooms and is fragrant. Very lush too. I fertilize it when I think about it in the growing season but it doesnt seem to care about that as I am a great mulcher. It dies to the ground every winter. I have tried H. coronarium too. It lived for years but never bloomed. I think that we do not have a long and hot enough growing season here in the NW. Often it would just get ready to bloom in October and then would fizzle out when the rainy season started. All of my things have to be IN THE GROUND. So far I have tried about 10 different varieties of Hedychium. Only Tara has bloomed reliably. I think that there are others that are early bloomers that would work here. I think that if you plant any of them where they dont sit in winter wet, and let them mass, they will be just fine. There are so many available now. Just check out www.stokestropicals.com. I think that there are several that are early bloomers. They should also work well in our NW climate and actually bloom. Mine all made it through 1991 when it got down to 9 degrees here. Of course the foliage looked like cooked spinach but they all came back in the spring and bloomed in August.