Preview

Know what time it is??

Its time to start canning! It's true!

So in the next two weeks or so you'll be seeing plenty of recipes, old and new, and a lot of information regarding the preservation of the summer harvest.

I'll be starting with peaches, strawberry jam and cherry pie filling. After that, whole tomatoes, and then tomato sauce. Green beans and corn will come soon too, and of course, this year's newest addition to my food storage - sweet pickles!

So join me in the 2011 canning marathon! Head to your neighborhood Rural King or other Middle American general store and stock up on quart and pint jars, get your stock pots and pressure cookers out and cleaned up and don't forget the lids! It's time to PRESERVE the HARVEST!

We Have Food!

"WE HAVE FOOD!"

That's what I hope to say when our economy goes belly-up, the America dollar plunges to worthless and no one can afford food anymore. Or maybe I was listening to a doomsday prophet again. I shouldn't do that.

Anyway, I've been working pretty hard on the pantry and emergency food storage. I'm kinda proud! I think right now, we could probably live for a week on what's in our pantry. It will be better after this growing season. Now what we really, really need is a chest freezer. Everyone in my family had one. It's a critical piece of food storage equipment and we really need to make the investment.

I cored and sliced 8 flippin' quarts of strawberries! Good Lord, when that was over, my hands were frozen, numb and stained red, but I have 2 big bags in the freezer and one in the fridge. (One that is now half empty because I used half of it to bake a pie tonight.

I bought 3 pounds of rhubarb at the market last week, and also used about half of it to bake pie tonight. The other half I sliced up and stuck in the freezer. Vegetarian Times had a 5 recipes to try with rhubarb in the May/June issue. There has to be a use for it besides pie! Alex won't touch it of course, so it will be up to me to give the ol' college try.

Tonight I choked down a pork chop, again, and decided that I am probably heading back to my vegetarian diet. It's hard to eat in my house. Alex, my sweet hubs, is deathly allergic to poultry, so we never eat chicken or turkey. Unfortunately, he is also a picky eater, so he won't touch a veggie with a ten foot pole. (Pretty sure I've mentioned this predicament once or twice before.) But he will willingly eat carrots, when prepared right, corn, potatoes, bell peppers when served with stir fry, and celery (but only raw with peanut butter). He has occasionally been willing to try other things, but by and large, he turns up his nose and frowns at my kitchen adventures when asked to taste-test. I'm not really sure if I am craving my vegetarian ways again because the garden has been so mouth watering, or if I am truly tired of eating meat, but either way, I'm collecting my vegger recipes together and getting ready to plunge into meatlessness soon.

A few updates from the garden:

The corn is almost waist high due to more excessive rainfall. (My waist, not a normal human's waist. So the corn is about 2 and a half feet tall.) I've only actually watered my garden once this year. The rest of the time, it has rained and then I have been sure to mulch with grass clippings to keep the moisture in.

I am going to go out and dig for a few new potatoes tomorrow. No, I really just cannot wait, its THAT urgent. :) I will leave the rest for a main crop, but I think since I have 7 plants and all will produce about 10 pounds of potatoes, we'll be okay this winter minus a few.

It's been chilly again all week. The summer solstice seemed to mock us here in Northern Indiana. My tomatoes, while flowering, have stalled in their growth again. I really need four or five good hot, humid days in a row to get the growth restarted and the fruiting process going.

Got the opportunity to hand-pollinate the zucchini this morning. Hooray for plant sex! (ROFLOL) 3 zucchini plants, all flowering, only one with actual fruit, but that fruit looks like they will be real winners.

I planted a new variety of cucumber a few days ago - a pickling gherkin. I have never liked dill pickles in my life, but strangely, I will eat sweet gherkins, so that's what I'm going to go with. I also planted some large-podded shelling peas, and I planted a LOT of them. I am really hoping for several pounds of shelled peas in the freezer for the winter.

The green beans are still small and weak. This is so strange to me because beans are supposed to be so simple to grow! I have successfully grown amazing things in this garden and the easiest veggie of all is giving me trouble?? Where is the justice?

The garden will eventually be completely overtaken with several kinds of squash vines. Yes, I am aware that I 'could' go and pull them out and I will do so eventually. But right now seeing the gorgeous green leaves makes me smile. I simply cannot bring myself to pulling them out. I purposely planted the zucchini and the pattypan squash. But the pumpkins and the gourds were not intentional and they are getting quite out of hand.

I am experimenting with a type of melon. I planted the seeds - quite late I might add - and I am more or less hoping for the best. If our growing season extends into October, as it sometimes does, I will probably have a few melons. But I am not wagering any money on having prize winning melons this summer. But wait until next year....

I will have a handful of ripe red raspberries in about a week.

My sunflowers are being devoured by earwigs. Time to break out the diazanon - which is a repulsive, but effective way to get rid of them.

I pulled a carrot out of the dirt two days ago. It was still a little short, but a perfect shade of orange and quite sweet, with just the right amount of bite.

The Trash Pile

There is a little section of my garden that I refer to as the trash pile. It is the area under a bradford pear tree (I hate this tree - it shades prime real estate, has stinky flowers in the spring and drops nasty little fruits all over the patio every fall) where I let the weeds grow rampant and where I pile up all the 'trash' at the end of the growing season.

It's not really a compost pile because I have a compost pile on the other side of the yard. This is just the place where I dump stuff. And I usually find treasures here when the new growing season starts. This year is no different than any other year.

The Trash Pile is currently home to 7 chamomile plants, mountains of catnip, and a few stray tomatoes. Truth be told, I have tomato plants popping up in such large quantities that I am giving them away to friends and family members. They have been showing up in such random places that I wonder why I bothered saving seeds from them at all.

I stepped on a thorn tonight and also ran another thorn into my thumb. Yes I know that there are things called shoes and gloves, but honestly, I just love to feel the dirt under my feet and in my hands. Even as I am typing this, I am still pretty well covered in mud.

I've been thinking about renting the church kitchen and having a 'canning' party later this season. Lord knows I'm going to have more tomatoes than I will know what to do with! As we get further into the year, I feel more strongly about preparing and helping others prepare for times to come. Maybe it's the fact that I cannot buy groceries for $50 a week anymore. ($87 this week - and I tried to get only sale items.) Maybe it's the dire economic predictions, the political scene and the state of our country in general. I don't know. But it's on my heart to prepapre and help others know how to prepare. Plus - canning in a group could be a LOT of fun.

Savory Leek Soup - Straight From The Garden

This morning was one of serious productivity. I had the grass mowed before 8:30 this morning and just now I dug up all of the onions and most of the leeks. The leeks were an interesting experiment for me from last year. They have been in my yard for almost a year now and I believe they struggled to grow almost as much as I struggled to lift them from the dirt. I unknowingly sowed their seeds in an area with heavy clay very close to the topsoil. The poor roots had nothing helping them achieve their fullest potential.

Though my leeks never got more than a half inch in diameter, they still had a fine flavor and sweet onionish fragrance. My plan all along for these babies was to make them into a savory leek soup with potatoes and freeze them for a day in the future winter when I can warm it up and think fondly back to this hundred degree, 100% humidity day in early June, when my deepest cares were simply the abundance coming out of the garden.

So this is the recipe. It would have been smart to take some pictures, but alas, I didn't think about that today. I just had digging and cooking on my mind.


Savory Leek and Potato Soup

6-8 small leeks (white and light green parts only), chopped
5 medium potatoes, boiled and mashed with a spoon
salt, pepper
two pinches of dried basil, or 4 fresh leaves chopped
3 cloves of fresh garlic
2 tablespoons butter
One can of vegetable broth (16 ounces)


In a saucepan, saute the leeks and garlic in butter until crisp tender.

After boiled and mashing the potatoes, add the broth to them and bring to a boil. 
Add leeks and garlic. Boil, stirring continuously. Mixture will be lumpy.
Season with salt, pepper and basil to taste.
Once the soup mixture is heated thoroughly, transfer the mixture to the food processor in batches and process until thick and smooth. Add milk if desired, to make the soup creamier and thinner.
Enjoy immediately, or put in freezer containers to enjoy at a later time! Especially delicious in a bread bowl, sprinkled with fresh cheese. :)

The New American Dream

It's December!

My gardening books and journals are being opened and studied for the coming year. By February there will be cabbage and broccoli seedlings in the greenhouse to put out in the garden as soon as the ground thaws enough. I've been researching tomatoes and peppers, because 2011 is going to be my magic year!

2010's garden was good. I grew a lot of new things that I was really very pleased with. I grew some new herbs that made it all the way through November. I grew cayenne peppers and lots of squash - that I didn't get much fruit from, BUT I learned a lot about how to grow and care for different varieties of squash. And I had 4 large pumpkins! I am definitely making the list of things to try in the coming year.

I am researching a gardening method called Grow Biointensive, also known as "Mini-farming". Since I live in the city on a 40 foot lot that both of my next door neighbors have encroached on from both sides (making my lot more like 36 feet) I don't have a lot of room. And our house faces the west, so we really don't have a lot of sun, except on the side that faces the south. I am going to try to remedy that this year. I do, fortunately, have two long strips of dirt, about 3 feet wide and 25 feet long that are a good size for the intensive gardening method. One of those strips is full of white quartz landscaping rocks - which are hideous! - but I am planning on moving those rocks to the north side of the garage, when there is no sun.

I have been hearing the whispers of the "Old Way" for about a year. Every Autumn I feel this little voice inside of me begin to nudge "Provide....hold back.....preserve....provide! Winter is coming!" Sometimes I wonder if there are mutant squirrels sending ESP messages to my brain, but then again, there IS a little farmgirl deep down inside of me. Grandpa and Grandma taught me the importance of food preservation. Yes, on occasion, I do turn on the political talk shows, and I was shocked to hear 3 out of 5 political pundits talking about the costs of food rising and how we should be teaching ourselves food storage and preservation because a time may be coming that food in the grocery store isn't affordable. And that is just good advice in general! Everyone should keep at least an extra week's food in storage, but I have challenged myself to find a way to store 6 months worth of food for us.

Hooray for the Midwest!! Do you know how much I love living in the Midwest? I can ride my bike to a Farmer's Market. I can drive 15 minutes in any direction and find a berry farm. There are 4 apple orchards within a 45 minute drive from our house. And I have learned the locations of 3 small local butchers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it all you Big City Folks. When you can't afford your food, we 'yokels' in the farmlands will be just fine.

Okay, sorry, that might have been uncalled for. My best friend is visiting from Los Angeles, and when the two of us get on a rant about the spoiled lives of those on the West Coast, the feelings sometimes last for days afterwards. Either way, we still get a chuckle out of mocking the 'big city folks'. :)

Anyway, this week we're going to make and can pasta sauce and applesauce. Alex told me last week that he's tired of canned Italian. Particularly, one night I had boiled the spaghetti noodles and unceremoniously dumped half a jar of store brand marinara over them and stirred. His actual words were "That's not made with Love". This seems to be a new kick my husband is on. He can apparently tell when the food I make doesn't have my Love in it. And of course, being the picky little turd that he is, he doesn't like it, eats half of it and the pushes it back across the table at me. So I am on a quest to create my own recipe of pasta sauce that has the special, and obviously necessary, ingredient of Love in it, that Alex will eat. 

I gave our household an ultimatum this year - reduce the grocery costs to $50 per week. I am proud to say that we have done it! For my 2011 New Year's resolution, I would like to reduce it even more! I would really like to get it down to $35 per week and stop buying store bought canned goods altogether and try to stick to fresh produce and ingredients entirely.

To the kitchen! It's time to bake Christmas cookies!