Peppers

Today we're going to talk about drying out and preserving peppers. Specifically hot peppers. I can't can them because I only have a water bath caner, and trust me you really want to can those in a pressure caner. So what else can you do to keep peppers? I'm going to look at 2 different things today.

1. Roasting then Freezing

This is honestly what it sounds like. Cut your peppers in half lengthwise. Preheat your oven to 375, coat with a little olive oil, put your peppers on the pan cut side up, sprinkle lightly with salt. Roast for 20 minutes. Once they cool put them in your freezer. I'm doing this with jalapenos. You can then use the roasted peppers as a substitute for fresh peppers in cooked dishes.

2. Drying

There are a few different ways to dry peppers. You can dry them on the line (like I had set up for corn) but it takes a few weeks to dry them out completely. Leave them whole since it'll cut down on rotting before they're dried. Just tie them up and leave them in a place with open air circulation.

You can dry them in the oven. Set your oven as low as it goes (Generally 120-150) and leave the door open partially. Flip the peppers every hour so they don't scorch. If they start cooking your oven is too hot.

Dehydrator. This is the easiest way. Seriously. Cut them in half and stick them in the dehydrator until they're dry.

No matter what drying method you use keep the peppers in an airtight container. They can last for a a year or so. You can also grind them into chili powder..

Food storage and pets

So everyone knows the best way to ripen tomatoes is to keep them on your counter after you pick them, right? Right. Well I can't do that anymore. At all. Why? Because my cat is a jerk. She has decided that she enjoys the feel of her fangs sinking through the thin tomato skin into the pulpy goodness below. She has discovered that round tomatoes are fun to knock off the counter and chase.

Did I mention my cat is a jerk? Because she is.

But this brings me to a very important topic:

Pet Proofing Preservation

So how many of us have a beloved fur ball that just can't wait to mess up their stuff? The vast majority? Yeah. Not everything can go into pet free rooms (which are only pet free until the fuzzy bandit figures out how to open the door) or totes (which collect condensation, so are bad for things you're trying to dry). So how the heck do you keep your food (and your fluffy jerks) safe?

Carefully.

Basic kitchen safety covers most of our problems. Things like making sure your pet isn't underfoot while taking your jars out of the caner. But what about the boiling hot jars sitting on the counter? All breakable and enticing to mischievous four foots? I have no idea. Thankfully Minerva (the aforementioned tomato killing jerk) isn't interested in the jars while they're hot. Once they cool they go up on a shelf that she (so far) can't get to.

But the tips that I have so far are as follows:

Keep anything breakable/edible out of pet reach.
Keep dried things in totes with a well fitting lid
Accept a certain level of loss comes with owning pets.

Ahhh Yeah, be jealous

Be jealous because your SOs don't set up a clothes line (henceforth known as  food line) in your kitchen.

BEHOLD!

Isn't it majestic? Not pictured is the fan under it, blowing up toward the line to keep air circulating.

Please ignore the YELLOW of my kitchen walls. My landlord calls it 'depressed man yellow' because it's so bright that it helps combat depression. I call it 'rather oppressive yellow'. Anyhow, that sucker is about 8 feet or so in the air, Husband needed to stand on a chair to put the nails in to hang it from, and he clocks in at 6 and a half feet. That's high enough to keep both my dogs, and my pain-in-the-butt cat from knocking things off of it.

What on earth is hanging from the wooden clothes pins? I'm glad I pretended you asked dear reader! That is 9 ears of dwarf corn that I'm drying on the cob for easy storage. That big long green thing on the end is a line of herbs. From the bottom up we have:

Cutting Celery
Sage
Purple Basil (or as I lovingly call it: Goth Basil)
And regular Basil

I call it my soup bundle. When it's done drying I'm going to toss a bunch of each into  the jar that I have the dehydrated green beans and soup noodles in. And when the corn is done drying I'm going to put some dried corn in there too. Yup, dehydrated soup mixes are a go.

Also Husband and I have been cleaning the basement. And by 'Husband and I' I mean 'Husband'. Apparently the dust and mildew down there sets off headaches and dizzy spells if I'm working for more than 30 minutes. But Husband is awesome and is cleaning. While he was cleaning he discovered a root cellar.

No seriously. There's something down there that can only have been intended as a root cellar. It is tucked away in a corner, with two exterior walls that never see sunlight, with a third wall and built in shelves. And a window. All we need to do is add a fourth wall (which can be heavy plastic) and a vent into the window. Guess what is happening before next winter? Yup, come this time next year I'll have a legit root cellar for storing the produce from my better planned garden. Which will have more squash, so there will be more need. But if nothing else it's a safe place to keep all my canned goods out of the sun, and my dry goods safe.

Yup. Somewhere along the line I've turned into my grandmother's memories of her mom in the '40s. And I'm perfectly ok with this.

Tonight is the march of NOM!

We went to the garden this morning. We harvested a handful of snow peas (it's been so damn cold that they're still producing. It is august. They ought to be dead by now), the last of the cucumbers, some tomatoes, more evil tasty peppers, some spinach, a few blue potatoes, some more corn, and three pumpkins.

You read that right. Pumpkins, in August.

There is only one thing for it. Tonight? I make pie filling. Just the filling mind you, pie crust and I are not on speaking terms. Husband is also going to make beer at some point, as one of the harvested pumpkins was The Beer Pumpkin. The one he has been babying since he saw it. So some time in the next month or so Husband is making me pumpkin beer out of our own pumpkins. It must happen.

But first, I make beef stock. The plan is to freeze the extra stock that I don't use for soup tomorrow so that I have it for the future. I am also going to dehydrate the veggies I don't use, and make "instant" soup mixes where we just  need to add meat and broth (or broth for veggie soup). The dehydrated versions will take up less room than jars of soup, and save me jars.

Mia's Beef Stock

You need:

1 good sized beef marrow bone
1 medium sized sweet onion, cut into large chunks
1 heaping tablespoon of minced garlic
1 tablespoon of salt
3-4 quarts of water

Sweat the onion in a sock pot. Add the garlic and saute until the garlic is toasty-colored. Add the marrow bone, salt, and water. Set on low and let it do its thing, covered, for 4- 6 hours. Remove the bone, and use or freeze with the onions and garlic still in the stock. Alternately you can just make it in the crock pot.

Tomorrow I make soup. Beef and Bacon soup.

Beef and Bacon Soup

You need:

1 lb stew beef, cut into chunks
1/2 lb thick cut bacon
1 handful of green beans cut into 1-2 inch pieces
4-5 small potatoes cut into chunks
1/3 package of Orzo or soup pasta
3-4 carrots, sliced into coins
3-4 ears worth of dwarf corn (roughly 1/2 package of commercial frozen corn)
1 handful of spinach
1 small handful of okra
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste
Oregano
Parsley
Sage
Basil
1-2 quarts of the beef stock outlined above

Cook the bacon until crispy. Brown the stew beef in the bacon grease. Add in everything else and set on low. Let it simmer for 4-6 hours. This can also be made in a crock pot if you want. Eat with a crusty bread.

Still with me after this recipe dump?

Because now I want to talk to you about my pumpkins.

As you know I grew Long Island Cheese Pumpkins this year. From what I'd read they were better than sugar babies for making pies, and they would keep like preservation pumpkins in a root cellar provided they weren't cut into. So I decided to grow them, thinking 'what the hell, the seed packet is $3.00, if it doesn't work or I hate them I'm not out much.'

Guys?

I am never growing a different type of pumpkin. Ever. Allow me to preach the joys of these things. The outer rind is thinner than a sugar baby, which means it comes off easier after steaming or roasting. The inner rind (the part used for pie makin') is thick, and creamy. It looks and smells a bit like a butter colored cantaloupe.  The pulp is small and easily removed, the seeds are large and are easy to separate from the pulp. I'm currently making pie, so I'll post tomorrow about how it tastes. But I can't see how this wouldn't be amazing. Why the hell did sugar babies replace these?! If you're going to grow pumpkins for eating, grow these. Seriously.

Pumpkin Pie Filling 

You need:

1 medium sized Long Island Cheese Pumpkin
nutmeg
heavy cream
brown sugar
all spice
cinnamon
ginger
cardamom
1 frozen pie crust (because fuck making that fickle bastard)

Cut the pumpkin into wedges (leave skin on, trust me). Remove the pulp and seeds. Roast the slices on a lightly oiled baking sheet at 390 degrees for 1 hour. Let the slices cool until you can handle them. Peel the skin off, it'll be easy to pull off after the pumpkin is cooked. Add the pumpkin and spices to a food processor. Pulse together, add heavy cream until the texture resembles a thick custard. Pour the custard into the crust. Bake at 350 for roughly 30 minutes, until the crust it starting to brown (check frequently to avoid burning). Let it cool.

Because pumpkin pie isn't complete without whipped cream:

Basic Whipped Cream

You need:

1 quart (or however much you have left over) heavy cream
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 tsp white sugar

Pour the cream, vanilla, and sugar into a food processor and pulse until a light and fluffy whipped cream happens. Or you can use an egg beater. But I don't have one of those.

There's one more recipe that I forgot to include the other day. I made a pork rib marinade with the Peppa Sauce that I made a couple of weeks ago. So here's that too.

Peppa Pork 

You need:

1 lb pork ribs
2 tbs Worcester sauce
2 tbs soy sauce
3 tbs Peppa sauce
1 tsp smoked paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Put everything together in a container in the fridge. Let the pork marinade over night, flipping frequently if the marinade doesn't cover the ribs. Either bake, or grill the ribs like normal.

Husband and I did the pork in the crock pot with some sweet onions. It came out tasting more like a delicious pork roast than ribs, but it was still tasty tasty stuff.

Ok, I think that's it for today. Time to go continue my cooking.

Tomato Sauce for freezin'

So today I'm making tomato sauce. Because I have tomatoes that are ripening faster than I can eat them raw. So I'm doing a basic sauce.

Lazy Freezer Sauce

You'll need:

Tomatoes
Salt
Pepper
Basil (fresh if you've got it)
Parsley
Oregano
Thyme
Rosemary
Garlic
Bay leaf

Wash your tomatoes well. Cut them into chunks. Toss them (seeds, skin and all) and the seasonings into a sauce pot on low. Let them simmer for 20 minutes covered. Uncover and let cook down about another 20 minutes to thicken. Strain to remove the seeds and skins if you want to, then put it through the blender until it reaches your desired consistency. Then toss the sauce into freezer bags and freeze until you're ready to use it.

This is a good basic red sauce, when you thaw it you can add meat or cheese or more veg depending on what you feel like having for dinner that night.

Jerky 2: The reckoning

Ok, so there was something I left out of my little expose (can't get the accent on blogger drat it!) on jerky the other day. Something I'd assumed was obvious, yet apparently needed to have been articulated to Husband.

When slicing meat for jerky, slice it thin. Otherwise it doesn't dry out correctly. Which then leads to having to bake it in the oven at 390 for about 30 minutes to kill off anything living in it and to properly dry it out. After it spent 12 hours in a dehydrator. And I'm still a bit suspicious of whether or not I should eat it. It looks and feels like jerky. It breaks apart like jerky. However food borne illnesses are a thing and I'm not sure I've avoided them entirely.

Food science friends, please advise.

Other thing I made the other day as Peppa Sauce.

Peppa Sauce is apparently a Southern Staple. It is hot peppers in vinegar. That's it. I had hot peppers and apple cider vinegar, and garlic. My husband likes spicy things so I figured why the heck not and thew a bottle together. Specifically a fancy bottle.

This fancy bottle

I found the recipe (such as it is) here: http://ourdailybrine.com/southern-pepper-sauce-recipe/

The changes I made were:

Apple cider vinegar instead of white wine vinegar (I'm on a budget I had to work with what I had)

A mix of Bird's Eye Peppers (7 or 8 of them), Jalapenos (about 10) and some whole dried red peppers for color (a handful 'cause they're wimpy). I cut each pepper in half so the vinegar could get to all of the rind, and left the seeds in for added burn. I also tossed in about 1 tsp of minced garlic and Husband wanted ground black pepper added because he likes black pepper and we didn't have whole pepper corns. 

It's been sitting on my counter for two days now. It has opinions. It would like to share these opinions with you. Mostly by clearing out your sinuses when you sniff it. I wonder how it'll taste.

Jerky

Here we depart from things directly going on with Fwigf to discuss preserving something I can't grow in my garden:

Meat.

The day I find a steak tree that'll change. But until then I must buy my meat from a store. But buying meat in bulk is cheaper long run so we need to discuss how to preserve it. Sure you could toss it in a freezer, but where's the fun in that? And what if (like me) you lack a freezer big enough?

That my darlings is where jerky comes in. Jerky is a pre-refrigeration method of preservation. We've got all kinds of accounts of smoked or dried meats from almost all cultures (to the best of my knowledge, someone correct me in the comments if I'm making things up). Jerky is dead simple to make, or complicated as hell depending on your preference. I am lazy, I prefer dead simple.

Jerky is created by long, slow, drying and cooking and low heat. This means the heat doesn't get intense enough to properly kill off pathogens lurking in your meat. So, a few safety precautions:

1. Use lean cuts. Fat takes longer to dry out than muscle.
2. Brine your meat. In addition to adding flavor an acidic brine helps kill nasties.
3. Make sure your dehydrating method of choice gets to and maintains a temperature of 155 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. Sanitize you work surfaces
5. Use either the pre-roasting or finishing method to be extra sure

Pre-roasting or pre-boiling the meat either in brine or water is the safest way to make sure your jerky is cooked all the way through and safe to eat. However it produces a crumbly/crunchy jerky. If that's your thing then by all means! Boil your meat in the brine for about 10 minutes, or roast it at 350 for about 15 minutes before putting it either in your dehydrator or oven at 155 degrees for 4-6 hours.

Me? I prefer chewy jerky. So I'm going with the finishing method. Which is basically roast it at 350 for 10 minutes after it's spent it's time in the dehydrator. My source for this information was a paper by the University of Wisconsin, link in the bibliography page.

So now that you know how you're going to cook your meat lets actually make brine!

Mia's Jerky Brine

You will need:

Apple cider vinegar
Brown sugar
salt
pepper
garlic powder
onion powder
smoked paprika

I put my meat strips into a quart sized freezer bag, covered them with the apple cider vinegar, then added the different spices to taste, then sealed the bag and smushed everything around and left it over night in the fridge. There are no measurements given because I'm a rebel that doesn't actually measure her spices, I just kind of eye ball it and call it good.

If you're pre-boiling you don't need to marinade over night, just boil in your brine.

The next day take your tasty brined strips of raw meat and layer them on the  trays in your dehydrator (after confirming it gets to and keeps 155 degrees), turn the thing on, and ignore it for 4-6 hours. I'm doing 6 to be safe.

If you didn't pre-boil then after 6 hours pop your jerky strips in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes. Let them cool, then keep them in an air tight container and they'll last for about 2 months. Unless you devour them all first.

Corn!

Guys we have corn! Successful and tasty corn!

See? Isn't it cute?!

This year we grew Jade Blue Dwarf Corn (Hudson valley seed library) and I highly recommend it. I planted about 20 stalks, 10 down either side of Fwigf. My tallest one is about 3 and a half feet tall (just over a meter for our metric friends). The advertised average was about 2 mini-ears of blue corn per stalk. I'm looking at 3 or 4 ears each. The ears themselves are not large at all, they're about 3 - 4 inches long (6-8cm), so each one yields about one side dish serving of corn per person. Not the massive ears of sweet corn that I'm used to, but tasty none the less. I'd actually like to try these as container corn. They didn't take up much room at all and frankly I believe a nice big pot will hold three or four stalks and give a decent yield of corn. So there apartment dwellers, you too can have corn!

They were less sweet than commercial sweet corn, but they had more corn flavor if that makes any sense. I think these would stand up very well to being frozen. The good news is we will have enough to freeze, and we can freeze one meals worth in a quart sized freezer bag. So yay corn!

This weekend also marked my acquisition of a dehydrator. And by 'a dehydrator' I mean 'the dehydrator my parents had when I was a child that they used maybe all of twice in the early '90s'. It is an ancient beast. There are no thermometers, no digital timers, the temperature is regulated by turning the top to open or close vent holes. But it works. And it was free. And the company is still in business, so even though the box says 'as seen on tv' it wasn't a one hit television wonder invention.

Current cunning plan is to make jerky. Then start making soup mixes out of on sale seasonal veggies and meat. This will save us money this winter. Provided my wonderful new-to-me dehydrator doesn't take off like the UFO it resembles (guys, this is a creature of the early 90s and looks it). The other plan is to attempt to make drink mixes by buying seasonal fruit (Read: all fruit) when it's in season (read: summer) and dehydrate it then smash it into powder. But first, we try jerky. basic jerky. Salt, pepper, garlic, and a little bit of vinegar. That's it. Baby steps.

Safety and pickles

Today we are going to discuss something newly near and dear to my heart: kitchen safety. As I'm sure you're aware your kitchen is a very dangerous place. It's chock full of things like knives and stoves and other things that can either cut or burn you, or give you a rather squashed big toe. You should avoid getting cut, or burned, or squashed. It's generally unpleasant. Generally just be aware of your surroundings, avoid grabbing sharp things by the sharp end, or  hot things by the hot end, and you should be ok.

This PSA brought to you by: Mia is a dip who missed the jar and poured a ladle full of boiling brine all over her left hand and wrist. Remember my dears: Mia, screwing up so you don't have to!

Moving right along, I made three different types of pickles today.  And I still have 30 some odd cukes to deal with later this week. The aforementioned burn caused an early end to apicklypse  today. I made four jars of Alton Brown Bread and Butter Pickles, four jars of dill pickles, and a dozen tiny gift jars of my great grandmother's chunk pickles. I will share none of those recipes exactly (because the only one that is *mine* is Nana G's chunk pickles and she passed away in 2008. I got the recipe two weeks ago. It's 2014.) I will however give you a bastardized version of sweet pickles that I am going to attempt next.

Fwigf Sweet Present Pickles

You will need:

12 half-pint jars
About 6 or 7 good sized cucumbers
12 Allspice seed/ball things
Tumeric
1/2 cup Brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
3 cinnamon sticks (broken into quarters)
celery seed
mustard seed (I used Garlic Mustard seeds, I'll explain those later)
1/4 sweet onion
1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons Sea salt
2 cups water
a caner of some kind.

First things first. Sterilize your jars and lids. Combine the vinegar, salt, water, and sugar (both kinds) and bring it to a boil. This is your brine. Wash your cucumbers and slice them up into 1/4-1/2 inch slices. Cut your onion into chunks. Into the jars place 1 allspice seed/ball thing, 1/4 of a cinnamon stick, a couple pieces of onion, a pinch of celery seed, a pinch of mustard seed, and a pinch of tumeric. Pack your cucumber slices into the jars and cover with the sweet brine. Screw on the lids and process in your water bath caner. I did about 10 minutes at a rolling boil. Remove and set on a towel to cool.

Now then, what the heck is garlic mustard?

Garlic mustard is a noxious weed. It is invasive and very Very prolific right on the edges of forests. It is also edible, tasty, and packed full of nutrients. It comes into season in the early summer, the leaves are tasty and you can treat them like spinach, the roots are also edible but I haven't tried them. In the mid-late summer their seed pods mature. The seeds make a very strong, very tasty, mustard. The flavor is very close to a spicy brown mustard with a hint of garlic after taste. So, delicious, nutritious, free, and doing your local ecosystem a favor by removing it? Yes. Go eat garlic mustard. It's out of season now, but next summer you'll be prepared. Won't you?

The great Krautastraphy.

Guys? Remember that lettuce kraut recipe I shared  the other week? (If you don't here's the link to the post: http://fwigf.blogspot.com/2014/07/dealing-with-lettuce.html)

Don't do it.

No seriously. Not kidding. It was scary and gross. I ended up throwing it out without tasting any and my bowls are green and flies won't even go near my trash.

This was poor decision theater all over my pantry. I can not recommend this. Which means my beloved darlings? You have to either eat your lettuce fresh or compost it. I think I'm going to just compost it and I am NOT growing lettuce next year.

Right! I promised a thing!

Let this be a lesson my dears. Well a couple of lessons. 1. Don't make promises you can't keep. 2. Don't trust me to remember anything. Because I will forget. 3. Pickles are tasty and easy.

Ok, so in yesterday's post on salads I used some pickled pea pods and pickled onions and promised the recipe to you guys today. And forgot until I was messing around with the formatting on my blog and accidentally read that post. Thank goodness this blog exists to remind me to share things I promised to!

Though if I didn't have this blog I wouldn't have promised anything. Oh well, not the point, moving on!

Perfect Pickled Peas

You need:

1/3 cup Apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup water
2 heaping tablespoons salt
2 sprigs of fresh dill
A handful of washed sugar snap or snow peas still in the pod

These are refrigerator pickles, they are not shelf stable. Put the vinegar, salt, and water on to boil. Warm up a jar to avoid temperature shocked glass (on one's friend). Fill the warmed jar with your beautiful peas and dill. Pour the brine over the peas. Secure the lid. Let the jar sit in a draft free place for at least over night to cool to room temperature. Then stick them in the fridge.

Here comes the hard part: Let them sit for a week without eating them. Then feel free to devour at your leisure. They'll last about 3 months or the length of time it takes you to eat them ALL. The brine gets caught in the pods, so each bite releases little pockets of goodness. The peas themselves stay sweet and crisp. All around excellent.

Pickled Onions

Same as you do for peas. Only replace the peas with either a large onion cut into chunks, or several mini-cocktail onions. I use the large white onions because that's what I had. They are amazing. You should make them.

Dealing with Lettuce

As I mentioned yesterday I am currently dealing with an over abundance of lettuce. As in I'm not done harvesting but I've gotten two Large plastic shopping bags full of the stuff. That is... considerably more than my husband and I can eat fresh. I managed to offload about half of it to my neighbors two doors down, along with a cucumber and a jar of pickles, as a thank you for unexpectedly mowing my front lawn yesterday. It was getting really long, my husband hadn't gotten around to it, I hate dealing with the getting the gate open to get the mower out. But Awesome Neighbor noticed and just mowed it for us. Didn't even take credit, we had to wander over to his place and ask if he'd done it before we found out who our mystery mower was. So he and his wife got garden produce.

But that still leaves me with A Lot of Lettuce. I scoured the internet for ANY lettuce preservation method. Lettuce is a delicate and testy thing. It is mostly water, so freezing it ends with mushy, slimy, black sludge. Not Appetizing. It doesn't stand up well to high heat, so canning it is Right Out. Fresh lettuce only stays that way in a fridge for about a week.

There had to be something I could do (other than toss it on the compost pile and shrug).

It is here that I discovered lacto-fermented pickled lettuce. Apparently pickled lettuce is a popular condiment/relish-thing in South East Asian cooking. I figured since you could buy jars of the stuff off the internet there had to be a way to do it at home. Seems logical right? I found a simple enough recipe and decided to try it with half of my remaining lettuce. That way if it failed I didn't ruin ALL of what I had harvested, but if it worked I could use all my lettuce before it goes bad.

Disclaimer! This is the recipe I am currently using! I can not attest to it being tasty or working. I'm still in the 'this is fermenting' stage of things. There will be another report when I taste it.

Pickled Lettuce/Psudo-kraut

You need:

A big, deep bowl
A smaller bowl
Plastic wrap
things to weigh the smaller bowl down with
Lettuce. An inadvisable amount of lettuce
sea salt
water.

Wash you lettuce carefully, leaf by leaf. Layer your leaves in the large bowl, alternating with a layer of sprinkled sea salt. Don't be stingy with the salt. I'm talking about a teaspoon between each layer. When your bowl is 3/4 full stop adding more things to it. Put a layer of plastic wrap loosely overtop. The plastic wrap is only to help keep your smaller bowl from touching the top of the lettuce and to keep bugs out. Put your smaller bowl on top of your bigger bowl. Add weight until your lettuce is being squashed.

The next day:

Check it. If your lettuce has had enough water squashed out of it that it's sitting in brine? Excellent! Leave it alone for a few days, then put it in a jar and leave it in your fridge. If it isn't covered in brine add water until it is, then leave it for a few days, put it in a jar, and let it live in your fridge.

This (in theory) should last as long as refrigerator pickles (so a month or so). The longer you leave it the more intense the flavor gets but the softer your lettuce is.

2 Months of Gardening in One Post. Also Pickles.

Ok, here goes.

The day we got access to Fwigf we planted up everything motioned in my last post, as well as Russet The-Potato-That-Should-Not-Be (it was a commercial russet potato that sprouted, I said 'what the heck' and planted it in my yard. Then transplanted it to Fwigf. After transplanting I was told by another gardener you aren't supposed to transplant potatoes. Oops. But he seems to be doing well regardless). I was a bit concerned about my seedlings, since they were tiny, Fwigf looked huge, and I was convinced everything was going to die. Short version? It didn't.

Long version:

We lost two heads of lettuce to Jerkface. They were planted right in the front, so I wasn't surprised they were gone. They were small, easy to eat, and planted where they were essentially an offering to the wildlife to leave the rest of my crops alone. Even with that loss I'm currently suffering a lettupalooza.

We experienced critical Pea failure. Of the 9 plants I planted only 2 continue to grow. Peas are a cool weather crop, and do better being planted either in an area with fewer hours of direct sunlight OR early enough in the season that it's still below 80F on average. Fwigf in June is not that place. My backyard however apparently *is*. So I have peas from the tiny garden I'd planted out back before getting Fwigf.

In order to provide the tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans with support, without having to buy individual cages for each plant (which adds up quickly) we built a rope trellis for each. I got the idea out of The Backyard Homestead (full citation at bottom). Basically how a rope trellis works is you get two long/tall garden stakes (we used green fencing stakes from Lowes, they were about $3 each) per row of things you want to give support to. Then we took cotton clothes line ($2 from the dollar store) and ran the clothes line between the two stakes. We tied to one end, ran the line to the other stake, cut it, tied the end, then repeated back and forth up the stake. The fence stakes we used had holes in them at regular intervals so we pulled the cord through the holes and tied knots to keep them in place. For the tomatoes that's all the needed. We wove the growing plants between the strings and they are doing fine. that's about 7 or 8 tomato plants supported for roughly the cost of one cage.

The cucumbers and beans got an extra step. We tied clothesline going vertical in addition to the horizontal lines. This created a net that give the cucumber tendrils more places to cling, and gives the beans more support between horizontal cords. Again each trellis comes out to supporting 7 or 8 plants for the cost of a single tomato cage. And they're reusable, at the end of the season we just need to pull the old plants off, roll the stakes up in the netting, and set them in the basement until next year. They take up less room than a whole pile of tomato cages, and when the cord breaks or gets too old to be trustworthy we can just replace that as opposed to the whole thing.

Directions for making a rope trellis can be found here: http://www.ehow.com/how_12152993_make-rope-trellis.html

Trellises have the added benefit of letting you garden vertically. Which saves space and lets you can cram more plants into your available space. More plants in an available space means a higher yield and a higher return on investment. Any vining plant can be grown vertically. The amount of support it needs depends on how heavy the plant itself is. Next year I'm doing a heavy duty trellis to support pumpkins. And then planting those suckers right at the front of my garden to give bit of privacy to working in my garden and discourage Jerkface from eating my lettuce. And to stop this from shading out everything else I'm growing.

We've also hand to mound up our potatoes. I've never grown potatoes before (neither has Husband) so this is an experiment. Potatoes keep growing and reaching and putting out more roots (which is where the edible bits grow) for as high as you mound them before they flower. They grow a little bit, you throw a little more dirt around the base, and so on. This eventually means that you need something to hold all that dirt in place. I've seen a lot of different suggestions. Everything from commercial potato cages (which are expensive) to growing potatoes in garbage cans (also more money than I want to spend) to building boxes around them gradually to hold the dirt as you add it. Think Lincoln Logs or Legos. Husband and I debated all of these options. Including getting Legos in bulk and building colorful fortresses and castles around our potatoes. Because we are adults and we get to decide what being a grown up means. We ultimately decided to buy some 5 gallon buckets from the hardware store and cut the bottoms off. Those seem to be working for now.

Totally doing Legos next year though.

Right! I promised pickles. My backyard garden is currently experiencing cucumber manifest destiny. I harvested a dozen cucumbers a couple of days ago. And since this blog is about preserving food, rather than making sculptures out of a material prone to rotting thus making a commentary on the nature of life and beauty, I decided to pickle them.

First I made refrigerator pickles. I found a recipe online but ended up modifying it so heavily that it bares little resemblance to the original. Therefore I give you:

Fwigf Refrigerator Pickles

You need:

1 pint jar
3 decent sized cucumbers
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup water
1/4 cup salt
Sprig of dill
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 a medium onion

Put your water, vinegar, and salt into a pan and bring to a boil. While that is heating wash your cucumbers and cut off the ends, then cut them into spears or slices, whatever you want the final shape of your pickle to be. Cut your onion into chunks. Put your cucumbers, onion, dill, and garlic into your warmed and sterilized jar. You want the glass hot so you don't temperature shock it. Once your brine has come to a boil and dissolved the salt pour it into the jar with everything else. Screw the lid on and let it sit over night so the glass can cool down slowly. Again, temperature shock is bad. Once it's room temperature to the touch put your jar in the fridge. These will last roughly 2-3 months (or as long as it takes for you to stuff them all in your face, whichever comes first.) The pickled onion chunks are also tasty.

Perhaps you are running out of room in your fridge? Maybe you just want pickles that will last longer? In that case I give you:

Fwigf Shelf Stable Pickles

You need:

Everything listed in the refrigerator pickle recipe. Also either : A. a commercial water bath canner or B. A pot big enough to put your jar into without it touching the sides, and with enough room above it to have 2 inches of water over the top of the lid. Also a hand towel, ladle, and oven mitt.

For this the jar you are using needs to be a canning jar. One that seals. You know those mason jars with the two part lids? Yeah. Those. I found mine at Tractor Supply Company, but in the fall you can also find them at grocery stores and (if you must) Wal-Mart. And through all powerful Google.

Put your jar and lids in a smaller pot filled with room temperature water, slowly bring to a boil (again temperature shock is NOT your friend), this will kill off any bacteria that might be living in the jar/lid pieces that would spoil your pickles while they live on a shelf. Prepare your brine, onion and cucumbers the same as before.

Now if you're using a commercial water bath canner follow those instructions.

If you're using my 'giant pot and a towel' canner: lay the towel at the bottom of the pot, set the full jar on the towel, away from the sides of the pot. Add enough water to cover the jar, plus two inches over it. Bring the whole thing to a boil and keep it boiling for 10 minutes. Your 10 minutes doesn't start until it starts boiling. If at any point your pot stops boiling, bring it back to a boil and start your count over.

When you've let it boil for 10 minutes turn off the heat and allow the water to cool for about 20 minutes or so. I did this to avoid temperature shock, and because I realized I had nothing to pull the blazing hot jars OUT of the water with. So I decided to let them think about what they've done while I scrambled around to figure out what the heck to do. Once you've finished that, realize you got your ladle and oven mitt out because I told you that you'd need one. Ladle out enough water to be able to safely grab the jar.

Set your jar on a towel in a draft free area. Let it sit over night. In the morning check the lid, if it's suctioned down (doesn't Pop back and forth when you push on it) you're sealed and you can set it on your self. If it isn't suctioned down put it in your fridge and eat them within a month or two.

Mission Statement

This year I began gardening in earnest. I also began looking at preserving food beyond just putting something in the refrigerator. I have been making a ton of posts on my social media sites about what is going on in my garden, what my pickling recipes are, how I making things, and I decided to start this blog to have it all in one place.

This is where you will find updates from Fwigf (the name of my garden). It will be a collection of what I'm growing, how I'm growing it, how much produce I got out of it, and how I laid it down for later eating. I am growing my garden specifically to cut down on the costs of food, my goal is to grow as much food as I can, as cheaply as possible. If I found a tip online I will post a link to the place I found it, if I found it in a book I will have a running annotated bibliography, complete with ISBIN numbers if you want to find the book yourself. If the tip or recipe came from a family member or friend it will be credited to that person. If it's something I decided to try for the hell of it then that'll be mentioned too.

What is Fwigf?

Fwigf stands for two things: Field Where I Grow Fucks (when it is barren and lifeless) and Field Where I Grow Food (when it is not). Fwigf is a 400sqft plot of land in my local community garden. If I tried to grow everything at home I'd lose at least half my crop to my much beloved, yet very assholeish dogs. I highly recommend looking for community garden in your area if you don't have space to garden at home. If there isn't one near you? Don't worry, I'll also be adding tips and information on container gardening for apartments/urban areas. You can get a surprising amount of food from a stunningly small space.

The community garden is an organic practices only garden. Which means I can't use any synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or weed killers. Fertilizers that I can use are things like compost, manure, fish emulsions, that sort of thing. Weed control can be done by pulling weeds by hand, or laying down landscaping fabric. You won't find any reviews on MiracleGrow(tm) or Scotts(tm) here.

Your growing rules will vary by garden. Obviously if you're in your yard then you can grown whatever you want. My community garden limits me to non-invasive species (no mint, no oregano, no Jerusalem Artichokes ect), no trees, no cane fruit (raspberries, black berries ect), and nothing that takes more than a year to mature (no asparagus or anything like that). The reasons for these rules boil down to being considerate of your fellow gardeners. Your wonderful apple tree may shade out your neighbor's tomato patch, your Artichokes won't stay in your patch and your neighbors may not want to spend the next 5 seasons pulling those nutrient hogs out of their own gardens, you may not have your patch next year and you don't want to leave someone who hates asparagus an unwelcome surprise when they try to plant their lettuce. Always check your community garden's rules before getting your heart set on planting something if you go the same route I did.

So that's it. That's the purpose of this blog. Sit back and enjoy if you want to, or get out a note book and a pen and dust off your library card. Either way this should be fun.