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.
Showing posts with label recipe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipe. Show all posts
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Friday, August 22, 2014
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
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.
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.
Monday, August 4, 2014
Peppers!
The garden in my back yard has been giving me jalapenos pretty steadily for the last week or so. Which means I have about 15 of the little green peppers of awesome in my fridge waiting to become something. Then today I went out to Fwigf and discovered that my Bird's Eye had peppers on it, not just flowers. I'd never had birds eye peppers, I had no idea what they tasted like. So I handed one of the small, green, thin and long peppers to my husband to taste.
Darlings? Bird's eye peppers are Hot. Angry hot. I've had hobs that were more restrained and polite. I now have 5 or 6 of these devil peppers in my fridge waiting to become something.
The thing with peppers is you can't can them. Botulism is a thing. A thing you'd rather avoid, trust me. Ergo home canning peppers is not something I want to risk. I'll leave that to professionals in sterilized kitchens. So what CAN you do with a windfall of hot peppers?
Chili.
And so my dears I give you:
Mia's Crockpot Cheater Chili
You need:
Roughly 1 pound of sweet sausage
1 medium sweet onion
1 large can of crushed tomatoes
1 large can of diced tomatoes
2 table spoons of minced garlic
1 ounce of tequila
Jalapenos
Bird's Eye Peppers (or any unreasonably hot pepper will do)
3 stalks of celery
about 2 carrots
either 1 can of kidney beans or 1/2 a cup of dried beans
2 medium sized potatoes, diced
If using dried beans: Soak over night and rinse well (multiple times) before adding to the chili.
Cut the sausage up if you have it in links. Brown it in a pan with the garlic and onions (roughly chopped). Put the browned sausage, onions, garlic, and pan drippings into the crock pot. Seed and dice your peppers. Dice your celery and carrots. Add everything to the crockpot set on low (do not drain the tomatoes). Proceed to ignore it for about 6-8 hours.
Serve over rice with cheese and sour cream. Keep a glass of milk handy, just in case.
I am going back to Fwigf tomorrow since there is a lot of work that has to get done. Life has eaten me so I haven't been out there as frequently as I should, and I want everything back to organized chaos before life eats me again.The plan for tomorrow entails:
Weeding. The weeds are taking over. I do not approve.
Picking lettuce. It came back. I do not approve.
Planting Turnips where the lettuce was. Turnips are much better.
Tying up my tomatoes
Reigning in my pumpkins
Harvesting some spinach
Not getting heatstroke and dying.
Picking through the dead potato buckets for potatoes and mounding the living ones with the dirt.
We will see how much I get done.
Monday, July 28, 2014
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?
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?
Friday, July 18, 2014
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.
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.
On Salads, Over Eager Pumpkins, and Tomatoes
Today I harvested the last of my lettuce. I have 7 full heads of lettuce in my fridge. My husband and I take two weeks to go through a head. This will not stay good for 14 weeks. My psudo-kraut is still fermenting, so I don't know if that's a viable preservation method yet. Also it kind of scares me. It looks and smells evil. I've been reassured by my friendly neighborhood food scientist (don't you have one of those?! They're so handy!) that yes, it is supposed to look and smell evil because it's rotting. In a controlled way that hopefully leads to food. But still. Rotting. On my counter. Yum.
Anyhow! Lettuce has one primary use. Salads. So lets talk salad for a minute my friends. Salads are like the box of chocolates of the vegetable consumption world. You can put almost anything on them, in almost any combination, and you *should* be ok. They can be hot, cold, warmed slightly, or be generally cold with a hot protein. Or something. This has started to get away from me. Salads are easy is my point. They don't take a lot of time to make and with the sheer number of combinations you can put together? They don't have to be boring.
That being said, I find salads boring. A salad is not a meal, it isn't even a side dish. It's a rabbit food garnish. I grew up with salads coming from a bag with iceberg lettuce, carrots, and red cabbage already mixed in. You dumped it into a bowl, slathered in in dressing and you were good to go. Anything else was for special occasions because adding tomatoes and cucumbers take effort. For every day salads? I was child one of three with two very busy full time parents. Meal times needed to be quick, easy, filling, and cheap.
However! I am currently in the middle of an Apocalypse of Lettuce, and that means figuring out how to make salads that aren't boring and are a meal in and of themselves. Challenge accepted dear readers, challenge accepted.
Today I made:
Lemon/Dill Salmon Green Salad
You need:
Olive oil
a splash of lemon juice (I'd estimate half a lemon's worth)
Salt
pepper
garlic powder
dried dill
Salmon filet
Lettuce
Fresh sugar snap peas
Pickled sugar snap peas
Pickled onions
Heat the olive oil in the pan. Ad the lemon juice, salt, pepper, dill, garlic and salmon. Cook covered on low heat, flipping occasionally, until the salmon is cooked all the way through. Then turn up the heat and fry your salmon uncovered for a few seconds on each side to make a tasty crust.
While that's cooking, wash your lettuce and fresh peas. Put them in a bowl. Add the pickled onions and snow peas (I'll post a recipe for those tomorrow). Top with your hot and tasty salmon. Eat.
This doesn't need dressing. The pickle juice from the peas combines in the bowl with the juice and fat from the salmon and makes a tasty vingery dressing all its own.
Now that that's out of the way, lets move on to the other things in Fwigf.
My pumpkins. As I mentioned before I'm growing long island cheese pumpkins. They don't taste like cheese, they're sweet pie/preservation pumpkins. They're called cheese pumpkins because they look like wheels of cheese apparently.
My pumpkins are planted along the back of Fwigf. Right by a chain link fence. You clever darlings can surely see where this is headed. Yes. They started climbing the chain link. I think I'm going to let them. I'll make little slings for the pumpkins as they develop but I'm just going to let them climb the fence. Better than having them invade my neighbor's plot I suppose.
Tomatoes. My poor tomatoes. I hadn't been weaving them in their trellis. And they're getting rather large and were starting to fall over. Thankfully I was able to save them and weave them into their support system. Let's see if this helps. They are developing little green tomatoes. See?
Anyhow! Lettuce has one primary use. Salads. So lets talk salad for a minute my friends. Salads are like the box of chocolates of the vegetable consumption world. You can put almost anything on them, in almost any combination, and you *should* be ok. They can be hot, cold, warmed slightly, or be generally cold with a hot protein. Or something. This has started to get away from me. Salads are easy is my point. They don't take a lot of time to make and with the sheer number of combinations you can put together? They don't have to be boring.
That being said, I find salads boring. A salad is not a meal, it isn't even a side dish. It's a rabbit food garnish. I grew up with salads coming from a bag with iceberg lettuce, carrots, and red cabbage already mixed in. You dumped it into a bowl, slathered in in dressing and you were good to go. Anything else was for special occasions because adding tomatoes and cucumbers take effort. For every day salads? I was child one of three with two very busy full time parents. Meal times needed to be quick, easy, filling, and cheap.
However! I am currently in the middle of an Apocalypse of Lettuce, and that means figuring out how to make salads that aren't boring and are a meal in and of themselves. Challenge accepted dear readers, challenge accepted.
Today I made:
Lemon/Dill Salmon Green Salad
You need:
Olive oil
a splash of lemon juice (I'd estimate half a lemon's worth)
Salt
pepper
garlic powder
dried dill
Salmon filet
Lettuce
Fresh sugar snap peas
Pickled sugar snap peas
Pickled onions
Heat the olive oil in the pan. Ad the lemon juice, salt, pepper, dill, garlic and salmon. Cook covered on low heat, flipping occasionally, until the salmon is cooked all the way through. Then turn up the heat and fry your salmon uncovered for a few seconds on each side to make a tasty crust.
While that's cooking, wash your lettuce and fresh peas. Put them in a bowl. Add the pickled onions and snow peas (I'll post a recipe for those tomorrow). Top with your hot and tasty salmon. Eat.
This doesn't need dressing. The pickle juice from the peas combines in the bowl with the juice and fat from the salmon and makes a tasty vingery dressing all its own.
Now that that's out of the way, lets move on to the other things in Fwigf.
My pumpkins. As I mentioned before I'm growing long island cheese pumpkins. They don't taste like cheese, they're sweet pie/preservation pumpkins. They're called cheese pumpkins because they look like wheels of cheese apparently.
My pumpkins are planted along the back of Fwigf. Right by a chain link fence. You clever darlings can surely see where this is headed. Yes. They started climbing the chain link. I think I'm going to let them. I'll make little slings for the pumpkins as they develop but I'm just going to let them climb the fence. Better than having them invade my neighbor's plot I suppose.
Tomatoes. My poor tomatoes. I hadn't been weaving them in their trellis. And they're getting rather large and were starting to fall over. Thankfully I was able to save them and weave them into their support system. Let's see if this helps. They are developing little green tomatoes. See?
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
On The Subject of Peas
I like peas. Snow Peas, Snap Peas, shucking peas, peas that come frozen in a bag. All of them are tasty when cooked correctly. Or raw. But I digress.
Peas are a cool weather veggie. This means that they need to be planted early, come into season in the early summer, and die in the heat of summer. Even in the Northeast.
What I'm trying to do is get around this. I'm trying to keep my peas cooler and alive all summer and try to get a fall crop. What I'm doing to achieve this in my garden at home is keep the peas shaded by my cucumbers. That's helping to keep the temperature down for them. This appears to be working (in combination with the oddly cool weather we've had for the last couple of weeks) since my home peas are blossoming a second time and I have a few more pea pods forming. One or two have fully developed peas in them. I'm letting those age a bit longer on the vine while I research some seed saving methods.
At Fwigf I planted a trellis of pole beans right behind my peas. Which means once the beans become mature they'll provide my tiny peas shade and let them grow for a fall harvest.However when I tried to plant peas in Fwigf most of them didn't live. Only two plants came up. My advice? Get your peas in the ground *before* the average temperature is over 80 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. But I'm still trying. if it works then I'm trying to save the seeds to plant my heat hardy double producers. If not then I'll try a different starter strain next year.
Peas don't need a lot of fertilizer. So they're an excellent thing to plant after a heavy feeder like corn. They'll do just fine with almost depleted soil, you just want to add a little manure to help them out. Really the only care they need is: planting before it gets hot (you can direct sow peas before the last frost if you really want to), water, and something to climb. That's it. They are the most low maintenance veggie I've ever tried to grow. Carrots are harder.
You can also grow peas in a container if you don't have a lot of space. They do well (in my experience) in containers with tiny trellises. You don't get as big a harvest, and the pods themselves don't get as big, but you can grow peas in your window with minimum investment. I'd only suggest 1 plant per 3 inches in a deep pot. That information isn't coming from anywhere specific, just my own observations with pea plants. Remember if you're growing indoors you may have to manually pollinate your flowers to get pods. Since I'm assuming you don't keep bees, butterflies, or other pollinating insects indoors as a general rule.
So I mentioned 'cooked correctly' up above. Cooked correctly does NOT EVER mean boiled into a sad and tasteless mush. When you do that you make your peas cry. You can't see the tears in the boiling water, but they're there. There are so many ways you can eat peas! Shuck them and steam the peas themselves without the pod, or toss the peas into a soup or salad raw. Or blanch them and freeze them. I have been known to eat frozen peas in the middle of the summer instead of popcicles. I mentioned I have a love of peas. Don't judge me. If you get a variety that you can eat the whole pod you suddenly have almost limitless options! I eat them raw by the handful more often than not. However if you can resist that urge you can pickle them (just treat them like cucumbers and pickle them whole. Soooooo good).
If you must cook your pea pods here are two ideas. Both of these are great either as side dishes or garnishes for salads.
Barbecue Pea Pockets
You will need:
Tinfoil
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Dried red pepper flakes
Garlic powder
Sugar Snap or Snow Peas
Lay out a sheet of foil. Oil it lightly. Put your raw peas on the lightly oiled foil and season to taste with the aforementioned spices. Here comes the hard part, folding the foil into a packet.
Take the long edges of your foil and bring them up to touch in the center. Roll them down together until they are firmly against your peas. Next roll each of he short edges in until they are firmly against your peas without tearing the foil. You should have a roughly rectangular shape. Now the reason these are called barbecue peas is because you cook the packet either on a barbecue grill or over hot coals. Your cook time will vary based on how hot your coals are, but generally takes us about 10 minutes.
The peas steam themselves in the packet and come out tender and delicious. The seasonings mixed with the sweet flavor of the peas themselves makes this a sweet/spicy side dish that goes great with any meat cooked over coals. Or by themselves because you share my unnatural pea love.
"But, Mia? What if it isn't summer? Or grilling weather?" I'm so glad I imagined you asking that theoretical reader!
If you're trapped indoors I suggest you try:
Fwigf Skillet Peas
You need:
Olive oil
Sugar snap or snow peas in the pod
minced garlic
a small finely diced onion
salt
pepper
a pinch of sugar (trust me, I won't lead you astray. Well, I won't lead you far)
In a skillet heat the olive oil over medium high head. Add your onion and garlic. Saute them until the onions are clear. Add your peas and season with the salt and pepper to taste and add your pinch of sugar. Saute everything together until your onions are caramelized and your pea pods are bright green and tender.
This is a sweeter side dish so I find it goes really well with spicy meats, or over crisp green salad if you're not carnivorous.
There you have it my dears. Go forth and eat peas.
Peas are a cool weather veggie. This means that they need to be planted early, come into season in the early summer, and die in the heat of summer. Even in the Northeast.
What I'm trying to do is get around this. I'm trying to keep my peas cooler and alive all summer and try to get a fall crop. What I'm doing to achieve this in my garden at home is keep the peas shaded by my cucumbers. That's helping to keep the temperature down for them. This appears to be working (in combination with the oddly cool weather we've had for the last couple of weeks) since my home peas are blossoming a second time and I have a few more pea pods forming. One or two have fully developed peas in them. I'm letting those age a bit longer on the vine while I research some seed saving methods.
At Fwigf I planted a trellis of pole beans right behind my peas. Which means once the beans become mature they'll provide my tiny peas shade and let them grow for a fall harvest.However when I tried to plant peas in Fwigf most of them didn't live. Only two plants came up. My advice? Get your peas in the ground *before* the average temperature is over 80 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. But I'm still trying. if it works then I'm trying to save the seeds to plant my heat hardy double producers. If not then I'll try a different starter strain next year.
Peas don't need a lot of fertilizer. So they're an excellent thing to plant after a heavy feeder like corn. They'll do just fine with almost depleted soil, you just want to add a little manure to help them out. Really the only care they need is: planting before it gets hot (you can direct sow peas before the last frost if you really want to), water, and something to climb. That's it. They are the most low maintenance veggie I've ever tried to grow. Carrots are harder.
You can also grow peas in a container if you don't have a lot of space. They do well (in my experience) in containers with tiny trellises. You don't get as big a harvest, and the pods themselves don't get as big, but you can grow peas in your window with minimum investment. I'd only suggest 1 plant per 3 inches in a deep pot. That information isn't coming from anywhere specific, just my own observations with pea plants. Remember if you're growing indoors you may have to manually pollinate your flowers to get pods. Since I'm assuming you don't keep bees, butterflies, or other pollinating insects indoors as a general rule.
So I mentioned 'cooked correctly' up above. Cooked correctly does NOT EVER mean boiled into a sad and tasteless mush. When you do that you make your peas cry. You can't see the tears in the boiling water, but they're there. There are so many ways you can eat peas! Shuck them and steam the peas themselves without the pod, or toss the peas into a soup or salad raw. Or blanch them and freeze them. I have been known to eat frozen peas in the middle of the summer instead of popcicles. I mentioned I have a love of peas. Don't judge me. If you get a variety that you can eat the whole pod you suddenly have almost limitless options! I eat them raw by the handful more often than not. However if you can resist that urge you can pickle them (just treat them like cucumbers and pickle them whole. Soooooo good).
If you must cook your pea pods here are two ideas. Both of these are great either as side dishes or garnishes for salads.
Barbecue Pea Pockets
You will need:
Tinfoil
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Dried red pepper flakes
Garlic powder
Sugar Snap or Snow Peas
Lay out a sheet of foil. Oil it lightly. Put your raw peas on the lightly oiled foil and season to taste with the aforementioned spices. Here comes the hard part, folding the foil into a packet.
Take the long edges of your foil and bring them up to touch in the center. Roll them down together until they are firmly against your peas. Next roll each of he short edges in until they are firmly against your peas without tearing the foil. You should have a roughly rectangular shape. Now the reason these are called barbecue peas is because you cook the packet either on a barbecue grill or over hot coals. Your cook time will vary based on how hot your coals are, but generally takes us about 10 minutes.
The peas steam themselves in the packet and come out tender and delicious. The seasonings mixed with the sweet flavor of the peas themselves makes this a sweet/spicy side dish that goes great with any meat cooked over coals. Or by themselves because you share my unnatural pea love.
"But, Mia? What if it isn't summer? Or grilling weather?" I'm so glad I imagined you asking that theoretical reader!
If you're trapped indoors I suggest you try:
Fwigf Skillet Peas
You need:
Olive oil
Sugar snap or snow peas in the pod
minced garlic
a small finely diced onion
salt
pepper
a pinch of sugar (trust me, I won't lead you astray. Well, I won't lead you far)
In a skillet heat the olive oil over medium high head. Add your onion and garlic. Saute them until the onions are clear. Add your peas and season with the salt and pepper to taste and add your pinch of sugar. Saute everything together until your onions are caramelized and your pea pods are bright green and tender.
This is a sweeter side dish so I find it goes really well with spicy meats, or over crisp green salad if you're not carnivorous.
There you have it my dears. Go forth and eat peas.
Monday, July 14, 2014
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.
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.
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.
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.
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