My garlic harvest has now been hanging out to dry in our basement for a couple of months so it's ready to be trimmed and stored for the fall and winter. I've already given a lot away and bartered some but there is still PLENTY to eat over the next 6 months. The next step will be to go through the garlic and select the largest bulbs to be planted next month for next year's harvest, I'll show these steps when they happen!
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I harvested all of the cukes in my garden the night before our frost. I couldn't eat them all fresh so I made some quick refrigerator pickles with them, here's how: CHILLY DILLIES (makes 1 quart): -1 quart cucumbers, sliced or cut into spears -3/4 cup apple cider vinegar -3/4 cup water -2 tsp salt -2 tsp dill seed (or a few heads fresh pickling dill) -2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed -Small onion, sliced (optional) 1) Combine the vinegar, water and salt in a pan and bring to a boil. 2) Place the dill seed, crushed garlic cloves, sliced/speared cucumbers and sliced onions (optional) in a clean quart jar. 3) Pour the brine in the jar and put lid on jar. 4) Let cool to room temperature and then put in refrigerator. 5) Enjoy after a couple of days in the fridge! Here's the top shelf of my fridge... everything is home made:)
alfalfa sprouts, dilly beans, maple syrup, pesto, pickled ramps, bread 'n' butter pickles, pickled fiddleheads, rhubarb sauce, kim chi, and a fruit smoothie:) Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful fall day. Well, it started off very very chilly, I sat at the farmers market stand with some of the SEEDS farmers from 9-1 and we shivered the whole time. I love the energy at the market, there were plenty of friends and community members to chat with, it was a wonderful time. And Franzwa, the farmer next to us, gave me a beautiful bouquet of snap dragons at the end of the market. Luckily, the snap dragons survived last week's frost! It's amazing what an early frost does to the diversity of crops, it went from a bountiful summer farmer's market full of zucchini, peppers and tomatoes to one full of winter squash , potatoes and summer vegetable stragglers in a week. Still, delicious food! The afternoon became beautiful, mid-60's and sunny, it just smelled like fall. In the afternoon I went apple picking with Becca and her friends, Laura and Billy, at a community member's home, Terri. She lives in a beautiful home in the country on an old apple orchard. It's great because none of her trees are sprayed ever and she doesn't know the varieties, but I can tell you they're sweet and a bit battered but who cares if they taste good, right?? Terri was so kind and gave us a little tour and let us pick as much as we wanted! Most of the apples left were in hard to reach places but we were able to climb trees, use a ladder, and the hood of my truck. It was sooo much fun. This week I'll be making plenty of applesauce and will be experimenting with making some apple butter and apple pie filling for canning (these two I haven't made before). It's worth a shot, and I'm looking forward to it! I found this muffin recipe while browsing the food section of the Huffington Post the other day and decided that they sounded delicious. Plus (and most importantly) almost everything is grown here in Minnesota so it's a pretty low carbon footprint baked good to have around the house. BLUEBERRY CORNMEAL MUFFINS: -1 1/4 all purpose flour -1/2 cup cornmeal -1/2 cup brown sugar -1/2 tsp salt -1 Tbsp baking powder -1 cup milk -1/2 cup butter, melted -1 egg, beaten -1 cup frozen blueberries 1) Preheat oven to 375F. Grease muffin tins with butter. 2) Whisk flour, cornmeal, brown sugar and salt together in a large bowl. 3) In a separate bowl combine the milk, butter and egg. 4) Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients just until combined. Stir blueberries in. 5) Spoon batter into muffin tins. 6) Bake for about 20 minutes. The other day it was very cold, I didn't know what to make for supper so I assessed what was in the fridge. Hmmm.... there were a few quarts of chicken stock, a couple of cooked kielbasa from supper the night before, and a random assortment of veggies (plus more in the garden if needed). So soup sounded like it would totally hit the spot and it sure did. The following soup can be made with basically any vegetable, meat, bean, and grain assortment. The basic platform for making good stock-based soup (so no cream) is to have good stock (meat or vegetable) and preferably the initial vegetables of onion, carrot, and celery... the rest is up to you! It frosted last night in some places! Some places nooooot quite but pretty darn close. Now, this is just way too soon for a frost, especially for all of those beautiful tomato plants out there that aren't doing so well this season to begin with. Unfortunately, I don't think that I'll be putting up any tomatoes this year, we'll just have to wait and see.... Many vegetable plants can't tolerate frost so I harvested all of the cherry tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, ground cherries, and celery from my garden yesterday. I made some quick refrigerator pickles with the cucumbers (recipe will be posted soon) and plan on eating the rest of the goodies over the next week. Another plant that can't tolerate frost is definitely basil so a few days ago me and Kayla decided to make and freeze a bunch of it. First, we went out to SEEDS Farm and harvested a lot of basil for the pesto. The next day was great because in the morning we went on a 15 mile bike ride through the country and then came back to my apartment, enjoyed a few beers, and made pesto... good times! Right now I'm at Simple Harvest Farm Organics being support staff for Nick. It's so peaceful right now, Nick and I are just chatting away while he washes and cores apples for applesauce. For the past hour I've been picking raspberries to take home and freeze because their raspberry patch is going out of control. The dog's just sleeping and making occasional grunts. I love this job! I snagged this recipe from Ann Iijima, a fellow Just Food Coop board member. She posted it in last issue's Compost (this is the coop's newsletter). _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Ratatouille or, How to Use Up Your Full CSA Share submitted by Ann Iijima We did this every week with our CSA share and loaded up our freezer with bags of ratatoille. This is great as a meal, particularly with local cheese and home-baked sourdough bread. We also like to skin chicken thighs (local, of course) and throw them into the pot—presto-chango: Chicken cacciatore (aka “chickatoilletore”)! All of the ingredients & quantities below are approximate. The short form of the recipe would be: “take one end-of-summer CSA share, wash, chop, simmer in a large pot.” It always turned out great! Ingredients: 2 Tbs oil (olive, butter, etc.) 1 onion, chopped 3 cloves of garlic, chopped 6 tomatoes, chopped 3 carrots, chopped 1 medium eggplant, chopped 3 medium zucchini, chopped 1 sweet pepper (any color), chopped Optional: hot peppers, cooked chick peas (garbanzo beans) Salt, pepper, basil, cayenne Directions: Heat oil in heavy pot. Add onion (caramelize by cooking over very low heat until brown). Add garlic; saute until fragrant. Add tomatoes; cook until slightly thickened. Add other vegetables and cook until tender. Season to taste. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Here are all of the ingredients I used, I didn't measure quantities. There are: eggplants, green and sweet peppers, zephyr zucchinis, broccoli florets, red onions, garlic, fresh parsley, fresh basil, cherry tomatoes, salt, pepper, olive oil, and some cooked garbonzo beans I happened to have in the fridge.... After the tomatoes were cooked, the rest of the chopped vegetables and cooked garbonzo beans were added. These then had to cook down for awhile with occasional stirring, it took about an hour to soften all of the vegetables (but there were a lot in the pot!). I tasted and added more salt and pepper pretty liberally as these cooked down. ...I used a slotted spoon to spoon 4 quarts of the ratatouille in freezer containers, reserving the tomato juice and some veggies at the bottom. The 4 quarts were cooled to room temp, covered, and then put in the freezer for later use. Next, the vegetables and tomato juice were then ladled into a gallon mason jar and were put in the refrigerator, I'm going to eat it this week as soup! Later that night I heated up a half gallon of the ratatouille with the tomato juice in a pot. When it came to a boil I turned it down to medium-high heat and added pasta noodles and let these cook for ~8 minutes while they absorbed the tomato-y deliciousness. This was then topped with shredded mozzarella cheese, and voila!.... a tasty supper with tons of fresh vegetables.
Here are some updated pictures of our garden gone out of control....!
A few nights ago a group of great SEEDS farmers stopped by my apartment for an evening of canning pickles and dilly beans. We also decided to make some pizza from scratch. For the dough I used a fool-proof recipe that's made in a food processor. We then made a pizza pie by layering dough in a cast iron skillet and then topping this with pesto, farm vegetables, cooked bear sausage, mozzarella cheese, and another layer of dough. (Yep, bear sausage.... Dan and I traded some of our garlic for bear sausages from a friend, he shot the bear in Canada last winter). Here's some pictures of the delicious indulgence.... Perfect Pizza Crust
(from Cooks Illustrated) 1 1/4 tsp instant or active dry yeast 1 cup water, slightly warm or room temperature 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface 1 cup cake flour (or use all-purpose flour) 1 1/2 tsp salt 2 tsp sugar 1) Preheat the oven to 500F with your baking stone on the oven rack.** 2) Combine yeast and water and stir to dissolve. 3) Combine flours, salt and sugar in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to blend. With the motor running, stream in water/yeast mixture. Continue to process for 1-2 minutes, until dough becomes smooth and satiny. Add an extra tablespoon of flour if the dough becomes too sticky. 4) Divide dough into two and shape each piece into a tight ball. Place on a lightly floured surface and cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap or a clean dish towel. Let rise for 1 hour, or until doubled in size. 5) Working with one ball of dough at a time, place on a lightly floured surface. Flatten the dough into an 8-inch disk, then stretch the edges gently until the dough is about 12-inches in diameter, rotating the dough by quarter turns as you work. You can also gently stretch the dough by placing it on the backs of your hands, letting the weight of the dough stretch it out. 6) Transfer the stretched dough onto a baking sheet that has been covered with cornmeal (you can use a pizza peel, if you have one). Spread it with a small amount of the sauce, toppings of your choice and slide it quickly into the oven. 7) Bake pizza at 500F for 5-10 minutes, until well browned.** 8) Retrieve pizza with baking sheet or pizza peel.** 9) Serve immediately and repeat process with second piece of dough.Makes 2, 12-inch pizzas. **I have done this using a baking stone at 500 degrees and it iiiiis delicious. However, you can also use an oiled baking sheet or cast iron skillet and cook at 425 degrees for 12-15 minutes (and avoid the need for a baking stone and foresight of preheating it) and it comes out delicious too. Yum yum yum... beets... and blue cheese, two wonderful foods that just so happen to taste delicious together. Here's how: Beets & Blue Cheese Salad -1 bunch beets -Blue cheese -3 Tbsp sunflower or olive oil -1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar -Squeeze of mustard -Salt and pepper 1) Roast the beets! Preheat oven to 375 degrees. While oven preheats place washed beets in a baking dish and drizzle with sunflower or olive oil and sprinkle on some salt and pepper. Cover with aluminum foil. Cook beets for 20-60 minutes (times varies greatly depending on the size of beets). Check them by pricking them with a fork, if fork easily pierces the beets then they are done. 2) Remove beets from oven and let them cool, when they’re cool enough to handle peel off their skins. Then cube the beets and let them cool in the refrigerator until cold. 3) Make the dressing. Just whisk the oil, vinegar, mustard and a pinch of salt and pepper together. 4) Combine cooled beets, dots of blue cheese, and dressing. |
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January 2012
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