Because of the move our lives were split in two apartments for a bit and very messy so we did some home cooking and gardening but not as much as I'd hope for the past couple weeks. I'll post a recipe for cooking a whole chicken soon that we ate up awhile ago, yum. And also making chicken stock from scratch. But for now I'm tired so here's a few pictures from our vacation and some veggies from the garden that will be in our meals tomorrow....
Yep, it's been a while since the last post because, well, summer creeps up on you and takes over quick! Dan and I moved into the largest apartment in our house on the 1st and that took over our life (but it's much more comfortable for the two of us, our two animals, and all of our hobbies... so a good move overall). We also took a vacation these past several days up in northern Wisconsin at the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. We made it to Duluth, MN on the way back and today stopped in Hutchinson, MN for the Annual Minnesota Garlic Festival that was held there today (a blast!). And now we're back again, I don't go back to work until Monday so we have tonight and all day tomorrow to do some house work and get back to life. Because of the move our lives were split in two apartments for a bit and very messy so we did some home cooking and gardening but not as much as I'd hope for the past couple weeks. I'll post a recipe for cooking a whole chicken soon that we ate up awhile ago, yum. And also making chicken stock from scratch. But for now I'm tired so here's a few pictures from our vacation and some veggies from the garden that will be in our meals tomorrow....
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Kale chips are delicious and definitely much better for you than potato chips. Kale is one of the most nutrient dense vegetables of all, it is very high in beta-carotene, Vitamin A, Vitamin K, calcium, and much more. We are pretty much never short on kale here in Minnesota, it's available fresh from early spring until after frost in the late fall (it actually tastes sweeter in the colder weather). And it freezes very well, so we eat kale all year long. KALE CHIPS: -1 bunch of kale -1-2 Tbsp oil -plenty of salt and pepper 1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees. 2) Remove the stems from the kale leaves and discard, then roughly chop the leaves. 3) Place the chopped leaves on a cookie sheet and drizzle with 1-2 Tbsp of oil, plenty of salt, and a bit of pepper. Stir the combination with your hands to make sure the leaves are all oiled. 4) Heat in the over for 8-12 minutes, open the over door and shake once or twice during cooking time. They are done when kind of crispy. **Enjoy fresh from the oven, they also keep for up to 2 weeks in an airtight container in a cupboard. Blueberries in the bags are going straight into the freezer Last week almost 2 tons of blueberries were delivered to the co-op. They are IPM Blueberries from Michigan. IPM stands for Integrated Pest Management, it is common for berry and apple producers that grow sustainably to follow this practice, essentially they are dedicated to organic and sustainable farming measures but will only apply pesticides where absolutely necessary to prevent the loss of an entire crop. So, they are Michigan blueberries but in just a couple of years we will have a U-Pick blueberry farm in Northfield! Here's the blog for Little Hill Berry Farm, our friends Molly and Aaron are operating it and this is their first year, kudos to them, it's A LOT of work! So, for this year, we bought 20 pounds of Michigan blueberries from the co-op and froze over 15 pounds of them, it came to about 6 freezer bags 1/2 full of berries. Let's hope this lasts us the year (it's going to be tough, we LOVE blueberries). We also dehydrated a couple of pounds to be used for some future blueberry home-made granol Today Dan and I went over to his brother's place to celebrate his nephew's 15th birthday. We of course brought Daisy and let her run free for a few hours, doggy heaven. She made a dog friend, Bella the golden lab puppy from across the street, so they frolicked and sniffed for most of the afternoon together. Alec has a great garden in his backyard, we went down there to pick yellow beans for lunch and he discovered that he already has some massive turnips. We dug up a lot of these and while Jesse cooked up some delicious sour cream bread, tabouli, and soup I decided to make some honeyed turnips. Here's how you do it: HONEYED TURNIPS -several turnips, cubed -1/4 cup water -pinch of salt -butter -honey 1) Put about a 1/4 cup of water and a pinch of salt in a pan and place on stove top, turn to medium high and let boil. 2) Add your turnips to the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, until the turnips are soft when you prick them with a fork. (If there is still water in the pan, drain it off. If the water evaporated and the turnips aren't soft yet, add a little more water) 3) Put a few pats of butter and squeeze plenty of honey all over the turnips and sautee for about 10 minutes, letting the turnips brown a little bit. 4) Serve warm. Here's a picture of Jesse, Alec's amazing girlfriend and chef extraordinaire, and myself:)
Tonight was a great night for grilling, so Dan and I had our friend Adam over to join us for some steak and grilled vegetables. Adam's a great guy, he lives in town with his wife and two little girls and he's also into canning, growing vegetables, and has a backyard chicken coop of his own, good stuff. We cooked some Rib Eye Steaks from 1000 Hills Cattle Company (located in the next town over, Cannon Falls). Adam seared them on the grill and we first marinated them in "Rita Sauce", it's a steak sauce a friend of mine gave me that she canned from her farm last season and it's delicious, I must get her recipe and then I'll share! We also chopped up a variety of vegetables from our garden or from friends' farms. From the garden we had chopped carrots, carrot tops, broccoli, green and purple beans, sage, and garlic, we also chopped up onions from SEEDS Farm and Cauliflower from Spring Wind Farm. We then sprinkled on pats of the Ramp-Lemon butter that I froze in May, salt and pepper, and a bit of oil. We wrapped the vegetables in a foil packet and put them on medium heat on the grill and flipped them once, they were directly on the grill for about 8 minutes and then we moved them to the top shelf of the grill away from direct heat for another 8 minutes or so. To cook the steaks, Adam seared them on one side on medium heat for about 6-8 minutes and then flipped them and cooked for another 4-6 minutes. The key is to only have to flip them once, and getting a good sear on each side. The meal came out fabulous!
Last night Dan and I harvested all of the garlic that we planted at Spring Wind Farm last fall. We both had a long day and weren't able to get out there until about 8:30 but it was just wonderful harvesting while the sun was setting (and it was fairly cool outside! Quite nice after our heat wave). Dan's older brother, Alec, also helped out and we sent him home with a nice bundle of garlic. We then drove back home and bundled up our garlic in the driveway under our outdoor sensored light (so every 5 minutes one of us had to run up to light and wildly wave our hands to get it back on...) Then we hung it all up in the rafters of our basement. The garlic has to hang and essentially "cure" for several weeks, they will then be dried out and can be stored through the fall, winter, and possibly next spring. In the meantime, I've brought several bulbs in and we're eating them "green", so they're not dried out yet but extra pungent and delicious. We planted a lot! There's probably 150-200 bulbs hanging in our basement right now. There's three varieties, one is a mystery variety that we had growing out at our farm last year, we saved a lot and planted these. (Each clove from a garlic bulb will produce a new garlic bulb, our garlic last year was small-medium sized so we planted these cloves and this year they're medium-large sized, we'll keep doing this year after year and our bulbs will increase in size slightly each year). The other two varieties we didn't plant quite as much of because I purchased these (& garlic is expensive!), the varieties are Cherokee Purple and Tzan. The Tzan is a "softneck" variety and after they've hung I'm going to clean them up and experiment with braiding them, I'll post the process in about a month. If these varieties are tasty we will save some bulbs and plant their cloves this fall to continue the harvest and save our seeds. Oh, and here's some pretty carrots I just picked from the garden! We're going to have steak with carrots, potatoes, and parsley for supper, can't wait....
So we're getting ourselves some backyard chickens soon! Only thing is now we have to build the coop... The story is that we have until August 14 to get it built and get our new chickens housed and cozy. A woman in town, Vanessa, has 6 hens and a rooster and no longer can take care of them, she generously offered them to me and I just couldn't say no. They're still youngsters and will start laying this fall, so the peeeerfect age. Vanessa's going on vacation the 14th hence the deadline. So the first thing I did was walk to the library to check-out a book of 45 different chicken coop designs, then Dan and I enjoyed his home brew on our table out back and paged through the designs. Right now we're wavering between the "Poulet Chalet" and the "Little Red Hen House" designs (corny, eh?). We're going to design a very simple coop since we now are certain that our building skills are a bit sub-par! This morning I went out to the SEEDS Farm at 6:30 and worked until 8:00. There is supposed to be a heat index of 118 degrees today so folks were out there early weeding and won't be doing any work outdoors during the day, it's honestly just dangerous out in that crazy sun. I came home muddy and hungry so I cleaned up and fixed some breakfast. Let's see, I made some garlic butter from my garlic to go on a slice of toasted baguette. And then sauteed some green and purple beans, broccoli, and onions from the garden in butter and scrambled some eggs. This was topped with salt, pepper, Mozzarella cheese, and some bulbills (these are tiny garlic bulbs that are formed in the garlic scapes, essentially garlic "seeds" and they are GOOD). Yesterday Dan and I started officially putting up our greenhouse. Somehow we spent over 8 hours (the first 3 in the rain) plotting out the location and quadruple checking where the 26 posts are going to be placed. We also organized the pieces for the main-frame of the building (they're all there!) & used a surveying tool to determine where to level the dirt. The SEEDS Farm rented an auger for us to use to drill the holes but it was very burdensome and didn't go deep into the ground enough (it drilled 4' instead of our required 5'). Soooo, now we're on a hunt for an auger implement that can be attached to the tractor out at the farm (*cough cough*, anyone in MN know someone who has this?!). Our next work day will be spent hopefully drilling the holes and leveling the ground. After that we will need to rent or borrow a lift to raise the main "ribs" of the greenhouse. Finally, a farmer friend has enough goat milk to sell! I bought a delicious half gallon of raw goat milk out at the farm for $3 this evening. Yum. Tonight I made a classic strawberry-banana smoothie with goat milk and honey: GOAT MILK SMOOTHIE: -2 cups goat milk (or cow!) -2 cups frozen fruit (in this case, banana and local strawberries) -1 Tbsp honey *Put everything in a blender and blend until smooth. Today I harvested a couple of heads of broccoli from the garden. One head went into my scrambled eggs this morning and the other was pan fried in butter and topped with cheddar cheese to go with some brats tonight. It's so tasty. Some updated pictures of the garden from this morning: My little brother has been visiting the past couple of days and I've actually been having a good time (a surprise, indeed!). Today was Sunday, so I was still able to get in an hour of "Prairie Home Companion" listening in the kitchen while I cooked us up a frittata for breakfast. Afterwards, we went over to Silkey Gardens and picked just about 20 pounds of strawberries (and ate quite a few in the field as we picked). Graham, who's never had a fresh strawberry before, noted that they were the best strawberries he's ever had and are better then candy. They are goooood. Paul, the farmer, was out in the field explaining the different varieties planted and he had us taste-test a few, it's amazing how different the flavor is between each variety. Later on in the evening I froze 10 pounds of strawberries, it took quite a while. I will have to finish the rest tomorrow before they get mushy. I sliced off the green top and chopped them in half, then placed them in freezer bags and into the freezer, now we'll have strawberries all year!
It's been a while, full of work work work and a grrrrreat family reunion in Chippewa Falls, WI and Rochester, MN. The garden is going great! Right now we're eating snow peas, carrots, green onions, tons of herbs (parsley, cilantro, basil, dill, oregano, lemon balm, thyme, tarragon, chives, garlic chives, peppermint), chard, kale, greens, and radishes. The beans are starting to produce, there's green tomatoes, zucchini and broccoli will be ready to eat in a few days, peppers and eggplant are strong and starting to flower. Ahhh... isn't summer wonderful? Tomorrow I'm going over to a local farm, Silkey Gardens, to pick a bunch of strawberries for freezing (the season's just about over, I sure hope there's still plenty to pick!). I've been truly enjoying fresh strawberries, it's been a short season, but raspberries have just begun to take over and come into full ripeness. My new favorite go-to drink (other than sun tea) is making fresh strawberry milk, it's amazing (once again, amounts are estimates): STRAWBERRY MILK -2 cups strawberries -4 cups milk -2 Tbsp sugar or honey Place all the ingredients in a blender and blend on low until combined. Add more sweetener if desired. Oh yea, and as promised, here's some pictures of the wedding location for next summer: For the past few days my mom visited us from Illinois. The main purpose was to start planning for our upcoming wedding next summer... and so it begins.... It has been an intense wedding-plan filled time with me, my mom, and Dan- there's a lot to consider! The biggest accomplishment was that the location and date have been determined, we also really hashed out each of our expectations and desires for the wedding, and we all love the direction it's taking. The location is amaaaaazing! But, I'm going to post that info later this week when I have some pictures to include, so you'll have to sit on the edge of your seat for a few days (well, probably not:) Let's see, she arrived Sunday during the day. So we went out to the pizza farm and enjoyed a beautiful day, Dan's sister, brother-in-law, and absolutely adorable 3 year niece joined us. We did some preliminary planning and that evening cooked out, a lot of family and friends joined, it was a perfect summer evening. We made a huge salad from the yard, some asparagus with garlic scapes, green onions, and swiss chard from the garden, and wild rice brats with kimchi. Here's a picture of some fresh greens (& a few small carrots!) that were a part of the meal: On Monday I worked at the co-op until 1:00 while Dan and my mom drove around checking out wedding venues, visiting liquor stores... a.k.a wedding stuff. I met up and then we headed out to check out what ultimately was the perfect place. Afterwards we celebrated our great fortune by going to The Cow for a few drinks, Daisy joined us on the back deck. When we arrived back at the house, we saw that a friend had dropped off a bunch of Hastas for us to plant in our yard, so we found some time to do a bit of landscaping as well. On Tuesday we did a lot more planning and re-visited the wedding site with Mickey and Dario (Dan's sister and brother-in-law). Dan and I also took Daisy to the vet, she's an old dog and has some health issues going on right now, she'll pull through though:) My mom and I made it down to the farmers market and bought a beautiful bouquet, we brought this over with a thank you card to the couple that owns the property of our wedding site. Oh, and I bought some beets there! I'm quite excited to cook these, I loooove beets. I also brought my mom over to Spring Wind Farm and SEEDS Farm, we picked the scapes off all of my garlic at Spring Wind and I dropped this off to Becca at SEEDS afterwards to use for our CSA members this week. Later that evening we enjoyed way too many beers at The Tavern, Daisy came along and met A LOT of friends on the patio, lucky pup. Today I was at the co-op from 7-3 and worked as a support worker from 3-7:30. I'm a job coach for a farmer in town with down syndrome, he's awesome, I really really love working with him. Okay, he was a bit grumpy tonight but it was still fun to hang out. Then I get to drive him home to Simple Harvest Farm Organics in Nerstrand, a peaceful wonderful place with plenty of livestock and a great dog named Olivia. Nick gave me a tour of his "chef" garden tonight, a large herb garden. He's very proud of it and it's looking great! He sells chicken eggs at the co-op, they're called "Nick's Eggs" and are beautiful colors of the rainbow eggs from his Americauna Chickens, they're by far the most popular eggs at the store. Anyways, I am exhausted. It has been an amazing intense several days and I'm going to bed early tonight. I'll sign off with some recent pictures from the garden.... |
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January 2012
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