One Hour French Bread

Even though I don't make it as often as I did a couple years ago, I love to make homemade bread. I ran across a recipe for 1 hour french bread a while back (at this post), and it looked really good. Best of all, it said the entire process from start to hot-from-the-oven could be accomplished in an hour.

So I made two last night, and voila...they were great!

They can be made into an oblong loaf, or smaller baguettes or breadsticks. I went with the oblong loaves this time. One recipe makes one loaf. And aside from water, there are only four ingredients.
NO mixer.
NO difficult instructions.
And easy for anyone who is a little standoffish about kneading...the instructions don't call for it, though when I formed the loaf I gave it 4 or five good turns to get it to hold its shape better. The 20 minute rise is all part of the One Hour.

Aside from raw milk, is there anything more delicious than crisp cold salad greens and crusty, hot homemade bread...or the bread itself, with butter and honey?

Or slices toasted with grated mixed cheeses atop?

I'm going to have to hide this recipe, for the sake of my waist. After one more slice, perhaps :)

Here's Sadge's (at Fireside Farm blog) recipe:

One-Hour French Bread
1½ cups warm water
1 tablespoon honey
1½ teaspoons salt
1½ tablespoons Active Dry Yeast
3 - 4 cups flour (any combination of white and whole wheat)

Preheat oven 450º. Combine water, salt, honey, and yeast in a medium bowl. Let sit 5 - 10 minutes, until bubbling. Add flour, stirring with a wooden spoon, until dough is no longer sticky (I'll sometimes dump the dough out onto the cutting board with what flour is in the bowl and roll it around,adding a bit more flour, until it's not sticky). Roll dough into a 12 - 14" roll (or you can divide it in half and roll it into two long skinny baguettes). Place dough roll(s) on a cookie sheet (this won't work in a bread pan), greased or sprayed with non-stick spray, cover, and let sit 20 minutes. Make diagonal slits, 1/2" deep, on top with a razor blade. (Optional: spray with salt water). Bake 20 minutes.


Devour  :)

Easy Cottage Fare: Shepherd's Pie

My kitchen collection as yet contains no ramekins, custard cups, tart pans, or individually-sized mini casserole dishes. But I do have white ovenproof cereal dishes. I use them when I want indivual-sized entrees like homemade mac and cheese, hot pasta dishes, individual portions of beef stew topped with biscuits, and if I ever get the hang of it (must master pie crusts someday) homemade pot pies. The possibilities are endless. Tonight's use was for shepherd's pie...it's what we had on hand and was fast and easy.

And I have a half a pound of ground beef...actually several, in the freezer. I divvy up the larger quantities after shopping and freeze half pound quantities (raw) at a time since it's the amount I use a lot. I used a lot more meat at a time in the past, but have found ways to stretch that, unless we're having good ol' burgers straight up, or a roast. Even the leftovers from those, if there are any, get stretched for soups and more.

One way I stretch our protein out a bit is to pair it with veggies, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to use leftover bits of meat and veg and assemble a shepherd's pie. I've never used a recipe for it, per se, but essentially it's a casserole without all the ingredients being mixed together. A savory meat is on bottom, veg in the middle or combined with the meat, and mashed potatoes are atop. Some recipes call for the mashed potatoes to be on the bottom and the top, as a sort of crust all ''round. Seasonings vary, as do the sorts of meat and the type of vegetable. I usually top ours with some cheese and bake till it bubbles and is tender through. Since the meat is pre-cooked, and usually the veggies are, too, it only takes the time needed to heat through.

Last night's mashed potatoes preceded tonight's meal...it's an easy way to use them up. Tonight I wanted some fresh cabbage in our shepherd pie. A lot of recipes call for corn, carrots, green peas. Use whatever works. This is a rustic dish, not a prim and proper one...it holds up to a lot of experimentation or using what you have right on hand. I've been craving sauteed cabbage lately, so that's what spoke to me as far as the vegetable. I'm not into limp leftover cabbage, so I sauteed some in a pan, only till bright green and still slightly crisp here and there.

It doesn't take much meat. I sauteed beef chuck and onions, drained off the fat, and seasoned with a pinch of sea salt and garlic. Nothing fancy. Moist but not greasy.

It certainly can be whatever meat matches the veggies, though. Just make sure it tastes good. If it's too bland heat it in a skillet before assembling and add a bouillon cube or splash of meat broth for flavor. Or a splash of Worchestershire sauce...etc. Just don't oversalt it like I did mine (oops!)

Leftover roast, cubed/minced very small and paired with a splash of red wine and sauteed mushrooms would be wonderful. Leftover grilled meats and grilled veggies would be delicious, especially if the meat's cubed fine and moistened with something complementary so it won't be too dry.

Leftover meatloaf with a splash of tomato sauce and green peas is good...whatever combination your family would find enjoyable (or what's on hand that tastes good hidden beneath melted cheese, ha!)

Here I layered the meat with a spoonful of tomato sauce, seasonings, shredded cheese, the sauteed cabbage, leftover mashed potatoes, more shredded cheese on top of that, and some fancy schmancy panko breadcrumbs that I picked up once at the store, thinking they were plain, but ended up instead being somewhat Italian seasoned. Anyway, you can use what you want, but the idea behind most shepherd pie seems to be beef plus veg plus tatties.

The mashed potatoes are good enough to eat alone, which is why I NEEDED to spread them out (ha!)...don't hand me homemade mashed potatoes and give me a spoon. At least paired with the cabbage it has the illusion of something a bit more nutritionally virtuous ;-) Tonight I used less potato...to make more servings. A generous amount of fresh ground pepper topped it off. Usually I put a thick layer of the mashed potato, especially if I'm making this in a casserole dish instead of individual ones.

The cheese (as with most of the other ingredients) is optional. Unless your household is like mine in which cheese makes a certain husband want to grab the cook and kiss her soundly. Which is why I use it frequently :)

I topped the cheese with the panko crumbs, which is also unnecessary, but potatoes, cheese, and bread crumbs...a culinary trinity, mmmm...

I'm thinking I'll keep honing this dish till we have an ultimate favorite. After all, it's a casserole. Leftovers. But with potatoes? Shepherd's pie even sounds better. Especially to folks like me who've eaten enough hamburger-helper-ish concoctions, casseroles, and leftovers throughout the years for those terms to ever have much appeal any more.

I'm thinking up my ultimate shepherd's pie. I'll keep experimenting. But if it features primarily beef rather than lamb, I think I'll utilize some Guinness in making the meat mixture for the distinctive robust flavor it lends red meat (I love making roasts with it), and when I get to the potato layer, make it more fluffy than creamy and top it with a smoked white cheese. Like I ever buy smoked cheese (smiling) but hey you never know when the opportunity will strike :)

Anyway, whether plain or fancy, popped into the oven, especially since this is in individual bowls, this only needs about 20-30 minutes at 350 F, till everything's happily hot throughout.

And then you eat it.

Between kisses ;-)

Herbed Potato Soup

We eat a lot of soup around here, and no complaints :)

I've found that especially after a long work week, though I love special dishes for certain dinners, there's nothing quite as satisfying...and simple...as soup and some great snuggling with my hubby. It's a great slow AND fast food, and can be tweaked to what's on hand in the kitchen fairly easily. Couch time on the fly equals a date, to us, so I made us some comfort food and we caught a bit of Good Neighbors and Foyle's War (thank you, inter-library DVD loans). Soup's one of our favorite easy eats...this one featured the potato, and was easy.

I don't have a regular blender or food processor, but do have an immersion blender (those stick blenders you can make smoothies with right in the container). If someone has none of those, a handheld potato masher would do the trick pretty well, too, but the potatoes would have to be peeled ones only or you'll have big pieces of skin in there.

This is just a basic potato soup, very unscientific as to proportions of this and that. I like the combination of flavors rich with basil. Ingredients can be adjusted to include ones that are on hand, and bits of this and that. Here's what went into mine this weekend...

Rich Basil Potato Soup (ha, it's just potato soup with basil and some spices)

Several white or yellow potatoes (6-10) depending on size and preference, scrubbed and cubed (mine are unpeeled)
Several carrots, chopped
Several celery ribs and tops, chopped
Onion, chopped
One red sweet pepper, chopped
Large can chicken stock

Spices:
Dried or fresh basil, lots
Garlic powder
Parsley
Pepper and Salt
Cayenne
Dash of oregano
Few dashes hot sauce

Add later:
Several dabs of real butter
Whole milk

Cook all ingredients together, covered, in heavy soup pot, except spices and milk and butter, till all veggies are tender. Add a little water if there's not enough liquid just to cover. Stir to make sure nothing sticks.

When all is cooked tender, put stick blender down in pot and blend ingredients till desired consistency...I like it almost, but not all liquified. Turn down heat to low setting, and stir in butter and enough milk to thin soup to consistency you desire (I'm generous with the milk).

Add spices, adjusting to your own taste. I prefer a lot of garlic and basil and enough cayenne to warm the tastebuds. Heat a while longer, stirring frequently, then serve. This does even better after cooled and refrigerated overnight to allow flavors to mingle.
I like to serve this in bowls very hot with some shredded cheese added to each bowl just when serving, or with hot cheese toast.

This is a keeper now...we liked this well enough to have it added to the Tried 'n True category, mmm :)

For further experimentation, I'm thinking of making this with the same ingredients next time, omitting the basil and oregano, and adding chopped spinach and parmesan.

Update: Did the spinach number with the next batch, and froze some...we'll see how well it stands up to freezing. It was good but not as good as plain potato-cheese soup or the basil version above.

Good ol' potatoes...the poor man's riches! :)

Sweet, Tart, Lemony

Fresh-squeezed lemon and pound cake make a great combination! Jump to today's NotDabblingInNormal post if you'd like to read how mine turned out, and maybe snag the recipe...

which goes great with a tall glass of unsweet tea or good cup of coffee

:)

Rain, Rain...Stay!

It was hot, hot today! And then we finally, FINALLY, got some rain. For two hours.
That's two more hours than we've had for most of the year so far, so it's time to celebrate!
Cornbread started out the soul food fare...

Greens picked from the garden fresh today...purple hull leaves and calabaza (pumpkin) leaves cut in a chiffonade (ribbons) and boiled like turnip greens. It was our first time trying them cooked like this, since we usually sauteed them. They tasted great...milder than collards or kale or chard, even. Perfect with the cornbread, mmm. They nestled next to some homecooked red beans and a small slice of tender roast beef.

It all went down goooooood :)
This was for later...Jack works tonight. I miss him even before he has to leave. We take whatever time we have for a date. Today's date was warm homemade berry cobbler with cold milk. And lots of kisses :)
We love the sound of thunder. The plants were still dripping when the brief storm let up.
Liquid gold...
I love how the rain beads on the leaf surfaces. These thirsty guys got a well-deserved drink.
This is part of the snap bean and purple hull patch. It's a sprint to see if we can keep the Bermuda out long enough for them to bear.
Here's more evidence of the chase...layering old straw and hay and wheelbarrows-full of old barn manure, and yet the Bermuda skips merrily along.
Marking off a new calabaza sprout with some stick debris and willow whips, to keep our friendly neighbor from accidentally dumping a load or two of stall cleanings atop the little guy.

I hope you had a great weekend! Ours was wonderful. I was with my best friend/beloved and mix in some outdoor sunshine/sunburn and a surprise thunderstorm, and it's my favorite kind of day. The cornbread, good eats, and cobbler didn't hurt, either :)

How was yours?

Eating Cowpea Greens

They're not just good for animal fodder, a plate of purple hull peas with cornbread, or fixing nitrogen as a cover crop in the garden. The leaves are a really nutritious edible green! For more on our experiment on how to use cowpea leaves as edible greens, it's my post today over at NotDabblingInNormal.

Hope to see you there :)

Simple Herbs, Full Flavors

Two herbs almost anyone can grow, and are easily kept in pots --
Rosemary (the green stalk), for remembrance



and Thyme (the other herb here sprinkled over all), for courage.

For the simplest memorable meals requiring no courage at all to enjoy, they make a great pairing. These are the first two herbs I've used straight from the garden as well as home-dried for use in our meals.

Sometimes the simplest things are the best.

We love these spices for poultry, soups, and breads, but our favorites are probably for roast chicken/turkey (as a rub on the skin with oil and under the skin for flavor)


...and another favorite use is for roasted veggies.



These were last week's batch of roasted veggies prior to being put into the oven. They require no adornment other than these two spices, a good sprinkling of sea salt, and a drizzle of olive oil before being sealed with foil (or covered) and baked at 400 degrees F for an hour or long enough for the thickest veggie chunks to be fork-tender. That day's ingredients were simple some white baking potatoes, sweet potatoes, and Vidalia onions. But you can use whatever dense root veggies and tubers are at hand.

The roasting leaves the veggies aromatic with herbs, and it can be crisped up by briefly uncovering and leaving a bit longer in the oven (we like it without doing that, just fine). Depending on the veggie/root, sometimes it gets paired with salad, with rice, with roast beef, or just served alone, depending on the meal. I've used the pan juices as "gravy" when serving, or to flavor soups or rice. Leftover veggies are great chopped into a hash and crisped in a skillet by themselves or served with eggs for breakfast (especially with a dollop of salsa or a pinch of grated cheese atop), and also are great for a nearly-instant soup when paired with juices from a roast, or turkey-carcass stock.

They also pair well with garlic as a spice.

I, like most people had already discovered the flexibility of rosemary and thyme, but most of my spices used to come from the spice jar rather than just outside my own back door. These are two that have found their way into an abundance of dishes around here because they're so adaptable and delicious fresh.

My next thing to try them in....homemade vinaigrette!

What are your favorite go-to garden herbs?

Planting Directly Into Grass...No Till Peas??

Purple Hull peas, that is...

food not instead of the lawn, but smack IN the lawn??

I'm on a mission to find more purple hull peas and bush type beans and cowpeas, except I just don't want to pay Big Box store prices for individual packets. I had to hunt and hunt to find a Farm Supply store (over an hour away!) that sells farm seed by the pound...the southern girl in me has just exploded this spring (it ain't pretty, folks...ha!) and I'm so SO excited by our success in seeing the few dozens of bush-type Roma green beans come up like gangbusters, I want to plant more, more, MORE...

(they're qualifying as Robbyn-proof so far...no fuss, fairly bug-proof, endures weather extremes and not-so-fertile soil and still are growing strong...WOO!)

I'm jazzed!!!

And I'm hungry for food that is good for me.

I'm very surprised that with the necessity of keeping things simple due to our work demands away from home, I'm reverting back to the handful of crops that kept me fed during the country part of my childhood.......the old southern standbys.

I SHALL have the other things, too...we'll add them in yearly, a couple at a time, and keep going with what we already have. But I need to eat in the meantime, and the things I know we grew under punishing conditions in the deep south of my youth were simple...they were what we found at the farm supply store:

Bush green beans, purple hull and other cowpeas, bush limas, tomatoes, scallions, yellow squash, zucchini, okra. Yeah, we had corn, eggplant, lettuces, and so on, too...but what was on the table for dinner was usually purple hull peas, squash, scallions, and tomatoes...always with cornbread.

Oh yeah, and I want sweet potatoes, too.

OK, on to the question at hand...

Today when I was looking for sources for pink-eye purple hull peas, I happened upon this article. It's worth a look, and it has pictures. Basically, it's a small write-up about a man who stakes off part of his yard each year and plants purple hull peas directly into his lawn.....NO digging, NO planting per se, NO shovel or hoe....huh? He mows his lawn, stakes off the section he wants for growing the plants, drops the seeds straight onto the area, basically walks across it to make sure the seeds make it to ground level, throws down some fertilizer, and waters it in. He waters it each day till they flourish...about fifteen days, and then the plants kind of take over their area, and he basically keeps the grass mowed around the edges.

I know...it's not the House Beautiful raked-and-staked weedless patch of perfection, but I found it SO interesting that he got a whole crop off this one patch with so little effort...and those little stinkers seem hardy to the point that they overcame the grass enough to put out a decent harvest.

For people like myself who already have access to land that's unused (we have a vacant lot next door) with only part of it under what can only loosely be termed cultivation, why shouldn't I try growing some patches of food this way instead of having to keep mowing down the wild vegetation periodically (we have to for fire issues, even if we wanted to leave it wilder.) And I can put some in areas of my existing lawn that aren't used or are a part of our "resale curb appeal." (sigh)

:)

So I called the county extension service and followed the trail to the farm supply store and can now take a little day jaunt on one of my days off to go purchase seed by the pound for the same price I'd pay for one or two packets of seed at my local retailer. I'm nostalgic for the plain food from my childhood garden...I have enough herbs and such growing in buckets that it would never lack for seasoning and dressing it up with variety.

Right now I have some limas boiling on the stove. And sweet potatoes baking.

And it looks like I have enough "lawn" next door to warrant some wild-and-crazy experiments. If growing things in the lawn is that easy, ANYone with ground surface can eat...and that's good news for people like myself who can't afford equipment, soil amendments, and a lot of extra time to go far afield for some of the less expensive or free alternatives at times. (Though we do have a lot of different kinds of those projects underway, we're just tapped out of time and money for more, like many people).

We'll see...

I'm so excited about trying this!

Quantity Cooking Recipe Success

Hey, I'm trying it a little at a time...recipes to cook in quantity to have for dinner and that can be frozen for later meals.

Here's the latest one we love...I posted the recipe for Orange-Cumin Beef Stew over at today's Not Dabbling in Normal post. If you get a chance to try it, I hope you love it as much as we do!

Welcome to all the new visitors to this site...I'm glad you're here! I'm here sporadically and am presently trying to get my camera back in action. We're having fun in the garden, and we're especially glad for the rain showers that finally came in the last 24 hours...woo!

I'm off now to get my anti-crankiness sleep so I'm fresh for work tonight during these upside-down worknights/days. Shall return soon!

5 Minute-A-Day Bread: First Try

Sweet success...this bread, I love! 5 Minute-a-Day Bread, I love you! Jeff Hertberg and Zoe Francois, authors of Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, I love you, and now I shall go and buy your book!

You see, I found so much mention of this great and easy bread all over blogs and the internet, it was inevitable and I had to try it...finally. The "Artisan" part was a hook, but the real clincher was the "5 Minutes."

But the "No Knead" was what initially threw me off...

You see, I have a confession to make. It's sorry, lame, and ugly, but here it is...
I never liked No Knead Bread. I had a BBNKE (Bad, bad no-knead experience), and it took me a while to recover. I must beg humble apologies of Jim Lahey, the mastermind of the No Knead phenomenon.

Yes, I'm talking the dummy-proof bread that nearly every American now makes in their dutch ovens with, of course, no prior kneading.

I tried it, and it was a catastrophic flop. It's all my own fault...I must have done something wrong. And because I immediately moved on to loaf breads in search of the Great American Farm Bread Loaf, I never went back to try to correct my dismal failure.

And I do mean dismal. (Unless you're in the market for a reallllyyyy effective doorstop) I mean, you don't want to have to go register every time you want to bake bread, but the loaf I managed to turn out when trying the No Knead Bread should have required a license to handle...it was surely a deadly weapon.

Anyway, I'll return to the No Knead someday, and give it a better try. Till then, I'll be using this 5 Minute-a-Day bread because it actually seems to be Robbyn-proof...and it turned out to be delicious :)

You can access the basic boule recipe at the link above, and it's only 4 ingredients long...yeast, kosher salt, flour, water. You mix it in a roomy container and then cover. After an initial rise you can go ahead and cook with it or store it in the fridge for later access for up to two weeks. I've done this with cookie dough before, and really enjoy having stash of dough ready to scoop and pop into the oven when needed. With this bread dough, it only needs a 40 minute rise and into the oven it goes!

It's nice that there's no kneading necessary...everything's mixed with a spoon till fully incorporated. In fact, this is a fairly wet dough.

It took me a minute to get the hang of it, but you have to cut off a grapefruit-sized lump and form it into a ball, which is easy. The only tricky part was that it needs a good pile of flour and some floury hands to plop it into so the surface can be formed lightly without sticking all to your hands. Or you'll find your fingers stuck together in some breadmaker's version of the Swamp Thing... Above is a picture of the dough lightly formed into ball (boule) shape, and liberally dusted with flour. It's perched atop a generous layer of cornmeal, on an upside-down cookie sheet, my southern girl substitute for a pizza peel. While this rises, you have a baking stone preheating in a 450F oven on the middle rack, and you situate the bottom part of a broiler pan on the bottom rack. When it's risen 40 minutes, you slash the top of the dough ball a few times with a serrated knife, about 1/4" deep, to allow for expansion during cooking. Then you try to gracefully slide the whole unit onto the heated peel. Then you put a cupful of hot tap water into the broiler pan and quickly close the oven door on the whole shebang so that the bread crust will have its own nice little sauna as it bakes to a crispy exterior, and wonderful soft, lofty interior.

I had to remove the baking stone from the oven (with oven mitts), onto the stovetop (since I didn't want my raw dough to plop accidentally somewhere off-target in the maw of my very hot oven) before going further, then tilt my cookie sheet while getting a little momentum going via a metal spatula...and then the dough slid pretty well onto the baking stone. And into the oven it went to cook for 30 minutes. Here's the finished product, yay!!

And then it went on to do its disappearing act...

...only I think my hips just discovered where it went ;-)

For anyone who's followed my blog for a while, we had to make a big cutback in the amount of bread and flour we eat on a daily basis. We've done pretty well at that.

I have noticed that there are times we were buying a loaf of bread here and there at the supermarket to use for sandwiches, toast, etc on a limited basis. Even though our consumption of flour has gone way down, I wasn't pleased to be paying store prices even sporadically for something as basic as bread, that's so easy to make at home for so much less cost. Plus, there are no preservatives when I make it myself.

So this is what we're doing. I'm glad to have a recipe now that I can make as needed and store in the fridge in the interim. That's what we do with our kombucha (we bottle some for the fridge and store the rest at room temp), and it works very well for us. I'm delighted to find this versatile bread, and I'll pass it down to my daughter and anyone who's not likely to begin with a bread that needs kneading. I'll still make a good farm loaf now and then, but I'm delighted that this one will fill the bill for pizza dough, breadsticks, sandwiches, and pita...so very easily.

Yum! :)

Turkey Thyme

Please excuse the naked poultry...there were no fig leaves available.

This is one of the fat young birds we purchased loads of when they went on sale during the holidays in 2008...and they still cook up great!

Of course, there came a point where we had a hard time saying the word Turkey, thinking of turkey sandwiches and all the many other incarnations for leftover turkey meat, even though noone around here seems to tire of cranberries.

But the herbs survived the freezes (we won't mention all the plants that didn't) and the rosemary was too good to pass up (it's actually beginning to bloom!)...the thyme sprigs were dried in bouquets still hanging upside down from my impromptu drying rack (a metal 3-fold standing screen), and begging to be used. Is there anyone out there who doesn't like the scent of rosemary and thyme?mmmm

I don't have a roasting pan or anything big enough for a turkey....note to self NEXT year if we decide to re-stock the freezer, "Get Pan..."

Lest anyone think cooking a turkey is rocket science, a big thawed turkey CAN be wedged securely upside down into a stockpot, doused with a cup of water, massaged with sea salt, tickled with garlic, adorned with herbs, sealed with foil, and baked till fork-tender at 300F...... to great success. All while you run errands with the hub and then come home to the house smelling like Thanksgiving dinner.....ahhh :)

Some day maybe I can say each of those ingredients was raised and nurtured by our very hands on our very own farm. But till then, I'm happy the herbs came from only a few feet from our back door, and that the sale meat we bought 4 months ago is still pulling its weight in trimming back the weekly food budget considerably.

Small steps.

Just a reminder to myself that even those DO add up, though...and are sometimes delicious :)

Hey, Little Salad Bar!

I've been playing in the salad bar garden!



Can you tell how many different types of greens are in these thinnings and trimmings?

There's mustard, two types of green leaf lettuces, one type red leaf lettuce, radish greens, komatsuma (sp?), red-stemmed chard thinnings, and rocket (arugula). All of them are new to me, and they're all from my sowing a few weeks ago. I like having a salad just outside my back door!

We're not weighing our produce this year. I don't have the scale and we're slow to do EVERYthing, it seems, but my first priority in planting something on a small scale was to get some greens into our diet, pronto. There's really no reason for us not to, since they're really easy to care for (so far that's been the case, at least)

This is our second harvest from these bins...I harvested a good-sized grocery sack of mustard and komatsuna (sp??) thinnings last week, and we have a little leaf lettuce left in the fridge from the volunteers we keep finding in the ground around where we had some going last season and let it go to seed.

If you have advice, I'd love to hear from voices of experience...

I've thinned the mustard, but am not sure if mustard can be used as one of those cut-and-come-again greens when small? The other greens mentioned above are ones I'm wondering about whether to grow a few to maturity and then harvest, or to give them "haircuts", leave them more thickly planted, and keep harvesting the resprouting leaves?

Even if we don't know what we're doing yet, I'm so pleased at the flavors and ease with which these grew!

A few things so far that I've noticed --

1. The mustards that stay in the sun are going gangbusters...the others are lagging behind.

2. All these plants have weathered three freezes and weather in the 20s and were not killed back.

3. I planted a big horseradish root. Maybe I should have cut it into pieces first and planted each of them? It is now putting out leaves...

4. Rocket/arugula had an odd smell compared to the other greens when cut.

5. I love the feeling of the sun baking my back while I poise myself on an upturned bucket and putter away in the greens.

6. The nasturtiums were a no-show, except for one little upstart...I tucked a few sunflowers in here and there, too...may transplant them (can sunflowers be transplanted?)

That's all for now. I'm baking a turkey, which will translate into some calabaza soup, stock, curry soup, lunchmeat and frozen meat, and maybe some experiments making turkey sausage.

I also hope to get some almond & honey granola going, replenish the kombucha kegs, make some homemade vinegar-and-rosemary kitchen cleaner, and maybe..maybe...make my own laundry powder (after procrasinating it now for oh, TWO years...) :)

There are other recipes I want to try, but I have to go run errands and hope to kidnap my sweetie for the afternoon (and if that happens, will any of the above get done?? ah, I have to enjoy my time with him when I can get it!)

And maybe a fudge pie is in our future for the evening....

...or not. Maybe just yerba buena tea and some great movie/snuggling-in time in the living room..

Shall return I know now when...hope you're having a great start to your week! :)

Chocolate Alert

...if you need your fix, this one's easy as pie! It's today's entry over at Women Not Dabbling in Normal, where I posted one of my family's Go-To standby recipes.

I haven't been posting here much, mainly because I've been hiding under a rock. Can't explain it, but every now and then, it's what I do.

Hope to be back out in the light of day soon, with some constructive things and updates for here. I hope you're doing well!

Sorghum 'n Biscuits

I've been craving sorghum lately, that thick sweet slow-pouring lava flow of dark mineral richness.

I ate it when I was growing up, the syrup stirred with a pat of butter and slathered over biscuits. A little goes a long way -- it's dark, smoky, fortifying.

I couldn't find sorghum at the market so had to substitute molasses this morning. Close...but I'll still keep looking.

Sorghum is a crop that does well in these parts, and I'm slowly looking into it more. The grain type is said to make a nutritious flour. I'd like to find some or make some and experiment with it to see how to best incorporate it. Sorghum syrup hails from the deepest of my Deep South roots...my Grandpa's working mules were named Sog'rum and M'lasses.

Nothing deep to report here....just cleaning up from the momentary drop biscuit-fest and the jolt of liquid iron I think I needed (there are mixed reviews on the healthfulness of molasses and sorghum, but with such a long tradition in the South, I'll stick to my forbears' ways as regards this subject...and polish off the test subject with enthusiasm!) A little goes a long way...only a few bites, and I'm full. And now for a moment or two on the back porch, just me and my hot mug of Constant Comment...ah :)

A perfect start to a day off...and a new year...

hope you're enjoying your day!

Happy New Year to all :)

First, You Get A Glass of Milk...

...then you make these (here's what I posted today at Women Not Dabbling in Normal)

Then you walk five miles. (Unless your birthday falls in a month that includes the letters "a," "e," or "u," in which case you should eat more cookies and contemplate it a bit longer)

Repeat as desired ;-)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

The turkey's in the oven, and our formerly non-existant Thanksgiving is going to at least make a small appearance after all...yay!!

Jack does have to work that evening and sleep the day, but that buys me some time to put the polish on some side dishes now that we ARE having T-Day. My daughter found out at the last minute she is NOT traveling out-of-state, so she'll be joining us...double yay!!

My kitchen is not clean, which means that has to happen before the last mad dash of concoctions get concocted, but since this is a GREATLY scaled down scenario, it'll be turkey, gravy, dressing, cranberry sauce, veggies, beans, winter squash, pecan pie, iced tea (or kombucha) and pumpkin cake. Not too shabby, eh?? In comparison to other Thanksgivings, it's small, and I really like to put on the dog (well, bird anyway) for a whole gang of family and friends when possible, which usually requires planning weeks in advance and cooking days in advance, a regular baking tear...which I love! But this is ok for this year...I'm glad we're able to pull off something :)

It sounds like a crazy way of dealing with the empty nest syndrome, since my daughter moved out last weekend to her own place, but most of her things are still here, and she'll be coming to get them soon. So I've been dealing with it the opposite way I thought I would...by removing her things and cleaning and then making certain areas "mine" again. Weird. This isn't the house she grew up in, nor do we have any extra rooms, so we don't have a guest room...till now. The second bathroom is the one she's been using as her own, and with her things gone, it's naked. Enter my things...and now it looks like a whole new place (sorta). I'm glad we've gotten her nice things through the last few years so she has the basics to set herself up with. There are enough reminders here that I'll never lack for the comfort of a few talismen. But seeing ALL THOSE things that have yet to be packed and moved was making me sadder and sadder. So I consolidated them for easier sorting, and regained a bathroom and a big closet...two things in short supply around here. I also cleaned out all the movies...also difficult! But half our office got sorted in the process...and that clears my head some.

This whole year has been weird, weird, weird.

Taking out some of my own things and putting them where my daughter's used to be is weird, too.

But not bad.

And there are a few bonuses (oh yeah!) in not having anyone else in the house but just us two...case in point, the romance department ('nuff said...woo hoo!) So I think we'll deal with this. I haven't burst into tears today one time, and tomorrow we'll be thoroughly L-Tryptophanned and stuffed, and we'll have a great time together if I can manage not to burn everything.

I'm still on my Horrid Food Bungling streak. This turkey should be interesting!!

;-)


HAPPY THANKSGIVING to everyone who sees this...we are SO thankful for what you mean to us!

Crackpot Disasters

That's what I get for posting so many recipes.

I've had a pretty good run in the kitchen these days. But pretty soon, it was due to happen.

Today was a total kitchen disaster. I had peeled, diced, stirred, seasoned, combined, tasted, heated, simmered...everything I usually do to stuff in a Crockpot. But this time, the ingredients were just not going to have it...they were done with me. They rebelled. I had overstepped my culinary grace period, and they were unforgiving. The squash disintegrated, the beans retreated, the spices were discordant, and the more I tried to save it, the darker and stranger the color and texture became. Before it all burned. The fabulous slow-cook things melded into an unspeakable substance, inedibility being its highest virtue. I think I may have to patent it and sell it to a bio-lab for testing...

I moved onto other foods, because if at first you don't succeed, try try again, and all that...
I didn't burn water, but I did manage to waste veggies, pasta, and meat in what can only be called a Flameless Charred Carnage, involving multiple pots and pans and the entire countertop surface now cluttered with rescue receptacles (to no avail..there is no rescue for what's already perished). The stench has permeated the farthrest reaches of my house. I had to have a stiff Root Beer to deal with the situation. Or three.

My husband was reduced to eating dried figs at about 6 p.m. after scanning the pantry, declaring we had a few cans of tuna, and staring bemusedly at the "Pasta Something" that remained slightly edible. He finally took me out to eat, more from an attempt at self-preservation than to have a date out. I felt us slide twelve dollars backwards from our goal of paying debt off faster. I think he considered twelve dollars a small price for his survival. Good thing we're not pioneers on the prairie a hundred years ago, or he'd be gnawing for sustenance on the nearest prairie dog.

Not my best moment, hour, day...

I'm typing this lest anyone think I have anything together in the cooking department. The recipes I post usually SURVIVE my attempts to ruin them, which attests to their genius...NOT mine :)

I'm off to my last remaining root beer. No, not something healthy like kombucha. I have to make another batch of refresher tea for the kombucha, and do NOT trust myself to make it tonight...ha!

Heirloom Recipe: Pumpkin Cake

It's what's for dessert today at Women Not Dabbling in Normal...and what'll be on our dessert buffet for Thanksgiving!

Eat 'Em, or Plant 'Em?

...decisions, decisions!

If they don't get saved, I've been wanting to try Maria's recipe...yum!

Cook Like a Peasant...

...eat like a king!!

I did it...I finally after 42 years learned how to make a decent pot of slow-cooked beans...the deep, rich, savory sort that tastes good no matter how many days you eat it. Or at least that's how I feel about it right now, yay!

I've made some awful beans in my day, so I've been making a real effort to improve things. I made some bangup red beans the other day I wasn't sure I could top, and I'm doing it from scratch, from dried beans. To others, this was a skill they probably learned at age 3, but for me, I usually only bought beans in the can, for chili and such, only occasionally. Cow peas such as pink-eye purple hull were our substitute growing up, and you'll hear no complaints from me about them.

This weekend I made a big ol' pot of slowcooked pintos...the world's simplest meal. And I made cornbread (salty buttery crisp southern cornbread, not the sweet cakey stuff), kale, and roasted a caribbean pumpkin/winter squash. Yep, that's them shown in the pic above (except for the kale), all crumbled up together and steaming hot. I won't make the cover of Gourmet, for sure, but there's nothing else I want right now. It's homespun and messy and perfectly simple...sometimes more is just more.

It's a little nippy outside just now, wonder of wonders. And I just simply don't remember peasant food ever tasting so good.

Here's what we washed it down with...kombucha decanted into recycled wine bottles. Sweet and slightly bubbly and semi-sour in a dry cidery way, mmmm!

I know better than to think I'll ever be a vegetarian, but this meal makes me sooooo happy I don't even think about eating meat.

Love your beans, your cornbread, your roasted winter squash? I raise my 3 week vintage kombucha and toast you! (the temps here in my neck of Florida are for once dipping down into the 30s...a rare treat...I believe I'm giddy on remembrances of Real Winters Past, ha!)

Slainte!

:)

P.S. I've been lazing around today, ignoring the stack of dishes remaining from my cooking frenzy of two days ago. I really truly will be answering emails and comments soon. As soon as I finish my second Cary Grant movie...this one with Ingrid Bergman. Ah, I love home!