Some Like It Hot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4cNVusWlVs

It was a lousy year for my peppers.  They pretty much sat there all summer and then all of the sudden, sprouted a bunch of peppers.  In the meantime, I got three bags full of chili peppers from my CSA share.  Two bags of Anaheims and one bag of Poblanos.

The end result of this, was that I found myself with a ton of chili peppers.  I thought about what I could do with them.  Most of the canning websites suggested pickling them in vinegar.  eh.  I'm not overly found of pickled peppers in spite of the fact that I used to be able to say that tongue twister perfectly at top speed, so I kept looking.

Someone suggested a chili pepper mead.  Intriguing.  I do make mead - pretty good mead, if I do say so myself.  However, that would involve a lot of honey and perhaps not as many peppers as I had.

Someone else suggested green enchilada sauce.  Oh heavens, I do love me some green enchilada sauce.  Es verdad. Este es muy bueno.

So, I chopped up the lot...removed as many of the seeds and membranes as I could.

and then took my emulsion blender to them.  Not happening.  Just not enough juice to get it going.  hmmm...

So I decided to add a little bit of water and cook them for a bit until they were soft.

 I simmered them for about 30 minutes and then revisited the situation with the blender.  ahhh... MUCH better.

A few whirs later (but not before getting a splat in my eye... ouch) I had a beautiful smooth puree, which I then put through my food mill.  I ended up with this lovely stuff...

Holy mole, it looked so good, that I took a little sip from the spoon.  Holy Mother Of All That Is Sacred.  Several minutes later, when my breathing and pulse had returned to normal, I decided to let this atomic stuff cool, divide it up into SMALL portions and freeze it.  I can add some chicken stock to some of it and make green enchilada sauce that way.  Or at least that is the plan.  Either that or let it eat through the floor boards.

Update on the saurkraut... it is bubbling away and looking very saurkrautesque.  You can see it in the next photo, to the left of my hand.  Today in my CSA share, I received this monster...

I have named him Sr. Winthrop C. Cabbage.  Guess what I'm going to do with him?  Yup... more saurkraut.  Here is his friend, the Esteemed Buford S. Butternut, III.

 He shall become butternut squash gnocchis and perhaps some smooshed squish with butter n brown sugar...

Now, I have to go see if my tonsils are still there.

Good Soup Weather

I was all set to do some fall yard work today.  Perhaps some cleaning up some dead canes and straightening stuff up, but when I woke up, it was damp and dreary.

So instead, I cleaned up the kitchen.

Then I thought, "Self?  Why don't you make some soup?"

"Self", I said, "That's a great idea."

So, I did.  This:

Plus about 2 hours, became this:

7 Quarts of vegetable beef soup.  I forgot to put vinegar in the canner, so I have to scrub haze off the jars tomorrow once they've cooled and settled, but still.  

I had enough left over for a big bowl for lunch.  

Perfect day.

Thank you, Millie.

A long time ago, in another lifetime, I used to be married.  My mother-in-law was a great cook of Italian cuisine and enjoyed eating all sorts of good things  Time passed, things changed and now I am divorced, but one of the things I have retained was her way of cooking a lot of Italian dishes.  Simple ingredients, fresh, and filling.

One of those things for which I had a hankering lately was home made pasta, or "home mades" as she used to call them.  The recipe is simple and takes surprisingly little time from start to finish.

You start out with a ratio of one egg to one cup of flour, in my case tonight, three farm fresh eggs from my CSA share (Shout out to Red Earth Farm!) and three cups of flour, add a dollop of olive oil (don't get mixed up and put in balsamic vinegar instead... just sayin'), and about a 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Three beautiful eggs in well of three cups of flour

Put the flour and salt into a bowl, make a well in that and crack the eggs into it and add the oil.  With a fork, start beating the eggs and pulling the flour in from the sides of the well.

Pulling the flour into the egg

At some point, the dough will become too stiff for the fork and you'll have to switch to your hands.  What you are looking for is a relatively dry dough.   You might be tempted to add water, but don't.  It'll be okay.   Once you get as much as the flour kneaded in as possible, let the dough rest for about 10 minutes.  This well let the gluten relax and you'll have an easier time of it from here on.

Nice dry dough

First pass

Get out your trusty pasta machine that your son gave you for Christmas one year, find the only place in your kitchen where you can clamp it to a counter and with the rollers on the biggest opening, and run a wad of dough through it three or four times, folding it back on itself in between passes.

after running through smaller opening

Then switch to a smaller opening and run the strips through again.  This time, you will notice the dough will be thinner and smoother.  Switch to another smaller opening and do it again.  Continue this until you've reached the smallest opening.  Place the strips of dough over something to hang while you finish up the rest of the dough.


Start water to cook the noodles on the stove.  You'll want this ready to go once all the strips are cut, or the noodles will get a little gummy and stick together.  Not the end of the world, because you can stir like a maniac once you dump them in the water, but it is easier to keep this from happening.

Once you have all the strips completed, run them through the cutter.  I chose the smaller one tonight to make skinny noodles.  Hang the completed noodles up while you finish cutting the remainder of the strips.

After that is all done, dump the noodles into hot boiling water (I added salt) and cook on a rolling boil for about 5 minutes.  Home made noodles don't take nearly as long as dried store-bought noodles, so keep testing them for doneness.

When you are satisfied, drain the noodles and dump into a pan of hot spaghetti sauce (mine was also homemade from my CSA share of tomatoes.

Remove from heat and let noodles sit for a few minutes, stirring to let the noodles absorb the sauce.  (Here in Philadelphia, Italians call this "gravy")  Serve with a nice sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan cheese and a fresh salad.

Mangia!

Doh!

Why have I never thought to plant strawberries before?  Little red nuggets of mouth watering deliciousness, sun warmed sweetness... mmmmmmmm....
It makes perfect sense that I do plant them, since I generally make strawberry jam every year.

Strawberry Jam Canned in One of My Vintage Ball Jars

Most years I make strawberry shortcake from scratch and serve it with real whippy cream, 'cause seriously nothin' says summer quite like that to me.

Homemade Strawberry Shortcake

So why, oh why would it never occur to me to actually plant my own?  Who knows.  The important thing is that today I have taken steps to remedy that situation.  I bought 20 bare root strawberry plants.  There are enough growing days left to get them established this fall and actually harvest a few next summer.

Here's something I didn't know.  There are two different types of strawberries - June bearing and ever bearing.  Why decide?  Get some of both.  Yes, have some.  The names sort of tell you what you need to know.  June bearing have one big crop, usually in June of the second year after planting and the ever bearing varieties bear fruit all summer, beginning with the first year after planting.

I can't wait to get them and plant them so I can get those tasty little morsels of summer next year!  I think I may have just the bed for them.... 

NOM NOM NOM!

Another bed and some ideas for next Spring

I've wanted to get back out in the backyard last week, but laboring in a sauna is not something I was willing to do, so I did other things this week.  Mostly sitting on the couch looking up stuff on the internet.  Productive stuff.  No, really.  It was.  Scout's honor.

See, I found this youtube channel by a guy named  Larry Hall.  Basically, you take some vinyl rain gutters and some two by fours, some containers, net cups and some potting mix and you create a self-watering system in which you can grow amazing vegetables in containers.  Since I have an entire driveway that extends all the way into my backyard that gets sun all day long, I've wanted to do a container garden there forever.  These are cool, because it will eliminate me having to water those containers to keep everything alive.  The nutrients go right into the water, which is pretty efficient, sort of borrowing from hydroponics.  I'd probably use compost tea in mine, as I don't want to use chemical fertilizer.  The other thing is that here where I live, I would have to take steps to prevent creating a mosquito breeding ground.  Still, I love the idea - it's simple as can be, inexpensive and I can use grow bags, which are better than buckets or plastic totes since the roots self-prune instead going round and round and eventually killing the plants.

Then, in my travels, I found this guy.  Another thing I've wanted to do again is to grow potatoes in containers.  Besides having a great accent, I love what he is doing with the potatoes, even if he does use chemical fertilizers.  That's easy enough to bypass and again, watering with compost tea would work wonders.  So again, I'm filing this away for next year and in fact, I think I would combine the two ideas and grow potatoes with the rain gutter self-watering system.  I wish I found this in the spring, because I would have done it this year, but oh well.  The possibilities for next season abound!

In the meantime, I decided to start another permaculture-type garden bed with sheet mulching.  I surveyed the backyard this morning and narrowed down two possible sites.

The first site is near the fence and at the moment is a tangle of pachysandra, ivy and thistles.  Probably a few dandelions there too.  You can see the last of the phlox flowering and there is a rose bush struggling to the left.  Sterling, I think.  It doesn't get sun in the morning, because its close to the back steps of the house, but I knew I wanted to put one of the fruit trees I've ordered there.  Possibly the apple, since it would be fairly close to my existing apple tree and cross-pollination, ya know.



The second site gets a good amount of sun every day and would be a great place for tomatoes, peppers and possibly another fruit tree.  Right now, there is a type of perennial sunflower/daisy thingy I purchased at Fordhooks on a whim and it is much, much too big for that space.  I keep it cut back, but if I didn't, it would get over 8 feet tall.  This is actually what grew back after I dug it up and replanted it toward the back of the yard where the size made sense.  So, yeah... this one is going to have to go.

After mulling over both possible sites for the new bed, I ended up choosing the first one for a very simple reason.  (and this is where my youngest daughter should stop reading)  Bees.  Those yellow flowers are a bee/moth/butterfly magnet and I figured I would give them a few more weeks of luscious pollen before tackling this bed.

Decision made, I hauled out the weed whacker and discovered several new curse word combinations.  I hate that darn thing.  It's inexpensive (cheap) and the strings don't advance automatically like they are supposed to and most of the time, whirl back onto the spool.  

At any rate, a short vocabulary building exercise time later I had this

Chop and drop.  

I spread some newspapers I purchased this morning (I should have read them first, I suppose), wet them down and added a layer of cow manure and wet that down too.

Then I mixed a five gallon bucket of my compost with ten gallons of peat moss, about 3 gallons of vermiculite, two big handfuls of pulverized lime and a handful of Epsom salts.  

I spread half of that mixture over the manure, wet it down, then another layer of manure and topped that off with the remaining soil mixture, wetting each layer down.  Once I got that smoothed out to my liking, I spread a layer of pine shavings over the whole thing and gave it a good soaking.  

Here's the finished bed.  I would like to get another couple inches of pine shavings on top before winter hits, but I'm pretty happy with it so far.  No digging is always a good thing.  Time will tell whether or not the pachysandra and ivy actually succumb to this method or not.  They may just rear their heads, look in my direction and say, "Thanks for the manure, lady."  I'm also wondering if the poor little rose bush will benefit from this sudden glut of nutrients.  Hope so.

For those of you who may be wondering about the addition of lime and epsom salts, the lime is for the calcium and the salts are for the magnesium, both of which prevent blossom end rot in tomatoes, melons, peppers, etc.  It's not enough to neutralize the acid that the manure adds, but will make a difference to the plants.  The peat moss and vermiculite were added because I have a fairly dense clay soil and I wanted to aid in drainage, especially at this particular bed site, since it sits pretty close to my downspout.  

After everything was said and done, I weed whacked the walk again and then decided to take a few pics of my backyard as it is now to share with all of you, plus one of the tree well bed I finished a couple of weeks ago.

New bed and walkway  

Coral Bells in flower

Creeping Charlie.  Someday, I'll make beer with it.

Bed I did a couple of weeks ago.  I ended up planting Russian sage, lavender, Greek oregano and English thyme on this side.  The other side is all seeded with garlic, which has not made an appearance yet.

Well, gentle readers... that is as they say, that.  At least for now.

Under Pressure Or My New Shiny

Isn't she pretty?  Yesterday, I purchased this pressure canner and shall name her Cora the Canner.  She's something that I plan on using a lot, especially if my plan to create a little food forest is successful.  I do have a freezer and it is great, but honestly, lots of times I think, "Oh, I have such and such in the freezer and we should have that for dinner tonight," but then I forget to take it out of the freezer and this way on nights like that, I will just have to open a jar and I've got the basis for whatever dinner.

In order to test it out, I bought three pounds of dry black beans.  I read two different methods of canning dry beans.  One was adding dry beans to the jars and boiling water and the other was to soak overnight, give them a quick parboil, add to jars with boiling water and can that way.

So, since I bought a new shiny, guess which method I used?  If you said the soaking overnight, then you are grossly underestimating my enthusiasm for new toys, as well as my complete inability to grasp the concept of delayed gratification.  (Not really true about the gratification, except when it comes to new toys.  Which reminds me, I really should do a post about another new toy I received this year, but never mind that right now.  See? I'm helping you with delayed gratification.  You're welcome.)

At any rate, I rinsed half of the beans very thoroughly, trotted down to the basement to my hoard stash of vintage canning jars I scored at Goodwill for $2/box.  (Happy little dance)  I washed them in hot soapy water and then filled them with boiling water to sit for a bit.  Meanwhile, I boiled some water on the stove to use to pour into the jars after I added the beans.

Check out this jar...

Apparently, these are worth some money and that's sweet and everything, but they are also utilitarian items and there is nothing wrong with using them for the purpose for which they were intended.   (I clearly don't grasp the entire collecting canning jars thing...)  I have about 20 of these pint jars.  I suppose I could look up the value of them.  If they were worth a nice price, I could sell them one at a time.  Then I could use the funds to add to my vintage toilet paper roll collection.  

Anyway... after I washed the beans I started heating up 3 quarts of water in the canner, Next, I added a heaping 1/2 cup of beans to each pint jar.  Then I added 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt on top and then filled the jars up with boiling water, leaving an inch of head space.

This is a picture of adding salt because I know that is difficult to visualize. 

This is actually from this morning, when I did the other 1 1/2 pounds of beans after soaking them over night.  I decided to get all crazy and add the salt first.  It really doesn't matter which order they are added.

I plunked all the jars down into the now hot (but not boiling - that's important) water and sealed the canner up.  An hour and fifteen minutes later, this is my result!

8 pints of canned black beans ready to dump into salads, be smooshed up to make black bean tostados, added to yummy yummy salsa, or whatever else my little heart desires.

I also did 8 more pints this morning with the pre-soaked beans and just from a visual alone, I think I like the dry bean method the best, but the proof is in the tasting.  The dry pack method probably results in a much firmer bean, which would be best for salads, soups or salsa.  

So, that's it gentle readers.  I'll leave you with this picture of one of my favorite canning jars (okay, okay, I get the whole canning jar collecting thing after all).  

ps.  (I don't collect old toilet paper rolls)

pps.  (One of the lids didn't seal properly, so I had the occasion to taste the beans from today.  A little too much salt for my liking, but the beans were delicious!)

Beginning Permaculture in My Urban Backyard

Yesterday, it was hot here.  After a relatively mild August for Philadelphia, I was not prepared for 90 degree heat and a buttload of humidity.  I wanted to work in the backyard, but it was just too hot for me, so I decided to wait until evening before doing yard work in hopes that it would cool down significantly.

This did not work.  I still managed to sweat enough to soak my entire shirt and head and feel like I should have been chanting some meditation for enlightenment.

Around 4:00pm, I ran to my local home center and picked up two bags of composted manure, two bags of organic top soil, a bag of potting soil and a bag of shredded pine bark.  The most expensive thing was the potting soil at eleven dollars and change.  The rest of it was around two bucks a bag.

After arriving home, I scrounged around and managed to come up with enough cardboard to cover the area where I wanted to start a permaculture bed - under the apple tree, one to support the apple tree's health and two to grow something there that is useful (although I am not sure just what yet).  The first thing I did was to dump the bucket of half eaten/rotten apples and leaves under the tree and spread that out evenly.  Then I laid the cardboard on top, making sure to overlap the edges so nothing could grow through.  Then I wet the cardboard down pretty thoroughly.

Next up, I dumped the bags of composted cow manure on top of the cardboard, spread that around and wet that layer down pretty well too.  On top of the manure, I spread the top soil, making sure to completely cover all of the cardboard so that nothing was showing.  Another wet down and then the last layer was the shredded bark, which I also wet down.

A fairly sizable tiny vampire bite on my face later, I stood back to survey the results.  It looks pretty good, but I think I'm going to go back to the home center today and get four more bags of top soil and a couple of bales of hay.  I think this should give me the depth I wanted and the hay on top will keep the shredded bark from wicking all the moisture from the top soil I plan on putting on top of that layer.

I originally thought about planting comfrey under the tree until I read that it was toxic to both humans and animals.  Something in it damages the liver.  I would like to put something under there that would be edible, while at the same time help support the tree's health.  A little more research is called for.

In the meantime, my packages arrived yesterday.  One of them contained a everbearing mulberry bush and a Violet de Bordeaux fig tree.  I have to say that I was rather surprised by the small size of both plants.  I guess when they said 4" pots, my mind was like, "okay, that's going to be about a foot tall."  ha!  Try about 3" for the fig and maybe 5" for the mulberry.

Anyway, they'll grow.  I just may not have figs for a couple of years.  Bummer.

In other news, I've been watching a youtube channel called "Linda's Pantry" and now I want a pressure canner.  She cans just about everything, but the beans intrigued me the most.  Never thought of canning my own black beans or pintos.  

I've been busy...

I know it has been a long time since I wrote a post and I'm not really sure where the time has gone.  However, I keep thinking about it and I finally decided there is no time like the present, right?  So here goes...

What I've been up to:
Let's see.  Work on the porch hasn't really progressed past my last post.  The railings are done and have survived a winter with lots of snow, a spring with some rain, and a mild summer.  They still look great and I'm completely pleased with them.  I would still like to screen in the porch at some point, but I just haven't gotten the motivation nor funds to do it yet.  

I've been spending a great deal of time out in the backyard, trying to get it back in hand.  4 nights of school and homework on weekends created a jungle out there of amazing proportions.  I've pulled lots of weeds, mostly creeping charlie, thistles (ouch) bind weed and dandelions.  I'm getting something to help with the weeds, but more about that later.

One of the things I was lacking in the backyard was a compost bin.  I've been tossing clippings and weeds over the fence in the back where there is a 10 foot space between my fence and the neighbor in back of me.  Since they have a few trees and bushes back there that block the view, there wasn't a question of unsightliness, but it did seem a waste to me to just toss all that organic matter over the fence.  After a few days of looking (and gasping at prices), I found a moderately priced unit on Amazon and ordered it.

Now in the past when I have had a compost bin, nothing really happened except it got real stinky and I only got usable compost out of it about once a year, so this time I spent some quality time with my computer and read quite a few articles and watched some youtube videos about proper composting.  Armed with that information, I was able to load my bin in the recommended layers of green vs brown and in no time at all, I had a cooking compost going.  It's been pretty amazing watching everything cook down and feeling the heat come off of it.  When I have veggie matter from the kitchen, I make a hole in the middle, dump the stuff in and cover it up.  I figure I should have some decent compost in the fall, just about the time to plant some stuff in the backyard.

This leads me to one of the other things I've been researching - food forests.  There are some fine videos out there about turning your landscape into a food forest.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it basically means creating an edible landscape with fruit trees and other edible crops grown in conjunction with the trees.

Like most Americans, my landscaping is mostly ornamental in nature.  I have one apple tree, which frankly has been a bigger PITA than help, but after reading up on fruit trees, I realize that I've made a number of mistakes with it.  One is that I let it get completely out of control and I have never taken care of the soil the tree is growing in.  The result of this is that from about mid-July on, I'm picking up hundreds of apples that are full of insects, half-eaten by tree rats (squirrels) and have some sort of blight or fungus on them, rendering them entirely inedible.

The rest of the backyard is filled with perennials.  Pretty, but hardly useful except for attracting bees and butterflies.  That is of course, a wonderful thing, but none of those plants are going to feed me.  I do have a small area where I've put in tomato plants, a couple of peppers and a few herbs.

After reading all these blogs and watching all these videos, I've realized two things.  Number one is that I want to put in some dwarf fruit trees, some berry bushes and number two is that I really need to amend my soil.  I've neglected it for far too long.

I don't want this post to be too lengthy, so I'll stop here.  Tomorrow, I'll cover some of the things I've learned and write about the plans I want to implement in the immediate future.

Thanks for reading - I promise I will be better about posting, so that the energy doesn't die down.  For me or my readers.