And it's officially spring... pretty sure...

Started 3/22...
Weather has been below 20's overnight, but in the upper 30's to low 40's during the day. Supposed to start getting into the above freezing overnight temps next week... keeping my fingers crossed.

All the peppers have been repotted as of yesterday. Ended up with a reasonable amount- 1-3 plants per variety. I hesitated a bit overlong, but started a second pot of the Farmers Jalapeno yesterday- the last 8 seeds I had. I had a total fail last year from the seedlings, and this years sole seedling out of 5 seeds planted isn't looking too happy as far as I'm concerned.
I have found myself really short on the 3 gallon sized pots- but used a lot of them up planting bulb stuff that won't be ready to unpot before the peppers need their final pots... And I'm not sure if one brick of cocoa is going to be enough to fluff out the pro-mix and compost this year. So I'm going to need to head out to the grow shop tomorrow for the cheapest nursery pots to be had around town. And probably hit Menards for a new bale of pro-mix and a bag or two of compost. I have a few other big tubs and containers to top off and mix up a lot too.
I know I do a lot of other composting, but I prefer to grow my containers in a more reliably sterile and worked mix in a lot of ways. And this pepper container year is an important comparison year.

Most of the tomatoes are looking pretty good. Got 4 Freds, 1 strong and one popping Moon and a second coming along, only one Inca. Only planned on 2 Freds in the raised bed so if I got extra to fill in where the Moon and Inca does not, ok. One Waspi peach repotted up and going strong. The Coure is kind of, well, herm.. not sure yet. The weird cluster tomato never sprouted, though I'm still keeping it under the domes. If only the one Coure grows on, it's not so bad of a thing. I'm trailing into finally hitting the end of the tomato trials from the seed I got- last year is the final stuff before doing a big comparison year in 2020.

A couple recipes... Tinkered around with the large lasagna pan southern summer squash casserole to feed 6+ down to a 2 person with some lunches or 4 person with a salad kind of thing.....

small light southern squash casserole. And trust me, this is light compared to the original.

Large frozen chicken breast (about a pound), half a little bottle of moscato wine, the liquid from a drained can of mushrooms, and a heavy tablespoon of bacon fat.. cover and over low heat till the liquid starts burbling, then up to medium flipping the breast several times for about 15-20 minutes. The point here is to flash thaw in the liquid enough to cut it up before putting it back into the pan to finish cooking. Once you can slice and dice it up into bite size chunks, put it back into the pan and sprinkle with about a tablespoon or so of Cajun seasoning to and cover to simmer on med-low for another 10 min.




While that's going on, get your big bowl and start the sauce.
Medium onion, halved and sliced fairly thin
2 carrots, peeled and grated/chopped fine
1 can water chestnuts, drained and chopped
1 can mushrooms, well drained- you drained that into the chicken fluid.
1T dried parsley
1T dried minced garlic
1T salt
1t dried thyme
1/2t black pepper
1 can chicken cream soup OR other cream soup+ packet of Golden G's
1/2 cup sour cream
Mix well and set aside till the chicken and squash are ready. 


Prepare your squash- I use 3 each of small zukes and yellow squash. Rinsed and sliced into generous inch slices. Set aside till the chicken is done. Once the chicken is done, there should still be liquid in the pan... leave it. Pull the chicken chunks off to a bowl and let sit on the counter to cool a bit, stirring occasionaly. Pour sliced squash into pan, and pour in enough water to cover. Cover the pan and kick it up to med-high and set the timer for 10 minutes.
Once it hits 10- water should be just hard burbling, the slices still rather on the crisp side of tender-crisp. Pull it and shock it.. I put a colander out on the front porch in the snow and dumped it out there- at 20 degrees outside, that shocked the slices right quick! That only needs about 10 min or so, enough to cool them, not chill them off.


I used the 1/3 pan as the prep pan for the raw squash to hold till they were blanching, then did the crust.. Oven at 350. Use the 1/3 pan and melt a stick of butter while the oven is heating up. Once melted, mix in a box of instant stuffing and pat down to the bottom of the pan to make the crust. Set aside till ready to build casserole. 


Time to assemble.
Mix the cooled squash into the sauce mix. Dump 1/2 the mix onto the stuffing crust. Evenly distribute the chicken across mix. Dump other half of mix on top.


Toast off Panko breadcrumbs... I'm not sure how much, I poured into a fresh dry pan and guessed about how much a sleeve of crushed up crackers would be. Enough to coat the top of the pan nice. Once it was toasting for a couple min but not turning yet, I tossed in about a T each of dry parsley and dehydrated minced garlic. Kept swirling around till stuff got it's toasty crunch on, then immediately poured off on top of the casserole.


Covered with foil and into the oven for 45 min and it's first temp check. Popped in the meat thermometer and was a bit above body temp, lol. Another 30 minutes and it was a piping 160. Pulled it out of the oven and let it sit for 10 minutes. Took off the foil on top and let it sit for another 15 minutes or so.
Yum.



Made an extra good "smear". Kind of more dense than a ham or egg salad, but not quite a cream cheese spread. Deviled ham and egg.

For the sauce:
2 oz cream cheese- room temp or even warmer to mix in well with the Miracle Whip.
2 oz Miracle whip. Don't use Mayo here. The MW as a salad dressing makes a difference.
1 teaspoon smooth yellow mustard
A pinch each celery salt, white pepper, and garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dry dill
1 Tablespoon minced garlic greens- can use onion greens.
3-4 dashes red tobacso sauce. 

Into the processor..
1 cup diced ham
1 small onion
2 Milwaukee petite pickles 
1 teaspoon capers
Pulse several times till the ham is a crumble and the onion and pickles are fine
Add in 2 hard boiled eggs, quartered- pulse processesor a few times to get the egg worked in, then let it run for about 15 seconds to really fine everything up.
Into the fridge overnight- makes about 2 cups or so of spread stuff, great on wheat bread :)

3/23... Another lovely and sunny day. So dry I actually needed to water the outdoor pots of bulbs again. Not supposed to have rain again till early next week, with temps stabilizing above freezing!! Woot!! Good thing we got full tanks from over the wintertime.. coming up soon enough to be uncapping and digging out all the other containers in the kitchen area too.
Outside stabilizing over the weekend also means time to haul out most of the rest of the pots from the solarium of the bit more tender bulbs and all the mums. The mother mums are kind of scraggly but doing good- all the heldover daughters are doing really well. With any luck I should have a couple dozen plants to work with and choose from for setting into the front hibiscus bed early summer :)
Yes- this summer. Mums can establish in  very well if you get them in the ground early. Thing is, they are mostly sold in the fall when it's way too late to put in the ground....

Anywho. Fine day for running around. Hit the grow shop for some pots and a couple blocks of coco fiber. I have enough of the mid-sized peppers growing out nice that I realized I was short on the cheap pots. And I like using some coco in my container applications, and they got the cheap blocks of that. However, they don't have the cheap big bags of soil stuff or tomato cages.. of off to Menards.
Menards only had 2 bales of the pro-mix I usually use and is 14 bucks for 4 cu ft- but the bales were really damaged and I wasn't willing to haul that home in the trunk. But they had 2 cu ft bags of pro-mix for containers on sale for 15 bucks for the 4 cu ft worth. Fair enough. Between the new stuff and mixing in the old dirt, I should have enough to pot up all the peppers and top off a few bins that seriously need topping off.
Hit Meijer and picked up some nyjer seed and a new finch feeder on clearance- it's a two station version of the single sock one I currently have. It was on clearance so I said yes please. Also picked up 5 one pound bags of fresh spinach for 1.50 a piece. I've already wilted it all off in water and have it draining in the sink and cooling down right now to press in the fridge overnight.
I used the 8 quart wide pan with water and broke the 5 pounds into 2 batches worth of cooking. Worked way better than using a 8 quart stockpot for me. 
Tomorrow when the mass is well drained I will chop split it and do a batch each of creamed spinach and Italian spinach and beans. Good stuff for the freezer- I ran out of creamed spinach and been bummed, lol.
That reminds me.. there's a chest freezer out in the stable that I need to ask the neighbor about. Don't know if they plan on taking it or not, or if it works or not, or what. It would be sweet on a sweetstick if it works and they don't want it. We are loosing the little chest freezer soon enough, and I already have the upright one empty again.

Finally made a proper mileage run of the parks while out and about today. Normally I just pop in and around while doing other stuff anyway, but apparently I'm supposed to be claiming mileage for while I'm stopping at the parks. Turns out it's about a 10 mile round trip.

Decided to try out a green chili tonight. Normally I do up Chucks crockpot chili.. but didn't want to wait. Writing up the notes here while it slowly burbles and drives us up the wall with great smells.

Chicken and bean salsa verde chili

1 pound of raw chicken breasts, diced
1-2 tablespoons fat to sear off the chicken in- I like to use bacon grease
1 can of Great Northern beans, drained and rinsed
1 can of Garbonzo beans, drained and rinsed.
1 large yellow onion, diced
1 head garlic- see prep notes
1 4 oz can diced green chilis, undrained- OR 2-3 fresh chopped hot/seasoning peppers of choice and 1/4 cup of liquid- you can do water, stock, wines, beers, ect.
1 16 oz jar of salsa verde- you can make your own.
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 package G Washingingtons Golden
2 cubes chicken demi-glace

Prepping the garlic. Stick the whole head of garlic in the microwave for 15-20 seconds depending on the size of the head. Let cool for a minute or two then cut off then slip the skins off the head with ease. You are using the whole cloves as is. Set them aside till later.

In a stockpot, melt your fat over medium high till it sizzles, then drop in the chicken to brown off. Unseasoned. Stir occastionally till you got some color going on and some juices are starting to render.
Toss in the onion and saute for 5-10 minutes, till onions get a bit soft but still tender crisp.
Add in the whole garlic cloves, stir, and saute another 5 minutes.
Dump in beans, chilis, salsa verde. Don't bother scraping out the two containers- instead fill each one up with water and swirl and drain into pot. This will end up being 2 1/2 cups water total.
Add in the chili powder, cumin, GWG's, and chicken cubes, and a teaspoon of kosher salt.
Simmer on medium high still with the cover on till it comes up to a hard burble, then drop the heat down to medium low uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want a kind of hard burble to evaporate off some water here early on.
Cover and drop the heat to very low- it should barely be showing burbling. Stir occasionally for another half hour to hour of active time depending on how tender you like your chicken and beans.
Kill the heat and uncover, and let rest for at least 15 minutes to let rest and cool down a wee bit, stirring a few times.

Takes a couple hours.. I started fussing around with the spinach action and working up the chili around 2. But not bad for firing up the pot a couple hours before dinner.

3/24: A bunch of gardening and cooking up spinach day. Last night I broke down a lot of the 2017 dried pepper stocks and tomatoes.. this morning I started the fresh dry and grind down, and set up a goodly batch of death spray of hot peppers, vinegar, and oil to steep.
Gave the bigger peppers their first deep drinkie of fertilized water and let them sit while I got some cocoa made up with nute water and fluffed with some pr-mix. Then repotted a bunch of them up deeper into solo cups and under the higher light. All of them are looking healthy and happy.
Did the two batches of spinach. About 2 pounds went with a can of beans for an Italian, and 3 pound went into a bigger batch of creamed spinach..
And also pulled out for dinner tonight from the freezer a pan of spinach and sausage stuffed shells for dinner. Needless to say we won't be eating the Italian beans and spinach or the creamed spinach with dinner tonight, lol. 

4/1: Happy Easter, Passover, and April Fools! We got the earliest of daffodils and hyacinths popping blooms though it's supposed to get down into the 20's tonight, sheesh. A bit chill for the season.
Been running 2 bots out in the solarium, one that's been running all winter, and a new one inside a bagged cage- and the cage runs an average of 5 degrees warmer than the solarium, which is running 8+ degrees warmer than outside. I'm in business for some plant shuffling.

I seriously love Ninjasmoke and CyberGro- the bots are so easy to use, just plug and play. The new harpoon is really cool too, right handy for monitoring and testing moisture and temp levels in big pots. I love it.

The finches have been looking like a bird feeder advertisement of rthe last few days on teh sock feeders. Been a joy of flashing color that makes me just dying to take the plastic off teh windows. But not quite yet, lol. Patience till the nighttime temps stabilize in a week or two.

With Easter season finally came a price break on lamb- so I started the process of making a huge batch of gyro meat for the freezer.  I was thinking about splitting the meats up and doing a batch of Shwarma/kefta too, but skipped the fussing for straight up gyro goodness. Started a couple days ago with pulling a heap of meats out of the freezer to the fridge to defrost. Yesterday I broke down the semi-boneless lamb shank and busted out with the grinder attachment for the mixer and ground up a heap-o-meat with onions, garlic, and herbs. Let sit in the fridge overnight and baked it off this morning. It's cooling on the counter right now. I'm burbling a batch of lamb stock with the bone bits, and so far it's just reducing down on the back burner and concentrating in flavor. I'll keep reducing it down like I did the last couple times with chicken and ham stocks to get that 6-8 quarts of freezer space shrunk down into a more 12 oz of cubes size.
What I did for the gyros. We can't afford straight lamb by a long shot, so I've been building up other meats to work in, hoping to catch ground lamb on clearance or sale since it's so expensive- 10 bucks a pound that I can occasionally find on sale for 8 bucks a pound. But because Easter, I was able to pick up a 4 pound shank for 5 bucks a pound. Thought it was boneless, but it wasn't- so had to break it down. 2.5 pounds meat for the gyros, and 1.5 pounds of scrap for making stock with. Not too bad. Effectively got the meat for the cheap 8 bucks a pound price, with scrap for a batch of stock too.

4 lb semi-boneless lamb shank- yield 2.5 pounds meat
2 lb ground beef
2 lb ground turkey
1 lb, 6 oz cubed pork meat- the pack I made was a that wee bit over a pound, oops
1 lb ground veal

I ran the lamb chunks through the coarse plate on the grinder, then ran the pork chunks through the grinder. While those went back into the fridge to chill, I made batches of seasoning stuffs. Yes, this is about 9 pound worth of meat.

I use a 3-4? cup food processor. It's an old Emmie I picked up cheap second hand. So I can do 3-4 small or a couple medium onions rough cut at a time. I cut into eights to make it easier.
I made 3 batches of seasoning mix. Totaled out at about 5 cups worth of mix. If I had a huge 14 cup food processor this could all be done in one batch- but sometimes I find I like doing a few smaller batches of mix like this too- I started out with 2 batches totaling about 3 1/2 cups, then was able to adjust the last batch a wee bit to make it total out to the 5 cups. In a big processor you can't fine tune the final amount quite so much.
Each batch had:
full of onions
1 head garlic
1T, 1t dried oregano
1T, 1t dried marjoram
1T, 1t fresh rosemary- about 3-4 nice sprigs of prone and upright rosemary.
2T kosher salt
1 t coarse cracked black pepper

You can use the nuke-a-head trick with the garlic here. 15 seconds in the nuker and the skins break off the heads beautifully. Pulse your onions and garlic a bit to break them down to a fine dice. Add the rest of the seasonings, then pulse it down into a fine mince and all the green is even.

To mix- you will need 2 large bowls. Split the meats and seasoning into each. 4.5 lb meat, 2.5 cups of seasoning mix per bowl. Mix it by hand really well to incorporate everything. Then pop both bowls into the fridge to chill for an hour or two.
Then working one bowl at a time, run the mix through the coarse plate on the meat grinder again. Since I started out with decently ground meats and fine mince seasoning mix, I was satisfied at that. And didn't feel like running it through the fine plate, the mix looked great.
Then the two bowls sat overnight in the fridge to let the flavors marinate in well.

In the morning, I pulled out the meat mixes and let them sit on the counter for an hour to take the chill off them a wee bit while I got the baking equipment together. A deep roasting pan for a waterbath, and the deep half hotel pan to bake the loaf in. Kicked on the oven with the roasting pan and water in it to heat up while I set up the loaf.
Dumped both bowls into the half hotel pan and mashed them together a bit and worked the mass down. After it was smooth, did the nice finger tucking around the edges. By then the oven was hot and had heated the bath to steaming, so the loaf went in uncovered.
At one hour in, time to check it. It read at 150 degrees, and the thermometer was solid in the meat, ready to be left in. Sucked out 2 cups of liquid with a turkey baster. Closed the oven and set the timer for another 15 minutes. Temp check was at the nice 165-170 range, time to pull it out. Pulled out the baking pan, left the water bath in the oven to cool down with the oven.
Immediately sucked out another pint and a quarter of juices with a turkey baster.
Then a processing trick. I made sure the slab of meat was loose in the pan, then flipped the whole thing out into my sheet cake pan that is sitting on a cooling rack. Then put the half hotel pan right on top of the slab. Lined the pan with plastic wrap real quick to help keep it clean withhout cleaning, then stacked a half dozen quart cans of V-8 into the pan, then stacked a couple of my heavy cast iron pans on top. I've gone by over the last hour or so sucking out the juices that accumulate in a corner of the pan. I think total I've drained off about 3-4 oz of fat, and 5 cups water. Maybe a bit more.
But now I have eight dense 12 oz loaves of gyro goodness meat finishing their cool off on the counter and will be wrapped up for the fridge overnight. I'll slice down the chilled meat to a 16-18-packages of meat slices by the time I'm done.

It's a lot of work, true. But with zero gyro action around here, this is 16-18 worth of gyro lunches and dinners for many months to come. 36 bucks worth of ingredients, mostly the meat and a few cents worth of onions and the herbs I didn't grow myself.

2017 preservating tally

Started 3/15
I apparently haven't really done any preserving yet... but I have been going through the shelves of canned and dehydrated good and started making some tallies. I will for sure need to make some of this year...and some stuff to be scrapped. So some catch up notes first.

Pickled zuke cubes and pickled green tomatoes are icky, don't make those again! Pepper relish is good, but the one batch I made is still hanging around, we just don't eat much relish.

We are finally down to about just a full case of jellies and jams left. I didn't make anything last year because we had so much to blow through, and we still got a lot left. A few jars will probably go to the birds this spring when they start coming in. But dang, we really are slow eaters of the stuff.

Getting down to a last few jars of salsa too... A few jars left, and probably at least a small batch of salsa will get done this year.

Enchilada sauce.. 2015 batch was 34 pints, 10 half pints. We are now down to our last two jars and will be needing much more canned up this year. I did up batches of 5-9 pints at a time in the slow cooker and then canned them up, and will do the same this year. Also was kind of nice to have mild, spicy, and smokey kinds, so will be repeating that as well.
Still have a few jars of all the other random sauces too, but not many. I might need to make up a batch of steak sauce this year. 

The half bushel of beets I did up last year looks like it will hold out till at least the end of the season when beets are available this year. Yielded a full 24 case of pint jars.

Did up a few batches of Brussels last year, about 18 pints worth, plus a couple quarts of ferments. That will likely last us till the time when they start becoming available in the fall as well.

About 15 pints of sweet and sour onions last year, and I think perhaps those will hold till 2018 canning time comes- those go a bit slower.
A few half pints of pickled jalapenos are still on the shelf too. We had a large commercial jar in the fridge to use up first. A small batch of those this year wouldn't be a bad ides.
A few jars of spicy and dilly beans, so maybe just a batch or so each of those will work nicely for this year. 

In dire need of more this year is Lemony Cauliflower, pickled mushrooms of the canned and fridge types, some spicy Mexican carrot ferment, and asparagus. Wax pepper rings, cherry bombs, and pepperonchini too. And oooh, the pickled radish and carrots, those were divine and went far too fast. And Pickled nasturtium capers- A quart and a pint is too much, a pint too little. I think this year will be a pint and a half jar.
Will be canning up some tomato sauce too depending on how things go, it's a bit lower on the list of tomato products after enchilada sauce and some salsa.

Some yums to repeat are pickled edamame, fridge pickled Asian peapods, and garlic scapes if I can.. we got no hardneck set for this year so that's pretty iffy. Lime zucchini fridge pickle spears too, damn those are good.

Dehydrating- we still got heaps of corn and kale, and various peppers of smoked and unsmoked kinds. A bunch of those are going to get ground up to restock the pantry spices, so I will need to do up a round of fresh dried hots and smoked hots, particularly the seasoning peppers I'm growing this year. Pretty stable on most everything else. Always need more mushrooms. And will for sure be drying up a quart or three of tomato slices- those sure are nice. Dead out of onions and breadcrumbs, so will need to keep an eye out for onions on sale and time to make some nice bread. And dried nasturium leaves and perhaps flowers this year. The leaves are really nice peppery herbal used like most other herbs, and I think trying out the flowers would be interesting as "finishing herbs".

Freezing- Need to keep an eye out for butter sales- 2 pounds of chive butter is for sure not enough to get us through the year. Will need to do 4 pounds this year. Don't freeze squash slices to try to make casserole later on, they suck, a lot. IQF asparagus is better than freezing them together in a vacuum sealed bag. Stock rotation has been going well and regular- we did up a last big batch of turkey stock after Thanksviging and still have some, and a couple ham stocks with bones ready to go for the next batch. Want to do a nice round of chicken stock soon. And I think I would like to keep my eye out for some good beef bones to do up a nice batch of a demi-glace cubes, and maybe if I can lay my hands on some veal bones...  that will probably happen when I can do the process in the closed solarium or even outside. The smell of roasting beef bones kind of churns my stomach, even more so if I pince them. Ew. But makes for smashing results in flavor, lol.
For whatever reason, some of the nasturtium pesto cubes were showing blooming- a white on the leaf pesto, and a greenish black on the flower pesto. Only in a couple trays, but I scrapped the whole batch just in case the other ones just weren't quite showing it yet.

Herbs- still finding it more cost effective and usable to buy dried minced garlic, thyme, and dill. Sage, rosemary, and tarragon are mostly house grown now, though in the winter we do still buy a lot of dried rosemary, and probably will keep doing so till I get that hedgerow established. Parsley is still better off commercial, but we do like to keep our kitchen box of the fresh stuff too. Homegrown oregano is likely to take over this year. Savory and marjoram are still more fresh use due to limited plants.

3/16: got some pickling done today! Hardings had a couple 12 oz bags of snap peas and a couple pound bags of organic mixed colors baby carrots for 99 cents each. So.... for about 5 bucks worth of ingredients.. Made 4 quart jars and 1 pint jar of pickles

Snap peas first. These are all fridge pickles, and take 4-6 weeks to really cure up and start tasting good.
This takes 2 cups each of water and white vinegar + 1/8 cup of pickling salt for the basic brine. I ended up making an extra half cup of just the 50/50 mix to top off the pint jar.
1 quart of Asian style snap peas: Add to quart jar
1t peppercorn
1t hot pepper flake
1-2" of ginger root, peeled and sliced
4-6 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole
2T rice wine vinegar
1 1/2T mushroom soy sauce

1 quart Hot Asian style snap peas: Add to quart jar
Same as above with pepper subsitute: 1/2 t hot pepper flake, and add a whole half of a smoked Inferno banana pepper

1 pint of Zesty Lime Asian style snap peas: Add to pint jar
5 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole
3 dried lime slices
4 smoked Aji Lemon peppers
1" garlic, peeled and sliced
1/2 t peppercorn
1 1/2 T regular soy sauce
1/12 T rice wine vinegar

On to the carrots. I used 1 pound bag per quart jar, one is a ferment, the other a fridge pickle.
1 quart of lacto-fermented carrots
Loose pack the carrots and a few springs of thyme into the jar and set aside till the brine is ready and cooled to room temp.
Brine:
4 c water
1/4 c kosher salt
2-4 bay leaves
1 dried hot chili- I used 5 dried serrano halves from 2014, they were the last couple in the jar and I figured they were probably kind of heat dead by now, lol. And if it's extra spicy, that's ok too :)
Once the brine is room temp, pour off the liquid and set aside for topping off. Pour rest into jar, making sure you get all the spices into the jar first. Cap up and let ferment between 55-75 degrees for 2-3 weeks, or till the burper stops burping. Put in fridge after that and start eating.

1 quart of Zanahorias En Escabeche- use a 4 quart pot for this.
1 pound carrots
6-8 cloves garlic, peeled and whole
1 large onion, sliced on the radial
5-6 bay leaves
1 T peppercorns
1 t kosher salt
1 T dried oregano- I had a handful of fresh springs and used 1 t dried
Hot peppers, I tend to use a mix of what I got, today it's used dried sweet, 1 half each smoked sweet and hot banana, and hot banana peppers rings
2 cups each of water and white vinegar
1-2 teaspoons olive oil- just enough to lube the bottom of the pan for the saute.
Saute onions, garlic, and peppercorns on higher heat till there is some browning and the onion is just getting translucent.
Add in carrots and peppers, and saute for 5-8 minutes, just to gloss everything together.
Add in water, vinegar, salt, and bay leaves. Leave carrots to simmer till tender crisp.
Pull from heat, and leave to cool down to warm to room temp- this will finish off the cooking before it hits the fridge.
Jar up, and leave on counter for another 30-60 minutes to really get to room temp before cap up and pop into the fridge for 2-4 weeks before tasting.

Though we tried to stretch it as much as possible, used up the last of the chive butter last night. The wild chive plushies aren't quite popping up yet, they need a couple more weeks, April seems to be when I've been making batches up over the last few years.

3/26: Hardings had butter, 2 for 6 bucks. I picked up 4 for the freezer. They also had a handful of 99 cent mushrooms, so I got 3 each of button and baby portas, and made a half gallon jar of fridge pickled mushrooms.
3 pounds mushrooms
1 T whole allspice
2 T peppercorns
2 T canning salt
6-8 bay leaves
A few sprigs thyme- toss half in for the cooking, and other half into bottom of canning jar
2 medium onions, cut on radial
1 whole head garlic, peeled
2 1/2 cups white vinegar
1 3/4 cups water
Simmer up till mushrooms have reduced in size by about half, and the white button mushrooms start turning darker. Kill heat, pack jar, let cool to room temp uncovered- cap, and into the fridge for a month or so before eating.

4/15: chives are finally plush enough to make chive butter! made 4 pounds of chive butter today, it's currently in the freezer getting hard to cut into smaller sticks. I like to use an equal ratio of salted and unsalted butter, and shittons of chives, around a cup or so per pound.

4/22: made two pounds of garlic greens butter- we actually had an excess of greens!

5/8: Meijer had mushrooms 11 for 10.00, so we picked up a ton- 33 tubs of baby bellas and button mushrooms. That's 16 1/2 pounds! 3 pounds of half and half went into the dehydrator- makes 2 quart jars. 3 pounds of half and half went into making a half gallon jar of fridge pickled mushrooms.

5/9: another 3 pounds of half and half mushrooms into the dehydrator. These dried up to a full quart and a little less than a full quart- I left the not full one out for regular use.

5/10: 7 8oz jars of canned pickled mushrooms done.

5/18: 10 pint jars of pickled asparagus done, used Food in Jars recipe. Blew two of the lids while uncapping, so those went into the fridge.
Just barely had enough pickling spice to make the asparagus, so I made a quadruple batch of pickling spice. Pretty much what's in the ball book, with extra bay leaf and left out the powdered ginger and cardamom since I'm out of that. I wanted to more closely mimic the pickling spice I get at GFS than the pickling mix I often make that has more powdered ingredients. It refilled the pickling spice jar about 2/3ish full.

3-4 cinnamon sticks, crushed up in the spice grinder to a fine bark
40 bay leaves, crushed up- I used the spice grinder, and kind of filled it twice
1/2 cup mustard seed
1/4 cup whole allspice
1/4 cup coriander seeds
1/4 cup whole black peppercorns
1/4 cup dill seed
1/8 cup hot pepper flakes
4 teaspoons cloves

6/18: had a full harvest of Helios radishes badly needing harvesting. So far there's a nice large heap of small ones for fresh eating.. A full load of radish greens dehydrated to a 1 quart yield, and a couple experimental fridge pickles. A couple relishes, one called Farmer Dave's that came out in a 12 oz jar, the other 1720 Chatsworth House, which packed into a 8 oz widemouth jar. I also dried up about a pint jar of Italian pizza crust bread crumbs.

6/21: I split the Farmer Dave're relish up- the whole thing needed a bit of black pepper, and I divided the batch so I could put red pepper flake into half- the repack ended up using 2 4oz jars. Also made another batch of the 1720 relish, this time a whole pint jar.

6/25: Softneck garlic was ready to harvest! I ended up with 3 sizes of about equalish amounts. Big enough for proper curing off, 5 bundles of a dozenish heads eachare now hanging in the spare bedroom to cure. Today I sat down and peeled all the little heads, and got a heaping 4 cup measure full of tiny little heads. I pickled them whole and ended up with 6 pints of pickled garlic :) Picked all the little bulbis out of the stems, and used them to make Pickled Shoyu Garlic Bulbis for the fridge, 8 oz jar. Peeled up some medium heads and made a batch of Italian sweet pepper and garlic mix for the fridge.

8/14: Geez, have I lagged behind with entries. Around mid-July we got in some of our earliest summer squashes- I did a half-gallon jar of fridge lime-zukes, and a pint and a half jar of spicy lime-zukes.
We have run out of nast capers :(. The radish relishes are awesome and long gone. Cracked into the pickled garlic- they have skins, but nice sized perfect cloves come out when pinched just about as easily as when you roast garlic. The Shoyu Garlic Bulbis is almost gone, those were extra spectacular- more reason to start a nice mother patch or few out back.
Toothache plant- just put the third dried batch in the freezer this morning. A few weeks ago I picked the first flush, about a quart dried. Second flush yielded up about quart and a half dried. Third flush about a quart dried. 
Anywho, today... The garden is growing in, and got a dozen beautiful fresh picked Ambrosia ears of corn yesterday.  So this morning I shucked and cut off the kernels- none of us like eating on cob much. Got a nice quart of kernels in the fridge to make some chowder with, and another quart or so in the freezer for later. And five quarts of lovely corn stock, yum. Gonna use a quart for the chowder, but then four for the freezer. And the first good flush of Roman Candle Tomatoes were ripe, loosely filled 3 trays on the dehydrator- the rest of the tomatoes, Freds and Roman Candles, that we don't eat up tomorrow will be put in a Ziploc bag for the freezer to keep till I get more tomatoes in.

8/15: 1 quart, 1 pint of portabella mushrooms dried up

8/23: First flush of tomatoes is in! Got 6 pints of Smokey Spicy Enchilada sauce in a couple half gallon jars cooling on the counter to go in the fridge overnight to cure up. Already have the next batch of Freds cored and in a container for the next batch, this one is going to be a mild garlic. Pulled 10 pounds of tomatoes to the freezer to make a big batch of Garlic salsa with.

8/24: Got 6 pints of Mild Garlic Enchelada sauce in a couple half gallon jars cooling to go into the fridge to cure up. The farm stand had lovely large heads of fresh cauliflower for 3 bucks each- the salsa tomatoes will stay in the freezer for now, I'm going to be canning up a couple heads worth of lemony cauliflower first.

8/25: 14 half pints of Mild Garlic Enchelada sauce canned. Full pint of hot pepper powder ground up and in the pantry.

8/26: 14 half pints of Smokey Spicy Enchilada sauce canned, 6 pint and a half of Lemony Cauliflower canned.

8/27: a quart jar of fridge Milwaukee pickles- I froze up brine a while back, and am doing a jar of fresh cuke spears to see how well or not it flavors up.  Set up another crock of enchilada sauce, this time just regular to do pints with. It yielded low, about 5 1/2 pints, because I used more romans than freds.

8/29: Got the next batch of regular sauce in the fridge, it yielded a high 7 pints.. so I will get my dozen pints canned off.

8/30: Got a round of hot peppers smoked off and in the dehydrator.

8/31: Got 12 pints of enchilada sauce, and 8 half pints of pickled edamame done.  There's one half pint of edamame that didn't seal that makes for 9, it's in the fridge. The peppers have been pulled and are lovely. I smoked off 6 pie tins of Roman Candles, it's in 3 trays on the dehydrator now. I topped then quartered them off because they are so nice and long. Two tomatoes of 8 quarters per pie tin, 2 smoked pie tins per dehydrator tray. Overnight drying to get them really good and crispy before vacuum sealing off.

9/2-4: The tomato trays ended up fill a 1 quart jar when done, they took forever. Got a batch of 14 half pints of Flaming Fred enchelada sauce done, and 5 pints of sloppy joe sauce.

9/8: 2 quarts, 1 half pint of Italian sauce cooked up and chilling in the fridge. 6 pints of enchilada sauce chilling in the fridge.

9/12: 6 pints, 5 half pints of Italian sauce, 6 pints of enchelada sauce, and 5 pint and a half of Lemony Cauliflower canned up. 2 12 oz jars of Magic Dust, and 2 8 oz jars of Veggie powder jarred up.

9/29: 1 8 oz jar of dried Trinidad Perfume, 1 quart jar of dried Tobago seasoning, and 1 pint jar of smoked Aji Limon peppers jarred up.

10/8: 32 cubes of Ham DemiGlace in the freezer. This is a reduction from 8 quarts of heavy ham stock, so 2-4 cubes per batch of whatever. And the freezer space is about a quarter of what it normally would be. 12 oz of squash flour ground and jarred up. 

January, 2018- Gosh, I did do some preserving after the beginning of October. Got some turkey stock made and a couple rounds of dehydrating done. But now it's 2018 and I need to publish this list.. 

mid August report...

So the huge load of summer workload is pretty much over. My last day at the fruit exchange was last Sunday, and I'm offically laid off from there. I might go back and work there again in the spring, depending on what happens or not in the interm.

Sunday was my last day.. I took Monday off. Tuesday was the elections, and this gal won the democrat ticket for trustee with 35 votes. I have a competitor in the ring, threw in his hat as a write in on the day of- his name is Tim. He likely made his qualifying 10 votes to be on the November ticket. We got home from GenCon on Monday, and I had a Town Hall meeting that night that mom attended with me. Guess who wasn't there? Tim. Or the other two write in people.

GenCon.. again, fucking huge. The main exhibition hall has now taken up the full space that was gaming last year, and spilled over into the basement of Lucas Oil Stadium. Lots of good folks, fun times. Steam Crow is my hands down fave of the show. And of course, doing stuff like this with my sister always makes regular stuff extra awesome! It's just a blast doing stuff like this with her.

Took most of Monday off to decompress before the Town Hall meeting. Tuesday was some petty errands and waiting on hold with bill folks.

Wed was weeding, got the kale bed and kennel bed done. Made a version of Jambalaya for dinner. It was fucking good, and there's leftovers. I did it fast and easy, using up a couple bags of cooked rice (about 6 cups worth) that were in the freezer. Added in a pint of home canned tomato juice, a cup of home canned enchilada sauce, a handful of dried tomato slices, couple cans of undrained mushrooms, chunk raw chicken, few andouille sausage, and a half package of white fish fillets. This easily fed the 5 of us, with a few leftovers, so I would say 8-12 servings, depending on portion size. If I had been feeding more of a crowd, I would have added in a can or three of various canned dry beans of any kind, rinsed and drained. If I had less sausage or chicken on hand, or wanted to make a meat free version, I would for sure add 2-3 different kinds of beans. The seafood is critical, using whitefish, shrimp, or scallops is what's needed here at the end of the simmer to suck up the rich flavors.

So...

2-3 tablespoons bacon grease- butter or olive oil will do, but bacon grease is best for that porky flavor. If you have rendered smoked ham fat, that is even more sublime.
1 large onion, rough chop.
2-3 sweet bell peppers, medium dice. This is optional, but makes it way better. 
6 cups cooked rice
1 large boneless chicken breast, raw, chunked in large two bite pieces
5-6 andiulle saugage, left whole, room temp. If they are raw, cook them first. If they are heat and serve, leave alone.
6-8 white fish fillets, or bag of raw large shrimp, or package of scallops- frozen. This is important, you want to add the seafood in it's frozen state, not thawed at all.
2 cups tomato juice- V8 and bloody mary mix works too.
8 oz enchilada sauce. This can be fudged out with salsa, or a can of diced tomatoes with some extra seasoning thrown into the mix, or use a bigger 15 oz can of sauce if omitting the mushrooms.  Do NOT use premade spaghetti sauce or canned tomato sauce.
Canned beans, rinsed and drained. Optional.
2 4 oz cans of mushrooms, one drained, one not. If not using mushrooms, refer to the enchilada sauce note. Or add 2/3 cup water.  Or if you want to make it HOT, replace the 2 cans mushrooms with 2 cans diced chilies or jalapenos.
Cajun seasoning. Usually I add 2-3 Tablespoons per batch. Adjust to taste and heat level.
Dried minced or wet jar garlic. Usually 2-3 tablespoons per batch
1 tablespoon salt, and one teaspoon black pepper

Sautee up your onion and peppers in the bacon grease till fragrant and starting to get a bit soft.
Add in the tomato juice, sauce you are using, half of the cajun seasoning, garlic, and salt.
Once that gets up to heat, add in your mushrooms or substitute, and raw chicken, and/or canned beans. It should be a bit soupy right now. If not, add in some liquid. Water, beer, and stock are good. Up to 8 oz depending..
Add in rice and stir in well.
Layer in sausage. Cover, reduce heat to low, and let simmer 15 min.
Add in half of the seafood, stir well, cover, let simmer 15 minutes.
Add in the other half of the cajun seasoning, garlic, and salt. Add in the black pepper. Stir well. Add in the other half of the seafood. Let rest on top. Cover, and let simmer on low 15-30 minutes.

If you find yourself on a hold.. kill the heat on everything up to adding the seafood. The addition of the seafood should be in the last wee bit before service.

A note to folks.. if you like eating rice a lot, and like to buy those single serve instant nuke packets of it... Consider making a double batch of rice next time, and freeze off portions. Rice freezes and reheats really well. If you tend to use pouches, use freezer ziplock bags or vacuum sealing. If you tend to do bowls of rice, use deli containers or butter tubs to give you bowl action.
This works great too for when you have a lot of leftover rice, either homemade or chinese take out.
 
Thursday was mulching in the kale bed, putting in the smother bed between the kennel bed and the garage, and weeding out the central lasagne bed since that's the only one that had shade, lol. Lots of watering.  We are still disturbingly dry. We haven't quite hit the drought like in 2012, but it's creeping in there.
And cheesey baked potato bake for dinner. A dear friend of mine who happens to be a firefighter and hates cooking and I were chatting the other day, and I offered to help him out with some super easy recipes to feed 20 hungry firefighters. So I'm kicking off with another round of solarium cooking.
I baked off 5 pounds of taters in the nesco. Browned off one pound of bulk sausage- Jimmy Dean, Tennessee Pride, whatever- just mild or regular flavor. Did that up on the camp stove. And I'm baking the whole thing off in the Nesco. So.. recipe formulation time, using ratios I've used before.


5 pounds baked potatoes, large dice
1 pound cooked meat- this is a great way to use up leftover meat
1 can cream soup- we like mushroom or particularly, poblano queso cream soup. But any of the cream cooking soups are good for this- particularly depending on the meat used. Cream of asparagus or celery would go will with basic chicken, cheddar or nacho cheese soup would be good with chorizo. If you are making a double batch, you can mix soup flavors to suit since you would use two cans.
1 cup cream dairy product- this can be room temp cream cheese, cottage cheese, ricotta, or a boursin style spread- that's what I'm using tonight since it was on hand and needed eating up. Do not use a sharp dairy like greek yogurt for this, use a blander/sweeter dairy.
1 cup sour cream. You can substitute sharp dairy like greek yogurt here.
1 8 oz package shredded cheese- I used a mac and cheese blend, but any blend will do. If making a double batch, you would use two packages anyway, so you can do two different packages of cheese to make a blend.
2 4 oz cans mushrooms, one drained, one not drained- if you can't do mushrooms, substitute in a 2/3 cup water with a beef bouillon cube, brown G's, beef stock. Or if doing a chicken or pork version, chicken cube, golden G's, or chicken stock.  If doing a double batch using leftover meats of various kinds, 1 cup water plus 1 each of beef and chicken flavoring.
2 medium onions, halved and sliced across the grain
1 T each of thyme and parsley
2 T dried minced garlic
1 t each salt and pepper
1 t mushroom powder
1-2 cups veggies, depending on your veggie level. A drained can of corn or  green beans, a bunch of broccoli, a couple cups a various frozen veggie tail end bags lurking around your freezer needing to be used up. Make sure you drain canned veggies, and get frozen veggies thawed out before mixing in. Even if you normally skip veggies, add in at least that can of corn or whatever. The moisture content from the veggies is necessary during baking.

Yes, you must use baked potatoes. Easy enough is to bake off a batch the night before, but doing it earlier in the day works too. Don't cook them till they are baked potato eating done- when you stick a fork into it to test it, pull off the heat when it hits about 10 more minutes till done time. Let cool at least till room temp, or better yet overnight. You want starches to set before slicing up, much like letting a steak rest to let it's juices redistribute before cutting into it.
You can use whole boiled/steamed taters for this too- but usually what you steam/boil whole is better suited for other applications like potato salad or smashed potatoes.

Meanwhile.. in a big frigging bowl, mix together everything but the taters and meat. Then fold in the taters and meat. Pour into a big baking dish and cover.
Normally in the oven, I would bake this off at 350 for an hour, then kill the heat and let rest for a bit before serving. Since I did it in the nesco, using a steam bath baking, I'm doing it at 400, utilizing the cover of the nesco for covering instead of actually putting a cover on the pan itself. I'm using a deep half hotel pan for this, and it could easily accommodate a double batch. If I were to do that, I would reduce the heat to 300 and let it bake for 2+ hours till a thermometer inserted in the middle reads at 165 degrees.  Everything should be hot and melty.
I also sliced up a large hot banana pepper to put on top of half the pan, to up the kick a bit. If doing a double batch, I would layer in half the potato mix, a layer of pepper rings on one half of the pan, then the other half of the mix with a second layer of pepper rings on top. Or do two 9x13 pans, one pepper spicy, one not with a single layer of pepper rings on top of the spicy.

It's pepper time!

Yet another nasty and snow filled super snap of cold moving through. Single digits and goodly winds make for a ton of brrrrrrr!!!!! My sister has been kicking ass with keeping the drive clear. I only have helped out a little since I kind of hurt myself doing it by myself last Sunday morning and now I'm being cautious.

So of course it's a day to plant in some heat loving seed! On the first I started a couple pots of 7-pot pepper, and on the 6th I started fatali, devils tongue, hot lemon, and McMahns Texas bird peppers- these are "chinese" cultivars and take longer than "annuum" peppers do. Today was the day to start the rest of the peppers- after last year, I figured I needed to give them a couple more weeks, and since last year was mid-march, this year it's the tail end of February. So today I planted..

2 georgescu chocolate, a sweet
2 Jommy Narvellos, a sweet
2 alma paprika, a sweet
2 tequila sunrise, a sweet
4 greek pepperonchini, hot
and one each of these hots-
black hungarian
cascabel
martins carrot
costeno amerillo
fish
bulgarian carrot

I'm a little concerned about germination rates since I have more recently learned pepper seed does best in the first two years, and starts to decline a bit after that- and most of my seed is from 2010-2013. So I heavily oversowed the pots- I figure since I'll end up repotting anyway, it's all good and whatever extra I got will end up on the end of the yard for sale. And better to have too many plants than to have zippo for plants, right? And I figure after about 10 days, whatever pots haven't popped at all, I'll just choose more seed to try starting, just in case.

And thought it would be smart to share a few pics of some seedlings!

These are some of the asparagus seeds I started on the first... I thought I was only going to end up with a half dozen tubes, and optimistically up to 15 of them. I had to be patient apparently, because a lot of them have been coming up in the past two days- and now the tally is currently over 20! Not awesome considering I planted in 54 tubes, but not too bad either considering some the disparaging things I have read about starting asparagus from seed. If I end up with a 50% rate, I'll be pleased as punch. Still not enough to make me really think I should rip up a whole bed out front just yet, but for sure to confirm ripping up a bed out back!
And notice those nifty tube pots- those are recycled toilet paper tubes. Excellent for a lot of seed starting purpouses:)

Another happy pic, this time of basil-

I started this seed on the ninth, and a mere four days later they were popping up! This is a pic from today, and they are well on their way. Darn things will probably be a veritable jungle needing much more room well before I can start planting them out. That's ok, we like to use it fresh, I need to restock the pesto in the freezer, and our dried supply is running low enough that I will enjoy dehydrating a ton sooner rather than later. This is just regular basil, I still have oooober tons of time to start up the other flavors- those will come later because I plan on having them outside rather than being a seriously needed stab at some indoor green to lighten up the winter gloom. Spring is indeed on it's way damit.
And the bunching onions have started popping- wasn't too sure about those since onion seed is only supposed to be good for a year, and this was packaged in 2012. And my pot of flat leaf parsley is starting to pop too. Wait, more parsley Bee? Why yes, more parsley. The fenceline bed is establishing in well, but it's a biennial, not a perennial, and it's not that established yet for my tastes. And it never hurts to have a couple more pots of it for overwintering.
I brought in my poor pot of overwintered thyme from the solarium. Darn thing is almost dead, not too sure it will survive till spring planting. But the patio tomatoes down in the library are doing so well I'm starting to think I will need to repot them and not leave them in the big pot I originally put them in. 
I also brought in the pot that the yellow roses and white alba roses seeds were stratifying in from the solarium. And the white soul and yellow wonder strawberries that were stratifying.

With all the horrid weather, it's hard to think a month from now I will be out and about doing spring gardening chores. But I will. I have had a good time looking back over the last couple years worth of entries and I'm feeling pretty good about that. I potted up the eight recycled mushroom tubs worth of mixed color grape hyacinths to plug into the solarium border the other day too. Those will stay in the solarium till it's time to plug them into the ground, but several of the bulbs had little green leafy sproutlings, despite the fact they have been chilling out there in their original bags since I picked them up on sale last fall.

So today with all the chill I figured I would make some hearty favorite foods. Tuna loaf.. and winter squash puree. So not as icky as that sounds, lol. My mom hates tuna, but loves my tuna loaf. And the squash puree is just the pulp I usually use to make soup, only I won't be adding all the stock to make it liquidy. My tuna loaf is a take on a Kosher recipe- and uses tuna in oil, which is extra good for you. It ends up being almost a crabcake kind of consistency by the time it's done being baked, and I use small loaf shaped ramekins so everyone gets their own loaf, and it cooks nice and even all they way through- no dry edges with a gooky center. So the entire loaf is nice and moist with just a little bit of outside crust.

Tuna loaf- makes 4 personal sized loaves

2-5 oz cans of tuna in oil, undrained
2-5 oz cans of tuna in water, drained
1/2 cup minced onion
2 medium carrots, minced or shredded- I use a food processor, it's about 1/2 cup once it's chopped up
3 eggs
3/4 cup matzo meal- I bet you could use other crushed cracker, but I never have
2 t old bay seasoning
1 T parsley
1/2 t each salt and pepper
1 t oregano
1 t thyme
2 t minced garlic

Grease your ramekins/loaf pans. I use butter flavored crisco, but you could use regular shortening. I haven't tried with butter, but shortening does not have a water content, and butter does, which might make the loaves stick- and they should pop right out of their pans when done baking.
Mix all your ingredients together. I tend to dump out my tuna whole chunk, then just keep mixing till all the tuna is broken up and it's a homogenous mass.
Pack your tuna mixture evenly between your greased pans- this is pretty easy, but make sure you get it smushed all the way down and don't leave pockets in the corners.
Put your pans onto a cookie sheet- makes them easier to handle than individually.
Bake in a preheated oven for 45 minutes, then kill the heat and let them rest 10 minutes. Pull them out and pop them out of their pans, and serve up hot.

Note: I have made this on one loaf pan before, and adjusted the heat down to 325 and upped the time to an hour. But it turns out better if you use four smaller pans than one big one.

I make homemade tartar sauce to go with all my fish. Was utterly pissed off today when I managed to break homemade mayo twice, ugh. But in general, a basic tartar is just mayo, chopped pickle with a little juice (or pickle relish if you keep it in the house), and lemon juice. I also add in some chopped capers and juice, dill, old bay seasoning, and a bit of salt and pepper. And I tend to use some of the true lemon powdered lemon at first, then adjust with lemon juice as needed. Makes for a less runny tartar than using all lemon juice to get to that nice lemony level.

For the squash.. Well, a while back I realized all my squash were getting frozen in the solarium, and I had to prep them up quick for real freezing. So I baked, pulped, strained, and froze off a few quarts of pulp. Today I'm using a couple quarts for tonights side dish. Just carmelizing some onion in bacon grease, pulp, and some sage and thyme really. Cooked up nice and hot.

It's been rather nice..

The weather has been rather nice for the last several days. We might be getting in a bit of snow over the next couple days, but I'm fine with that.

Been busy organizing seed, and doing up WS containers. Mixed columbine, showy milkweed, redring milkweed, cesars brother Iris, red with purple center poppy, black peony poppy, rose campion, New York ironweed, butterfly weed, bleeding hearts, thimbleberry. A container or two of each, cept the columbine which I did up a half dozen mushroom tubs.

So what does that look like?

Kitty litter jugs that have been cut to have a hinge, holes drilled in the bottom, and a few inches of dirt to grow in.

Closeup of what the dirt looks like in the container.

Container after seeds are finely sown and tag put in to mark it- I used a cut up sour cream container for this set of markers.

Jugs after they have been filled, sowed and marked, and taped shut. Caps get taken off so water can get into the jugs.

This is what the outdoor setup looks like- the litter jugs are too tall for the lower shelves, but once I'm getting sprouting and it's time to open up the jugs, they will start filling the next shelf down. Hopefully I will be timing myself right to be able to start clearing off the racks for when I start bringing out seedlings from the solarium.

This is from the porch view- nice and accessible viewing :)

I've gotten enough sown in now that I had to start up my 2015 grow spreadsheet. Which is kind of nice. I seriously need to be better about keeping up my spreadsheets instead of just relying on my paper copies.

While I was fussing about with seeds, I decided to start up some indoor growing too.

From left to right is one mixed lettuce, one garden cress, then three lavewa spinach. Time to get some greens going on darn it, lol. Time to get anything growing going on- sheesh, I'm dead ass tired of slushy cold dead grey crap. And on a bright note, my patio tomatoes have started their true leaves- I lost one, but got three of them going good right now, knock on wood.

Today was just one of those days where I really felt the need to do something positive- like outdoors positive. It's still gloomy out, but it's nice out. So early this morning I ran into town to get some birdseed for the birdies that are starting to show up at the feeder. Good deal, a 20 pound bag of wild seed mix was 5 bucks, and I picked up a pound of lard from Hardings for two bucks.
Then when I got home, I set about making up some wild bird treats.

First I made up a couple big suet cakes- each one of these will be split in half to fill the big suet feeder.
On the left is..
3 c birdseed
1 c instant oats
1/2 c buggy wheat flour
1/2 c masa flour
1/2 c or so of diced up prunes
1 c chunky peanut butter
1/2 c vegetable shortening
1/2 c lard
goodly dollop of darkberry jam, maybe a bit over quarter cup or so.
Melt the peanut butter, shortening, lard, and jam together, stir into the rest, and mold- I lined the pan with plastic wrap first, then was able to turn the wrapped thing out onto the sheet pan, neat as can be.

On the right is...
3 c birdseed
1 c instant oats
1/2 c buggy wheat flour
1/2 c masa flour
1/2 c or so of torn up dehydrated melon and cantaloupe fruit leather
1 c chunky peanut butter
1/2 c vegetable shortening
1/2 c lard
goodly dollop of caviar jam, a bit less than a quarter cup.
Same procedure as above.

I realized the smaller mushroom tubs were the perfect size for a small suet cake, so hey!
4 c birdseed
1 c instant oats
1/2 c corn meal
1/2 c buggy wheat flour
1 c peanut butter
the rest of the lard, a bit over a cup I think
1/4 cup of honey.
melt the fat and sugar, stir into the rest, and mold up.

Did two batches of these- one between the big sheet and mushroom tub suets, and the second right at the end- wanted to give the first batch time to really set up before I decided to do a second one. I have a puck hanger, and these will get strung onto it.
3/4 c buggy wheat flour
4 c bird seed
1/2 c hot water
3 T or so white corn syrup
2 packets unflavored gelatin.
Stir the corn syrup and gelatin into the hot water till fully dissolved, then stir it into the rest. I used sandwich bags with the flap split open to line a pair of 16 oz tubs, then packed the mix equally into them. Then I stuck the sticks down through the center to create the threading hole I will need to put these onto the puck hanger. This is the first time I'm trying this, so we shall see how the birds like it or not.

Mmmm, birdie bread- not sure, but I think I will cut this into small suet cage size once it's fully cool. All those little white flecks are eggshell, ick. But hey, if the birds like it, great. The original recipe called for 3-6 oz jars of baby food fruits and veggies, and since I didn't have that, I used some rehydrated veggies instead.

1/4 c dehydrated shredded sweet potato
1/4 c dehydrated shredded carrot
1/4 c squash flour
1 cup hot water, to rehydrate the above, let sit for 10-15 minutes
4 eggs, with shell
2 c bisquick
2 c cornmeal
1 c buggy wheat flour
1/2 c or so diced up prunes- the last of the bag
1/2 c birdseed
Set the oven to 400. In the processor, whip up those whole eggs, then add the rehydrated veggies and whip it up some more. Add to the rest and stir in. Add in a bit of water, maybe 1/2 cup or so to moisten the dough to a really stiff almost putty like dough. Oil up a 9x13 pan, and smooth the dough out into it. Bake about 40 minutes, till the dough pulls off the sides a bit. Cool completely before cutting up.


In good work news... I got the job at Cracker Barrel, I go in next Wed for orientation :) The pay starts out pretty low, but if I do well, I'll get my first raise in 30 days- and right now any pennies are good ones.

Summer Bounty

Today is Sunday, the 27th. And summer bounty is coming in.

The one ball and cue ball squash have been growing like crazy. Been picking a couple every couple of days. A few of them starting off off got a bit too big but there weren't enough for stuffing for four, and so I had to figure out what to do with them. Came up with a squash casserole, southern style- it's yummy! So much so we have had it a couple times recently.

Squash casserole- 9x13 pan
1 box stuffing mix
2 sticks butter
3-5 squashes, a couple pounds worth, sliced into 1/2 inch slices
2 medium onions, juilenned
1 can water chestnuts, drained- I used diced ones
2 cans mushrooms, drained
1 pound cooked and cubed meat- I've used ham and chicken, both are good. The meat is optional.
2 t dried thyme
1 sleeve butter crackers- I've used Ritz butter garlic
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup sour cream
1 cup grated carrot

Start out by piling up your sliced squash in heavily salted water. Bring to a boil, let boil 5 minutes, then drain, rinse well with cold water to cool it down fast, and then let drain really well.
Mix the grated carrot, sliced onion, cream soup, sour cream, mushrooms, water chestnuts, and thyme in a big bowl.
Once the squash is cool and well drained, pull it out of the strainer, leaving any seedy bits behind, and fold it into the creamy mix. Using your hands is easiest for this.
Melt the first stick of butter, and mix it with the stuffing mix. Make an even layer of the mix in the bottom of the pan. It won't fill in the bottom completely, but should have pretty decent coverage.
Layer in half the squash mix- using your hands is easiest for this. Make sure it is spread out completely over the stuffing mix, and pat it down well.
Layer in your meat, spreading evenly.
Layer in the other half of the squash mix, patting it down.
Melt the second stick of butter. Crush the sleeve of crackers, and mix it with the butter. Then spread it evenly over the top of the casserole.
Cover the casserole, and bake it at 350 for about 45 minutes. Uncover, and bake for another 15 minutes. Then kill the heat on the oven, and let it rest for another 10 minutes in the oven.
Serve up, yum! Yep, sounds like a billion calories, but it's well worth it. Makes a nice moist casserole, the onions are tender crisp, the squash stands out yet blends with everything else.

Dunno what I'm going to do with the rest of the ball squash I've already picked yet, there are a lot of possibilities. Zucchini has started coming in, and I decided to try out a recipe from one of my bread machine books- a wheat zucchini bread. It's not a quick bread, it's a true yeasty bread. That turned out pretty darn good too.

The banana peppers have started cranking the fruits out- I've picked a couple batches and stowed them away in greenie bags till I had enough to warrant canning up a batch of pepper rings. Todays pickings gave me enough, and I made up a half dozen pints of the things.

Dill seed and Spanish Black Round Radish seed are coming in right fine, already picked a bunch of both, with more to come. Parsley seed is coming along too, but not ready for harvesting yet. I can hardly wait till next year when I get to really start harvesting leaves and seed, woot!

First snow of the year

Sort of. We got a serious day of slushy snow a couple weeks back, but it only stuck around for the day- I count that more as the first frost date rather than snow, lol. The new Autumn Maple pic to the right was a couple days after- figured I better capture the moment while it was still good.

But today, November 11th, is for sure the first snow of the season. Started out cold and drizzly, but has progressed over the mid afternoon into a rather firm dusting and it's supposed to keep being like this for the next 24 hours...

So I sucked it up, and went outside in the drizzle to pull all the beets- at this point, they are tender enough that a good snow could screw them, and they ain't gonna produce any sort of big enough to eat root this season anyway. The radishes are doing fine.
Made a mess of greens and white beans for dinner :)
When I last used breadcrumbs, I realized I was almost out. Today I realized I had some bread that had been sitting and really needed to get used up because we actually have a surplus of bread at the moment. So I toasted up a new batch of breadcrumbs. 1 loaf of bread dried up and ground up refills the 15 oz breadcrumb can beautifully if packed.

Started the Christmas seed stocking the other day. I liked having a heap of seeds to open for Christmas last year. So this year I decided to do the same thing- save all my seed collecting from Nov 1st till it's time to pack them up for under the tree. Using a recycled dark green bag from limes, so that will be easy. Already have three trades in it, and I put in seed orders the other day. Seed Savers exchange has a heap of seed for 1.38 a packet! And a whole handful of the sale seed also happened to be on my wish list. Put in a small order to Pinetree, and an order to Artistic Gardens. I focused a lot on my winter curbit wish list- the swap is after the holidays, and I wanted to refill my stock to participate- and I am finally running low on varieties. 28 packs for 25 bucks total all told- that's .89 a pack for a lot of seed I've had on my wish list since the 2013 catalogs came in :) Squee!
I'm also currently in the beans swap- that should come in before the holiday. And tomatoes, though that might come in late enough to count to 2014.
Right now, I'm looking rather hopeful about what Growbox Hill's seeds totals for the years end will look like. We have gotten in a rather astonishing variety this year. We have also sent out quite a bit of newbie seed this year too- over 200 packets and counting :)

November 12 broke with snow... and more snow. We got around 3ish inches. Not too bad though, the sun came out in the early afternoon and already started melting it off the driving surfaces.

Kind of a hrmmmm day, lol.
Realized that I still had a nice package of ground sirloin that I got for cheaper than ground beef out of the manager special case. Well hell, that means either into the freezer NOW, or make it for dinner. I decided it was Salsbury Sirloin for dinner. Ok, so I took a couple salsbury steak and a couple of chopped steak recipes and made my own up.

Salsbury Sirloins- makes 8 steaks
2.75 pounds ground meat
2/3 c breadcrumbs
2 eggs
1 1/2 t dry mustard
1 T worstershire
1 T dried minced garlic
1/2 t white pepper
Mix all that up, and make into 8 croquettes. Toss into the fridge for an hour or so to let it set and dry. Sear them in a couple tablespoons oil, I used grapeseed. You just want to put a "char" on the outsides quickly, and cook them as little as possible. Only do a few at a time to help keep up searing heat, and pull off to a plate to rest as they get done to rest till the gravy is done.

Gravy:
In advance,  2 cup liquid measure filled loosely with uncrumbled dried mushrooms. Fill with hot water and let mushrooms reconstitute. You might want to do this before you even start mixing the meat. Once they are rehydrated, drain off the soaking liquid into a measuring cup to reserve liquid. Squeeze your mushrooms a bit to get most of the liquid out of them.
Take the resulting mushroom liquor and use water to make 2 cups. Add two packets of brown G Washingtons, a couple dashes Worcestershire, and set aside till gravy making time.

1 onion, thinly sliced
2 T butter
4 T flour
2 cups liquid

Don't drain any of the fat after you fry up your steaks. Since sirloin is so lean it yields little fat, and this counts into your gravy roux ratio.
Saute the onions in the butter till soft and starting to carmelize.
Stir in mushrooms
Stir in flour and coat well, allowing the flour to toast up a bit, you should see no white by the time you are done stirring, and keep stirring through this to prevent burning.
Stir in your stock slowly about a third at a time, keep on stirring to ensure smooth gravy.
Once your gravy is done, place the croquettes back into the gravy to heat through, making sure to coat all the pieces well- this can be done on the stovetop over low, covered.. Or in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes or so, covered. I opted for the oven since I use a huge pan and it frees up "topside" space to finish off dinner.
*If you like, you can add a couple sliced carrots at the time you are sauteing the onion. If you hate mushrooms, you can use beef stock instead, being sure to add the Worcestershire.

WTF is a croquette? Same thing as a burger, but in the shape of a log instead of round. A mini steak kind of shape with two flat sides to sear up quickly and set aside for it's final cooking in the gravy.

Felt the strange need to bake today too- guess the snow kind of brings it out, lol. Got to thinking about cookies. Now, we aren't big sweet eaters here, so a full batch of cookies is a bit much. Got to thinking of when I used to do mini-cookies for bistro. I would double batches and quarter them up, stashing the quarters in the freezer. Then I could do a shitton of a couple varieties.
Did I really want to go through that much trouble? Sure! Made a half batch each of peanut butter and nutella, split each of those in half (one for freezer one for today), and baked up two small batches of mini cookies, perfect to eat in a day or two. To make nutella cookies, I just used the PB recipe and used nutella instead. A quarter batch fills 2 cookie sheets with little cookies.

 This is one full recipe of cookies. I halved the original peanut butter recipe to make two half batches. Then I halved those batches- the ones in plastic for the freezer, the bowls for baking now. Considering how many turned out, I might decide to quarter the batches after mixing. So this pic would be two bowls and three packages for the freezer.

 This is one of two cookie sheets. Think only one sheet would be much better.

 Both the PB and Nutella cookies, baked up and ready to store. Now, this much is probably pretty good for a regularly cookie eating house. A bit much for us though I think. Right now the wrapped dough is chilling in the fridge before going into the freezer. I think I will quarter those up as to bake a half pan of each kind when baking.

So I go to start getting stuff together to make cookies- shit, I have no brown sugar. Well, I do have white sugar and molasses, and that's all brown sugar is. So I made brown sugar.
2 1/2 cups sugar
2 ounces molasses
I started out following a description for dark brown sugar of 8:2 oz, and was unhappy. Added another cup to approximate the 8:1.5 oz, nope. Another 4 ounces of sugar and I was satisfied with a good dark brown sugar. So, 10:1 ratio for dark brown sugar.

Got in the 2014 Pinetree Seed catalog today, yay!!!! Kind of makes me extra glad I finally put in my 2013 wishlist order :) Hmmm, could I possibly be a good enough kid not to peek at it till Christmas and put it into the seed stocking? Probably not, lol. But it would make a cool addition to it.

It's pretty nice out today on the 13th- lots of sun, which makes me feel a tiny bit better about the season, lol.

Decided to do something with the luffas. There's lots of info about let them dry, but not much info on what to do if they couldn't go dry on the vine- as in, I live where it snows. Since they already got the freeze so it's too late to pull them before freezing, I decided to experiment and see if I could salvage any of these things.
So, first two luffas I peeled, sliced, and laid out on heavy paper to start to dry.
Second two got their skins pierced quite a bit, and laid on heavy paper to start to dry
Luffa 5 got peeled, sliced, and put into the dehydrator at 115
Luffa 6 got sliced up unpeeled, put on heavy paper, and into the oven at 200
Still have 2 more that I haven't touched yet
And at least another dozen on the vine still since some advice said just leave them there to winter dry

We shall see if any of these methods work, or if none of them do. Just a couple hours later and I'm already more hopeful about the dehydrator and oven unsurprisingly enough. I really would like to get at least a little bit of luffa, though I realize none of the fruits are mature enough to produce viable seed. Good thing I still have more seed. Makes me wonder if there is a short season luffa, lol. I will likely not grow them again next year or two- I'd rather use the space for beans and other squash. Eventually there will be a chicken house on that slab, but I will likely keep doing some vertical growing on that side even after that.

Haven't done a post recently...

There really hasn't been much to post recently. Fall has come on with a rush here, full of wet and chilly weather and all the leaves coming off the trees.

So what have I been doing?
Brought all the tomatoes in and set them up in a couple trays in the kitchen to ripen, and they have been. Brought in a lot of the pots and containers to the solarium for overwintering and attempting to extend some harvest. Picking radishes.
Lots of cooking, tons of cooking experimenting. So, pulled together from a few drafts worth of notes, here it all is for future reference. They all still need some work though, lol.


First was a fall veggie roast.

1 can tomato paste
1/2 c white wine
1 large shallot, diced
1 cup water
1/4 c dried parsley
1 t each salt and white pepper
5-6 cloves, sliced

Mix all this together in the bottom of a 9x9 dish
6 golden beets, scrubbed and finely segmented
2 rutabega, scrubbed finely segmented
Spread a layer of beets, then rutabaga, then beets, then rutabaga- all the layers should be partially submerged
Cover and bake at 400 for 20 minutes

Meanwhile..
8 tiny eggplants- each one cut into 1/3ds, plankwise
1/2 pint grape or small cherry tomatoes, halved
5-6 small or 1-2 big NON green peppers, cut into slices
Layers these onto the root veggies, cover and turn the oven down to 300 and bake for another 30 minutes... Or till all the veggies are tender.

I used this to dress a big chunky pasta with, as a general side for a meat and potatoes kind of dinner, and as a leftover veggie chopped up and made into a skillet :)

Chucks White Chili- he gave me a wonderful version with how he always doubles the original.. I kind of went with what I had.. So here's how I made that

1T olive oil
3 lb chicken breasts, diced- do this while the chicken is half frozen, and makes for easier cubing.
1 medium onion, finely chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced- using big cloves
3 cans great northern beans, rinsed and drained
2 cups chicken stock from the freezer
3- 4 oz cans green chili peppers, undrained
1/2 cup dried yellow banana peppers, crumbled
3 dried serrano peppers, crumbled
1 cup water- to rehydrate peppers
2 T garlic powder
1 T cumin
1/2 t each cayenne, black, and chili dust peppers
1 T salt
16 oz sour cream
8 oz cream- and yes, real cream is required here
2 cans garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained

This is a two stage chili. It starts out on the stove, goes into the fridge overnight, and into the crockpot the next day for finishing.

Heat the 1 cup of water in a 4 cup bowl or measure. Add the dried yellow banana and serrano peppers to get them started hydrating. Add in the 3 cans of undrained chilis to this mash and set aside till needed.
Heat the olive oil in the bottom of a large dutch oven and brown up the chicken with the onions and fresh garlic. This should go almost au sec before proceeding.
Add the great northern beans, stock, rehydrated/canned pepper mash, and seasonings
Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and summer uncovered for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat, and use a potato masher to mash up the mix a bit, paying particular attention to the beans.
Cool quickly, and pop it into the fridge overnight.

The next day, pull out your chili and let rest on the counter for an hour or so before you start heating. Start taking a spoon during this time to help break up the bits.
Then pop it into the crockpot- on high for two hours, though you can stretch it by an hour or two if neded by turning it down to low at this time.
About an hour before serving, turn the temp back to high if you turned it down.
Add the sour cream, cream, and garbanzo beans, and keep it on high for half an hour- make sure you don't let it boil.
Serve up.

Squash fritters
3 squashes- for this batch I used a medium each of carnival acorn, delicata, and kabocha squashes.
2 T butter, divided into 6ths
1 t each salt and pepper
1T or 6-8 leaves crumbled of dried sage
2 t turmeric

Halve, cleanout, and set up squashes in a pan with sides for baking
Fill the pan about half full of water
Sprinkle the salt, pepper, sage, and turmeric into the 6 cavities, and drop 1 piece of butter into each cavity.
Cover well, and bake at 300 degrees for 2 hours
Kill the heat and let squash rest in cooling oven for another hour
Pull out squash, uncover, and let cool to room temp before putting into fridge overnight- with shells on. You do this cavity side up to allow the seasonings time to sink back into the flesh
In the morning, scoop out this pulp and then use it to make yummy stuff, like fritters.

I took this overall recipe, and then divided the result into three bowls to try out three ways of doing this..

The main recipe:
All of the squash pulp
3 eggs
1 cup flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
1 T baking powder

I stirred the pulps of the squashes till smooth/chunky instead of mashing to a smoother pulp. Stirred in all the rest of the ingredients and poured into 3 bowls.
bowl 1 got about a half cup of dried herbs, mostly dill and parsley
bowl 2 got 1/4 curry sauce, 1 oz tahini
bowl 3 got a few shakes of hot sauce, 1/4 t hot flake, 2 t each paprika and garlic 1 t worst..

Bowls 1 and 3 did well in making fritters. I layed out breadcrumbs for 3 and it was a pointless mess. Just draining onto paper bags was good. Heat up about a half inch or so of oil and fry up.
Bowl 2 just fell apart- the extra liquid from the curry sauce really made a difference! So I decided to dump the whole bowl into the pan, let it fry up as best as possible- and used the bottom of a paper bag as sort of a bowl with a couple layers of bag under the bowl. Dumped the whole mess in and let it sit in a 200 degree oven for about an hour. Then I dumped on a ton of cracker crumbs, carefully folded down the "bowl" and flipped the whole mass and let soak out some more. The result was a surprisingly firm cake.
None of my seasoning additions made a huge impact to the overall squash taste though. They all taste good- squashy. But nothing to dance about.

Spicy beans and rice soup
1 lb ham
3 c dried kale
1 box beans and rice
1 c instant rice
8 cups water
1 T dried minced garlic, and 1 t pepper powders to the water

Bring ham, kale, and water up to a boil, covered. Reduce heat and hard simmer for about 30 minutes
Stir in beans and rice, cover, and drop down to a low simmer for about 30 minutes
Taste, and see if you need to add any spicy- hot sauce, ground peppers and salt if needed
Add instant rice, cover, and keep on low simmer for 10 minutes
Kill heat, uncover, and let sit for 10-15 minutes before serving

Upside down leftover meat casserole
2 leftover porkchops and mushroom gravy- you can use whatever meat of a couple portions- you will need at least a cup and a half of gravy, so make more if you need to. I ended up needing more, so made a quick dried mushroom and beef gravy with cornstarch
a couple portions of tail end veggies- I used broccoli this time from the freezer
tatertots- about a couple servings

So.. Toast up the tater tots in the oven as per package directions
reset oven for 350
put your tater tots on the bottom of the dish
Cover with your leftover veggies- since I used unseasoned broccoli, I dotted it with about a tablespoon of butter.
Cover that with your meat and gravy stuff
Cover the dish, and bake for about 45 minutes or so


Cabbage, bacon, and noodle casserole

1 package bacon- I used 12 oz, but recipes vary from 8-16 oz
1 large onion, cut on the radial thinly
4-8 cloves garlic, sliced
1 head cabbage
1 cup water
thyme, parsley, caraway, pepper...
8 oz package egg noodles

Cut bacon in half and fry up crisp, lay aside
Don't drain off your fat, use all of it!
Add in onion and garlic, saute a couple minutes
Add in cabbage, saute a couple minutes
Add in water and seasonings, cover, and simmer for 20 min or so till cabbage is tender
Add in cooked egg noodles, bacon, stir together, and serve

Note about seasonings here. Thyme and parsley are wonderful. Be careful of caraway- if you don't like it, yes, it's still necessary and you should add it. Pepper and salt are per taste at the end of the dish. I ended up adding in about 1/4 cup parsley, 1 T dill, 1t caraway, 2 T salt and 1/2 T pepper. I did all of the seasoning on the cabbage/onion mix, and made it potent on purpouse to offset the egg noodles and bacon.

Made a cheesy Halloween bake :)
1 package bacon- you can omit entirely since you use butter later on, and use up to 1 cups of other shredded/cubed leftover meat. Or use 1 can of beans.
1 head cauliflower
1 cup dried from frozen peas- NOT dried soup peas
1 medium onion, diced
1 cup celery, thinly sliced
3 T butter
3 T flour
2 T parsley
1 T dill
1/2-1 1/2 cup dairy- I used a combination of a leftover bottle of non-sweetened creamer and a bit of milk. Needed to use the creamer up.
bunch of velveeta 1-2 cups depending on your cheesiness level- or use other super melty cheeses.

Take a 2 cup measure, put peas in it, fill with water, and heat- let sit to rehydrate
Coarsely chunk up the cauliflower into a dozen or so chunks, and put into a deep pan with enough water to cover the bottom of the pan by a half inch or so. Tightly cover the pan and bake at 350 for 25-35 minutes depending on the size of the cauliflower chunks. Pull from the oven and let rest covered for 10-15 minutes. Then uncover, pull out of the pan and chunk it down into more bite or two pieces.
Bake the bacon in a single layer on parchment paper on a lipped cookie sheet 25-35 minutes, till chewy crisp. Baking is the better method for this dish. When done, put onto towels to drain. Once cool, roughly chop. And don't forget to pour off your bacon grease while still hot into it's crock- baking bacon makes for a very clean pour.
Saute the onion and celery with 1/3 of bacon in the butter till tender.
Add flour and mix well to coat everything
Add the liquid the peas have been rehydrating in for the first amount of liquid.
Add in half cup dairy and stir well
Start adding in your cheese.  When about half of it's melted in, adjust thickness of the sauce with another 1/2 c dairy if needed.
Add second 1/3 of the bacon
Melt in the other half of your cheese. Adjust thickness with the last 1/2 c dairy if needed.
Stir in the peas and last 1/3 bacon
Gently fold in the cauliflower
Bake uncovered at 350 for about a half hour- till the stuff bubbles and gets a bit of color on top.

Also baked up a banana-pumpkin loaf. As usual, we have a couple of bananas that were softening too fast, so I figured as long as I had the oven on already, why not?
You can replace up to a quarter of flour called for in a recipe with pumpkin flour- or in this case, pumpkin and squash powder that I made myself.

Half a stick butter, melted
2 eggs
3 soft bananas
2/3 c sugar- I would reduce this to 1/2-1/3 cup next time. I think the sweetness of the pumpkin flour was such that the sugar could stand cutting back on.
1 c AP flour
1/3 c pumpkin flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/4 t baking powder
1/4 t cinnamon
1/8 t cloves
several grinds of the nutmeg grinder- 1/4 t or so?

Grease a loaf pan and set your oven to 350. I like to use a smidge of butter flavored crisco for this.
Mash the first 4 ingredients together- USE A PASTRY CUTTER! Way the hell easier than any other tool to use for this. Leaves you with a nice smooth mash with a little bit of small banana chunk in it. Pastry cutters are also the best tool to make a smooth and chunky guac :)
Add the rest of the ingredients and stir well- this will make a slightly stiff batter
Pour into prepared loaf pan
Bake for about 40 minutes at 350
Allow to cool a bit before unpanning upside down- you want the surface of the bread to already be well cooled enough to avoid collapsing of either top or bottom, but the loaf to still be a bit warm.

Decided to make mom's kluski noodle casserole for dinner tonight. Cept I'm using egg noodles instead of kluski noodles since I'm not fond of kluskis and also happened to have egg noodles.
1 pound ground beef- I used savory roll sausage instead
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 pound frozen or 1 big can drained of corn
8 oz mushrooms undrained- which I didn't have so 1/3 cup dried mushrooms + 2/3 cup hot water to rehydrate
1/2 c dried shredded from fresh zucchini. My own addition, moms casserole never had this
2 cups noodles, cooked
Brown up yer meat, mix with everything else, and bake up at 350 for a half hour or so, till bubbly hot.
Turned out dead spot on with the yummy comforting casserole mom used to make.

Decided to make some stuffed squash for dinner :)
Halve and clean your squashes- set aside the seeds for roasting :) For stuffed squash, I use 4 mini springform pan rings set into my lasagna pan- throughout cooking you just need to handle the rings then, and the squash stay upright better. Put a bit of water in the pan, cover tightly, and bake at 400 for about 35 minutes. Pull from the oven, uncover, drain the water out of the bottom of the pan, and set aside so they cool a bit.
While this is going on, make your fillings. I decided on a bean and kale, and a spicy quinoa, mushroom, and corn. 
Kale and white bean- this calls for using fresh hardy greens, but since I didn't have any on hand, I used dried and cooked it back to hydrated. You have to cook the kale back to hydration rather than soaking because it removes the bitters better.
3-4 handfuls of kale- fresh or rehydrated
1 can white beans, drained- I used great northerns
2-3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
couple tablespoons olive oil
4-8 fresh sage leaves, about a tablespoon
2 T each breadcrumbs and Parmesan, mixed
Fill a pot with your kale and cover well with water- simmer 15 minutes, then drain well
Into the pot goes the olive oil and garlic. Saute for a minute or two till fragrant.
Into the pot goes the greens- stir well and saute for 2-3 minutes.
Into the pot goes the beans- stir well and let burple 2-3 minutes.
Add the sage along with salt and pepper to taste, kill heat, and cover- let sit till stuffing time.

Spicy quinoa, mushroom and corn filling- the quinoa I used follows a 1:2 ratio of quinoa to water.
1/2 c quinoa + 1 c water
1/3 c dried oven roasted corn
1/3 c dried mushrooms
1 c hot water to rehydrate the corn and mushrooms
1 t chili powder
1/2 t cumin
1/4 t hot pepper powder
1/4 t salt- depending on salt taste. I used it on this batch and I found the first taste of the quinoa before stirring in the mushrooms and corn too salty. By the time it was cool enough to stir in the cheese, the salt seemed right. 
1 package Golden G Washingtons
2-3 cup shredded cheese, divided
Put corn, mushrooms, and hot water into a bowl and set aside to rehydrate
Follow packagage directions for making quinoa- add the Golden G Washingtons to this water
Once quinoa is done, stir in the chili powder, cumin, and hot pepper powder
Drain the mushrooms and corn well and stir into the quinoa- let sit till stuffing time. When it's stuffing time, stir 1/2c of the cheese into the stuffing, reserving the rest to sprinkle on top.

When it's stuffing time..  Stuff your squashes, duh. Top the beans and kale with the breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese,  top the spicy quinoa with the rest of the shredded cheese.
Bake at 400 degrees for 15-25 minutes, uncovered.

I shared around the stuffings in the squashes so we could get a wider range of tastes. We agreed that the quinoa stuffing was way yummier in the buttercup, and the bean was better in the sweet dumpling

I'm pretty positive if you wanted to and chilled everything down right, you could stuff your squashes, store them overnight, then pull them out, top them, and bake them off. Not sure if freezing would be good or not, that will have to be a future experiment.

Potato soup- my soups are rarely the same twice, hehe.
8 cups of stock
3 pounds potatoes- peeled and very rough chop
1/2 cup dried carrots- rehydrated 15 minutes and drained well
1 cup diced celery
1 medium onion, diced
1 large shallot, diced
1 head garlic, peeled and sliced thick
2 cans white beans, rinsed and drained
2 T bacon grease- yeah, that stuff you should be saving when you make bacon
2T parsley
2 T tarragon
2 T lemon verbena
1 T thyme
1 cup sour cream

In a large stockpot, heat bacon grease and saute the carrot, celery, onion, shallot, and garlic.
Once a fond starts to appear, and the veggies are really releasing steam, deglaze the pan with some of the stock.
Pour in the rest of the stock, add the beans and herbs, cover, and bring up to a boil, uncovered. Once at the boil, reduce heat to medium-med low, cover, and let simmer 15 minutes.
Pour in the potatoes, cover again, and let simmer for 45 minutes or so, till the potatoes are fall apart tender.
Stir the snot out of the soup with a potato masher to break up the chunks if you like your soup chunkier, or run it through a blender if you like it smoother.
Put in the sour cream and stir well to blend. Kill heat, and serve.

With the stuffing of the squash gone well the other day, and having a bunch of tomatoes handy... hmmm, how about stuffed tomatoes for dinner? I had thought about making a wee batch of yellow spaghetti sauce to go over the spaghetti squash, but decided to stuff instead- more experimentation for me :) I picked out 6 tomatoes, and am doing 3 stuffings.

Quinoa and spinach:
1/4 c quinoa+ 1/2 c water. Cooked according to package directions.
1 c frozen spinach, defrosted
1 T fresh parsley
1/2 T fresh rosemary
2-3 garlic cloves, coarse dice
1-2 T olive oil
1 t dried minced garlic
Bring oil up to heat, briefly saute the fresh garlic, add the spinach and saute 3-4 minutes. Kill the heat, stir in the parsley, rosemary, and dried garlic. When quinoa is done, stir into spinach. Season to taste, and set aside till stuffing. Makes about 1 1/2 cups.
Tomato and rice:
1/4 c brown rice
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 large shallot, minced
1 T olive oil
1 T basil
1/2 T marjoram
2 T dried mushrooms, crushed
tomato puree- when you core your tomatoes, reserve the guts and whir them up in the blender or food processor.
Sweat the shallot and garlic
Add rice, and toast 3 minutes or so
Stir in 1/4 cup of puree to moisten
Stir in basil, marjoram, and mushrooms
Stir in another 1/4 c of puree
Allow to sizzle away for about a miniute or two, stirring the whole time
Stir in another 1/4 of puree, cover, and drop the heat down to low. Let cook for 15 minutes, occasionally stirring and adding in more puree if needed, ended up using 3/4 cup.
Tuna and cheese:
1 can tuna
1/2 block cream cheese
1/4 cup bread crumbs
2 T butter
1/2 T dill
1/2 T old bay seasoning

When it's time for dinner, stuff your tomatoes, and bake off at 350 for 20 minutes or so.
Realized after dinner some things.. The quinoa was best. The rice should have been at least par cooked before the puree, didn't cook up tender correctly. And the tuna should have used less bread crumbs, better flavoring- and in general needs a serious overhaul before I try that one again. But they were are pretty good anyway. 

Nova is sitting there wondering WTF that is on the other side of the stove.