Today I will change the brine on the pickles and am also going to be canning summer squash and zucchini. I still have some frozen zucchini in the freezer so I'm going to mix it with the yellow summer squash for nice color. We actually enjoyed the squash this past Winter. It's not our favorite and you have to be really careful when cooking it but it's pretty tasty as a side dish. Squash, when canned, gets really soft but I put mine in large chunks. When I prepare it I saute onions first and get everything in the pan BUT the squash, and at the last minute drain the squash, saving the liquid for soup, put the canned pieces of squash in the pan with the onions and seasonings and just barely heat it up. That way it doesn't all completely mush up. Yes, it's soft but it still has some solid pieces. It works and it's good. I was telling Hubby, tongue in cheek, that squash may be all we get from this garden. The look he gave me was not a welcome sight! LOL!! He can eat squash but again, NOT his favorite, even when it's straight from the garden.
,Aghhh!!! It's raining AGAIN!!! I don't know how much more our garden can handle. Every plant up about 12 inches from the ground is turning yellow and we all know what that means. I'm nearly in agony walking around it every morning seeing it slowly die. Oh well, grab hold of that pioneer spirit and keep on smiling. It could be worse!! Today I will change the brine on the pickles and am also going to be canning summer squash and zucchini. I still have some frozen zucchini in the freezer so I'm going to mix it with the yellow summer squash for nice color. We actually enjoyed the squash this past Winter. It's not our favorite and you have to be really careful when cooking it but it's pretty tasty as a side dish. Squash, when canned, gets really soft but I put mine in large chunks. When I prepare it I saute onions first and get everything in the pan BUT the squash, and at the last minute drain the squash, saving the liquid for soup, put the canned pieces of squash in the pan with the onions and seasonings and just barely heat it up. That way it doesn't all completely mush up. Yes, it's soft but it still has some solid pieces. It works and it's good. I was telling Hubby, tongue in cheek, that squash may be all we get from this garden. The look he gave me was not a welcome sight! LOL!! He can eat squash but again, NOT his favorite, even when it's straight from the garden. We're going to the fair this evening. I can't tell you how long it's been since I've been to a country fair. The Ferris Wheel is beckoning.
1 Comment
I got up early this morning, let Hubby sleep in and went out on the front deck. It looked like it was going to burst into a thunderstorm at anytime! I took my cup of coffee, laid back on my lounge chair, watched the birds fly over our calm lake, and gave thanks for the morning. It was so peaceful. I've said it before on here. I love it right before it rains - it's my mood weather. There's just something about it that makes me so reflective.
Hubby got up and we sat and had more coffee and then out to the raspberry patch for me!! I'm getting 1 to 2 quarts of red raspberries every day now and soon it will begin to slow down to just 1 every other day. I'm also picking cucumbers and squash every day too!! LOVELY!!! All the rain is not doing my tomatoes any favors. They need sun and they need sun badly. I'm a little worried about them and I really, really want the tomatoes. The corn is doing okay as long as we can keep the deer and racoons out of it and the beans are doing just fine. I can't believe the spaghetti squash. It's, like, taken over!! It's been an unusual year here for the weather and the garden, but it is what it is and we just have to deal. Again, it's difficult to anticipate what Mother Nature has in store!! This morning I'm going to get a batch of open-jar pickles started. This is a recipe I received from a lady whose home Hubby and I first lived after we got married. She was simply wonderful!! Ethel taught me so much and she didn't even know it. It was mostly taught through her way of living. It's almost as if she spanned the generations with such grace that you never knew what hit you. You learned the old ways and the new ways and learned to appreciate how they blended into each day. She was an educator - and very, very wise. She introduced me to chickens and wild foraging and ALWAYS with that amazing positive attitude. I miss her, a lot! So, with that said, I'm off to wash the crocks out and get them ready for pickles and get the beans on too. Talk to you later!! --------------------------------------- I ended up canning 3 quarts and 4 pints of green beans. Not bad for a little half row of green beans, huh?! We've already had a big old-fashioned pot of beans and some stir-fried beans with almonds so I'm learning what I need to be growing in my garden. As I said before, I had loads of green beans canned from last year and didn't know if 1/2 row would do me this year, but it's perfect. Of course next year I'll be back to growing 2 rows of green beans and that will give me enough to get me through another 2 years. This way every other year I can try growing something a little odd or different. It's a nice change-up but doesn't leave me without a stocked pantry. I also got one 2 gallon crock soaking of open-jar pickles and 1 crock of dill pickles. I am so excited!!! What a sensational Monday morning!! I sent Hubby off to work, fed the chickens and then I got busy. First I picked the green beans and squash, then I cut about 8 heads of cabbage, 2 heads of broccoli and 2 heads of cauliflower. Then I picked some cucumbers, green peppers and thinned out the onions. My nephew always buys a load of Georgia peaches and gets them up here to Indiana and we go and generally buy a bushel but this year we just couldn't make it. Instead I went up to the farm market and bought a bushel. (Hubby even got into the act and helped deseed and peel the peaches too. Don't think for a second it wasn't appreciated.) It's good to know you have some kind of fruit in your pantry and I ended up with 18 quarts of peaches, 6 pints and 5 half-pints of peach preserves, and 3 pints of peach butter. Not too shabby! I ended up with 14 quarts of sauerkraut and still had 1 -1/2 heads of cabbage left so I cut it up, blanched and froze it. I've still got oodles of cabbage left in the garden to cut in a week or two. I'll freeze some more but do any of you have any suggestions for what I could do with excess cabbage?
I took the 2 heads of cauliflower and broccoli, chopped it up and blanched it, then mixed it together and froze 2 packages. We really like the cauliflower/broccoli blend and I've bought that blend many times at the store so this was perfect for us. I had no sandwich meat in the house this morning for Hubby's lunch and he's burned out on peanut butter and jelly, so I went downstairs and brought up a quart of beef and made a roast beef sandwich for him. For supper I put some canned sliced potatoes in a casserole dish, chopped up some onions and peppers then layered some zucchini on top of that. That I shredded some beef on top, put some pats of butter on that and sprinkled cheese on top. Yummmm!! When I was a little girl one of my fondest memories was my Dad bringing home those little sparklers on July 4 and we got to write our names in the air, draw circles or just stand and stare at our sparkly sparklers. But as I got older Dad and Mom slowly but ever-so-surely explained to us why this particular day was celebrated.
Oh, and I was so proud and honored to be an American, but needless to say, many smart alecks have said to me over the years, "Oh, you're one of those "flag wavers." Yep, I suppose that's exactly right, I come from a family of flag wavers - and I'm proud of it. As a family back then, no, we didn't have a lot, but even as a little kid I knew two things for sure. We believed in God and we were free. We had that and nobody could take it away from us. I remember as parents, Hubby and I weren't quite as much fun. By then sparklers were like stupid, and nowadays, too, sparklers are nothing - kids have so much and it takes an awful lot to excite and grab their attention. But Hubby and I tried to teach our sons what July 4th stood for, why it existed. We just didn't do it on the 4th of July either. Learning and appreciating freedom is something that should be taught every day, because every day is a day we should thank God for the blessing of being born and living in a nation protected by his mighty hand. I don't know if we can take credit for succeeding as flag-waving parents or not, but somehow our sons have both become great men who now teach others nearly daily about freedom in one form or another. Both understand explicitly what the cost of freedom is and could be. Yes, there it is - the big "C" word. The cost of freedom. I'm older now and I realize that there are some of us who have never had to bear the cost of freedom. We've just enjoyed it. But our freedom has come at an immense cost. Patriots of all stature have stood their ground and fought large and small battles, won and lost many skirmishes. It wasn't all big booming sounds, bright lights and rockets bursting in the air. It was the anguish of being mocked by your family and the great pain of enduring wounds that would never heal. It was being treated like a caged animal, the loss of hard-earned personal possessions and it was the loss of many, many lives, both young and old . . . . and all for what? FREEDOM!! My friends here we are on the precipice of time where many of those hard fought-for freedoms are slipping away faster and faster and we stand by, doing absolutely nothing, and silently wonder why no one really comprehends anymore how very blessed we have been all these years. No one gets it. No one knows, or in many cases even care, what it took to get this very point in time. Still . . . . . . . . . . . . we stare into the sky at the beautiful lights and the rockets red glare and say things like - "It's just not as good as last year." Need I say more? We walked around the gardens last night and noticed that the mosquitoes are terrible . . . but we had no idea until we went out this morning!!! They were swarming around us. With all the rain and the high humidity and heat it's perfect for mosquitoes. You all be careful out there, ha hear?!
I've been busy doing "this and that" all day long, but not really anything important or worth blogging about. I will say this though - I had bought several mangoes for the Caribbean Pork meal I was going to fix my brother and sister-in-law and they left to go home before supper yesterday so I'm sitting here with way too many mangoes. I decided to go ahead and make the meal for Hubby tonight and make extra mango salsa . . . but I also changed the salsa up a bit and wow!!! It's so good. I wanted a salsa I thought Hubby would eat with chips as well. This dish really sends my taste buds into orbit. I can't honestly say I have a recipe - which is my usual bad. I do this often, make a dish and then do not write down what went into it, and it makes my family so disgruntled. They'll say give me the recipe and I give them this blank look. Nonetheless, it would be very easy to duplicate. It was 3 chopped mangoes, 5 chopped small tomatoes, 1 chopped green pepper, 1 small chopped red onion, 1 fresh chopped jalapeno, handful of chopped cilantro, some lime juice, some olive oil, 1 tsp. of my homemade onion/garlic blend, some salt and pepper. That's as close as I can come to a recipe. All that's left is "Yum!" Thunder woke me this morning, yes thunder! It's been raining off and on most of the night and is getting ready to give it another go. In the 13 years we have lived here we have NEVER seen it rain as much as it has this year. We've seen some pretty "hard" and "fast" rains but never this much. They've not been those horrid, torrential downpours that flood everything in sight either but oh my goodness there has been so-o-o much rain!!
We ought to have a lot of huge, killer tomatoes from all this rain and heat but I am very concerned about some of the rest of the vegetables. I really am worried that many of them will rot right in the ground. Makes one appreciate the times we live in, where we can just run to the store. Of course, the whole idea, at least with us, is to see how much we can glean from the garden and NOT run to the store!! Come this Monday, I have to begin pushing the envelope around here. Canning and preserving begins and won't stop for a good month or more. When this all begins it's fun - but about halfway through is when it stops being quite so much fun. You have to have set your sights on something more than just fun - you need to set your sights on stocking that pantry of yours!!! My brother and his wife could arrive any time this morning so I've got to get going. Let's see: deviled eggs (check), cheesecake (check), salad (check) . . . . . -------------------------- It's rained off and on all day today but that didn't stop us from having a good time. It was great to have the company and I don't think I've EVER heard Hubby talk as much as he did today. My sister-in-law and I even sneaked in a little shut-eye. TeeHee!!!! We were so bad!! Yikes!! I got up ready to take on the world this morning and after having my coffee I started preparations for all the things I was going to do. First, of course, I had to make my trip out to the garden to collect veggies and check on everything. I had to feed the chickens and get the laundry started. About 30 minutes later I realized I had worked too hard yesterday because I was tired already. Man!!! I couldn't believe it!! Didn't really matter though. I had things to do.
First off I had to do some more weeding in the herb garden. It's actually looking pretty good. It could use about 3 more days of constant work but it looks a heck of a lot better than it did!! After about 3 hours of weeding I dashed for the shower, dressed and lit out for the store. My brother and his wife are coming for a visit and I had a few things I needed, no that's not true, things I "wanted" for their meals while they were here. I'm wanting them to try my Caribbean Pork with Mango Salsa and mangoes were needed. Hubby had requested I also pick up some vanilla ice cream, some root beer, red pop, orange crush and grape soda for "cows"!! I've talked about cows on here before. Come on now, you know what cows are, right? They're really just ice cream sodas but my Dad used to make them for us when we were little and we would call them black cows, purple cows, red, orange. You get it. Cows are great on hot summer days! While I was in I grabbed a bag of sugar and a couple other items and was ready to head out the door and there came a rainstorm to end all rainstorms. I stood there lamenting, in my head, how I was not going to be able to get into the garden yet another day and when the rain finally let up a little I made a mad dash to the car, loaded it up and got in the car drenched through and through. I carefully drove home because the thunderstorm did not let up and carried the groceries into the house and changed clothes. After that, it was back to laundry. Right now I have a beautiful cheesecake in the oven. It is going to taste scrumptious. I also bought some good mozzarella while I was at the store, cut it up and am now marinating it with Italian Seasoning, hot pepper flakes, a little salt and olive oil. By tomorrow it will be one of those dishes to "die for". I'm serving crusty Italian Bread to go with the pork dish and it will also be perfect to eat with the cheese and mop up that wonderful olive oil Ooooooh, I'm nearly drooling already. |
AuthorMy name is Nina. Southern Indiana has been my home since 1952. I've been a legal secretary most of my adult life and for my leisure time I enjoy everything connected to the world of herbs and cooking is almost like a "fever". I am also quite opinionated but try not to push my opinions on others. My family is grown and I'm left with a wonderful hubby sharing life with me. I'd guess you'd say my passion is living that life to the fullest. Archives
May 2016
Categories |