Harvesting Peas, etc

My sugar snap peas have been beautiful this year, the best ever. I planted them early this year for the first time - my veggie garden just happened to be ready early this year. Timing: weather cooperating and husband/son cooperating. The compost piles were screened and piled for me to distribute. We had manure ready. And then a beautiful day. So I tilled, planned my gardening layout, and planted lettuce, spinach, kale, greens, radishes, carrots, and onions. I say early for me, but really not early according to the books. Those things are cooler tolerant plants. Then a visiting friend said my climate is good for those veggies - cuz, if you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of summer, and in most places these veggies would be fried. But then my timing between frosts is typically 90 days. And that's why I can't grow some HOT weather veggies - it's why most of my tomatoes are in walls-of-water, and I might get a couple peppers before frost.

Monte decided to help me freeze the peas by picking them. I froze 3 lbs. Sugar snap peas give you pea choices: eat them like snow peas, in the pods, or let them get large and shell the fresh peas. I thought I'd shell these, so I'd left them. Monte said, "No. Let's have them for stir frying over winter." AND I really don't like shelling peas. I like to do it for an occasional meal, but not for doing a bunch for freezing.

FREEZING SUGAR SNAP PEAS

Either boil or steam blanch for 3 minutes 1lb of peas at a time (I didn't wash them or anything, just removed blossom ends).

Cool quickly by either very cold water (which our mountain tap water is - I often need a bit of warm water running too if I'm washing much, like lots of spinach, cuz our water freezes my hands!) or an ice water bath.

Drain and pat dry on a towel.

Distribute on a tray and freeze.

When frozen solid, pack in a freezer bag.

These frozen do not retain their crisp texture. They could be removed from the freezer, cut in bite-size pieces, and added to a salad a few minutes before serving. We typically use them in stir-fry: slightly sauteing veggies.



Now for the rest of the story ... Monte often hates to get rid of good stuff. Just like my baby veggie starts from the greenhouse. He made new planting spots for extra kale, broccoli, etc this year that I had so much extra of (I always have extra and he just happened to be around this year helping). I tried to tell him the price of seeds - like 30 plants - is the price of buying a 6-pack of the veggie at the nursery. So we can throw them in the compost. I know, it is hard even for me. Some years I've frozen 30+lbs of broccoli, and I get tired of kale! So we had this leftover water we'd boiled the peas in ...

Monte loved the taste of this water and wouldn't let me throw it out. It's in a large jar in the refrigerator. When Dawson came home from his mountain bike ride, Monte told him to try the "Pea tea"! The next morning Monte tried it cold saying it would be better sweetened, thus, "sweet pea tea"!!!! ;-P

Our table grapes in the greenhouse are almost ripe. This year there's probably a hundred clusters! - some hanging down at head level and Monte ties up higher, since I'm often busy doing my textile art dyeing in there. I called them table grapes differentiating them from wine grapes. I used to trim them back hard like you have to if you want a lot of wine grapes. This process did not give us grapes, so I had to research. Now I don't trim them, but for cutting back the too long ends wanting to take over the greenhouse. I just bang down the dead leaves in January or February.

Raspberries are now producing. Tho I've now planted raspberries, everbearing ... and we'll see how they do. The raspberries we've got are wild. But they're growing in two of my flowerbeds. They are my oldest flower beds and Monte had brought dirt up from the woods by some springs (that's why we called our road Singing Springs Lane). The raspberries came from that dirt. They try and take over the beds. I do pull out a bunch periodically and last year I cut them all back in the spring. I thought our wild variety were everbearing. But no. We didn't get any raspberries that year. Everbearing bear on current year branches and bear throughout the growing season off and on. Others on older canes. I don't mind them mixed in with the flowers. My gardening style is 'cottage' and I've got veggies and fruit co-mingled with perennials.

Real Food

Found a website - 100 Days of Real Food

Velveteen House Creativity

I knew Dawson had come home ... and with friends. Monte and me were watching a movie. When done and I came downstairs, they were in my studio. My initial feeling was "PANIC"!!!!! I have this initial feeling too when coming down to the kitchen in the morning after Dawson and friends have been active into the night. I try not to be a kitchen witch. But I have asked that they clean up - and my preference: I don't care about stuff in the sink, but I like clean counters. So we went to bed and they carried on into the night in my studio. The next morning, all was clean ...

I took some pics to capture their process. Dawson was at the sewing machine. Tim had left material and scissors on the dining room floor (he'd tried making himself some pants - it didn't work - didn't ask Dawson's advice ... Dawson knows, he's tried the same thing). Having given up, Tim was serenading them with playing Dawson's metal cello. Splarah showed me her iPad - showing a kids apron and chef hat pattern, and was cutting out the pieces, giving them to Dawson to sew.

It was Splarah's neighbor's birthday - turning 3. Splarah's mom was giving her Splarah and Abby's old little kitchen set, so Splarah wanted to make her an apron. Dawson said, "don't go get fabric, my mom's got a 'fabric store' in our garage. He knows - I've given him free reign of the boxed material in the garage - which he's made use of for years. They also made a chef hat and apron for her 5 year old brother.

When I came down in the morning, there were the hats and aprons! Notice the contrasting material used for the apron back? The pink one has a pink check for the apron back. The chef hats have velcro in the band for tightening and expansion fit around their heads. Didn't they do a great job? and SO cute!


Why did I title this "Velveteen House"? I did posts about our Velveteen House several times in my old blog. Remember the Velveteen Rabbit book? Remember the classic dialogue in the book about 'What is real?' ...

"What is REAL?" asks the Velveteen Rabbit of the Skin Horse.
"Real isn't how you are made" (they were looking at all the fancy toys surrounding them in the nursery). "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?"
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful, "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, or bit by bit?"
"...You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

... Well our home has been well-loved, lived in, and worn. Lots of wonderful memories bounce from our velveteen house walls.

Yogurt Ice Cream

Whenever Monte and me are in Ft Collins Colorado, visiting our son Travis, wife Sarah, and now little Emery, we always want to visit a family operated Yogurt Ice Cream place. They sell by the weight and there's lots of flavors and topping choices. The mechanism instantly freezes fresh yogurt, and it's not too sweet (unless you add tons of sweet topping). So I got to thinking ...

YOGURT ICE CREAM

Why not make our own yogurt ice cream. I make yogurt all the time. So with the last making, before even refrigerating it, I mixed

- 4 cups of the yogurt with

- 3/4 cup of sugar till it dissolved and refrigerated it till ready to make ice cream

- (I suppose a bit of vanilla flavoring would be good too)

For years we had a hand-crank ice cream maker - not the kind needing ice and salt - but an insert you keep in the freezer. We still have it for an extra, but it doesn't work as well (dented or something for an improper fit). Now we still have one with an insert for the freezer, but it's electric. While the guys were still enjoying sitting on the deck talking and watching the birds, and I was putting away pizza and salad makings, I dumped the yogurt mixture into the machine and let it run till it was frozen thick. We ate it along with the fresh strawberry grilled dessert pizza.

Our favorite frozen desserts have been pureed fruits - like mango and lime juice. Last year we did some with our garden's currents and greenhouse grapes. Lazy me no longer likes to make up the cooked ice cream bases. Last night's yogurt ice cream was fantastic! We'll be doing it all the time now. Monte often likes to cook up older fruit sitting about and old jam jar bottoms into what he calls a Swedish word for a fruit sauce- 'crem'. This would be good on the yogurt ice cream. The next time I make this I'm going to try substituting the sugar with 1/2 the amount using Agave Nectar.

Freezing Produce

A friend in Florida posted on Facebook about putting up peaches, commenting about all the work blanching to remove skin, and slicing. I commented on what I've done now for years, and thought I'd post some comments here.



First off! ... I've never peeled my fruit, whether canning, freezing, or drying. I figure that's where the majority of the nutrients are. The books say to, but after 30 years, we and guests are still very much alive and well! I suppose tho, that putting tomatoes thru either my hand cranked berry press or my Bosch one, the peel along with the seeds get eliminated, and too with apple sauce and pear sauce. But beyond those types of things, I don't work at removing the skin. Call me lazy. I like pies and cobbler, etc with fruit skins in the equation. When we'd eat canned peaches, the skins often fell off anyway, but in eating them they'd be full of flavor.



I don't can anymore. Canning loses 40% of produce's nutrients. Freezing and Drying only loses 15%. If I were to still can anything, it would be tomatoes, but with the two of us, and Costco having organic cases, and my garden doesn't produce that much of tomatoes (our 1st frost is early to mid September - so I pull out tomato plants onto a tarp and pull the tarp into the garage and pick off for eating the ripe tomatoes on into November). The best book for these techniques (tho they still peel stuff) is the classic Stocking Up. I love all the Rodale Press books (tho it may not be published by them now), having learned so much from them. Mr Rodale in the 70's was a maverick for health when American culture was moving into modern processed foods, and poor agricultural practices (A great book on the story of food is The Omnivor's Dilemma - I like all of Michael Pollan's books - I'm currently reading his older book Second Nature).



I've been freezing peaches whole now for quite some time. Since I don't cook a ton of desserts, we use them mostly "fresh" on granola/oatmeal/cereal, mushing on toast, frozen yogurt, in a smoothy ... Just take out however many peaches you want. If you don't want the skin, it slips right off. Slice and use.



Today, since it's cooled off quite a bit with cloud cover and forecasted rain, I'm going to be pulling up all the volunteer kale I let grow in my kitchen garden. It's been helping shade the garden soil all over the garden, so it doesn't dry out so fast, but it's now needing to be pulled out. I'm going to be freezing up a bunch.



Some veggies need to be blanched before freezing. I've not blanched corn in years since an old-timer told me she never blanches hers. But the Stocking Up book has done studies on testing produce's nutrients over time and found that most veggies hold nutrients better if blanched a bit. I freeze a lot of kale and spinach every year (and I get plenty of broccoli, cauliflower, and beans to freeze too). I like pulling out a little bag of kale or spinach, chop it up and thro in spaghetti/lasanga sauces, stews and chilis, or even just saute up a bit and put on a bit of lemon juice and parmesan and eat. Kale has more vitamin C than does citrus.

Grilled Corn and Pesto Pizza

Monte's geology partner from Arizona flew in yesterday and I echoed grilled pizza from a previous post. But I tried some new things, learning more. We know Stan says he likes a pizza with anchovies, artichoke hearts, feta cheese, jalepenos, olives, and hot sausage. I'd have to try each of those things individually to test, but the pizza was too salty. I think the biggest culprit was the chorizo sausage I'd pulled from the freezer and crumbled and browned. I used it on another pizza with mushrooms and onions and mozzarella and that one was too salty too. The other night's pizzas were not too salty at all and all of the combos were good. In the future I'd just brown up ground meat and season it myself.



The best pizza last night was one I spread with pesto sauce, instead of the spaghetti sauce. I make up pesto from fresh picked basil every year and freeze, without parmesan, adding in fresh parmesan when using the pesto. Then I tossed on chopped tomato, mozzarella and parmesan cheese.



I did do a dessert pizza - good flavors but didn't work. I'd mixed some orange liqueur and orange peel into mascarpone cheese and spread on the pizza, scattering sliced fresh strawberries. The cheese started melting off the pizza. So I think this one would work with more of a crust lip, or not spread it to the edges. Too, because of the cheese running, we let it sit quite awhile to let it cool and not be so runny. But I also mixed up some yogurt ice cream, which I'm going to post next, which was a hit!

GRILLED CORN

The grilled corn was a hit with Stan. In the summer I grill corn all the time. I've read lots of recipes, and even have my son Travis's opinion, on grilling corn, and have tried probably all the options. Since I don't want to baby the corn and brush on stuff, I leave it in the husk and let the husk char black, with occasional turning. BUT I do peel off some of the outer husk and cut off the tip of silk and husk close to the corn top. Some will tell you leaving the husk on just steams the corn. Removing some of the husk eliminates this complaint. By charring, the silk is no issue either. So it's the simplest method for me.



I mixed up a butter for the corn. Plan on 1 Tb butter per ear of corn. So I did -

4 ears of corn

4 Tb butter

1 large canned chipotle with some of it's adobo sauce (I always keep this in a jar in the fridge), chopped

(1 Tb mayo - 0ptional)

1 Tb chopped cilantro

Grilled Pizza

I've been wanting to try grilled pizza and finally did last night. It was GREAT! ... and the guests, I wasn't planning on, loved it too. My last post mentioned our Velveteen House (from an old post on my old blog)(look at last post for the link). Well ... 5pm approached and as I was grinding wheat flour for the pizza dough, Dawson walked in, along with Tim and Gary ... and then Matt came, right when we were eating and pulled up another chair to the table on the deck ... and then while cleaning up, Splarah (Dawson's girlfriend) and Lizzie, scaring mommy and baby elk on their way up our road, ate more pizza, and said it was great ... and as I started, prior to this long sentence ... not expecting guests, but they arrived, I doubled the pizza dough and made 4 large pizzas instead of 2 on the grill. Monte picked salad greens from the kitchen garden, I'd made a dressing, and sitting on the deck eating and yacking with these young adults - a nice meal.

PIZZA DOUGH

-1C warm water

-1 tsp yeast

-pinch of sugar (I used succanat)

-1C flour

Slightly work the flour in, put the lid on the bowl (I'm using a Bosch Universal) and let sponge for 10 minutes, it should be bubbly.

Then add

-1 tsp salt

-(I added 1 TB of the Italian spice mix I mentioned in my last post)

-More flour (about 2 1/2C) till mixture starts cleaning the bowl and let knead for 6-10 minutes. (With WW flour it's best to have the dough still a bit tacky, not sticky, otherwise you've added too much flour and your bread will be dry. But this isn't as noticeable with pizza dough. I'll have to post bread making with fresh ground whole grain flour sometime. Detail bread making is in my cookbook.)

Turn on the grill to preheat.

While leaving the dough in the mixing dough to do some rising, get your pizza toppings ready. I had some natural pepperoni I'd removed from the freezer, a bit of ham left over, grated pepper jack, mozarella, and parmesan cheese, chopped some pineapple, sauted some onion and mushrooms, and opened a jar of spaghetti sauce. Also have a bowl of olive oil ready with a brush in it. And too, you need to oil the grill grate.

I divided the dough in 4ths and rolled them out on parchment paper. As you can see in the picture I stacked them on my pizza peal to take outside by the grill. Have everything ready by your grill. Have your salad and plates ready. Have a large serving board with pizza cutter ready. And beverage choice ready, sipping while cooking or waiting to eat.



Make sure the grill grate is clean and oil (I always keep a shallow bowl by my grill with a folded paper towel and oil). I kept one burner on high and the other side on medium. Put one pizza dough on the high burner. It'll start bubbling up. Check it for burning, but it seemed I left it there for 1-2 minutes, then turned it over onto the medium side. Immediately brush with olive oil and spread several spoonfuls of spaghetti sauce on and add toppings. Close the grill lid and cook till the cheese is melting - which seemed about 3-5 minutes. I pulled it onto the bread board for the guys cut it up while I began the next pizza.

You might ask, "You, Karey, are grilling? Don't guys usually do the grilling?" I always do the grilling. I love grilling. Monte never has grilled, unless helping me.



See the elk beyond our electric fence?

Monte's Tortilla Egg Sandwich

It's hot outside, which is unusual for our neck-of-the-woods. Lots of people are leaving Denver (supposed to be 100 tomorrow - we're always 10 degrees cooler) for the mountains for the weekend! I've been sitting out on our back deck at the umbrella table reading, drinking iced tea I sweeten with a few drops of Agave Nectar, which has a low glycemic index in comparison to sugar!. Until supper, Monte and me usually eat separate. Sometimes he goes directly into his office upon waking ... since he works at home, he's coming and going around the house and eating at varying times than me. While I was resetting the sprinkler for the veggie garden, he brought his creation out for me to take a bite of ... and proceeded to email Travis and Sarah and me his recipe, with a picture of the seasoning he used taken with his iPhone. So I just made it for my lunch and took a picture.



From the guests we had the other night we've got leftover flour tortillas. I think we primarily stay Costco members for their uncooked flour tortillas. I know ... some of you will say, "but you grind your own flour and make everything from scratch with it!". If I'm going to make tortillas from scratch, I'll do corn tortillas. We use these for our many guest meals and Tostada Egg (in my cookbook and I'll post here someday). So many high school and college kids end up around here (I have posts from my old blog called "Velveteen House" [-click that phrase if you want to read it]), especially over school breaks, I never know who might have spent the night till mid morning. And I often do Tostada Eggs when they're around - they like them, cut in wedges, dipped in salsa. And an easy on-the-go meal to grab.

TORTILLA EGG SANDWICH

-Heat small skillet for cooking one egg.

-Fold cooked flour tortilla and toast in toaster (watch closely).

-As Monte said, "break egg yoke and shape to fit half of a tortilla."

-Sprinkle on Chef Prudhommes' Magic Italian Seasoning (I get this from Costco too).

-Flip egg till desired doneness

-Spread a bit of mayo inside toasted tortilla

-Slip egg inside.

-Enjoy!



I did. Along with an avacado half with fresh sqeezed lime juice.



You'll see in the picture a fork. I didn't need the fork - cuz of course we pick it up to eat. But it reminded me of the many times we've had Norwegians here for geology meetings. Unless they copy us, they'd eat it with a fork and knife as they also do with sandwiches, and everything. Monte and me have gotten used to keeping our fork in our left hand for eating along with a knife in the right hand, as do Europeans.

Mexican Zucchini Salad

We had house guests: investors interested in Monte's swashbuckling geology. It was an all-of-a-sudden event, and one, the only one we knew, stayed the night. Our typical first meal for guests is Mexican and usually I'll grill stuffed poblanos (I'll post that recipe another time), but didn't do that this time. Since it was a quick throw-together we repeated our mexican chuck roast and radish salsa meal I recently posted about. I did a rhubarb crisp, already posted too, along with rhubarb-ade, and tea. I also made another favorite guests like - Mexican Zucchini Salad. (Monte told me I better take a picture of his plate - he always makes a great presentation of food!)



I have a cookbook from when we were first married, so thirty-five years old, that this recipe idea came from (idea... since I don't totally follow). When Travis got married, Monte and me catered the rehearsal dinner all the way to Ft Collins from our Evergreen home - a Mexican fiesta! This salad was one of the dishes well received.

MEXICAN ZUCCHINI SALAD

3 medium zucchini

1/2 tsp salt

Cut the zucchini in half lengthwise and again in 1/4" slices. In a bowl, salt these with the salt, toss to mix, then spread on several layers of paper towel to sit and drain for 30 minutes. Pat dry before adding to bowl mixture.



Combine in a bowl-

5 Tb vinegar (I like to mix some balsamic, red wine vinegar and maybe brown rice, apple cider, sherry vinegar - the recipe uses all white vinegar - how boring!)

2-3 cloves minced garlic (instead of recipe's 1 - I always do more garlic in recipes)

1/4 tsp dried thyme (use more of garden fresh thyme)

1/2C good tasting olive oil

1 can drained garbanzo beans

1/2C sliced olives

1/2C+ sliced green onions (I always do more green onions and love the green tops)

1 canned chipotle chili in adobo, seeded and minced (I always keep these in a jar, once a can is opened, and when I take out a chili I make sure to shove all the chilis into the adobo for better keeping)

1/2C crumbled queso anejo (which I don't usually have, so I use cows milk feta [we don't like goat feta - fresh goat milk and cheese is good, but something happens to it in the processing and time])



I'll make this a bit ahead 30 minutes to 4 hours, and occasionally stir for the flavors to marinate.

After supper, and a rain sprinkle, we walked around the gardens, enjoying the flowers, texture, and mountain air. I had them all eat a sweet cicely seed pod - an after dinner mint. The plant is behind my tarragon plant - both a type of licorice/anise flavor. Sweet Cicely is very ferny and mine has been reseeding (I think last year's moist summer did it) so I moved them about the garden this spring.



An artist friend, Sarah, and me made my Sculpy Dough herb labels last year. They are weathering just fine - I didn't know how they'd hold up. Garden twine holds them to bamboo poles.

Hummingbird Nectar

I just mixed up some more sugar water for my smallest hummingbird feeder. The feisty rufous hummingbird has arrived and the activity level has escalated. The rufous copper color in the sunlight is spectacular. Tho my feeders all have many feeding holes, once the territorial rufous shows up, he doesn't like to share the feeder. I read one will take over a feeder, so this year I've got three feeders, and I'm seeing more rufouses than ever!



I've read of boiling the nectar. I don't. Never have. Nor do I put in red food coloring. I've been feeding hummingbirds every summer for years, cuz they're here all summer, from mid May till Labor Day weekend. And noisy they be - their chips and high pitched humming sound is heard from afar!



So how I mix my sugar water works. I just use hot tap water and stir till sugar is dissolved.

Hummingbird Nectar

-1 part sugar

-4 parts water

(So 1C sugar to 4C water is my typical amount I'll make up)

-Have part of the water hot tap water till sugar dissolved, then add the rest as cold water.



I'll use this filling time to rinse the feeder in the hot tap water too. I do have a bottle brush for feeders if need be.

I so enjoy seeing nature utilize my environment I've created for their enjoyment.