READY TO EAT
This afternoon I peeled and quartered my potato harvest from Thursday and canned them.
Aren’t they gorgeous?
I have not always liked canned potatoes – until I ate my home-canned ones. The commercially canned potatoes always had an “off” flavor to me.
Now “canned potatoes” just means “convenience” to me.
I can make mashed potatoes, smashed potatoes, fried potatoes, potato salad, potatoes for stews, soups and casseroles — almost all the things I can make with fresh potatoes — but without having to take the time to cook them first.
In fact, there’s one recipe I want to try in the near future. I found it at loavesanddishes.net and it sounds like a nice side dish to have the next time I need a quick potato side dish. Wendi’s instructions say to:
Melt 3 Tablespoons butter in a medium saucepan on the stovetop. Add 1 teaspoon each of onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, and parsley, plus a pinch of cayenne pepper and stir well into the butter. Drain a can of potatoes and dump it into pan, mixing well to thoroughly coat them with the butter. Mix 1/2 cup of water with 1 teaspoon lemon juice and pour into the pan. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Add salt and pepper to taste and remove from the heat. Sprinkle with 3 Tablespoon Parmesan cheese and serve.
Ten minutes to a glamourous side dish! Can’t get much better than that.
TONIGHT IN THE GARDEN
We had some nice rainstorms this week and I’ve not been out to the garden to water since the weekend. So that’s what I did tonight when I got home from work, along with a general check and cleanup.
I collected more tomatoes, cucumbers, and Time Bomb Peppers. Even so, look at how many are still ripening.
I also trimmed dead or diseased leaves from plants. While I was gone, there was a heat wave here (same as in many other parts of the country) and Oscar just couldn’t keep things watered enough. By the time I arrived home, the mint, elderberry bush (which had flowers on it when I left, sob!), and comfrey had bit the dust.
I love how resilient nature can be. I didn’t give up on watering them and was gratified to see the elderberry bush had new growth along several branches. So, I trimmed the sticks that showed no signs of life.
The spearmint, which was a black mass of dead foliage, has new growth!
It doesn’t seem to matter how many times the comfrey dies. Give it the water it needs, and it rewards you with new growth.
I trimmed all the herbs and gave them to the chickens, along with a few tomatoes the bugs had gotten into and a cucumber that was overly scarred.
Road Runner was complaining that I wasn’t letting them out to roam. I groused back that he had failed as a rooster by not saving Chipmunk from whatever attacked and killed her. When I approached the run though, I saw that he had a large, tender-looking, bald patch on his back where the feathers had been yanked out. I took that as a sign that maybe he did try to help and apologized to him for the uncharitable thoughts I’d had toward him. No, the chickens still can’t come out.
About a month ago, the foliage completely died back on two pots of potatoes. That is the sign that they are ready to harvest. However, by number of days, it was not time! So, I determined I’d leave them in the pots until I returned from my trip.
Look what I found when I dumped those two pots tonight!
Aren’t they lovely? I will let them cure a bit before doing anything further with them.
By the way, running the tomatoes through the blender did speed up the dehydration process. I now have the beginnings of a supply of tomato powder.
What didn’t work out was the repair job on my farm boots.
The rubber edge had become separated from the boot in a one-inch section and my foot was getting soaked. Trying to be frugal and make it last through the end of the season, we repaired it by gluing the separation and duct taping the seam for extra security. Then we let it “cure” for several days. Sigh, that patch job only worked for one wearing. Tonight, my foot got soaked.
Oh well, at least we tried, right?
THAT DIDN’T WORK AS EXPECTED
After making pizza sauce, I had six or eight cups of cherry tomatoes to take care of. These were destined to become tomato powder.
About half of them were the ones I put in the freezer before leaving on vacation, so they were, as expected, mushy when thawed. Too squishy to cut in half (as I should for dehydrating), I decided to do an experiment.
I figured the skins of the thawed tomatoes were already compromised so I put them on one tray of the dehydrator. The tomatoes that were picked last week were pierced with a knife (to give the juice somewhere to escape) and put those on another tray. I added extra trays between them as spacers as running the dehydrator with only two trays is not effective.
The question: Which tray would dehydrate faster and/or more evenly.
After 24 hours, the answer is: Neither. I expected them to take a bit longer to dehydrate this way but in reality, they had made very little progress.
I expected another 24 hours wouldn’t see much more headway either, so I abandoned the experiment. I ran them through the blender, spread the paste on fruit leather trays and returned them to the dehydrator. This is probably what I should have done in the first place.
Time Bomb Peppers
The Time Bomb Pepper harvest has started. I’ve picked one here, one there over the past week.
I decided to taste one to see if they lived up to their heat claims — they are supposed to be between a green pepper and a jalapeno on the Scoville scale.
I really didn’t feel there was a difference between a green pepper and the Time Bomb. That’s too bad as I was looking forward to something with just a little bite.
However,
When I started clearing out the seeds to prepare them for the dehydrator, I could feel that breathlessness that comes from inhaling the fumes of hot peppers and I started coughing uncontrollably. I decided there’s heat in there somewhere, so I dropped the plan to dehydrate them and just cut them up to freeze. Dehydrating hot peppers in the house is not something you want to do!
Lazy-ish Weekend
I had plans for the weekend: go to the Farmers Market to get winter garden starts and some produce for preserving throughout next week. That didn’t happen. I was tired once Friday arrived, no less tired when I got up on Saturday, so I just had a rest day.
Today, though, I knew I had to accomplish one particular project: make pizza sauce.
When I planted cherry tomatoes this Spring, my intention was to dehydrate them and turn most of them into tomato powder. A few weeks ago, though, I saw a You Tube video from Living Traditions Homestead where Sarah was making pizza sauce from cherry tomatoes.
One of the nebulous thoughts in the back of my mind has been that I’d like to learn how to make pizza in a cast iron skillet. Well, this sauce recipe would get me one step closer to accomplishing that. I ordered the book with the recipe, and it arrived while I was on vacation.
In the week since my return to the homestead, I harvested more than the 12 cups of cherry tomatoes needed for the recipe. The refrigerator was overflowing with them!
Roasted Cherry Tomato Pizza Sauce
(from Freeze Fresh by Crystal Schmidt)
I started by washing and cutting the tomatoes in half.
Then I put them on face-up cookie sheets and spritzed them with olive oil. Popped them into the pre-heated 350-degree oven and let them roast for 90 minutes.
You roast them to reduce the amount of water in the tomatoes. This will help you have a thick sauce, not a runny sauce.
I forgot to rotate the trays halfway through as the recipe instructed. It wasn’t a disaster but there were a few pieces so charred I put them in the chicken treat dish. I need to highlight that step in the recipe. Another thing to note is that, while I did toss the tomatoes with the olive oil to help them not stick and used non-stick foil — they stuck. So, I need to actually spritz the foil with oil, too.
The next step was to put the roasted tomatoes in the blender, add the seasonings, and run it until it’s smooth. Just look at how thick this sauce is:
I got four and a half cups of sauce in the freezer. One cup is enough for two 10-inch pizzas.
Next step: find an easy dough recipe to use in a cast iron skillet.
AND THEN THERE WERE 9
Sad news: Chipmunk is no more.
It had been almost a week since the chickens had been outside their run, so we let them out for a bit of a walk-about this evening. When Oscar went out to the coop at bedtime to do a head count, he couldn’t find Chipmunk.
His search came upon a pile of feathers and then he found her body under his bedroom window.
Rest in Peace Chipmunk
WHERE ARE THEY ALL COMING FROM?
Help! What do I do with all these cucumbers?
When I was out watering tonight, every time I turned around, I found another cucumber to pick!
I didn’t remember planting cucumbers, so was a bit bewildered when I found two in the garden back in June. As it turns out, that’s because I labeled the seed tray “PTH” (for Party Time Hybrid) but by the time I transplanted them, I mis-remembered them as a variety of mini-peppers. Surprise! Even though the seeds were from last year, they obviously are doing very well.
A Google search gave me several suggestions of what do to other than make pickles. Most of them are in the following article. The cucumber sorbet and jelly sound suspicious, but I think #1, #7, #9, and #10 are viable options. Click on the picture below to read the article and tell me what you think sounds good.
TRYING SOMETHING NEW
Before leaving on my adventure, I picked the three spaghetti squash that had ripened. They weren’t very big — just bigger than a softball. I think they are beautiful though and just the right size for a meal. I put them in the refrigerator to use when I came home and today was the big day.
I’ve been served spaghetti squash before but have not made it. There was one attempt in the 90’s but I couldn’t even get a knife through the darn thing, and that was the end of my caring if spaghetti squash existed.
Also, I found a recipe online that sounded like it would be worth trying. It’s a good thing I wrote it down because I sure couldn’t locate it again online. Sorry, I can’t give proper credit.
It’s called Turkey Sausage Broccoli and Pasta Skillet. What attracted me to it was the suggestion to substitute the pasta with spaghetti squash. How fortuitous!
COOKING THE SPAGHETTI SQUASH
Cooking the spaghetti squash was quite easy.
Slice the spaghetti squash:
Scoop out the seeds:
Spritz with olive oil and season with salt and pepper:
Place the cut side down on the baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes:
While those were baking, I prepared the other ingredients, cutting the measurements in half.
The recipe said that when using spaghetti squash, to use a block of cream cheese to create the sauce. Since I use cream cheese so rarely, my powdered cream cheese worked perfectly. I just mixed some water into about a 1/4 cup of the powder until it was a smooth creamy consistency (I made it more on the thin side, not as stiff as a block of cheese would be).
When the squash was done, I scraped the squash out and was happy to see it shredded to look like spaghetti noodles.
Add the meat, broccoli, and sauce on top and here’s the final product!
Here’s the recipe as written if you want to try it – either with pasta or with spaghetti squash. I’ve indicated where I needed to make changes.
TURKEY SAUSAGE BROCCOLI AND PASTA SKILLET
3/4 pound ground turkey sausage
8 ounces pasta (I used spaghetti squash) **
4 cups broccoli florets (I used frozen and cooked it in the microwave)
4 cloves garlic, chopped (I used jarred garlic)
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper
Cook the pasta. During the last 3 minutes of cooking, add the broccoli. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid.
Brown the sausage in a skillet until no longer pink. Add garlic and cook 1 minute until fragrant. Add some red pepper flakes if you like it spicy.
Stir in the pasta, broccoli and Parmesan cheese. Add reserved pasta water a few tablespoons at a time, stirring until a thin sauce forms. **
* * If using spaghetti squash, create the sauce by adding cream cheese.
Another variation suggested adding a can of cannellini beans, drained.
That was dinner. Tomorrow, I go back to the office.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUE
Today is my sister’s 80th birthday!
Sue likes Tai-Chi and crafting (especially crochet) and flamingos and dragonflies (visits from her husband Steve) and curling up with a book and road trips.
Sue is the one extrovert in the family. She’s Extremely extroverted. Really. I’m not kidding about that.
Being older, Sue often had a parental-like role in my younger years. She often had to take me on her dates as a teenager. She rescued me from California when I was a teen-ager and gave me a home. When I was caring for our ailing mom in her final years, Sue supported my efforts and provided respite care. I appreciate how she has been present for me.
I admire my (much older) sister, Sue. We have been on different paths in our individual lives and our strong personalities have sometimes clashed. Having matured though, I think we’ve learned how our different traits can co-exist and bring value to each other’s lives.
Happy Birthday, dear Susie! I love you!
Two Chickens Homestead 
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