One Shot :: 19 and This Week in My Kitchen :: Blog Hop

Posted on July 10, 2014 by thespunmonkey

This shot of pure, liquid gold in the afternoon light required no editing. We lost our bees, but what a precious gift they left behind. It took months, but we finally borrowed an extractor and liberated sweetness from the hive frame graveyard.

Today, I’m joining Heather for This Week in My Kitchen.

This week contained many a garden meal. I realize a garden post is well past due, but it’s not quite peak and there is so much that has such a very long way to go yet, that I’m not sure it would be interesting. Peas are happening, though, and I’m pretty sure I’ve harvested the last garlic scape. Our first round of greens have all bolted, so when I learned that daylilies could beef up my scape/pea saute instead of the bok choi I’d set out to harvest, I had to give it a try.

It’s so simple I can’t even pretend to give you a recipe. Snow peas and garlic scapes sauteed in butter, with daylily buds added in the last two minutes, whole flowers in the last thirty seconds. Salt and pepper, and you’re there. So good.

Speaking of butter, I am still in the midst of preserving oodles and oodles of scapes, and while most of them will go into the pesto recipe I’ll share tomorrow, and mixed vegetable ferments, I used them the other day for this compound butter. I didn’t bother with mincing or sauteing, but just threw 12 raw scapes into the food processor, whizzed ’em around a bit, and then added a 1/2 pound of softened butter. And yes, I’ll be holding back at least another 12 from tomorrow’s pestofest so I can make another batch of this stuff. We’ve been using it every morning to cook our eggs in, and tonight I’ll use it to baste chicken on the grill.

Oh, and it tastes delicious on heart-shaped bread, too.

What’s going on in your kitchen?

This Week In My Kitchen :: Blog Hop

Posted on July 3, 2014 by thespunmonkey

Joining Heather today for This Week in My Kitchen.

The last week and a half has been a jumble of four schedules and two cars, and if, like us, you live at least a half hour away from the nearest everything, then you know how little time there is for anything else besides planning for driving and actually driving. Somehow, I managed to keep everyone fed, except for the day they fed me (to celebrate another trip ’round the sun…whoosh!…more on that later), but I did not photograph it. Really, I just felt lucky to have a few moments each night to sit with my family and enjoy a meal together before the rush of bedtime for animals and child, and preparing for the next day.

One of the things that happened amidst the comings and goings was that we finally got things set up in the goat house to keep the babies separated at night. This means we get the morning milk; a half gallon every day! We have not yet been able to encourage the young ones out to pasture, but the mamas have no problem leaving the littles to their own devices for the day, so perhaps we’ll soon have them fully weaned. Mama’s Day Out consists of rotating browse, and then they come home to ridiculous, violent nursing. I recall some days like that in my own life as a working mother of a nursing babe…

Pictured above is the first yogurt experiment with milk from our girls. Three quarts, brought to 180 degrees and then cooled to 110 before adding starter. I’ve made hundreds of quarts of successful yogurt with raw cow’s milk, but I find it to be much trickier with goat. Precise temperature seems to be much more important, as is the incubation time. We’ll see how I did when I make this morning’s smoothie.

Stay tuned for some ideas for using garlic scapes, of which I’ve just harvested a bazillion. Pesto is a favorite all year long, so I’ll be whipping up several batches today to put in the freezer, as well as brainstorming some ferment projects.

What’s happening in your kitchen?

Come Into My Garden: 2

Posted on June 30, 2013 by thespunmonkey

No, really. Come on in.

C flagged down the tree-trimmers down the road and graciously offered our driveway as a spot to dump their full load of mulch. A heavy rain storm the other night washed a good deal of it away after our teeny stream jumped its banks, but I have plenty more to reapply. A top item on the agenda for when C can use his body normally again is to dig that stream bed a bit deeper. Thank goodness I had not yet planted out the peppers…their whole bed was gone! So much topsoil…whoosh, down the hill. It’s tricky business, farming on a steeply sloping piece of land. Creating drainage is a constant, evolving issue.

Very similar to the last installment’s garlic photo, but can you spot the difference? I harvested yesterday and ended up with this:

Today, I will fill the two-gallon crock with scapes to ferment, and another generous portion will go into yet more batches of pesto. Beyond that, I’m out of preserving ideas, so will do my best to grill and saute my way through them in the next week or two, and maybe make a compound butter. Any other scape ideas?

Finally, a week of solid rain and these guys took off. Pickling cukes, you will be mine.

1st and 2nd generation broccoli and cauliflower. Almost time to start the seeds for a fall planting…crazy!

This is the blue jade corn. It’s an heirloom variety that only grows to 3 ft. tall, so I’m not sure where we should be by the fourth of July…certainly not knee-high; maybe, mid-shin high? If so, we’re almost there. I am especially excited about this variety because it is a sweet fresh-eating corn that is a deep blue that stays blue when you cook it, unlike those disappointing purple green beans that leach all their beauty when heat is applied.

Speaking of green beans, we went all green all the way Providers this year. Hoping for a really great haul for the freezer. I tried dehydrating them last summer…awful! So many things dried very well, but green beans? It’s like they just can’t rehydrate, even in a soup.

The 2nd planting of onions has gone in. I trenched with a hoe and laid compost in before planting. It’s a very efficient method; two flats out in no time. We ran out of room in the onion bed, so there will be a row keeping the celery company. Celery! I wish I had more than one little row of it, but that one row is looking fantastic. Celery + rain = friends.