Recipes Cooking

This soup comes from the "My Kitchen Cafe" blog. She has a lot of tasty recipes and this one was definitely a winner! (She also happens to be my brother-in-laws cousin). It has a little bit of a kick to it and it has tons of flavor. Ive made it twice now and it was delicious both times. I also found a yummy cornbread recipe from Martha Stewart to go with it. Both were really easy and super delicious. (My picture is lame, but it really is good). Yum!


Creamy White Chili

1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 1/2" cubes
1 medium onion, chopped
1 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 T. oil
2 (15oz.) cans Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained
1 can (14.5 oz.) chicken broth
1-2 (4 oz.) cans green chiles (I did one)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup whipping cream

In a large saucepan, saute chicken, onion and garlic powder in oil until chicken is no longer pink. Add beans, broth, chilies and seasonings. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Remove from the heat; stir in sour cream and cream. Makes about 6 servings. (Or 4 if youre really hungry).

Cornbread

1/2 c. butter
2/3 c. white sugar
2 eggs
1 c. buttermilk
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 c. cornmeal
1 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt

Melt butter. Stir in sugar. Add eggs quickly and beat until well blended. Combine buttermilk with baking soda and stir into other mixture. Stir in cornmeal, flour, and salt until well blended and few lumps remain. Bake in greased 8x8 pan at 375 degrees for 30-40 min.
Originally posted 11/17/09

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This aint yo Mommas  Split Pea and Ham Soup...

Servings: (8 to 10)
Prep: 10 mins.
Cook: Appx. 2 hrs.

INGREDIENTS

-1 (16 oz. pkg.) dried green split peas
-4 cups water
-4 to 6 cups loww-sodium chicken broth
-1 tablespoon cider vinegar
-2 heaping teaspoons brown sugar
-2 cups cooked ham, cubed
--(or 2 *smoked ham hocks, or *ham bone with meat on it, or a ring of smoked sausage)
-1 lg. carrot, scrubbed, and chopped
-2 ribs celery, chopped
-½ yellow onion, diced
-1 russet potato (or sweet potato), peeled and chopped
-1 large garlic clove, minced
-1 bay leaf
-1/8 teaspoon each: dried oregano, basil, and thyme
-1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
--(I do not add any salt due to the saltiness of the ham)
-Dash of hot sauce

METHOD

Spread the dried split peas out on a baking sheet and pick through them; toss any unwanted matter, then rinse in a colander.

In a large dutch oven (or heavy-bottom soup pot), bring split peas, water, broth, cider vinegar, and brown sugar to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 1-1/2 hours; stirring occasionally.

Add remaining ingredients, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes, until vegetables are tender. Remove bay leaf, and toss. Taste for seasoning, and add more broth or water if a thinner consistency is desired.

Serve with hot rolls or slices of French bread. - Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Tip: If using smoked ham hocks or ham bone with meat on it, add at the beginning of the cooking process, and remove after 1-1/2 hours to pull meat from hocks or bone, cube, and return to pot when adding vegetables.

A very easy recipe to make and youll have year-round homemade honey...

Yields: [Appx. 8 (½-pt.) jars]
Prep: 10 Mins. |
Cook: 10 Mins.

Posted by Sandra

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT:

3 large pots
Sterilized canning jars and lids, with rims. (boil for 10 minutes, and air dry on a clean towel)
Cheesecloth

INGREDIENTS:

30 pink clover blossoms, (1” in diameter)
20 white clover blossoms, (1” in diameter)
25 fireweed blossoms, (the fuller, darker, and richer looking the better)
1 teaspoon alum
5 lb. bag white sugar
3 cups boiling water

METHOD:

Begin boiling 3 cups of water, in a medium saucepan.

Meanwhile, remove stems from fireweed, reserving just petal shoots. Gently rinse all blossoms in colander with cold tap water.

Place all ingredients except boiling water into a large heavy-bottom pot. Pour the 3 cups of boiling water over ingredients, and let steep for 10 minutes. Turn heat on under large pot to high, and bring to boil, and then let it continue to do so for 10 minutes.

Wild Alaska Fireweed Blossom

Meanwhile, get another large pot and secure cheesecloth over the top (I do so by tying it to the side handles, or secure it with a large rubber band). Carefully pour the mixture, straining it into another large pot. Gently twist the top of the cheesecloth to get any excess honey out, prior to tossing residual blossoms.

In another large pot, begin boiling enough water to submerge honey jars to sterilize (you can do so in batches if your pot is not large enough to hold 8 (½-pt.) jars at once).

Wild Alaska White Clover Blossoms

Meanwhile, gently ladle hot honey into canning jars. Clean rims of jars of any drips, and secure rims and lids. Once water is boiling, carefully place jars into water bath, and once boiling continue to do so for 10 minutes.

Remove jars using tongs onto a clean, dry towel to cool, and then tightly secure lids after 30 minutes of cooling (you should hear pings when they seal). Once cooled, ‘label and date’ the jars of honey and place in pantry – enjoy as you would any other store-bought honey product!

And do you know why it isnt pumpkin soup?

I nurtured these pumpkins all year; first planting them as seeds in little peat pots so their roots would not be disturbed when we planted them out, then keeping them under lights, then planting them in a compost-enriched bed with a little aluminum foil collar around the stem to keep the cut-worms away, then hours spent weeding and watering, then finally collecting them and storing them carefully in the furnace room to keep them coolish and dry. A lot of effort went into those pumpkins.

And then today I trudged out into the snow to buy the other ingredients I needed to make soup. I washed my pumpkins, and cut them in half. I was a little surprised at how narrow the band of flesh was, and it seemed pale. I put this down to our summer drought though, and proceeded. I pulled out all the seeds and gunk, I rubbed them with a little oil, I roasted them until tender. Then, once they had cooled, I went to peel off the skins and put the flesh into the food-processor to purée it.

EEEEK!

The flesh was stringy; stringy like spaghetti squash. I tasted some. It had practically no flavour beyond a slight bitterness.

SOMEBODY SOLD ME IMPURE* SEEDS!

I am not going to name names here. Mainly because this is the 4th batch of impure seed from this summer, from 4 different suppliers ranging from the very large to the very small, from the long-established to the very new. But you can bet I will be sending this post to all 4 companies. We got 2 batches of bad peas and my favourite slicing tomato was not my favourite slicing tomato. And thats just the stuff I can tell. I wonder how many other things that we were growing for the first time were not actually what they were supposed to be? (There were a few other tomatoes that had crossed, but this was seed we saved ourselves, and we have no-one to blame but our own inexperienced selves for those.)

Its been a while since Ive done much gardening, but I just dont remember having anything like this many problems when we were gardening in an allotment garden. True; we didnt grow as many different vegetables. Still, we did have a garden for 4 or 5 years and I just dont remember anything turning out not as advertised. Possibly we were lucky. But possibly with the surge of interest in home gardening seed suppliers are getting careless.

So, all you gardeners out there: what has been your experience - in the past and this year - with your vegetable seeds? Ive been hearing rumours of other gardeners who have been having problems with unexpected and undesirable crosses in their purchased seeds. Lets hear about it. What seed, and if you dont mind, where you got it.



*Or, if you want to get technical, hybrid seeds. But in this case the phrase that comes to mind is not "hybrid vigour". Its "mongrel". BAH HUMBUG!

The long-awaited day arrived yesterday, when we pulled the first half of the potatoes we planted in a large box, back at the end of May. We would have let them sit a little longer, to let both sides die down, but it was clear that some mice or voles had taken up residence in the bed. Hope I dont have the same problem that we had last time we evicted mice! The half we dug up were the Russet Burbanks; the German Butterballs seem to still be growing, and to be mouse-free, as far as we can tell.



As Mr. Ferdzy unscrewed the boards that formed one side of the box, I pulled them out and took them away. You can see how deep the bed of potatoes was; probably about 16".


Then we started digging. It was quickly clear that we needed to dig by hand as of course the first thing we did was slice a couple potatoes in half. Most of the potatoes were very large. Real lunkers.


We found a few that had been much eaten by the mice or voles, but fortunately most of them were still fine. I think it was good we dug them up when we did though, or there would no doubt have been much more damage.


Here we are about three-quarters of the way through the digging process. All extra soil was hauled away and is sitting in a pile again. We will have a grass-free area over 2/3 of what will become a blueberry bed next spring. Thats a nice head start!



We got 96 pounds of Russet Burbanks which filled 2 bushel boxes. Taking into account the mouse damage, Im sure there was just over 100 pounds of potatoes. Im trying to remember what we originally planted... was it 4 pounds? It might have been, but we didnt keep good records. We planted the same amount, whatever it was, in one of our regular beds and that yielded 40 pounds of Russet Burbanks. Which was one of our best harvests of potatoes in the regular beds yet.


Last week we dug up the sweet potatoes. Im afraid they were a very disappointing harvest. We got 9 pounds of Frazier White and 11 pounds of Georgia Jet. I would say that growing them through tomato cages was a good plan, and we will do that again. It definitely prevented them from rooting all over the place, which is what they will do if allowed to sprawl. And if they do that you will get a lot of sweeet potatoes, but very tiny.

The problem, I believe, was that they basically did nothing for the entire month of June. June was perfectly grim, as far as the heat-loving vegetables like peppers, tomatoes, peanuts, melons and lima beans were concerned. It was cold and rainy, and the poor little slips just sat there and sulked. Essentially, they were a month behind when we dug them up, and since most of the root formation takes place at the end of the season, that was a month that really, really counted.

We also pulled our peanuts yesterday. Again, there were a lot of partially formed ones, and if they had done better in June I think our harvest would have doubled. On the other hand, this was still our best peanut harvest in the three years we have been growing them. We are developing peanuts suited to our soil and climate by selecting the best each year to be replanted. I also think our first planting did so poorly because the seeds were sold with the shells off, and I suspect many of them had had their growing tips damaged.

From a 5 by 5 area, we got 4 litres of shell-on peanuts. For the first time, we are going to actually eat some. (But yes, we have already sorted out about 80 of the best, largest peanuts for next years seed, including making a point to take many of them from the plants that produced the most peanuts.)


We also got some trees planted in the afternoon, most notably a couple of paw-paw trees we grew from seed this year. They join two that we bought as young plants last spring. Ive never had a paw-paw. I hope we like them. We wont know for some years!