Magical Morning

Posted on November 28, 2010 by Dave @ HappyAcres

We woke up this morning to find everything outside blanketed in a beautiful, heavy frost. At first glance it almost looked like a light dusting of snow. When I grabbed the camera and went outside, I could see why. The frost had formed big crystals, as big as any I have ever seen.

I didn’t have to travel far to see what the frost had done for the landscape. Even everyday, ho-hum objects were transformed by the ice crystals, like this hose sprayer on the deck.

(click on photos to enlarge)

The hose end of the sprayer was almost other-worldly.

Just around the corner in the herb garden, the leaves of the sage plant were nearly covered.

sage leaf

Over in the butterfly garden, the catmint was a ghostly shade of white.

catmint

The sedum that was much loved by the butterflies when blooming this autumn was now dried and brown under the frost. The water in the bird bath was iced over.

The dried tithonia blossoms were nodding as if asleep, their heads covered in snow.

The scallions couldn’t escape Jack Frost either.

green onion

A few of the figs didn’t ripen before cold weather came. Now they look like they are sugar-coated.

fig

And it’s time to put up the big blue watering can. The plastic surface seemed etched by the frost.

By mid morning, the frost was all gone. Everything returned to normal, no longer hiding under the coating of white frost. It was surely beautiful while it lasted!

Posted in Nature, Photography | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Finally!

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Dave @ HappyAcres

We’ve been suffering this year with one of the worst droughts I can remember. So, normally this much rain in a two day period would not be welcome, especially at Thanksgiving time with many people out and about.

But we’re not complaining! I’m calling it 4.2 inches of rain in 48 hours. That still leaves us a whopping 12 inches below normal for the year. Though it came too late to help much of this year’s crops, the rain will surely start to replenish the ground supply for next year. And I think I heard many trees and shrubs breathing a sigh of relief!

It cleared off today and the weather turned colder as a cold front went through the area. It was a frosty 24F this morning as shoppers hit the stores in a Black Friday feeding frenzy.

Sidd isn't going anywhere

No shopping for us. My wife and I spent the day at home, cooking and relaxing. The cats just relaxed!

Posted in Cats, Gardening | Tagged , | 5 Comments

What’s Cooking?

Posted on November 24, 2010 by Dave @ HappyAcres

It’s a good thing I like to cook, because this week finds me cooking up a storm. Monday I was helping fix Thanksgiving dinner for 3000 at the Evansville Christian Life Center. I got to work the ovens and bake dressing. The ovens hold 40 pans of dressing and it was a fun challenge keeping up with it all.

Yesterday I went back and helped cook big kettles of green beans for T-day, plus help with the usual Tuesday hot lunch program. It takes an army of volunteers to prepare a meal on this scale, and we have many people who even take vacation time so they can come help out.

Today, I’m at home cooking the Long Neck Pumpkin I grew this year. My wife is going to bake one of her wonderful Whiskey Pumpkin Pies with it later this week. It’s been a long time since either of us made our own pumpkin puree, so this will be a real treat.

We are going to experiment with two cooking methods for the pumpkin. First I cut in into smaller sections, and scooped the seeds out of the round, hollow end. Some of the sections were halved and baked with the skin still on. I baked them for about an hour at 350F degrees. When cool, I scooped the flesh out of the skins and mashed it up.

neck pumpkin ready for baking

The rest of it was peeled, cut into small chunks, and steamed. From one of my favorite vegetable reference books, The Victory Garden Cookbook, this is chef Marian Morash’s favorite way to prepare it. The 1-2 inch chunks were done in about 15 minutes.

steamed pumpkin chunks

Our neck pumpkin weighed a bit less than 6 pounds, and yielded 8 cups of pureed flesh. That’s enough pumpkin to make 4 pies. The steaming method was a bit quicker, but I think the baked pumpkin has a richer flavor. We will see if this makes a difference in the pies. A quick taste told me both ways were better than pumpkin from a can!

pureed pumpkin

Tonight I’m going to make a big pot of ham and bean soup for dinner, and bake some cornbread to go with it. It sounds like the perfect thing for a cold, rainy day like today.

Then tomorrow my wife and I will go back to the Center and help dish up and package the meals for the many volunteers who will then deliver them. That’s been our Thanksgiving Day tradition for 5 years now, and it’s a nice way for us to give back to our community. The meals are delivered to anyone who requests them, and will go to many who are hungry or house bound.

Then we will come back home and have leftover bean soup, and be thankful for our many blessings. For all of you who celebrate it, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted in Food, Holidays | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

We’ll Have A Green Christmas

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Dave @ HappyAcres

Or maybe I should say, “We’ll have GREENS for Christmas”. Due to a convergence of the moon and stars (and perhaps some over planting on my part) we have a lot of greens going on here now, which is not entirely a bad thing.

Starting in the kitchen garden,  the two cold frames are full of greens, including lettuce, arugula, spinach, Yukina savoy and komatsuna.

The cold frames are 4×4 feet, so each bed has 16 square feet of growing space. I added a one inch layer of compost before planting the beds back in October. The greens seem to appreciate it!

We might get a taste of spinach before really cold weather comes, but the big harvest will come next spring. In our area, overwintered spinach has a big jump on spinach that is planted in spring. Last year the overwintered plants gave us most of our spinach, since they had edible leaves much earlier than the spring planting, which started bolting after a brief harvest period. Spinach is a tricky plant to grow here. Our warm fall weather makes it difficult to get it to germinate then, and in spring it warms up so fast it bolts in no time.

young spinach plants

The Yukina savoy will be ready in a couple of weeks. It is an upright type of Tatsoi, and while it looks sort of like spinach, the taste is more like its close relative pac choi. It is versatile in the kitchen, good in salads, soups and stir fries. After harvest I will probably replant that area with some mizuna, which is a bit more hardy.

Yukina savoy

I have some young mizuna seedlings ready to go. I’m hoping to test their hardiness this year in both the cold frame and greenhouse. The greens are pretty tasty too.

mizuna seedlings ready for planting

This Spotted Trout lettuce plant is so pretty. I have seven plants in the cold frames. We’re looking forward to seeing it soon in our salad bowls! Also known as Forellenschluss, this Austrian heirloom is supposed to be very cold tolerant.

Spotted Trout lettuce

In the GREENhouse, there are even more greens growing. The Red Choi pac choi is coming along nicely. It will be ready to harvest soon.

Red Choi pac choi

The Mei Qing pac choi was planted a bit later.

Mei Qing pac choi

I’ve got lettuce in the greenhouse too. This Red Salad Bowl has colored up about as red as it gets. We’ve been harvesting this as we need it. There’s more lettuce in the beds and in planters.

Red Salad Bowl lettuce

Out in the main garden we have greens as well. The turnip patch has been good to us this year. We’ve enjoyed the greens and the roots. They’ll hold up well into the winter, if we don’t eat them all first.

turnip patch in November

And there’s kale and collard greens too. Most of the kale should last well into winter. The hardiest types will make it to spring. The freezing weather just makes it taste all the sweeter.

variety of kale plants

As you can see, it will be a green Christmas and New Year here! And guess what we’re having for dinner tonight? Well, GREENS, of course!

Posted in Gardening | Tagged , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Green Tomato Jam

Posted on November 17, 2010 by Dave @ HappyAcres

The first heavy frost of the season usually sends gardeners like me scrambling to harvest the last of the tender vegetables. This year was no different, and I picked whatever was left in the garden, in this case peppers, eggplant, and quite a few green tomatoes.

Some of those green tomatoes got dipped in a cornmeal/flour mixture and fried. Yes, I know fried food is bad for you, but green tomatoes are a special case, aren’t they? That’s about the only food we fry anymore at HA, and I’m just not willing to give them up! Fried green tomatoes are definitely one of my ‘guilty pleasures’.

But many of the green tomatoes I picked weren’t really big enough to fry, plus we had way more than we needed, so I went looking for other ways to use them. I remembered saving a recipe that was in our paper a while back for some green tomato jam, and that sounded interesting. That recipe is available here.

I also looked online for recipes, and found a lot of rather disgusting sounding (to me) recipes that involved various flavors of jello, usually raspberry. I did find this recipe that seemed better, but it made more than I wanted. I decided to stick with the original recipe I found in the paper, with a couple of small changes. I left out the cinnamon and pepper, and I only used one lemon instead of two.

Green tomatoes are cored and then chopped into about 1/2 inch pieces. Sugar is added, and the mixture is allowed to stand for overnight (or up to 24 hours). A couple of my tomatoes had just started to turn pink but I used them anyway.

The tomatoes will throw off a lot of juice. Zest and juice the lemon and add to the tomato mixture. Bring to a boil in saucepan, then lower heat and simmer for about two hours, or until thick as desired.


This jam will keep refrigerated for 2 weeks, or frozen for up to six months. The resulting jam is sweet/ tart and fruity tasting. I froze two half pint jars and kept the rest in the refrigerator. The full recipe follows.

This green tomato jam is an Italian recipe. In Italy, it is eaten on bread, spooned over cakes and ice cream, or eaten by itself. It’s a great way to use up some of those end of season green tomatoes.

Green Tomato Jam Print This Recipe Print This Recipe
Adapted from this recipe

2 lbs green tomatoes, cored and cut into 1/2-inch pieces (with juice and seeds)
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 medium lemon, zested and juiced
1 pinch of salt

1. In glass bowl, stir together chopped tomatoes and sugar. Cover and let sit overnight, or up to 24 hours.
2. Zest and juice lemon, chop zest into small pieces. Add zest, juice and pinch of salt to tomato mixture. Pour into heavy 4 quart saucepan.
3. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 2 hours, or until it reaches desired thickness.
4. Refrigerate jam for up to 2 weeks, or freeze for up to 6 months.

Servings: 12 (2 tbsp)
Yield: 1-1/2 cups

Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per serving): 131 calories, 1 calories from fat, <1g total fat, 0mg cholesterol, 34.1mg sodium, 160.9mg potassium, 33.4g carbohydrates, <1g fiber, 32.3g sugar, <1g protein, 10.5mg calcium, <1g saturated fat.

Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , | 6 Comments