Roasted salsa verde

It was a great year for tomatillos in the garden. Above average year for everything, really, but the tomatillos outdid themselves. I planted four plants I bought from the garden center, but a few weeks after planting time I noticed a volunteer tomatillo or two among the cabbages. That's one good/bad thing about tomatillos; onnce you plant them, they will spring up everywhere the next year.

Tomatillos seem to have one purpose in life: salsa verde. This uniquely sweet, tangy salsa goes well with just about any white meat, eggs, or of course, tortilla chips. I used to make salsa verde by cooking the tomatillos in water, then pouring off some of the water, adding the rest of the ingredients, and whirling the whole thing in a blender. This made an acceptable salsa, but I think some of the flavor was compromised by adding water and pouring it off. So this year I decided to try something different: roasting.

Tomatillos are not as squishy as their ripe red tomato cousins, but their cells, like those of all living things, are made up of a high percentage of water. By roasting the tomatillos in the oven, the excess liquid cooks off, and some of the sugars start to caramelize, making for a unique, rich flavor.

I did some searching for a recipe for roasted salsa verde, but all of the recipes I came up with were for small quantities of tomatillos, not the full grocery bags I hauled in from the garden before the first hard freeze. I'm more of an improvisational cook anyway, so what I have here is a "guideline" recipe that can be adjusted for quantity and taste. One exception: for canning, you want to be sure the acidity is high enough, especially if you're doing a boiling water bath. I add one cup of vinegar per four pounds tomatillos.

Roasted salsa verde

Tomatillos, however many you have

Chopped onions, about a 1:4 ratio to the tomatillos

Hot peppers to taste

Garlic, to taste

Salt (use your judgment)

Vinegar (white distilled or apple cider, whatever you have on hand, or lime juice, which tastes pretty good in fresh salsa)

Cilantro, chopped, to taste

First, husk the tomatillos and wash away any dirt. If you have about three times this amount of tomatillos, as I did, I recommend putting some good music on and pouring a glass of something. This will take a while. And your fingers will get sticky.

Cut tomatillos in half; on the bigger ones, cut out the stem. Place on a roasting pan that has been drizzled with olive oil. 

Roast at about 400 degrees, until some liquid is cooked off and the tomatillos start to turn brown in spots. You want some liquid left; shoot for something like this:

Pour into a Dutch oven or stock pot. Add the rest of the ingredients, tasting often and cleansing your palate with a good IPA. for this batch I used some assorted hot peppers that were given to me by a friend; my hot peppers didn't do so well this year. 

Simmer for a while on low- medium heat. I suppose at this point if you want a smoother salsa with no skins you could run it through a food mill. I'm too lazy to do that.

At this point, it's time to can it. You can use either the boiling water or pressure method. Since my old boiling water bath canner sprung a leak, I will pressure can this batch. 15 minutes at 10 lbs, otherwise 40 minutes boiling. Some recipes call for adding a tablespoon of lemon juice per pint for acidity; since I add vinegar earlier this is not necessary.

Carrot habanero hot sauce

Last year I found myself in the unique position of having a lot of habanero peppers from the garden. It was a hot summer, and habaneros like heat, and we had planted some, mostly as an afterthought. They thrived. Since I have virtually no use for fresh, individual habaneros, I started looking around for ways I could maybe incorporate them into a sauce. I have long been a fan of Yucatan Sunshine, which has carrots in it. I'm not sure how I ended up finding this recipe, although I do know it is from a book I checked out from the East Central Regional Library system: Tart and Sweet: 101 Canning and Pickling Recipes for the Modern Kitchen. It looked good, so I tried it. I ended up making two batches, and they were gone by mid winter. Good stuff.

This year, I did not have any significant yield of habaneros. The summer was kind of cool, even in the midst of global climate change. But I did plant carrots, a Nantes variety, and I got a good yield. So when I found some habaneros at the local grocery store, cheap, I could not resist.

Last night I did the hard and dirty work, chopping up stuff and cooking it and adding vinegar and whooshing it up in the food processor. I was up until 10 doing that. Tonight I whooshed it again, and simmered it some more. I am not crazy enough to think I will get it canned tonight, or tomorrow night. But it will be done, and I will make another batch, because I bought too many habaneros! :)

Se here's the recipe, with my modifications:

1 1/2 pounds carrots, cleaned, peeled and sliced into1/4 inch coins
1 large white onion, roughly chopped
1 1/2 cups water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons kosher salt
3 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger (this is the key ingredient!)

Combine these in a large nonreactive (stainless steel or such) pot and cook over medium high heat until carrots are soft. Add water if it gets too dry.

4 habanero peppers, seeded and chopped (I probably put in 7 or 8)
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped (3 maybe)

Add these and cook for 5 minutes.

5 cups white vinegar
Zest from one lime
The juice from that lime

Or so. Blend with an immersion blender (Don't have one, so I just transferred the mix, in batches, to my food processor. Or you could use a blender.) Cover and refrigerate overnight to let the flavors combine. And, at that point, I was ready to call it a night.

So today I blended the sauce again, in the food processor. Then the recipe offers two options: You can strain the mixture for a saucier sauce, or you can leave the chunkier bits in for more yield and a thicker sauce.Last year I strained the sauce. And I could not let myself discard the chunkier bits, because they were so delicious. So this year I skipped the straining. Cooked it down for about 30 minutes.

I have not canned it yet, I might tomorrow if I have time after yoga class. But, for canning, process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath canner. If left chunky, you should get about 8 half pint jars. Enjoy.

gathering

I really seem to have fallen behind in blogging lately. Summer is happening, kids are as busy as ever and so am I, work is crazy, and in between I'm trying to keep the house in some semblance of order. But last Sunday, the wild raspberries were calling me, and I spent all morning crawling through brambles picking the tiny, juicy, sweet as summer berries.

I didn't have to go too far from home. Since our riding mower died a couple of years ago, large areas of our land have gone unmowed, and raspberries are one of the first plants to take over. They produce fruit in their second year, so while in other years we have had a few berries here and there, this year we;ve had enough to make it worthwhile to spend some time picking.

I ended up with about half an ice cream pail's worth, which was enough for four half pint jars of jam, which I made last Monday. I also made twelve half pints of strawberry jam from some berries the kids and The Hermit had picked. It was my first canning effort in the new house!

There are more raspberries out there, and I'm hoping to get my hands on some fresh local blueberries, but do I have to say "so much to do, so little time"?

the prodigal cat, and other weirdness

Blue Flame is still alive and well. The kids lured him from underneath the cabin a couple of days ago. He had likely not ventured from that spot since he went missing a week and a half ago. He is in the cabin now, about five pounds lighter and I had to cut a massive cat dreadlock from his back. But he is still as sweet and stupid as ever.

There are frost advisories for tonight, but they are all to the south of here. Go figure. I covered up three tomato beds and one pepper/eggplant bed in the vain hopes that they will still produce a viable harvest. I need to give it up already.

I made the mistake of walking by the crabapple trees yesterday, their branches loaded with rosy red fruit, and I started thinking...maybe it's time I did a batch of jelly again. Or that liqueur. So I may be a kitchen warrior this weekend.

And my kitchen may finally get the change of venue in the next couple of weeks. The electrical inspector gave the okey-dokey today, so the first priority is insulating, then completing the outlets, then moving the fridge and workbench countertop and connecting the range and hood, and I'll be cooking in the new house! Right now it's a real pain, the cook shed is many steps away from the house, especially if it's raining. And I hate going off by myself to cook. Then again, going off by myself is nice sometimes. I get to listen to whatever music I want.

I had a huge spike in hits on my Site Meter today, due to a post that almost slipped away unnoticed about ATV's. Apparently it got noticed by someone who posted a link on an ATV group listserv, and I got a couple of comments. I will have more to say in a future post, but I couldn't help but notice what a defensive bunch they are. I never really got the answer I was seeking. Oh well, Dan from Payne Hollow provided some comic relief. Thanks.

Finally, I have gone political, as you can see from my sidebar. I listened to an Obama speech from LaCrosse, Wisconsin yesterday and it was electrifying. He spoke to everything I believe is wrong with this country, and what he would do about it. The best part was when he spoke about education, how he wanted results but didn't want the teachers to teach for the tests. He wants kids to learn art and music too. Amen! And as for the Vote Yes Minnesota, we have the chance to vote on a constitutional amendment that would add a 3/8ths percent sales tax devoted to clean water and outdoor and cultural heritage, with all the proper citizen oversight. How could that be a losing proposition? Those kinds of things just won't get funded otherwise.

basil harvest

It is one of those achingly beautiful September days where you never want autumn to end. The day is sunny and warm, but you are reminded of the chill in the air last night and the fire in the wood stove that felt just right.

I have not gone more than a mile away from this place this weekend. I could have, but sometimes it just feels good to stay close to home and get things done. I organized the garage on Saturday and hauled a bunch of plastic storage bins in to the new house where they will stay, full of winter jackets and clothes and books.

Today I washed dishes, then decided to cut the stems of cinnamon and lime basil before frost got to them. They smelled so good I decided to dry them in the new house on this antique dresser we bought second or third or fourth hand. We now have several such dressers, courtesy of Craigslist. Then I cut the tops off the garlic cloves and put them up in the cook shed. I don't think I have as big of a harvest this year as last year, and I will have to order garlic to plant.

My tomatoes are still ripening on their own schedule, half of them cracked and rotten by the time they ripen. One of these years...But at least I have garlic, and onions, and carrots and turnips. Anyone know any delicious turnip recipes?

We got skunked last night. I heard something scratching around outside, and this morning our yard is aromatic. The Hermit saw a dead skunk on the road near our driveway; I wonder if it was the one.

I think I'll put a spaghetti squash in the oven to cook for dinner. I didn't grow it, and I've never had it, but I just want to try it out in case I might want to grow it next year. Or try growing it, anyway.

the morel of the story is...

Always take the time to go out in the woods the morning after a rainy spring evening.



And, take Mr. Attitude with you. He found 'em.

The Hermit and Mr. Attitude went for a drive this morning, mostly because our Internet server was down and TH could not access his work emails, etc. Amazing how much work depends on the Internet these days. I even spent a good part of my day doing e-correspondence.

The story goes, they drove back roads over to the Wisconsin border, then headed south a ways, checking out some forest roads, and made their way back west. They stopped at a small lake, actually a flowage on a creek created by a century old logging dam. There is a public access on the lake, and they got out to explore and walk a trail alongside the lake.

Mr. Attitude was obviously looking down, noticing things. He went up to The Hermit and said "Look at these neat mushrooms!" Then, a moment later, "Why are you getting so excited, Dad?" Then, "We'll find more. Just look down!"

I have not had morels with dinner in seven years. What a treat!

There's gotta be more out there. Just look down.

Winter survival in the cook shed

How many straight hours can one listen to the sound of video games being played, of kids arguing about video games, and of kids giving up on video games to watch a "King of the Hill" marathon? All within about 500 square feet of living space?

Yes, those are Christmas lights still up in March, and those are real icicles hanging from the lights. Actually I prefer to call them "winter cheer" lights, because I never intended to take them down until day lengths got back to a reasonable amount. Around the equinox, that is.

I'm not saying the kids didn't get out to enjoy some fresh air once in a while. Starflower especially seemed to enjoy the snowdrifts. But my philosophy on outdoor recreation has evolved to the point where, while I encourage it, I don't want to nag the kids to drag their butts outside for a while. That would leave them with the sense that playing outdoors is just a chore, something to appease Mom. They eventually find their way outside on their own. Unfortunately, I think the pond skating season is over for the year so that won't be an option. Even if I did get out there with the snowblower (not the shovel; I think I'm still hurting from the last time I cleared a mere three inches of powdery stuff off the ice!) I would probably find that the weight of the snow has caused water to seep up around the edges and cracks in the ice, forming a layer of slush. Oh well, I did rediscover how to do the waltz jump this year, and the kids improved greatly.

Funny thing, when the big snow hit and I found myself facing an extended weekend at home, I fancied myself making all kinds of culinary creations in the cook shed. It would not have anything to do with escaping the constant barrage of electronic noise, now, would it? Not a bit, I tell you. I only found the time to make:

• rye bread


• bread crumbs from old rye bread


• Italian meatballs using the bread crumbs


• spaghetti and meatballs


• teriyaki sauce (for marinating meat, stir fry, etc)


• chocolate chip cookies (gone in 1.5 days, I didn't eat any)


• oatmeal cranberry raisin cookies (now these I could get into)


• pot roast


• beef stew from leftover pot roast


• whole wheat flour tortillas


• venison jerky


• pickled northern pike

Note the hyperlinks on the last two items. I also found the time to resurrect a blog I started in September, which I haven't really been paying attention to. Every so often when I do a food post, I plan on posting the recipe there, as well as some of my musings on trying to be a homemaker while living the reality of holding a full time job outside the home.

That's the intention, anyway.

(clockwise from upper left: pickled northern pike, oatmeal cranberry raisin cookies, venison jerky, tortillas)

march came in like a lion

At 6:15 this morning, an unprecedented hour for them, the kids woke up. "Let's get ready and ride the bus this morning!" This was highly unusual. I usually have trouble getting them out the door at 7:40 AM.

However, I then heard The Hermit say "We'd better see if they're having school today!" He turned on the TV, and of course there was a long list of school closings. Our district was among them. Strangely, the kids did not go back to bed. They were too excited at the prospect of a snow day.

Work was not cancelled for me for the day, however after weighing the risks of the 30 mile commute against the benefits of me showing up (I'm in the process of updating our area office web site, which is nice but not essential) I stayed home. It turned out to be a wise decision; this morning we've had periods of snow so heavy you can hardly see, plus high winds piling up drifts everywhere. It would have been a risky commute home.

Instead, somehow the cooking instinct kicked in. I went out to the cook shed after breakfast and cleaned things up. Then I put a rye bread in the bread machine, put some old bread in the oven to dry for bread crumbs, made teriyaki sauce, put a roast in the slow cooker for dinner, got some venison steaks out to thaw, which I will make into jerky later, and there are two sticks of butter softening on top of the stove for a batch of chocolate chip cookies later.


And this is how we ride out a blizzard here in Minnesota. It's as good a time as any to sample the home brew (Belgian Witbier on the left, delicious, Three Hearted Ale on the right, delicious, both kits from Northern Brewer). The cheese is tomato basil Gouda from a farm about thirty miles away.

Another blizzard survival tip: Finding the Pokemon Colosseum video game disc, which has been missing for about a month, will keep kids occupied for the whole day. (That is, me finding the disc in a pile of other stuff. ) That, and a Jetsons DVD. Next up: King of the Hill, our new favorite diversion. No, we're not running outside to pile up on a snowdrift. We have seasons 1 and 3 on DVD.

I'm kind of liking this. Maybe school will be cancelled tomorrow too!

the folly of automation

Quick quiz: this is a) my brain on beer; b) a relief map of some mountain range that Calvin made for geography class; c) my first bread machine failure.

If you guessed "c", you are correct. Usually when I try a new recipe, or mess around with a recipe as I did here, I watch the machine for a while to see if more liquid or more flour needs to be added as it mixes. In this case I was making a whole wheat flour bread and I optimistically substituted ground flax seed for oil, as the flax seed package claimed I could do. What the flax seed package did not tell me was I may need to increase the amount of water during the first kneading. And, because I followed directions and set the machine for the "whole wheat" cycle, there was a thirty minute warming/resting period which supposedly allows the whole wheat flour to absorb the liquids, which supposedly makes for a lighter product. But during that thirty minutes I got distracted, went away from the cook shed, and did not return until some time between the first and second kneading. What I found then looked a lot like what you see here; a mound of crumbly, dry dough. I added more water, but by then it was too late to affect the texture of the bread. It still smelled nice as it baked, however, and the birds or squirrels or rabbits or deer might enjoy it.

Ideally, I would not leave the task of making homemade bread to a machine. In the kind of life I want, I would not spend nearly fifty hours of my week away from home, earning enough money to buy my bread from the store. I would knead the bread by hand, and gradually learn the intricacies of bread making.

Despite what they say, machines don't always make life easier or simpler or create more free time.

evening light and dinner

I just had to run out and take this photo as the evening light lingered across the swamp. And as I was doing so I thought "Damn! I'm lucky to be able to live here."
I'm lucky to enjoy some pretty good meals too. Today The Hermit had some lumber shopping to do at Menards in Duluth, and he called me on the way home to say he had picked up some steaks for dinner. Inch thick ribeyes. Mmmmm... We're getting a quarter of local grass-fed beef in a month, but our craving for steak could not wait.

So I thought about a side dish. Rice...done that last night. Potatoes...had them for breakfast. It was then I noticed the bin of rutabagas and the few parsnips, already starting to shrivel. I guess I have been suffering from Rutabagaphobia: the fear of cooking a vegetable with which you have no experience. I thought it would taste so bad I could not eat it, or that if I could eat it of course the kids would not. What was I thinking?


I went online and found, among the usual bland recipes for mashed, pureed rutabaga, one for rutabaga with caramelized onions. If I'm going to go down, culinarily speaking, at least I'm going to go down fighting. So in the above picture, lower left you see a skillet of onions (from the garden) on their way to caramelization, and, upper right, a pot of boiling rutabagas, along with the parsnips.

To make a long story short, I was impressed. I liked the earthy, nutty flavor the rutabagas had to offer, and they were wonderful along with the onions, salt, pepper, lots of butter, and a pinch of nutmeg and curry.

It's a good thing, because I have a whole bin of rutabagas to go, including the gigantic one I described earlier.

Oh yeah, if the steak and rutabagas weren't enough, we had sauteed mushrooms and onions, and fresh Swedish rye bread from the bread machine. I'm on a heritage kick lately; Swedish bread, Swedish music, I guess even rutabagas are a Swedish thing. Anyway, God natt.

Foods you thought would never go together

It all started with a Lyle Lovett song...don't worry, explanation follows!

Last night we had one of The Hermit's specialties, fried fish (walleye, and no, it was not the "too-large" ones from the walleye ponds!). He essentially dips the cut up fillets in an egg wash and breads them with cracker crumbs, pan-frying them in oil. I made one of my specialties, oven fries, with potatoes from the garden, sliced and tossed in olive oil, and baked until just crisp. Much tastier and healthier than those bags of frozen French fries we until quite recently bought without question. We topped it off with two sliced tomatoes; we're still eating from the garden, although for every one we eat I throw probably two on the compost.

We were listening to the local independent public radio station, but after a while the music took a turn for the blues, not quite what a chilly Minnesota evening calls for. We weren't in the mood for any of the dozen or so CD's in the cook shed, so The Hermit pulled an old Lyle Lovett cassette tape from the several cassettes we had handy. It is one of my favorites of his; I'm not sure if it is his very first album, but it is definitely early Lyle. My favorite song from it is The Front Porch Song, which he cowrote with Robert Earl Keen Jr., another favorite musician. One line goes like this:

This old porch is just a steamin' greasy plate of enchiladas
With lots of cheese and onions, and guacamole salad...

Hmmm...guacamole...it's been a while...sounds good...

"That reminds me, I bought some avocadoes the other day," The Hermit said. "They were cheap at Chris' (grocery store). They should be somewhere in the refrigerator."

"I almost feel like making some guacamole. You think it would be good with fish?"

So I mashed and mixed avocado with picante sauce, and we tried it in place of tartar or cocktail sauce.

It was really good. So good, in fact, I think I'll make guacamole every time we have fried fish.

Who woulda thunk it? Do you have any unlikely combinations of foods you like?

A salute to fungi

With the recent rainfall over the last week or so, there has been a proliferation of fungi on the forest floor. I'm curious if these are supposed to look like this, or if some combination of freezing temperatures and intermittent rain caused this striking pattern. I don't know my fungi too well.


But I do know yeast, and all the wonderful things it can produce. This is my first loaf of bread from my new bread machine. I decided to go with a prepackaged mix to test things out, but this is no ordinary, white bread. It's a Swedish limpa rye, flavored with anise, fennel, and caraway, with a bit of orange. The machine did its job beautifully, although I think I may have added a touch too much water. The bread was fabulous, with all the complexity and body of a good beer. My entire dinner consisted of bread (dipped in melted butter), wine, and a salad made with red cabbage from the garden, along with walnuts and poppyseed dressing.
I spent the evening browsing through a bread machine recipe book, and now I have all kinds of visions of heavy grain breads, whole wheat buns, focaccia, sourdough...the possibilities are limitless. I think I'll head out right now and get a cracked wheat dough started!

the jars are all sealed

Before

This was my assignment for the day. A few gallons of ripe and green tomatoes, various other ingredients, pots, jars, and a canner. This, by the way, is the 8 x 12 shed that serves as my kitchen. For nearly four years. That soon will change.

I made two kinds of salsa today. On the left is my salsa roja. Recipe: Take a bunch of ripe tomatoes, scald, skin, core and chop 'em, cook them up while adding onions, hot peppers, grill-roasted sweet green peppers, cilantro, cumin, salt, and garlic to taste. Tasting is essential; I have to live with this stuff every time I open a jar. On the right is green tomato relish, which I consider to be more of a salsa, but I got the recipe from Farmgirl Fare, and she calls it relish. The voices in my head told me to add a pinch of cinnamon to the final product, and I think it may turn out well.

The final product: eleven jars of salsa, seven red, four green. Not enough to keep a family of salsa lovers for the entire year, but at least I got something for my tomato growing efforts. I was disappointed that the plentiful harvest of golf-ball sized Glacier tomatoes turned out to be totally worthless for salsa, along with anything else. Thin fleshed, with a huge cavity filled with pulp and seeds, they have a thin unbalanced acid taste. I was hoping this short season tomato would be a good provider, but I ended up composting most of them.

Although it was a lot of work, I enjoyed the art of creating canned goods. And with salsa, it really is an art; no formula recipe can account for the variable taste of tomatoes or hotness of peppers. I don't think I can reproduce any batch of salsa I've ever created.

My long time of chopping and preparing was accompanied by two new CD's that arrived yesterday: Chris Thile's How To Grow A Woman From The Ground, which is...interesting, needs more listening time to grow on me but I'm sure it will, and the Swedish group Vasen's Trio. Vasen is pure Nordic roots music, which means traditional songs and original compositions played on traditional instruments (Nordic fiddle, nyckelharpa and guitar/bozoki). Haunting. Deep. Dark. The Hermit heard some of it this morning, and he described it as "seafaring music". It is rhythmically and modally more adventurous than even Celtic music. And I'm really grooving on it. Hardly the association one would have with making salsa, but then I'm hardly predictable. :)

The upcoming salsa mandolin orgy weekend

I have many more ripe tomatoes than I ever thought possible. I'm beginning to think that the early killing frost of two weeks ago might not have meant anything in the long run. I have buckets full of ripe and almost ripe tomatoes in my cookshed, more slicers than we can possibly slice for every meal of the day. We are in the midst of tomato heaven, and life is good.

I have decided that the highest use for these tomatoes is to make salsa. I could can them straight, or freeze them, but when it comes right down to it, we use a lot of salsa here. God forgive me and help my Scandinavian-Minnesotan ancestors up there to understand, but...salsa is good. And, I can even make salsa out of the green ones! Now that's thrifty, which goes along with Scandihoovian values, dontcha know? Uff-da! But watch out for dose hot peppers dere...

My plan is to hit the Sandstone Farmers Market early on Saturday, and hope that someone has a lot of jalapenos. Then to the grocery store for cilantro, which I'm afraid no one else will have, and anything else the market did not have. Of course, I will take a break Saturday night to go see Mike Compton and David Long, performing a benefit concert at Camp Heartland, a mere fifteen miles or so away. Fred and The Whistlepigs will be opening up for them, so it promises to be an exceptional night of music. I have seen them before, but Compton has influenced my mandolin style and practice more than anyone lately, and they put on a hell of a fun show last time, so...this time we'll even bring the kids.

getting pickled

My DSL connection is running slow tonight, as it usually does when it rains, not that I mind the rain.

I took the day off, since I have to give up this Saturday in service to the state, and because The Hermit had business to do. And I had pickles waiting to be made. Canning is a big time commitment; not the canning itself, but the preparation. I had to locate enough wide-mouth canning jars, wash the dust and bugs out of them, and cut up garlic and harvest more dill heads. I found out it takes a long time to get the canner to boiling on my stove.

The end product was eight quarts, a full canner load. Two of these were my first batch of fermented dill pickles. They look really bad, since the brine gets cloudy from fermentation and someone happened to spill some red Kool-Aid in the bucket yesterday! But I checked them carefully, and they weren't slimy or smelly, so they were good. I have about four more quarts bubbling away in another bucket.

The way my family goes through pickles, this batch will last all of two months, maybe.

Chickens sitting around on their cans

This was dinner. We bought fifteen organically grown chickens to put in the freezer yesterday, and had these two for dinner tonight. No, didn't bother raising our own this year, too many other concerns to think about, like getting a roof over our heads for the winter. But these were a deal at less than 5 bucks apiece.

We originally got the beer can chicken recipe from The Hermit's sister. The liquid in the can (you can drink it and fill it with water if you want) steams the chicken from inside while the outside grills. It was all delicious, and plenty of leftovers. Side dishes were corn on the cob (of course, this time of year) and new red potatoes from the garden. Starflower liked them a lot.

On the other hand, we got some sad news today. There is a couple who raise and board horses near us. We knew this couple from when we lived seventy miles south of where we do now, and they used to have a place near there where The Hermit boarded his first horses. Anyway, they just found out that he has throat and liver cancer. I don't know, maybe there's some hope, but it does not look good. She called to see if we would take one of their horses; at this time they can't be bothered with caring for as many horses as they have. The horse is the mother of one of ours, so it would be a natural match. Of course, we're taking her. On top of the two more horses The Hermit is buying ( I have nothing to do with horse transactions. Nothing. ) that will bring our total to six horses. Maybe I better start to like riding.

And a musical note, dedicated to Jim of Earth Home Garden. Jim, I finally got around to listening to the Reeltime Travelers, and the song "Little Bird Of Heaven", which you recommended, is now on my list of all time perfect songs. I tried it out on guitar tonight, and there is one chord I don't even know the name of, but I just happened to find it. It fits me like an old glove. I also like "Hallelujah", but that will be another day's practice. Anyway, thanks Jim, you old hippie you, you've turned me on to some good music. Maybe some day we'll make our way out to Big Bear Lake. :)

dinner from the garden

yummm...grasshopper...

Okay, I'll admit we are most definitely not insectivores. But Calvin was very proud of the fact that he whittled a willow stick to a sharp point and impaled a grasshopper. That boy has some tribal instincts in him!


What I meant to brag about here was the garden-harvested component of our dinner tonight. On the left, broccoli, all second shoots; in the middle, tomato, Pruden's Purple (Or Caspian Pink, if I could just find my garden notebook from planting time!) Anyway, the first beefsteak tomato of the season, and delicious. On the right, Swiss chard, sauteed in olive oil with two garlic cloves, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice (Can't grow lemons here, sorry!) and pine nuts. I'm wondering about the pine nuts; I mean, we do have pine trees, but harvest would present a problem due to the height at which the pine cones grow. Oh, and notice the basil sprig in the middle. That is, I think, Genovese basil, from seeds I saved from a garden long forgotten somewhere else, and it is the most potent, fragrant, intoxicating basil to be found anywhere. Basil, like hops, is a sign that if there is a God, it likes us and wants us to be happy. (Attributed to Ben Franklin, in part)

This was not the whole meal; accompanying it was fried shrimp from a Big Box store, shipped from somewhere on this earth. That's local, isn't it? The shrimp, however procured, was delicious. I promise some day we'll find a way to grow our own in a tank in a greenhouse.


Entertainment was provided by a local hillbilly band. They say a good time was had by all. ;)

everything back to normal

And yes, this is normal around here but I thought it was a little bit surreal. The Barbie swim party.

Low temperature got down to 39 last night, proving once again we are in a cold spot. And I say hooray! We had two nights where the nighttime lows only reached the upper sixties or seventies, and that was enough for me. 24 hour sweating may be natural, but I'd rather be in a climate where I can avoid it. This place seems to fit the bill for me. It's all that buried glacial supercooled ice block...

I am proud to say I ate overwhelmingly locally and organically today! Breakfast...well I don't do breakfast much and I am entitled to my two cups of fair trade, organically grown coffee per day, but I did eat one hard boiled egg, from our own chickens, mid morning. Lunch was a hand picked salad, lots of fresh greens and a few herbs from the garden, augmented by two more hard boiled eggs and Seeds of Change organic vinaigrette dressing. Delightful! And for dinner, stir fry of fresh sugar snap peas, broccoli (first head from the garden!), mizuna, Daikon radish, green onion, garlic, and some julienned organic carrots thrown in. The rice was Lundberg organic brown basmati, the only "distance" indulgence. As far as I know, you can't grow rice any closer to Minnesota, except for wild rice which really isn't rice at all. All in all, very satisfying, and of note I have not consumed a single wheat product today and I feel great. Not jumping to conclusions, just keeping a food diary here.

The night temperature is dipping nicely again as I write. More good sleeping weather. I love this place.

A Minnesota Mother's Day

Mother's Day is the second Sunday of May. The fishing season opener for walleye (and northern pike, but mostly walleye) in Minnesota is two weekends before Memorial Day weekend. The two coincide more often than not.

Walleye is Minnesota's official state fish. A major part of my job is raising and stocking walleye into lakes, although a large proportion of the walleye caught in Minnesota are not stocked, but from natural reproduction. Still, we are criticized that we don't stock enough.

My Mother's Day dinner consisted of fried walleye, purchased from the local grocery store, and commercially caught in Canada. Two pounds cost about as much as one fishing license. I will purchase a fishing license, when I get around to it, because there are still a lot of crappies and bluegills to catch this summer, and maybe even a walleye.

Accompanying the walleye, which were very tasty, were grilled vegetables and a wild rice blend. A wonderful meal, all in all.

The Hermit is off to Edmonton, Alberta for a week of work. I'm keeping the home fires burning.

the (partly) homegrown dinner

This is one of two "Rainbow" winter squash that I harvested. They are rather small, about 6-8 inches, with medium orange flesh and a rich, aromatic flavor. They obviously store well, as I just used one last night in one of the unnamed, stew-like concoctions I like to cook.

With all of the posting I did last year about gardening and canning, I realize I have not posted much about the good part--enjoying the harvest. And with garden planning time at hand, I thought it would be useful, even to myself, to post about some of the meals that I enjoy from my own garden.

I don't have a name, or even more than a vague recipe, for last night's fare, but I noticed even the kids, who tend to eye my new creations with suspicion, enjoyed it. I started with some leftover ham and three precooked chicken/apple sausages which I cut up and heated in a Dutch oven. I put in a quart of canned tomatoes, drained, and half a pint of tomato sauce (all tomato products homegrown!). Then some chopped onion and garlic (not homegrown; hopefully my garlic crop I planted last fall will yield more this year) and celery, which I have never tried growing. Then I peeled and cubed the Rainbow squash, added some oregano and basil, a splash of red wine, and let the whole thing simmer until the squash was tender, about 30 minutes or so. The stew was served over organic brown rice. Delicious.

The Rainbow squash seeds came from Sand Hill Preservation Center in Iowa, although I could not find them in last year's catalog; I'll have to save the seeds from last night. I don't know if I've ever had a squash with such rich flavor.