This Week in the Garden- July 15

Oh, looky!  I have acorn squash.  I haven't had great success 

with winter squash in the past, so this makes me happy.

Jalapeños.  Sure wish I had peppers and tomatoes ready, so I could make salsa with these.  I've not quite figured out how to time my planting so that I have all the things I need at the right time.  

I pulled half of the beets and have been enjoying 

them in recipes.  The next harvest will be for canning.

Tomatoes = Love

 It appears someone else feels the same way.  The war is on.  Mark helped me wrap the tomatoes loosely in bird netting and hopefully that will discourage some of this.  I don't mind sharing a little of my goodies with the animals, but I'm not so generous with my tomatoes.

If you look really closely in the middle of all those weeds and grasses, you'll see a sweet potato plant!  What a wonderful surprise to find that some of my sweet potato plants survived after all.  Remember when I planted those baby plants and something came and ate them?  Twice.  I finally gave up and turned my attention elsewhere.   This week I will be reclaiming my sweet potatoes from the grass that's grown up all around them.  It's not going to be fun, but I keep thinking about how good those potatoes are going to be this fall.  It'll be worth the time invested.  She who plants, weeds, picks bugs and sweats in her garden, enjoys food the most.

I had a great little helper when I dug potatoes this week.

I was especially happy with the yield from my fingerlings.

The garlic has all been harvested and these soft neck heads are drying in preparation for braiding.  I will use this all winter and until next years harvest. I use a lot of garlic! 

This Week in the Garden - July 6

The squash plants are huge, especially this patty pan.

It's been a squash, zucchini and cucumber kind of week.

The tomatoes plants are growing with lots of green tomatoes.  

It's hard to be patient here.

Pulled up a garlic bulb to see if they are ready.  Yep, it's time to harvest my garlic.

The best thing about this week in the garden... I had helpers!

These guys help some too.  But mostly, not. 

 They're still fun to have around, though.

Overnight Artisan Bread

Don't you just love chewy, dense, artisan bread?  You know the kind you buy at a good bakery?  Sometimes you can even find a decent loaf at your regular grocery store.  What if I told you, that I can teach you to make bread like this at home?  It's true.  Thanks to my friend j'Nae, who taught me this recipe (along with a bunch of others), I can now share it with you. You're aren't going to believe how easy it is and oh, how you're going to thank me every time you pull a loaf from the oven.  I know, because I go through this little gratitude ritual myself.  Good bread is a gift.

The easy part of the recipe is that you mix it up and pretty much forget about it, for about 12- 18 hours.  The hard part is to remember to start it a day before you want to eat it.  You have to plan ahead with this recipe, or make up a few loaves and have them stashed in the freezer to pull out at a moments notice.   

I start my dough late in the afternoon or right after dinner.  I mix up the flour, yeast, salt, and dried herbs (whatever blend you like) in a plastic bowl.  j'Nae said the Rubbermaid Take Alongs are the perfect size, so that's what I use.  Into the dry ingredients, you stir water and red wine vinegar.  Mix and put on the lid.  I leave it sitting on my kitchen counter over night and depending on the temperature in my kitchen, the next morning or by lunch, the dough is ready for the next step.

It should be bubbly and look like this when you take off the lid.  Oh, and it's going to smell really good, especially if you have a little garlic in that herb blend.  My favorite is a Mediterranean Blend.   But you could use olives and cheese, or nuts and seeds, or dried cranberries and cinnamon if you are thinking sweet bread.  Whatever you like to buy in the store, you can create yourself at home.

After the 12- 18 hour rest in the bowl, I turn the dough (which is quite moist) onto a floured surface and adding a little flour, knead about 8 to 10 times, until it's soft and workable.

Now you put this dough back into a greased plastic bowl (buy two) and cover to rise.  Let it rise for about 1 1/2 hour.  

At this point, take a cast iron dutch oven and heat it in the oven at 435- 450 for thirty minutes.  You want the pan to be screaming hot when you take it out.  And be really careful!  Use double pot holders.

When the dough has risen for two hours and the pot is hot, turn the dough over into the pot.  I spray mine first with cooking spray.

Put the lid on and bake for 27 minutes.  This is the secret to that chewy crust and soft interior.  That hot, covered pan creates the perfect steamy environment for this bread to bake.   Uncover the pan and continue to bake until browned (another 6-10 minutes).  Cool on rack before slicing.  Or wait as long as you possibly can. 

You're going to be so impressed with yourself when you taste this bread.  It's absolutely delicious!  And think how easy it is. Mix it up in a plastic bowl, let it sit and do it's magic, knead it a few times and then let it rise some more.  Put it into a heavy duty pot and bake.  This is the simplest bread I make.   It's perfect with soup.   The next couple of posts will be two of my favorite potato soup recipes.  Practice making the bread now, so you'll be ready. 

Rustic Overnight Artisan Bread

3 cups plain flour

3/4 t. instant yeast

1 1/2 t. salt

Mix above ingredients, adding any spices/nuts or condiments that you like to the dough. 

 Add 1 1/2 cups water and 1/2 t. red wine vinegar.  Stir well.

Cover bowl and let rest 12-18 hours.  When surface is 

dotted with bubbles, dough is ready.  After the rest, place dough

on well floured work surface and gently knead for 7- 10 kneads.  Spray a second large bowl with nonstick spray.  Transfer dough to oiled bowl.  Cover and let rise until it has doubled in size and does not readily spring back with poked with your finger.  After dough

has been rising for about 1 1/2 hours, preheat the dutch oven for 30 minutes at 435- 450 degrees.  Carefully remove pot from the oven and turn dough into pot.  Cover and bake 27 minutes.  Uncover and continue baking until browned to your liking.  Cool on wire rack.

A Grain Flaker- My New Preparedness Tool

Looks like wheat kernels, doesn't it?  It's not.  It's whole oat groats. This is how your morning bowl of oatmeal begins.  It's a far cry from what we usually buy in the grocery store though.  Steel cut oats would be the closest thing you could get to it.  Next in line would be old fashioned rolled oats, followed by quick cooking and then instant, each one becoming more and more processed.  Quick cooking and instant are popular because we are a society that wants everything in a hurry.  Unfortunately, the more processed a food becomes, the worse it seems to be for our bodies.  A bowl of good old fashioned oatmeal, with a little sweetener and fruit is one of the healthiest breakfasts you can eat.  But have you taken a look lately at all the flavors of instant oatmeal available?  Apple crisp, cinnamon roll and banana bread... I mean are we having breakfast or dessert?  Flavored is usually a code word for lots of sugar.  It's so easy to flavor your own, with real fruit and stevia, I'm not sure why anyone would want to buy the imitation (you do know that's not real fruit, right?) stuff.  The real thing always tastes better.  My favorite combinations are canned apples with nuts and cinnamon or peaches, strawberries or blueberries and cream (not really- it's just milk), or dried fruit, like raisins, cranberries, apricots or cherries. Yum!!!  My oatmeal is not boring!

For the past few years, I've been eating steel cut oats.  You can go here to see an easy way to let them cook overnight, so all you have to do is reheat in the morning. (There's also a nice recipe for granola and a killer oatmeal cookie recipe on the same post.)  Steel cut is my favorite way to eat oats, but I also like old fashioned rolled oats too.  And here's where my new kitchen toy comes in.  I found a resource for a grain flaker.  I never imagined that I could roll my own oats at home, but with this tool I can.  I put the oat groats into the top of the flaker

and start turning the handle.  Yes, it's manual, but it didn't take very long for me to roll a bowl of oats, and my arms got a nice little work out in the process.

Pretty neat, huh?  It almost looks like store bought.  The flakes aren't as perfectly shaped as Quakers, but hey, these are one of a kind, homemade rolled oats.   They're not supposed to look like they've been processed on commercial machines.

With a little help from Kenzie and Mark, we refilled my oatmeal container with our own freshly flaked oats in about ten minutes.  I had a nice big bowl for breakfast the next day and it was delicious. I thought it was better than any I've bought in the store, but I might be biased, seeing as how I put a little effort into working for my breakfast.  The things we work for bring extra satisfaction and enjoyment, right?

So here's why I'm really excited about having my own grain flaker. If I wanted to store oatmeal as part of my food storage preparedness program (and I do), the shelf life on processed oats is less than whole grains that I process myself.  For short term storage, oats purchased in the grocery store are fine. In time, the quality will deteriorate though.  They need to be used and rotated regularly.  I've had some rolled oats in large buckets (that weren't nitrogen packed) that had a funny smell when I opened them and I didn't use them.  Okay, if I'd been starving, I would have eaten them, but this was not the case.  When properly packaged, long term storage items can sit in my pantry and I don't have to worry about using them for years, if I don't want to.  We live in uncertain times and may not always have access to the abundance of food that we now enjoy.  It's a good idea to store food for your family.  You can go here if you'd like to learn more about starting your own food storage program.

The Cookbook Project

I have a thing for cookbooks, which is understandable, because I have a thing for food!  I love everything about it, growing it from seeds, shopping for it in a great market, trying new recipes, looking at and taking beautiful pictures of it, dining in wonderful restaurants and sharing all of these experiences with people I love... yep, I just adore food.  Sometimes maybe too much, but that's a subject for another post.  Back to my cookbooks.

I have stashed, in nooks and crannies throughout my kitchen, and overflowing into the family room, cookbooks that I've collected over the years.  My Christmas wish list usually has a few titles on it and I'm known to spend whatever mad money I might have on a new volume.  Some girls buy shoes, I buy cookbooks. 

For relaxation, I will take a cookbook off the shelf and read it from cover to cover, as one would read a novel.  Because a good cookbook includes much more than just recipes.  There are stories around those recipes that make them come to life.  If you've ever noticed over on the right sidebar, under "What I'm Reading", there is almost always one book dealing with food. 

 This month I've been reading The Homemade Pantry.  It was while I was reading it, that I had an idea.  I thought it would be fun to have a cookbook project, where every month or so, I would pull one of my cookbooks off the shelf and share it with you.  This is mostly for my benefit, so I'm spending less time dusting off my books, and more time using them and because I'm motivated by projects.  But I hope you might enjoy it as well.  With Pinterest and so many great cooking websites, a person would never really need to have a cookbook in their home and still turn out some great meals.  And because life's busy, more days than not, we just stick with the tried and true, get it on the table quickly, meal.  It's easy to get in a cooking rut.   But when we can make the time,  there's something exciting about pulling a cookbook off your shelf and creating something new.    

As much as I love this cookbook, I know it would not be for everyone.  Some people have no interest in making their own cheese or yogurt.  Or Poptarts.  Yes, that's  homemade Poptarts on the cover of the book.  I think they look delicious.  But for those who like to challenge themselves to produce foods that others would only buy in a store, this one's for you.  I already make a lot of my own food from scratch.  But at times I get lazy and this book has motivated me to start cooking and baking again.  I'm going to dig out the yogurt maker this week and I've already been munching on granola that I made a few days ago.

In the introduction, the author says,
"If we are to become people who do make butter, we might have to shift the way we see ourselves a bit.  We might have to get into the adventurous spirit and unearth our own curiosity about where our food comes from.  We might have to make a colossal mess of the kitchen. And we might have to slow down, at least long enough to knead a loaf of bread before the day begins.  Here are a few reasons I have found myself to be the kind of person who makes butter:
1- Food made at home is better for you.
2- Food made at home tastes better.
3- Food made at home usually costs less.
4- Food made at home eliminates unnecessary packaging.
5-Food made at home will change the way you think about food.
You won't make all of these recipes every week.  You might make pickles just once, and then decide that the experience is not for you. But I promise you this- after making your pickles, you will think very differently about all pickles."

I concur.  Not only does this cookbook have some great recipes, for simple and nourishing foods (which doesn't always translate as quick and easy), but the pictures are amazing.  I would love to follow her photographer around for a while and learn her techniques.  In this book, she has captured not only images of beautiful food, but  a lifestyle that centers around wholesome eating.  In another life time I'm sure I would have been a food stylist and photographer.  After reading through The Homemade Pantry a couple of times, I feel like I know Alana and her family.  Take a peek.

Every recipe begins with a little essay about why this food is important enough to be included in her cookbook.  True stories about food and a family. I loved them. 

Alana gets excited about food, just like me.  She talks about the thrill of cooking this way for her family when she says: 

" Whether it's your inner pioneer expressing deep satisfaction when you look at your rows of bright-red jam-filled mason jars or your inner five- year- old (or real five -year- old) celebrating when the butter breaks from the buttermilk, the thrill is what keeps me cooking and sharing."         I totally get this.

So, here are the recipes I plan to try in the next month or so.

*mozzerella cheese - I have to hurry while I still have some basil and few tomatoes left.  I can only imagine a caprese salad with fresh mozzerella that I made myself.  If it turns out well, that is.

*toaster pastries - There is a big kid at my house who likes Poptarts.  I won't mention any names.

*basic pie crust -I've never been able to master a good pie crust consistently.  Maybe this will be the recipe that works for me.

* cheese crackers-I hope these will make me forget that I love CHEEZ-IT's.

* lasagna- yep, I'm going to make my own noodles and sauce, and who knows, maybe even my own mozzerella and ricotta.  This will be my piece de resistance.  I'll have to set aside a chunk of time for this one, but I bet it will be the best lasagna I've ever made.

That should keep me busy for awhile. I'll keep you posted as I try each new recipe.  How about you?  Would you like to be a part of my cookbook project?  Just go ahead, pull one of your favorite cookbooks off the shelf and make something new.  I would love to hear about your cooking adventures.