Always Learning

I decided to take advantage of what is probably one of the last cold, windy days this season to run the pressure canner and get some dried beans out of my pantry. I avoid having the stove on for over an hour to pressure-can anything when my kitchen is 80 degrees, you see, but yesterday the house could use the heat.

I thought I only had 11 new jar lids, though*, and I had more like 15 pints of soaked beans. Since I still had room in my giant pressure-canner for the extra jars, I stuck some already-used lids on the extra jars and put them in with the jars I was canning for storage. I figured I might as well at least use the space to cook the jars of beans, even if they went in the freezer afterwards.

Easy to tell which are the re-used lids.

And then every single jar lid sealed.

I was somewhat shocked by this. I mean, EVERYONE KNOWS those lids are single-use. They're not supposed to seal with a second use! Sometimes they don't even seal with the first use!

But they did. And it was a serious seal. I tried to pull the lids off with my fingers and couldn't. Just like with the jars I keep in my pantry for months at a time, the seal was tight enough that I had to use my can opener to pop off one of the lids.

Huh.

So, of course, I had to do some research on this. The first results for a search on re-using jar lids are pretty much ,"DON'T DO IT. BOTULISM AND CERTAIN DEATH WILL ENSUE." Or at least the wrath of USDA will descend upon you.

Further scrolling, however, revealed a whole cadre of canners who explain how to re-use lids. Always with the disclaimer that EVERYONE KNOWS you're not supposed to re-use these lids. But these people do. And they'll tell you how, with handy tips and everything.

I guess the takeaway here is that what EVERYONE KNOWS is not actually what everyone practices. 

I am not suggesting we all wantonly re-use lids and blithely ignore safety practices when canning, I just thought this was interesting.

* And then I found three more boxes of wide-mouth jar lids in the cabinets when I was searching for masa, so obviously my organization is not what it could be. 

Growing Food: Continual Planting

This is the time of year that I'm always watching the weather, waiting for a break in the wind so I can go out and plant things.

As you know, I've been wanting to plant out my cabbage and kohlrabi starts for a couple of weeks now, but the forecast keeps throwing in a couple of nights in the low twenties, just to keep things interesting. I am not putting out baby plants when it's going to be in the low twenties, even if they are somewhat protected by their very classy plastic milk jug greenhouses.

So. No plants.

But that doesn't mean I can't put things safely under a blanket of dirt!

Like snow peas:

Also very classy with their re-used cattle panel A-frame featuring the remains of last year's green beans. Classy is a theme in my garden. (And that is definitely sarcasm.)

And potatoes:

The bed for which provided so many excellent grubs for the chickens.

The occasional freezing night does not, however, deter some of the things that were already in the ground. Our intense sun warms the soil so much that many of the seeds and perennials are already above-ground.

Parsley.

Rhubarb. This already sustained some frost damage, as you can see by the brown on the leaves.

Volunteer lettuce that came up by the rhubarb, because we watered there already.

Radishes.

The lettuce we planted a few weeks ago.

All of these things will be covered with mulch and boxes, as needed, to protect them from the temperatures for the next couple of nights. But after that, then we're looking at temperatures in the seventies and even eighties during the day, and no more freezing.

That means I will shift from protecting plants to encouraging them to grow. And that will mean watering. A lot of watering.

I should also be able to plant out those cabbages. FINALLY. And then I can use the mushroom containers those plants are in to start some more tomato seeds. I did put a couple dozen tomato seeds into the salad green containers A. got for me awhile ago, but I'm going to need to start another dozen or so to have enough plants, what with the inevitable attrition that occurs getting the plants from seed to actual tomatoes. I always figure I'll lose at least five plants somewhere along the way, and I might lose more than that.

So if I start more than I need, I might end up with enough. If that makes sense to you, you're probably a gardener.

So tell me, my fellow gardeners: What are you seeing coming up in your garden now? Or in your house, if it's still too cold outside for anything living to be above ground?

Snapshots: Patchy

Now that the weather is warming up, the children and I can resume walking or riding bikes to the post office when we have things to mail.

Riding home from the post office. (It's only a quarter mile, don't worry.)

A. and I planted some of the excess commodities potatoes that were sprouting. While he was digging holes for me, I spied some of the nasty, silvery grubs that usually appear when we're digging beds in the spring. I'm not entirely sure what they turn into, but I know they're nothing I want in my soil. 

I don't get any great pleasure out of picking these things up, but I know some smaller people who do.

 

They found a total of nine grubs, which were duly delivered to the chickens. Happiness all around.

Adventure Van is starting to show its age (14 years) and all those adventures are catching up to it. A tear appeared in the fabric covering the driver's side seat. I knew if I didn't do something about it, it would get bigger, the foam underneath would start to come out, and the seat would end up being a total mess.

A stitch in time saves nine!

I'm sure there are car patches or something I could buy, but buying things isn't really my style. I was tempted to just duct tape it, but in the interests of trying to maintain some semblance of class--if such a word can be applied to a giant old passenger van--I made a patch of my own.

Poppy donated a pair of her ripped jeans for the patch. I tried super glue first, but that didn't hold, so I had to sew it. I don't have much skill at sewing, and this was a particularly aggravating situation to try to be making stitches, but I managed it in the end.

We'll call this boho chic.

Of course, I don't know if it will hold, and I might end up having to use duct tape in the end, but I tried.

Last, a friend loaned me a novel to read, and I was amused at the floral theme of the cover that I inadvertently matched with my bookmark made from a torn out piece of a tulip bulb catalog.

Incidentally, this is one of the best books I've read this year. If you're looking for something to read at the moment, I would recommend it.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Salvage Cake

Friday 

Short version: Spanish tortilla, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: It had been awhile since I had made a Spanish tortilla, and apparently it was long enough that everyone liked it again. Even though, as one child remarked, "This looks a lot more green than I remember."

That's because I put about half a cup of finely chopped beet greens (from the freezer) in it along with the potatoes, onions, eggs, and a lot of grated cheddar cheese.

I should have served this on St. Patrick's Day.

The best part for the children is they get to choose mild salsa, hot salsa, or green chile to put on top. The boys all go with hot. Poppy and I stick to mild. She appears to have inherited my sensitive mouth.

Saturday

Short version: Vaguely Asian ground beef, rooster rice

Long version: I had taken out a package of ground beef to thaw, but with no clear idea what I was going to do with it. And we had our monthly Saturday Mass, which meant I needed to have it cooked before we left so could just eat when we got home.

I had a tentative plan to make fried rice, which is why I made the rice with rooster stock. I also cooked the ground beef with some onion, and then added garlic powder, ginger powder, soy sauce, and vinegar.

When we got home, I simply heated up the meat, added some frozen peas and the last of a jar of (rinsed) sauerkraut that had been in the refrigerator, and called it done.

And then, of course, not a single child complained about this very slap-dash meal. That's the way it goes sometimes.

Sunday

Short version: Pizza, green salad with ranch dressing, failed pudding

Long version: I was too lazy to get bacon out of the freezer to cook for one of the pizzas, so it was just one cheese pizza and one with some cooked onions on it.

I experimented a bit with the pudding. I usually make a cornstarch pudding, but I have a LOT of eggs on hand at the moment. However, I hate separating eggs and ending up with a bunch of egg whites, which I definitely would making a double batch of pudding. Also, I wanted to use more cocoa powder than chocolate chips.

It probably would have worked, if I hadn't heated it too fast, thus curdling the eggs. Also, the finished pudding lacked flavor, so I ended up adding some more chocolate chips after all, as well as a bit more salt and some maple syrup.

It tasted good, but it definitely did not have the smooth texture you expect from pudding. The children were not pleased. I wasn't, either. Never fear, though! I salvaged it later in the week. Stay tuned . . .

Monday

Short version: Meatloaf, leftover pizza, frozen peas, chocolate cake

Long version: This was how I salvaged the pudding: cake. I unfortunately woke up at 4 a.m., so I went ahead and mixed some of the grainy pudding with flour, baking soda, oil, more sugar, salt, and one more egg. I was literally just throwing things into a bowl, so when the batter seemed a bit thick and like it needed some more flavor, I also added some maple syrup and a bit of the coffee I was brewing.

After it was baked, it seemed a little dry, and still needed more flavor, so I poked holes in it while it was still hot and poured over it a glaze of milk, powdered sugar, and salt.

This made it look sort of diseased, but it improved the flavor and texture quite a bit.

Success! The kids got to have chocolate cake for breakfast, so my unfortunate early waking was a lucky break for them. 

And I got to sing, "Mom is great, give us the chocolate cake," which was highly amusing to me.

Bill had hay for breakfast. No song for that. Yet.

I had actually made the meatloaf the day before when I was baking bread anyway, just to have it for an after-work dinner. Handy.

Tuesday

Short version: Pork, baked beans, rice, green salad with vinaigrette, peach crisp or cake

Long version: I really wanted to finally use up the industrial-sized can of pinto beans we got from the school in, um, 2020. Yeah. So I made one last giant batch of baked beans with them. I froze three quarts of the beans for later and we had some this night with the pork shoulder I cooked in the oven at the same time as the beans.

The last Tuesday of the month is the day the commodities food is delivered, so it's the day I always end up with a bunch of random stuff that was left over. This time, that included six peaches of questionable usefulness. They were definitely not good enough for fresh eating, but since I had the oven on anyway, I peeled and sliced them and put them in a casserole with maple syrup, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and lemon juice to bake. 

Just as I was about to put them in the oven, I remembered all the packets of maple-flavored oatmeal that had also come from commodities. So I used a few of those, with extra sugar, spices, and butter, to make a crisp topping for the peaches. It came out surprisingly well. 

I mean, it obviously was not as good as would have been with Nick's peaches, but it was at least edible, which is more than I can say for these peaches in their original form.

Wednesday

Short version: Barbecue pork sandwiches, leftover baked beans, cucumbers

Long version: Last month's excess commodities included huge bags of onions. Those are now getting pretty soft and somewhat sprouty, so I've been working on not only cooking the onion, but freezing the excess. 

This is a good idea.

I used some of those cooked and frozen onions in the barbecue pork. Chopping and sauteeing onions is a step I avoid on work days, but if the onions are already cooked and frozen flat in a bag (like the shredded cheese), so I can just break off a chunk and put them in with the meat with some barbecue sauce, ketchup, and mustard? That, I can handle. 

Thursday

Short version: Sirloin steaks, leftover rice, carrot sticks with curry dip, banana chocolate chip cake with chocolate peanut butter frosting

Long version: More pudding to use up! I still had almost half the pudding left, and that means another cake. With one completely made-up cake under my belt, I knew that I needed more sugar, oil, and chocolate flavor. So I added more sugar and oil, plus a few chocolate chips, to the actual cake, and then made this frosting for the top. I also added two mashed-up bananas because I had them and they were getting overly ripe.

The cake had a much better texture, and the frosting was A+. Definitely remembering that one.

Our lesson for this week is that if you end up screwing up pudding, don't throw it away. There are no recipes anywhere for it, but you can totally make a cake from otherwise unappealing pudding.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

Growing Food: Foiled Again

The weather is not cooperating with my planting schedule. You know, the one I totally made up based on St. Patrick's Day and its affiliation with cabbage? 

I mean, how inconvenient that since St. Patrick's Day, which I had arbitrarily decided is the day I plant out my cabbage starts, we've had an unbroken streak of coldcoldcold, WINDWINDWIND, coldcoldcold, hey how about some SNOW?

Also, work.

I was all set to plant the cabbages and kohlrabi today, which is the only day that didn't feature winds above twenty miles an hour all day and is a day I don't have to work. It was supposed to be 31 degrees tonight, which is fine if the plants are in their snuggly plastic milk jugs. I was going to show you the milk jugs! I had a plan!

Then I woke up to a changed forecast calling for 17 degrees tonight. AND wind.

And that means no gardening today.

The next even halfway decent day for planting that I can see is Saturday. If we get out early enough, A. should be able to dig before the wind starts and blows all our topsoil away. And it's not going to be below freezing at night for at least the next few nights, which would give the plants time to get established.

Assuming no change in the forecast between now and then, which of course we can never really assume.

Anyway. 

I did plant some cubanelle pepper seeds this weekend in an old mushroom container. Why cubanelle? Because that's what A. found at the store when I asked him to look for banana pepper seeds. I know nothing about cubanelle peppers, but I guess we'll see how they work.

Overly large cabbages in the background, ready to be liberated from their confining pots. 

The peppers are on a heating pad to help them germinate. It's just our regular, oh-my-aching-back heating pad covered in aluminum foil* to protect it from water. I've found that peppers really will not germinate at all without a little heat boost, but since I don't want to have to buy and store a separate heating pad just for seeds, I modified the one I already had.

Of course, those peppers are a long way from being outside, but God willin' and the temperatures don't plummet, those cabbages and kohlrabi will be out this weekend.

* Ha, I just realized I can make a really good joke here about the heating pad being foiled again. And then my post title is a pun. Okay, maybe not a really good joke, but a joke, anyway.

Woah

I just today realized that March 23 is the anniversary--or is it birthday?--of Going Country. 

That means that as of last Thursday, I have been writing here for fifteen years.

Definitely just blew my own mind.

Bill is shocked, too.

I guess I'll just carry on then, shall I?

Snapshots: Spring Things . . . and Cold

I cribbed the title from the sign I put up in the school library, yes.

The signs of spring are all around! Including blossoms on the apricot tree.

Which will almost certainly perish in the next couple of nights when the temperatures get into the low twenties. Happens every year.

Spring here means high winds. And that means I must now use the laundry lines in the more-sheltered backyard.

Not so good for clothes to be whipping around in 30-mile-an-hour winds.

It looks as if all of the rhubarb plants are coming up.

This precocious plant was the first to come up.

Rhubarb is fairly cold-hardy, but I think 20 degrees will be too much for it. We'll have to cover the plants for a couple of nights, at least.

Cubby is part of the livestock judging team in his FFA chapter. This involves judging a whole bunch of different animals (bulls, steers, pigs, ewes, goats) for different marketability characteristics. They have to give their reasons for their judgements, too. His team went to the district judging contest last week and he left this instructional sheet on the table.

I speak English well, but this might as well be Greek to me.

They did well enough that they're going to the state competition this next week in Las Cruces. He has to iron his clothes for FFA competitions, and he requested laundry starch for a more professional result.

Poppy was not a fan of the smell.

Good thing she was prepared with goggles and a mask.* 

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

* Yes, he is ironing on the table. I don't own an ironing board, because I iron maaaybe once a year, and I don't want to store one.