Gardening

I love to see things growning. Particularly if they are beautiful volunteers. Don't ask what they all are. I can't remember what all I planted last year.

This may be bachelor's button? There are only a few of these.

A good part of the front bed is full of these.

Some are very light pink, but others, like this one, are somewhat darker.

They have this neat little x coming out of the center.

These are on the far right side of the same bed.

*I've done some checking and I think this is coreopsis. I did plant that last year.

Beautiful

I know this one. I love hollyhock.

They're biennals, so I've waited quite awhile to see them bloom, unfortunately they have contracted hollyhock rust and will need to be removed. You can see some of the spots on the leaf to the left.

Such promise, but I'm afraid if I don't remove the ones in the front yard it will spread to the ones in the backyard.  These are single blooms, which I prefer; the ones in the back are double blooms. I'm sure they'll be beautiful too. I just have to wait a bit longer for them to bloom because they are in a spot that gets more shade.

The lemon balm thrived last year after I moved it to the shady side of the deck. It overwintered well and it looks as though I'll have to keep my eye on it this year if I don't want it to take over the bed on that side.

The sage did fine over the winter as well and is now starting to bloom.

And finally, the parsley. We used it several times during the course of the winter, but have stopped since it has bolted and is beginning to flower.

If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see the beginning of several umbrells.

Here's one of the larger ones. By the looks of all the clusters that are already starting to form, we will have a lot of parsley seed.

As you can see, I'm a bit of a lazy gardener. My somewhat indolent attitude is due in part to the long growing season. Once the hot sets in, it's here forever. So for me, I never seem to feel a rush to get the things in the ground. I know I'll regret that one day when we have freak freeze in September, but it can't be helped this year since nothing is planted yet. We'll probably get around to it later this week. I would like to wait and put one of the beds of green beans in much later though. I've heard from someone I know that they have successfully done late plantings of green beans as far out as July, but it probably depends on the type of bean.

Crockpot Cooking: Venison

I know. Lots of people turn their noses up at eating deer. After all, most of us have seen Bambi. Who wants to eat anything that's that cute? And we were all sad when the hunters shot his mother. Right? Then there are those who've never eaten anything that didn't come from the meat section of their local grocery store.
Let me lay some misconceptions aside.
1)Yes. Bambi was cute, but they aren't still that little and cute by the time hunting season rolls around.
2)They lose all appearance of cute when they keep eating the stuff in your garden. And they seem to like the stuff in your garden better than anything else.
3)The deer have led a much happier, more sanitary, and humane life than anything you've bought out of your big chain, grocery store meat case.
4)No, they don't need to keep living that humane life forever. Do you know how many deer there are?? Trust me, the population could stand to be thinned down a bit before they eat everything and start starving to death. We are not currently in danger of over-hunting.
5)When prepared properly, they are delicious. Besides, they are much leaner than beef, and aren't we all trying to eat healthier?

There. Now that we've blazed through all your doubts and misconceptions, find yourself a hunter and trade him some baked goods and/or homemade preserves for some deer meat. Hunters that really enjoy hunting always have more deer than they can fit in their freezer.
There are tons of ways to completely ruin venison. Trust me, I've had my share of poorly cooked deer, but there are many excellent ways to prepare it as well (one of my favorites is for it to be roasted long and slow, and then turned into barbeque - mmmmmmmmmm!). If you want to make it seem more like beef, the following is a good method.

Venison in Mushroom Gravy

Deer meat - any cut but the tenderloin (good luck getting that from a hunter anyway); you don't want to waste the tenderloin with this method of cooking. Save it for grilling.
Beef stock (or water and beef base)
Buttermilk
Red Wine or Milk
Onions                        Mushrooms
Butter                         Olive oil
Flour                          Seasoned meat tenderizer
Pepper                       Worcestershire sauce

This does take a couple of days to prepare (don't worry, it's easy), so think about it in advance. If your deer is frozen, take it out to thaw the morning of the day before you want to cook it. It needs to be thawed by evening-time, the day before you want to cook. If I've confused you, sorry. Ex: If you want to eat it Friday evening, lay it out to thaw Thursday morning. There you go, that's less muddled.

The evening before you want to cook it, cut it into smallish chunks and put it in a glass dish. Cover it with buttermilk, put a lid or plastic wrap on top and put it in the fridge overnight.

The next morning pour it into a colander to drain.

There was more meat here than there seemed to be. Kay used our largest colander.

Rise it with cold water and leave it to drain while you prepare the onions and mushrooms.

Lightly saute the onions and mushrooms in olive oil and butter.

What? You don't see the mushrooms? Confession time. We didn't have fresh mushrooms - since they were canned we just threw them in the pot later.

Scoop out the onions and mushrooms with a slotted spoon, leaving the butter and oil in the pan, and set the pan off the element for the time being. Put them and the venison in the crock pot. I know, I know. The mushrooms aren't in this picture either. Trust me, they were in the final product.

Add flour to your butter and oil to make a rue. Yes I know. We didn't get all of the onions out of the pan. It's okay. Everything ends up in the same pot anyway.

Slowly brown your rue, then make your gravy using the stock, or water and beef base. Don't add quite as much liquid as you want because you will do one of the following at the end: Add 1 cup of wine, or 1 cup of milk. I like it with the red wine, but we didn't have any yesterday, so we used the milk instead. It's just as good that way. Also, add 5 or 6 healthy dashes of Worcestershire sauce, and season to taste with seasoned meat tenderizer and pepper.

Then pour your gravy over everything else in the pot and cook on low all day.

No - there is no 3 or 4 hour option for this. Not if you want just any old cut of venison to be tender.

This is great served over rice, just like beef tips, but I was in the mood for potatoes yesterday.

Mmmmmmm - it was good, and if you look close enough, you can see some mushrooms in there. :D

This was Kay's bowl. There are green beans under the potatoes and meat (shudder). I like green beans, but not all mixed in with my other stuff.

I know I used the word we in here, but in all honesty, I did none of the work this time. Kay and Bree cut the meat off the deer shoulder Thursday evening, and I told Kay how to prepare it for the crock pot as I was running around trying to get out the door for Beenie's guitar lessons yesterday morning. So, thanks girls. It was delicious. 

Crockpot Cooking: Ham and Potato Casserole

This was one of those, "I'm tired of bringing the same old thing to the potluck, so what can I adapt to put in a crock pot?" kind of a thing. I usually do this in a regular, rectangular casserole dish, and I will admit that the top browns quite nicely in the regular oven, but this just gives you one more thing that can be done in a slow cooker, plus I hope it will inspire you to think outside the box and see what other recipes you may have that can be adapted to the crock pot.

Ham and Potato Casserole

Potatoes                      Ham (diced, or leftover)
Cheese                        Potato Water
Milk                            Sour Cream
Butter                          Flour
Parmesan cheese         Garlic salt
Salt                             Pepper

Peel and chop your potatoes and then par-boil them. How long you boil them will depend on how long they need to be cooked in the crock pot. If this will cook all day, you probably don't want to boil them but about 7 min, but whether you will eventually cook them all day or for about 45 min in the oven, you still want them to be fairly firm. Drain them, saving the potato water.

The next thing you want to do is make your own cream of potato soup. Melt butter in a large frying pan and add flour to make a rue, simmering slowly in order to cook the rue, but not brown it (exactly like it was done at the start of bechamel used in the macaroni and cheese recipe). Then add milk and potato water, equal parts is fine. For the crock pot version, you want this to be fairly thick because the moisture won't cook away in the crock pot like it would in the oven. Add garlic salt and/or regular salt and pepper to taste. The garlic salt really adds to it, but if you don't like a lot of garlic you may want to use part regular salt and part garlic.

Once your cream of potato soup is ready, add your par-boiled potatoes and ham. Left-over ham really tastes much better, but we didn't have any. Mix well but be gentle - you don't want to mush the potatoes.

Add in your sour cream - about 1 cup.

Then mix in your cheese. As you could see from the last photo, my pan was too full to add anything else, so I just finished mixing it in the crock pot.

You can use just about any type of cheese you like. This was a fiesta blend that the store had on sale. I've also used this recipe in order to finish up all the odd and ends of cheeses we had in the fridge.

For this size recipe I used a little over 1 pound of cheese.

Wipe the edges, to keep things from burning and then top with parmesan cheese.

Cook on low 6-8 hrs, or on high for 3-4.

Mine was a little thin this time. Someone was using the sink so I didn't drain the potatoes very well. It's okay, it still tasted good.

I love using luncheon plates. It makes a smaller amount of food look like so much more :).

This makes a fine crock pot meal, especially if you use your cooker a lot and need some variety, but I wholeheartedly suggest you also try this recipe in the oven. Prepare it the same way, pour into a rectangular casserole dish, top with the parmesan cheese, and bake at 350 until the casserole is bubbly and browned on top. It looses some of it's moisture so it sets up a bit firmer, which I like, and the crusty top is also really good. Either way, this is something that can be made in advance and held in the refrigerator until you're ready to cook it.

When Procrastination Pays Off

 While I'm not officially encouraging procrastination, sometimes it ends up working in your favor. Like when I finally got around to ordering swim dresses for the girls and I. The ordering took place over several weeks, as I 'got around to it', but after all was said and done, I caught some items on sale, was able to order on days when they were offering free shipping (I only had shipping charges on one order, and that was only $0.55), and one of the styles, that three of the girls eventually picked, ended up being available in several colors, instead of the one they had when we first started looking. Because I didn't put in my last order until today, I was able to take 40% of my total order at one store, due to their Cinco de Mayo sale. I'm loving it.
Ri is slightly afraid that this particular turn of events will encourage my natural tendency toward procrastination.
I think she is unnecessarily worried, but we'll have to wait and see.

Ahhh - Strawberry Season

Another year, another race to see how quickly we can pick strawberries.

Just a bit over 30lbs. in under 15 minutes.

The older girls all complained that we should have been done in 10min.

We did have one less than enthusiastic picker. One of the other girls and I helped finish her bucket.

Then came all the work of washing, sorting, and capping.

The absolutely perfect ones will be frozen.

Others made it into jam.

And who could spend all day around strawberries and not eat a bunch.

The decision to go strawberry picking today was kind of a last minute thing. Normally I would make a pound cake the day before, but we weren't going to let that stop us from having one of our favorite desserts. I just stopped at the store on the way home to pick up an angel food cake and a can of Redi-Whip.

Of course there were lots of dire warnings given in the car (and on the way to the car), just to make sure that most of the berries made it home, but that always happens. The whole, "But it hasn't been washed yet." never fazes them. I have to put and older kid (who happens to be sitting too far from temptation to join in) on lookout. Then the table has to be guarded while we make sure the pans for the freezer get filled and that there's plenty for jam. After all that they are allowed free access to the remaining berries.

We'll have to go picking again. We can only fit so many pans in the freezer at a time, and after all the picking, sorting, capping, cutting, etc., I was only up for two batches of jam (plus, we didn't have anymore pectin). We only have one box of berries left now anyway (about 6 lbs), and it won't take long for the girls to polish that off. Have I mentioned they love strawberries?