Gardening How To's

It's that time of year - at least it is in the Northern Hemisphere. It's time to begin gardening.

Or maybe it's past time to start gardening. I don't really know, and that's part of why I decided to post today. With all the information out there about how to garden; what to plant, when to plant, how to plant, what you should plant with what, when, where and how to rotate plantings, planting up, planting in rows, or blocks, etc., etc., etc., it can all seem incredibly daunting. So I've decided to help out (this may be a little tongue-in-cheek; bear that in mind).

Step 1 - Plant something, anything. It doesn't really matter what you choose. Unless you hate eggplant. Then it probably wouldn't be such a good idea to plant it. You'll have very little motivation to keep it alive, and if you do manage to keep it alive, what are you going to do with a bunch of eggplant you'll never eat? Give it away? Don't count on it. Some people even get tired of receiving all your excess tomatoes, and way more people like tomatoes.
Step 2 - Make sure you water it. Yes, there's another unless. Unless it just rained. But if you're planting in pots, or some other type of container, you'll need to water it very frequently. My younger brother usually waters his containers in the morning and then again when he gets home from work.

That's pretty much it. Yes, there are tons of other things you can do, and a good many things that are probably good to do, but if you are just starting out don't overcomplicate things. If you live in a difficult area, like somewhere the growing season is very short, you may need to read up on when to start plants that require a long growing season, but otherwise try to keep it simple, at least in the begining. Just dig up a little section of your yard, or throw down some wet newspapers and some garden soil, and stick in a few seeds, or maybe some tomato or pepper starts. Read up on the few plants you started with and add a few each year. Before you know it you'll be producing more food than you can eat. Then you'll have to foist it off on your neighbors, or you'll have to read another book on various ways to properly preserve your produce.

I know many people who express a desire to garden, but also tell how they feel they could never manage it. Reading a bunch of gardening books can make you feel as though you need a degree in agriculture to plant so much as a handful of vegetables. This isn't the case. All you really need is dirt, water, seeds and a little diligence.
I'm the first to admit that I'm a little lazy with regard to when I start my planting because we live far enough South that we have a decently long growing season, but I don't plant according to the phases of the moon, or when the dogwood blooms are as big as a squirrel's ear. I don't even remember what it is you are supposed to plant when the blooms are as big as a squirrel's ear, and I don't really know how big a squirrel's ear is so I just ignore it and plant when it best fits into my schedual. What if you work during the week and the blossoms were the correct size on Monday. Do you just skip that year because you couldn't plant 'til Saturday? No. That's ridiculous. I've planted at all times, between May and June, and the plants seem to make it. I know, from expirence, it's not best to do succession plantings after the baby bunnies are up a little size, unless you can somehow fence off the new plants, but other than that, just give it a try. Worst  case senario, you'll learn something you shouldn't do next time.

So my only real garden tip is just to give it a try. Don't sweat all the various ways you could do it. Just plant something. Even if it's just a few herbs in pots on your window sill. Once you've produced something that ends up on your table you'll be hooked and you'll end up learning more than you thought. Or maybe you'll just end up like me and keep throwing stuff in the ground, hoping for the best, and finding creative ways of dealing with all the excess zucchini, cukes, and tomatoes.

Spring is in the air.

And that air was sure moving quickly Monday night. Around 2:30am (okay, so I guess it was actually Tuesday) a storm woke me up. That doesn't usually happen. I don't normally wake up during natural disasters(or brass bands for that matter) - just (briefly)for kids that want to sleep with me. Although there was a lot of lightening, it wasn't particulary close to us, so it took a second for me to realize what it was that woke me up. It was the wind. The next day, after seeing all the limbs and trees down and hearing about the tornados that had touched down, we found out that the winds had reached gusts of 90 miles an hour. The sound of it screaming around the eves of the house is what had caused me to wake up. It woke Ri and Bree too, and since the power went out right after they woke up, they went and got Beenie and T.Lynn and had them come in their room for the rest of the night. They thought they might get scared if the storm woke them up and they realized we didn't have power. I had wondered why little people didn't join me during the storm.

We spent today cleaning up the storm fallout. We had to clean everything out of the refigerators that we had not been able to fit in the coolers. We were able to save a good deal out of both refigerators and thankfully, the big freezer is a chest style so it keeps things frozen for quite a while. We didn't lose anything in the big freezer, but we lost all the rest of the okra because it was in the freezer section of the extra fridge and I forgot it was there. While Kay was working on the inside fridge, and Ri and Bree worked on the extra fridge, I went up in the wooded area behind the house while the younger girls and some of the little neighbor girls were playing. One of the girls bumped a tree and a large limb fell, narrowly missing her. I went around to check for loose and broken branches, or limbs that had fallen and gotten stuck in other trees.

I'm grateful that although we did lose power for most of Tuesday, and there's still more clean up to do in the yard, all in all we faired very well.

Crockpot Cooking: Barbeque Chicken

Okay - so I'm slipping this in at the last minute. I have a really good excuse. I do. But I guess I'll just tell the truth. My mother always told me that telling the truth is the best way, so here goes. I forgot 'til about 11:30pm that it was Saturday and I needed to post a crock pot recipe. There it is. The awful truth in it's entirety.
Sorry there are no pictures. The photos get downloaded to the main computer, but the internet isn't connected to that computer right now. I've commandeered Ri's laptop so I could post.

So, without further ado...

Barbeque Chicken

Chicken Breast, or another cut of chicken if you prefer
Barbeque sauce
Meat tenderizer

Put chicken in the pot. Sprinkle with meat tenderizer, remember to get the type without MSG. Cover with barbeque sauce and cook on high if you only need to cook it for about 3 or 4 hours, or put it on low if it will cook longer. Ya'll know me. The chicken is frequently frozen when I start it.
I don't use cuts of chicken that have skin on them for this because I think it just makes it greasy.

This is another super easy one. I thought I'd take it easy on you after last week.
Enjoy!

What do we live for but to hear our words...

coming out of our children's mouths.

"Cleaning up with children around is like shoveling during a blizzard." Arthur unknown.

One of the things I've heard from the older girls with the most frequently recently is, "Trust us mom, we JUST cleaned up." and, "It's impossible to keep it clean with the girls in the house." I've even seen/heard them tell the girls to go outside and play because they just can't seem to make any headway while the younger girls are in the house.

I distinctly remember feeling as though all I could manage was to move the mess from one room to another. I remember telling my husband I'd just cleaned something, or assuring him that the basket of laundry on the floor in the living room, while actually being the same basket, was not the same batch of laundry. I'm not sure he was ever convinced of that, but that's okay.

So when the older girls tell me that the younger ones came in and messed up the room they had just cleaned while they were busy in another one, I just smile and tell them I know exactly how they feel. I also make the little girls go back and clean their stuff up.

Crockpot Cooking: Country Style Steak

Allrighty. You can get this in any cafe, family style restaurant, cafeteria style restaurant, or hole-in-the-wall dive. At least you can here in the South. I've even seen about a bizillion recipes for this that call for cream of mushroom soup and a packet of brown gravy mix. In fact, that's what my original recipe was. BUT, this is not soup-and-powdered-gravy (can you hear your blood pressure rise from all that sodium?) country style steak. Nope. This is honest to goodness, homemade country style steak, and you'll never regret making it this way.

Country Style Steak

cubed steak             onions
mushrooms              beef stock or water and beef base
flour                         milk or cream
olive oil                    butter                       
salt                           pepper

Slice your onions and mushrooms.

Heat some olive oil and butter and add your onions.

Sprinkle with pepper. Do not add salt here.

You don't want them cooked to death. Just cook them

until they're pliable and have some color.

After removing the onions, throw in your mushrooms.

Same goes for the mushrooms. Just cook 'til they

are softened and have a little color.

Remove them from the pan and take the pan off the heat.

Prepare your cubed steak. I cut all the larger pieces, except

for two or three I'll leave big for hubby and Superman.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper. If you started at lunch you can sprinkle them with

meat tenderizer in place of salt, but don't do this if they will cook all day or you'll

have meat mush by suppertime. Return your pan to the heat and add oil and butter.

Dredge the pieces in flour and fry on each side for a few minutes.

I have stock thawing/melting in the saucepan behind this.

These do not need to be cooked all the way through.

Just brown them good on both sides.

Between panfuls, assuming you have more meat than will

fit in the pan at one time, pour the used oil off in a measuring cup,

 scraping all the little brown goodies up off the bottom of the pan.

What is brown and tasy now will be black and nasty by the time

you've finished with all the meat unless you pour it off each time.

You need fresh oil and butter for each panful of meat.

When all the meat is done, pour your oil and browned bits back

into the pan. Add more oil and/or butter if necessary and dump in the

leftover flour from dredging the meat, forming a rue. How much rue

you'll need depends on how much gravy you'll need to completely cover

the meat in the crock pot. I needed a lot. Let this brown, but don't burn it.

When your rue is ready, pour in your stock (or water).

If your stock was hot, like mine was, it's a really good idea to

remove the pan from the heat because the gravy will spit and bubble

like an exploding volcano while you're stirring it in, and you need to

stir the whole time to keep it from clumping. Once things have settled

down and the gravy is simmering you can add beef base if you used water.

You can also add the milk or cream at this point. You want the gravy a

little on the thin side. It will thicken as it sits and you may need to add a

bit more stock or water before you get the end of the assembly process.

This is where you taste and add salt if needed.

Okay, you're almost there. Pour a little of the gravy into the bottom of the slow cooker.

Then start layering the meat, onions, mushrooms, and gravy.

This is what it should look like before you add more gravy and start another layer.

You don't need a huge layer of gravy between each layer of meat and goodies.

The rest of the gravy gets poured on top of the whole thing and then set the pot to cook all day on low if you started in the morning. If you started at lunch, turn it on high. In a few hours your house will smell heavenly.

Mixing a packet of gravy mix into a can of cream-of-mushroom soup and adding water is slightly easier, but you still have to brown the meat (and who could go wrong spending a little time sauteing mushrooms and onions), so you're not saving a great deal of time. I used to make it that way. Before I learned as much as I know now about nutrition. Before I had a child that would have been labled hyper had I ever taken her to be diagnosed, and who is sensitive to processed foods. Before my feet spent 6 months looking like dirigibles during my fifth pregnancy. So yes, at one time I did use powdered gravy and a can of soup, but never again. My family deserves better.

                  

I know this isn't one of my simpler crock pot recipes, but your hubby will thank you. Your kids will love you, and until they're big enough to notice what they are and then object on principle, they'll eat those gravy covered mushrooms and onions.

Enjoy!