Mules and Veggies

Eddie and Megan brought me veggies from their garden! How lucky can a mom get? I got these wild colored carrots along with Swiss Chard and garlic! Oh...YUM!

Today I blanched the carrots and froze some and put a variety of them in the little dehydrator along with another tomato and an apple. 

My thought is...I won't run the little dehydrator with just one tray of anything. I like dried apples while hiking so I chopped one up and tossed it in along with the tomato that needed to be processed. The carrots will become strange twisted colorful shapes as they dry.

I'll put some onions, carrots, tomatoes, and green beans together in a packet for dumping in a stew or soup later this fall or winter.

My morning was fun. I did the grocery thing at 7AM then chores, and this afternoon I'll be introducing my neighbor Olive to our mules. She is a master Chef and also a mom who works for MOSA with is an acronym for Midwest Organic Services Association. I think she can work from home. 

She and my ex neighbor Terri work together. 

Any...way.... 

Olive spent time cooking and doing the Master Chef thing all over Europe and I imagine .... everywhere? I don't know much as we haven't had time to talk about all of that. However, she used to be a groom and rode/exercised horses in Europe. 
I'm thinking this could be a really great friendship in the making.

She is my neighbor on the ridge. She likes foraging, hiking [night hiking or day hiking], riding, and cooking. 

Could I learn something from her? Oh yeah.

Face it. Being a Caregiver for a very difficult spouse is tough. So I'll forge friendships. Those friendships KEEP me sane.

~~~~~ 
2pm rolled around and Olive came trotting into the yard. I had gotten my two gals, Sunshine and Siera out and had saddled them. 

It is that time of the year that they somehow find burdock and manage to get it in their tails. So I was finishing that.

Olive fit in my Simco saddle just fine and we went over the 'how' to operate Siera. She's easy. She is very lazy, so a whoa works well.

I got up on my little red mule and we headed towards the hay and oat fields to ride in between the strips of corn. 

Siera did her normal thing like turning towards home when she thought Olive wasn't paying attention. I let the two of them work it out. Siera won't bolt or run off, it isn't in her nature. She'd rather stay with the other mule.

Anyway we circled the fields and then I asked if Olive would like to try some hill work. We went down into the neighbor's woods and rode down the steep trail and into a dry run. We sat on the girls and chatted down in the deep woods for a bit, then returned home.

We were so busy chatting and talking Mule/Horse Talk and getting to know each other...that I only took one photo.

I think this sums up everything.

Olive asked if we can do this every Tuesday. I'm like....um, yeah! Of course, with weather and schedules permitting.

It will be nice to exercise The Fat Bottom Girls together with another enthusiastic person.

I can cook, sorta

This is a photo of one of the few wild apples trees that have grown on the other side of the line fence in a large meadow.  Every other year or so we get lucky and have great crops of apples.

This year is one of those years. The last two years were flops as either we had late frosts or terribly dry weather.

The apples are super tart and of slightly different sizes.

Over the years I've become quite good at making apple sauce, apple butter, and apple jelly from picking these wild things. 

Yesterday I picked several apples to see if they would be ready. I chopped some up and dumped them in a sauce pan and the others I dipped in cinnamon and sugar and stuck them in my dehydrator.

I ended up with fresh applesauce and sweet apple chips to take with me hiking for snacks.

See? I can cook!

Since I was doing apples and it was pouring cats and dogs outside on Saturday, I decided to get with the program and dehydrated tomatoes with seasoning along with onions, broccolli and seasonings from the flower gardens.

I packaged everything in small sealed bags that are a bit of each veggie and seasonings for winter use. I'll drop each prepped packet into a stew or soup. I only had 4 tomatoes that needed processing and cooking and canning them was not an option.

I bought a couple of pounds of onions at the farmers market, but we don't use a LOT of onions on a daily basis, so I dehydrated those also.

As I was cutting up the wild tart apples and sorting some for applesauce and the other slices for drying, I kept hearing my grandmother's voice saying things like:

'Waste not, want not.' 

The tomato soup mix stuff went into the freezer next to the little packets of nettles and lamb's quarters for winter eating when fresh veggies were not readily available.

It looks like I may get more veggies this coming week! My son and his fiancé are coming to visit and he is bringing some produce from his garden.

I'm looking forward to the visit. However, Megan is a cook and she can whip up delicious meals from thin air I think. 

That is intimidating! So do I offer them a take out pizza? Or horrify them with an attempt to make 

Meat and Tators?

Decisions, decisions.

In search of ...Fungi and Fun

Finally we have had some rain! It was hard to go out and find one of my favorite things to photograph because it was SO dry! So I went to the creek before the scheduled rains and looked around for...

Fungi....
Mushrooms.....
Tiny stuff found on the forest floor.....

I did find some extremely tiny fungi growing orange and red on moss...on a log in the creek. I actually could not see the individual forms without using the Microscope Mode on the Olympus Tough camera.

These were smaller than the point of a lead pencil!

This is what I found:

Ahhh, here is the totally cool Fungi I found! I love how they lined up on the log and there is a slug that seems to be visiting!

Fungi Family:

The supervisor was checking things out from the log above me:

Of course this was before the weather turned absolutely awful. The temperatures are in the 40's and there has been a bone chilling rain for 24 hrs. .

I pulled apart our cabin heater and cleaned it thoroughly, then got it started to warm up the house. 
Brrr! I cut up a small batch of tomatoes and some apples to dehydrate.
My loyal little soldiers are protecting my lids and jars so when I start making jelly from my summer haul of berries, I will have lids.

The tomatoes are slowly ripening and not many at a time right now.

So there it is. A very dull day. But I got a lot of indoor work done. Including attacking the cob webs downstairs. 

Meanwhile, if the weather stinks...

I'll look for things to do inside....while I wait for it to warm up later this week!

More Covid Diary Thoughts

Morning shots from yesterday, the 13th. I went out to look for Comet Neowise. I did see it!

I was not successful at photographing it, but I did enjoy a long predawn quiet of watching the sky and the fog change with the light.

Up at 4am because...well, because I had to blanch a LOT of green beans and get them ready for the dehydrator. 

I'm in that mode now. The saving produce mode. Pick carrots and green beans as soon as there is enough light. Wash them and trim them on the porch before noon and then set them in the fridge for the next morning.

~~~~~~~~~~

I ran out of freezer bags on Friday and thought since I had to run to the post office to pick up our new mattress I'd ordered, I'd run into WallyWorld and grab some freezer bags.

Imagine my surprise that the shelves were barren. Not only were there no bags of any sort, there were no 'Seal A Meal' items either.

Then of course there were the tourists, or the weekenders. More than one mom with Little Vectors and no masks walking about the store. 

I stopped in my tracks. What has this Covid-19 done to me? I stared at the kids as if I could make them go away and with carefree mask-less attitudes. Was I right? Was I wrong? Was I an idiot? Was I paranoid? Why did I see her and her own kids as dangerous.

6 months ago, I wouldn't have had a second thought.

I grabbed two other items I was looking for and vowed never to return to any store on a Saturday morning.

Ok. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pick the veggies.

Wash the veggies.

Cut them up....

Dehydrate them! 

The cukes went into a refrigerator sweet pickle salad of onions and cukes.

To tell you the truth, I sort of have a love/hate relationship with doing vegetables. I know I will enjoy them in the winter. I sort of resent having to take up a good part of my day caring for them.

I'd much rather plant flowers and mess around with them.

But as my husband likes to point out.

You can't eat pretty flowers.

But, you can put pretty flowers with your unusual dried veggies and do a Still Life photo of them, right?

Just for information. 

That pint jar [vacuum sealed] of green beans hold about 22 servings of green beans for 2 people. I generally mix my dried veggies up in a jar like the carrots and green beans and open them when it is soup making time in the winter.

I toss a handful of dried veggies in the crockpot along with the broth and in about 6 hours, I have some incredible tasting soup.

I am careful to plan ahead and use up the dehydrated veggies during the winter months. Apparently they don't last forever in this state.

Another thought to consider is the storage. I can store more vegetables in a dehydrated state than I can in a freezer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last Covid thoughts for today.

My Grandmother lived through the 1918 Pandemic and WWI. After that she had to deal with Prohibition. The Depression. WWII and raising a family with rations.

I get it now.

I get why Grandpa and she never let one tiny thing go to waste. Why Grandpa would bring home items from the dump. Why he kept every tin can and used it for things like seed starters or earth worm containers when we went fishing.

Why they even kept balls of twine or string. Or...even old bed coils. How they picked up old windows and built a green house...why not even a ratty old shirt got tossed...it could be used for a wash cloth, or...woven into a rag rug.

My grandparents were the original 'up-cycle' folks.

Life has changed.

I used to run to the store just on a whim. I was used to finding what I wanted when I wanted it.

My whole thought on humanity has changed.

...and it

is very 

un--nerving.

What has happened to us?

 

Gardening.

First some photos from the other morning. I thought these were pretty neat. I drove out to a different area to see the foggy sunrise. These were actually taken pre dawn and I was home by the time the sun appeared through the mist.

We had a pretty nasty storm that afternoon that dumped 2 inches of rain in less than a half hour with high winds that toppled our corn.

Thankfully there was no hail so the corn survived.

The photo below is the corn the next morning. But it is upright now.

Before it got too hot, I picked the carrots and the green beans.

Yes, I put a dinosaur in my garden for fun. I sent this to my youngest grandson who adores dinosaurs. He can name the type this is, I can't.

I spent the morning out on the porch with Charlie getting things ready to blanch as soon as we had a break in the weather.

After blanching them, I found to my surprise that I only had enough to make two bags with my vacuum seal!

I had to make a Saturday morning run to the post office to pick up a large parcel that they wouldn't deliver so I thought I'd run to the store to get a roll of bags while I was at it.

WHAT a mistake! 

First, no vacuum seal bags...the shelves were barren. And second? The place was over run with moms and kids with no masks and sense of distancing.

Wait. How did it become this way? One year ago, none of this would have bothered me [the kids and crowds]. 

Anyway thanks to my Kenosha friends I could still dry my carrots and beans and vacuum seal them in pint jars. 

I ordered the bags on line when I got home.

So this is what the carrots look like after being dehydrated.

7 trays of green beans fit in a pint jar, that is about 14 servings.

I will mix and match some of my dehydrated foods to make mixed veggies for soups this winter. It is quite handy to open a jar and shake it up then add it to broth.

I like to also seal the veggies in small frozen packets for meals.

I'll end my Saturday here.

Tomorrow I'll explain my little Bear-y ~~~ Berry adventure.

Gardening and Dehydrating

Oh no! I didn't get dehydrated while gardening!

I got a new food dehydrator and went at it the past few days.

I tried drying herbs last year and some of those grape tomatoes. I still have some excellent dried Kale, Parsley, and onion bits from last year.
However, I used up all of the dried green peppers and basil I had.

My first experiments in dehydrating food were pretty straight forward. I didn't want to use the oven as a dryer so I'd bought a cheap dehydrator last fall. I was looking for an alternate way of preserving foods and not taking up freezer space this year as we have big ol' Black Bart just about ready for 'market'.

Here is the new dehydrator just after I filled up two trays with green beans and two trays with green peppers.

Here is the one tray of green beans after dehydrating.

I vacuum sealed the green beans and stored them away. Even I was amazed at how small these whole meals of beans were reduced to. However, I will more than likely use the frozen ones to go with a regular meal and the dried ones in soups and stews this winter.

Rich and I picked some of the 'wild' apples from the meadow. I found a recipe on line for cinnamon and sugar dried apples. I sliced the apples thinly and didn't bother with peeling them. I dipped them in some vinegar water [which works just like lemon juice to preserve the apple's color] sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar, and then placed them in the dehydrator.

OHH how delicious! It is like having apple pie in your hand!

Shown also are the green peppers and onions. I will grind the onions into onion powder for a spice after I am done drying the rest of the onions.

So while I was letting the dehydrator work its magic, I went out to work on my east flower garden.
Last year it looked like this...

And now?

It is coming along!
[ I may change the shape to make it easier to mow around in the future. ]

Compared to how it looked when I started. Whew...

I put the finishing touches on it and stood back recalling what the pile of bricks, drywall, and nails looked like. The ugly eyesore on the east side of the house. Then I smiled and did a little happy dance.

I have the rest of this side of the house to finish, but that will wait until next year. I have some plants to transplant from a few friend's gardens that will go well with what I have now.
I do love my marigolds in containers, especially the ones in old maple sap buckets.
They are easy to move around. Just pick up the handle and go!
Instant rearranging is so much fun.

I heard my husband tell his daughter "She is out there playing with her buckets again, moving stuff around!"

Saturday was another busy day. We went to a farm in Genoa to get a truckload of hay and spent quite a while visiting. I went with the farmer's wife to admire her gorgeous vegetable garden. We talked plants, gardens, flowers, freezing veggies, and safflower.
I told her about my experimenting with dehydrating and had brought some samples of my dried apples. They all loved them.

We left with our load of hay, a huge bag of sweet corn and safflower petals to dry.

Safflower is the poor person's saffron. I spread this out on the counter overnight.

Then I went to work on processing the corn. I blanched and vaccum sealed about 8 bags for the freezer.

Farmer's wife wanted some lemon basil.
So...instead of running the dehydrator for just two trays of herbs, I decided to see how corn dehydrated.

Well? I bet you are wondering how this all turned out?

I'd call it a success!
My next step is to put a portion of green beans in with the corn and some peppers along with some spices in a vaccum sealed bag and label it 'soup stuff'. I could just grab a package and toss it in a beef broth.

Next up. Apples. More apples!
The cheapskate in me doesn't want to waste all of those superb wild apples growing in the meadow.

Crab Apple Preparation for Jelly

I know, I know. I am the last person to really blog about...ewww....cooking!

I don't consider canning, prepping food for the winter, and making jelly cooking.
As in the type of cooking I dislike. 
Cooking is a derivative of cook a 4 letter word just like bake is.:

Years ago I created a t-shirt. It has a mule head on it and says below:
Cook and bake
are 4 letter 
words
While 
Ride
Is Not!

I picked nearly 4 gallons of crabapples from a tree near work. I had permission and every other year or ... whenever I can get to the tree, I pick crabapples for making jelly. The process itself is very labor intensive, but the beautiful pink jelly that is created is worth the effort.

First I picked. Then I picked over and removed stems while washing them.

I went over this batch pretty carefully. We'd had a bad storm the day before with high winds and some hail, I picked through and tossed the bruised apples.

I'd gone to the garden early to grab any more tomatoes and veggies I could find. The NOAA had predicted storms again for the evening hours so I wanted to make sure I got anything that might get damaged.

I had a huge amount of 'grape' tomatoes along with several romas and beefy tomatoes. Not sure what name those big tomatoes were called, but I washed and sorted out the little ones, the big ones, and the ones that were ripe...and the ones that needed to ripen.

I had Kale and Parsley bunches washed and set aside.
I decided that since I'd be spending the day in the kitchen with the crab apples, I may as well do as much as I could.

I don't like to do all of the apples at once. So I started a batch. I put about a cup and a half of water in with the little red beauties and started them. I get them to simmer until they are mushy and I can crush them with a hand held potato masher.

I looked up different ways to do this and many websites suggested a juicer, or to use a blender to chop up the apples and then squeeze out the juice.

I decided to do it the OLD fashioned way. The way my Grandmother and Mom did it. Besides, I'd always had good results doing it the way I knew best. 

It was going to be an all day project and nothing was going to change that. 
I had all day.

While the crabapples were started, I got busy and put the parsley and kale on the drying trays. I also cut up and onion and sliced grape tomatoes.

I decided to try out a dehydrator. Apparently you can dry tomatoes and the grape or cherry tomatoes were good candidates for drying. I sliced everything up and put it together.

The kale and parsely came out great. I crushed the leaves and put them in containers for soup flavorings this winter.

Now that I know it works well, I'll go out and get more. I may even visit the Farmers Market and find some more spices. 
It is fun to provide for yourself.

Meanwhile the first batch of crabapples were ready. 

The smells in the kitchen were a bit wild. Imagine, onion, kale, parsley, and an overpowering smell of tart apples!

I used Grandma's method of straining the pulp from the juice for the first batch.

Hands down, you can't get more beautiful clear juice doing this any other way. I know folks use cheesecloth, but for pure juice, this is the best.

However I had a time limit and had another batch to do, so I used method number two which also is labor intensive in a way, but allows a bit more pulp to get into the juice.

I took this shot after I'd measured out at least 2 cups. This was towards the end of the 'juicing'. 
Viola!

I ended up with 7 cups of beautiful pink/red tart juice all ready for jelly making!

During my wait time for things to drain and dry, I continued to clear coat the Wainscott wood in the dining area and caught up on laundry.

Busy day, but when it was done, I marveled at the beautiful crabapple juice.

What amazes me is that people rarely plant these trees any more and most folks don't even know that you can create wonderful jellies from this fruit.

I guess it is easier to just go to the super market and buy jelly.

Well I haven't done that since...well...
forever. Once you get a taste for homemade, nothing compares.

Well. Next adventure is to hunt down some wild apple trees and perhaps get some grapes from either the Farmers Market or find someone I can trade some jelly for ... grapes.

Today? 
More food prep.