Cream of Celery Soup

I'm still here just way busy with a full-time job and three teenagers.  Oldest monkey is now a college freshman.  Can you believe it? 

I still have my garden, but don't grow as much as I did before going back to work full-time.  Now, I am concentrating on growing things that are hard to come by at the grocery store or farmers' market.  We receive a produce share every two weeks for the regular vegetables.  I currently grow edemama, swiss chard, herbs and other things that are either very expensive or hard to find fresh.  Heirloom tomatoes can break the bank, so I have at least 10 of those plants each spring and fall. 

The produce share is pretty amazing.  It is about 40 pounds or more of fresh often local produce for $25.  Only problem is sometimes it is hard to use it all up.  We don't always eat meals together every evening and I certainly don't have time to cook every day.  We end up with extra stuff that either gets fed to the rabbits or composted.  I'm trying to stop that.  Soup uses up a bunch of veggies.  Today I made cream of celery soup and I will never buy canned stuff again. Our broccoli cheese casserole will be made with homemade cream of celery this year.  

While the recipe is super easy you will need a wand blender or a standing blender that can handle hot stuff.  Also, you have to make a roux.  I know some people struggle with that, but it is really just a matter of patience and heat control. 

4 ribs of celery (break them a few times crosswise and strip out some of the strings)
1 onion
1 tablespoon of butter
1/8 cup of olive oil
1 tablespoon of ham or chicken base or a cube of bouillon.
Roux
1/2 cup of milk

Chop the celery and onion up into small pieces and sauté in the oil and butter until tender.  Cover with water and cook until very soft.  Add the ham base (or chicken base or chicken bouillon) and blend until smoothish.  I like a little texture.  Make the roux.  Stir the milk into the roux and heat until slightly thickened.  Add the milk/roux to the celery and onions and mix well.  Eat.

Roux
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
handful of bread flour

Over medium heat stir together until it turns a little brown and feels creamy = roux.

Gnome Mosaic

Boo

Boo from The Library

Favorite Picture

Refrigerator Pickles

My cucumbers turned out not to be cucumbers.  I think they are musk melons, but not sure yet.  What I planted were Soyo Long seeds.  Apparently, there were musk melon seeds in the compost and they germinated instead of the cucumber seeds.  Oh well, I can try again in the fall. 

My mother, on the other hand, who usually struggles with plants, has a fantastic garden this year.  Her cucumbers are epic.  So I am getting nine to twelve inch long cucumbers from her.  The first one I took home was so big, it was super bitter.  The only thing to do with a bitter cucumber, is make pickles.  We make dill pickles as well as sweet and sour pickles.  That one giant cucumber made three large jars of pickles.  Two dill one sweet and sour.  The Baby Manimal ate almost all of those pickles and left the brine in the refrigerator.  I have another long, but not bitter cucumber from mom's garden.  I had been eating on it (to big to eat in one setting), but it was starting to get a little soft.  I simply sliced it up and put it in the brine and put that back in the refrigerator.  In a day or two there will be pickles.  They won't last as long as pickles that are processed in a water bath.  That wont matter here, because they will be eaten long before they can go bad.

 
Mom and her J is for Jumbo cucumber :)

Pickled Onions

We began participating in a produce share group a few months ago.  The way it works is a friend, Michelle, and her husband, Paul, get up at some insane hour before dawn twice a month and go to The Dallas Farmers Market.  Before each shopping trip, Michelle speaks to some vendors about what is in season, fresh, and good.  They go to market, load up the fruits and veggies from the different vendors, take the haul home, and split it up.  A quick check on the produce groups' Facebook page shows 41 members.  Looks like about 15 families participate twice a month.  For $25 we get what feels like 40 pounds of produce every two weeks.  This is a really good deal.  Here is where it gets hinky, I still have my garden and it was onion pulling time a few weeks ago, which coincided with cheap, in season, local onion time.  Between the garden and my produce share, I have onions running out my ears.  I did make baked onion rings, which were very very good.  Recipe to follow. 

Today we went to Twisted Root in Dallas for yummy yummy burgers.  I have mine without the bun = "Burger in a Bowl" to accommodate my special diet needs.  Twisted Root is a really cool resteraunt.  They serve excellent food, have a staff with a great sense of humor, and they are green.  The following is lifted from their website " We r freak’n Green. Everything disposable is biodegradable. Even our cleaning products r Green!"  Check out their website here -> http://twistedrootburgerco.com/wordpress/menu/.   My burger/salad had some nice pickled onions on it.  Hello, I have onions running off of my table and across the kitchen floor.  I should make pickles out of them. 

The recipes I found online suggested using red wine vinegar with a some distilled white vinegar and a little sugar and salt.  I think no problem, I've got that.  Nope, I have several bottles of vinegar - not one of them red wine.  I do, however, have more than one bottle of balsamic vinegar.  Substitution?   The pickled onions I made are tasty, but they are not pretty.  Red wine vinegar made the pickled onions at Twisted Root a nice pink.  My pickled onions are sort of the color of coffee.  Next time, I will use red wine instead of balsamic. 

Recipes

Baked Onion Rings
Thick sliced white and yellow onions
Flour
Bowl of Water
Bowl of milk and egg (equal amounts egg and milk)
Bread Crumbs

Separate the onions into rings and put them in the bowl of water.  Dredge with flour (take them out of the water first ;), dip in egg mixture and then coat with bread crumbs.  Bake at 375 until crispy.  Next time I am going to spray them with a light coat of olive oil. 

Pickled Onions
Slice onions very thin.  (I used red onions)
Place them in a sauce pan and add equal parts red wine vinegar and white vinegar to cover. 
Add a little water
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar. 

Bring this to a boil and remove from heat.  Let sit until onions are soft.  Eat as soon as they are cool enough.  I am going to store them in a covered bowl and use them up fast.  I don't feel like this is a "safe" recipe for canning.  I plan to eat them in fewer than four days.

Winter Sprouts

I know it is winter, but I want to garden NOW.  There is a little bit of stuff out there including onions, garlic, cabbages and Brussels sprouts, but I want more.  My boss gave me a homemade seed sprouting set up for my birthday .  This includes a cool old Mason jar, the collar to the  Mason jar and a square of tulle.  She shared plain radish seeds and a salad mix of broccoli, radish and alfalfa seeds.  We have already started and finished on "crop" of radish sprouts and are now three days into another batch.  Since the middle Manimal (sorry they grew out of monkeyhood) will not stay out of them, I  started another jar this afternoon.     So now I have both plan radish sprouts and the salad mix growing in my cupboard.  Sweet right, gardening indoors and in the dark.

Here are the steps.  It is beyond easy.  Get a clean canning jar with a collar and a piece of tulle.  If you can't find a canning jar a regular glass jar will work just use a rubber band instead of the collar.  Find some seeds to sprout.  We bought ours at a local natural food market.  I also have seeds I've saved from the garden including broccoli, collards and Chinese greens that I will sprout soon.  Put about a tablespoon or so of seeds in the bottom of the jar and let them soak in a little water for about an hour.  Cover the top of the jar with the tulle and secure it with the canning collar a sturdy rubber band.  Drain off the water pretty well and put the jar in a cool dark place like a cupboard.  Wait.  In a day they will be germinating.  In about four days you can eat them, although they will be a little crunchy, which I like.  In five to six days they are ready to go.  Don't save them for special, you want to eat them young and fresh.  .

Changes

Today was the second to last day of my short career at a local garden center.  Ron's Organics is a great place to work and I will miss it, however, a full-time job at the library opened up for me and I can't let that opportunity slip by.  Plus, I got a little overexcited about the fall seed order and I'm a little afraid they may call the mental health authorities.

Because I was working two jobs and mostly seven days a week during the busy season, my spring/summer garden suffered.  It did okay, but nothing to brag about.  I was gardening vicariously through the garden center customers and my friend, Brenda Gardner-Newby.  More about her later.  No, I didn't make up that name.  

Today I left the garden center a little early.  This gave me plenty of daylight to get some of the fall garden put in.  I planted broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprout plants.  I started broccoli raab, an heirloom broccoli called Di Cicco, and collard green seeds.  These will be transplanted in about six weeks.

Over the weekend, I put in my garlic.  I also took another shot at artichokes and quinoa.  I had limited success with quinoa a few years ago.  I have managed to keep a relative of artichoke, cardoon, alive for many years.  I figure if I can't grow a thistle, I better get a new obsession hobby.

Tonight, I am going through my seed box and finding everything else I can grow in my garden this winter.  I intend to plant every inch of it.  I want to have enough to share with friends, family and maybe even a local food pantry.

Happy Fall Everyone.

Don't forget to grow your garlic.

Nasty Little @#$%^@#s

You may or may not know, North Texas is in the middle of a West Nile epidemic.  There have been 207 confirmed cases and ten deaths in Dallas County according to NBC Channel 5.  One of the fatalities was a gentleman who lived in my work-hometown.  The City of Dallas is planning an areal spray program.  I hate to think of all the poor innocent bugs that are going to get wiped out when that starts.  I am very concerned about honey bees.  We NEED our honey bees.

The way I handle the mosquito situation at Casa Debbi is mosquito dunks.  The dunks contain Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israelensis.  Let's just call that BTi, mkay?  BTi is a bacteria that is toxic to mosquito and black fly larvae. You simply place a dunk in standing water, say your rain barrels, and the BTi takes care of the larvae.  So if you live in an area where West Nile virus is a problem or mosquitoes just make you mad, get some mosquito dunks and kill those wiggly little babies.

Read more on this at The Texas Triffid Ranch.

Gardening ADD

I'm pretty sure I have ADD. I've been wandering around outside in my garden and inside my home.  I started out trying to get a raised vegetable bed planted.  Then I needed compost.  In order to get compost, I had to hire help.  Help does not have ADD and the compost is coming along nicely.  Then I was going to make compost tea, but saw a caterpillar.  Of course I had to find my camera and post a picture of the caterpillar on Facebook.  Suddenly, I couldn't remember the task at hand.  Compost employee, a.k.a. Middle Monkey, gently reminds me I am supposed to be making compost tea.  He might have used the words scatter brains.  I make the compost tea and decide a friend really needs some rabbit poo.  Compost employee bags up the poo.  I take the poo inside, remember my glass of water and put the poo down.  Spend the next 10 minutes hunting for a bag of poo.  Decide that I need to spray some weeds (don't worry all I use is vinegar and orange oil) and make up spray.  Go spray 1/4 of the weeds, get bored and come back inside.  Waste 15 minutes on the Internet.  At that point, I actually weeded the raised bed.  It was a miracle. No, the raised bed is not planted yet.  I'm blaming the compost employee.

Happy Spring.

I'm out this morning doing a having a little pruning and planting therapy.  I am stunned at the things that didn't die last summer.  My viburnum, mock orange and Maggie rose have all returned from the dead.  The only thing I know for sure that didn't make it was a very large prostrate rosemary.  I will miss it so.

This year I'm going to try a small watermelon called Minnesota Midget.  Four seeds in containers and five in the ground.  I hope it works because we need short tomato vines for our small garden.  We don't want another repeat of "The Attack of the Giant Pumpkin Vine."

Hope all your gardens are growing well.


Happy Spring.

and here is a present for Our Friend Ben.  

Indoor Garlic

Last year, I did not grow enough garlic.  It is almost impossible to grow enough garlic.  This year I think I did better and will certainly let them stay in the ground longer to develop better cloves.  Anyhow, I did grow garlic indoors last year.  Very simple.  All you need is a nice, small container, three or so garlic cloves, good potting soil and a bright spot to put it, like the kitchen window.  Pot ups the garlic cloves pointy end up, water the potting soil and wait.  You will be amazed how fast this stuff grows.  To use it, just clip what you need off the green tops.  Don't forget to use it, it gets leggy fast.  The taste is actually a little more intense than garlic cloves.  Enjoy. 

BTW garlic from the grocery store is just fine.  That is what I used in the picture above.

Smaller Pants

I haven't lost any measurable weight in the last month.  The last date I measured weight loss was New Years Day.  I did, however, lose a pant size.  Back on April 1st 2010, I was a size sixteen.  Today, I am in a size ten.  My goal size is an eight.  Pretty happy about this. 

To jump start a little more weight loss, I made cabbage soup today. 

2 cups shredded cabbage
1 celery stalk
1/2 cup chopped green onion
1/2 teaspoon Better Than Bouillon Chicken
3 cups water
Olive oil
Cider vinegar
Hot sauce (think Tabasco) but mine is homemade
Sesame seed oil
Olive oil
Saute the vegetables in olive oil until soft.  Add the Better than Bouillon and water.  The other ingredients are to taste so have at it. 

Mine is so good it is making my nose run.

So Help Me, I'll Turn off the Comments if Y'all Act Ugly

There has been a lot of anger in the garden blogging community about a certain nonprofit and a certain corporation hooking up.  I don't have ties to either organization and am not here to comment on them.  I am going to voice my opinion  about pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer.

I am an organic gardener.  I have been since I was 12 years old and my dad made me sick putting a synthetic pesticide on my first little vegetable garden.  I have used organic pesticides off and on and now only use soap and diatomaceous earth and only when I absolutely have to.  I have found that it is smarter to plant when the bugs are not active.  Tomatoes in the spring/early summer before the red spider mites show up and squash and beans in late summer/early fall after the squash bugs have moved on.  Your results may vary.  This way I hope not even to need soap next year.  The DE is used as needed against fire ants.  Fire ants are from the devil. I don't know of one single pesticide organic or synthetic that only kill one kind of bug.  If it can kill your cabbage looper it can kill your butterfly caterpillars.  I want my butterflies to live here, make babies here and let those babies eat my passion vine.  I also want bees to come and visit my flowers.  I want lady bugs to eat the aphids.  I want to want praying mantis, but they sort of scare me.  Look up and one of them is staring at me like I might be good for lunch.  Shudder.

The only herbicides I use are my own two hands and mulch.

Fertilizers I love me some fertilizer.  I use blood meal, bone meal, bat guano and liquid fish.  These are great products that don't reek of ammonia.  Well, the bat guano reeks of ammonia.  And here is where I take a stand, ANY of these things can pollute if they are used incorrectly.  Algae in our lakes doesn't care if that nitrogen is organic or not.  Nitrogen is nitrogen is nitrogen.  I take extreme care in making sure I use my products properly and keep it out of the water.  Never never never intentional fertilize before a rain event.  Don't dump anything down the drain.  Never over fertilize.  Make sure I water it in well when I do.

Finally, compost compost compost.  Make it, turn it , use it.  Good for the garden and the landfill.

Winter Herbs for North Texas

We have rain yipeee.  Making spaghetti for dinner tonight and needed herbs regardless of the rain.  Yes, I was the crazy person cutting herbs in the rain. 


The herbs I was able to harvest fresh for the sauce were Mexican mint marigold and oregano.  I grow both regular oregano and golden oregano.  The golden is just for looks.  Mexican mint marigold tastes a lot like tarragon.  I've actually seen it labeled Texas tarragon in some garden centers.  I have basil that I put up back in late summer and garlic I put up last spring.  These are the four must have herbs for our sauce.  I also use the leaves of garlic that is growing in the garden during the winter, once I run out of whatever garlic I put up in the spring.  This doesn't appear to effect the garlic cloves at all.  I will also grow some garlic on my windowsill here for the next few months until the garlic in the garden is ready to pull. 

I'm grateful that we are able to grow some of our food at this time of year because of our mild winters.  When it is freezing cold in February, I wil most likely not be so enthusiastic.


Short list of herbs that grow well in the winter in north Texas
Garlic
Onions
Mexican mint marigold
Oregano
Cilantro

Can you grow herbs at this time of year?  If so, what kind?

Monkey Talk

Conversation with previously sick monkey. "I thought you were sick, why are your eating a taco?" "I was sick, I'm not now. I'm going to eat this taco." Me "Okay, you are ready to go to school tomorrow." Him, "No, I'm sick" Me "so you are not going to eat that taco?" Him, "No so I get to stay home. " Me, "I'm going to eat the last taco". Him, "No you aren't. I guess I'm going to school."

Storing Endive

I saw a Pinterest pin that showed how to make salad ahead in a mason jar.  The information said that as long as the dressing didn't touch the lettuce it would stay good for several days.  I have endive growing like crazy this year.  I picked a little more than we needed for our salad about ten days ago, cut up the excess and put it in a mason jar.  I expected to use it in just a couple of days.   Well, the usual happened.  The monkeys shoved it behind a gallon of milk and a bottle of BBQ sauce and I forgot about it.  This afternoon, I discovered it.  It was surprisingly still pretty fresh, at least the top half.  So I am cutting up another couple of heads, putting one jar in our fridge and one jar in the fridge at work.  This time, I promise not to forget about it.

Rain

It has been raining since about midnight last night.  There is standing water in the yard and garden.  It is the most beautiful sight.  We have had such a dry year.  Everyone is on water restrictions.  Some worse than others because of  zebra muscles in Lake Texoma. 

The animals are not nearly as excited about the rain as their mama.  The manx are giving me dirty looks.  It seems that they think I caused the rain.  (wish I had that super power).  Abby stood by the backdoor to be let out, took a few steps into the yard and got a "forget this" look on her face and came back in. 

Here is hoping this helps fill up our lakes. 

Dear 2011

Dear 2011,

It was a mixed bag.  Manly was on blood thinners for half the year.  We didn't find out that the blood clot had cleared until September.  Finding out that he no longer had the blood clot was the biggest surprise blessing of the year.  The doctors told us he would probably have it for life.  We are so grateful this is over.  The silver lining in this is that it made us truly appreciate our health and each other.

We also found out that all three of the boys and I have a weird type of diabetes called MODY2.  Nothing to do for it but watchful waiting and limiting simple carbohydrates in our diet.   My doctor does not feel that my blood sugar levels are high enough, at this point, to prescribe medication.  There is no approved medication for children.  Although this is not good news, it did cause me to make some major changes in my own life.  On April Fool's Day, I changed my diet.  I now eat mostly lean protein, dairy and vegetables. This keeps my blood sugar in a healthy range.  Over the last nine months, I have lost 33 lbs.  This is a very very good thing. This fall I also began jog/walking or wogging ;) and yoga. 

The horrible drought took all the pleasure out of my summer and fall garden this year.  We have had rain recently, so I am enjoying my winter garden.  Here is hoping that this next year the drought breaks completely.
 
I want to focus on the good and not the bad.  May 2012 bring more blessings and fewer stressful situations. I am going to forge ahead into the new year with focus and intent to parent my best,  show gratitude for the love and support of a good man and create the best life I can for all of us.

Goodbye, 2011.

Aunt Debbi

Oh, and I intend to get my sense of humor back here on this silly little blog :)

Asian Greens Soup

I have some sort of Asian green that comes up in my garden every year when the weather cools down.  I usually just cut it and share it with my coworker, Kathy.  Today, I decided to make myself some Asian greens soup.  Simple as can be and yummy. 

Handful of greens chopped
1 teaspoon chicken Better than Boullion
2 cups of water
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Make chicken broth, wilt the greens in it, add the lemon juice and enjoy. 

Now I will go outside and plant some Swiss chard.