Vegetable Broth & Tomato Rice Loaf Recipe

Hello, friends.  I pulled all the veggie bags for broth from the freezers last evening, and put them on the woodstove to defrost and simmer last night.  After simmering the pots of broth a bit more this morning, I strained and canned it.  There are 16 pints cooling, to add to the pantry shelf.  Yesterday, I thinned the carrots a bit more.  J and I enjoyed them with hummus, and the tops started a new veggie broth bag.    While weeding an herb bed, quite a few wild onions were pulled.  I've also seen them called wild garlic, so maybe I should just say wild alliums.  Whenever I pull them up with the bulb intact, I clean them up, chop off all but the tender portion of stem, and add them to the broth bag.  Though I've used them in a pinch when out of onions or garlic, they are a bit of work, due to the layers of skin, so I prefer to use them this way.  It's easy, and still makes use of them.  We garden organically here, so there are no worries about chemicals.  If you'd like to harvest some, I'd recommend making sure there have been no chemicals sprayed in the area.

I was asked to share the Tomato Rice Loaf recipe, and thought I'd do so in a post, so I can find the recipe here in the future.  I'm not sure where I originally copied this recipe from, but I've been making it for many years.  I've tried adding various herbs at different times, and feel free to do so yourself.  It's not an exciting recipe, but we think it's good, and uses ingredients we have on hand.  

Tomato Rice Loaf

1 medium tomato, chopped                                     1 tbs oil

1 stalk celery, chopped                                            1 tsp garlic powder

2 cups rice, cooked                                                  2 tsp onion powder

1/2 cup bread crumbs                                               Oil for loaf pan

1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350.  In large pan, saute tomatoes & celery.  Add onion and garlic powder, rice, bread crumbs and milk to pan.  Salt to taste.  Mix well and spoon into a well-oiled loaf pan.  Bake for 1/2 hour.

Notes:  This recipe is quite forgiving.  I typically use fresh onion (1/2 small) and garlic (2 cloves) instead of dried, and saute them with the tomato and celery.  For the tomato, I've subbed a handful of grape tomatoes, or often use a pint of home canned tomatoes.  I like it heavier on the tomatoes than the recipe calls for.  For the milk, I've used the tomato juice for a portion of the liquid, and used part or all yogurt, kefir, or half & half instead.  

Early Spring On The Homestead

Hello, friends.  Last week, I got several of the storage butternut squash, peeled and cut them up.  Seeds were saved.  I made squash crumble, and froze bags for two more.  This winter, I was introduced to a new to me kitchen tool, a Kuhn Rikon peeler, which has made peeling winter squash considerably easier, and I no longer have to worry about cutting myself, cutting through thick skin with a knife. When it arrived, I was surprised by how small it was, but it does a fantastic job, and doesn't waste any squash, unlike my usual peeling with a knife.  I learned of it from a chef who shared his favorite kitchen tools.  The squash peelings went into the broth bag.  Butter beans were pulled from the freezer to have with it, and a broccoli salad was made.  Pretty pear and peach blossoms are opening, and the violets and pulmonaria have also begun blooming.

Soup was made using up leftovers.  J put all the partially done compost in the wheel barrow to dry out for a couple of days.  I then sifted it and got around 5 gals, which he spread in the asparagus bed.  We continue collecting warm up water, and use it for flushing and in the woodstove humidifier.  While packing orders and wrapping soap, I enjoyed listening to podcasts.  Tomato rice loaf was made, with peas and a salad.  Most of the winter greens are bolting in the garden.  I harvested the last of the cabbage, and started a small batch of sauerkraut.  The first of the tomatoes are sprouting, three Brandywines so far.  After delivering soap, I went by a thrift store, and bought a lavender cashmere sweater for $3, and a canister for $4.  I drilled holes in the canister, cut a carbon filter, and listed it in my shop.

I transplanted 14 wintersown spinach seedlings into a raised bed.  I also planted a few of the wintersown lettuce, but they came up very thick, and most were too fragile to make it.  I've left the top off the container, so they'll hopefully harden off a bit. Looking through the freezer, I noticed how many bags of grated tromboncino squash there were.  J is avoiding cheese at the moment, which made it a bit tough to find a recipe, but I found a zucchini potato bake to make.  I used the grated squash in place of sliced, and it turned out fine.  I'm beginning to see anole lizards, skinks and frogs on the homestead.  The frogs are making quite a chorus at the pond.  With the leftover squash/potato bake, I made corn on the cob I'd frozen, and we finished the broccoli salad.

J finished putting up the last of insulation and sheetrock in the workshop.  We took out all the leftover insulation and sheetrock, then I cleaned up and swept before mudding the sheetrock where needed.  J requested pasta with olives, and parsley was harvested for it.  On Sunday, my intention was to begin picking up sticks and limbs from the yard, but I started weeding first, which kept me busy for several hours.  Oh well, it all needs to happen.  After that, I cleaned the refrigerator, which sorely needed doing.  I opened a jar of home canned crowder peas, to have with jasmine rice and cauliflower for dinner.  Over the weekend, my sister and I planned an adventure in a few weeks, and I'm pretty excited about it.  It's very nice to have something to look forward to.  Wishing you a most lovely week.

A Happy St. Patrick's Day

Hello, friends.  Last week, there was one huge football of a sweet potato left over, and it was calling me to make pie.  Tuesday was cold and rainy, so that seemed a good day for it.  J had requested baked ziti for dinner, and it was made using our tomatoes, herbs, garlic and onion.  I used a promo code for an order on Vitacost for 15% off the order, got another 8% back through Swagbucks, and bought just enough to get free shipping.  A pot of sweet little daffodils purchased at the grocery store had finished blooming, so I planted them in the ground.  Quite a few of the zebra hollyhocks were up, but all of them were outside the flower bed, so most were dug up and returned to the bed, and a new spot got the extra three.  The new spot is across from the workshop window where I'll be packing orders, so I hope they do well there.  

I picked daffodils, forsythia and a hellebore for a bouquet one day, and more daffodils and forsythia another day.  On St. Patrick's Day, I harvested a cabbage, and made colcannon and Smitten Kitchen's Irish soda bread scones.  I made the cake flour it calls for, using her instructions of 1c flour and 2 tbs corn starch sifted twice.  I wandered the homestead, looking for a 4 leaf clover, and found a 5 leaf!  After dinner, J took me to our new local wine bar, to have a drink to celebrate the 14th anniversary of our first date.  There was only one other person in there, so social distancing was not an issue.  On the trip to Asheville with my SIL last year, I gathered four fruits of the kousa dogwood, which had fallen where we had parked.  They'd been in the refrigerator cold-stratifying ever since, but I got them planted over the weekend.   I've been wanting one of these for quite a while, and hope some of the seeds germinate.

A clump of red sorrel/bloody dock was divided in 4 and transplanted.  The thornless blackberry and raspberries were pruned.  I took 3  blackberry cuttings, used root hormone, and am trying to propagate them. While wandering the woods, I came across a cluster of plants along the creek.  I thought they looked similar to heuchera, and the LeafSnap app indeed came up with heuchera americana, or alumroot.  I'm thinking I found another cluster of them in a different spot last year, along the creek bank as well.  J put the ceiling insulation in the workshop.  I assisted him in putting up the ceiling sheetrock between painting orders. He got all the potatoes planted, and planted lots more than usual.  Our recent harvests have been pitiful, so we're hoping we'll have plenty of potatoes this year.  He amended the truck tool box we use to start seeds in, and planted 9 varieties of tomatoes, 3 peppers, and 3 eggplant.  I made name tags by cutting up old mini blinds.  

My sister asked me Saturday morning if I'd like to go to an outside event that afternoon, where they closed off the street, so restaurants could expand outdoors.  We had a fantastic meal, and supported a local business.  Plus, I brought home a piece of their yummy strudel.  It was a lovely way to celebrate the first day of spring.  Sadly, we lost a hen last week.  They all seemed fine when I let them out in the morning, but by early afternoon, one was struggling to breathe.  I made up some Vet Rx and put it beneath her head, but J found her dead when he went to close them up that evening.  That's the fastest we've ever lost one, besides predator attacks.  The grape hyacinths have just begun blooming, adding a bit of purple to the yellow and white blooms.  Happy Spring!

March Meals & the Garden

Hello, friends.  Lately, I've been getting bored with the usual lunch choices.  One day, I decided to make some shell pasta, and sauteed a few mushrooms with garlic, then added some cream and fresh parsley to top the pasta, along with grated Romano cheese.  It was good, and a nice change.  I pulled our lima beans, spaghetti squash and lambs quarter from the freezer for a dinner, and made cranberry relish with the last of the cranberries, an apple, juice of an orange, and a handful of blueberries that needed using.  The squash and lambs quarter dish used the last of the cream that needed using.  Another dinner was The Prudent Homemaker's black bean burgers with a Mexican quinoa dish.  A green salad was made, which used our home canned pickled beets.  The seed potatoes arrived, and are in pans in the studio, developing eyes.

It had been a month since I cleaned the bird feeders, so I cleaned them and the birdbaths again with 10% bleach solution, to avoid spreading mycoplasma among the finches.  I've only seen a rare bird since the first cleaning with sickly looking eyes, and nothing as bad as before the cleaning.  If you'd like to learn more about it, Julie has an excellent post on mycoplasma.  A sweater was mended.  Hummus was made for lunches.  The workshop porch and steps were sealed.  Laundry was hung on the line.  For a dinner, I topped cheese ravioli with sauteed garlic, mushroom, and chopped frozen parsley.  Another dinner was baked sweet potatoes, roasted asparagus and pinto beans, with home canned applesauce.  J tilled up the garden, took down the trellis, and amended the soil where the potatoes are going.  I pruned the fruit trees in the pond garden, and pulled up all the wild blackberry and grape vines I could, then cut the rest at ground level.

We dropped our taxes off at the accountant's.  Orders were powder coated on Saturday, including an extra one J had made, but afterwards I realized I mixed up two of them, and will have to repaint both the proper colors.  We continue heating with firewood, though there was one warm day and night we did not need any heat.  I enjoyed oatmeal with our frozen blueberries and figs.  Repainting the two stands was a major hassle, but after two tries for one and three tries for the other, we decided they were good enough.  My mistake was in not looking at the order slips, and just going on auto-pilot.  I'm usually better with details, but this one slipped by me.  I needed a simpler dinner than what I had planned, so veggie chik patty sandwiches were made, with our dill pickles, and a salad.  I don't know if it's the time change, or a shift in energies, but I hope the coming week will be gentler on us than the weekend was.  Wishing you a gentle week as well.  

The Power of Color

Hello, friends.  Last week, I harvested lettuce and thyme.  The wintersown lettuce is now up, as well as spinach, marigolds, hollyhocks, scabiosa, cosmos and Hopi dye sunflowers.   The stovetop was cleaned with homemade thieves vinegar and baking soda.  Fire cider was strained, and honey added.  To use up several leftovers, vegetable soup was made for lunches, which also used our canned tomatoes, fresh cabbage and carrots, garlic and last year's frozen peas.  The dehydrated garlic was ground into powder, and another tray of garlic was dehydrated.

After talking with J about David the Good's video on the trench biochar method, he said he thought what was left in the woodstove with the ashes every time he cleaned it out was the same thing.  So I sifted the ashes out of what was in the ash bucket.  Once I get a full 5 gal bucket of the charred pieces, I'll charge it with compost tea.  I spread the ashes around fruit trees.  A dozen eggs were shared with a friend.  I made cabbage and noodles with our cabbage, and sweet potato muffins with leftover sweet potatoes and soured milk.  Laundry was hung on the line.  Face masks were hand washed and hung on the line.  On the way home from dropping recyclables off at the dump, I got gas for the push mower, then mowed the edges of the asparagus patch, around a fig tree, a persimmon seedling, and a flower bed.  Somehow, when the guys mow, these areas are almost always missed, so I wanted to start out with some clean edges.  

For a dinner, I made autumn succotash, using some of our butternut squash.  Three more containers were wintersown... butterfly weed, woad, and dyer's coreopsis.  A patch of poppies was direct seeded.  On Saturday, I powder coated lots of orders.  A flower bed was weeded, a volunteer bachelor button was transplanted, and a goji berry was pruned.  A jar of our red noodle beans was cooked in the wok, to go with mushroom gravy over jasmine rice.  The windows for the workshop were all salvaged and are different.  The two with wood frames happen to be the most visible, and were painted in spring green on the outside.  I'm planning on making flower beds beneath these two windows, and putting a flower box at one.  J finished putting all the flooring down in the workshop, and built the steps up to the porch.  The walls took some hits, so I need to mud some places before I put the second coat of paint on.  Slowly but surely, we're getting there.  

I've been thinking about color, and the power it has to soothe or excite, make us happy or sad, even make us hungry (it's said red does that).  The recent blooms are surely making me happy.  If I'd have tried, I couldn't have matched the new flannel sheets to our walls any better.  They didn't look like they were a lavender blue on my monitor, and were just named "Blue", so I was pleasantly surprised they were such a good match.  After looking at a load of laundry from the house, it made me smile to see they were hung pretty similar to the color wheel, though I wasn't aware of it at the time.  Other than the 3 containers from a few days ago, most of the wintersown plants are germinating, which is pretty exciting.  The peas are slow to germinate, with only five up.  I'll give them a little longer, then will reseed some spots.  

J has been working on the garden plan for the year.  He's going to move the trellis we grow tromboncino on, as they've grown in the same spot the past two years.  We're taking down the long PVC "house" we tried growing corn in.  I don't have anything on my calendar this coming week, and hope to spend some time working on the workshop, and in the yard and garden.  I learned a few things while reading Margaret's post about companion planting.  A few things I plan to try are planting nasturtiums in with the squash, radishes with the eggplant and possibly tomatoes, and sweet alyssum with the lettuce.  Hopefully, our garden will continue to just get better each year.  Wishing you a most colorful week, friends.

The First Blooms

Hello, friends.  Last week, for a dinner, I made salad with recently harvested kale, baked some of our sweet potatoes, pulled a bag of turnips from the freezer for J, and steamed asparagus.  I've been regularly taking empty canning jars out to storage, as we use them up.  The canned and frozen produce from our garden is providing a good portion of our meals, which is as it should be during the winter.  We're still getting plenty of rain, but Tuesday was sunny and in the 60's, so I cleaned up the porch, swept the walk, pruned butterfly bushes, pomegranates and roses, and cleaned up a portion of a flower bed.  I also winter sowed marigolds, sunflowers, lettuce and spinach.  Here and there, spring cleaning urges are beginning, and I've been  tackling some small areas.

I was able to hang out three loads of laundry.  J requested an apple pie, which used the last canned apple pie filling in storage.  Hummus was made for lunches.  I weeded the asparagus patch on a warm day, and J planted onions, a mix of red, yellow and white.  While cleaning up the asparagus patch, I pulled three wild onions, and added them to the broth bag in the freezer.  For a dinner, I made pasta sauce, which used our canned tomatoes and summer squash, fresh rosemary and frozen basil.  Garlic was used in the sauce and a winter salad with our mixed greens.  I sanded all the screw heads in the workshop walls which our son mudded last weekend, and J installed the vent and ventilation fan.  We figured out the remainder (hopefully) of what we need to buy for the workshop, and I used my Lowes cc to get 5% off, which will get paid off when the bill arrives.  

On the way to meet my sister, I picked up a requested library book.  I redeemed a $4 reward at Food Lion, and got gas for .06 less than locally, which saved .50.  M gets Smithsonian magazine, and knows I enjoy it, so he let me read it before he did.  Some bananas bought recently did not want to ripen, so I put them in a paper bag with an apple, and they finally ripened.  Popcorn was made for a snack one night.  I harvested more oregano than needed, and dried the remainder.  For a dinner, I pulled our butter beans from the freezer.  I intentionally made extra brown rice, and the next night made fried rice with frozen mixed vegetables and leftover roasted asparagus.  Yogurt was made, and a bag of pureed pumpkin was used to make dog treats.  I cut them in half to keep the pups calories down, and they don't seem to mind a bit.  A few years ago, I read Compost Everything by David the Good, which was an interesting read.  I've recently found his blog and youtube channel, which has really inspired me to try some things to make better soil.  Though J and I have gardened for decades, by ourselves and together, we still have some serious challenges in the garden.  I really believe building healthier soil will make a big difference.  As a start, I pulled all the brown comfrey leaves in the garden, and started a bucket of compost tea.

I weeded carrots and beets, and thinned the carrots.  The pups are getting the smallest ones.  I enjoyed some fresh, and in a salad.  The carrot greens will all be going in the vegi broth bag.  A loaf of raisin zucchini bread was pulled from the freezer.  Sunday morning, I felt like sweet potato pancakes, so before I set out on my walk, I put a few of the smallest ones on to boil, and made pancakes when I returned, using some milk that was starting to sour.  I recently bought two sets of sheets, the first new ones I've bought in around 30 years.  During that time, I picked them up at thrift stores, and enjoyed mixing and matching sets, but many have been tearing.   I bought good quality new ones, one flannel, and the other summer weight organic cotton, which should last for many years.  Both were on sale, as is typical this time of year.  I got 5% back through Swagbucks for one set.  More fruit trees and shrubs were pruned.  The first of the hellebores and daffodils began blooming, and the first of the wintersown containers has sprouted.  I do believe spring can't be too far away.  Wishing you a most lovely week.