Recipes from the Harvest Tasting Event

The food was delicious at our harvest tasting event and I requested the recipes to share with you all.  I have received the ones below and would love to receive more to post!

Easy Pickle Recipe from Alan Rollins

4 pounds cucmbers (small or sliced)

2 Tablespoons salt

3 cups water

3 cups vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

3 Tablespoons dill seed

3 teaspoons whole mixed pickling spices

Wash cucumbers

Heat salt, water. vinegar, and sugar together to a boil

Pack cucumbers in clean bottles

Add 1 Tablespoon dill seed, 1 teaspoon pickling spice to each quart bottle

Put on new canning lids

Process for 30 minutes in water bath canner.

 

 

 

 Potimarron Bread by Julie Peterson

15 oz. of Potimarron puree (Potimarron is a small winter squash that has a chestnut flavor)

4 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2/3 cup water

3 cups sugar

3 ½ cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

1.        Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Halve squash lengthwise and remove seeds. Place squash halves, cut side down, on a foil covered cookie sheet. Bake uncovered for 55-60 minutes or until tender. Cool squash completely. Scoop squash pulp from shell using a spoon, into a blender. Blend till smooth. You may need to add a little water to get it smooth.

2.       Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.

3.       In a large bowl, mix together potimarron puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the potimarron mixture until just blended. Pour into pans.

4.       Bake for about 50 minutes in preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Garden Planning

Hopefully your fall/winter garden is doing well.  I've got radishes, lettuce and swiss chard growing nicely.  I'm going to keep planting my winter lettuces and see how long they will grow just out in cold.  I have parsnips that are mulched and I hope to save their seeds next year.

It's time to start planning your spring garden for 2013.  I'm determined to exercise self control and only plant one variety of each plant family to make seed saving easier.  I've coordinated with my mom to plant a different variety and we'll share our harvest with each other.

I found some favorites this year that will definitely be planted again - my favorite is Rattlesnake Snap Bean, it was a prolific grower and delicious fresh and cooked.  I have seeds I saved (not easy to save the first/best pods and not eat them!) and will have them to trade in the spring when we get together.  Another favorite was Red Romaine Lettuce, it was easy to grow, delicious and slow to bolt in the summer, I have seed from this also. Blacktail Mountain Watermelon was another winner, easy to grow (see a pattern here) and delicious, not the best saver - I'm trying one next year that is a long saver.  I didn't save those seeds, that will be project for another year.

Please post your favorites from this year as a comment and let us know why you love them and if you will have seed available!

Garlic

It's not too late to plant your garlic, you can still get your garlic in thru the end of November!  Garlic is very easy to grow and requires little care or fuss.  You plant it in the fall, start watering in the spring when it comes up, and harvest in the summer.  Garlic is grown as clones, like potatoes, so they do not cross pollinate.

When you harvest, you save your biggest, best cloves to replant in the fall.  Each single planted clove grows around 8-10 cloves which a great rate of return.

There are hard neck, and soft neck garlic - hard necks store longer, sometimes until you harvest your next crop, they grow a delicious spear in the early summer called a scape and they are stored with the stems trimmed short.  Soft neck garlic stems can be braided for storage and do not store anywhere as long.


Grocery store garlic is soft neck, and the large cloves are usually Elephant Garlic which isn't a garlic at all, it's a Leek.  The complexity and flavor of garlic will amaze you and it will probably be the easiest thing you grow.