Ambergris

Nobody remembered to thaw anything, so we're having omelet again tonight.

Luckily, I'm really fond of omelet.

Toast. I don't feel well.

Broccoli, onion, and mushroom stir fry, macaroni with Velveeta, and chocolate cake. DS1 cooked tonight.

I didn't check the links, but have you seen one of the recipes for zucchini "noodles"?

http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/hortcult/treeshru/whipgrftg.htm

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/dg0532.html

The Japanese persimmons, kakis, are as big as apples, and some of them are not astringent--you can eat them before they're fully ripe without wanting to sandpaper your mouth afterward. You can spread out the season and be harvesting fresh simmons from mid-October through Christmas. Some of them can be dried, although I've not been happy with the result, and the Japanese ones are easier to pulp and freeze.

Vegetable soup, eaten hot with cornbread yesterday. Today I ate the soup cold, like gazpacho, with home-made cheese crackers. The kids, who aren't fond of soup, cooked hamburgers.

I finally found some more persimmon trees on the property! Kinda embarrassing that it took me this long to find them, since we've lived here 6 years, but oh well! We did have a couple in the horse field, but the horses chewed all the bark off of them. (They had plenty of food, they were just bored I guess.) So those finally died last year. I was so bummed out about it too! I was planning on buying some more trees, but they take so long to reach production age. I'm still planning on getting some, but at least these will tide me over until the planted ones start producing. I absolutely LOVE persimmon pudding! We have the Covered Bridge Festival every year here in Indiana, and that's something I have to have. Persimmon pudding and persimmon ice cream. I already have a little bit of pulp in the fridge, I'm gonna be out there everyday scouting for them now!

Hurray! I'm assuming what you found was the American? You can graft kaki on those Virginiana, you know.

Bean soup with cornbread.

French-cut green beans, angel-hair pasta with sauteed onions, chicken chunks baked with garlic and parmesan, and sliced tomatoes.

Pink kidney beans make really good burger patties. I like to mash at least half of them with a potato masher before forming a patty to quickly fry in bacon grease.

Half-mashed the same way, pink beans are really, really good in meatloaf.

Black eyed peas (canned, frozen, or fresh-picked) taste greener (less meaty, more vegetable-y) in a sandwich than pink beans do, but that might be because all my pink beans are dried and most of my black eyed peas (including the pinkeye purple hulls) aren't. Or it might be because I just mash leftover peas to a thick goop to spread over toasted bread, while with pink beans I like to make a patty and cook (or re-cook) it like a hamburger patty.

Thank you, Lau3Turtle. I rinsed it but perhaps not well enough. It had the same sort of tooth-scraping near-bitter taste I get from pecans. As sensitive as I am to bitter tastes, I think I need a lot more sauce or a lot less quinoa.

For the soup, I chipped up chicken thighs, garlic, and onions, and browned them together. Deglazed the pan into a pot, and added a can of chopped baby corn and half a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, and while it thawed a little went out in the yard and picked up garlic chives to mince in, ginger to grate in, and two stalks of lemon grass. Mixed up enough white sauce from powdered milk to bring it together. I had planned to freeze the leftovers in cups for lunches, but even with the sandwiches there nothing was left over. Previously, I've made this with a can of cream of mushroom soup, a can of chopped baby corn, and some chopped leftover chicken, but I wanted something a touch racier because school's starting and we can use the immunity boost.

Thank you, LAU3Turtle. And welcome to Mrs. S!

Soup (cream of chicken with Chinese vegetables) and sandwiches.

Quinoa with stir-fried mushrooms, lentils, tomatoes, black olives, sliced garlic, scallions, and eggs, with feta and a bit of cider vinegar sprinkled over the top.

Next time I'm going to try barley instead of quinoa. It's much cheaper, it tastes better, and I have a reasonable grasp of what "a serving" means.

lamb, sweet potatoes, and chick peas

Scrambled eggs with salsa and cheese.

I would love to have someone come remove all the Peruvian lily and tradescantia from my yard.

Two weeks ago when I dried some hash browns I half filled a pint jar and pulverized them into a powder. They are a little grainy, but hey they take up less space and if I get hungry enough I'll eat them. Any jar that a standard ring will fit will fit the blender.

 

 

 

John

It's been a very long week. I was sitting here wondering why you'd be drying hash brownies.

Rats! I saw this and thought CookieJar was back.

If I lived in your climate and planted any now, I'd try to give them P and K fertilizer but no extra Nitrogen. If you put something in the ground now and gave it plenty of nitrogen to shoot out lots of new green, how much of that new green will still be soft and vulnerable when your winter freezes hit?

Redeemed my coke reward points for a free AMC movie ticket and large soda voucher. Harry Potter, here I come.

Wait, what?

Score! DH saw a leather couch sticking out of a dumpster. He climbed in with his knife and climbed out with six big (18-22" x 24-30") swatches of upholstery-grade leather, plus a lot of scraps. He said he'd have brought more if he had a car instead of a backpack (and arms) to carry it home in.

What some people throw away!

I keep waiting to hear about noodlers catching water mocs. I guess they don't survive to tell the tale.

Hudson's is not printing a paper catalog this year. Here's a link to the list with two kinds of sorghum on it. http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/Supplement%202011%20Vegetables.htm

I put water in the half-empty bottles in the shower. My bet is that nobody notices.