admin's blog

I was horrified when asked this weekend what I was planning for the following weekend for Labor Day. I had no ideas Labor Day had snuck up on me. I always throw a party for Labor Day weekend. My brother and one of my best friends birthdays always fall around Labor Day so started a tradition of throwing Labor Day parties many years ago. Unfortunately I am recovering from some type of flu so I couldn't feel less like planning for a party.

Luckily Ree over at Pioneer Woman is more energetic than I am and her Labor Day menu was able to spur me on to plan my own. I am going to borrow a few things from her menu like her Potato Bundles which I will be revamping in my own way and posting here this week. With a garden full of spicy Bulgarian Peppers waiting for me I will have to try her Bacon Wrapped Jalapeno Thingies. I am going to have to buy some actual Jalapenos so that the weaker stomached of the group can still enjoy them. The Bulgarians have incredible flavor but their heat can peel the paint off your car. I am not sure how I can improve on her recipe for them but I will let you know if I decide I can make it better. I may even try a hand at her Favorite Burger recipe. This one I know I will be changing up. I just can't make a recipe as it is listed on the page. I think that is why I am not the best baker. Baking is a science and cooking is an art.. I am much more of an artist than a scientist.

This is what my menu is looking like at the moment. I am sure it will change 3 or 4 times before Saturday.

Grilled Chicken
Hamburgers - recipe will be posted
Bacon-Wrapped Jalapeno Thingies
Amish Macaroni Salad - I must admit I buy this at Wal-Mart but I will work on a recipe
Potato Packets

Peanut butter Pie - I think I have one on the site at the moment but his is a no cook version that I will be posting
Rhubarb Custard Pie

As you can see I have a lot of recipe work to get done this week. I imagine I won't be posting an more pictures until next week when I can do a nice wrap up post.

The tomatoes have been roasting for 3.5 hours so I thought it was time to mill them and see what they turn out like. Well here are the pictures to show that my tomatoes are just hopeless this year. I guess there won't be any tomato sauce this year.

Starting making tomato this weekend. Unfortunately we found that my tomatoes this year are like 90% water. We cut, seeded, seasoned and baked about a bushel of tomatoes just to find that we ended up with tasty tomato juice. Well that is until we tried to cook it down to sauce and accidentally burned it. Now we are starting over and this time I am trying to bake them longer to reduce the moisture at that stage. I start them at 400 F and then turn them down to 350F for at least an hour. My current batch is on its third hour. I am going to pull them out soon and see how they turn out. The picture above shows one of the pans I started with seasoned with chopped garlic and onion with salt, pepper, basil, oregano and thyme.

I do my best to grow as much of what we eat as I can. I have several vegetable and fruit gardens spread out over our 3.5 acres. In addition to the gardens I have apple, cherry, apricot, and peach trees but the one I have been waiting patiently to produce something is my Chinese chestnuts. These trees are suppose to be chestnut blight resistant and so far have proved to be very hardy trees. My fruit trees like to produce even though they are young but I thought I would have to wait a couple more years until my baby chestnuts got a little bigger to produce some lovely chestnuts for me. While taking my regular walk around the property and checking on all my little plant babies I was shocked to find prickly little chestnuts. I am so excited that I will get to taste my first truly fresh chestnuts this fall. No if I can get my self motivated to gather and shell my black walnuts this winter I will have rounded out my sufficiency to nuts also.

So far this summer I have had picked and canned around 80 quarts of tomatoes with much more to go over the next few weekends. My burgundy beans have been neglected a bit but they have still produced 20 quarts of canned beans with many more on the plant waiting for their turn. Last weekend we shucked, blanched, cut and froze somewhere in the range of 10 dozen ears. I have soybeans (edamame) that needs picked, blanched and froze for future snacking as well as a forest of zucchini that has resisted the usual bug infestation and has almost engulfed my peppers and okra. My fiery Bulgarian carrot peppers will be made into a pepper sauce when time comes. And when the frost kills the vines I have 6 different varieties of winter squash and pumpkins including some giant jack 'o lantern pumpkins that the kids and I cannot wait to carve. I will make sure I take pictures of all this harvest goodness and share them with you.

Wish my baby chestnuts a swift development into full grown nuts before this crazy weather dumps feet of snow on us in October and stops everything dead in its tracks.

The site is still a little messy from my remodel in progress. I have tweaking to do and I had to put it online to be able to finish getting everything up and running.

So watch your step but don't be afraid to play with it a bit and give me all the feed back you can think of.

I hope to be posting new recipes and blogging it up within the week.

Thanks!