Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Garden Tour- Rootstown

Let's take a little tour of what's growing in my plot at work...


Brussel Sprouts forming.


A row of painstakingly hand weeded carrots and Carnival winter squash


Sweet Alyssum fragrantly blooming next to Garbanzo beans.


Carrots and red dianthus nestled up together.


Jacob's Cattle Heirloom beans just starting to poke through the ground.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Bread, anyone?

Hey - just throwing this out to see if there's any interest.

Anyone out there bake their own bread? Want to start up a bread baking group? Not like I don't have enough stuff to do, but I'd love to get together with other bread bakers once a month and swap recipes, work on a wood fired oven and bake. Email me if you're interested - janeehouston@gmail.com

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

broccoli flower soup

I knew I'd find it! Thanks cooks.com

I have not tried this yet. If you do, let me know what you think!

BROCCOLI FLOWER SOUP (BEST EVER)
3 c. chopped broccoli tops
3 qts. water
1 med. onion, chopped
4 tbsp. chicken base (dry)
2 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. season salt
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
1 tbsp. cooking sherry
1 c. milk
1 c. Ranch dressing
1/4 c. sour cream
6 strips of uncooked bacon
1 to 1 1/2 c. flour

What do you do with broccoli gone to flower? Make soup! Wash and trim long stalks on fresh broccoli. Chop broccoli to make approximately 3 cups. Bring 3 quarts of water to boil and add broccoli, chicken base, garlic, pepper, season salt, Worcestershire, nutmeg. Boil 20 minutes uncovered. While water is boiling chop onion and mince up bacon strips and fry on medium high until bacon is crisp (without burning the onions). Then add flour to bacon, onion and bacon grease until lit is a thick paste. Remove from heat and set aside.Lower heat on boiling broccoli to medium (nice low rolling boil). Add Ranch dressing, milk, and sour cream while constantly stirring with wire whip. Then slowly add bacon, onion, flour mixture until soup thickens, simmer on low for 10 minutes and add cooking sherry. Serve hot with bread sticks or crackers.

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Tuesday, June 15, 2010

CSA week 1

CSA Pickup Starts Today!!!!



Times - Tuesday 6-8pm or Wed from 8-10am.


Email me with any questions at janeehouston@gmail.com and I'll see you all soon!

Saturday, June 5, 2010

broken neck

CSA First Pickup is June 15th!!!!!!

With the plant sale and putting everything in the ground and all this warm weather, I'm left wondering - where did spring go?
I think I blinked and missed it. I rejoiced at the first tshirt day... and I don't think that I have worn a sweater more than a couple days since.

I had so much fun at the plant sale this year! Thanks to everyone who came out and helped. It was great meeting new csa and meat share members and watching kids play with baby ducks. Everything that is leftover fit on a couple tables and slowly we've been planting them flat by flat. We have hundreds of tomato plants in the ground and hundreds of pepper plants happily growing in the gardens. We're running out of room! Travis moved his melon patch up by my parents house and they're starting to grow. We have all different, unique kinds this year. It must be bad if I'm already planning my order for next year and anticipating seed catalogs. Gardening must be an addiction, which is odd that even though I'm saturated in it, I'm still looking for more.


On a really sad note, one of our super garden helpers, my Grandma, broke her neck. She was playing in the back garden, getting a pump in the creek to water everything that was coming up on Memorial day and she tripped and fell backwards, hitting her head on a fencepost and cracking her C2 vertebrate right in half diagonally. The emergency room on a holiday was terrible and they sent her home with a neck brace and told her to take anacin. Yeah... that didn't fly for more than a few days before she was back in the emergency room begging for Dr. Kevorkian. But now she's back at home on a bit stronger medication with a better neck brace, talking about picking beans in a few weeks. She's amazing and the gardens are a lot less lively without her bossing us around and making fun of the way I plant potatoes. I am so glad she's not paralized.


Anyway, everything is growing at an odd pace: our asparagus is slowing production, our strawberries started producing really early this year, rhubarb flowered before I could make a pie, bok choy already choked in the heat, the peppers are loving it, my onions are the size of golf balls, and I'm having a heck of a time keeping the garlic from flowering already. And my sister declared this the year of the tomato because we already have little green tomatoes forming on a few of our plants. I'm just worried that all this hot weather will burn out our broccoli and lettuce before it's even begun.


Oh Ohio! You are sooooo weird.