What Happened in the Onion Patch

A few weeks ago, I planted a lot of onion sets. A week or two later, my husband ran the rototiller through the garden, and that is very helpful, but it doesn't weed up close to the plants. I was out there a day or two later, dealing with weeds, and by the time I got to the onion patch I was tired, and decided that since the soil was all nicely loose and crumbly, I would just sort of "hill" the onions quickly ~ just use the hoe and draw some soil up around the onions to smother the weeds. It worked very well, however, I was concerned because I've read that onions like to have their shoulders exposed. I was back working in there today, and lo and behold! I was just able to very lightly, with my hands, pull that extra soil off and that killed the little weeds that had grown in the meantime. I hope you understand what I mean. It saved me lots of effort. I don't know what it will do to the harvest, but then, weeds competing with the vegetables for light, food and water is not very helpful either.

Oyster Chowder

I was wanting to make some clam chowder for supper, but don't have any canned clams right now. I do, however, have lots of canned oysters, so decided to use those instead! Here are the oysters from one can and I sliced each of them into 4 pieces. Reserve the liquid from the can.



Scrub and cube 4 medium potatoes. Put them into a heavy kettle and add 1 small diced onion and 2 cups of chopped celery (mine came out of the freezer.) Add 2 cups of chicken broth, bring to a boil and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes.



Next, add 1/3 cup butter, the liquid from the can of oysters, 1.5 teaspoons salt and 2 cups of water. ( I used unsalted butter, so if yours is salted, you might want to add less salt.)
Bring that to a boil and slowly stir in 1 cup of whole milk into which you have mixed 1/2 cup unbleached white flour. Cook until it is nice and thick, stirring constantly. Gradually add more water to make it as thick or thin as you like.

Add 1.5 teaspoons of salt and several cranks of pepper.



Just when it is done, stir in the oyster pieces. They are very soft, so you don't want to cook them very much at all.

It is delicious!

Our first zucchini of the year!

I was working in the garden yesterday and found this very small zucchini squash. I also found one nice onion left in the greenhouse so brought them in for today's breakfast:



Here they are sauteing in some butter and olive oil:



...and made into a lovely omelet!



I know (hope) that before long I'll have too many zucchinis to keep up with, but right now, this was definitely a very welcome treat!

I don't remember if I mentioned this before... "Do you know what terrorism is in Indiana?" ahem.... "It's when you leave your car unlocked and when you come back it is stuffed full of zucchinis! :)

The Things That Matter Most

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l70e1TfN34w&feature=player_profilepage

Nice Potato Chips

Have you ever considered making potato chips? It is easy to do. It takes a little time, but you can make them from wholesome ingredients and they are SO good! Here are my potatoes, scrubbed and sliced:



Here is my mandolin that I used to slice them. You can use a sharp knife, of course, if you like.



Here are a few of them already fried and draining on paper towels spread on a cookie sheet:



Here is one up close:



And here is my cast iron Dutch oven with some frying in it:



Potato Chips

Potatoes, scrubbed well and sliced thinly
Enough kettle-rendered lard to make 2 - 3 inches of melted fat in your heavy pan
Salt (I used RealSalt)

Prepare the potatoes.
In the meantime, heat the lard using a thermometer to at least 300 F, or up to 340.
Carefully drop potato slices into the fat. You only want one layer.
Let them fry until they start to turn brown. Don't burn them.
Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.
Sprinkle with salt.

That's it!

You could season them in other ways if you like. I hope to be making some sour cream soon, and plan to make some more of these to serve with it.

Visit Simple Lives Thursday #49 where I have linked this post. Also at Frugal Tuesday Tip #22!

Daylily Fritters - again

Last year I blogged about daylily fritters. This is one of my favorite things to do in late Spring. As we were returning from milking the goats this morning, I saw the daylilies blooming enthusiastically, so I picked 4 of them to have with our breakfast.



Next, I made a batter to dip them in:

Fritter Batter for 4 Daylily Blossoms

1 chicken egg
2 Tablespoons goat milk
pinch of sea salt
some freshly ground nutmeg
1/4 cup sprouted wheat flour



Mix the first 4 ingredients together with a fork and then add the flour and stir that all together:



Then I melted 2 Tablespoons virgin coconut oil in my black iron skillet:



Then the blossoms got dipped into the batter and fried on medium-low heat until one side was brown:



Next, they get flipped over and the other side is fried until it is brown also:




Here is my husband's breakfast plate. We put butter and maple syrup on the fritters. On the plate you can also see 2 fried duck eggs (in the same pan right after the fritters were done,) and some soaked buttermilk biscuits.




We didn't eat the green crunchy stem part:



This can be done with squash or pumpkin blossoms also. It really is very good. Needless to say, you don't have to have goat milk, or sprouted wheat flour or virgin coconut oil. Just use what you have to substitute.

In our part of the country, daylilies grow wild along the roadsides all over the place!

Have you ever eaten/cooked any flowers?

Bread