What's Cooking in Your Garden?
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Notreadytoquit
Posts: 231 Member
I am a professional horticulturist turned "accidental chicken farmer". I know many clean eaters raise chickens and there are many skilled gardeners on MFP. This is a space to strut our stuff ... from the day's harvest to your garden in all it's glory.Please share all that goes on outdoors and in the kitchen..
Questions, pictures, just plain bragging - all are welcome.
One of our new girls.
Questions, pictures, just plain bragging - all are welcome.
One of our new girls.
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So beautiful...you're amazing!0
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Mason jar salads. Pasta chicken veggies. Below0
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So sorry about the size. Ugh. I am just happy that I followed through and made these. They are great for dinner when I get home late and am too tired...it's fresh and tasty and not a frozen meal. Nothing came from my garden as I do not have one. Maybe some day...a little garden on my patio.
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Thanks for sharing. I was laughing yesterday...I harvested 4 small potatoes....I could see my Dad rolling on the clouds laughing...at my great endeavor. My daughter is so much a better gardener than me...she can grow potatoes and sweet potatoes. so fun.0
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It's almost chestnut season.
Chili paste from mixed hot peppers.
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@magic very pretty & clever. Will have to keep in mind for excellent travel food. Did you use dressing?0
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Great thread! I eat eggs from our chickens every morning. We planted a small garden for our boys to pick from, but my family owns a farm so we get most of the produce from there.0
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We need a "like" button!...and recipes! Pretty hen! My dogs just killed my 2 little barred rock hens who were just getting ready to start laying...grrr....so I gave my other 5 hens and roo to a friend.0
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@SandiKani Nothing like farm fresh. You have total control over what you eat. I eat quail eggs as our hens like to raise their chicks and get quite aggravated when we steal their eggs.
@Stef1959 Our dogs don't kill our chickens, although our big guy likes to bounce them sometimes. We have ferocious predator problems. The chickens that don't go up in trees put themselves in a safety bunker at night. Some come to the porch for us to carry them to individual crates, pens, etc. Some of them crave human touch & warmth, I think. I'll get pictures.
Plymouth Rock girls are new. Just getting to know them. They have nice personalities.
Will note to put recipe or link in future. Will try to collect them up and post in a few days or feel free to PM me.
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This week was all about apples. Applesauce, apple cider, apple cider vinegar made 3 ways ... with white sugar, raw honey & molasses, apple wine. Also DH and #1 son made a batch of Jalapeno jelly.
allrecipes.com/recipe/47520/jalapeno-jelly/
The apple cider vinegar is homework project for my herbalism course.0 -
This week is all about chestnuts ... a superfood we use to thicken soups and stews, to replace 1/3 - 1/2 of flour in recipes, and for a healthy crusty batter. Planted the trees from saplings in 1975. Usually produce 50-60# nut meat, but due to rain while they were in full bloom crop is down 1/3 this year.
Involucres or prickly pods surrounding the nuts are very sharp, hence the leather gauntlet gloves.
We process within a day or two, otherwise the nuts will get wormy. Easy safe way to prepare ... use round edged pruners to cut nut in half. Using a pot with perforated liner bring water to boil. As shells pop off the nuts, skim and throw in compost. I like to slightly under cook my chestnuts and drain in colander set in sink of cold water to cool down immediately. Nuts should be bright yellow still, but edible. If they are brown and mushy they are overcooked. Drain on cookie sheet lined with paper towel or dishcloth.
Most nuts are frozen, some are dehydrated to make flour. Anyone have an Italian grandma with great chestnut recipes?
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I had my first chestnuts 2 years ago when my hubs and I celebrated our 25th anniversary in Paris at Christmas. Street vendor roasting chestnuts. OMG! They are amazing! (I have lived in warm weather places that aren't big chestnut zones my whole life. )0
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Awesome work! All those beautiful photos.
I am a long time veggie gardener (currently harvesting the last of the tomatoes, peppers, fall raspberries, lettuce). We also added 6 chickens this year. They are barred rock pullets, should be laying any day. So hopefully they will lay all winter!
We built the Ana White a-fame chicken coop, which holds 4-6 girls, and cost about 200$ all in, which I felt was a reasonable up front cost. Lots of coops are crazy fancy and very expensive. This works for us since we might relocate.
Now I am just working on teaching my autistic son not to chase the chickens. It's just so fun! It's so hard to resist! They make such lovely flapping noises!0 -
@martabeerich Oh, the smell of roasting chestnuts. So glad you got to meet chestnuts in such a beautiful romantic way. I will go back through the archives and find picture of tree in flower.
@Suzan06 All of our coops were built from scrap or recycled materials. To avoid the Ma & Pa Kettle look I paint them for uniformity in the garden. My son started free range flock to control ticks. It took off from there and now our flock is about 125 - 150 birds. Some free range, but the predators are fierce, and some are breeding stock or back up roosters. Chickens like plants are very therapeutic.
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@Notreadytoquit Ours was about half old wood we found, and half purchased. It is built like Ft. Knox so no predators can get in the coop, but my girls are out all day, and this week a hawk tried to get them. We have hawks, raccoons, weasels, etc. Hawks are the big issue though because they prevent some people from free ranging. Not me- yet anyway!0
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Notreadytoquit wrote: »@magic very pretty & clever. Will have to keep in mind for excellent travel food. Did you use dressing?
I am so sorry I never got back to you...
Yes, I did use dressing...you can use a separate container or if you choose to put it in the jar, it goes at the very bottom with the hearty veggies. I was amazed that the lettuce stayed crisp and fresh at the top. I had seen mason jar salads before, but poo poo'd the idea...yay, right...the lettuce will stay crisp. Uh huh. REALLY IT DOES.
Great time saver for people on the go or who are too tired to cook when they get home...or it is a great lunch to take to work.
No garden for me to share my bounty...but I am making all fresh food these days with no help from the frozen food section. That is huge plus for me.
I sure am enjoying all the beautiful pictures posted by you all.
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Have been busy harvesting Hawthorn berries, rose hips, nuts and many herbs for the chickens and us. The vegetable garden was fallow this year as the chickens ate everything for the last two years. Fennel and dill have naturalized the area. I went to harvest seeds and ended up harvesting a forest of fennel and dill. Tucked into coops for winter health and amusement.
Rose hips from native multiflora rose, dill, comfrey chopped ... in box for drying for winter use, calendula, solar & lunar infused oils and other berries and herbs drying in paper bags. Must go around and shake them all today.
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As first frost approached I went into a frenzy of harvest and putting herbs and food by. Tomorrow is the harvest moon. A class assignment is to make a lunar infused oil. I chose plantain ... one of the most versatile of the healing plants. Also called settlers footsteps as it is found most anywhere people have journeyed. My oil was created on the blood moon and will be bottled tomorrow night hopefully in the presence of the harvest moon.
I almost always have a pot of stock cooking. Bone stock or vegetarian potassium essence are my favorites for high quality stock with lots of flavor and nutrients. A new cooking pot from Cabella. No, I don't get a commission. I searched for a new crock pot for quite a while when mine old friend exhausted itself. I finally settled on this multipurpose cooker. It has a rack for roasting, baking, infusing oils or cooking as per regular crock pot with temperature control.
Bone Stock
After cooking and removing protein, I slip the bones into broth/water. Any herbs, vegetables that cooked under the meat are removed and eaten or given to chickens as most of the nutrients have leached out (if braising) and chickens are amused by scraps. New herbs and a teaspoon of sea salt are added along with 2 tablespoons - 1/2 cup of vinegar. Keep at slow simmer for 3 days adding more water, nettle infusion, dandelion or Echinacea tea to up the potassium and calcium values. Strain and refrigerate. If you are counting calories skim off fat. Pot holds 25-30 cups
If you find your stock is gelatinous, you did good. When mine is like that I thin it down, add lots of herbs and make stock soup. Great for nursing winter flus and colds or everyday health.
A note about sourcing bones. I was recently researching nutritional value of bone stock. Came across alarming reports of even organic purchased bones/stocks having high levels of heavy metals leaching out of the bones from ? feed, air pollution or other environmental sources. Just might want to research source
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Everything is looking good. I'm down to turnips, peas, tomatoes, peppers and cilantro in my outside garden. Margie made unstuffed Mini Sweet Peppers last night. We made lots more hot peppers than sweet, but few of them get ate. I did blend up about half a gallon of Jalapeno, Serrano and Cayenne today to make pepper spray.0
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The guys made stuffed habaneros yesterday. Way out of my comfort zone. 10 minutes of intense habanero heat per bite. So is the pepper spray for plants or people?0
