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After two years of poor harvests of snow peas from our garden, this year we have had a nice crop. I made stir-fry for Saturday night dinner using soba noodles, leftover pork and its deglazing liquid, carrots, celery, green onion, red bell pepper, mushrooms, broccoli, and our snow peas.
We had leftover lima beans, brown rice, ham, and vegetables, along with some sweet corn.
This morning I blanched some green beans and froze them. For details, see the "Freezing Green Beans" thread.
It has been three years since I last froze green beans, but we have had a bumper crop, and my husband remarked that it would be nice to have some in the freezer in the late fall, so I reviewed what I posted here, then did some additional googling. I thought this site was helpful:
I also looked at a couple of other sites. I decided to add 1 Tbs. coarse salt to the boiling water before adding the green beans. I also followed my procedure from last time and after blanching put the dried, individual green beans (this time without parchment) onto small baking sheets before sticking them in the freezer for an hour before sealing them in pint bags and returning to the freezer.
According to one source I read, the salt is supposed to help maintain the nutritional value during the boiling stage and may help the texture when I cook them later.
It was not the most balanced of dinners on Thursday: a slice of leftover pizza and an ear of sweet corn. At least I included a glass of milk.
I made yogurt today.
My husband and I went back to the blueberry farm today and picked 15-16 pounds. I washed most of the berries and am air drying them on paper towel-lined sheet pans. Tomorrow, I will divide them into 4-cup bags and freeze. That should hold us for the year. I set aside the rest for upcoming baking projects.
The neighbors on our north, who come up most weekends in the summer, have a farm, and they gift us with sweet corn every year. Dinner on Wednesday was sweet corn and leftover pork and Michiana Green Bean Salad.
I mentioned my husband's cranberry plant in a tub "bog" last year. We harvested about a half cup of cranberries in the late fall, and I used them to bake muffins. The plants had lots of green berries on them this summer, and I was anticipating baking with them again. Note the past tense. The chipmunks, which are all over our yard apparently decided to eat many of the green berries. I hope they had the tummy aches to end all tummy aches. My husband is protecting what is left, but it will not be the harvest of our dreams.
On Wednesday morning, I baked a new recipe, "Blueberry Oat Muffins for Healthy Mornings," from the blog 31 Daily:
I made some changes by substituting white whole wheat flour for all the flour, using buttermilk, halving the salt, and adding 1 Tbs. each of Bob's Red Mill milk powder and flax meal. I replaced 1/2 cup of butter with 1/3 cup canola oil. I used about a cup of blueberries. I sprinkled the tops with Penzey's Cinnamon Sugar. I baked them in as six large muffins rather than twelve small ones. The flavor is excellent, and I will bake them again. However, next time I will increase the baking time by about ten minutes, because even though they tested done, the center area slightly collapsed about ten minutes after I removed them from the pan. I ate one and put the others back in the oven for another ten minutes. The issue, I suspect, was that I had larger muffins and needed to increase the baking time.
Aaron--I haven't tried using a peel for pizza except with parchment paper for the initial set, but some years ago, I was using one to bake round bread loaves on a pizza stone after letting them rise in a basket and turning it out. I think that I used cornmeal, and yes, it went all over the oven. At the time, I was in an apartment with an older oven, so I had an aluminum liner on the bottom, which helped contain the mess, although not completely.
When I began to use clay bakers, I tried semolina, but my experience is that it burns, not a taste I wanted, while I was waiting for the bread to bake completely.
These days, I use cream of wheat (farina), the regular breakfast stuff from the store. I got the tip from a King Arthur article some years ago. The farina does not burn like the semolina did; of course, a loaf of bread bakes longer than a pizza.
Thanks for the comment about the hot grains on the wood floor. We have an ash floor in the kitchen, which while it is a hard wood could be damaged. (It's also my husband's pride and joy, so I respect it.)
Tuesday's dinner: My husband cooked pan cooked boneless pork ribs, I roasted some sweet chunks of sweet potato and made another Michiana Green Bean salad to keep up with the overflow of green beans from the garden.
Temperatures on Monday were in the mid-70s with lower humidity. I seized the day and baked my sourdough pan pizza with the usual toppings, including a red bell pepper from our garden
It's leftover lima beans, brown rice, and ham for us.
We had another great rainy morning and drizzly afternoon, so Sunday was opportune for baking, which was good, since we are out of bread. I baked three loaves of my Whole Wheat Oat Bran Bread, which came out fine. However, I realized as it was on the first rise that I had forgotten to incorporate the half cup of flax meal. It made no difference in the dough, which did not need additional flour. I will note when we cut it tomorrow if the omission affected the texture.
I also baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Sunday from dough that was resting in the refrigerator.
On Saturday, I baked another blueberry coffee cake, using the same recipe as I did on Wednesday. The recipe can easily be doubled, but blueberry items can go bad fast when it is hot, so two separate bakes in the week work best.
We have green tomatoes on the plant I bought from the farmers' market, but the other two (from Gurney's and initially stunted by the grow lights) have only just flowered. My husband is thinking ahead about how we might protect them in September and October if cold weather occurs then.
We are eating red bell peppers from the plant that was started in a pot a year before it was planted outside. The green bell peppers that were on it when it was dormant on the enclosed porch turned red in the garden, but they also had what looked like green bell pepper inside. One was almost completely full of a green bell pepper, so I cut it up and used it along with the red.
My husband bought some honey nut squash from Gurney's. These are the small butternut squash. He planted those seeds. He then found some seed he had saved from some honey nuts we bought at the farmers' market and planted it. We have squash forming, but one of the Gurney's plants has produced two squashes with long necks that are definitely not honey nuts, and that vine is more aggressive. The other Gurney's seed and that from the farmers' market is producing fruit as expected.
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