Crockpot lentil rice stuffed peppers

I am trying lentil rice stuffed peppers in my crockpot today. I had some red lentils I wanted to use up so I cooked them. So there were about 2 cups cooked lentils and I added 1 cup cooked rice, 1 small can tomato sauce, 1 egg, some leftover shredded cheese (somewhere between 1/2 and 1 cup - let's say 3/4), 2 TBSP minced onion flakes (dried), 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper, about 1 TBSP homemade taco seasoning. Stuffed it into 5 peppers which had the tops cut off and the seeds removed. Put in crockpot for 6 hours on high.

cold soups

It has been in the 90;s and 100's lately, so early in the year. I am going to try something I've never done before - cold soups. My first try is Jade Garden Soup. It is simmering right now. I'll use chard instead of spinach since that is what I have. Hope we like it.

Jade Garden Soup

Rated: Submitted By: CORWYNN DARKHOLME Photo By: Soup Loving Nicole Prep Time: 25 Minutes Cook Time: 45 Minutes Ready In: 1 Day 1 Hour 10 Minutes Servings: 7

"A savory combination of spinach, lettuce, and parsley are pureed with rice, not cream, in this cool jade green soup. Garnish with sour cream, paprika, and dill."

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil 1 onion, chopped 1 carrot, sliced 2 stalks celery, sliced 6 cups chicken stock 1/3 cup uncooked white rice 1 1/3 cups fresh spinach, washed

and chopped 1 1/3 cups butter lettuce - rinsed, and torn into small pieces 1 1/3 cups chopped fresh parsley salt to taste ground black pepper to taste 1 pinch cayenne pepper

Directions:

1.	Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in onion, carrot, and celery; cook and stir until the onion has softened and turned translucent and the vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes.
2.	Pour in chicken stock and rice; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 35 minutes or until rice is soft.
3.	Stir in spinach, lettuce, and parsley; cook just until wilted. Season with salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper. Use an immersion blender (or blend in batches in a blender) until smooth. The soup may be thinned with more broth, if desired. Refrigerate overnight before serving. Garnish as desired.

swiss chard

This morning I went to the Farmer's Market and bought some Swiss chard. It is one of my favorite vegetables to grow because it is so trouble free -it doesn't mind the heat, doesn't mind the cold, can take a bit of a freeze -  but I do not have any of my own yet. So I was pleased to find some locally grown. I made the following recipes from Marissa Macclellan's Food in jars blog (see link below). The green leafy parts are cut up and put into meat loaf and the stems are made into a quick refrigerator pickle. The stems of one bunch of chard made exactly one pint of pickled chard stems which I am looking forward to eating in a couple of days. The meat loaf was delicious though I would chop up the chard greens finer in my ninja next time and I used ground beef rather than ground turkey since I have wonderful ground beef in my freezer which my nephew raised for me. . Her recipe called for leeks but i used chopped chives and garlic chives because those I have growing in my yard. 

http://foodinjars.com/2015/05/csa-cooking-turkey-meatloaf-and-quick-pickled-chard-stems/

Fresh Mint Tea

My mint bed is pretty lush. I don't know what kind it is because it was already in place when we bought our house. It is growing through an area which is lined with groundcloth and covered with gravel. I think the former homeowner might have done that to suppress the mint but it happily grows right through it.

Making fresh mint tea today.

Sweet Mint Tea
Pack a quart jar with fresh, clean mint leaves. Add 1/2 cup sugar. Run hot water over outside of jar to prevent breakage, the pour in
Boiling water to fill
Agitate jar to dissolve sugar. Cover loosely and let stand several hours or overnight. Strain contents. use resulting concentrate by pouring into ice-filled tall glasses. May freeze concentrate.

Plain Mint Tea
Pack quart jar with fresh, clean mint leaves. Pour in boiling water. Let stand several hours or overnight. Strain contents. Use resulting concentrate by pouring into ice-filled tall glasses. May freeze.

This procedure may be used for any fresh herbal tea such as with lemon balm.

Ukrainian canned winter salad

I heard a lady who moved here from Ukraine give a talk about her country. The whole talk was fascinating and covered all sorts of subjects. One thing she said was that home canning was veeeery popular in Ukraine and they canned winter salads. I found a recipe for that online and here is a link. http://www.valentinascorner.com/canned-vegetable-salad/
I believe I will try this except I will not try oven canning but water bath can it. I noticed that several Ukrainian canning recipes I found online use oven canning and flipping the jars. Don't think I'll try that though.

Perennial vegetables

Since reading Eric Toensmeyer's book "Paradise Lots" - oh such a good book by the way! https://paradiselotblog.wordpress.com/All about how he and his partner made their 1/10th acre city lot into a permaculture garden in a northern climate.



Anyway, I read about perennial vegies and thought I'd try some.



I know, asparagus right?



 But I decided to start with sea kale and sorrel. So far the seeds (from Restoration Seeds http://www.restorationseeds.com/) are just planted in flats and I am waiting for them to come up.

I have them slated for a shady spot where I took out dead juniper.

Herbs make a pretty short list

I only have a few herbs in the yard. There is chamomile which reseeds itself, and lemon balm and mint which are perennial. I harvested chamomile and lemon balm yesterday to dry for tea. I live in a dry climate so I just put it in paper lunch sacks and set it out of the way until it is dry.




There are chives and garlic chives as well which I just cut and use. If there are a lot I freeze the extra. The garlic chives seem to be spreading throughout the back yard and make it smell interesting when we mow the grass.

Small fruit in my yard

My yard is semi shady but some small fruits do well. My red  raspberry patch (Polana) has produced like crazy the past few years. My friend Chris, a fabulous gardener gave me my starts. This variety is one where you cut the canes right to the ground every fall after they are done bearing and they come up again in the spring from the roots. These are known as primocanes aka fall bearing. The other kind are floricanes aka summer bearing. She had tried many varieties of raspberries and this is the one which survived in our climate - zone 3, sometimes 4. The floricane types always died out in our harsh winters.


I have a Hinnomaki Red gooseberry bush which produced well the last couple of years but this year did not flower and the leaves are curled. I must find out what is wrong with it.


There are two currant varieties - red currant and golden currant. Both produced a lot of growth and beautiful leaves but no flowers this year.

Rhubarb of course, a gift from a friend, which does well in front of a downspout.

I planted black raspberry - McBlack - last year which is supposed to do well in zone 3. The initial planting died out over the winter but they are spreading into deeply shaded nooks around the yard this year. Aren't they supposed to be sun lovers? I hope they produce something.

Three mature crabapple trees make a nice deeply shaded area in the side yard. They bloom beautifully and produce tiny red crabapples. I made pickled crabapples one year and crabapple jelly one year. The deer love them and make a cozy sleeping area for themselves between the trees in the winter so I have been leaving the crabapples for the deer.


I tried grafting real apples to one of the crabapple trees but the grafts did not take. I want to try again but I keep putting it off until too late in the season.

What I'm growing at home - the annual veggies

Since I manage such a big vegetable garden - the Salvation Army charity garden  (in addition to my full time office job), what I grow at home in my own partially shaded yard is pretty limited. I have 4 tomato plants (2 Early Goliath, 1 Early Girl, 1 Better Boy) given to me by friends, and 4 pepper plants, 1 Orange Blaze, the rest unlabeled (also given to me by friends). 3 of the tomatoes are in pots with 1 in the flower bed. I have a little rectangular planter in which I planted two of the pepper plants and filled in around them with Little Finger carrot seeds. I figured those would not take up much room but would make use of every inch of the planter. The remaining two pepper plants are in the flower bed keeping the tomato company.


I have a wooden tub planter with yellow and red Swiss Chard and a fabric bag planter with Outredgeous lettuce interplanted with Purple Plum radishes.

We were blessed with garden volunteers last night

Last night we were so blessed!!! A small group from Christ United Methodist Church has decided to incorporate helping in the Salvation Army garden as part of their ministry. Two couples, two ladies and two little girls (daughter and daughter's friend of one of the ladies) came to the garden to help. First they had their devotions, a short prayer time and Scripture reading and my husband and I were invited to be part of it. Then they helped in the garden. They plan to come help every other Monday all summer! Some cleaned up the flower part of the garden and added some iris to it which one of them had divided from her home garden, some weeded. We have volunteer calendula there but had not cleaned up the weeds. We also fertilized. We received a number of bags of Milorganite fertilizer from a grant last year and so we spread a couple bags. The little girls enjoyed doing that, poring it through a funnel

More recipes from Penzeys

I feel like I hit the jackpot with the new Penzeys catalog - www.penzeys.com. I have made 4 recipes from it - recipes that I feel are practical and doable and relatively inexpensive. As well as the Garden Rice Salad I made the other day, I made Jake's Summer Tomato Salad to go along with pizza which was a nice after church lunch..

It was just mixed salad greens, cherry tomatoes, chopped celery and some marinated mozzarella cheese balls. Our adult daughters and their husbands were here so that made it extra special.Used my own dressing though. I use roughly 1/4 c olive oil, 2 tbsp vinegar, 1 tbsp sweetener, 1 -2 tsp spike or other seasoning (sometimes taco seasoning, sometimes Italian seasoning) and pepper.

Tonight after work I made the Black Bean/Sweet Potato stew and I made Torta Pascualina (Argentine spinach pie) for tomorrow. I come home for lunch from work most days so like to have leftovers.

I fudged the recipes to make them simpler though since I am really tired after working in the garden every night after work last week, all day Saturday and after work Monday.and working at work all day today too. I think my husband will like the Torta Pascualina best. He likes anything as long as its pie!

Black Bean Sweet Potato  Stew
2 cans black beans (.69 X 2 = 1.38)
2 sweet potatoes, chopped (1.89)
1/2 leftover packet beefy onion soup mix (.35)
1 can diced jalapenos (.89)
ground cumin (.10)
chili powder (.10)
paprika 9.10)
salt
1-2 cups water
Simmer 20 minutes.

Total Cost  4.81 (I'm going to just use 10 cents for each little measure of spice)

Torta Pascualina
1 double crust pie shell (I used store-bought unroll and bake pie crust - (3.27)
Mix following ingredients:
1 bag frozen spinach, microwaved, drained and squeezed (1.00)
2 TB olive oil (.25)
1 onion (I just used dried onion flakes and soaked them in the olive oil rather than sauteeing an onion in the oil) (.10)
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (.10)
1 tsp oregano (.10)
2 eggs, beaten (.22)
1-2 cups grated swiss cheese (2.89)

Unroll 1 crust into 9" pie pan
Put the mixed ingredients into the crust
Top with the other crust.
Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes

Total Cost (7.93)

The Vegetable Garden

We have been planting like mad since the beginning of June when the weather warmed up and the rain stopped. I guess I should say I manage a community charity garden for the Salvation Army. That is why it is so large. It is about 1/4 acre and is grown by volunteers (including myself and my husband) to add fresh produce to the food boxes that SA gives away. This is in addition to the non perishables they have in their large food pantry and give away year round to those in need.

We have a drip irrigation system (www.dripworks.com)so all our rows are 40 feet long and either 2 feet or 4 feet apart, though there are some double rows and some wide rows. All the seeds and plants are donated for this garden.

We planted 13 rows of potatoes (=520 row feet)
5 rows tomatoes (90 plants)
1 4 foot wide row of sugar snap peas (broadcast seed)
2 2 feet wide rows of green bush beans (broadcast seed)
4 double rows of onions
1 double row of kohlrabi
5 rows cucumbers
7 rows winter squash
1 row zucchini
15 rows corn (600 row feet)
Still have to plant cabbage and carrots

For the past 5 years we have gotten 5,000 to 8,000 pounds of produce from this garden in the short growing season of north central Montana. God has blessed his garden

Food rationing WWII - Basque region of Spain and England compared

I've been working in the vegetable garden all day so I am thinking about food. We have such an abundance available to us. (I live in the northwest United States) But it hasn't always been so. I've read a bit and thought a bit about the food rationing observed during World War II. I'd like to read more and learn more.

In "The Basque History of the World" by Mark Kurlansky he mentions what the Basque ration was during the war, at least in Bilbao where they had access to chick peas (aka garbanzo beans) because they controlled the import of Mexican chick peas.

The ten day food ration per person was
 1 pound of rice
 1 pound of chick peas
 1 pound of vegetables
 and 1/2 pound of cooking oil.

The government also provided a dark whole grain bread which apparently the people didn't like. The book didn't say how much of that they were allowed. It didn't say what kind of vegetables were in the ration either though the chapter is called "The Potato Time". People had to scavenge for whatever else they could find. Can you imagine living on just that for 10 days?

I just realized that in making a new recipe today from the Penzeys spice catalog which came in the mail I almost used up a 10 day ration. It calls for
16 oz rice (2/3 white or brown, 1/3 wild)
1/2 c. mayonnaise
1/2 c. yogurt
1 c. chopped celery
1 c. chopped tomato
1 c. chopped cucumber
2 TB parsley
1/2 tsp seasoned salt
1/2 tsp pepper
The recipe calls for 1/2 c. chopped peanuts but in honor of the Basques I am putting in chick peas (aka garbanzo beans) - not a pound though, 1 can of chick peas, drained and roasted and then cooled.
Of course there will be two of us, and we won't eat it all at one sitting, but still..it almost takes my breath away to think of using up almost a 10 day wartime ration in 1 recipe.  They would not have had the luxury of yogurt and mayonnaise either.

In England they had a bit more food. This is from the lovely blog 1940's Experiment.https://1940sexperiment.wordpress.com/

"Weekly ration for 1 adult

• Bacon & Ham 4 oz
• Meat to the value of 1 shilling and sixpence (around about 1/2 lb minced beef)
• Butter 2 oz
• Cheese 2 oz
• Margarine 4 oz
• Cooking fat 4 oz
• Milk 3 pints
• Sugar 8 oz
• Preserves 1 lb every 2 months
• Tea 2 oz
• Eggs 1 fresh egg per week
• Sweets/Candy 12 oz every 4 weeks

In addition to this a points system was put in place which limited your purchase of tinned or imported goods. 16 points were available in your ration book for every 4 weeks and that 16 points would enable you to purchase for instance, 1 can of tinned fish or 2lbs of dried fruit or 8 lbs of split peas.

… (remember that in addition to this people were encouraged to incorporate lots of fruit and veggies into their diets and grow even more in their back gardens!)"

 England, like the other English speaking countries (and possibly other countries ) encouraged home and community gardening so people could provide as much nutritious food on their own as possible.

The lady who writes that blog has lived on that ration plus what a good sized garden would have produced in the way of vegetables and she lost quite a bit of weight and improved her health by following that plan.