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)