Storing your garden goodies...Late summer edition

I find this to be a very busy time of year.

The garden is bursting with goodness and I'm either not home enough to make meals at home or too busy to actually be in the garden.  Sigh.  Unfortunately this is the WORST time of gardening season to be so busy!  There is so much of everything ripening that it seems like a huge waste to le it all go bad.

We are currently swamped in tomatoes and apples we've been given by my mother-in-law.  What to do with 7 baskets of tomatoes and a milk crate full of apples?  Well, this post is all about what we DID do with them!  Below is my wonderful husband.  He's carrying our hard work from Saturday (after we checked out the Verona Garlic Festival).  We knuckled down and peeled until our fingers hurt. 

What we ended up with was the following:  4 large freezer bags of chopped apples (ready for plopping into a pie shell or under a crisp topping), 2 large freezer bags of tomatoes, washed, rinsed and scored (so the skins with come right off of them when we make soup this winter), 3 containers of tomato sauce.  All ready for the freezer and will provide fresh summer goodness all winter long.  YUM!

The best was the apple sauce we made from scratch!  Sounds impressive, but once you find out how easy apple sauce is to make...you'll never want to buy store bought again!  (That's kinda the point, after all)

Take a whole buncha apples, you can use almost any type or apple.  Although I do know some apple purists who swear you can only use certain types.  A quick Google search will tell you to "Make sure you use a good cooking apple like Golden Delicious, Jonagold, Granny Smith, Fuji, Jonathan, Mcintosh, or Gravenstein."  I'm sure there is a reason why, but I only use what I have, so whatever Nana grows is what we use.  You don't have to be picky about the quantity of apples, because you can adjust the taste as you go!

You chop and peel the apples and unless you have a herd of pygmies working for you, you may want to use this trick.  Have a bowl of cold water and lemon juice handy.  Place the peeled and sliced apples in the lemon water until you are ready to use them.  That way the apples will not brown prematurely!

Place the apples (not the lemon water) into a pot.  Heat slowly and the moisture from the apples will steam out of the pot, leaving nothing but warm sweet applesauce.  Hubbie likes to get fancy by adding some brown sugar, allspice and cinnamon.  Basically its like apple pie fill when we make it.

Then we place it in jars.  We steamed the jars to keep the insides sealed until we're ready to eat it.  Leaving a 1/2 an inch from the top of the lid, just in case we decide to freeze the jars we aren't going to eat right away.  This is a perfect way to keep the fall taste of fresh apples all winter long, and its also a great way to make home made foods in advance for school lunches.



Delicious, nutritious, home made, low carbon foot print apple sauce!



What are you planning to make from scratch for your kids lunches? 

Maybe a better question would be, what changes are you going

to make regarding your kids lunches?

You're the apple of my eye....and heart too!

Oatmeal is one of those comfort foods.  It reminds me of my Grandma Bell, who always seemed to have a pot cooking on the stove every morning I ever stayed at her cottage.  I remember its texture and the smell of it.  The instant I start to smell my own stove-cooked oatmeal, I am transported back in time.

Lately I've been hearing a lot about oatmeal, but these days its in relation to soluble fibres.  I try to always make the quick oats as opposed to instant, mainly for tradition's sake...but also because I can control the salt and sugar content. 

I also love coming up with new variations so that the kids will eat it all up.  Noah is a fan, but Owen is still getting used to the texture. 

The label on Quaker Oats says oatmeal is a soluble oat fibre which contributes to healthy cholesterol levels.  This is one reasonably priced food to have in your pantry.  One bag, in our house, seems to last for a long time.  All I know is its great on these cold, damp mornings before you start your day.

I included my recent favorite variation.  Enjoy!

I make the oatmeal as per the directions, but just before its completely cooked...I add in some 1% milk.

During the cooking process I pull out a bag of peeled and sliced apples.  We picked these apples from Owen's nana's few apple trees.  Normally we would have gone out apple picking in the fall with the family.  The beauty of freezing apples in this format is that you can pull them out of the freezer at almost anytime for nearly instant apple crsip or pie....or in this case...apple pie oatmeal!  I add a dash of nutmeg, and a tsp of cinnamon...or if I have it, I'll add Victorian Epicure's Apple Pie Spice.  Its a gloriously fragrant mix of spices...NO SUGARS!   The final touch is the 1 tsp of vanilla.  If you want to know more about the healthy benefits of the spices I mentioned above, be sure to check out my post on carrot cake.

Of course you can add brown sugar if you decide, but I prefer to limit the amount of extra sugars we take in.  The kids get enough of it in treats.  I love to show the kids that things can taste great without the need for sugar....the look on Noah's face was priceless when I told him breakfast tastes great and it actually healthy!  (Does.....not....compute.....)

So dig into some old fashioned oatmeal...you can make it ahead and reheat as necessary.  Your heart will thank you!   Perhaps your family will too...

Butternut Squash Love....

We have been eating a LOT of soup lately....its kind of a soup time of year....

You know that feeling, when you've been outside shovelling snow, or playing with the kids, or ice fishing on the lake?  Perhaps thats just our lifestyle...but even if you're just going from your car to your home, its still nice to come in from the cold and enjoy a nice steaming bowl of soup.  Even better when you've grown the vegetables yourself!!!

We tried growing butternut squash this year, and I will admit that I am still waiting for the taste of squash to grow on me.   I figured, why not?  Grow them and the recipe hunt will begin.  I will not spend money at the grocery store on items that I have no idea whether I or the family will like them.  There is something widly emancipating about growing something...and if you don't like it...it just goes right back into the compost bin!  WIN WIN!



Butternut Squash soup with home made biscuits

The one thing I really enjoyed growing butternut squash, is that they arrive and ripen when the rest of the garden has long since died off.  You get these beautiful, waxen lovelies that produce wonderous flowers.  Their vines take over all other areas.  It was growing these lovelies that made me think about late season foods and also their ability to store well.  I didn't get a chance to start a root cellar this past year...so I didn't get to expertiment with the old school method of storage.  We did cube and freeze them though.  It was the late season aspect that made me love them.  This past year I did get to experiment with staggering my veggies.  Its a wonderful method to avoid the common gardening ailment of having 10 tonnes of anything all at the same time.  This method allows you to enjoy each crop for several weeks instead of getting flooded with them all at once (which makes it almost impossible to eat everything or have enough time to properly prepare and store everything - trust me!  I've learned this one the hard way).  You wind up sick of whatever it is thats ripening...and you waste the rest.
 

close up on soup with cracked black pepper

So here is the mouth-watering recipe that I cooked up in the fall.  I frozen the whole lot that time.  All I had to do was freeze it and add cream when ready to serve! 

Butternut Squash Soup

2 tablespoons butter

1 small onion, chopped (from our garden, dried and stored in the basement)

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 medium carrot, chopped (from our garden, kept in the crisper with dirt on)

2 medium potatoes, cubed

1 medium butternut squash - peeled, seeded, and cubed

1 (32 fluid ounce) container chicken stock

1 tsp nutmeg

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions

1. Melt the butter in a large pot, and cook the onion, celery, carrot, potatoes, and squash 5 minutes, or until lightly browned. Pour in enough of the chicken stock to cover vegetables. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover pot, and simmer 40 minutes, or until all vegetables are tender.
2. Transfer the soup to a blender, and blend until smooth. Return to pot, and mix in any remaining stock to attain desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper.

Nutritional Information

Amount Per Serving  Calories: 305 | Total Fat: 6.8g | Cholesterol: 21mg

Servings Per Recipe: 4
Amount Per Serving
Calories: 305

• Total Fat: 6.8g
• Cholesterol: 21mg
• Sodium: 1248mg
• Total Carbs: 59.7g
•     Dietary Fiber: 9.5g
• Protein: 6.9g

That was the original recipe I used...from allrecipes.com but I'm a sucker for a rich soup, so I swirl in heavy cream just prior to serving.  You can also add some cinnamon to taste. 


while Owen loves the biscuits...he's still not a huge fan of the soup



Carrot Cake is actually good for you?

So forgetting the fact that my recipe contains 1 whole cup of refined white sugar....and nevermind that I like my carrot cake to have a 50% ratio of cake to icing content...I am convinced that carrot cake is good for you!

Allow me please to elaborate...

I recently ran into an article on bewellbuzz.com and it reported that we should definitely increase our intake of certain spices.  So I did some research on my own regarding the spices included in my favorite dessert. 

Nutmeg:  increases blood circulation and stimulates nerve cells, eases digestion
Cinnamon: one of the world's oldest spices, used for regulating blood sugar levels, very high in antioxidant qualities
Cloves:  stimulates the throat chakra (in Ayurvedic medicine), strengthens the thyroid gland.
Allspice: relieves indigestion and gas

Although not a spice, I include walnuts in my cake...partly because of the protein...but also because:

Walnuts: are one of the only plant based sources of healthy omega 3 fatty acids, cleanses the liver.

To top it all off, I used the last of this year's carrots from our garden...adding the the healthful, natural feel to this cake.

I was actually amazed that carrots can be stored in a root cellar, in wet sand, for most of the winter!  I discovered that nugget of information whilst reading my favorite gardening book "The All You Can Eat Gardening Handbook" by Cam Mather.  He has a root cellar and has been root cellaring for a few years now.  I am facinated by the idea of storing food without using hydro electricity!  It is my intent to try a root cellar experiment next year...but that would involve cleaning a section of the basement...which is a bigger task that you'd think!

So I'll include my dreamy carrot cake recipe that I am borrowing from the quintessential "Joy of Cooking" cookbook.  Including the cream cheese frosting recipe...merry christmas!

Carrot Cake

preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 12 x 9 inch pan.

I do everything in the food processor....so begin by adding:
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt

blend until mixed thoroughly

add 3/4 cup of vegetable oil
3 large eggs

blend thoroughly

add 1 1/2 cup grated carrot
1 cup golden raisins
handful of walnut pieces

blend slightly until ingredients are mixed throughout

scrape into greased pan and bake for 30-35 min

allow to cool on stovetop and then you can prepare icing

Cream Cheese Icing

Again using the food processor, add 8 oz cream cheese (cold), 2 cups of icing sugar and 5 tbsp room temp butter or marg. 
This recipe calls for 2 tsp of vanilla, but I use about 2 TBSPs of vanilla....i do love my vanilla!
Blend above ingredients and spread on cake.

ENJOY!