Kicking off soup season

Definitely one of those days that I was thankful to be working inside at the clinic.  I got home from work and Mike was sitting in his easy chair with a big mug of hot tea and told me he had changed clothes three times during the day.  Picking produce most of the day in 55 degrees and rain is not pleasant.  But the show must go on.  Nice order to Fresh Fork this week.  Golden beets, cucumbers, green cauliflower, Swiss chard, and summer squash. 

I was a little luckier doing evening chores outside and came through without having to change my clothes even once.  Then I decided to walk the two beagles back to the garden and pick some broccoli to steam for dinner.  I almost made it to the culvert over the creek behind the house when a loud clap of thunder sounded off.  Oh boy!  Nothing like heading back to a wide open field with a thundershower looming overhead.  But the dinner show must go on too and I needed broccoli so I quickened my pace, picked some broccoli without hesitation and back to the house.  Just a bit more interesting than shopping for broccoli at the grocery store.

The other part of dinner was some homemade chicken and noodle soup.  This is a very easy process, but it is spread out over several days.  Ok, maybe the VERY first part is not that easy.  Well actually it is easy once you have done it a few times, but you have to have a live old laying hen on hand.  Most will probably just purchase an already butchered chicken at the store.  Monday I started butchering my old laying hens.  I let them lay for three lay cycles (approximately 3 years) and then butcher them and replace them with younger hens.  So Monday I butchered a hen (actually 9 of them, but it only takes one to make soup).  Tuesday was my long day at work so the chicken just sat in the refrigerator waiting.  Wednesday I put the chicken in the crockpot with veggies and seasoning and covered with water.  Cooked it all day.  Removed the chicken and deboned it.  Poured the homemade chicken stock into a large pot and put into the refrigerator.  Today,Thursday, I took the pot of stock out of the fridge, skimmed off fat and then strained the stock through some cheesecloth to take out all the dirty looking particles left behind from cooking the chicken.  Brought the pot of stock to a boil.  Added noodles of choice to cook.  Added cut up deboned chicken into the pot of cooked noodles and stock and presto!  Homemade chicken noodle soup.  Mike said having hot soup for dinner was perfect after spending the day outside in the cold rain.  Soup and chili season has officially begun.

That was a close one

Has it actually been 9 days since I have written in my blog???  Holy freakin' cow!!!  Well, all I can say in my defense is that first me and then Mike, picked up the cold virus flavor of the month.  I've been totally wiped out and just trying to hang on to everything that needs to be done at both the clinic and at home.  All is better now though and we are both feeling our old selves again.  Maybe I should say our middle aged selves.

This is the time of year that us farmer's watch the forecast like hawks.  One day we are picking produce and the next day the growing season is done.  Literally.  Our first frost warning was last night.  At 9pm it was 40 degrees, the sky was crystal clear filled with stars and there was not a breath of wind to be had.  You could just feel the cold bite to the air.  When I got up at 5:30am, I took the dogs out for a walk and went back to check the thermometer on the maple tree behind the house.  32 degrees.  There was ice on the windshields of our vehicles.  Right before sunrise as the first light is breaking, that is when the temperature often drops to its lowest point.  We were both wondering what was happening in the garden.  Fingers crossed that the black plastic that is underneath most of the plants would hold some heat.

This is how the back yard looked when I left for work.  The sun had been up an hour so there was only frost in the grass in the low spot down by the creek.  The hillside in the sun was free of frost.  Had it melted?  Or did the frost not touch the higher ground?  Well what do you know? The garden looks pretty much unscathed.  Just a little bit of frost nip on a few of the peppers and a few of the eggplant, but the rest looks very much unharmed.  Whew!  Next chance for frost is looking like this coming Saturday night.  Actually this is quite good for us because our average first frost date is the first week of October.  Every day that goes by without frost is a blessing.

Eat Local Challenge Day 3

Well fall is surely here.  The weather theme for the past 3 days was cool and wet.  It's not so bad when cool and wet fall on days I have to work, but it is down right annoying when they fall on my 3 day weekend.  There was a brief break this morning so I spent about 3 hours hiking around the Dorset Wildlife Area near our house.  Exploring these woods is something I have wanted to do for some time and since the wet made outdoor chores like lawn mowing impossible, I decided to grab the opportunity to go for a walk.  When I got back to the house, the rain started up again and so I did the next best thing which is to start making food.  We were almost out of cookies so a batch of chocolate chip cookies came first.

Then batch number two of apples from the farmer's market went into the crockpot to make applesauce.  These were Jonagold apples this time, a much firmer variety than the McIntosh.  They went through the peeler, corer, slicer contraption in record time.  I love when things work like they should!  Even the finished product looked better than the first batch. 

Next dinner and the eat local challenge meal.  Once again, not 100% perfect, but pretty close.  Mike took some bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, hot and semi hot peppers over to the Middlefield Produce Auction this afternoon and when he got home it was getting dark.  And raining.  So I sent him out to the garden to get some sweet corn and bell peppers for dinner.  What a good sport!  One dozen ears of sweet corn were picked, husked, kernels cut off the cob and put into a pan to make a new recipe from the Southern Ground Cookbook called "Heavenly Creamed Corn".  Then I cut up a couple boneless skinless chicken breasts from the chickens we butchered last weekend.  Stir fried the chicken and set aside.  Then I stir fried the red, yellow and green bell peppers that Mike had picked.  Added the chicken back in along with some pineapple and sweet & sour sauce.  Served the stir fry over some brown rice.  Dessert was apple crisp made with apples from the local farmer's market.  Mike said that even though the rice wasn't local, it was wet enough outside that it looked like we could grow rice.  Sounds good to me.

Tomorrow's eat local challenge might be a challenge.  We have some leftovers that have to be eaten tomorrow, but it does include some potatoes from our farm.  I wanted to make some homemade wheat wraps for my sandwich tomorrow, but with the cookies and the applesauce and the creamed corn and the stir fry, well for some reason I just didn't get it done.  I'll see what I can come up with when I wake up and start fussing around the kitchen tomorrow.  No need to be too prepared.

Eat Local Challenge October 2-8

The Ohio Department of Agriculture is sponsoring the "Eat Local Challenge" this week.  It started yesterday and runs through October 8th.  The goal of the challenge is to  "plan and prepare one meal every day using foods that are made, grown or raised in Ohio".  Being generally out of the news loop as usual, I just found out about the challenge in the middle of last week.  No matter, I decided to jump right in and take the challenge.  So here I am on day 2 and having mixed results.

Yesterday I had plans to go to a dinner to benefit the local humane society so I decided to choose breakfast as my challenge meal.  I did pretty good, but not 100%.  I made an egg sandwich using one egg from our own hens.  The cheese and the bread were both purchased at the Howe Meadow Farmer's Market in Peninsula, OH.  The orange juice I had was sadly not from Ohio.  If I had time to think ahead, I should have gone out to one of our local orchards and bought some apple cider.  So not too bad, but not perfect.

So day 1 of the challenge got me to thinking a lot about where our food comes from.  I have decided that it is going to be nearly impossible for me to make a complete meal just from Ohio products.  Oh I could do it I suppose, but the meal would be pretty bland.  Back in the summer, I had a source of fresh herbs and since I didn't know about the challenge then, I made no preparations to dry herbs for later use.  So if I made a meal today, I could not use any herbs, spices, salt, pepper, etc.  How about baking powder or baking soda that I use for my baked goods?  Nope, couldn't use any of that.  It would be a very basic meal using just local products.  I couldn't use my normal olive oil for stir fry.  And while there are some Ohio companies that make their own chocolate, I would waste a whole lot of gas to buy some.  But I guess when it comes down to it, all this thinking is the point of the challenge.  It makes you really appreciated the food system we have in place. 

Back to the challenge.  Day 2 was a mixed results day.  I did not prepare one meal with local food, but instead had at least one or two items each meal that were locally grown or made.  For breakfast, the eggs came from our farm and Mike made toast with bread from the farmer's market.  For lunch, I had a BBQ squirrel wrap sandwich (ok weird, I admit, but true and tasty) with squirrel from our farm.  I also had some watermelon from our garden.  Mike made a toasted cheese sandwich with farmer's market bread.  For dinner, we ate fried chicken made with chicken from our farm, the salad had tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden and farmer's market cheese.  The milk I drank came from United Dairy which is an Ohio company I am pretty sure.  Homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert.  I'm not really sure though if homemade cookies count though as the only ingredient that was local were the eggs.  Everything else came from the grocery store.  Although I if had purchased homemade cookies from a baker at the farmer's market that would count.  So I am going to count my own.  *grin*  Overall, not bad, but I could have done much better.

Depending on how my day goes tomorrow, I may take a drive through the county and see what goodies I can find to add to the challenge.