Mustard Greens

Cheesy bean and rice burrito with sides of collard greens with mixed vegetables and grapes.

One of my favorite kinds of places in the entire world are farmer's markets. A close second are the produce sections in the grocery store. I love to skip through the aisles flitting from one bin to another to admire all of the fresh food. I constantly get distracted and forget what vegetable I had originally intended to buy and, if I'm not careful, I will end up bringing strange fruits and vegetables to the check out counter and then make the check out take twice as long because I am too busy telling the cashier how I am going to cook it when I get home.

SO

If this is the case at the grocery store... imagine me at the farmers market.

Last Saturday I went with my roommate and another co-worker to the local farmer's market here in Pensacola. I had a blast! There is so much to see at this market. People will come all the way from Alabama just to set up here in Pensacola. There are a lot of craft like tables that sell things such as homemade clothes, toiletries, jewelry, games, yard decorations, household items, pottery - just about anything you can think of. The food tables are equally diverse. There are baked goods, fresh produce, refreshing drinks, snacks, jams, jellies, kettle corn, honey, preserved meat, fresh meat, different grains... There is also a lot of music there. A bluegrass band comes every week along with several solo musicians. People will play guitar, piano, banjo, violin, drums, and even foreign instruments that I don't recognize. This market is the place to be.

Baby Garden 2013

Over in our neck of the woods it is and has been time for planting. I am mostly in charge of everything this time and I've never done it before so I am very anxious for everything to work out well. :) Before Zachary, my older brother, has done it but since he's moved out and is on his own now I guess I'll be taking up the mantel. So without further ado here's a look at what we've got up our sleeve for the garden this year.

First the seeds:

Forty different kinds of seeds!



We made two orders. Here is the first. Everything came from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. A company I highly recommend.

Dinner Time Shakshuka: Recipe

A while back someone shared a link on Facebook to a recipe for Shakshuka. It is a breakfast dish from Isreal and it is delicious! I have made it several times since then and tonight I made it for supper. I usually do make it for breakfast.

Here I'll show you how I made a dinner version. As these are very general directions you should go check out the original one first at The Shiksa in the Kitchen.

This isn't the best picture, but you can see what it is like. There is an egg missing at the bottom. I forgot to take a picture before I took out the two-year-old's portion to cool.

Recipe: Grilled Chicken over Parmesan Rice

I have been thinking about my little cooking page over there in the top right corner. I haven't done much with it, although I haven't slowed down a bit on the cooking. I am not sure I will add anymore to that page or not and I thought I would just start putting them here in the posts section.

Most recently I made an extraordinary dinner all on my own. Usually when I make things without a recipe they are good, and worth doing again (like my carrot and sweet potato soup) but they don't come out amazing as often. This time it did however.


This recipe was inspired by some parsley that was sitting in the refrigerator.

Fifteen Pumpkins

We got these from my grandma's church when they were through using them as fall decorations. You may remember reading about that here.

 

 

The following will be several pumpkin related pictures and I will try to get as many of the recipes I used as I can into this post as well.

Banana Bread, Stuffed Cabbage, and Macho Nachos

For breakfast the other day we had banana bread. We lost our own recipe so I looked for one online. This is what I found, I added some vanilla and cinnamon. I didn't have quite as many bananas as it called for, I think that's why the batter seemed kind of dry at first. I just added some milk and it fixed it right up. Everybody said it was great, I'm thinking this recipe is a keeper.  :) Click here for the recipe.

Cooking

Bacon Chicken Dumplings

Click here for the recipe

This recipe was delicious! The only thing is that it needed more bacon and I think not so much dumplings although Mom said it was just right. And, I really don't like it when recipes call for other recipes! Like poultry seasoning (I don't have a bottle of poultry seasoning in the spice cabinet) and biscuit mix. I looked in a recipe book for the biscuit mix, and didn't bother with the poultry seasoning but just added the spices I normally do for this kind of thing.


Savory Breakfast Muffins

Click here for the recipe. :)

This was a good recipe. Really liked it. :) There were just a few things I did differently. It needs more bacon, I added onions, and cheese. Besides that I did everything just the same. My family loved it and I could hardly keep my older brother from eating all the leftovers. (The leftovers that I was saving for HIM!)    haha ;)

Acorn Squash Soup

Ingredients:
2 medium acorn squash or butternut squash
3 c. chicken broth
3 c. milk
1/3 c. packed brown sugar
1 tsp. Cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 c. creamy peanut butter

1. Half the squash and scoop out seeds. Bake in the oven upside down at 350* for an hour or until done. It helps to add a little water in the bottom of the pan.

2. Scoop out the flesh and mash it up in a bowl or put it in a food processor.

3. Put all the ingredients in the pot except peanut butter and heat thoroughly. When it is hot take out a cup of soup and put the peanut butter in it and then add it back to the pot. Cook a little longer and then it's ready to eat.

This recipe was super easy. We cooked a pumpkin a few days ago and made a bunch of yummy stuff with it. I saved out about four cups (one very full quart sized bag) in the freezer and just put it in the refrigerator two days ahead of time to thaw. One thing I almost always do with recipes is to add more seasonings than it says. I used a lot more nutmeg and not much Cinnamon only because we ran out. The soup is pretty thin so maybe next time I might add something else to it.

Making Peanut Butter

This picture was taken after the fact. I didn't think to take pictures while I was doing it so I had to set it up this way. :( 

So a couple days ago I got this notion that I wanted to make peanut butter. There was a deal going on at the grocery store for buy one get one free on a jar of peanuts. My unsuspecting Dad brought home the nuts and immediately I declared I was going to make peanut butter. Well I didn't make it that day or the next or the next and before I knew it there was only half a jar left! This morning at breakfast Dad was spreading some all ready made peanut butter on his pancakes, a privilege we children rarely enjoy. Well I wanted some of that peanut butter so I asked Mom if I made peanut butter today if I could have some right now on my pancakes. She said yes, the deal was struck so I had to be sure to make the peanut butter today. And I did.

Canning

    Well the growing season is here and I'm pretty excited about canning. I've got plans for this summer, it will be so great to be able to pull out our very own canned food from our very own garden. We have a plum tree and an apple tree, then in the garden we have, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, cabbage, squash, cucumber, green beans, blackberry's?... and I don't remember what else but I counted them all up and there is eighteen different things. Zachary's going to sell a bunch at farmers market and whatever doesn't sell we will can.

~Short post I know~