Stuffed Eggplant – A New Summertime Favorite

 Let me start off this post by saying that this is Jennifer’s recipe.  I can take no credit for it.  As a matter of fact, the eggplant as well as all of the other vegetables used in this recipe came from Jennifer’s garden.    She brought it all over to the house one day to try to teach me something new.  That being said, here’s what I learned:  Stuffed eggplant tastes great!

Here is the recipe we used:

2 small eggplants
1 cup rough cut bread crumbs or plain croutons

1 small onion

1 small zucchini or yellow squash

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 small bell pepper

1/2 cup mushrooms of your choosing
1/2 cup browned sausage

1 cup of grated cheese (you can pick your favorite kind, we used mozzarella).

Optional:  4 cherry or grape tomatoes, halved or whole

salt
black pepper
crushed red pepper (optional; to taste)
basil (to taste)
oregano (to taste)
extra virgin olive oil or butter (your choice)
Vegetarian option:  Skip the meat and up the mushroom portion to a cup.  You can also substitute the meat with a 1/2 cup of any vegetable that you wish.  Peas come to mind as a nice addition.

Cut the eggplants in half from stem to bottom (lengthwise) and scoop out the insides.  Leave about ¼” of eggplant left inside the skin all the way around.  Dice up the eggplant innards, spread in a colander bowl, and sprinkle lightly but evenly with sea salt.  Leave them to sit for a half hour.  Preheat the oven to 350°.  Dice up the onion, zucchini, pepper, and mushrooms. Mince the garlic or use a garlic press.  Combine them and sauté them with the diced eggplant in extra virgin olive oil or butter.  Season as you wish.  We used salt, pepper, a dash of basil, oregano, and some red pepper seeds.  When everything is tender, add the tomatoes and sausage if you choose to do so.  We added both for a little extra flavor and staying power.  The sausage we had on hand was a medium spiced variety, so it added just a little extra zip to the final meal.  When everything is mixed, stuff those hollowed out eggplants as high as you can get them with the meat and veggie combo.  (Try as we might, we just couldn’t get all of the good stuff back into there.  I saved it for a quick dish some other night).  Arrange filled eggplant halves in a baking dish and roast at 350° for about 20 minutes.  Remove from the oven, top with cheese, and return to the oven until cheese is melted and a bit browned, about 10 minutes.  Serve up and enjoy!

I know that I identified the tomatoes and the sausage as optional, but really anything in that list of vegetables (other than the eggplant, of course) is optional.  You can also add in your favorite veggie if it’s not in this list.   I do believe Jennifer said she uses whatever she has on hand.

So there you have it – if you have a plethora of eggplant and you just don’t know what to do with them, stuff them for a quick, delicious, and nutritious meal. 

Cooking Dried Beans

Beans are easy to grow and harvest.  They're high on my list of plants recommended for new gardeners.  As dried beans, they also store beautifully in containers for a long time, making beans a favorite for people who like to keep a little food put by for hard times.  If you're not growing beans, then you can always pick them up at the market.  They are VERY affordable.  

Cooking our dried beans, however, seems to be a bit of a dying art.  Many of us eye those cute little bags in the market, and opt for the cans instead, not knowing where to begin with dried beans.  Let me tell you, cooking dried beans is super easy.  Here's a video that I found showing you how to cook beans simply and painlessly.

If you cook more beans than you need for one meal, then you can freeze the extra for another day!  I usually use my slow cooker to cook beans.  The process is exactly the same as cooking on the stove, except that the beans usually take closer to 2-4 hours on the low setting in a crock pot.  You can play with seasonings as you see fit.  I usually cook a large pot, and freeze them in dinner sized quantities.  When I need them, I grab a container and warm up the beans, using whatever seasonings fit the recipe that I'm making that night.  So my basic bean recipe is designed to create beans that are fully cooked, but ready to take on whatever regional flare I want to give it.  You can throw them into a soup pot, re-fry them, make a bean dip, whatever you like!  

Here's my Basic Bean Recipe.

1 lb bag of whatever bean you like

Water, Chicken or Vegetable Broth

1/2 an Onion, whole

1 Bay Leaf

Salt to Taste

Pepper to Taste

Old Bay Seasoning to Taste

Examine the beans for any rocks, or other non-bean debris.  Soak your beans for at least 6 hours in water.  Overnight is best.  This will soften them, and cut down on cooking time.  Drain off the water.  You can collect the water and dump it onto your garden beds.  Dump the beans into a crock pot.  Add water or broth to about an inch above the beans.  Set the cooker to the low setting.  Add the bay leaf.  Float your half onion on top of the liquid. No need to chop the onion, as you'll just be pulling it out later.  Add salt, pepper and Old Bay seasoning to taste.  I tend to like a lot.  Cook the beans until they are done (not hard anymore), probably a few hours.  Discard or compost the bay leaf and onion.  You can eat them as is, or add them to another recipe.  They're ready to go!  If you intend to freeze some, then let them cool before storing.  Use a slotted spoon to scoop the beans out.  You won't need the cooking liquid, though you can save it as a flavoring broth if you like.  This recipe can be sized up or down as you like, but don't use more than one bay leaf.

It's that simple!  Give growing and cooking beans a try!  You'll be amazed at how easy it is!

Swiss Chard

Well, even the chard resented the cold weather that we've been having.  I'll have to clip off as much as I can.  If it recovers, fantastic.  If it gives up on growing for the winter, that's alright.  It was a good ride.

Photo courtesy of mercedesfromtheeighties

If you're new to chard, then just treat it like you would fresh spinach.  It has more of a peppery bite than spinach, but cooks exactly the same.  I usually give it a very rough chop, and saute it quickly in bacon fat or olive oil.  Like spinach, it wilts down super fast.  Sprinkle a little sea salt and black pepper after you toss it in the pan, and you're good.  It's that easy.  You can also eat chard raw, steam or boil it.
Chard is very healthy for you, and VERY easy to grow. You direct sow the seeds into the soil after all danger of frost is gone.  Give it water.  Give it sun.  In about two months, you'll be clipping leaves for the table. If you're new to gardening, then add easy, forgiving chard to your list of spring plantings!

Additive Free Seasoning Blends

I'm always looking for ways to get the MSG, sand (silicon dioxide), and other unnecessary additives out of my seasonings. Click below to read an article I found on Natural News with some great recipes to create your own blends for popular seasonings like taco seasoning and beef bullion.

Article Link

Pears, pears, pears

Pears are great fruit that will thrive in our lovely NE Texas climate and soil.  It seems that no matter where I drive out in the country, I see a pear tree loaded with fruit.  They may be beside an abandoned barn, in a front yard, or standing in a field next to a park.  One of the things that this tells me is that once a pear tree is established, it is resiliant!  I read one post in my search for information about this hardy produce that jokingly suggested that the only thing you could do to kill a pear tree is pamper it.  Hmmm, this is sounding like my kind of tree!  In truth, I have killed a pear tree or two.  I have a couple struggling in the back yard right now that wish I had planted them somewhere else.  It seems that, once again, picking the right variety and proper location are the key to success. 

The picture at the start of this post is a small portion of the haul the kids and I gathered from a lonely tree next to the park my kids play at.   After some research, I have come to the conclusion that these are Kieffer pears.   This tree is described on Texas A&M horticulture website as the "old standard of pears".  They are heavy fruit bearers that will ripen in late September to October.  It also says they are "higly reistant to fire blight".    Sounding good...

Just on a state level, we seem to be on the border of Texas tree growing zones one and two.  That leaves a wide variety of pears available to us to grow.  I love the idea of the old, hardy, do-nothing-to-it and have it produce year after year kind, but the fruit of the Kieffer is not the high dessert quality that some people prefer.  Never fear, there are still more than ten variety of pear trees that will survive in our area if you find the right location!  One that is good in Zone one (which seems to encompass most of west Texas all the way over to Grayson County) is the Moonglow.  I have seen this particular variety in many nurseries around here, and have some in my yard.  They struggled over this hot summer, but did survive with only one watering from us.  The yield was very small, but the trees have only been in for two years.  The other pear tree we have planted out there is an Asian variety.  I have not given up on these trees and feel that they will thrive in years to come, but my next one will be a Kieffer and it is getting planted on either the north or east side of the house.

So, what do you do with all of those pears?  Give them to friends of course!  And eat them and make preserves, pies, and pear butter. 

I have a pan of pears boiling on the stove right now.  Trying out new recipies is a thing of joy!   The recipe for today can be found here:  http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/pear_butter/

The pear butter in the picture is from here:
:http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Spiced-Pear-Butter-2789

I don't know how today's will turn out, but the cinammon/vanilla recipe is wonderful!

Have fun and happy gardening!

Jenny - Great Meatball Recipe

Great meatball recipe that I've just kind of jury-rigged together. Came out delicious!

1 lb of meatballs, beef or venison preferred

6-8 oz of beef gravy, jarred or homemade

8 oz of Michele's wild plum jelly

salt to taste

pepper to taste

Roll the meatballs up, small to medium. Use whatever seasonings you like. I used salt, pepper, dill and parsley. Brown them in a pan. You don't have to cook them all the way through. You're just browning. Remove the meat from the pan. If you're making your own gravy, then deglaze the pan and make your gravy. I deglazed with a little wine and then added about 1 1/2 tablespoons of flour, salt and pepper to taste. I then added water until I had about 6-8 oz of gravy. Dump the meatballs, the gravy, and 8oz of the wild plum jelly into a slow cooker and cook that on low until all the flavors are melded together. This took about 40 minutes for me.

Serve on a platter with toothpicks stuck into them for an appetizer, or in a bowl if preferred. I bet these taste great over egg noodles!

Jelly Making

I was having a great debate with myself as to whether to title this post 'The Fruits of my Labor' or 'Plum Tired'. As you can see, I ended up choosing neither one. Just too big a decision for this time of night. 'Why are you so tired?' one might ask. Well, even if you didn't ask that, let me tell you. I've been making jelly. Lots of it. After twenty four pints of plum jelly from the plums off of the trees in our yard, ten pints of blueberry (my sad little plants didn't yield this year, so we went to a pick your own blueberry farm), and twenty seven pints of wild plum jelly made from plums my husband picked in West Texas last weekend, I'm tired of the whole thing. The good news is that I learned how to can and am willing to share what I've learned with you!

According to my mother-in-law, you can make any type of jelly you want without the aid of fruit pectin (more commonly known as Sure-Jell). After boiling the fruit long enough to get it soft, smash it up to get the juice and pulp out. Combine two cups of juice with two cups of sugar and boil it for ten minutes. To that mixture, add two more cups of juice and two more cups of sugar. Boil it for another ten minutes. Pour this syrup into your prepared jars, apply hot lids and relax. Each batch yields about two pints of jelly.

She says that starting with three or fours cups to make the process go faster just won't work. For whatever reason, you have to stick with two. I don't know the validity of that argument yet. I got tired standing over the stove stirring tonight, and started adding an extra cup of juice and sugar now and then. My figuring was that if you added a little extra, it would boil down a little slower, so you should add a couple of minutes to the boil time. I don't know how it will jell, as I just poured it into the jars and sealed them, but the liquid consistency looked about right.

If you want to make pectin free jelly with a tested and approved recipe, stick with the one above. I've sampled and tested plenty of it this week and definitely approve! Tonight's experiments may or may not prove successful, but I'll have fun finding out.