Heart

More heart shaped potatoes.

Cheesey Scalloped Potatoes

 

 

 

 

I put some mild blue cheese, about a quarter cup, along with a half cup of smoked gouda cheese, and one cup regular gouda cheese in with the white sauce.  I have to say that this was one of the best batches of scalloped potatoes we've made ever!

 

Dinner 112011

Dinner: florence potatoes (named after a woman named florence) home canned green beans, pickled beets, and honey orange marmalade ginger glazed smoked ham.  Here's the ham sitting atop my 1952 kenmore stove, even though we baked it out on the grill.

Garden Update

My potato patch before round three of mulching - we mulched it just before it started pouring!

Greens patch: Lettuce, chard, beets, turnips, radishes, carrots, and parsnips.

The hail and tornados missed us! I'm so very grateful for this!!! At present I have no way to protect my tomatoes. John has an idea and we will set it up sometime this week.

Garden Update

The potato patch has been mulched, I beat the rain this time. One of the upsides to checking the potatoes was I found something was munching on the leaves so tomorrow it's off to the gardening store for some organic bug stuff to kill off the buggies. Otherwise hubby is threatening to use Sevin on everything and that is the last resort around here.

Potato Patch

They need to be mulched again! They've grown about 18 inches since last Saturday. The plants are dry but the much they are in is wet, I'm wondering if it's ok to go ahead and mulch them (I'm using hay) or wait another day???

Tonights Dinner Menu

Tonights Menu

Seasoned Pork Roast with onions and carrots
Mashed potatoes
Roast juice thickened with potato starch
Cranberry Sauce - homemade of course!
Mustard Greens

Garden Update

Front potato patch which now has chicken wire around to keep the hay and potatoes confined.

Lettuce, radishes, beets, carrots, parsnips (I hope), and turnips planted using the square foot method.

One lone potato plant in the big garden.

Garden Update

Up already: Radishes, Potatoes, Lettuce, and Chard!

Potatoes Planted

Forgot to mention that I planted potatoes today, two varities actually Kennebacs and Blue's. The blue potatoes my neighbor Carol gave me,s hould be fun to see what I end up with this summer. I have about 7 pounds of Kennebacs left to plant, they need more eye growing time before they can go into the ground.

Potato Boxes

The potato boxes are in, if this bad weather skips us - Lord Willing - I'll plant potatoes this coming week!

Ready to Go!!!

My poor neglected garlic patch, I have two of them actually. Hopefully next week I'll be able to dig the patch up and seperate it out so they will actually produce sizable bulbs this year. Leeks and onion seeds are going in next week as well, again if we don't end up with a nasty blizzard tomorrow.

Now that John is finished doing his thing, tilling, I can put up the fence again this will help to keep the rabbits away from my grape vine which they tend to ravage and very quickly. Picture below YES that really is a tree growing in the middle of my garden. I could opt to remove it but it provides a LOT of shade on my house hence reducing the need for central air in the summer. It's a crab apple, I've been working on guilds to plant around the tree it would appear that there are a lot of plants, including vegetables that love apple trees.

North Garden below East Garden above, Native Prairie Garden to the right of the sidewalk.

My garden spots have been tilled, just 2 inches to break the large clumps of horse manure apart and to mix it in with the leaves, and are ready to go! Now barring any major blizzards which we may or may not get next week I'll plant my potatoes, peas, kale, chard, mustard greens, and rhutabegas.

Canning Potatoes

And dealing with all of that starch! There are very few things I remember from Home Ec, taken from 1981-1984 and this was one of them!

Cube your potatoes and rinse, you may have to rinse them twice, drain.

Place potatoes into a container and cover with COLD water, I used a 2 gallon bucket.

To this add 1/4 cup of vinegar.

If you use a smaller container then reduce your vinegar.

The potatoes will have a clearish look to them after soaking. I soaked mine for 4 hours but overnight yeilds the best results.

Instant Gravy

Served over potatoes it's not all that bad, needed more black pepper though.

Pasta with Potatos and Peas ~ Depression Era Cooking

Potato Bin

John planted some potatoes in this bin with straw, this is a new experiment for us, will let you know how it turns out.

The idea behind this potato growing method is as the starter potatoes send up shoots you put more straw, and another round of wood (or tires) and you keep doing this until you are ready to harvest. This is supposed to encourage more potatoes and less vines.