Harps adds bulk food section

Seen today at the Wedington St. Harps store. First time I have seen it.

Ozark Natural Foods has some competition now. Bulk foods is what I buy the most of at ONF. Though Harps is not offering the huge selection of organic bulk food, I will probably start buying some of my bulk food here. Most of this selection is nuts, dried fruit, and oats. I mostly buy almonds, pumpkin seeds, oats, and lentils by bulk.

Why bulk? Well...for one, you decide how much you want. It's slightly cheaper too. Less packaging. Supposedly more sustainable...even if you are buying in small quantities, the super thin produce bag is less intensive than whatever extra crap marketers incorporate into packaging in hopes of higher sales.

Making Granola

I had been wanting to try homemade granola for awhile. I finally got some inspiration after reading this blog recipe, but I settled on Alton Brown's recipe instead. I will try the other recipe next I guess. Here is Alton Brown's:

Ingredients
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup slivered almonds
1 cup cashews
3/4 cup shredded sweet coconut
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown
sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons maple syrup
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins
Directions
Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.
In a large bowl, combine the oats, nuts, coconut, and brown sugar.
In a separate bowl, combine maple syrup, oil, and salt. Combine both mixtures and pour onto 2 sheet pans. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes to achieve an even color.
Remove from oven and transfer into a large bowl. Add raisins and mix until evenly distributed.

Yes, I didn't follow the recipe....I doubled the batch and did one cup raisins, 1/2 cup sultanas (golden raisins), and 1/2 cup cranberries. Just for a little variety. Don't let the "rolled oats" fool you...they are just "old-fashioned oats". NOT INSTANT OR QUICK COOKING OATS. This is what it looked like:





It was a little salty, probably from the cashews, but we devoured it. Warning: with oil, nuts, and coconut, granola is not a low-fat food. It certainly has great fiber and lots of micronutrients in all the good stuff that goes into it, but this should be considered a fat (with some fiber).

Chili Mac

So...chili-mac. Someone told me that every knows how to make this. I disagree....if everyone knows how to make this, why don't more people cook it? It seems everyone has some bad memory of too much of this as a kid, but there is probably a reason: it's easy, and if you try you can make it pretty healthy as well. My chili-mac is never quite the same, but I am committed to two absolute things: add vegetables and spice.

Sometimes the base of my recipe is a box of store brand macaroni and cheese. Sometimes its dry noodles. Either way, I always add Velveeta as well. I know it isn't real cheese, but this is one of only two dishes I ever eat Velveeta in. Give me a break.

This time, I had whole wheat shells to start with. The homegrown contribution to this meal was tomatos, garlic, bell pepper, jalapeno, and cayenne. I am kicking myself for not having grown more onions! So this is what the ingredients looked like:




Peppers (of all sorts) and garlic started off in just a bit of olive oil.

Then fresh tomoatos.

This is where my method probably breaks from others': I add the chili and cheese to the vegetables. (yes, I know, it looks like a typical chili cheese dip)

If you can't cook noodles, you have a problem.

Then it all comes together for a hearty meal. I recommend more onions and bell pepper, but I was short on these. If you eat it with a nice salad and keep the portion small, it really is a nice, healthy meal.

Garden Journal #6

Okay, prepare your self for pictures and short explanations. Nothing amazing, but do skip down to the bottom and read about my garlic! I am so proud!

Normal view of our counter
This summer there has always been random vegetables just sitting on the counter.

Okra
I am still amazed by the flowers. And they have been producing very steadily. Did you know theses plants grow 4 to 4 ft tall? I made gumbo..........mmmm.

Eggplants
We had quite a bit of difficulty with these. The started off very slow and were totally eaten up by these very small bugs that looked like fleas or something. We finally powdered them with a pesticide and they finally started to grow. The eggplant fruits looked beautiful, though small. That is what they looked like a week ago. After some heat they have started to wilt. They have lost their firmness and shine. We are trying to salvage them with heavy watering. Perhaps they will just end up as baba ghanoush.



Cayenne Peppers
These have been producing prolifically, but we have done NOTHING with them. Some are rotting on the plant and a few have rotted inside the kitchen. I used a few in a few dishes, but we have yet to really dry them. So I gave a bunch to my friend Fillan. He is better about things like this. He will dry them and crush them I am sure. We may actually give them ALL to him and let him process them and get some back from him. It will be nice to have dry flakes for all kinds of cooking.

Garlic
Okay, this is something I am truly proud of. Though they didn't get a full 220 growing season, I pulled the garlic up last week. The tops were turning brown and the necks had gone soft. They are small, but they are as done as they will get. Tried some the other day and it tasted just fine....in fact it smelled great! In searching online how to braid garlic, I discovered the BEST blog about gardening and cooking. Thy Hand Hath Provided is a blog written by a early 30's Mennonite (though modern) mom. They grow and preserve almost all their vegetables and cook so much amazing food. I am very very jealous. Strange for me to feeling such long distance, anonymous friendship with a conservative Mennonite family, but I devour her blog. Thanks for the lesson on braiding garlic, though mine did not turn out perfectly.

Garden Journal #5

That's right people...drool...experience envy...hate me if you want.....but that is from my garden! I have been away from it for nearly two weeks and it's killing me that I can't see and pick and eat it. Kyle actually harvested that haul and posted it on Facebook. He managed to completely leave out my participation in the garden....out of sight out of mind I guess. Oh well.

Onions, tomatoes, squash, soy beans, jalapeños, banana peppers, pears, fennel, cucumbers zucchini, tomatillos. I wanted the onions to get bigger, but Kyle tells me that a week of rain while I was gone really challenged them. If only all that rain would have come in June when we had to water almost every day! For now I am not eating the fruits of our little piece of earth......if Kyle is letting this stuff rot I will kill him. At minimum he should be giving this stuff away.

Garden Journal #3

I guess all the garden really needed was the heat to turn on...and turn on it did! Though I had some faith that these things work themselves out, I was skeptical that my yard was going to produce something worth eating. Some things have not worked out the way we envisioned, but other things have surprised us.

Green beans are surprising me right now. Kyle "let" me have a 12 foot row in the yard. He doesn't care for green beans, but I think they are the perfect reason to garden. I will eat green beans out of a can, but nothing beats the fresh ones. They are pricey at the farmer's market, so it makes sense to grow them yourself. Green beans are BUSH beans, not pole beans. And no, they are not string beans...breeders bred the strings out years ago. We turned over a 1 foot by 12 foot strip of yard and worked in a bag and a half of Scots garden soil amendment. That's it. Stuck the beans in the ground. Watered. That's it. We didn't even weed the row, as the beans grew faster than anything could have tried to get into the good soil.

Result?

That's the first picking. 14oz and pretty good looking. The second picking had ever better looking beans and was 3lbs. The next was 2lbs and was a little rougher looking. There is probably one more good picking out there. If I had known how easy it was going to be, I would have planted three times as many and provided everyone I know with beans. I did give some to my mother...after all, it was her mother that was big on growing beans and making great dinners out of them. Speaking of dinner:


This is why God created the green bean. Green beans and potatoes. I cannot think of a better way to eat green beans. This was always one of my mothers's best dishes and my grandmother's as well. It is pretty simple. Unlike my girl Misty with her detailed recipes over at Popcorn on a Skillet, I only give rough estimates of what went into my dishes.

1 pound of fresh beans
Some potatoes, peeled and quartered (I was trying to get rid of old ones and used too many this time)
4 oz black pepper ham (the nice stuff...like $7 a pound nice)
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper
Water

Clean and snap beans. Put beans, crushed garlic, and enough water to half cover beans into a wide skillet. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Add diced ham, potato, salt, and pepper. Add more water if you need. At this point I went out for a run, and came back about 45 minutes later to a perfect dish. The potatoes should be cooked, but not to the point that they totally fall apart with a fork. Now, in my family we eat this as a complete meal, so this amount should only feed two people.

So my little bean row has done me proud. Nearly six pounds so far, and more to come. Because I have been too busy to cook lately and because Kyle doesn't eat them, I actually had too many to eat. Though I hate the texture of frozen green beans, I did freeze a pound or so. Clean, snap, and blanch for three minutes, then three minutes in an ice water bath. Into the freezer in a ziplock. They will be stirfry I suppose.