Thursday, June 25, 2009

AROUND OUR HOUSE

Lots of summer activity going on around our house so I thought I'd share a little bit of it with you this morning.
(click on picture to enlarge)
Four of the five greens Mickey harvested for me.
Mustard greens to the far left, one variety of lettuce, Swiss chard, another lettuce

The fifth, leaf lettuce. These are so yummy and I love making a huge salad with all but the mustard greens.

This is the first time Mickey has grown Mustard Greens so I had to look up how to cook them. Here is the very good and very simple recipe.

Braised Mustard Greens

4 slices bacon, chopped

3 bunches mustard greens, trimmed & chopped

2 tablespoons white vinegar

2 teaspoons sugar

Coarse salt

2 Cups chicken broth (I make my own)

Directions: In a large skillet over medium high heat brown bacon and render its fat. Add chopped greens to the pan in batches and turn until they wilt, then add more greens. When all of the greens are in the pan, add vinegar and cook a minute. Season greens with sugar and salt. Add chicken broth to the pan and cover. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer greens 15 to 20 minutes then serve.

This is very good and I have made two batches of it so far.

We have been picking a few green onions along and been using them in salads but here we harvested the remainder of the onion sets.

Here they are after being cleaned up and ready to bag. These are the best, fresh, tasty onions. Note the one tiny carrot in the front!!! We pulled one just to see how close they were to being ready.....not yet!

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Honey Harvest time is getting near.

Getting the 39 Ball & Kerr canning jars washed that our dear friend, Don, found for me at a garage sale for only $5. What a deal that was. Thank you Don for always being on the look-out for me.

The rest of those 39 jars!!! We have bought new caps & rings at 12 for $3.22. That makes our cost $.40 a jar versus $.73. Savings of 45%!!!

Mickey - in the process of building 2 more Supers. The Super is what you put on top of the hive for the bees to store honey in that can be harvested. He had to build these two news ones to replace the full ones he will be removing that are loaded with that wonderful, pure honey. Yum!!! Stay turned for this years first harvesting soon.
Have a great day......I'm off to bake Banana/pineapple Bread. I'll post about that later :o)

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10 comments:

Mari said...

Wow! What a great harvest already! Fresh veggies and honey. It's all good!

Sharon said...

We are finally getting some things out of the garden too. It has done so good this year after 2 failures.
Enjoy your salads and greens.
God Bless

Jill said...

Yum - that bread sounds delicious! And green leaf lettuce fresh from the garden is one of my very favorite things.

Brenda said...

I can't wait to see pics of your honey harvest!
We've had some baby lettuce and chives out of Reva's garden and just this evening Rick came in with the first tomato. I LOVE COLORADO!
Yesterday we picked sour cherries and got them all pitted. I'm enjoying being all domestic!

Shirley said...

Wonderful - I can taste the honey already :)

Dawn said...

My African DIL loves greens of all kinds and I tried to find them for her in the store when she got here - I haven't tried the mustard greens.

I made banana bread today, but never heard of it with pineapple in it. I'm anxious to see the recipe.

Mountain Mama said...

Your greens look delicious and I bet they were too. I have never tried mustard greens but have cooked kale much like you did the mustard greens. I didn't use vinegar though, just cooked the bacon and drained off the fat, then packed in a load of kale, and poured chicken broth over, put a lid on and simmered until tender. YUM!
We used to have bee hives too. I remember the loaded supers and how heavy they were.

Ruth said...

You "make" honey? YUM!!

Fitter After 50 said...

Have you ever tried making greens with Turkey bacon? If so, how'd that turn out?

Merisi said...

Beautiful harvest!

I was at the farmers' market this morning and among other things did I buy young swiss chard (4 lbs!). I washed and boiled them in batches. I am looking forward to eating them the Italian way, with a little good olive oil and lemon juice.

I had a great-uncle who was a beekeeper. I have the fondest memories watching him around his bees.