Peter's Cross Station

Acorn Squash Soup

Too good to forget how I made this one:

1 Acorn squash

2 yellow onions

6ish garlic cloves

2 cups of broth (chicken this time, but you can use veggie)

rosemary

salt and pepper

Cut the acorn squash in half and scoop out the seeds.  Place it cut side down on a baking sheet and roast on about 400 (F) for about an hour

Quarter the onions and peel the garlic.  Toss in olive oil and salt (I used coarse sea salt).  Spread on a baking pan and roast on about 400 (F) for about 20 minutes.

Bring the broth plus an additional cup of water to boil.  Scoop the roasted flesh from the acorn squash skin and toss it in the pot of broth.  Toss in, likewise, the roasted onions and garlic.  Add a branch of fresh rosemary and some salt and pepper.

Simmer for about 20 minutes.  Remove the rosemary and puree the soup.  (I used my trusty immersion blender.)

Yum!

Housekeeping: Crockpot Edition

I used to cook dinner from about 4 to roughly 4:30.  Sometimes it was 4:15 or 4:30 to 4:45 or 5.  But the upshot is, my family is hungry by 4:30 or 5 and I spend about half an hour cooking.

But now, Nat is in school from 1:30-4:30 and we don't get home until about 5.  I spend her school hours near school, writing, while Selina is hanging with the babysitter.  Or, on days I don't have a babysitter, I spend the time at home with Selina until 4ish, then put her in the car to go pick up Nat.  Either way, though, cooking dinner doesn't fit into the new plan at all.  Not the way it always has in the past.

So we've been eating a lot of crap lately.  The kids will get frozen pizzas and mac and cheese from the babysitter and I will eat a plate of nachos after they're in bed.  When Cole is home, we've been mostly eating out.

I've been trying to figure out how to solve the dilemma of dinner.  One idea is to make a big soup or stew once a week.  Now that it is soup weather again, this should help.  I can make the soup before school and we can eat it later and it will not only be good but better than it would have been hot off the stove.

Still, we can't eat soup every day.

So here's my question for the crock pot people out there:  Would that help me?  Could I toss delicious dinner ingredients into a crock pot to be ready at 5 and the serve us all a tasty dinner the minute I get Nat home from school?

Can you make things in a crock pot besides the soups and stews I'm already making?

Advice, recipes, crockpot manufacturer preferences welcome--yea, encouraged!

Colors!

I know I just posted about the garden, but I can't help it.  I am loving this stage!  These are from yesterday, but some of these are already bigger and brighter even just one day later...

How the Garden Grows

Here's the squash I grew from seed.  The little squash are finally starting to look like they might be edible someday.  the biggest one is about the size of my little finger:

Tomatoes I bought as plants.  So far, they are exceptionally fecund.  I've lost count of how many tomatoes are there.  My chiropractor told me the squirrels won't be interested until they start to turn red, so I have my eye out for that.  If they get any, I'll harvest them half-ripe and let them sit in the kitchen window for a couple of days.  That's my father-in-law's strategy with his beefsteaks.  These are Romas and they are getting bigger than I expected them to. Thumbs up for the self-watering 24" pots:

I bought four sweet pepper plants when they were pretty little, after all the ones I started from seed up and died inexplicably.  These are three-color peppers.  I wasn't sure how big they would get and if the pot would work out okay (12").  They are doing really well.  I only have one pepper so far, but loads of blossoms.  And this one grew really fast!  In like a week or something, it went from a speck to a recognizable pepper:

I will never have a bumper crop of lima beans I'm afraid.  But they have rallied after being bitten down to stubs by squirrels.  I have two pots of them and will be lucky if I harvest enough for a single serving.  Probably won't bother next year.  (Those are chives in the edge of the pot--they are a bumper crop!):

Carrots!  Whoo-hoo!  I cannot wait to pull these up.  I pulled one up the other day and it was about a quarter inch long, so I'm sitting on my hands now.  I have this pot of quite mature ones, and a few smaller ones in two window boxes.  Oddly, the squirrels have left them alone and tried to dig up the basil planted in a pot next to this instead.  Basil???

This is one of my own tomatoes grown from seed.  It was about an inch tall 6 weeks ago, which is why I broke down and bought some plants.  I couldn't let my seedlings go, however, so I planted the two strongest looking ones.  It's looking pretty good now.  I doubt it will make it to fruiting stage, but I am using it as a sort of experiment.  Next year, I do think I'll do seeds again, but start super early, like in late January or early February.  I didn't really start these until about mid-April this year.  That's parsley planted around the tomato:

Finally, my prairie!  Here are some wildflowers I don't know at all.  But they are pretty.  You can't see the milk bottle when you look up at the urn they are planted in, but I couldn't take a picture of the sky without losing the detail in the flowers.  So pay no attention to the milk bottle:

How I Got My Kids to Eat Kale

I was gonna call it, "How To Get Your Kids To Eat Kale" but thought better of it.  Because kids--they're a mixed bunch.  You just never know.  Still, if you want your kids to eat kale and they don't eat it, you're welcome to try my technique.

Time was when Nat had leafy greens daily.  Remember Green Supper?  Ah the golden days of baby and toddlerhood!  These days, I sneak frozen spinach into mac and cheese, spaghetti sauce, under the cheese on the pizza--otherwise they'd never get greens at all.  (Selina might, but she suffers from second child syndrome and typically gets whatever Nat's getting, thus fewer greens than Nat got at her age.)

Anyway, I have some kale in one of my back porch window box planters.  It's a variety called "perpetual spinach" because it's mild and can be used as a substitute for spinach,but is easier to grow and just keeps going all season.

I have cut it, cooked it, served it raw--none of these things got a thumbs up from the kids (they did from Cole and me, though).  Instead, they'd chew it, spit it out, play with it, toss it on the floor and otherwise waste this awesome fresh green that should be in their little bodies fighting oxidants and making them super girls.

Until they were playing outside while I picked it.  "I want a leaf!" declared Nat.

"What?  This kale?" I asked.

"Yeah, the kale!" she said.  I gave her a baby leaf.  She gobbled it down.  "I want anther one!" she begged.

By now, Selina was at my ankles, whining "Me too!  Me too!" (her perpetual battle cry).
I stood there pulling them off one leaf at a time until my kale was cut back to the roots.  They ate it with gusto.  About every three days, I get enough mature leaves to repeat this and so far, they haven't caught on to the fact that this is the same thing they have rejected on a plate time and again.

Kale.  The new Ice Cream Truck.

Give it try with yours and let me know how it goes!

Garden Growing

  These are my squash.  It's difficult to see them, and yes, they are teensy, but there are four little squash on the vine so far.  This was taken two days ago and the "big" one here in the middle is already twice this size and the next biggest one is this big.

  My other squash died after being decimated by a sudden thunderstorm.  Its main stem broke and that was all she wrote.

  But I am somewhat surprised and definitely pleased by how well the remaining one is doing.  Next year, I'll probably plant four of these.

 This is the same plant, but I wanted you to see my nifty self-watering bottle.  It's a terra cotta stake that goes into the container and then you fill a bottle of water and stick it down in there.  These are mineral water bottles I painted to keep the light out so they wouldn't grow too much algae.

  Here's one of my tomatoes.  Except not really.  Fine, I broke down and bought two plants.  Both are doing well.  They had blossoms when I bought them, which I pruned off.  Soon they had more blossoms and now they have green tomatoes.  I have about four on each plant now.  My actual tomato seedlings are  still only about an inch tall.  What's up with that?  I started them in early April!  They are healthy, but only have four leaves each!

  Remember the silly milk bottle in the middle of this planter?  It's finally doing what I had planned and hiding under the wild flowers.  Some are getting buds, including the teddy bear sunflowers I put all around the outer rim.

The lettuce produced beautifully for a month and we had many delicious salads.  It's pretty much done now, so I planted carrots in that planter.  I also put carrots in the pots where the cucumbers bit it and in the space which held the short-lived and under-producing broccoli raab.

This has nothing to do with gardening.  It's Nat's picture of a guitar on her magnadoodle.  She was very proud and keen that I take a picture and preserve it forever.  I have to say, I am impressed.  It's pretty good for a magnadoodle, don't you think?  She drew it from life, copying her ukulele:

 

In Which Early Reading Becomes a Problem OR Nat Discovers We've Been Holding Out on Her

The scene: our favorite neighborhood restaurant.  I hand Nat the "kids'" menu and tell her to look it over and choose two things.

Nat: "oatmeal, scrambled eggs, yoghurt, fruit, (pause) pancakes with chocolate chips?"

Mama Shannon: (casually) "we aren't getting that."

Nat: "cheese pizza, grilled cheese sandwich, milk, (pause) chocolate milk???

Imagine the incredulous look in her eye.

The good news is she chose plain yoghurt, cheese pizza and water.  And then she got really, really excited when the water glass came with two straws.

Wonder how long these days will last?

Another Recipe (Mine this Time)

A sort of resolution I've made recently (not exactly but kind of a New Year's one, I guess), is to stop buying cans lined with BPA-containing plastic.  So I'm going through my extant cans of beans and tomatoes now, but buying only dried beans from now on.  Canned tomatoes are an absolute staple necessity around here, and I've been tipped off that Eden Organic tomato cans do not contain BPA, so I'm going to buy only those in future.

Anyway, this is all to say that I made the following recipe with canned beans, but will be trying it in the future with dried ones, which would change things.  If you're a dried bean user, please revise as necessary and add a tip in the comments about your revision, okay?

Black Bean and Collard Soup/Stew/Chili (it's pretty thick)

About half a clove of garlic

one onion (I used a red one)

a couple tablespoons of olive oil or thereabouts

one tablespoon of rice wine vinegar

4 or 5 large leaves of collards

one can of black beans (with the liquid)

one cup of broth (I used veggie, but chicken or beef would be good too)

salt and pepper to taste

In a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil while chopping the garlic and onion.  Put the chopped onion and garlic into the hot oil and  sautee it for a few minutes (about 5).  I put the garlic in first then chopped the onion so the result was an almost toasty brown garlic.

While the garlic and onion is doing its thing, wash the collards, strip the big veins out then stack the leaves on your cutting board and slice them into thin strips the width of the leaf.

Add the collards to the saucepan, add the rice wine vinegar and a tablespoon of water.  Cover the pan and let the collards cook down a bit for about 5 minutes.

Add the black beans and the broth.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer for about 20 minutes.  Add salt and pepper to taste. (Red pepper flakes are good in this dish, added to the garlic and onions in the first step, but I didn't do that because of toddler/preschool palettes.)

Serves about 4 adults or a mix of kids and adults.  I think it would be good with cornbread, but didn't do it this time.

YUM!

Sharing a Recipe

My colleague, Keri, at Strollerderby was a chef before she was a mom.  Occasionally, she shares a kid-friendly recipe on the site.  I have to direct you to this one, which I've made twice already and am putting in the monthly meal circulation.  It's that awesome.

When I was a kid, C@mpb311'$ vegetarian ABC soup was one of my favorite foods.  Now I'm anti-MSG and a minimizer of canned foods with my own kids.  This recipe reminds me a lot of that childhood comfort food, but is, you know, healthy and natural.  The kids love it too, especially the letters.  You haven't lived until you've heard your kid announce "I just ate an R and it was delicious!"

Gardening Questions: I'm New at This, Please Weigh In!

1.  Please share your vermiculture experience.  I'm thinking of getting this.  Thoughts?  Advice?  Just to cut do-it-yourself advice off at the pass, I'm not going to do it myself.  Really.  I'm just not.  I have to keep this in the kitchen 6 months of the year, and I am willing to pay for a system that just works right without too much tweaking.

2.  Rain barrels: Can you use them when there are no downspouts at your disposal?  Would a barrel like this catch enough water just from the rain itself to make it worth it?  Because we don't have any downspout access on the balconies where I will be gardening.

I am doing a container garden with veggies on two balconies starting this spring.  I am really excited about it, but looking for ways to make it as efficient as possible, even if there's a little upfront investment.  But I don't want to go wrong with that investment.  Please share your experience!