Welcome to Fresher than Fresh...Cooking with Scapes

We've been watching a bit too much Food Network...bear with me...


Here's a pic of the garden from last week!


Garlic scapes that were harvested in order to encourage healthy, big elephant ear bulbs:


The scapes were chopped up and drizzled with bit of Olive Oil and some Parmesan Cheese then ground in my sweet neighbor's baby food mill (which I promise I will return any day now):


Then I put the garlic scape pesto in ice cube trays to freeze it:


We had pasta with garlic scape pesto and BOY, HOWDY...did it have a kick. Not sure if ours was a bit more stout than most or what, but I'll probably be mixing this in with other pasta sauces or traditional pesto in small amounts to add some flavor. I must say it was a bit too strong to eat solo, but the flavor was amazing.

In addition, we've canned 2 pints of pickled beets, 10 pints of carrots, and frozen 1 gallon of strawberries from our garden! This weekend, we'll be heading out to pick some wild blackberries as well as harvesting some of our own!

In the garden, I'm slowly pulling up the spinach and lettuce that's all bolting to feed to the chickens and the bunny. The garlic is almost ready to pull and we'll soon begin digging up and canning potatoes in earnest. The tomatoes are full of golf ball sized green tomatoes and the onions get bigger each day. Green beans are beginning to bloom and I'll be planting black-eyed peas this weekend. Busy, busy, busy!

Big things come in small packages...

The first two types of tomatoes that I planted are just beginning to sprout. Aren't seeds amazing little capsules of life?

As you can see, these are planted in our newspaper pots that can be planted directly into the garden soil, lessening the transplant shock on the plant. In addition, the pots will add organic matter to the garden. I had some plastic forks that someone brought to a get together here at our house that I decided to use for plant markers this year.

I had hoped to get the carrots planted in the garden yesterday, but our youngest and I have both been down with the flu, so they'll have to wait. Maybe I can plant them later in the week.

In other news, digging around in the freezer, I came across a frozen package of apples that I put up when they were on sale. We made some delicious apple crisp with them.

Fall Harvest Quick Bread

We made some delicious breakfast bread that is so healthy, moist, and not too sweet. I doubled this recipe so I could make some muffins and a loaf of bread.

1 1/2 c. flour

1 c. oats

1 t. baking powder

1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. cinnamon

1/2 c. milk

1/2 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. oil

1 c. applesauce (unsweetened)

1/2 c. canned pumpkin

1 egg

Topping:

2/3 c. oats

1/4 c. brown sugar

1 t. cinnamon

2 T. butter (softened)

1. Combine the dry ingredients, mix well. Add wet ingredients, stir just until combined. Batter will be a bit lumpy.
2. Combine the topping ingredients with a fork. Sprinkle on top of the muffins or bread.
3. Bake in muffin tins (20 min.) or a loaf pan (60-75 min.) at 400 degrees.

The applesauce and pumpkin add some great nutrients to this bread and all those oats add fiber as well as keeping it moist and adding great texture. We used our own homemade applesauce. Anyone know if you can can your own pumpkin puree? I'd love to get a recipe for doing this.

As you can see, I am a true leader in BBA (Bread Baker's Anonymous)...for those who want to embrace our addiction!

Leftover chicken???

Got a little bit of leftover chicken? Not really enough to even mess with reheating? Debone it and throw it into a container labeled "Chicken for Pot Pie." Keep this in the freezer, adding bits of leftover chicken, until you have enough for a tummy-warming pot pie. It's almost like getting a meal for FREE!! :-)

Homemade Granola

This morning I decided to try my hand at making my own granola. This recipe is from Women Not Dabbling in Normal:

Honey Granola

3 cups dry oatmeal
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2/3 cup butter (I used organic sweet cream butter)
1/2 cup almonds, crushed (I used pecans from my Grandmother-In-Law's trees)

1/2 cup honey (I used raw local honey)

First melt the butter in a 3 quart sauce pan over medium heat. Check out the deal I got in the fall on organic butter! This was for four sticks! It was nearing expiration, so I stocked up and put them in the freezer.

Add the honey and salt. Heat the honey briefly with the butter.

Add the oatmeal and pecans. Stir it up nicely. It smells really good.

Turn the mixture onto an ungreased cookie sheet, the kind with shallow sides; a large 9″ by 13″ pan works well too. Spread the granola out evenly and bake it at 375 degrees for 10-20 minutes. It should be a toasty brown. Why yes, my oven is incredibly clean!! How sweet of you to notice!(I just cleaned it on Tuesday...you shoulda seen it on Monday! ;-)

Now remove it from the oven and allow it to cool and crisp up right there in the pan. Store it in a half gallon mason jar.

This will be yummy with some milk and sprinkled on yogurt...or on fresh fruit...or over homemade vanilla ice cream...or....