beet the pizza

This one is quick. Since I used the beets on the pizza I figured I'd add the post. I bought the whole wheat pizza dough from the co op. That dough is really good. Homemade dough is great but I never think far enough ahead of time to make my own, though I'm going to shoot for it next time. It's just so easy to do. This pizza has onions sauteed in half a bottle of wine that was reduced to the point that it was a glaze, basil, sliced mushrooms, upton's chorizo, and sliced beets. I was hoping to get my mandelin so that the slices would be thin. I love grilled pizza so I put the stone out on the grill and preheated it. The crust is a little over done for my taste but next time I'll get it just right. Here's the "before" pizza:


The finished pizza:

2 more pounds

After we had pitted the 8 pounds of cherries there were still about 2-3 pounds of remaining cherries. I couldn't quite decide what to do with them. But I was at Farm and Fleet earlier getting some Ball jars and bought a dozen pint jars. This would be a great oppurtunity to use those if I made some cherry jam. The only issue I had with this was that the cherries are really tart. I figured I'd add a bunch of sugar and hope for the best. I always figure if I don't like them because they are too tart, I'm sure I have some friends that will enjoy the tartness. I wished that I had canned the batch of mulberry preserves so I canned these so that I can use them in the months to come. Here's the finished product:


A close up:

... and the fermenting begins

With all the cherries that we have I am getting sick of cherry pie, cobbler, crumble, etc. I figured I'd try to make some cherry wine. Fruits can be made in to wine but they aren't as ideal since grapes have the perfect balance the necessary ingredients. Anyways I've never fermented anything before so this continues to be a huge learning opportunity. To start Marion and I picked half of a 5 gallon bucket full of cherries. Picking the cherries is not the hard part, it's pitting them. The instructions I read online said to either pit and freeze or mash the fruits with the pits in them. I decided to do neither and I pitted and hand mashed the cherries. Well credit has to be given to Tracey, she sat with me and helped pit 8 pounds of cherries. Here are some pictures of the first few steps.


Me mashing up the cherries by hand. I was debating using my feet for authenticity but decided that there wasn't enough to mash for that to be reasonable.


Here you can see the mashed cherries, what's left of the bucket full, and all the pits.


Here's what the must (the in process wine that has the fruit pulp still) looks like just after adding the yeast.


Now to wait 5 days and see where it stands. Then I'll either adjust sugar levels or rack in to a secondary fermenter. So exciting!!

the HEAT

All this heat and rain has been wonderful for the garden. Everything is growing like mad. Most of the trips out to the garden are to weed the entire place. It is just amazing at how fast weeds grow. Luckily there's more than one of us weeding so it tends to go by at a tolerable rate. My goal either this year or next is to utilize chickens to do our weeding. I've started to research this but haven't come up with too much that relates to using them in planted row gardens. Updates on this to follow. Back on topic, everything has been growing like crazy here are shots of everything. I have to give Marion credit this time for taking the pictures.

Potatoes, beets, carrots, Sunflowers.



Chioggia Beet:



Here's the leafy greens. The spinach and lettuce started to bolt. I need to look up how to save the seeds. Hopefully I'd be able to use them again for a fall crop.





A nice shot.



Soy beans and string beans.



The sweet peas are almost ready. Next week they'll be prime picking.



Squash. Some golden and green zucchinis are getting close to be picked. Though we had some deer chowing down on the blossoms. I can't blame though, I should be making stuffed squash blossom. So delicious.




The tomatillos husks are in. The fruit still needs to grow in to its skin though. The ground cherries are doing the same things. Next time I'll show a picture of the ground cherry fruits.



I just keep itching for the first ripe tomato.





We could have harvested some basil but did not. Next time we'll have to and make some basil pesto.



Salsa is getting closer and closer.




Here's our garden watchcats. I can't tell if this is Sprinkles or Garbage for the pic though.



Harvest of the day:



We also picked about a half of a 5 gallon bucket full of morello cherries. Those will be used to make my first batch of sour cherry wine. I have more supplies but here's the start.



Sean cleaning up. He's demonstrating how to properly use a hoe.



I was getting hungry since I hadn't had dinner yet. As you can tell I was desperate since I was eating RAW turnips.



A nice photo to end the post on.

Beet Latkes

This post could be a double post but I've been really lazy about updating the Thursday's Dinner blog. So here goes. We've been harvesting beets lately and I just love beets. I cannot describe how awesome they are. The downside is we have also been harvesting turnips... my not so favorite root vegetable. So to use up both Anthony had the idea of making Latkes. That idea sounded great to me. We don't have any potatoes and they needed to be vegan so I set off to make up my own recipe. The latkes that I concocted consisted of shredded beets, turnips, carrots, onions, and zucchini. In order to keep everything together I used potato and corn starch (I would have used all potato starch but I ran out). I added some paprika, cumin, salt, black pepper. In order to get these to cook just right I used my cast iron skillet and put about an 3/4 to an inch of olive oil in the pan. I heated the oil to 350F and started frying. The closer the oil was to 350 the better the latkes cooked.

Here are the Chioggia Beets. They don't have as defined lines as most beets of this variety. I do not know why this is but they still taste great.



Here's the latke "batter".



Here's the latke/cast iron skillet in action. Deep frying is so fun but at the same time weirds me out because of the oil bath....



And......wait for it... the finished product. Sean made the whole wheat biscuits and Anthony made the wonderfully delicious gravy. YUM!

WEEDS, Weeds, weeds

Fortunately central illinois has been getting an incredible amount of rain and sunshine. This has really got the plants growing like crazy... all the plants including the WEEDS!!! This time when we (Darlene, Sean, and I; I have to give proper credit) went to the garden the sole mission was to weed. We had to weed almost every part of the garden. This was accomplished by using a good ole' fashion hoe and the rototiller. Here's some overview shots of the garden.




You can really start to see the lettuce, swiss chard, and spinach starting to go to seed. I'm going to attempt to "harvest" the seeds so that I can use them for a fall crop or for next year.





Now a quick walk through of how everything is doing starting with the corn. We tilled it so hopefully that'll help with most of the weeds.



The okra is getting bigger:



Tomatillos. There are tons of flowers on a few of the plants. I can't wait for these guys.




Hopefully this little guy will turn in to a delicious eggplant.



Here is a shot of part of the 35+ tomato plants that we have. (I need to buy a canner soon so that I can get some great pasta sauce going).





Basil for the sauce. Hopefully we'll have enough....



Here are the zucchini. I haven't seen any goldens produce yet. Here's the regular green ones.




The squash climbing away.



Here are the sunflowers. I'm hoping these guys get to be 10 feet soon.




Now time for harvest... The beets finally are ready. So we picked some of those guys. A few are starting to go to seed so I'm excited about that. We planted both golden and Chioggia. The Chioggia is a ringed beet. I'll post when I use it so you can see the inside. Next year I will definitely be getting a dark red strain.




The cucumbers. Pickling these guys is going to be wonderful.



Hot peppers are on their way.



The cabbage is coming along. I'm wondering how these will go since we didn't started them indoors.



I forgot to take a picture of the ground cherries but they seem to be doing really good. There is three of them so hopefully they'll hold up and produce.

Here's the pick of the day.