Bountiful Tuesday

Today I got my next to last delivery from Cecil Farms for this year.  Such a bounty!  More collard greens, which I have discovered I am in love with.  I just wish I had written down the recipe I used to make the first batch.  But I do remember starting out with a can of beer, so tonight when I start them in my crock pot, the first thing in, after the liner, will be a can of beer.  There are also apples, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cabbage and tomatoes in the group of goodies.  When supplemented with yesterday’s purchases at the grocery I’m all set for a few days of fun cooking and eating, not to mention making apple and pear butter, and then taking the waste parts of each of them and trying out a vinegar making experiment.

 Doesn’t this make a lovely bouquet?  Tomorrow I’ll start eating them.  I don’t have a ham hock, but I do have bacon and country ham, so I’ll use one of those with the collards for flavor.  I also have some ham flavored granules in the cabinet that I might add, just for the heck of it.  I know  I put an onion in the first batch, because I put onions in everything.  So I’ll be chopping an onion later tonight, and it won’t be real cooking without some garlic.  And several snips of my tomato leather.  Guess I’ll have to just make up the rest of it as I go along, and hope for the best.

 This is all the produce from today and yesterday, after I gave it a swim in the sink.  I took some huge outer leaves off the cabbage that I might try to stuff, but not really sure about that.  Might just do my unstuffed cabbage casserole again with that.  Or, I just might try making kraut.  I’m still debating that one, because of the limitations of this apartment.  It’s not much larger than my mom’s pantry, so any fumes from fermenting cabbage could do a number on everyone on the floor.  There will definitely be a chicken and broccoli casserole in the future, but for right now the broccoli will probably be frozen.  I got the green tomatoes at the grocery for frying, and the celery and bananas to eat with peanut butter.  Forgot to buy another jar of peanut butter, but it isn’t all that far to Krogers.

Have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning.  I must have made it in my sleep, because I hate morning appointments.  But Medicare took so long approving my new power chair that the time limit on the order for a new one ran out, so now I have to go back and see the doctor again for another mobility check, which means I will have to try to walk unassisted down a thirty foot hall.  Right now I can’t walk unassisted from my computer to my bed, which is about three feet away, so I do hope they will have someone there to break the fall so I won’t get another concussion.  They hurt, and I just don’t have time for that right now.  I have to clean out my fridge so I can find room for all the new stuff.

Irene came in to clean today, and I warned her about dropping the jar of pickled veggies a few days ago.  I had swept and mopped the floor, but she still found some glass I had missed and the floor was still sticky.  She mopped it again, but it’s still a bit sticky, so I guess it will be another episode like the one when I dropped the banana pudding.  No amount of mopping will ever get all the sticky feeling up.

Been fighting with my computer again, so this looked like the perfect way to end this post.  Tomorrow I’ll be blogging about bread, the staff of life, and oh, so good with homemade butter.  ‘Specially while the bread is still hot and the butter melts into it and….just come back tomorrow and I’ll show you.  Unless, of course, I fall at the doc’s office and get another concussion.  Then I’ll just be nursing a major headache and saying some bad words.

A.

Full Day Today

 And nothing much to show for it.  Except, of course, another sinus headache and flowing nasal passages — just a nicer way to say a runny nose.  I’m thinking hard about having my nose pierced and hanging a bucket under it.  That would be a lot cheaper than going thru a box of tissues a day.  It might look strange for a while, but I really think people would get used to it.  After all, when I shaved my head they got used to seeing me in hats.  I still wear the hats because the only mirror in my apartment is in the bathroom, above the sink, so every time I wash my hands I see my hair.  And my hair sticks out in places.  So…I grab the scissors and start snipping.  That means I end up bald in spots and have longer hair in some places.  And each time I promise myself I’m going to let the hair grow long enough to go to the hairdresser and get a professional cut, there’s another strand sticking out.

I canned my ketchup this morning.  Six beautiful pints of it, with half a pint in the fridge that I’m using now.  Dee-lish.  Told you I come from a long line of great cooks on both sides of my family.  And that’s one recipe I don’t fool around with.  Except once when I didn’t have cloves, so I substituted coriander.  Now don’t laugh.  I know they have nothing in common, but the ketchup with the coriander was pretty darn good too.  This time I used onion powder instead of taking the time to finely dice an onion.  Just really wasn’t in the mood to handle a knife at the time.  It also took longer to cook down the full recipe than it did when I cut it in half. That makes a weird kind of sense, now that I think about it.

Went to K-Mart about noon to get some jeans, but found the sale wasn’t on the kind I like.  The jeggins were on sale.  They look good on younger people, but on an old woman like me???  Don’t think so.  Ended up buying a box of envelopes, almost got some chocolate, but decided I have too much real food in the fridge to eat up, so put the candy back.  Felt so righteous on my way home, but now I’m kicking myself and really wanting chocolate.  Guess I’ll be making fudge before the night is over.

 A friend in Colorado sent me this calming picture today.  I love it.  I’ve been to Colorado a few times visiting my sisters, but I sure wouldn’t want to live there.  There’s no oxygen or humidity, so it was really hard to breathe, and I used a tube of lip balm each day I was there.  Love mountains, but I’ll take our own Eastern Kentucky mountains, or the Smokies any day.  You can see the moonshine in the stills here.  Oops, I mean the moon shining in the hills.

I had some ‘shine once.  Hubby came home with some, woke me up with a glass of clear liquid, and asked if I was thirsty.  Thinking it was water, I took it and chugged about half the glass before it hit my stomach.  You could say, I didn’t like it much.   He thought it was hilarious, until it came back up all over him.  And some people wonder why we got divorced.  Just the little things like that, among others.

Made some country ham fried rice today.  I would have taken a picture of it, but it really looked horrible.  Tastes good though, so I’ll be eating that for a few days, along with the leftover meatloaf and collards.  The collards are almost gone, and I sure would like to have more of them.  To think, all these years I’ve avoided every green except spinach, and all this time I could have been enjoying all these others.  Could be the secret is in the cooking liquid — I used a can of beer.  Why not?  The alcohol cooks out and I’m sure the rest of the stuff I put in there covered the beer taste, because I’m sure I don’t taste it.  Haven’t had any for so long I’m not sure what it tastes like any more.

 I’ve been thinking about making sauerkraut this year.  Found this picture and just started wondering how many gallons this head of cabbage would make.  And just thing about all the stuffed cabbage leaves!!!  You would need a whole cow to stuff one leaf on this head.  But I am seriously still thinking about making kraut.  Just not sure where to store it while it ferments.  I know it’s a stinky process, but since I have no sense of smell it wouldn’t bother me a bit.  Might send the neighbors running for the elevator, but I wouldn’t smell it.  So, would that make it their problem?  Hummm, maybe I had better keep thinking about this one.

A.