Rhubarb

Oh my gosh! Where does time go by… I really would love to be able to write and post more often…. Time just seems to go on with or without you. I also need to recognized once May come around I really do not have much time to just sit in front of a computer and type. Garden Season starts and Market Season starts in May the two motivators in why I wanted to start this blog….oh but they keep me so busy. Let’s see…. The community garden is going well… everything is planted and looks great. Families have been harvesting lettuce and rhubarb during June. I decided in the winter I was going to play a little bit more with rhubarb and learn to embrace it. I think people seem to love it or hate and because it bitter taste and some people seem turn their nose up at it. I am guessing that might come from a bad childhood experience. I do not have much of a childhood memory of rhubarb, but I guess my Grandpa use to grow it and my Grandma use to bake pies with it. I do hope to grow it one day too. So this was the year for me to embrace and well, I did. This growing season I made rhubarb crunch, rhubarb and apple sauce and the rhubarb coffee cake. The crunch was pretty good but when I made the other two items… it took a back seat. The sauce turned out pretty good, I was making the sauce while I was cleaning out the fridge and I had two apples that had been in there a while so I decided to put them in the sauce and boy did that turn out to be a little treat. Now the coffee cake I just love … I have make a few times and let a bunch of people try and everyone just seems to love it. Here are some interesting facts about the fruit. Rhubarb was considered to be a vegetable until 1947 when a New York court decided it was a fruit for the purpose of regulations and duties. When growing rhubarb it is important that you cut the flowers off the plant to make sure the energy stays in the stalks. The stalks are what you harvest from the plant and they can be red and green. It is important to take the leaves off the stalk because they are considered to be toxic.  

Rhubarb Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 13X9 pan

Topping:

½ cup white sugar

1 tablespoon melted butter

½ cup chopped walnuts

1teaspoon on cinnamon

Melt butter, mixed butter, sugar, cinnamon and nuts in a separate bowl. Set aside.

Cake ingredients:

1 ½ cups packed brown sugar

½ cup of butter

1 egg

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups of flour

1 cup of sour cream

1 ½ cups of rhubarb- cut into ½ inch pieces

Cream butter and brown sugar together, add egg. Add the rest of the dry ingredients. Mixed sour cream and then add rhubarb. Mix well and pour batter in greased cake pan. Then spread topping on top of the batter.

Bake for 45- 50 minutes, let cool and serve.

I love living and working in Western New York!

The growing season is just amazing in Western New York; it is such beautiful and edible time of year. Our season starts in about May and ends around early November. We live in zone 5 for growing flowers and vegetables. April is a great time to start planting the cold weather crops such as radishes, lettuce, peas and spinach. I am very lucky to have a job takes me all over Erie County which is marvelous county that has a large urban, suburban and rural areas. Today, I went to North Collins to do some Food Stamp Outreach. North Collins is about 30 miles outside the city of Buffalo a town over from the Eden. Eden is another rural town that has many growers and many of the growers are part of a business called Eden Valley Growers. They are a co-op of farmers who started came together so they could pool their fruits and vegetables to sell grocers like Wegmans and ship throughout Eastern States. The Co-op started just over 50 years and is made up of 10 Farmers which are third and fourth generation farms. They start their lettuce early using row covers protecting from bugs and frost and they hope to have lettuce in local grocery stores like Wegamns by the second – third week of May. Fresh local produce at our finger tips! In addition to providing Food Stamp Assistance I have a little job of finding big pine nugget mulch for our community garden. I am not sure if this is a great job for me since every place I have I go to I always buy something. I love going to the garden stores they are always so pretty. I think now is a really cool time to go because everything is ready for sale and the greenhouses are full because it is early to plant many annuls. While I was there I saw the perfect Mother’s Day gift for my mom and I wasn’t even looking. I bought her a climbing Clematis plant. The funny thing is she is has the trellis and a spot to grow the plant but no plant, I bet she knew I was going to buy her one. Then I saw these really cute strawberries plants in a planter, they were so cute I had to buy the plant for myself.  Then of course on my way home I stopped to buy fresh brown eggs from a road side stand. It truly lovely day for a county drive!

Missing in Action... I am back

I am so long overdue for a posting. Life has been busy plus I have been dealing with a three week old cold that seems to be taking all my energy. Although I do believe the cold is my fault, if I would of slowed down and took better care of myself- I feel I would of never caught this cold. Oh yes, by the way I caught the cold from my boss and I am sure there was a bit of karma there as well, every time when he comes back from visiting his grandkids he always gets sick and well I laughed- when I saw him sick on the first day back from his vacation. So you see any way I look at this cold- it is my fault. So hopefully I will learn a lesson from this… but I doubt it- I am pretty hardheaded. At any rate—spring is in the air and it is the start of the outdoor growing season. So many great things to do, feel, eat and see! April is really a good time to start your cold weather crops. I did buy a few things to plant in the garden in April like phlox, pansies, and a flat of perennials, lettuce and onions. I have planted almost everything I bought so for far.  

I went to the whole sale place where I buy all our plants for the Food Bank a few weeks ago- everything was just beautiful. Flowers and plants everywhere and it just puts you in a great mood. Nurseries in general are such fun places to be. Ok, so maybe I didn’t plant almost everything I bought because I keep going to nurseries and buying more, I forgot about the nasturtium I just bought yesterday. This is such an exciting time of year.

Shopping Matters…

I wrote for a grant for work, through Share our Strength called Shopping Matters. It is a small grant, but it is something I really believe in and love…. Teaching low income families how to shop healthy on a budget. The object of this grant to educate low income families at the grocery store how to buy healthy food on a budget to me this sounded easy and right up my alley. Shopping Matters provides a small reusable shopping bag, a book, full of tips and healthy recipes and a little calculator to each person. There is also a $10.00 challenge, I will tell you more about that later. So I took a small group of woman with my colleague to Tops on Niagara Street. I wanted to take them to Price rite on Elmwood because I think things are a little cheaper there but one lady in the group complained about Price rite. I take shopping for granted. I do have a budget as I do live on a budget and I do not make great money at my job. Although most people do or should have a budget when doing anything…. I came from a family who always had a pantry full of food on hand and so did my grandparents. I always stock up when things are on sale. I usually do no pay full price for meat. I also have a car and I can go to different stores at different times to buy what they have on sale when I want to… So my three keys issues are that I do have enough money to stock up on items and I can drive to different stores to buy items at different stores. I also can afford to get the Sunday Paper or go on line to get the newspaper. These things all make a difference when making trying to save money. The other thing is time and you have to want to put time and energy in wanting to save money. So now to the $10.00 challenge, I gave each person a $10.00 gift card to buy at least one item from the following food groups; fruit, vegetable, whole grain, dairy and lean protein. This challenge wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be. I was thinking that a meal could be purchased with challenge… All of traditional lean protein was at least $5.00 or more. Some of the proteins the women purchased were eggs, dried beans and tuna and lentils, which are all great items- but most low income folks that I know and work with are meat eaters. Even buying a loaf of bread for between $3.00 and $5.00, the woman bought things such whole wheat taco shells and whole wheat pasta. Overall the group loved the challenge and it was a lot of fun. As for me I learned a lot- I take my budget for granted and it is a lot harder then I often think. For example buying the big packs of meat is a lot cheaper, but you need to have the money to buy the large pack to save money and some people just do not have the extra money to buy the club size and large packs of items even though it one of the best ways to save money. It would be great to have a loan program for low income families to give them a jump start to be able to buy bulk items and save money in the long run. The following week I went shopping at Save a lot and was able to but a meal with dessert together for four people for $2.60 a person. Then I did a food demo with the group. We made sugar free jello with bananas ( fruit) and Chicken Stir Fry with Chicken and vegetables over brown rice .

Chicken Sir Fry over Brown Rice

2 boneless skinless Chicken Breast – fat cut off and cut up in small bite size cubes

2 packs of frozen stir fry vegetables or any vegetables of your choice

1 onion – cut up in small pieces

2 garlic cloves- minced

Soy Sauce ( 3 tablespoons) – more in needed

Worcester sauce (3 tablespoons – More if needed)

Olive Oil (about 2 tablespoons)

Cooked Brown Rice

Pour Olive oil in pan let heat up for about a minute, then add onions and cook until clear and then add garlic and cook for about more minutes. Add Chicken and lightly brown on each side- add ½ of the soy sauce and Worchester sauce stir in with meat. Then add frozen vegetables and stir the rest of the sauce. Cook until the vegetables are done. Pour over cooked brown rice.

If you are using instant brown rice, you can cook the rice while you are cooking the stir fry. If you are making regular brown rice – make sure the rice is cooked a head of time before you start the stir fry.

You can use one package of vegetables, I use to because we like lot of veggies. If you do not have fresh garlic you can use garlic powdered or minced garlic.

Super Bowl/Souper Bowl

I think the weeks leading up the super bowl, are often more exciting than actually the super bowl, except when of course the Buffalo Bills are in it– but that hasn’t happened since 1994. The playoff games are full of action and passion. On a side note over two decades ago youth of the Presbyterian Church started the Souper Bowl .The whole idea behind it is, while we are in are in warm home eating lot of food cheering on our favorite team-there are people who do not know where they are going to get their next meal from. The Saturday a week, before the Super Bowl, youth groups have Souper Bowl Service Day and provide service projects at area shelters, dining rooms and food pantries. So the three Saturdays ago a group of young adults from Orchard Park Pres. Church came to the food pantry that I work at and volunteered their time and stocked our food shelves and cleaned our refrigerator. We were able to accomplish so much. Then the day of the Super Bowl the youth hold a collection- they have big soup pots and they ask their members to think about all the people who may not be able to watch the game in a warm home eating everything and anything they want – to donated a dollar, a few dollars or a can soup. This coming Monday, Orchard Park Pres will be dropping up canned soup at our food pantry. Ok back to the Super Bowl… I wasn’t rooting for either team; frankly I didn’t care for either team. I don’t really like Tom Brandy, but I did know that Gronkowski was from Amherst and went to Williamsville North, but he doesn’t even consider Buffalo as his hometown because in his Sr. year of High School his family moved to Pennsylvania and he considers Pittsburg to be his hometown. As for the Giants, I was in NYC the last time these two team went to the Super bowl and I watched the game at the hotel bar in the hotel I was staying at… the party was great. I shopped the entire day before the game started and talked to some many people trying to find a good place to watch the game and feel the excitement after all the Giants are one on NYC teams, I couldn’t find any excitement and that was from the South Bronx to the Village. Then the Giants won the game- and on Monday we shopped once again from lower Manhattan- mid Manhattan through Harlem and at the airport and we couldn’t find one Championship T-shirt - but we did see Tracy Morgan on 125^th street. Coming from Buffalo that was a big appointment,,, if the Bills won there would be T-shirts for sale on every street corner and parties lasting weeks. In our glory days you would see people in Bills gear everywhere you go. ( ok, maybe I am a bit bitter) No city should have two teams…oh by the way if the Jets were in the big game, I would have been rooting for them.

Any ways back to my Super Bowl Sunday, I had a great day… I started cooking and cleaning the night before and in the morning. With my friend Judy I went to a card making Super Bowl party until 4:30 and had some much fun, I made five great cards and had pizza and pop. Then I came home and starting cooking for some great food. I made artichoke dip, taco salad, potato skins, hummus, deviled eggs and my friend Debbie made Chicken Wing dip.

The potato skins I used one of Rachel Ray’s recipes and the Chew demo as a guide- they were great and I didn’t have large amounts of guilt from eating them. I used the potatoes that I bought from the my farmer friend in Oct. (yes stored correctly they were still good). The skins are very tender and thin on fresh potatoes.

Potato Skins

4-5 whole potatoes (depending on how many people you are serving)

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Shredded Cheddar Cheese

Sour cream

Real bacon bits

1. Poke about five holes with a fork on each potato. Brush olive oil all over the potato and bake on a cookie sheet for about a 45 mins. – to an hour in a oven preheated to 400 degrees.

2. Let potatoes cool, where you can handle them, then take out the insides. I usually save the insides to serve for another meal. You are going to want to leave some potato on the skins esp. when you are using fresh local potatoes since the skin is so tender.

3. Line your skins on the cookie sheet – salt and pepper the potatoes and then sprinkle some cheese on each potato and then had a little sour cream. Then bake for about 5-10 mins. You want to melt the cheese and make sure the potato is warm.

4. Take out of oven and sprinkle the bacon bits on.

5. Serve and Enjoy!

It depends on how much toppings you put on the potatoes – if you need to salt your potato. I didn’t load then up so I felt the potato needed some salt. Do what works best for you.

Sausage and Kale soup

Sausage and kale soup

Today my friends came over and I made a quick soup for dinner. One of my favorites soups, sausage and kale. I am able to make this deliciously and easy soup fairly inexpensively. I find sausage in the grocery store on sale. I often buy sausage that says use today or freeze, you can get some really good deals. The soup cost about $15.00 for everything and I was able to serve 4 people plus one quart and half left over.

2- 4 pounds of Italian sausage hot- chicken or pork

3- 4 celery stalks- cut into small pieces

3-4 carrots cut into small pieces

1 med onion diced

3 garlic cloves- minced

1 tb. thyme

2 tsp. Pepper flakes- less if you are using hot sausage

12 cups of chicken stock

1 tsp. black pepper

3-4 small potato or 1 large potato

I bunch a kale

Cut the sausage in to bite size pieces and brown, take out of pan and set aside. Dice all you vegetables and set aside. Cook the onions in the same pot that you cooked the sausage pot using the drippings. If you are using a chicken sausage you may have to add some olive oil. Add the garlic, then celery and carrots and cook for about 5-7 mins. Add thyme and red pepper flakes. Add chicken stock and sausage. Last five minutes throw in potatoes and kale.

Worms

The worm lady (I do not think she would appreciate me calling her that)called on Sunday for me to pick up my worms and I was so excited. I went to her home in Lancaster and she gave me a coffee container with little hole on top of it filled with 500 worms. I couldn’t wait to get home to put in the worm factory. I shredded some lettuce so they would have some food for when I brought them home. I get home open the coffee can and put the worms in… that was it…. There was no excitement and there hasn’t been any since. The worms eat very little. I am not ever sure if they are eating the lettuce because they the lettuce looks like the shredded newspaper. The worm lady did give me some food – it looks like wood shavings – she told me it is a left over product from some type of sprits that someone made. The directions did say put the food in the corner and I didn’t put the lettuce there, I guess the reason might be so you can identify the food to see if they are eating. I check the worms every other day, I see a few of them move and that is pretty much it. It will be a week tomorrow… I promise I will keep you posted of any changes.

Composting ?

I have thought about composting through the years, but last year I have been thinking about it much more. Three reasons have me thinking so much about composting…. 1. The Community garden where I volunteer.2. The Buffalo garden walk.3. I do not have lot of money keep on buying good compost and soil. The Community garden has beautiful, unbelievable, great compost that they purchase each year and the gardeners all have beautiful gardens that produce much better than my garden. My dad also has a very nice garden that has a ton a produce and treats his garden with good soil and other items each years. I want my garden to produce like both my dad’s garden and the community garden. The garden walk as been around since 1995 and last year was my first time visiting these beautiful gardens. The gardens were extremely motivating to me. Once again my gardens do not like any of the gardens from the garden walk. I am pretty sure by now it sounds as my gardens look terrible, they don’t. My gardens are not bad… that are a work in progress and I am a novice and I have higher expectations. I do know another way to achieve this goal would be to retire from my full time job and cut back of my many projects, unfortunately early retirement is not an option. The other reason is I just do not have the money to buy great soil and compost… If I owned my home- I would considered it an investment, but I do not, and I do have to share some of the garden space. I have bought soil and mulch at this point, but I wanted to find a cheaper way of doing this and I want to make sure I have the good stuff. So that brings us to composting…. So far a bought a few items and have read a lot on the subject and yet I feel like I know nothing. This past summer I bought a little stainless steel compost bucket from Bath Body and beyond for about $30.00. You keep this on your cupboard or underneath and put your non oil and non meat kitchen scraps in the bucket. The bucket doesn’t smell, it has some type of filter on it. So I thought I would save my scraps and dig a hole in the ground and start composting that way. This is a very good way of composting but the problem I ran into was you really can’t plant anything where you dig the hole for the season as everything needs to break down. Since my yard is not that big, this is not that great of an option for me. I did do this method three times but I run out of space to put the kitchen scraps. You also have dig a hole 12 inches deep so you do not end up with rodents and other animals including pets digging up the scraps. Twelve inches deep didn’t seem that deep but when I was digging holes on hot summer days I was not loving it. After that experience I read that I could make a compost bin with a garbage can. So I ran to the store and bought a $10.00 outside garbage can to dill holes in it. The season was coming to an end, so this never did happen. I am not sure that I am going to go that route yet…. . I did find a place to put it , if I decide to do go this way. In the meantime I have been looking at worm factory composting. They run about $100. And are found in many of the garden catalogs and on Amazon. I was going to wait until after Christmas maybe after the income tax refund comes back to buy this. I decided that I really wanted to do this. After telling my garden friends about this at the Christmas party, my friend Joe said you can have mine. He got a bad case of fruit flies and when he first bought it about 4 years ago the worms escaped. So last week I went to his house to pick it up. I also met a woman who sells red worms in Lancaster, so I called her on Monday to order 500 worms. She is supposed to call today so I can pick up the worms. I feel that she might not call because I think it might be to cold for the worms. She was telling me that her worms do not really eat this time of year because it is cold. At first was so happy about this the Worm Factory but the more I read these worms are going to be more like pets and pets require work. Do not get me wrong pets are great but I can barely maintain my two gold fish Shit and Crap that I have for about two years. So since I have a previous used Worm Factory it didn’t come with a direction manual. So I have done research on the internet. Today I have started to prepare my worms’ home. Based on my research I have put some wet news paper on the bottom of the first tray and then I have covered with shredded junk mail. I have not put any food inside because if the worms are not going to eat there is no need to have rotting food around. When I was dreaming of this worm factory, I thought I was just going to throw in my kitchen scraps, but the more I read the worms like their food cut up into small pieces, REALLY ! See the worms are going to be more like pets . So now the wait, is the worm lady going to call me this weekend? Or do I need to wait until March… Or to I bring back the Worm Factory to my friend Joe? The photo's above are of one of my gardens and the tops of the Worm Factory.

Back on Track I Hope.....

December also brought me a terrible stomach flu which lasted a little bit longer than a week and knocked me off my A game for about two- three weeks. I had getting sick and having to slow down, but often I think it is the universe speaking or maybe yelling at me to slow down. It like if you do not want to slow down on your own I am going to knock you on your ass and make you slow down. So far 2012 has been great, I feel I have slowed down – but maybe that’s because it is January….. It is my goal to start working smarter and not harder…. I will keep you posted. I have been doing a bit of shopping these days… I keep finding all of these bargains and I have been spending my hard earned money, today I was in Springville and I stopped at the Tractor Supply Co, it is a place that I have always wanted to stop by and check out. I do like the place; I guess they have a lot of canning supplies in season. I found these great boots to work the garden. The boots will be great for spring when it is very muddy. My parents bought me garden shoe for the summer months.

A great gift!

It has been almost two months or longer since I have last blogged… I guess the Christmas Season just got away from me. I had a few parties at my house to celebrate: Garden Committee, Friends, and Grider Market Friends. At my Market pantry, my farm family made and gave me a beautiful wreath. I loved it. It was very fresh and smelled like pine. It was so much nicer than the ones from Home Depot or Tops. I still have it up, but I did take the Christmas decorations off.