Town House Homestead Tuesday

Spring has been popping her pretty little head around here lately. Temperatures in the mid sixties for several days, then back to the mid twenties and snow overnight, only to melt the next day. The flower beds are starting to show off all the life we planted last year along with a few new surprises. Bulbs that were probably tilled to the surface and will now grow well again. We just can't wait to see how it blooms. Of course there's all the new work outside to be planned for this spring reaching the top of the agenda lately too. My daughter is recovering from a couple of herniated discs, but surgery is probably not necessary. Yay! So grateful. It's still been busy for me, and with the help of Emily we keep moving forward.

The germination shelf in the basement got it's first light attached this week. I could not believe the simplicity of this task. I'll be ready to attach a second in the near future if finances permit. This has been a life long dream for me to have a place to start my seeds and be able to garden.

This happened just yesterday. To my surprise. I had tossed this pot of flat leaf parsley in a pile of pots last fall. I harvested all that I could and didn't have time to dump it outside before cold and snow arrived. I headed out to find pots to clean for spring, and there was the pot of five parsley plants starting new growth. I re potted them and  hope they grow, so I'll be able to cross parsley off my list of seeds to start. Who knew?

Here's the parsley and a small pot of basil under the new lights. They stood up straight as if they were as excited as I was that spring is almost here. 

This is a pot of garlic started from some that had begun to grow in Emily's refrigerator. I tossed it into a pot to see what would happen, and they are starting to emerge. There are eight of the largest healthiest cloves in this pot.

Outside on the other hand, I have about 34 cloves of garlic doing their thing. I put these in the front flower beds late last fall, because the back yard garden is still in the dream state. For this year the only new garden will be the pollination garden for around the bees, and I'll put in a few small items like onions and herbs. Baby steps, but we've only been here for ten months and have accomplished so much. 

I canned clementines and oranges this month. Not without one disaster as you can see, but one pint out of twenty four isn't horrible. I've been quite fortunate not to have many jars break, and since I buy second hand it could have had a crack I didn't see. 

I'm fermenting more garlic in honey. this is a quart jar, one third full and it's bubbling away on the counter. I cook with it and just chew a sweet clove when I'm feeling a little under the weather. This has a ways to go before it's ready, but there's a few cloves left in the pantry.

This is the second bag of vegetable scraps that will be boiled into stock shortly and canned. Once it's canned I have ready made soup. Just open a quart, add a bag of mixed vegetables and some noodles and in less than twenty minutes dinner is on the table with a slice of home made bread. Yes, I manage to stay busy. That's what's been happening at the Town House Homestead. Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful week. 

Townhouse Homestead Tuesday

How busy this little townhouse kitchen has been. It's been busy taking care of leftovers from Easter dinner and preparing more for the pantry. When I want to cook I would love to have all that I need ready so I am trying to go through my recipes and see what I need to do to be ready for summer. 

This week green bell peppers were on sale so we bought three pounds. It was seven large peppers in all and I cleaned them and chopped them and put them in the dehydrator. Away I go. Three pounds of peppers condensed to one pint dehydrated. Great way for me to store them in this little space.

If anyone was wondering if dehydrating vegetables works here you go. I needed carrots for my soups so I put one cup of dehydrated carrots in water and within two hours they were back to normal. I could have just added them to the soup, but I needed to take a few pictures for some skeptic friends. 

Also if I may point out that I put my daughter's Pyrex to good use here. I'm waiting for her to break one first. That way I won't be so stressed while I'm using them. I do have to say though that it's fun to use them and they add nice color to my preparations.

I have three kinds of soup underway for today and tomorrow. The first is white bean and ham and this one came out so good that I didn't want to can it all, so we are eating some too. I filled the crock pot with split pea soup and I finally cleaned out my tiny freezer and put all the vegetable scraps I saved for broth on the stove top to boil to make vegetable soup. 

Split pea along with white bean and ham are in the pressure caner as I am writing this post and tomorrow I will finish the vegetable soup. Adding these soups to my shelf is helping with my meal planning menu. It's easier to take something off the shelf than it is to stand and cook after a long day. That's what's been cooking this past week at the townhouse homestead, Going to start my tomato seeds shortly and have them ready, but I may be lucky and found someone who wants help with their garden and will share what is grown. That's a future post. Thank you for stopping by and have a great week.

UPDATE

Fresh from the caner 10 pints of split pea soup and 4 pints of white bean with ham. Yummy!

Townhouse Homestead Tuesday

I don't know where to start today. It's been a busy first week to the new year. We've been organizing to make it a good new year and more efficient. The holidays were wonderful. My daughter gave me a Presto pressure canner. This has been on my wish list for almost two years now so imagine my surprise when I opened this gift. When I was raising my family I always canned and preserved and when I down sized I gave away my canner and most of my equipment. We took a trip to the store for jars and it was immediately put to work.

New years eve day was quite a productive day. After eating our share of Christmas ham and serving company ham and cheese sliders I began by making a pot of split pea soup from the bone and leftover ham. The result for this day was three pints of ham alone and nine pints of split pea soup.

Since it had been many years since I had pressure canned anything I was a bit nervous about my results. The worry was for nothing because everything sealed and I felt good about not wasting food. I couldn't fit any more in our tiny freezer so I would have ended up throwing or giving it away.

On new years day the canning continued and I put up nine pints of ham, bean, and carrot soup. This finished up most of the ham leaving a few pieces to put in breakfast sandwiches. So moving on to the small freezer and how full it was it became clear that I needed to keep going and use up what I had been tossing in there. 

I made triple berry pancake syrup as Christmas gifts and had plenty of fruit stored up to make more. I wasn't aware that it would make so much, but I ended up with seventeen (17) cups of triple berry syrup. I know it's a lot, but it is preserved and will keep. You must understand that my daughter and I are always taking trips to the wonderful state of Vermont and we have always purchased a bottle of this syrup at $8.99 for 8oz. It is wonderful that now we can use our adventure to discover something new in Vermont.

It was a busy three days, but it is all labeled and put away so we can move on to the next adventure.

I also received for Christmas my favorite book to take out of the library. How excited I am to have this in my personal library and to be able to take it out and just glance through it whenever I want. 

I know that a lot of us are on tight budgets and trying to eat better and this butternut squash soup has become one of our favorites. Easy to make, simple sage butter seasoning (made with the sage I grew this summer) along with salt and pepper to taste then add a few home made croutons from that leftover bread and you have a wonderful and inexpensive winter dinner. 

This is what's been going on here in the townhouse and 2015 is starting out in a very positive way. I wish you all a very good new year and thank you for stopping by.

Townhouse Homestead Tuesday

Today is going to be in the mid 70's but we're expecting snow on Halloween. It's been cool, no cold off and on so far this fall so this is a welcome day. With the change in the season comes changes in what we eat and the blessings of winter vegetables. I don't grow my own, but the farm stands and super markets are loaded with deals.

I have a hanging basket of spearmint by the front door of the townhouse that just doesn't want to quit. I harvested it and set it back outside to do it's thing. I yielded two more cups of dry leaves for winter tea. I may get one more harvest before it goes dormant for winter.

At the market I got a four pound four ounce head of cabbage for 99 cents and I was curious about what I could do for meals from one head and a few vegetables and a little meat. I got ten servings of stuffed cabbage using ten leaves, 3/4 pound ground beef, 1 cup of leftover rice, an egg, a little onion and some home made bread crumbs. Then on to cabbage soup. I got four servings of soup and used one can of stewed tomatoes and 4 ounces of polish sausage.

I made a pot of boiled potatoes and cabbage that I'll reheat with some butter and pepper and there are about six servings there. Last but not least is fried cabbage in olive oil a small amount of butter, salt and pepper. About three servings there. So all in all I yielded about 23 servings from my four plus pound 99 cent cabbage.

Butternut squash was 99 cents each this week and I got two more to try some soup. I just made up my own recipe because all those I found added more than I was willing to use. I used two cups of cooked squash, not pureed, two cups of home made chicken broth, two tablespoons of my sage/pepper butter made earlier this summer and salt to taste. Served with a biscuit and it was gone in no time. I was getting tired of pumpkin everything so I made gingerbread biscotti. We like it more than pumpkin. I needed bread so I baked up a couple loaves of sandwich bread. It went well with all the soups. I was able to harvest a few more sprigs of fresh rosemary and I think I will get some more sage before I let them rest for the winter.

Finally I made some three cheese tortellini soup. I used 8 ounces of tortellini two cans of Italian style stewed tomatoes and 4 ounces of sausage. Served this up with fresh from the oven garlic bread made with home made french bread and it was a delightful meal on a cold evening.

This weeks freebies included a Biscoff cookie coupon, a cat food coupon, samples of Scotch brand products and taco seasoning. I spent last evening with my younger daughter just running errands and she brought me onions because there were to many for her and she paid for four pounds of carrots for me. I am so grateful and can see the veggies in my stir fry, stews and carrot cake. It's going to be a wonderful winter. Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful week.