All posts by ruthsoaper

Garden Meals – Eating Well

Gardening, homemade, Recipe, Reflections,

Despite not following some of the gardening strategies that I had mentioned earlier this year, like planting by the moon and companion planting, our gardens have produced abundant crops. For the last several weeks we have been blessed to be enjoying meals prepared with fresh home grown vegetables. We are thankful to be eating well.

Some of the meals we’ve enjoyed include:

Yesterday’s Dinner – Beef Stew (with home grown potatoes, swiss chard, celery, tomatoes and garlic)

Thursday’s Dinner – Pepper Steak over White Rice (with home grown bell peppers, tomato and garlic)

Wednesday’s Dinner – T-bone Steak, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Acorn Squash and Sautéed Swiss Chard. (with home grown potatoes, garlic, squash, and Swiss chard)

Eggplant Parmesan

Stuffed Cabbage

Spaghetti – with home made/ home grown sauce

Corn on the Cob

Green Beans with Garlic Butter

Swiss Chard

Cucumber Salad

Tomato Sandwich

Banana Pepper Poppers

All this, my friends, is why we do what we do.

The Banana Pepper Poppers are one of our favorite side dishes. They are easy to make so I decided to share the recipe. (Please note that I am one of those cooks who does “a little of this and a little of that” so the amounts do not need to be exact. Feel free to put the word “about” in front of each ingredient listed.)

Banana Pepper Popper Recipe

6 – 3 to 4 inch banana peppers

4 ounces cream cheese softened

1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

three strips of bacon cooked and cut into bits

a few shakes of crushed red pepper (optional)

bread crumbs (optional)

Slice peppers in half lengthwise and remove stem and seeds. Place in baking dish. Mix together the cream cheese, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, bacon bits and crushed red pepper. Fill each pepper half with cheese mixture. Sprinkle each pepper with bread crumbs (optional). Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 to 30 minutes (until peppers have softened). Enjoy! 🙂

Leftovers keep well in the refrigerator they are even good eaten cold.

Are you eating any in season vegetables?

Do you have a favorite seasonal recipe you would like to share?

55 Things # 34 – For Dad

55 Things, Reflections, Sunflowers

Click here to learn more about my “55 Things” and here to view previous posts in this series.

This spring my dad ordered some seeds to grow Teddy Bear Sunflowers. Since he had more seeds than he had space to grow them, he gave me some seeds to plants at the farm. They are now in full bloom and since Dad hasn’t been out to the farm this year I wanted to share the photos of the sunflowers.

These Teddy Bear Sunflowers have a fluffy looking blossom.

Each plant has multiple flowers.

They are a dwarf flower growing between 24 and 36 inches high. While I didn’t get a close up of it, the bees are foraging these just as they do other sunflowers. Thanks Dad! We will have to save some seeds for next year. 🙂

Wordless – Even Though It’s Not Wednesday

Chickens, Reflections

Some of the bloggers I follow do Wordless Wednesday posts. They are short posts comprised of a picture or a series of pictures. “Let your pictures tell the story” is the tag line. This morning I realized I had the perfect series of pictures for a wordless post. I decided to post it today even though it is Saturday. Perhaps that’s because of my contrary nature. 🙂

Thanks for visiting and have a great day!

Who Let The Dogs Out?

Dogs, Family, Reflections

I come from a family of dog lovers. That trait also got passed on to my daughters. This weekend we had a small family get together where we met the newest family member –

Captain.

Captain AKA Captain James T. Kirk is a 4 month old Boxer- Lab mix who was recently adopted by my daughter Kara.

He came to play with Phantom,

Phantom, a Husky mix, belongs to my daughter Lindell. I think he is around two years old.

and Ranger

Ranger, our Beagle, is probably between 18 months and 2 years old.

and Trooper.

Trooper, our Leonberger mix, is about 11 years old.

The four of them got along quite well. I did find it challenging to get a picture of them all together. I got just one.

This is how dogs get acquainted.

Makes me glad I’m not a dog. LOL!

While the young dogs ran,

and played,

and roughhoused,

Trooper seemed to take on a more adult role – acting as referee.

By the end of the day we had four very exhausted dogs – which is not a bad thing. 🙂

In closing I will leave you with these words from Captain James T. Kirk.

“The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.”

Thanks for reading.

Canning Season

Pickles, Reflections, Tomatoes,

Eating our own homegrown produce throughout the year is one of the benefits of having a large garden but in order to do so it must be preserved. As the tomatoes are ripening I am turning whatever we don’t eat fresh into juice. I will then cook it down into tomato sauce as needed. I did 10 quarts of juice this past week and will be doing more tomorrow.

I also discovered that we had way more cucumbers than we could eat before they went bad, so I decided to make a batch of bread and butter pickles. I haven’t made these in a few years so they will be a nice treat.

Do you do any home canning?

What is your favorite kind of pickle?