Rice & Gravy

I grew up on a rice farm in South Louisiana and we ate rice every single day.  We had a Hitachi rice cooker on all the time it seems.  One of my favorite dishes is Rice & Gravy.  It will 'stick to your ribs' and is delicious and satisfying.  You won't get up from the table hungry, I promise you.  Tricia is from South Texas and always laughs at the name of the dish, Rice & Gravy, because, as she says, we leave out the best part - the meat!  There's definitely meat in there, though.

The other night I figured Tricia needed a break, so I told her I would do the cooking and decided to make rice and gravy.  There are many ways to cook this dish.  Here is one way to do it:

The first thing you want to do is chop up some onions and get them browning in a cast iron dutch oven in some butter.  You want them to get really, really brown, so while they are browning, you can do your food prep for your other ingredients.  It doesn't matter if the onions stick to the bottom, you can just scrape them off a little later.

Start browning your onions in some butter 

Get out your cutting board and a sharp knife and get ready to chop as the kitchen fills with the aroma of onions sauteing in butter.  We'll slice up some mushrooms, mince some garlic, chop up some celery, toss in a few chopped jalapenos and slice up some fresh cherry tomatoes. 


Chopping up some veggies

I used some round steak that I applied salt and pepper, some garlic powder and cayenne pepper to and then dusted with some flour.

Seasoned and floured round steak

We check in on the onions and they are just starting to brown.  I let them get dark brown and then I remove them from the pan and set aside.  

Onions starting to brown, but not ready yet.

Then I throw the round steak into the hot cast iron pan and just leave it alone for a bit.  The steak will stick to the bottom initially, but will release from the pan when the bottom is nice and brown.  Once brown, flip the meat over and let it brown for a little while on the other side.  

Browning the round steak

At this point you can add to the pot of browned round steak the browned onions that you initially removed along with all of the vegetables that you chopped up.  Then you can add whatever liquid of choice to make your gravy.  I used some chicken broth along with a splash of red wine.  Bring the liquid to a simmer while scraping the bottom of the pot to release the tasty morsels clinging there.  You can then put a lid on tight and braise on low heat for 45 minutes.  At this point go ahead and get a pot of rice going.  Tricia came in from outside and said she could smell it from inside the garage!


Can you smell the delicious-ness?

Once 45 minutes has passed, it is time for supper.  We'll have some fresh Roma Italian beans and cucumbers from the garden along with our rice & gravy (and steak, Tricia). 

Supper time - Rice & Gravy all plated up

Time to pour a glass of milk, grab a fork, thank God for our meal and enjoy.  Here is a fork level view of Rice & Gravy:   Mmmmmmmm...


Fork level view

Bon Appetit!

Mulching in the Garden

I like to use mulch in the garden.  When I have excess hay or if I let the grass get too tall before mowing and have to rake up the grass clippings, I put it in a wheel barrow and cart it into the garden.  Sometimes the cows won't eat the very bottom of the round bale.  I guess it is sort of like how some people won't eat the 'heel' of a loaf of bread.  Well, I put it to good use.


Leftover hay

Once I get it in the garden, I'll scoop it up by hand and place it all around the vegetables that are growing.  It takes a little while, but the benefits are well worth the effort.

First, it provides a barrier to crowd out weed growth.  The sunlight can't reach the weeds and they don't grow.  This saves hours of back-breaking labor pulling out nut sedge and other lousy weeds.  Too bad it doesn't work on weeds that grow from rhizomes like Bermuda grass...

Second, it conserves the moisture in the soil as the sun isn't able to penetrate down to the ground level and dry up the dirt.  This is especially helpful during periods of drought and enables your plants to remain healthy, cool and watered for longer periods between having to water them.

Third, the hay, straw or other organic material you use as a mulch becomes part of next year's soil.  It is a helpful amendment that while it decays, encourages earthworms and beneficial soil bacteria.


Hay placed as mulch around the squash plants

Finally, it solves the problem of vegetable rot.  Prior to mulching, if a vegetable such as zucchini (below) touched the wet ground, it would get an unsightly blemish where it touched the ground and would begin to go bad.  Well, when you mulch, the vegetables are healthy and beautiful from the garden to your table.
  

Zucchini!  Yum!

I'll continue to add mulch all year long, realizing all of the benefits of adding organic matter to the soil.
Thank you very mulch!

Digging for buried treasure

Benjamin is our resident treasure hunter.  We read Treasure Island and other books about discovering treasure.  He has a big interest in coin collecting and has rummaged through every old piggy bank to find "wheat" pennies, silver Mercury dimes, or other collectibles.  He's collected a full set of the State quarters.  He also has a metal detector and likes to search around the yard and pasture and has unearthed many old pieces of farm machinery, nails, cans and other junk.  So far nothing of value, but who knows?  One day he may strike the Mother Lode. 

Isn't it exciting when you find something you weren't expecting to find?  It is a nice feeling.  Did you ever put on a coat or a pair of pants that you haven't worn in a while, put your hand in a pocket and pulled out a $5 bill that you had forgotten about?  That'll put a smile on anyone's face.  Digging up things that aren't visible can be a thrill.  Expectation of the unknown can be suspenseful and alluring.  So when Benjamin came up to me Saturday and said, "Dad, are the potatoes ready to dig up yet?" I knew a treasure quest was underway.

We assembled the tools of our salvage operation, a shovel and a bucket, and then headed out to the first row of potatoes that we had planted back on March 9th.  In fact, if you missed the post, you can read about it here:
Potato Planting at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm

All you do to harvest potatoes is simply turn the earth over at the base of the plant, being extra careful to dig far enough away to not cut any potatoes.  As the dirt loosened, Benjamin's eyes grew wide - buried treasure!  Thar's gold in them there hills (of potatoes, that is).

Benjamin grabs the first Irish Potato of the season

The red potatoes are all different shapes and sizes.  Here is a nice big one:


Fits in the palm of your hand

Our bucket slowly began to fill, plop, plop, plop, with bounty from beneath the surface. 

Treasure

Each plant had 6 or 8 potatoes under it and it looks like this will be a successful crop of potatoes.  No great potato famine at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm this year.

Healthy plants produce healthy potatoes

Here is my potato harvester posing with his shovel standing by just a half row that we dug up.  Just that little bit of land yielded an overflowing bucket of potatoes.

Quitin' Time.  I's the foreman.  I's the one says its quittin' time at Tara.  Quittin' Time!

Here is a close-up of Mr. Potato Head and his chest of buried treasure:


Nice work, Cap'n.

You're not supposed to wash them until you are ready to cook them, so we'll brush them off and bring them inside just as they are.  Potatoes will last for a couple of months if kept dry, cool, and in a dark room.  Trouble is, we don't have the first two items in South Louisiana in the summer, so we'll be eating lots of potatoes!

Yum!

We took the tops of the potato plants and tossed them to Stryker and Maggie.  A hen even got in on the action.  The animals enjoyed eating the plants, so the potato harvest was beneficial to man, beast and fowl.


We'll take care of this, boss.

We only dug up the small portion that you can see below:

Harvest Progress

And we have 5 1/2 rows left to dig.  So we're thinking about all the potato salad, baked potatoes, scalloped potatoes, potato latkes, small potatoes cooked with fresh green beans, potato soup, roasted potatoes with garlic and Parmesan cheese, pesto roasted potatoes, etc...  The list goes on and on.


The harvest remaining that we'll dig this weekend

The "X" marked the spot, indeed.  This was a successful treasure hunt!

Nosy Nellie

Saturday morning I was checking out the rows of sweet corn that I have planted in the garden.  Other than needing to be weeded, it seems to be fairly healthy at this point.  The couple of rows of sweet corn that I planted earlier is starting to tassel.  I walked through the rows of the corn planted later to take a closer look...

Sweet Corn

Something has eaten the very top out of this corn stalk!  What could it be?  If you notice in the picture below, this row is right up against the fence.  Well I caught the culprit red-handed... errr red-hooved.  Nellie, our Nubian dairy goat puts her front legs up on the fence and cranes her neck up and over and ate the top out of the corn.

Goats are different from cows and other livestock.  They are browsers.  Browsers feed on leaves of high growing trees and shrubs.  They like to climb and eat the leaves off of low leaning branches.  As I learned, they like to eat the tops of sweet corn, too.  I'll have to remedy that.


Who's been eating the sweet corn?

I had an old section of hog wire rolled up on top of the small barn that ought to do the trick.  This is not a pretty fix, but I'm not aiming for aesthetics - strictly functionality, here.  I got some staples and extended the fence higher so that the sweet corn would be safe from nosy goats.  We'll see if it is successful.  I'll probably have to do this on the west side as well this weekend.

Extending the height of the fence by 3 feet

I figure Nellie is trying to tell me something, though, about a job I've been putting off.  There is plenty of browsing material on the south side of the fence.  The perimeter fence is protected by a strand of electric fence so the animals all respect it and don't lean over that fence or they'll get popped.  All it takes is one shock and they steer clear.  Can you see all the woody shrubs and plants below?  I got Russ' machete and my gloves and set to work chopping and throwing the limbs, leaves and plants over the fence.


Before Photo

 You can see how I've made a dent in the jungle that was encroaching on the property line fence.


After photo

You can also see how the cows, chickens and goat are very happy with all the green stuff I threw over the fence for them to nibble on.

Thanks Kyle, I'll take it easy on your corn for a while now.

The animals stayed all morning long in the shade, eating contentedly.


Who said there's no such thing as a free lunch?

In the afternoon, I mowed against the fence row.  Here is the finished product.  It looks a lot better and will keep shrubs and vines from over-taking the fence.  It may also discourage critters such as possums from coming into the pasture and wreaking havoc on the chickens. 

Fence line all cleaned up

This was something I had been meaning to do for a while.  Nellie just was reminding me.  Thanks Nellie, I guess.

Roma Italian Green Beans

When I was a boy, one of my favorite canned vegetables was Del Monte Cut Italian Green Beans.  Green Beans are one of the easiest things to grow, so you can imagine my excitement to find Italian Roma II Green Bean seeds.  We planted them several years ago and have kept them in the rotation ever since.  These are bush-type beans that don't need a pole to grow on.


Italian Roma II Flat green beans

These are prolific producers of flat green beans that continue to produce for a while.  

Nice size beans

The pods themselves are at least five inches long and they are tender. 


Cool beans!

I brought our produce bucket out to the garden and after ten minutes, I had a nice "mess" of beans picked.  With these beans being a bush bean, you have to be diligent in watching them as they mature.  I made the mistake of waiting a little too long before picking them and a few had bad spots on them where they had touched the ground.  Not a big problem as I simply cut the bad part out.  

Bucket 'O Beans

I put them in a colander and washed them up.  At this point they are ready for cooking.  We usually just steam them with some butter.  They blanch and freeze nicely or they do quite well being canned.

Roma Italian Green beans washed and ready for cooking

Tonight we grilled some chicken, steak, and sausage.  While the grill has heated up, we drizzled olive oil on top of some freshly picked zucchini and yellow squash and our Italian green beans and then put salt and pepper on them, put them in a grill basket and let them cook on the grill.  Delicious!

Grilled Italian Green Beans



Pickin' Cucumbers

We have two different varieties of cucumbers planted and they are blooming like crazy.  It looks like barring disaster, we're going to have a bumper crop.  Each bloom is a future cucumber.  Look at the photo below and you can see the baby cucumbers behind the flowers.

Baby cukes

As long as they get plenty of water, it doesn't take long until those baby cucumbers turn into nice ones that are ready for picking.

Cucumber perfection

To me this is a nice size for a cucumber.  This is a variety called Organic Pickling Cucumber.  If you pick them when they are "dill pickle" size, they're never bitter.


Organic Pickling Cucumber

Would you look at all the blooms!  We'll have many jars of pickles put up if these all come to fruition.  I guess I shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch, though.


Blooming Cucumbers climbing on a livestock panel

You gotta keep your eyes on cucumber plants.  They grow very quickly.  If you let them get too big, they tend to be bitter.  Also, the vines grow quickly and the tendrils reach out and grasp anything to give the growing plant support.  If you're not careful, they'll vine out and grab tomato plants or anything else you have nearby.

A ripe one!



Another ripe one amongst the garlic chives


And here is another variety we grow called Japanese Long Cucumbers.  These are really good.  When you chill them, they are nice and crisp.

 They are easily a foot long or longer.

Now, we will pickle a bunch of them and put them up in the pantry for enjoying throughout the year, but many of them, we'll just eat like I've shown below.  The recipe is very simple: Pick them, Chill them, Slice them, Add a dash or two of salt, drizzle some olive oil on top with a splash of balsamic vinegar and lots of cracked black pepper.


Refreshing appetizer before supper



Buckwheat! (Or Patience is a virtue)

Not that Buckwheat!  Although he was great in Little Rascals, wasn't he? 

No, today we're talking about the other buckwheat.  I thought it was a grain, but it is not.  It is actually the seeds of a flowering plant.  They are called buckwheat groats.  I can remember going to a pancake house (IHOP, maybe, or maybe it was a pancake place in Gatlinburg, Tennessee) and eating buckwheat pancakes.  Man, were they ever good with a strong, nutty flavor.

Well, Tricia was learning that buckwheat pancakes have no gluten in them and have high nutritive value and she found some buckwheat groats at the store. 

Buckwheat Groats

Now, she could have just as easily have bought some buckwheat flour, but where is the fun in that?  We pulled out our grain grinder and Benjamin poured the groats into the hopper and began grinding the buckwheat groats into flour.

What a grind!

After cranking, dumping, and repositioning, Benjamin was seeing the fruits of his labor as the measuring cup kept filling up with flour.  

Go Benjamin.

In no time the big jar began to fill with buckwheat flour as he dumped each cupful into the jar.


Flour Power

We added 2 1/2 cups of homemade buttermilk to 2 cups of Benjamin's hand-ground buckwheat flour and let it soak overnight at room temperature, covered with plastic wrap.  In the morning we added 6 tablespoons of melted butter, 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, the yolks from two eggs and 1 tablespoon of honey to the batter.
  

Soaked Buckwheat & Buttermilk

A supposed trick in making your pancakes light and fluffy is to whip the egg whites, so Tricia started whipping two egg whites.


Whipping egg whites

You're supposed to whip them until they have stiff peaks.  Can you see the stiff peaks below?  I think they're ready.

Stiff Peaks

Now we'll just add that to the batter and mix it all up.


Adding whipped egg whites

Once that is all mixed up just pour onto a heated cast iron griddle.  Cook for 1 - 2 minutes on each side before flipping.  You can tell when it's about ready to flip when lots of bubbles appear on the edges like below.

Ready to flip

Using a spatula, we turned this one over.  Look at the steam rising from it.


Almost ready to eat

The official quality control department was on hand to perform taste testing.  He opted to melt some butter on top and pour some Steen's Cane Syrup over the top of the pancake.  Steen's comes in a can, so we pour it into an old honey squeeze bottle for convenience.

Quality Control has given its seal of approval on home-ground Buckwheat Pancakes

The novelty of grinding our own flour for pancakes was interesting and fun for Benjamin.  I wonder if we didn't live in world where everything is instant and convenient, if it would still be fun for him.  We talked about how in the old days, people grew the grain, harvested it, threshed it, ground it, and baked it.  Things didn't always come from a box or a store.  You had to work hard for good things.  You had to wait for things and it didn't happen overnight.  We agreed that we take things for granted.