Last night we talked about tomatillos and a salsita we make with it. Tonight I'll show you something for chips you just can't go wrong with: Pico de Gallo. Pico de Gallo means "the rooster's beak" in Spanish. Why is it called that? No one really knows. I used the Google machine that told me that people used to eat it with their thumb and forefinger, which made the hand look like a rooster's head and you'd eat it with the "beak."
We've been getting lots of heirloom tomatoes in of all different varieties. The colors are beautiful and the taste is scrumptious. We've been eating lots of them fresh. We've canned some and then Tricia has made lots of pico de gallo, too.
Back in the early 90's we'd go to the Folk Music Festival in Kerrville, Texas. There was a band playing there called "Trout Fishing in America." I know, strange name for a band, but they sang a catchy little tune that we would sing. As a bonus, it helped you learn the recipe for Pico de Gallo. The lyrics go like this:
Pico de Gallo, you oughta give it a try-o, Even if you're from Ohio, it'll get you by-o, Don't get it in your eye-o, unless you wanna cry-o, So, come on don't be shy-o, eat some pico de gallo.
It's got jalapenos. I reckon y'all have seen those They're kinda hot for gringos and probably flamingos. Just add some tomatillos, onions and cilantro Lime juice and tomato, you got pico de gallo!
Here you go!:
A bag of chips with this stuff around never sees the next day. We'll finish off the bag and the whole bowl of pico de gallo. I like to crush up the crumbs of chips in the bottom of the bag and pour it in the bottom of the pico and eat it up with a spoon like you'd do cereal and milk!
My wife is from South Texas and is Hispanic. I'm from South Louisiana. We each brought different culinary favorites into the marriage. She's introduced me to a number of delectable dishes from her culture, and I think she'd say the exact same thing about Cajun food that she had never eaten before. She grew up on 'Tex-Mex' food, so there are some things from Mexico that she wasn't familiar with.
She learned to cook them, because she likes to try new things, and today, I'll show you something new for both of us that we really enjoy - Roasted Tomatillo Salsita. Some also call it Salsa Verde. Many times on Fridays we'll sit out on the patio and eat chips and salsa. I'm ashamed to report that we will sometimes finish an entire bag of chips along with the salsa and that will be our supper. It's so good!
Tomatillos are also called Mexican husk tomatoes. They are green and are surrounded by a papery husk. I got some seeds and planted them and have had mixed results. They grow and the plants get large and are covered with blooms, but we don't always get a crop. I'm thinking that they might not be accustomed to our growing zone. Fortunately, we harvested some and made Roasted Tomatillo Salsa with items fresh from the garden, except for the garlic. Let's do this.
You'll need some onions. This time we used Creole Red Onions. Add some garlic cloves and peppers to your liking. We used a nice Anaheim. We took the husks off the tomatillos and put it all in a cast iron skillet.
We'll then roast the entire skillet in the oven until everything is a little charred. During this process the kitchen smells amazing.
We simply put all the hot vegetables into a wide mouth mason jar, also adding a huge handful of fresh cilantro and a teaspoon kosher salt. We like to do this right out of the oven. This dish can be eaten hot or cold, but we enjoy it hot.
She uses a stick blender to blend (puree) everything together.
It doesn't take long at all until you've got a mouth-watering concoction that looks just like this.
We pour the entire thing into a pottery bowl and bring it and the bag of chips to the patio.
Here's a chip with fresh, hot, delicious roasted tomatillo salsita!
It is hard to imagine or explain how fast the bag of chips and bowl of salsita disappears! It's become one of our favorite Friday afternoon snacks. Note to self: Grow more tomatillos.
The bloom is off the rose. Have you ever used that expression?
It's an old idiom, I read, that dates back to the 19th century. Roses were seen as a thing of beauty, perfection even. But as everyone knows, they wither and fade. Gradually, this fact was woven into our vernacular as an expression that means that something has lost its charm or attractiveness or luring qualities.
Bench seats in pickup trucks. Your girlfriend could slide right next to you. We would joke when we'd see someone sitting right next to the driver that they must be only carrying insurance on half the vehicle. The center console and bucket seats made that romanticism disappear. A high school boy was enamored with the fact that his girl could scoot over on the bench seat right next to him. That just kind of withered away. The thrill is gone. The bloom is off the rose.
Right outside our back patio, my wife has some roses planted. We enjoy watching their beauty. You must take in that beauty quickly, however, because it's fleeting. I have photographic evidence. I tracked a rose from its hopeful beginning to its tragic end. It takes all of six days or 144 hours for "the bloom to be off the rose."
Let's look at exhibit A. Here is a perfect boutonniere. You could snip this off and stick it in the button hole on you navy blue blazer and you'd be dressed to the nines. You'd be, as ZZ Top sang, "a sharp dressed man."
By that afternoon, the rose is just starting to open up...
And for a few days we beheld its beauty. It fully opened and the delicate petals attracted all the attention on the back patio. It was a show-stopper. The talk of the town.
And yet, time keeps on ticking, and I guess, similar to our lives, its health and beauty begins to rapidly decline. If you remember studying in school about the bell curve, or standard deviation curve, our beautiful rose is on the back side of that curve, and it's sliding down in an exponential fashion. Those once gorgeous petals have dropped or are in the process of dropping.
And six days from the beginning of it's beauty, here we are. The bloom is off the rose.
It reminds me of a song released in 1972 by Tanya Tucker called Delta Dawn. It's a song about a woman, a Southern Belle, who was promised that a man was going to meet her and take her away to get married. And he never came. He stood her up. The chorus goes like this:
Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on
Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?
And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today
To take you to his mansion in the sky?
She wears this faded rose - a symbol of hope and longing and good memories that went awry. She's still waiting suitcase in hand for the man, and he'll never come. The bloom is off the rose. That would be a sad way to end this post, but there's a lesson in the frailty and disappointments of life:
Matthew 6:19-21 King James Version
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
I think I may have told you before about something that my wife and I enjoy doing on a Friday afternoon. We're simple, no-frills type of people, but this is something we really enjoy and is the highlight of our week. We have a 2000 Toyota PreRunner with 251,000 miles on it. I can't tell you the number of people that have asked me if I'm interested in selling it. It's not for sale.
We get in the truck and turn west and travel slowly down gravel roads that are surrounded by cows grazing on green pastures, boats slowly crawling across crawfish ponds, rice in fields swaying in the afternoon breeze and rural landscape untouched by "progress". The sun is sinking toward the horizon. We just let (like Jerry Jeff Walker sang) "the truck just wander around." Our destination is a gas station where we purchase a couple of boudin balls. The cashier uses tongs to pull them up off of the steam table. If you're not familiar, a boudin ball is a big scoop of boudin, battered and deep fried. It's Cajun comfort food at its finest.
We get back in the truck and Tricia distributes each of us a boudin ball wrapped in a greasy napkin and we slowly take the road back home, enjoying big bites of the deliciousness. Our top speed might be 35 mph, but there's not a lot of traffic. We're not in a rush to get home. The truck never takes the same road back home. While driving, we listen to a country music playlist of some of our favorites - Glenn Campbell, Tracey Walker, etc. We sing loudly to "Big Green Tractor" and "I Shoulda Been a Cowboy. And then we sing along with this one: Amarillo Sky.
Amarillo Sky is a song that evokes great emotion. I don't know if the proper word to describe it is an elegy or rhapsody, but it's a song that makes you bang on the steering wheel as the story is told. The story explains a hardscrabble farmer facing adversity at every corner, yet he does everything within his power (while depending on the power of God) to keep his farm operating.
You feel his pain. You understand where he's coming from. You're rooting for him to survive. At the end of this post, I'll link the video. It's a must watch. In the beginning of it, several young men are interviewed and tell of their love for the land and the desire to farm. I pray that those young men are still on the farm. The family farm is a dying entity in our country. They've been pushed out by government policy of "Get big or get out." Sadly, to make it, you must have thousands of acres which requires capital investment that is out of reach for most.
First verse:
He gets up before the dawn Packs a lunch and a Thermos full of coffee It's another day in the dusty haze Those burnin' rays are wearin' down his body The diesel's worth the price of gold It's the cheapest grain he's ever sold But he's still holdin' on
Farming is not for the lazy. It requires early mornings, late nights, heat and exhaustion that does take a toll on you physically and mentally. The cost of inputs for your crop and of equipment is a mountain that most can't climb. On the other side of the ledger, the price you get for your crop often doesn't cover those costs. John F. Kennedy once said, “The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.”
Second verse:
That hail storm back in '83 Sure did take a toll on his family But he stayed strong and carried on Just like his dad and granddad did before him On his knees every night He prays, "Please let my crops and children grow" 'Cause that's all he's ever known
In addition to being at the mercy of prices you have no control over, you are vulnerable to the vagaries of government policy, pests, and the weather, among other things. The profession humbles you. You realize you can't control things, that the Lord is Sovereign. You learn the importance of prayer. You rely on the support and love of your family. You give it do God and trust the results to Him. President Dwight D. Eisenhower wisely noted, “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.”
Chorus:
He just takes the tractor another round And pulls the plow across the ground And sends up another prayer He says, "Lord, I never complain, I never ask 'Why?' Please don't let my dreams run dry Underneath, underneath this Amarillo Sky"
At this point the boudin balls are a distant memory. Tricia and I are singing to the top of our lungs as we tap on the dashboard to keep time with the music. The farmer doesn't give up. He sends up another prayer. He has dreams, dreams that he doesn't want to die. He loves the Lord, the land, and his family. “Agriculture…is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.” President Thomas Jefferson
Here's the link to the video I promised. Press the arrow. It's a must-watch. You won't be sorry. Tip your hat to the local family farmer. God Bless the family farm!
Shrimp is my favorite thing. I've often said if I had a last meal request, it would be fried shrimp, hushpuppies, seasoned french fries and onion rings, macaroni and cheese, a slice or two of homemade pie (pecan, coconut cream, and chocolate meringue), and wash it all down with a root beer float.
We were talking about needing to buy some shrimp and put them in the freezer. Well, last Saturday afternoon, we were sitting on the back patio relaxing after doing the chores and I received a text from a young man who attends our church. He said, "Kyle, would you like some fresh shrimp?" Now, what kind of a question is that? Yes, I'd love some shrimp! He told me that he had bought too much and has 50 pounds that he didn't know what to do with.
In 20 minutes he was at the house unloading some beautiful head-on shrimp that were caught the night before in Vermilion Bay. We often lament the fact that there is so much imported shrimp in all the restaurants when we have the best fresh shrimp not 40 miles from our doorstep. I don't understand why you would purchase or eat imported shrimp. We always ask when we order shrimp where it came from. If it's imported, we'll have a burger.
Back to the shrimp. The best part of the deal was the price. The young man would not accept a penny for them. He said, "They're yours for free." Fifty pounds of shrimp is worth a lot of money. We begged and pleaded to pay him. Finally, he said, "I want to bless you with them. If you want to pay something, put some money in the little church."
At our church we put together Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child Boxes. We work on them all year long. They are shipped to children all over the world. We have a little church up in the front near the podium that people put money into. The little church is emptied and the proceeds are used to pay the postage for the Operation Christmas Child boxes. We'll be putting a nice donation into the little church for these wonderful shrimp!
The shrimp heads are ALMOST as good as the tails. We save the heads and put them in a big gumbo pot and cook them down with water, making a good shrimp stock. That shrimp stock will be the base for seafood gumbos, etouffee, shrimp stew, etc. We love head-on shrimp for that reason.
Just this Sunday, Tricia cooked down a skillet of fresh picked tomatoes, garlic, onions, and peppers. She added a bunch of fresh heavy cream from our cow, LuLu, and let it all simmer and reduce. At the last minute, she added a quart of the shrimp!
In another pot, she had some bow tie pasta going. Now I'd like to be able to share a finished photo of the meal all plated up, but I was so looking forward to eating it, I didn't get around to taking the photo until my plate was clean. Fresh Gulf Shrimp. What a blessing to receive! We are so thankful.
The flow in south Louisiana in our area is dependent primarily on the Chinese Tallow Tree. The flow means that the tallow tree (and other plants) are producing lots of nectar. The busy bees gather it, bring it back home and make delicious honey. The tassels you see below are the flowers of the tallow tree from which the honeybees harvest nectar.
Here's an up close shot. There were bees really working it, but I couldn't capture them as I was far away zooming in.
As semi-novice beekeepers, we've learned that when the flow is on, you don't want them to run out of room to put the nectar. We check the boxes every week, adding honey supers to give them more space. A super simply means a box placed on top. Here are our hives. You'll notice that there are five. Last week we had six. I'll explain that in a minute. Let's go through the boxes one by one.
The first box is a swarm we caught in the yard this spring. You'll notice the brick is sideways. That, in beekeeper language, means we could find no queen. I did, however, find some larva, and that means there WAS a queen. I'm going to give it one more week. If I find no queen and no eggs, I will stack this deep on top of a healthy hive and they'll be able to use the nectar in these frames.
This second box is a swarm we caught this spring. It's blowing and going. In fact, I added a honey super to the super that was already there, because the first super was about 80% full of capped honey. One thing you'll note is there are 2 deep boxes. The reason for that is that one of the splits that we made failed. No queen and no eggs. I stacked the deep on top of the existing deep and put the queen excluder so that the queen won't go up into the honey supers.
The third hive is VERY active. I added another honey super on top of the four honey supers already on there that are full. We're really happy with this one!
This is the sad story we were telling you about. One of the splits that we made, although initially successful, failed. Rather than lose the nectar, we moved the deep box with the bees and put it on top of the second hives' deep box. They'll use all that.
The fourth hive is doing well. I didn't add a honey super to the top of the three existing supers as the top one wasn't quite full. We'll check again this week. One thing to think about when adding supers is this: When we pulled honey last July, we put the supers with drawn comb in the freezer. Using supers with drawn comb gives the bees a head start. If they don't have to draw out the wax, they spend more of their energy making honey. Supers with foundation only (meaning no drawn comb) requires the bees to build out the honey comb first before making honey.
The last hive is the swarm we caught at the farm. These are "mean" bees. When you pull the lid off, they are in your face, angry. It is important to always wear your bee suit. The good thing is that mean bees make more honey. We added a new honey super to the top as the one beneath it was almost full. This super was a new one with foundation only - no drawn comb. It will take them a while to build out the comb. They have about a month and a week before we pull honey.
Temperatures are in the 90's already and it is humid. Even though ventilated, it is hot inside a bee suit. Handling the boxes with angry bees flying around is tricky. Honey is heavy! A medium super with ten frames full of capped honey weighs about 50 pounds and when they are stacked high, are hard to lift and maneuver. When we pull honey in July when the flow is over, it will be a hard job, but there are fruits to the labor: Delicious, healthy, raw honey!
Each year we purchase onion sets from Dixondale Farms in Carizzo Springs, TX. I always order Yellow Granex, White, and Creole Onions. This spring I planted three and a third rows of onions. That was the least amount we've ever planted. I think next year we'll go back to our normal order of 300 sets. In this photo below, Some of the onions are telling you that they're ripe and ready to pull.
This is how they tell you. The neck bends over and touches the ground. When this happens, the onion is signaling to you that it's done growing. I pull them up at this stage, but I don't bring them in for another day.
I will pull them and lay them on their side and allow the sun to gently cure them or dry them out for one day. I only pulled the ones that have bent over. The rest of the onions will be left to grow until they bend over.
But we're not done. I bring them inside where I've converted the parlor into an onion curing room. I have a drying rack brought in and have the fans running at full speed. As the onions come inside, I'll cut off the "onion tails" and under the fan and lower humidity, the onions will begin to cure. We still watch them closely. Any that show signs of softening will be diced up and frozen for use in the kitchen later.
We'll go through these pretty quickly. That's why we're going back to 300 plants for next year.
I don't like wasps. We have a lot of them around here. They tend to build their nests on outside windows where they'll be dry when it rains. They also like to build them in the corners of ceilings in the garage and patios. I mix up some dawn dishwashing liquid and warm water in a cup and throw it on them. They fall, unable to fly and I step on them and then smash their nests. I also have a long wooden dowel that I wrap a rag around one end and poke the nest, killing the wasps. Wasps are no fun.
Walking through the gate this morning from milking, I heard a weird racket. I looked to see what was going on. It sounded like the wings of a cicada (we call them locusts). I looked and looked to see what was going on and then I saw it. It was a cicada, but it was in distress!
The big locust was being mauled by a smaller, yet fierce, creature. It was a sight to behold. I would estimate that the locust weighed three times the amount of the insect that was utterly manhandling it. I'm talking about the Cicada-killer wasp. What an ominous name that wasp has, doesn't it. It's name tells you exactly what he does. He's ferocious, I'll give him that much.\
The cicada was trying to fight off the intruder, but the cicada-killer wasp was aggressive and nimble. The cicada's wings are way bigger, but he couldn't fly. The cicada- killer wasp has smaller wings, but they appear to beat with the speed and intensity of a hummingbird. The wasp, amazingly, was able to fly with the cicada in tow.
As I read up on the cicada-killer wasp (sphecius speciosus), I learned that they kill cicadas and take them back to provision their nests. Now there's a nest I wouldn't want to discover by accident. The article said that they can sting humans, but rarely do and only when they are handled. I'll promise you this: You don't have to worry about me handling any cicada-killer wasps!
We plant Black Beauty Zucchini and two types of yellow squash - straight neck and crookneck. I like to plant them early to try to get out ahead of the squash borer. That devilish critter burrows into the stem. One day you have beautiful, productive squash plants and the next day you walk out to find your plants decimated. Heat also plays a number on the squash plants and temperatures are already 80 degrees by 8am and in the 90's in the afternoon. That heat causes my squash to wave the white flag and melt into the ground.
Our squash harvest was exceptional this year. Here's what they looked like exactly a month ago:
Beneath the canopy of squash leaves were numerous blooms and squash of all sizes.
Each and every day, we'd pick baskets of squash. We ate it. We brought baskets to church to give away. We knocked on the neighbor's door and gave them a bag of squash. We gave some to family members. All that and we still have a refrigerator full. Tricia talked today of making a squash casserole that we love and freezing it.
As with most things, we have favorite recipes we cook to use up the abundance. Just yesterday, Tricia made a zucchini lasagna. Sometimes she's made this and used zucchini sliced thin in place of lasagna noodles. This time she put the sliced zucchini in addition to the noodles. She hit it out of the park with that! We've come to love zucchini cake. It's a Bundt cake that is so sweet and moist. You'd never know it had zucchini in it if we didn't tell you.
Well, all good things come to an end. I noticed today with sadness that our squash plants have all died due to a combination of the squash borer and the heat. It was good while it lasted...
We planted two rows of sweet corn this year. We usually plant a couple of heirloom varieties - Country Gentleman and Stowell's Evergreen. They aren't prolific producers (only one to two ears per stalk), they grow very tall and tend to blow over in the wind and rain, but they are non-GMO and are sweet. I gathered my clippers and a laundry basket and decided I would go ahead and harvest in the morning before it got too hot. It didn't matter. It was hot and muggy and my shirt was soaked through and through almost before I got started.
I watched as a four foot long king snake slithered into the garden, unfazed by my presence, and nestled into the snap beans. He knew I wouldn't do anything to him. He's a "good" snake. Still, if I was picking beans and didn't know he was there, he'd give me quite a start, for sure.
The way I judge if the corn is ready to harvest is by looking at the silk. If it has turned brown, like you see below, it's ready to pick.
If it still has a red-color to it like you see below, I leave it to mature for a couple or 3 days. Of the two rows, I left about 15 stalks standing that I'll go back and pick in a day or two.
The cows (in this case, Nick, the bull, takes great interest in the corn harvest as they eat the leaves and stalk of the corn plant.
In the end, we got a laundry basket full of sweet corn. Not a tremendous harvest, but not terrible, either.
Aw shucks! I began shucking the corn, removing the husks and silk. Here is an ear of the Country Gentleman variety. You'll notice that this variety is different in that the corn kernels are not arranged in uniform rows on the ear. They're just haphazardly on the ear.
Here is an ear of the Stowell's Evergreen Corn.
We had a lot of damage this year from worms. Most every ear had damage on the ends that I had to cut off.
After cleaning it all up, I took it inside where Tricia blanched it on the cob. Once cooled, I cut the kernels off the cob and scraped the "milk" from the cob into a big stainless steel bowl.
We began bagging it all up in quart-sized zip loc bags. We'll eat all this up later. Our two favorite recipes to make are Mexican Street Corn and Corn Macque Choux.
Now that most of the corn is out of the way, I think I'll get some purple hull peas planted and maybe some pumpkins.
