One of Our Favorite Options for an Abundance of Cabbage

We've either eaten or processed most of the cabbage crop.  We still have 3 heads in the fridge and 3 heads still growing in the garden that I need to harvest this afternoon.  As the weather warms, we find that snails get into the cabbage and eat them.  Coleslaw has been standard fare for over a month now.  We also made four quarts of kimchi (Korean sauerkraut).  We also have been eating a cabbage & sausage jambalaya, which is really deconstructed cabbage rolls.  We also made a batch or two of eggrolls, but thought we'd make a bunch of eggrolls and then individually freeze them, so that we can pull out a few at a time to eat over the coming months.  Who doesn't like a delicious, quick meal?

I didn't capture step by step instructions as I remembered that we had done that several years ago.  However, when I searched the blog, I found this: Post from 13 Years Ago  Unfortunately, the photos are gone!  The recipe and steps are still there, though.  Making eggrolls seemed, initially, to be something outside of our expertise and comfort level, but making them/rolling them is a process that you pick up fast.  

So here is a photo of our egg roll filling all made up.  It contains shredded cabbage and carrots and seasoned ground meat, but the filling is up to you.  We've made them with mushrooms or chicken.

We set up a little assembly line in the kitchen, laying out the egg roll wrappers, putting two heaping scoops of filling into the center and rolling them up.  We line them up like little soldiers until the oil is hot and ready for frying.

We use coconut oil or beef tallow for frying.  The eggrolls are dunked in the oil and a spoon is used to roll them around until all sides are golden brown.

When done, we pull them out and arrange on paper towels to absorb the excess oil.

When you get in the groove, you can really get things going in a smooth, efficient process.

In this instance, I was rolling them and Tricia was frying.  As soon as she had some coming out of the oil, I had some waiting in line to be fried.

We allowed the eggrolls to completely cool and then arranged them on baking trays.  Our objective was to put them in the deep freeze and freeze them individually, so that they don't stick together and we could take out one eggroll for a snack or 10 or 20 at a time for a meal.  We learned that if you don't individually freeze them, the oil makes them stick together and when you try to remove them, they'll tear.  This process fixes the sticking together/tearing.  Into the freezer all of the trays of eggrolls went...

Once completely frozen, we removed each one and stacked into several Rubbermaid containers, sealed them and placed them back in the freezer.  Here is one of the containers:

We ended up making just about 60 eggrolls!  We'll likely make more as we do have 6 more heads of cabbage to do something with.  This will work out nicely.  With a little preparation and planning on the front end, we now will have quick, delicious meals at our convenience.  All we need to do is take out however many we want and warm them up.  Pass the soy sauce, please!

Preserving an Excess of Cabbage and Carrots

We have an overabundance of cabbage and carrots in the outdoor fridge due to bumper crops from the garden.  We've been cooking Cabbage and Sausage jambalaya, Egg rolls, steamed cabbage, roasted cabbage, coleslaw, Cream of Carrot soup, raw carrots, roasted carrots and on and on.  There's still a lot left, but we have a plan.

We've got a couple of recipes for lacto-fermenting cabbage and carrots that we always do, so we got busy.  First we are going to make a Korean sauerkraut (Kimchi).  It involves shredding cabbage, carrots, radishes, garlic, green onions and grated jalapenos.  We doubled the recipe to make four quarts.

We like to use a big wooden masher tool to bruise the cabbage and carrots and get the juices flowing.  You would think that an enormous stainless steel bowl would keep the contents inside, but we made quite a mess in the kitchen with bits of vegetables flying all over the place.

We tightly pack the kimchi into wide mouth quart-sized Mason jars.  The juices from the crushed cabbage and carrots coat the kimchi.  We also add salt.

Finally, we add 2 tablespoons of whey to each jar.  The whey is a by-product of making yogurt or cheese, and it is a preservative.  

Kimchi is put together.  Now we'll do Ginger Carrots.  We began to shred carrots and a bunch of ginger.

We've got loads of carrots to shred.  Our food processor got a work-out today.

All the carrots and ginger was dumped in the big bowl, and I once again got busy with the potato masher, working and working to crush the carrots and release the flavorful juices.

We spooned the gingered carrots in 2 quart sized Mason jars and added 2 tablespoons of whey in each jar.  For both the kimchi and the gingered carrots, it's real important that your vegetables stay beneath the liquid.  We purchased some glass weights that work perfectly for keeping the kimchi and the carrots below the level of the liquid.

We'll leave these on the kitchen counter at room temperature for about 3 days and then we'll transfer to the fridge.  It'll keep there for months and months and, believe it or not, gets better with age.

Very tangy, fizzy, and flavorful.  Very healthy for you, too!  We still have more cabbage and carrots.  I told Tricia that she should make a carrot cake!

Finished with the Fall Carrots

It's March 7th, and it is warming up.  It feels like summer already with mid-day temps hitting 83 already.  What that means is I have to get moving!  Warmer temps means the cabbage all needs to be harvested.  If you don't, the snails will wreak havoc on the heads - nasty critters, I tell you.  I harvested all of the heads, except for three.  I have one big bin of cabbage heads in the outdoor fridge.  I see coleslaw, homemade egg rolls, cabbage/sausage jambalaya (yum - I call it deconstructed cabbage rolls), cooked cabbage and yes, jars of sauerkraut in the near future.

Then there is yet another row of carrots.  We harvested the first row a couple of weeks back.  We've been roasting them in the oven and using them to dip into homemade radish dip (finely chopped radish, cream cheese, garlic and other seasonings.  This second row of carrots must come up today.  They're already too big.  The soil is soft and they are easy to pull, so let's get this show on the road.

Halfway through and I filled up a plastic bin.  All of the beautiful tops were thrown over the fence to hungry cows and goats that greedily gobble the greens down.  See those carrots?  They are mighty dirty.  This is a perfect time to try out the garden sink.  I spent the morning working on the sink.  Unfortunately, the hard freeze in late January - early July played a number on the plumbing to the garden sink, breaking the head to the sprayer.  We'll try out the sink to see if it works once we get that second row of carrots pulled.

I filled both sinks with water and everything seems to be working nicely.  I'll let the carrots sink in order to clean them up and wash off all the topsoil.  I'm catching it all in a tub beneath the drain.  I'll also use a vegetable scrubber to get the carrots super clean before bringing them inside.

And here we go: Two tubs of terrific tubers.  How's that for alliteration?  These will be stored in the outdoor fridge as well.  I plan on putting these up, blanching and freezing them, canning them, and making Ginger Carrots (sort of a carrot sauerkraut - cool and tangy)!

It's good to have the carrots and cabbage harvested.  That frees up room to plant sweet corn and okra as well as the tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings that I'll be transplanting from our seed starting trays in about another week.

Bringing in the Cabbage

Today is St. Patrick's Day.  Corned beef and cabbage is St. Patrick's Day fare.  We've no corned beef, but cabbage?  Yes, we've got some of that!  As the weather warms, the cold season crops begin to suffer.  Cabbage is one of those crops.  I like to leave it as long as possible to let the heads get big, but snails are attracted to our cabbage.  Tricia doesn't like snails - she says they're gross.  I told her to consider them escargot, but she's not buying that line.  I already picked one row of cabbage, but here's another we'll pick up today.  The cows and goats know what's up, and they gather to beg.

Here's probably the nicest head of cabbage in the patch. 

 

This one is a good, average sized cabbage - some were bigger, many were smaller.

As I picked, I plucked the outer leaves and tossed those to the waiting animals.  Before long, I had harvested the entire row.  This makes room to plant a couple more rows.  I always plant between the rows for the following year.  It's my easy way of crop rotation.

And here we go: A case of cabbage.  I'll tote these back to the house and spray them all down to clean them up real good.  Then I'll load them into the refrigerator, so they'll last.

We've already eaten a couple of side dishes of smothered cabbage.  We also had some cabbage and sausage jambalaya.  It is similar to a deconstructed cabbage roll.  We'll eat lots of cole slaw.  Finally, we'll make several quarts of kimchi and sauerkraut.  

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

"Let sleeping dogs lie" is an old saying that means leave things as they are.  Don't go stirring things up that are better left alone.  There's a lot of wisdom in that.  It can also be meant in the literal sense.  Belle was sleeping out in the garage.  She must have been deep in REM sleep.  She never even heard me.  That big 'ol girl was sprawled out on the cool pavement on her back.  When someone (beast or person) is sleeping so soundly.  It is best to leave them be!

But that doesn't mean that everyone's napping.  We've been busy.  We've learned new skills in beekeeping and we'll be opening the hive in another week to see if the queen is laying.  Can't wait!  Spring time means the hens are laying lots of fresh eggs.  Daily production has doubled and we've been eating lots of eggs.

Tricia boiled a bunch and pickled a gallon and a half of them.  It'll be a nice snack.  We're allowing them to sit a while in the spices so they are flavorful.  There's some jalapenos and garlic in there, along with the other seasonings.

The cabbage crop has all been harvested.  Once it starts warming up, it's time to pick them.  The snails wreak havoc with the heads of cabbage.  I picked them all and we've had cole slaw a bunch of times as well as cabbage sweated down in a cast iron skillet and a deconstructed cabbage roll dish with sausage.  This weekend we cut up a bunch of cabbage and carrots, mixed with ground beef and spices and made homemade egg rolls.  We ate until we couldn't eat another one.

This strange looking thing is something new we tried.  Dehydrated cabbage.

First time we've ever tried putting cabbage in the dehydrator.  After completely dehydrated, we store in mason jars and will add to soups and such.

Almost forgot to mention that we made homemade Sauer kraut.  We put the jars in the back of the fridge.  The longer you let it sit, the better it gets.

I trust your spring is going well?

Three Stages of Life in the Garden

The first thing is asparagus.  We planted some asparagus over a decade ago.  What a faithful producer.  Each year it comes up and we snap the spears off and eat them.  I know where they pop up so I generally just plant around them.  This year, they'll share space with Roma II Italian Snap Beans.

We snap them off at the base.  They make a delightful snap.

This young one popping up reminds me of "Junior Asparagus" from the VeggieTales cartoons that the kids used to watch when they were much younger.

So we have lots of items popping up in the garden.  We also have crops finishing up.  Here are some broccoli that are flowering.  We picked pounds of florets.  Finally, we let them go to flower.  The honeybees are really enjoying them.  I'm letting the broccoli go to seed.  I'll harvest the seed pods as they mature and save seeds for this fall planting.

You can also see the cabbage that's maturing.

As it warms, the snails really like to get in the broccoli.  Tricia asked if I could hurry and pick all the cabbage remaining and store them in a box in the fridge.  So I harvested all the cabbage.  I needed that room to plant zucchini squash anyway.

I heard the food processor whirring in the kitchen and stepped in just in time to see Tricia chopping up some of the cabbage and mixing with whey and salt to make a couple of quarts of homemade Sauer kraut.

Sure looks good.  She'll leave at room temperature for a couple of days and then will put them in the fridge.  Then we will put in the fridge.  The flavor gets better as time passes on.

More on the garden coming up in future posts...

How the Cow Ate the Cabbage

I have been on hiatus for a few days with a toothache.  OUCH!  I wasn't feeling worth a hoot and didn't feel like doing anything but swishing out my mouth with warm salt water.  Hopefully, I'll be better soon.  Anyway, good to be back.

Have you ever heard the saying, "I'm gonna tell him how the cow ate the cabbage?"  What it means is that you're going to tell the whole truth regardless of the consequences.  It may hurt someone's feelings, but it needs to be said.  I often wonder how these sayings came to be.  Apparently, according to THIS LINK it originates from an old (somewhat gross) joke:

A circus came to a small town, and one of the elephants escaped. The elephant moseyed over to an elderly lady's garden.  The lady's eyesight wasn't quite up to snuff.  The elephant got into the garden and began pulling up her cabbage with its  trunk and eating them.  The old lady called the police, and said, “Officer, there’s a big cow in my garden pulling up my cabbages with its tail!” “What’s the cow doing with them?” he asked, to which the woman replied, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you!”

Sometimes, like in today's post, the translation is literal!  We are at the end of the fall garden and have been harvesting the last of the kale, carrots, and cabbage in order to make room for the spring garden.  We've picked some nice-sized cabbage, but the ones remaining are small - most are the size of softballs.  Cabbage, at this time of the season, gets bug damage, particularly snails and slugs, though.  It was time to pull them up.

Tricia and I began clipping them off the stem, removing the outer damaged leaves, and putting the heads in a crate.  We'll eat them!

When we finished the job of salvaging the 'runts' of the cabbage crop, here's what we had:

They don't look bad.  They're just about 1/3 the size of a regular cabbage.  We make use of everything!  And hey, they're bigger than brussel sprouts!

Honey, I shrunk the cabbage

But we weren't finished with the crop.  Rosie came sauntering up to the garden fence, begging and we obliged, tossing over all of the outer cabbage leaves we had removed.  What we don't eat - the cows and goats finish off happily.

Rosie showed us how the cow ate the cabbage.  She put them in her mouth!

I Walked Through the Garden Alone

 I walked through the garden alone,

    While the dew is still on the roses broccoli.

It's a beautiful old hymn that I took the liberty of changing to match what I actually saw.  I don't have roses in our garden, although Tricia has some pretty ones by the back patio.  On the weekends, I walk out to the hen house to open the nesting boxes.  I like to do that early otherwise the hens will lay their eggs in the strangest of places.  My walk to the hen house leads me through the garden.  The sun is still rising over the horizon and the scenery in the garden is always nice.  

Here's a quick tour:  (Dewdrops bedazzling a big, healthy broccoli leaf)

Turnips!  I planted them overly thick.  We eat the turnip greens and slice the turnip roots to give to the cows.  They love them.

French Breakfast Radishes in the foreground with brussels sprouts and garlic chives further back.  We have a great Radish Dip recipe that we always have around in a bowl this time of year.

Berlicum carrots marking the rows.  These were the slowest growing this year, but they've willed themselves to sprout up through the mulch and are in a growth spurt now.  As you can tell, the oxalis is also coming up in the carrot row despite the thick mulch.  We'll have to weed those out.

The lettuce patch.  We have several varieties growing, including Black-Seeded Simpson, Oak Leaf, Lollo Rossa, Rocky Top Mix, and Red Romaine.  We're pinching off the fresh new growth for salads every night.

 

Galilee Spinach.  This variety comes from Israel.  We like to make homemade Cream of Spinach Soup with this on cold, gloomy, drizzly nights.  It'll put the warmth back in your bones.

Bull's Blood Beets between two more rows of carrots.  As both the beets and carrots grow, the variation in color will light up this section of the garden.  I made it a point this year to widen the paths between the rows.  The mulch really helps to keep down weed growth in the walkways.  (More on this later)

Sugar Snap Peas.  The first pods are ready for picking with blooms starting to fill the trellis.

Starting right to left, we have Dinosaur Kale, three varieties of cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli. I should have allowed more space for a walkway between crops, ha ha!  They've shaded out between the rows, so we don't have to worry about weeds, but it will be a challenge to harvest!  They are very healthy!  Can't wait for harvest time!