Preserving the Cauliflower Harvest

Gardening can be a funny thing.  Some years, even though you do everything you've always done, the yield is less than desirable.  This year the sweet potato harvest was lackluster, at best.  Some years, though, everything clicks on certain crops.  This year the cauliflower harvest can best be described as a bumper crop.  That term originates from the 19th century when things exceptionally large were termed as "bumper."

Before the big freeze we harvested all the cauliflower as exposing the heads to a deep freeze causes the cauliflower to become mushy and damaged.  We ate all we could, but decided we would need to blanch and freeze the excess so that we could preserve the harvest and eat it throughout the upcoming weeks and months.

Cauliflower grows with large leaves that curl around the head, leaving the head mostly protected.  As a result, the heads are snowball white, clean, with no blemishes or damage.  Tricia and I formed a quick assembly line, cutting off any remaining leaves and stem bottoms.  The upper portions of the stem are tasty and edible. 

We disassemble the heads, cutting them into florets a little larger than a golf ball.  While we are working on this, we get a pot of water boiling.  We also clean the sink and fill with cold water and ice.  We're about ready to get things going.

With the water at a full boil, we drop a batch of cauliflower into the water.  Once the water is boiling, we start the timer for three minutes.  It takes 3 minutes to blanch cauliflower.  Blanching the cauliflower (or any vegetable) does a couple of things: it preserves the color and it preserves the texture prior to freezing.

The beeper goes off, alerting Tricia that it's time to take it out.  I say "alerts Tricia" because I can't hear the beeper.  The timer sounds at a frequency that I cannot hear.  Years of running a crawfish boat with no hearing protection (my fault entirely) have resulted in hearing loss of certain frequencies.  There are worse afflictions, I suppose.  

Once the beeper sounds, we quickly remove the blanched cauliflower into a colander, allowing the hot water to drain out, and then we put the cauliflower into the cold water bath.  We want to immediately stop the cooking process.  To do so, we add more ice to the sink as needed.  Simultaneously, we put another batch of cauliflower florets into the water and start the whole process over again.  Rinse, wash, repeat... Literally.

Once the cauliflower has cooled, we bag it up into quart-sized Ziploc bags and put them into the deep freeze.  We yielded nine bags.

Of course, we did hold back 3 or 4 cauliflower heads to put in the crisper in the fridge and we'll eat that over the next week or so.  We always like to eat as much as we can fresh from the garden, but it's always important to be able to preserve the harvest.

Winter Harvest Before the Ice Comes

Forecasts show lows of 23 degrees overnight into the morning and tomorrow lows down to 19 degrees overnight and into the morning.  This has sparked a flurry (pardon the pun) of activity in getting things taken care of and ready.  Yesterday, I wrapped all the pipes in the attic, the faucets attached to the house, and then all the water pipes and spigots in the garden and out in the pasture.  It took quite a while but we got prepared as best as we can.  Hopefully we can make it through the cold weather without any broken pipes.

Late this afternoon after church, we bundled up and got all the tarps out, covering everything that's out in the garden, trying to save what's there.  I'm not really worried about the root crops, so I'm leaving the beets and carrots and turnips alone.  The cabbage are said to fare very well through a freeze, too.  I did check on the cauliflower.  We have a LOT of cauliflower that's ready.  I learned that if your cauliflower freezes, it gets mushy and is ruined.  Not gonna take any chances with the cauliflower.  Gotta pick 'em!

Most of the cauliflower are very nice, bigger than the size of your hand.  I pick the head of the cauliflower off and feed all the leaves to the cows.  How they love that!  Cauliflower is one and done.  By that, I mean once you harvest the head, no more will grow.  Broccoli is a different story.  Once you pick the main broccoli head, little broccoli florets pop up all over the place, so you can continue harvesting as long as you have patience to get out there and pick.  Pound for pound, you probably get more broccoli from the little florets cumulatively than you do from the main head.

In pulling all the cauliflower off so they're not ruined in the freeze, we got a huge haul.  I don't really have anything for perspective, but that's a big basket in the photo below.  We'll be busy eating cauliflower and blanching and freezing it.

I like to also pull some beets (bull's blood and chioggia varieties) and carrots (Danvers and Cosmic Purple varieties).

As a kid, I often turned my nose up at vegetables, but no more!  We eat lots of them.  One of our favorite things to do is roast cauliflower, broccoli, beets, and carrots in the oven with some olive oil, butter, salt and minced garlic.  I cannot stress how delicious this is.

Fresh spinach is coming in too, right now in the garden, so Tricia made a beautiful spinach, ham, pecan and cheese quiche.  That paired nicely with lettuce from the garden and the roasted vegetables.  It made for an enjoyable lunch.

After two days, we'll take the tarps off the garden and see where we stand.  Will everything we covered survive?  Tune in and we'll report toward the end of the week.  Stay warm!

Quite a Scare for Rosie

Saturday afternoon we began preparing for the blast of very cold weather.  It is supposed to be 11 degrees on Tuesday.  I cannot remember it ever getting that cold here.  Russ came over and helped me by wrapping pipes.  Then we began picking produce from the garden that will be ruined if we don't harvest and bring it inside.

We picked about 3 baskets of items.  One of the things we picked was cauliflower.  When you pick broccoli, it is a little different.  On broccoli, you merely pick the main head off.  Dozens of florets will continue to grow and you can harvest them every day, if you wish.  For cauliflower, once you pick the main head off, that's it.  One and done.

The cauliflower, once picked leaves a lot of big leaves connected to a stem that's about as big in diameter as a silver dollar.  I'll generally snip the big stem off at ground level and toss the whole thing over for the cows to devour.

So that's what I did.  The cows and goats came running like sharks circling their prey they ate to their heart's content.  The photo below shows the goats and then Elsie, LuLu and Rosie eating sweet potato vines back earlier in the fall.  It was the same type of all you can eat buffet yesterday, but with cauliflower leaves and stems.

Tricia and I went inside as it was starting to get dark.  We were going to eat supper and then head back out to do chores at the barn.  It was then that Russ came in.  "Dad, I think one of the cows is in trouble.  She must be choking.  She's running around, thrashing her neck around and has lots of slobber coming out of her mouth!"  The first thing I thought of was, "How do you perform the Heimlich maneuver on a cow?" 

I ran outside.  Sure enough, Rosie was bucking like a bronco.  I tried to grab her but she was running around, clearly in distress.  I ran to the barn and grabbed a lead rope.  Running up to her, I clipped the rope to her halter and held her firmly with my right hand.  I took my left hand, made a fist and jammed it down her throat, opening my fingers when I was almost elbow deep.

I could feel something.  Something that didn't belong in a cow's throat.  I grabbed it and pulled and a big, hard cauliflower stem a little more than two inches in diameter and five inches long came out!  Rosie was relieved.  We all were relieved.  Had Russ not been outside, the day could have ended badly for Old Rosie girl.

I'll have to be more careful with the things I throw over the fence for them to eat!

A Nice Cold Snap!

For the last three days and continuing into tonight, overnight lows dipped near 30 degrees.  It wasn't nearly a hard freeze.  I didn't worry about winterizing the pipes.  In fact under the trees, I saw no ice in the water troughs.  I knew that the freeze would end the green beans, though.  They had a nice run.  Not only did we get fresh snap beans for Thanksgiving, but we were still picking green beans for New Year's Day.  We've never done that before.  After I picked the last of the beans, I used clippers to clip the plants off at ground level and tossed the foliage over to the cows.

The fall garden always produces some wonderful meals.  I get excited about vegetables.  What kind of a weirdo does that?  I showed you a nice cauliflower we harvested last week:

I neglected to tell you our favorite way to eat cauliflower (or broccoli).  Chop up the cauliflower into florets.  Place on a stoneware baking pan and add kosher salt and a bunch of minced garlic.  Drizzle olive oil and stir it all up.  Place in an oven and roast until they turn golden brown.  I would assume people just call this Roasted cauliflower.  We call it cauliflower candy.  It is so delicious that there are no leftovers.

The freeze wrecked the peppers and eggplant.  We picked all the remaining fruit off of them and cut down the freeze-damaged plants.  Everything is brown now in the garden, except for bright green leafy things like kale, swiss chard, mustard greens, turnips, and things like radishes shown below.  The red radishes contrasted against the radish greens in the morning sun are pretty.  I don't get that fired up about cut up radishes in a salad.  I'll enjoy them like that, but Tricia makes a radish dip that's quite addictive.  She'll take a few nice sized radishes and put them in a food processer and mince.  To that shell mix in a softened block of cream cheese and a little salt, pepper and chili powder.  

The purple kohlrabi is a relatively new addition to our garden repertoire.  Growing up, I don't imagine I ever even heard the word kohlrabi, but I got some as Free Seed from Baker Creek and it looked like a vegetable grown on an alien planet.  We cooked it up and really enjoyed it.  I'll wait until this one's a little bigger and we'll feast on it.

We're also getting ready for planting.  My onion sets came in from Dixondale Farms, so some time this week or next, I'll be planting about 200 onions.  We harvested some Irish potatoes that came up volunteer from some that I guess we didn't find when we harvested back in early summer.  To that bed I'll be adding about four inches of mulch.  We'll be planting Irish Potatoes around Valentine's Day.

Still No Freeze

As of December 29th, we've had maybe three mornings that I've walked out and seen a very light frost out on the pasture.  It has not significantly damaged anything in the garden, though.  The snap beans had a very slight 'bronzing' of the leaves as evidence of the frost, but that's it.  I always plant a fall crop of snap beans with the goal of growing a mess of fresh snap beans for Thanksgiving dinner.  We accomplished that this year, but additionally, they've kept producing.  I've harvested another two big baskets of green beans since Thanksgiving.  We had some for lunch after church this morning.

This is the longest that I've been able to keep them producing.  Usually a freeze has burnt them to the ground by now, but they are loaded up for another picking!

Not only that, but they're still blooming!  We'll see how long we can keep this going.  

We have been harvesting lettuce, kale, chard, and broccoli already, but yesterday I picked a big, fat cauliflower!  It was possibly the biggest head of cauliflower we've ever grown.

I don't know how to show you proper perspective other than tell you that it's bigger than my head.  I put my left hand by it for comparison.

We'll be cutting this one up and putting it on a baking tray and drizzling with olive oil and lots of minced garlic before roasting in the oven.  That's my favorite way to eat cauliflower.

In other garden news, I'm expecting delivery of all my onion starts next week.  On December 31st, I always plant all of our tomatoes, peppers and eggplant from seed.  Lots of exciting gardening tasks coming up soon.

Before the Cold Blew Through

The last week of December, we had a cold front that blew through.  Other parts of the country get this type of weather and are quite accustomed to it.  We are not.  We were just recovering from the hard freeze a couple years ago and now we have to deal with it again.   Temperatures were projected to be 17 degrees with wind chills colder and it was going to stay below freezing for three days.  What to do?  What to do? 

First, I wrapped all of the pipes outside with pipe insulation and a bag of old t-shirts.  Then I brought ferns and tropical plants indoors and all other plants into the garage.  Then I got a heat lamp out of the attic that we normally use for baby chicks.  I set it up in the garage for Belle and Ginger to keep warm.  Belle has a thick winter coat.  She enjoys this type weather.  Here she is playing hide and seek in a hole that the cows ate out of the center of a round bale of hay.

First thing was to say goodbye to the tomatoes.  Three rows of beautiful, healthy plants full of tomatoes.  But it just wasn't meant to be.  We had harvested a handful of red ripe ones, but most are still green.

Some were big and plump and nearing maturity.

Others were smaller, but nice looking with no blemishes.

I filled up a big bucket full and we spread them out in several boxes to ripen.  We covered them with a paper bag and put a banana in the box.  Some are turning red.  Those that don't turn red, we'll eat fried green tomatoes or make green tomato sauce.

I filled another bucket with peppers.  Tons of Anaheims, jalapeno, lilac bell, horizon bell, emerald sweet bell, and criolla sella peppers.

The cole crops will generally handle a freeze, but I covered them anyway.  I also picked all the mature heads off of them.  Here's a nice PURPLE cauliflower that I harvested.

We cut this bad boy up and drizzled with olive oil and then tossed with salt and minced garlic and roasted.  When these come out of the oven, they disappear very quickly!

One final preparation before the cold weather blows through.  That's to sit down with a bowl of shrimp and okra gumbo.

Nothing warms the body and soul like a big bowl of gumbo!!

Late December Heat Wave and Its Effects on the Garden

Well, now.  Here we are two days after Christmas and we are in the throes of a heat wave.  Since Christmas Day we've had high temps of 80 degrees!  My firewood sits in the rack biding its time, neglected and unused.  The air conditioner drones on, keeping us cool.  The grass continues to grow and the cows have pasture to munch on.  

And then the garden.  The garden is growing like crazy!  The eggplant is full of blooms and fruit.  The peppers are producing.  We're even picking tomatoes for our garden salads!  Unheard of.  Things are actually growing TOO fast.  The heat has caused the broccoli to fruit early.  The heads aren't as big as they usually get and we have to get out and pick the florets every single day.

The high temperatures cause the plants to bolt to flowering and if you aren't determined about picking every day, you'll have the prettiest little yellow flowers on your broccoli that you've ever seen.  I'd rather eat the broccoli BEFORE it blooms.  The honey bees, on the other hand, were voicing their disapproval today as I was picking the broccoli, even those with flowers on 'em.

You can see, for example, this head of broccoli.  If I waited one more day, it would be too late.  It would be all bloomed out versus something good to eat.

The cauliflower is ripening too quickly as well.  With the temperatures persisting in the 80's for the next week, at least.  We are having to do a lot of harvesting that we wouldn't ordinarily be doing for a while.

We've been eating the broccoli and cauliflower in salads, roasting them in the oven with garlic, steaming them and intend on blanching and freezing some for later.  Tricia also made a Broccoli Cheese Soup for supper the other night.

We're waiting on some cooler weather.  If I understood correctly, the long range forecast shows some potential for freezing temps in the next 10 days or so.  That will be something to see.  A 50 degree fluctuation.  

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!  

Live Purple Love Gold

A few weeks ago we met to watch the LSU Fightin' Tiger Football team win the national championship game against the Clemson Tigers, finishing the season with a perfect 15 and Eaux record.  This post will be short as there's not much more to be said about it.  Mom and Dad had some great game food and we yelled and screamed and high-fived each other until our hands hurt.  My face hurt from smiling.

It got a little rowdy at times...  Our boys and Jenny's boys were fired up.

We celebrated the Tigahs and then we celebrated Benjamin's 19th birthday.  Lot's of celebrations going on.

Unfortunately, the game was on a Monday night.  I had to be at work early the next morning and Benjamin had to be back at college the next day.  We posed for a photo with Mom & Dad before heading out.

But we weren't done with the celebrations just yet.  I walked out to the garden the next day only to discover that my cauliflower was sporting a purple game jersey to commemorate the National Championship!

Was this some sort of gardening miracle?  Purple rain?

Actually no.  I planted some purple cauliflower this fall and it just happened to ripen to coincide with LSU's big victory.  We roasted it in the oven with garlic just last night.  It tasted just like regular white cauliflower, but the purple is just more visually pleasing to the eye.  My purple carrots should be ripening soon...  Geaux Tigahs!