The Garden in the Side Yard

Years ago after running out of room in the garden, I incorporated part of the lawn into what I call "the garden in the side yard."  I've been amending lots and lots of composted leaves and wood chip mulch and have improved the soil immensely.  We have 112 potato plants growing in this patch along with watermelons, cantaloupes and butternut squash on the very end where they can vine out.  You can't see them yet as they are just germinating, but I planted some Lemon Queen sunflowers in a long row alongside the potatoes.  The flowers are for the bees.  To the left, we have our muscadines and our thornless blackberries.

Just to the south is a small raised bed we call our herb garden.  It did not fare so well in our big freeze.  Our rosemary was probably at least 5 years old.  It is dead.  I've already planted another in its place since this photo was taken.

We thought the oregano was finished as well, but we were surprised and happy to see it coming back!

One thing that's not coming back is our Lemongrass.  The freeze finished it off, for sure.  It had made it for years and years, coming back in the spring, but not this spring.  I replanted some from some seed I had saved but none germinated.  I'm trying again with some purchased seed.  We'll see if we can get it growing.  We made a lot of lemongrass tea from this plant.  Hoping we can get another growing to take its place.

The two plants in the background are parsley that came up from seed.  It's very healthy and we use it often in cooking.  When it bolts, we'll let it go to seed again.  Then maybe it will come up again next year from seed.  

The two plants in the foreground are celery that Tricia started from the base of a store bought celery.

Finally, this plant.  This is an herb that is new to us.  We planted it from seed last year and it came up on its own again this spring.  It's French Sorrel.  I had never eaten it.  We really are enjoying it and eat some almost every day.

We'll pick about 10 leaves off of it and put on a slice of toasted homemade sour dough bread.  We then put a fried egg on top with a slice of provolone cheese topped with sliced avocado and another slice of sour dough bread.  It makes a great sandwich!

The Herb Patch

In all our years posting, I don't know if we've ever shown you our little herb patch.  Many years ago, we constructed a raised bed in the side yard with 2x12's and filled it with topsoil.  The idea was to plant herbs in one location to not take space out of the main garden.  We've kept this herb patch going for quite a while now.  We have a lot of different items in this bed.  We'll oftentimes come out and cut what we need and it's not that far of a walk back inside to the kitchen where the meal is being prepared.

Below you're looking at three separate celery plants.  They seem to be really happy and healthy.

Here is a close-up photo of the healthiest of the three.  If you've been following us, we planted these from store-bought celery stalks that we had eaten everything except a small 3 inch section of the base.  We rooted it in a cup of water and then transplanted it out here.  It's doing quite well.  We might get a bunch of celery after all.  This is our first time doing this.  

These two plants have similar leaves, but aren't celery.  These are flat Italian parsley.  These come in handy for gumbos.  We'll pick a bunch and the plants continue to re-grow.  We didn't plant these from seed.  They came up volunteer from last year's parsley plant that we allowed to go to seed.

This is French Sorrel and is two years old.  It continues to thrive.  I like to eat the leaves raw.  It has a unique taste.  We also put in salads.

This is lemon grass.  This group of plants was started from seed about three years ago.  We cut off bunches of it to make tea - either iced or hot.  It's delicious and has a real nice fragrance.  We aim to try to cook with it.  Lemon grass is used in lots of dishes, but we haven't tried any recipes yet.

Here is a pretty large rosemary plant.  It's four years old, I'm guessing.  We use rosemary quite often in cooking.  I love the fragrance.

Here is some ginger.  It is two years old.  The leaves look a little beat up.  I think it got hurt a little by the frost we had a couple of weeks ago.  I guess we'll need to dig it up.

And finally, here is what's left of the oregano.  This plant used to be quite large, but the drought this year really hurt the plant.  Where it used to fill up almost 1/4 of the entire bed, it's now just these small stragglers hanging on.  Hopefully it will recover.  We like its flavor in Italian dishes.

And that's a quick tour of the herb garden.  We'll plant some additional items in here in the spring.

Making Homemade Ranch Dip with Dill & Parsley

Last Saturday morning I took a stroll in the garden after the milking chores were done.  A heavy dew covered all of the plants and I thought that it looked especially pretty covering the foliage on the dill in the row of herbs and lettuce.

Dew Drops on Dill

Here's another shot...

The colors of the red lettuce contrasting with the wispy dew covered dill made me think about a nice salad.  Pretty much everything we need is right here.

Nice colors on the lettuce/herb row

Coincidentally, Tricia was separating whey from kefir.  The kefir was in a cloth suspended from the cabinet and the whey was being collected in a measuring cup below.

Separating whey from kefir

You can see the whey dripping in the measuring cup below.  She captured about 2 cups.  Whey is acidic (lactic acid) and is used for preserving foods.  We're going to use it in a later post to make Ginger Carrots.

Collecting Whey

After the whey has dripped out, the curds (solids) are all that remains.  Tricia put this into a mason jar.  Remember the nursery rhyme about Little Miss Muffet sitting on a tuffet eating her curds & whey?  Well this is what she was eating.

Curds

The ingredients to make our dip/salad dressing were gathered, which included the cup of curds, fresh parsley and dill from the garden, one clove garlic, onion and kosher salt.  

Ingredients for making our ranch dressing

The immersion blender works wonders!  Simply throw everything whole into the jar.

Immersion blender makes quick work

Vroom! Vroom!

All done!

And in a matter of seconds, you have homemade ranch dip.  Tricia added a little milk to make a dressing for our fresh salad.

Just the right consistency now...

You can also dip a carrot in it.

A healthy, delicious dip or salad dressing

Fresh Dill and Carrots go great together.  We demolished the jar of ranch dressing quickly.  With temperatures in the 80's already, the lettuce is beginning to bolt and go to seed.  Once it starts the leaves become bitter, so we've been eating salads almost every meal, enjoying a nice ranch dressing to accompany it.

Don't Get Perturbed About The Herbs

We cook with a lot of herbs. In order to have them in close proximity to the kitchen, we have them growing in terra cotta pots out on the back patio.  Right outside the french doors, we have oregano, parsley, and rosemary growing.  Most grow all year long.  Due to the quantity of plants and the size, our basil is located in the garden, so it is not as convenient.  Perhaps I'll grow a basil plant on the patio this spring for cooking purposes and leave the others in the garden for making pesto in large quantities like we frequently do.

Just this past weekend, I started a few pots of parsley, dill and cilantro seeds growing on the back patio.  Fresh parsley smells GREAT all cut up and we love to add bunches of it on top of a steaming bowl of gumbo.  When I was in the grocery store business, we would get some specialty mustard from a company called Inglehoffer.  They made different herbed mustards that came in little glass jars.  My favorite was a dill mustard and I'd like to make some of our own.  Another thing is recently I had a chicken sandwich with dill mayonnaise and although I loathe mayonnaise, it was pretty good.

Finally, cilantro.  We like it in pico de gallo and in Tricia's rice dishes.  Some people love it and some people hate it and say it tastes like soap and smells like stink bugs. This Article tells you why.  It is genetic.  It you hate it, chances are you have the OR6A2 gene that allows you to pick up the scent of aldehyde chemicals.  Those are found in both cilantro and soap.  I almost forgot mint!  We have mint growing out on the back patio as well.  Fresh mint hot tea is real good.

Parsley, Dill, Cilantro and Oregano (not as catchy as Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)

Green Onions.  Now here is something that I can't get enough of.  I love to add a big, heaping handful on top of a big plate of red beans and rice and sausage.  So Good!  Although I planted a bunch of it from seed recently, they haven't germinated yet and we needed some for a recipe that Tricia was making.  Unfortunately, we had to run to the store and pick up a bunch of commercially grown green onions.

I usually cut the green onions all the way down to the roots and use the whole thing for cooking with, but here's the deal: if the green onions you purchased were in good shape (and why would you purchase them if they weren't), simply keep the roots wet and when you've snipped off the tops, plant them in your garden.  I just planted four of them yesterday as you can see below:

"Recycled" Green Onions

The green onions from the same purchased bunch that I put in the ground last week in the center below were already almost ready to be snipped and used to flavor delicious gumbos, soups, and rice and gravy.  

Grows in NO TIME!!

So while we patiently wait for our green onions planted from seed to grow, we'll have some 'recycled green onions' in inventory while we wait.  I'd like to try planting some other herbs this spring that we haven't used before - like fennel, sage, and thyme.  I also have some lemon balm that I'll get started in early spring.

Pesky Pests Partaking of our Parsley

We grow various herbs in pots on the back patio.  It is pretty convenient so that you don't have to walk all the way out to the garden to harvest a handful of parsley, oregano, mint, or rosemary when you are cooking.  I would do the same for basil, but we make so much pesto, that we really need a full garden row for growing basil.

Saturday morning I went out to pick some parsley and something bright and colorful caught my eye. Parsley is supposed to be green, not bright and colorful.  A fat caterpillar was making quick work in eating, no voraciously devouring our pot of parsley.

Parsley Eater

But he wasn't the only one.  His wife was in the back working on the Our Maker's Acres Parsley All You Can Eat Special.

Junior was finishing up his breakfast and going back for seconds.

I Google searched, Caterpillars in Louisiana and found This Link.  It told me that this was called a Ppolyx Papilionidae.  These actually become swallowtail butterflies.  I like butterflies.  I don't like caterpillars eating our herbs, though, and that was what was happening.

The entire family of caterpillars were having a feast.  They were so busy eating, they didn't even notice when I picked off the parsley stem that they were clinging to.  My plan was to walk these fat, parsley filled interlopers out to the pasture, where I would call the chickens and take enjoyment watching them snatch up and eat the caterpillars.  Sadistic, I know.

I called the chickens, they came running, I tossed the caterpillars over the fence and the chickens just stared at the offering.  They were not interested.  Strange.  These things are so bad the hens don't even want to mess with them.

If you are looking for a happy ending to this story, where the caterpillars form cocoons and and we gather around the chrysalis and joyfully shout when butterflies emerge and soar heavenward, well, you're going to be disappointed.  They were eating our stuff and instead of a happy ending for the caterpillar family, our story was more of a tragedy - a macabre one, at that.

Kicking Steak up a Notch...

The night before Laura Lee and Russ headed back to college, we decided to have "Steak Night." Tricia will put some nice steaks in a super-hot, black cast iron skillet with some butter and in no time at all we'll have an enjoyable meal.  We never use steak sauce and are just content with the flavors of butter, salt and pepper.

Occasionally we like to add some zing to the steak, though, and tonight we made a Chimichurri Sauce.  Chimichurri is a green sauce for grilled meats that originated in Argentina.  We picked a cup of fresh Italian parsley from the garden and 1/4 cup of fresh oregano leaves from the patio.  I also chopped up a medium white onion.

The base of chimichurri

I put the parsley, oregano, and onion into the food processor along with some ground thyme, one clove garlic, one piece of stale bread, 1/8 cup of red wine vinegar, 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and Parmesan cheese.

About to mix it all up

We put the top on the processor and chop it all up.  It's as easy as that!  Using a spoon/spatula we put it all in a serving bowl and bring it to the table after tasting it. It has an "herby," zesty, flavorful pow to it. 

Completed Chimichurri Sauce

I take a serving spoon and place a large dollop of chimichurri on top of my steak. 

Freshly made chimichurri atop my steak

I find it really enhances the flavor of a good steak.  We don't make it all the time, but every once in a while we'll mix up another batch of chimichurri to liven up the taste buds.

Making Hearty Potato Soup

We had a few lonely potatoes left from our fall crop.  Note to self: plant more potatoes next year, both in the Spring and in the Fall.  With chilly weather and the kids in from college and Russ unable to eat anything but soup due to having his wisdom teeth removed, soup was on the menu - Hearty Potato Soup.

We peeled and cut up the remaining homegrown potatoes and had to buy some potatoes from the store to supplement the ones we grew.  I think it ended up being 7 or 8 medium sized potatoes that we peeled, cut, and added to the pot along with some homegrown sweet corn that we thawed out.  We boiled it in salted water along with a half cup of cut up onions. We cooked for about 20 minutes until the potatoes were softened.

The boiling pot

We took a potato masher and mashed up the potatoes and then cut the corn off the cob.  In a separate pot we added 3 or 4 tablespoons of butter with 2 or 3 tablespoons of flour and made a roux, but didn't allow it to brown - just until bubbly.  Then we added to the soup.  Finally we added milk and cream and warmed it up nicely.

Cutting the corn off the cob

As it was heating, we grated a cup of smoked Gouda cheese into the pot.

Grated smoked Gouda

Then it was time to get the bowls out and ladle the delicious potato soup into them. We picked some Italian parsley to garnish the soup and added some of our Criolla Sella pepper to the top.

Ready to eat!

We sat down, thanked the Good Lord for the good food and it was on!

Spoon view

Potato soup is a family favorite and doesn't take long to cook and it disappears very quickly.

Disappearing act

After we had eaten it and enjoyed it, we started thinking about things to add next time that will make it even better - things like mushrooms and bacon and accompaniments like cheese toast.  We'll try that next time...