Tears In the Kitchen

 After harvesting all of the onions in the garden, we brought them inside - out of the hot humid weather where they'd surely be rotten by now.  The sit in our "onion curing room" which doubles as our parlor when we don't have a tarp on the floor and a baker's rack full of onions sitting in the middle of it.  The ceiling fan overhead is on high and has been circulating air for about a month now. We've been quite fortunate to not lose a single onion.  Oh, one or two has begun to get a little soft, but if you peel off the outer layer, everything beneath it is fine.

On Saturday, it was a rainy day and we figured it would be beneficial to begin processing some of the onions.  With so many to choose from, we set our criterion for selecting the first onions to process.  We decided we would begin with choosing any that had the beginnings of a soft spot.  We found only two.  Then we selected all the small onions.  They were put into baskets and brought to the kitchen.

The first step in processing is to pull off the loose skin.  Then cut off the neck and the roots.  Then slice in half and remove the outer, papery skin.  Here's what you're left with.  The other thing that you must contend with is tears.

Finally, we chop them up into chunks.  These chunks will be perfect for cooking with.  We use an old chopper that has seen better days, but it still works like a charm.  I would love to know how many pounds of onions, peppers, and potatoes over the years it has cubed.  It's quite loud when you slam down the top.  Tricia wears ear plugs while doing it.

Just getting started, but we have a long way to go.

After working for a bit and putting a bunch of onion chunks in a big plastic bag for freezing, we decided to take a break for a week or two.  There's no rush for doing this as long as the onions cure and hold well.  Truth is, we are planning to take the bull to the slaughterhouse this summer.  It would be a doggone shame to have the deep freeze full of onions when it could be storing beef.

Just this little bit of chopping yielded a whopping 17 1/4 pounds of chopped onions.  Imagine how much time we've saved on the back side.  No more prepping and chopping onions and crying while you are cooking.  We've taken care of those tasks on the frontside.

Look at the onion curing room following chopping up 17 1/4 pounds of onions.  We didn't even put a dent in the onion inventory.

That's okay, we use a lot of onions in our kitchen.  The only slight rush to clearing this area is that it won't be too terribly long before we will be harvesting garlic and we'll need this area for curing garlic here.

Fall is the Time for Persimmons

The other day we were having coffee in the late afternoon when a visitor drove up.  It was a gentleman from our church.  He is an interesting fellow.  He was a boat captain for years and years piloting boats up and down the river from his base in West Memphis, Arkansas.  On this fine day he came walking up to our door with a plastic bag.  He said, "I have a little something for you."  He had been to his brother's house.

His brother had a persimmon tree that was loaded.  He said, "You'd better get 'em before the crows and coons get 'em all."  So he filled a plastic shopping bag with persimmons and wanted to split them with us.  You'll remember our postings about the wild persimmons that grow in our yard.  We've processed and froze a bunch of them.  These persimmons are three times the size and twice as sweet!

We put them in a cardboard box to further ripen and as they got soft, Tricia froze them whole.

As opposed to the wild persimmons that have around nine seeds per fruit, these have none!  We ran them through the food mill to liquify the persimmons for freezing in zip loc bags.

The persimmon flesh is fluorescent orange in color.  It almost looks like egg yolks!

But the sweetness!  Let me tell you about the sweetness.  We're already planning to make a persimmon cake using these persimmons.  We also talked about making persimmon ice cream.  Finally, we talked about making persimmon popsicles.  In this area persimmons are a ubiquitous fall fruit.  We've very thankful a generous gentleman dropped some off at our house.  Tricia's gonna make him a cake!

Processing Wild Persimmons

Other than pumpkin-spice flavored everything, the one thing that lets me know that fall is just around the corner is the ripening of the wild persimmons on our tree.  When we first bought the property twenty four years ago, there were two wild persimmon trees, but one succumbed.  The remaining tree produces hundreds of little golf ball-sized persimmons at this time every year.  They turn orange and fall to the ground and we go out and pick them up.

They are sticky, sweet and the birds love them.  My neighbor told me that prior to us moving here the raccoons loved them, too!  They would climb up in the tree and eat until they were full.  We haven't seen raccoons in a long time.  Each day we go out to the base of the tree and pick up the persimmons that have fallen.  

We take them in and wash them up.  They are very soft.  Some of them have broken as they hit the ground.  To be honest with you, most people would just let the birds eat them.  I'll show you why in a minute.  Each persimmon has a large number of big seeds in them.

We have a food mill that we sit on top of an 8 cup Pyrex measuring bowl.  We feed the persimmons into the food mill and crank.  The persimmon flesh is pushed through the holes in the mill and the seeds stay on top.

We spoon out the seeds and put them in a bowl.  They'll be fed to the animals or go in the compost pile.  Can you see what I mean about the seeds?  You get more seeds from each persimmon than you do edible fruit.

But that's okay.  The fruit we get is delicious!

We have a recipe for a persimmon Bundt cake that we have enjoyed for years.  We even have altered it to make a chocolate persimmon cake.  When it comes out of the oven, the fragrance fills the kitchen and it is so good to eat it while it is still warm.  Each recipe calls for a cup and a half of persimmon.

So we package the processed persimmons in pint-sized freezer bags with 1 and 1/2 cups of persimmon in each bag and then freeze them in stacks.  That way we can look at the stack in the freezer and inventory and know how many cakes we'll be eating!

So far we have 8 cakes in the freezer with plenty more persimmons left to fall.  It looks like it will be a good year.  That's a good thing because with the drought last year, we didn't pick any, so we need to build our inventory back up.

Seeing Red

Most mornings we try to get up and pour a mug of coffee and sit in the sun room before the sun rises.  We'll read a chapter or two in the Bible and the commentary notes to aid in context and understanding.  We're in the book of Micah now about to finish up.  It is a peaceful way to start the morning.  The sun room is aptly named.  It has a big window that faces east and we look out and watch the day begin, slowly and then in earnest.  On this particular morning, God was painting a masterpiece in the eastern sky, using blazing red, bright orange and muted pink and rounded out on top with columbia blue hues on His palette.  The red, specifically, was something to see!  "Red sky in morning, sailors take warning," I think the old Navy warning said.

But we weren't done with things red on this beautiful day.  We had already harvested the Cosmic Purple carrots last week, but before the upcoming rains, we needed to get all the Kyoto Red carrots pulled.  Tricia and I teamed up on the task, pulling, washing, clipping the tops off and feeding the carrot tops to the cows.  

While the cosmic purple carrots have purple skins and an orange interior, Kyoto Red carrots are red through and through.  In the past some of our carrots grew into weird shapes with multiple roots.  Not this year.  The Kyoto reds grew long and straight.

We brought them inside, scrubbed them with a vegetable brush and used a sharp knife to cut them into manageable pieces to cube into the vegetable chopper.  This photo shows how the carrots are a red tint all throughout.

They are quickly all cubed up and ready for processing.  The other day, with the cosmic purple carrots, we blanched and froze 10 quarts.  I think we'll pressure can most of these carrots.  When two people are inseparable, there's an old saying that goes, "They go together like peas and carrots."  These cubed up Kyoto red carrots remind me of that.  We would eat Swanson Hungry Man TV dinners sometimes when I was a kid.  I haven't eaten a TV dinner in a coon's age.  But these carrots cubed up remind me of the side dish of peas and carrots in those dinners in aluminum trays.

We began filling the jars hot pack and load into the pressure canner.  The canner will hold 10 at a time.  We'll have several batches to go until we get the job done.

Once we have the red carrots processed, we'll begin with the (boring) orange carrots.  We still have a row of those to harvest.

The "Besto" Pesto

Welcome to the Jungle!  In July, the sweet potato vines always engulf this section of the garden.  If one were to stand for too long in one location, you are in danger of the vines encircling your body and tying you down.  The vines are knee high and very healthy with all the rain we've gotten.

Barely holding its own in the middle of the vines are two Sweet Basil Plants like you see below:

And two Genovese Basil plants like you see below:

We really like fresh basil in cooking various dishes and love fresh pesto on pizzas with homegrown tomatoes, corn and mozzarella.  But today we're making pesto.  While standing in the vines, I pull off the healthiest leaves and fill a big measuring cup that I've brought with me that will hold 8 cups.  Once I get 8 cups of basil leaves packed down, I bring them inside and soak them in water.  We don't like bugs in our pesto!

We start grating Parmesan cheese as the recipe calls for 2 cups.

In fact, I've assembled all the ingredients.  You will need:

8 cups basil leaves

2 cups freshly grated Parmesan Cheese

2 cups extra virgin olive oil

1 1/3 cup cashew pieces

12 garlic cloves, minced

Salt and pepper

Process the basil leaves by pulsing until the leaves are uniformly chopped.  It smells great!

Add the cashew pieces and process until mixed.

Mince the garlic and pulse again until mixed.

Pour the 2 cups of olive oil into the mixture while it is on.  Once done, I scrape the sides of the food processor down with a spatula to ensure all is properly mixed.

Now is the time to add the grated Parmesan Cheese:

Pesto freezes remarkably well, so we spoon the pesto into Daisy Sour Cream containers that hold 16 ounces each.  Of course I taste it.  It is delicious!

I made two batches of pesto as described above.  I ended up with Five Pounds of pesto.  I labeled it with a Sharpie and freezer tape.

And that's it.  So simple to put together a quick meal.  Just thaw out a container of pesto and put some pasta on.  Voila!  Pesto Pasta for lunch after church.  Everyone loves it.  Pro tip: Be sure to check your teeth before going out.  Pesto tends to stick in the corner of your teeth.  That can be embarrassing!  That's experience speaking...

A Sure Sign of Fall

It is early September and it is still just as hot and humid as it was in June and July, but there are some things going on that clues us in that Fall is just around the corner.  Everything in nature is a cycle - a repeated series of events that you can almost set your watch by, if you are paying attention, that is.  At this time each and every year, our wild persimmon tree loads up with fruit that is green at first and then quickly turns orange. 

Persimmon tree loaded with fruit

They fall to the ground and land in the soft grass.  We pick them up before the birds get to them.  Their "shelf life" isn't long, so each day we pick them up, pull off the caps and bring the fruit inside and wash them up.

The picture above may make you believe that the persimmons are large, but the photo below gives you some scale.  The fruit is very small.  They are also FILLED with seeds.  To be honest, it is almost too much trouble to deal with to pick them, clean them and process the fruit into an edible commodity.

But we do it.  The fruit is very sweet and we really enjoy making persimmon cakes.  Well, we enjoy EATING persimmon cakes.  I'll show you how we process these little persimmons.  Here is a big bowl of fruit we collected today.  The fruit is heavy, soft and warmed by the sun.  Some have burst open - their sticky contents oozing out.  Russ likes to eat them straight out of the bowl.

In the past we processed by hand, separating the pulp from the skins and seeds by pressing through a colander with a spoon.  We've since purchased a food mill for $19.99.  It has made things a lot easier.  I think it's already paid for itself.  We set it atop a big measuring container in the sink and drop cleaned fruit (between 12-18) and turn the handle.  The mill presses the fruit down through a screen.  The screen serves to keep the seeds and skins separated from the fruit pulp.

Most of the processed persimmon falls into the container below, but when we're done, we are sure to get all of the fruit off the food mill.  The processed persimmon is similar in consistency to baby food, I would say.

Although Tricia has made persimmon cookies, the main thing she does is make cakes with them.  She makes a regular persimmon cake and a chocolate persimmon cake.  The recipe calls for a cup and a half of persimmon, so we measure out 1 1/2 cups .

Today, once we were done processing, we had 12 cups of persimmon puree.  It took about 30 minutes to do the job.

We were able to make up 8 ziploc bags of persimmon.

We'll freeze them and pull out once ready to make a cake.  A fresh baked persimmon cake makes an aroma in your house that draws everyone to the kitchen.  A hot slice of persimmon cake is so heavy and moist.  It reminds me of fall.  Now if only the cool weather would get here!

Cleaning the Gizzards

After butchering the chickens, we still have some work to do.  We wash all the livers and pack them into quart sized Ziploc bags.  They make a great supper, pan-fried in butter in a cast iron skillet.  We cut the chicken hearts in half and wash out any coagulated blood.  The heart is a muscle and makes for good eating.

Next comes the gizzards.  Gizzards require some work.  First, I like to pull off the fatty tissue that surrounds the gizzard and wash them up good.

Then, with a sharpened knife, we cut them in half.  This exposes a yellow, vinyl-like lining.  This is peeled off and thrown in the compost bucket.  There are a couple of items of interest in this chicken's gizzard - there are two small rocks in the gizzard.  Why would a chicken eat rocks?  Well, since chickens don't have teeth, they need something to grind their food down so it can be digested.  Therefore, they eat rocks, which become like teeth to them.  I remember as a teenager, I killed a wild goose.  When cleaning it, I found a penny in his gizzard.  I guess they aren't particular and will find and eat anything that will help them digest their food.

The other item of interest is the amount of grass in their gizzards.  Look in the bucket below.  The white stuff is the fat that surrounds the gizzard that we pulled off.  The yellow stuff is the gizzard lining that we pulled off.  The green stuff is grass - lots of grass.  I think that is very positive as grass gives the chicken extra nutrition that they aren't getting in the feed.  If you look closely, you can see some grainy stuff on the bottom of the bucket.  That is sand.  The birds scratch around and find sand to eat to help grind their food.

Finally, we start washing the processed gizzards and we will freeze in quart-sized bags.  Tricia makes gizzards and rice.  You would thing that they are rubbery, but if you cook them right, they are tender.

Gizzards are one of those things I didn't grow up eating as a kid, but as an adult I gave them a chance and it turns out that I like them.  Tricia prepares them with rice as a traditional Mexican dish.  I'd like her to try battering and then frying them.

Got the Bull Loaded and Delivered

A while back I posted about making cheese and explained how rennet is used in the cheese-making process to separate milk into curds and whey.  I talked about how rennet is obtained from the stomachs of unweaned calves when they are butchered. I also mentioned that there are non-animal based sources of rennet for those who are vegetarians.  I was not prepared for an email response to the post from someone VERY unhappy with me.  The writer called me vulgar names for supporting the killing of calves for making cheese and said they were vegan and I was barbaric for eating meat. This was a very angry person.  (Good thing they didn't read my annual chicken-butchering posts!!)  I believe in freedom.  Personally, I eat meat, but if someone chooses to be a vegan, to each his/her own.

The preceding paragraph serves as background for the following disclaimer:  If you are a vegan or are offended by eating meat, read no further.  In this post we'll talk about loading up our 2 year old Jersey bull and bringing him to the slaughterhouse for processing.  Over the previous week, I had fed the bull in the trailer.  He was getting rougher and rougher by the day.  When he would see me coming with the bucket, he would run at a full clip and try to hit me with his head.  I would run into the trailer with him in pursuit, I'd dump the bucket of feed and then I would exit the side door in the front.

Friday night I repeated those steps, but then circled back and slammed the back door shut.  After Friday night, there would be no more crazed animal on the pasture.  I wouldn't have to worry any more when the neighbor kids wanted to go pick up eggs.  No more buckets destroyed or electric fence reels knocked around. No more water troughs being turned over.  This bull was always breaking something with his hard head!

Saturday morning we took him to Elliott's in Morse, Louisiana and had to get him there by noon. After a teal hunt where we killed nothing but mosquitoes and time, we hooked up the trailer to the truck and departed.  It didn't take us long to get there.  The sign is not very impressive, but they do a great job in processing grass fed beef.

An attendant came out of the shop and directed us to back up to the holding pen. We opened the back gate and unloaded him. In some ways you might say that it was sad dropping him off, but this was the same guy that terrorized the barnyard for quite a while.

When I was a young boy and in 4-H, I showed sheep in the livestock shows.  I worked with them daily and named them and they were very tame.  I can still remember their names to this day (Fluff & Snowball, C3P0 and R2D2).  The problem was that these sheep were market lambs.  I didn't really understand this until the day of the auction and I learned that my sheep were being sent to a slaughter house.  It was very hard to deal with as a youngster.

This taught me a valuable lesson - Never name an animal that you are going to eat. We incorporated this with this bull to a certain extent.  We did call him "Chuck" from time to time, realizing that he was intended to be food.  Speaking of food, we went inside and talked to the gentleman behind the counter, explaining how we wanted the animal cut up.  Two years ago we brought a steer here and didn't request enough ground meat.  We remedied that this year, increasing the percentage of ground meat and having it packed in 2 lb packages, while getting roasts, steaks, soup rounds, oxtail, liver, tongue, bones, and fat.

The animal will hang and dry age for a little while and then they'll cut him up and package him and we'll go pick the beef up and transfer to our deep freeze.