Category: Spring - Our Tiny Homestead

Eat Your Yard Spring: Chickweed, Fiddleheads, Nettle & Ramps

4/24/2016

Our Sunday breakfast was steamed fiddleheads & wilted nettle, which are great with runny scrambled eggs seasoned with chives, and crispy bacon.

Our lunch was chickweed & bulghur salad with carrots and red peppers.

Happy Eating!

From Theresa: It's finally Spring and one of the great things about it is that we can start eating from the yard! Today we harvested chickweed, nettle, fiddleheads, and chives and had them for breakfast and lunch. After the long Winter, these tasty Spring treats provide our bodies with the nutrition we crave.

For information on how to grow, harvest, and eat these Spring treats, see the April/May section of our Eat Your Yard page.

Clockwise from yellow colander: Fiddleheads, chickweek, nettle, chives.

Eat Your Yard: Spring Garlic Pasta

5/17/2015

Bear here... Ever wanted to improve some pasta, butter, and lettuce, but didn't want to buy extras at the store? Here is another EAT YOUR YARD blog from the Shelf Chef. Enjoy.

INGREDIENTS FROM THE YARD

On the left is garlic we missed harvesting last season (aka spring garlic). Each clove in the missed bulb put up a stem. You can eat the whole plant at this stage.
On the right are bunching onions (a perennial- just pull what you need and let the rest keep growing. Theresa is pointing out that I forgot that last part when I harvested).
In the bowl is chickweed and nasturtium flowers for the salad.
In the jar... Forget the jar, I forgot to move the damn thing before I took the pictures.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER:

1. Chop the spring garlic and onions, using the whole plant of each. Saute in butter and crushed black pepper while waiting for pasta water to boil.

2. A cool trick I learned from cooking class is to crush the pepper between two iron pans. It's great when you want larger chunks of pepper.

3. Cook the pasta, then drain and pour over the "Yard Sauce"

4. Stir it up and saute a little. The Italians cook the pasta this way to help thinner sauces stick to it.

Good dinner... stupid jar.

There you go... the way to create two bowls full of yummy.

We also made cheesy flat bread using a 100% whole wheat bread recipe from:

Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients

Type at ya later.

Garage Sales Daze by Bear

5/17/2015

There was a village wide garage sale this weekend in our town. We decided to sell only (not go buy) and to sell only on Saturday. We had been to enough sales and it was time make room in the house by selling some of our stuff. (OK...that's a lie... I had time to visit and shop at other garage sales on Friday after work. I found a series of 14 books for 25 cents each. $3.50 for 14 books- too good to pass up- and yes, I did write it off on the buy nothing challenge sheet so there...)

Would have had a better picture of our front yard but sometimes bear can't work the f..ing camera. Oh well.

Here are a few things I learned on Saturday:

1. When you don't have a garage "scattered showers" suck. We got everything on tables and ready for the sale. Shower. This was when we figured out having extra tarps in the shed is a good thing. We also found out if the rain is light enough a large pine tree is good to have to set stuff under and keep dry. Every 1/2 hour it was tarp on, tarp off... tarp on, tarp off. Three hours of the yard sale version of the Karate Kid.

2. A lady from Florida who has lived all over the U.S. stopped at our sale and wondered why everywhere else had garage sale weekends on the WEEKENDS. In our area the weekend apparently was Thursday through Saturday, not Saturday and Sunday. Some of us have to work on Thursday and Friday.

3. A lot of sales stopped on Sat. around noon. We stayed open until 5:00. Our three biggest sales were after 3:00. Overtime pays... just sayen.
Type at ya later.

Theresa's Garage Sale Thoughts: I'm so glad this garage sale is finally over. We got rid of most of the stuff that has been clogging our upstairs room and making it unusable for over a year. As we renovated and organized the downstairs rooms, all the furniture I didn't use, but thought might fit elsewhere, gravitated upstairs, until the space was so full of old furniture I didn't want to be up there. But now that the downstairs renovating is mostly done, I know that none of the stuff upstairs will fit, so I finally let it go, even though it was some stuff that I loved. Now the energy in the house has shifted and loosened, and I feel like doing a good Spring cleaning/organizing. Then we get to renovate the upstairs room, in which I plan to build a lot of storage for smaller things. Maybe soon everything will have it's place, and if there's no room for it, I'll know it's time to get rid of it too. I look forward to the day when the simplifying is done.

Oh, and if you like the antique table or mirror in the photos, they didn't sell at the garage sale and they're still for sale.

Biodiversity Salad -- Extreme Eat Your Yard

5/10/2015

Bear here... Ever wanted a big salad and been out of salad fixings? That kinda sucks. It sucks less if you have weeds in the yard instead of grass. Yep... everything on the cutting board (above) is "weeds" from our yard.

WE HAVE
(above, from left to right)

Violets for the base. Use the leaves and flowers. The stems are soft so I used them too.
Dandelion greens for a little bitter taste.
Creeping Charley for some mint flavoring (Yes, you can eat it, although Theresa says it has a strong flavor, so don't use too much).
Garlic chives and onion chives, yum.
Thyme, because I like it.
I forgot Theresa cut Lambs Quarters earlier in the day or they would have been in the salad too.

Notes:

Make sure you pull out all the plant matter you don't want before cutting. (We found a couple pine needles.... oops.)
Use scissors to cut the plants rough or fine as you like.
If you harvest a lot of plants put the leftovers in a big bowl in the refrigerator. Easy pickings for your next salad.
Crunchy toppings that could be added from our yard include sliced sunchokes, walnuts, or ground nuts. I used pita chips (Not from the yard, but they were too good to resist)
Here's the link for our homemade salad dressings.
Here's the link for our other pages on how to Eat Your Yard.

There you have it. Anybody think grass is the only thing that should be grown in a yard? Heh... look up.

Type at you later.

Bring on the Ramps

5/9/2015

Bear here... We have another "treasure you can find in your yard if you are lucky or hunt for it" page. Ramps aka. Wild Garlic. The whole plant tastes GREAT. They go fast at the farmers markets. Next year we plan to get more so we can experiment and possibly add more ways to cook them on our ramps page.

Free Air Conditioning

5/7/2015

GOTTA HAVE PICTURES

Time for cat nip.

Ivy " A little help here..."

Doolin, early day nappin' by the A C

Bear here... Yep... keeping the house cool while using fewer resources. It is such a simple thing but Theresa had to teach me about it and I figure I would pass the knowledge on to our readers. Here is how it began...

Me... "Woman, it's night time why ARE you opening the windows?"

Her... "Silly male, this is how people kept their houses cool before air conditioning. When it gets into the 60's at night they opened all the windows to let cool air in. In the morning, before it gets hot, they closed the windows and the curtains to keep the day heat out."

Me... "Ug? They closed the curtains too? This sounds complicated."

Her... " Not at all, my cute neanderthal. Curtains stop the light from shining through the glass and having a green house effect. We also have different curtains for different seasons. Thick ones in the winter to help block the wind and thinner ones to let a little wind through..."

Me... "Oog. Me wondered about that."

Her... ... "Anyway, This is the plan. At night if it is warmer outside than inside or raining we don't worry about it. If it is cooler, we open the windows for the night then close them and the curtains before hot air can get in during the day. Almost forgot, heat rises so the windows upstairs can be left open and the hot air can escape. Simple old school air conditioning."

Me... "Good to know."

Now you know...

type at you later...

Lamb & Eggs for Spring Breakfast

5/3/2015

Grill bread and eggs.

Grill marked lamb steaks and eggs.

Bear here... Time to celebrate. Spring is here. It's fertility time. Time to get the seeds in the ground and harvest the early crops. (For more thoughts on the season, see our Celebrate Late Spring page.)

My inner shelf chef celebrates by cookin' decadent breakfasts.

GOTTA LOVE THE DECADENT WEEKEND BREAKFASTS!

Saturday we had leftover grill bread and ambrosia with eggs. Sunday we had "kinda grilled" lamb steaks, eggs, and salad. A quick "how to" section will follow the "shout out" section.

SHOUT OUT TO (aka, Big Thank You!):

Holly, our friend and supplier of lamb and hamburger. Can't cook it if I can't get it.
Our neighbor's chickens for doing the work and the neighbors who are willing to part with the good stuff (fresh eggs with brilliantly orange yolks from happy chickens).
Finally, Theresa who makes great salad dressing and most of the time loves me more than my cooking. :)

The Quick How to:

Grill Bread:

Saturday morning's breakfast was grill bread from Friday night's leftovers reheated in the oven. For instructions on grilling bread, see my Grilled Pizza page. This is Friday's grill bread:

I pushed thyme, garlic chives and onion chives into the bread and started with that side down.

It's a good idea to get the ambrosia or other topping hot before you need it. I used grated parmesan for the cheese.

If doing more than one round have a pan ready with a few coals under it to keep early bread warm.

The herbs were fresh from our garden and the ambrosia was from our freezer. We made it last summer by baking chopped tomatoes and garlic, tossed in olive oil at 375 degrees. Bake until all the liquid from the tomatoes is gone, then use or freeze.

This is the first time we tried reheating grill bread (there aren't usually leftovers). For a crispier crust, reheat at 400 degrees. For a softer crust, try 350. Theresa recommends the crispy crust.

Sunday's "kinda grilled" Lamb steaks:

Marinate the lamb steaks overnight in soy sauce, brown mustard, and lime juice.
Turn your electric burner to med-high. Get the pan really hot, so it will make grill marks, and put a light coat of oil on it. (I use peanut oil because it has a higher smoke point.)
Set oven to 350 degrees and have a pan with a rack in it (or a broiling pan) ready to go into the oven. (You will use it to finish the steaks).
Wipe the steaks dry before you put them in the pan for a better "grill mark".
Remind spouse that smoking pans are a part of cooking... trust me...
Put steaks in pan long enough to get the grill marks, roughly 2 minutes per set of grill marks. It will 4 minutes on one side if you turn it to make a diamond pattern.
When all steaks are marked, put them on the pan with the rack or on the broiling pan in the oven.
Finish heating the steaks in the oven while you cook the eggs and toast and make the salad. How long to cook depends on the thickness and how you like your steaks. For rare I put these in for 10 minutes.
When grill marking the toast, you can reduce the heat in the pan some, but keep an eye on it, bread turns to charcoal pretty fast.
For the eggs, I melt butter in the pan and add freshly ground pepper. Then I fry the eggs over easy and add more pepper.

The cast iron grill pan is your best friend for grillmarks indoors.

Notice... "grill marks" on meat AND toast.

The salad was crisp baby romaine and green onions with Theresa's homemade ranch salad dressing.

Type at ya later...

Eat Your Yard- Nettle Recipes

5/3/2015

One of our nettle patches in early Spring- ready to eat!

Nettle, not just for stinging. We've added a "Eat Your Yard" section (so dubbed by Bear), in which we'll be sharing recipes for eating the wild foods (and weeds) we're growing (on purpose) in our yard.

Nettle is one of the first plants to emerge in the Spring in our yard. It's a natural multi-vitamin. We eat the fresh leaves in Spring and make a nettle infusion drink the rest of the year (which even Bear says he likes better than mint tea). Our bodies have learned to crave the plant's amazing nutrition. Our Nettle page includes information on growing nettle, and recipes for: Nettle Soup, Nettle Pasta, Nettle Quiche, Ramen Nettle, and how to make a Nettle Infusion. Yummm...

Bear likes his nettle like he likes dark beer- he drinks it for the flavor.

Theresa's favorite recipe is nettle soup, with a side of Bear's cheese sandwiches.

Over/Under Hash and Eggs for Breakfast

4/26/2015

Bear here.. COOK OF ANARCHY UNLEASHED. Time for another breakfast that is strange and mostly from our yard. Hash made from our perennial plants and eggs from the neighbors. The hash uses ground nuts (Apios americana) and fiddle heads (baby ostrich ferns.)

The Over/ Under name comes from cutting down the fiddle heads and herbs (they're over the ground) while digging up the ground nuts (from under the ground). I was thinking of calling this Fiddle-Dee-Nut Hash. Let us know which name you like best, or if you have another suggestion.

I am betting this ain't normal... But it is good.

Here are the basics. More details on how to make the hash will end up on another page on our website.

Collect: Ground nuts (brown), fiddle heads (in the middle back), thyme, garlic chives (left), onion chives (right)... the garlic chives have flat stems and the onion have rounded stems).

Saute the brown ground nuts for five minutes then add the green fiddle heads and chopped herbs. Saute for another ten minutes. (I used two pats of butter)

Mise-en-Plase: Get everything cleaned and cut before you turn the stove on to medium heat. (Notice the neighbor's eggs are white, brown, and light blue? So cool....)

Fry the eggs in a separate pan, over easy, and sprinkle with the left over chives. Now you are good to go.

I repeat... good... to... go.

Type at ya later...

Spring Projects: Mushroom Garden and More...

4/3/2015

Bear Here...

It's getting kinda scary around here. Usually Theresa gets some ideas and I go along with them to, you know, keep her happy... you know... This year the projects seem interesting, I am interested in getting them started. Next thing you know I will be the one with the ideas and it will be complete and organized AnArChY!! ... OK I'm better now... Here are some of our plans to get done by next Winter.

Garden project #1, Mushroom garden: Yep, last year I wouldn't eat the things, this year we are going to grow them in our yard. We answered a Craig's list ad from Eric near Dodgeville. He is selling around 1000 logs that were innoculated with shiitaki mushroom spores last year. We bought nine. We should get at least two harvests a year for four years if things go well.

Nice car, thinks it's a truck.

Theresa, keeping the logs damp so we haven't wasted our money.

Keeping them shaded until we can find the perfect spot and better shading material.

Garden project #2 : Gardens in Stock Tanks. We have had wilting problems with our tomatoes and other plants. People tell us the problem is in the soil so we are going to start new gardens in stock tanks on the other sunny side of the yard. We are buying a couple of stock tanks and a LOT of dirt for the project. Theresa knows more about this one than I do.

Big outdoor project: Expand the Catio. We built a 8' x 10' x 8' cage on the house so the cats could go out when they want and be safe. This year we will put up a fenced area in the back yard and connect it to the Catio so the cats have more room and we have more of a chance to be in there with the cats. The trick is going to be connecting them and making doors that the cats can't get out of but unlucky squirrels and humans can. If we could, we would fence in the whole yard for the play area. Wish us luck.

Catio, freshly built in 2010.

A playground for all seasons. (Yes, the cats want to go outside in the snow too.)

Expansion area.

Big Indoor project: Nicer Tornado Shelter. Theresa likes to be prepared for disasters, with emergency supplies and shelter. When the tornado alarm goes off we head to the unfinished basement to wait it out. Usually it sucks because the basement collects dirt and spiders. When our water heater broke a couple weekends ago, we cleaned out the big room of our basement for the first time to make room for a new water heater, then decided to whitewash it since we could actually see the walls. It looks a lot better! Now we need to clear out the small room, do some wall fixing and get it organized so we are willing to use the basement more often.

Under the house in the crawl space- not going there.

Theresa patches the walls with a dark cement.

We apply whitewash- the same wall looks MUCH better.

Tired Bear, glad to be done for now.

Inspector spider also approves.

The... Next... Room... Oy...

I'm getting tired while inspired just thinking about these projects. We will keep you posted on our progress.