... squash soup

Hello there everybody,

My last post was all about finally breaking into the first of our stored massive Hubbard squash. I received a request for my recipe for squash soup. I am sorry there are no photos but you will get the idea.  :)

I must tell you that most of my soup recipes are of the "fly by the seat of your pants or kitchen sink" variety.

If you read my blog regularly you already know how I feel about wasting food. It is something about which I feel very strongly.

When it is time to make soup in our house (which is about once a week or so), I simply go through the fridge to see what I can use. When I made that Hubbard Squash soup I did the very same thing. Here is what went into it.

First of all, I usually make my own stock. As you could see from one of the photos, there is a carton of Organic Chicken stock there. I had run out of stock and also run out of chicken bones so had to resort to a rare purchase of stock. I did do a blog post some time ago all about making stock. It is dead easy and very economical.

We will assume that you have some stock on hand, either chicken or vegetable is you prefer not to consume meat, homemade or purchased.

In a large pot I saute an onion or two with a couple sticks of chopped celery and a couple of carrots cut finely in a bit of olive oil. Cook over low heat until nicely softened and just a tiny bit coloured around the edges. You do not want to really brown the veg as it will change the taste of the soup.

At this point I add the stock and give it a good stir around and bring to the boil. You want to scrape up all the yummy bits that may be stuck to the bottom of the pot. That is where all the flavour is. 

Since we were dealing with the squash I knew that was going into the soup. In my fridge I had a nice big bunch of rapini (or broccoli rabe). I used half of the bunch and saved the rest for a  pasta dish. Pick off any yellowed leaves and cut a tiny bit off the dried stems at the bottom. Give it a good wash, chop up and add to the stock, along with the squash which is cut into chunks about 1" square or so. You could use whatever sort of greens you happen to have in the house. I often use cabbage, broccoli, kale, chard or spinach. It all works.

I decided to add some egg noodles to give the soup some extra body so toss in a couple handfuls of that as well. It only takes about 10 minutes to cook and then dinner is on the table. Sometimes I use Orzo or even rice instead of the noodles. I even use tortellini once in a while as that really ups the body of the soup. 

The point of this soup is that it is dead easy to make and can use up all the stuff that would otherwise turn into a science project in the back of your fridge. And the best bonus of all.... it tastes fantastic.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a tremendous day. Cheers.

  ~ Melanie ~

... hubbard squash

Hello everyone,

We harvested a great deal of squash from our garden this year. Some were little acorn squash, some butternut and some were those massive big Hubbards. They are all mostly stored on the stone floor in our unheated boot room on the north side of our house which is also where our freezer is located. We try to keep that room as cool as possible.

We had been working our way through the smaller ones and the time had finally come to tackle one of the biggins.

My husband Frank was needed to cut it up as I was completely unable even to get a knife into it. This was one of the smallest. I think it weighed in at around 10 pounds.

Frank cut the ends off so he would have a level area to set the squash down and then got the knife through so he could cut it into two pieces.

I really like the flavour of Hubbard squash but as you can see, there is a substantial seed cavity so there is really a lot of wasted space in there.

However, even with that large seed cavity, there is still a great deal of flesh on one of these monsters. Frank cuts it up into wedges first for easier handling. He then removes the skin. On a smaller squash like a butternut we can usually just use a vegetable peeler but these ones need to be peeled with a knife.

After he gets the skin off the wedges I then cut them into chunks. We used some of it that night to make a pot of soup. That left us with about 80% of the squash with which to deal. I divided it into two piles. Half of it I steamed as you see here and the other half I put on a cookie sheet and roasted in the cookstove oven.

I then lay it out in a single layer on a wax paper lined cookie sheet and put it into the freezer. When the pieces are frozen they go into zip top freezer bags labelled appropriately. 

Because the squash has already been blanched or roasted it will be very quick to use in a number of different dishes. We like it in soups, casseroles, risottos and of course just eating it as a side vegetable. When we have used up these two bags we will tackle the next one. None of the squash will be wasted. At this rate the squash should last well into the summer. I have already planned out what squash I want to grow for this year. All the varieties we are now growing are open pollinated heirlooms so we can now save our own seed and be completely self-sufficient in squash. One less type of seed to buy and a bit more money saved.

Thanks so much for visiting with me today. Do leave me any comments you may have. Cheers.

   ~ Melanie~

... the rising cost of produce

Hello everybody,

My dear sister-in-law Mary and I were discussing the recent drastic hike in the cost of produce here where we live in eastern Ontario.

When I was last in a grocery store they actually had signs all through the produce department apologizing for the prices. They blamed it on growing conditions and the drop in the Canadian dollar.

Some of the prices were completely insane. A bunch of celery was $4.99, cauliflower was $7.99 a head and broccoli was $4.45. 

Now, we eat a lot of vegetables here in our house. We are also on a very strict grocery budget. I cannot afford these kinds of prices.

Thankfully we had a fairly decent year in the garden and I have a good bit of veg set aside. There is about 35 pounds of green and yellow beans in the freezer and about 100+ pounds of squash tucked away. We can manage. I will only buy fresh veg when I see something that is not a horrible price and we will make sure that we eat every single speck of it. Fruit is the same. The prices are through the roof. We must have some fruit but we will not be eating as much as we normally would. And again, we certainly will not waste a single piece of it.

I have a horrible suspicion that this is just the thin edge of the wedge. This is what we can now look forward to in the future. Climate change is a very real thing despite the nay sayers. All you have to do is look at what is happening all over the world to realize that our dear old earth is in trouble.

So what can we do about it? You do not need me to preach at your about using less fossil fuels and trying to reduce your carbon footprint. If you are a regular reader of this blog then you probably already do all these things.

I am thinking more about the immediate problem of providing food for the table.

I recently read an article about growing some veg in your house over the winter months. I am going to give it a try. I was thinking about something like swiss chard or spinach. I will let you know what happens in a future post.

In the meantime I think that we will all need to tighten our belts a bit. Perhaps frozen or canned food will be the answer in the meantime until we can get back into our gardens. I think that having a productive garden will be extremely important in the coming years. Perhaps we need to take the approach that England took during WWII. Everyone was encouraged to plant a garden and grow as much as they could so the country would not starve. 

I know that this has been a doom and gloom post with no pretty pictures but the costs simply shocked me so much I had to say something. Happier posts will be forthcoming.

A Happy and Healthy New Year to us all. Cheers.

     Melanie

... greetings

Hello everybody,

I am sorry to have been absent for so long. Alas, I have been in hospital having surgery and will not be blogging for a few weeks while I recover.

I appreciate your understanding and I will be back at it as soon as possible.

On a more cheerful note, I do hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and for those of you who celebrate it, I hope you had a very Merry Christmas.

2016 will be upon us before we know it and may it be a happy and healthy New Year for us all, one full of exciting challenges and adventures.

Thank you for visiting. Cheers.

... root crop harvest

Hello everybody,

We have enjoyed an unusually mild autumn this year in eastern Ontario. So much so that I was actually able to leave all our root crops, namely carrots, parsnips and beets, in the ground until now. The weather has become seasonably chilly so it was time to haul them out.

I had filled one 3 foot by 15 foot bed with the aforementioned veggies. They all did quite well and we have been eating from the bed all during the autumn. What ever was remaining needed to be pulled and stored.

Now, I wish I could say that I have some sort of wonderful root cellar to keep them in, but alas, I do not. I do have a plan in the back of my mind for next year but the question remained of what to do with them this year.

I decided to dig them up, leave the soil attached to them, put them into a large Rubbermaid Rough Tote and leave them in our boot room, or mud room if you prefer to call it that. It is the coolest room in the house. There is no heat in there and it is on the north wall. Average winter temperature is about 50F. Not ideal, but the best I can do right now.

We weighed the tote full of the veg and it came to an impressive 86.6 pounds. Pretty good from one bed.

I have tucked the tote in beside our freezer and all the squash and pumpkins are piled up around it. 

I will be keeping a close eye on it to see if any of the veg begins to rot and of course moving some of it to the refrigerator for weekly meals.

Another job done and now time for a well deserved cup of tea. Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Cheers.

... how to never waste bacon

Good evening everybody,

How often have you purchased a package of bacon, used up some of it and then forgotten all about it only to find the last few slices have turned into something truly horrible in the back of your refrigerator.

That used to happen to us as we do not really eat a lot of bacon, much as we both love it.

In an effort to stop the madness we now deal with the bacon in a different way. 

As soon as we open the package we take out the amount that we need for that first meal and then all the rest of it gets laid out on a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet and goes into the freezer. As soon as it is frozen, the wax paper is wrapped around the bacon and it goes into a zip top bag, appropriately labelled "Bacon", and back into the freezer it goes.

Whenever you want one slice or six slices simply remove what you want from the bag and cook it from frozen. It will defrost in the pan almost immediately.

No more wasted bacon and if you happen to need to slice it for a recipe it is much easier to slice frozen bacon than fresh.

Well that is all from me for tonight. Have a great evening. Cheers.

... meal planning

Greetings everybody,

If you have read my blog for any length of time you already know how I feel about wasting food!

I really believe that the more organized that you can be in your kitchen, the less food you will waste. I also think that you need to eat down your pantry and your freezer to use what you have already purchased and not just keep on buying more and more food.

I have a system to do just that.

To start with, I have a freezer log. I will make that the subject of a separate post but for today, it is enough to know that I have one.

I also have this nifty little pad that I purchased at Michaels craft stores years ago. It is divided up by days and each sheet shows one full week and I believe the pad contains 52 sheets, so enough for a full year. The best part was it was a whopping $1.50! There is also room on the side to note things like groceries needed, etc. This pad lives on the front of my refrigerator. Now, this is a personal thing, but I am not a fan of having a fridge covered in stuff. I know that most people put all sorts of things on their fridge doors but it is just not for me. I have two things on the door .... my menu pad and a magnet I recently purchased at a wonderful little store in a town close to me. Again, for myself, I am not a fan of fridge magnets but I do keep one of them there to hold my grocery list since I add to it throughout the week before I shop. When I saw this one, I simply could not resist. :)

Now, back to the menu pad. It really does not matter if you use a menu pad or a simple piece of paper, the principle is the same.

If you keep a freezer log, have a look at it to see what you have in there. If you do not, then just open up the door and look inside. Then decide what you are going to have each day. I really enjoy this particular task because I absolutely love to cook. I make up my menus on Sundays for the coming week. Once you have decided on the protein part (chicken, fish, etc.), then go into your larder or pantry and refrigerator and have a good look at what you have in there. Is there veg that needs eating up? Do you have a bag of potatoes on the verge of sprouting? You get the idea.

I make a note on each day of what the recipe is that I am using and where to find it. I read through the recipe carefully and look to see if I have everything needed and make a note on the grocery list for any missing ingredients. I very often will substitute ingredients if I have something on hand that I want to use up.

When I have finished with the weeks menus I will also have a start of the grocery list for the week. That gets stuck on the fridge under my one cutie magnet. :)   As the week progresses, I will add things to the list as needed. My aim is to only have to shop once during the week as I live almost a half hour from a grocery store. The last thing I do before shopping is to have a look at the grocery store flyer to see if I want anything else that is hopefully on sale.  :)

The huge benefit of making up your weekly menus is in the morning I simply have a quick glance at the list and take out of the freezer whatever is called for on that day. There is never the "oh my, what are we going to eat for dinner tonight?" panic that can often occur. This is especially true for those whose job has them getting home late and then they still have to scramble to get dinner on the table. 

Give it a go and let me know how you get on. Thanks a lot for visiting today. Cheers.