Busy Hands Homestead

At our house, this has been the summer of marinated salads.   The ingredients sourced from our garden: Sweet and Sour Cabbage Salad, Cucumber Salad, Green Bean Salad. Vegetables chopped and dressed and tucked into the empty spaces in the fridge to be eaten hours or sometimes a day or two later.   Now it is the beet's turn.   Bright and cheery, this salad is going to be tomorrow's lunch.   3 or 4 large beets, roasted, peeled and chilled 1 small onion, very thinly sliced 3 Tablespoons Olive Oil 1 Tablespoon White Vinegar basil, parsley (fresh, roughly chopped) and tarragon (I used dried) salt and pepper (to taste) Cut the beets in half and then the halves into wedges put into bowl and add the thinly sliced onion.   In a small bowl combine the olive oil, white vinegar, basil, parsley and tarragon.  Whisk to combine the olive oil and vinegar.  Pour over the beets.  Stir, or if your container seals, give it a good shake. Chill for...

After heating up the oven to 450 degrees it was too hot to eat in the house.  We took our plates and moved outside to the picnic table and ate our slices of pizza in the cool shade our maple tree. I made my favorite pizza: roasted beet, feta, caramelized onion and walnuts. I made a second pizza: feta, pizza cheese, beet greens and morels. Between the two pizzas I used a beet and all the beet greens off of the bunch I bought from the farmer's market Saturday morning.  Reluctantly, I let Adam pack the remaining slices for his work day lunch.  I know that I will be making pasta with radish green pesto for the kids and I...  but that pizza was so, so good. I always enjoy pizza night. I like to think that it involves washing less dishes...  probably not true...  after making the dough, caramelizing onions and mixing up the sauces the dishes pile up just the same.  But it feels different. I like sliding the pizza onto the baking stone in the oven. I ...

The kids and I walked through our garden this morning an snipped flowers for our first summer bouquet:  some roses, a sprig of lemon balm, parsley blossoms, bolting radishes and flowers off of what I am fairly certain are pretty, but invasive, weeds.   It sits in front of me as I trail shapes onto the cups that I threw during yesterday's nap time.  While the children sleep an apple tree moves through the seasons; carrots, beets and cabbages grow  in rows; and hens peck at scratch. Today's nap time creations. 

I etched my last tumbler.   This one has bunches of beets on a plaid table cloth. Tomorrow morning it is off to the clay studio to throw a few more cups.

September is flying past.   I am trying to soak up the last few days of summer and the first of fall.  This involves pulling things out of the garden, into my kitchen and preserving food in jars.  I pulled the largest of my second and third planting of beets, (they were so small, sigh, in spite of the watering), scrubbed them, boiled them and pickled them.  I am trying out a few new canning recipes and using a few of my old standbys.    Really, this process should not have taken more than a few hours, but some how it took me all day.  By nighttime four ruby red pint jars stood on my kitchen table. This new recipe only contains half a cup of honey..  although, I will admit, that I am going to make a second batch of pickled beets using my old sugar laden recipe because I don't think the kids will be chowing these down with quite as much enthusiasm.  I picked arm fulls of my blue curly leaf kale.  Running back and fort...

A new take on the California Roll.  Fake crab, cream cheese and roasted beet that bleeds a bright pink into the surrounding sushi rice. YUM!

I spent the evening sitting at the ceramics studio, teasing the clay into what will hopefully become a tall, free standing sculpture.  When I arrived home the dinner dishes were still stacked by the sink, the house mostly picked up and I found Adam, Ivory and Sylvan all cuddled up in the same bed.  I resisted the urge to wash the dishes and decided instead to put together this post that has been haunting me ever since I baked my Beet and Onion Tart a few days ago.   There is something so indescribably gratifying about being able to pull a plant from the ground, carry it to the kitchen table and share it with family and friends.  Being able to make an entire meal from ingredients almost entirely from the garden is even better.   I pulled yellow and red onions from the ground and beets with nice lush greens, and as most times when I walk back into the house with my harvest, my cookbooks lacked an option that utilized these plants in their e...

This recipe utilized the ENTIRE beet plant: the leaves as well as the roots!  3 medium sized beets with greens 2 tablespoons coconut oil peppered goat cheese salted and roasted sunflower seeds salt pepper Roast the beets ahead of time ( directions here ) and let cool.  Peel the beets and cut into cubes. Wash and chop greens.  Heat the coconut oil until hot and drop the greens into the pan.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the leaves are dark, dark green in color and a little crispy. Remove from heat.  Layer the greens, the cubed beets, crumbled goat cheese, and sunflower seeds.   Add salt and pepper to taste.   There are no exact quantities.  Just add all the ingredients in the proportions that look and taste good to you.  Enjoy. 

2 fist sized beets (*roasted) 1 lbs of strawberries 4 (or more) ounces of fetta cheese 1/4 (or more) cup of roasted walnuts arugula dressing: 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar 1/4 cup olive oil 2 tbsp agave nectar garlic salt pepper * To roast the beets, set them in a oven safe dish and fill the bottom inch with water cover and bake for an hour or until the beets can be easily poked with a fork.  Let them cool and rub the skin off of them.  They are ready to be used. Place the walnuts in a dry hot pan and "fry" on the stove until the skins darken and they are wonderfully aromatic.  Remove from heat. Chop the beets and strawberries into equal sized pieces. Put on a bed of arugula. Since arugula is a peppery green, use as much or as little as you like.  Sprinkle with the feta and walnuts. Prepare the dressing. Whisk together the vinegar, oil, agave nectar and add garlic, salt and pepper to taste. Pour the dressing over the salad.  Toss and enjoy. ...

The sun is shinning.  It is warm and humid. We woke this morning to birds singing and the ever present humming of the cars driving by just out of sight.  The view of farm fields and little farm houses tucked between the rolling hills visible from the windows of our room belie the proximity to town.  We are all still a little tired after arriving at my father's house in the wee hours of  Wednesday morning. My father proudly gave us a tour of the yard, coffee cups in hand, and we admired his strawberry plants, tomatoes, peppers, squash, onions, fennel, peas and beans. His yard is something to which I hope ours will someday aspire.  While I have been raging war on the sod in our yard, here there all ready are well established garden beds, filled with beautiful perennials, interspersed with plots of edible plants.  There are covered walkways and sitting areas over which thick stemmed grape, hardy kiwi and wisteria spread their bows. ...

Ivory turned four years old yesterday. It was the first birthday that she anticipated for days, weeks and even months.  Her new found awareness, excitement and joy about her birthday made it enjoyable for me to play along in this birthday game. So late Sunday night, I was putting the finishing touches on her birthday outfit, her cake and making sure that I had my bag packed to go and bake cupcakes at her school in the morning. The outfit: The breakfast: The cupcakes : Chocolate Beet Cupcakes with cream cheese icing and marzipan flowers and leaves.  Sylvan and Ivory, oh so eagerly, awaiting their cupcakes.  The cake(s): A toadstool fairy house for the children made of a chocolate sheet cake and iced with cream cheese icing and embellished with marzipan flowers and butterfly.  A Boston cream pie for the adults.  and the party: The party was a potluck, of course. Birthdays are perfect oportunities for the adults as w...

We are planting a garden.   Onions, beets, and sugar snap peas are tucked into the bare raised beds that are on the south side of our house.  My heart swells with happiness as I watch Sylvan drop pea after pea into the water.  He is so obviously delighted by the sound.  These seeds are going to grow into little bushes of shelling peas and will line the path to our front door.  Just wait until he sees how many sweet, plump, green peas we will harvest! I am ecstatic as I watch Ivory separate the soil from the grass clods we are digging up, turning lawn into the beginnings of a strawberry patch.  The news of a strawberry bed pales in comparison to her delight in looking for worms, rolly pollies and centipedes.  When we leave for a trip to the grocery store she begs: "Mama, when we get back, can we please do some more yard work?" Progress.  On the way home  we took a detour and stopped at a ...

All of the sudden time has slowed down. The month has been a whirlwind: meetings, birthdays, kiln firings and school outings. Ideas for blog posts scratched on scraps of papers, just to be piled up while we go on to the next thing. These are the matching journals I stamped for Ivory and Adam as his 30th birthday gift.  Last fall I started having Ivory draw a picture of her day for Adam on those days that he doesn't come home from work.  This way they can share their days with each other even when they don't see one another. This is the double layer meat cake I made for Adam's birthday party.  Two layers of meat loaf, a layer of bacon in between and the entire thing is iced with mashed potato "frosting" all topped off with sauteed onions and mushrooms.   This is the bright white glow of the Anagama Kiln firing. In a few more days, we get to unbrick the door and unload shelf after shelf of transformed clay.  This is the...

I have been neglecting the beet. More truthfully, I have been neglecting writing about the beet. I have been cooking beet dishes a few times a month, whether it be borscht, or roasted beets with chevre and walnuts or simply an assortment of roasted fall vegetables.  I have even been photographing them, but some where between moving the images from my camera and actually writing about it, it just seems like too much time has passed. I am eating beets right now. Now is the time to write. I am eating the few left overs from my new favorite beet recipe that I found between the covers of a book entitled Plenty; One Man, One Woman and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally .  I admit I was skeptical.  It only calls for five ingredients and three of those are disliked in my family.  Beets are marginally disliked by my husband, blue cheese is marginally disliked by me, and mashed potatoes which often are left uneaten by Ivory.  I tried the recipe anyway. P...

I have been trying, like many other mothers out there, to incorporate more fresh fruits and vegetables into our day. The promise of summer and the soon to come gardening season leaves me yearning for fresh produce. My shopping trips have resulted in boxes brimming with kale, beets, carrots, sweet potatoes, celery, potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, lettuce, avocados, onions, apples, pears, bananas, and strawberries. As I stash them all away in my kitchen, I admit that I feel just a little guilty as I briefly consider just how far some of these item have traveled to find their way into my kitchen. I brush the thought away: “Soon it will be summer and I can buy most things locally.” My husband's shopping trips result in some other items finding their way into our kitchen. He had to return an item to ACE, which happens to be right next door to Albertson's, and I asked him to pick me up a few apples for the cookies I was making. He brought back apples, but ...