Busy Hands Homestead

"There is a big seed in this one." Sylvan is beaming at me, shoving the fourth plum into his mouth in under five minutes. "Slow down. You are going to get a belly ache." We went on a walk through the neighborhood and passed a tree tucked into an alley that had dropped the most perfectly ripe, pink and purple plums.  We picked them up and brought them home. They are our latest edible find. A few days ago we picked spearmint up the Rattlesnake in the Bugbee Nature Area.    It is dried down and ready to be tea on cold winter nights.    These beautiful and delicious shaggy parasols popped up in our neighbors yard (currently empty and we did ask the landlord's permission) and I used them in our frittata yesterday.  The remainder of the mushrooms are opening up and we will pick and grill them soon. (These mushrooms are what a portabello mushroom you can buy at the grocery store attains to be.  They are meaty and dense and juicy.) Fo...

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 ...

aka: a new purpose for broccoli stems Our food scraps do not go to waste. A few are given to the dogs, some to the worms and the remainder to the chickens. In spite have having well deserving recipients of our food scraps, I do make an effort to utilize "the entire plant" in my kitchen. I recently prepared a few dishes that required the dark green crowns of broccoli, but not the stems.  I felt a little silly when I put the broccoli stems back into the crisper drawer of my fridge, but I had a plan for them. Broccoli stems are a part of the plant that even my husband will push aside and the kids, well, they usually just chomp the greenest of the green parts and leave the rest behind. So,  I felt even sillier as I rummaged through the freezer to retrieve a container filled with chopped up broccoli stems and I set it and the bag of broccoli stems on the counter.  I was going to turn all of these stems into cream of broccoli soup. I almost apologetically...

Just a week ago Sylvan was still running around in nothing but a diaper. Ivory was lounging in the sunshine. The leaves all around turning every color but green. I hugged the largest Western Larch in the United States! A few days later I marched through my garden bed full of wonderful volunteer tomatoes. I picked red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes and many more green tomatoes.  I lugged a giant box inside. The next night we dragged all those indoor plants that lived outdoors all summer inside.  They now crowd the kitchen table and the space under the window. The cold sent me unpacking. Pulling all the winter coats and hats and gloves out of their hiding places. Snow pants and boots and coats were tried on and either hung on their hooks or put in bags to be passed on to the next lucky children to wear them. Suddenly it is autumn. The sky is blue and clear (no smoke). The buckeyes are just about to rain down from the trees. We rode our bike to th...

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...

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. 

In a forgotten corner of our yard four currant bushes are tucked between a windowless corner of our house, the dog house and the neighbors fence.  A few days ago,  I checked the status of the berries, and they were not quite ripe.  Yesterday, they suddenly were more than ready to pick.  While Sylvan napped and Ivory played in water buckets in the shade under our big tree, I walked around the house and teased hundreds of tinny tart red berries off of the branches. Ivory stood by me at the edge of our porch, sneaking the largest, juciest berries into her mouth, while helping me sort the good from the bad, and in the end we had a solid cup of currents.  What do you do with fresh currents?  Jam?  Of course.  But, the thought of standing over a pot in a hot steaming kitchen for a few small jars of jam...   no, not jam.   I scrolled through recipe ideas on the internet, and none of them seemed quite right to me..  until I found...