Happy Winter Solstice!

OK, so it is actually tomorrow but I wanted to make sure I got something posted in celebration of the shortest day of the year. It is tough to think about, since we have two or three more months of the coldest weather to endure, but at least the days will be getting longer from now on!

Above is a picture of some of my holiday decorations out front. I made these trees out of the tomato cages I used in my garden the past two seasons. I figure I might as well use them for something in the off season! I got the garland on super sale after last xmas, so it was just a few bucks to make these cute decorations. Then I'll just unwrap and save the garland for next year, and use the tomato cages in my garden again over the summer.

You can also see we got a huge snowfall yesterday! Well, huge at least for this area. This is the most snow we've gotten in years, although I do remember getting this much quite often when I was younger. The neighbor across the street was so nice, and helped us (and our other neighbor) with his snowblower. Now that's teamwork in the holiday spirit. :-)

It is also the most snow my dog has seen yet, by far. He was completely buried to his belly, but once he got used to it I couldn't get him to come back inside! We played ball for so long my nose was frozen.Here are a few more pictures of my decorations.
The house outside:
And below is the Frasier Fir we cut from a local tree farm. Most of my decorations are hand me downs from my mother, which just makes them all that much more special to me. You can kind of see the set of soft handmade animals I still remember buying from a church bazaar in the 70's.

The rest is rainbow ornaments my partner gave me, peace decorations & disco balls. I love the tree so much! We keep falling asleep under it every night, with JJ the dog curled up on our comfy couch. This picture does no justice to how warm and festive it looks here in my house. I wish this season could last through March!!!
Now I've got to make several batches of Christmas cookies and food for my work potluck tomorrow (peanut butter soba noodles and morrocan carrots).

I wish everyone has a warm peaceful holiday and happy new year!

Indoor Winter Setup

I have two plants I needed to bring indoors for the winter - the bay tree and an orange thyme. As you can see above, I set them up in front of a sunny window, and added two regular desk lamps to give them some additional light. The very bright desk lamp to the right has a full spectrum lightbulb to mimic natural light. They seem to like it, and are doing well. I decorated them with some holiday decorations so it makes a nice display.

Here's an indoor plant I have in my front window too. Just because I like happy snowpeople. Haha My mom got me the one on the right because she thinks it looks like my dog JJ. :-)

Green Tomato Canning 2009

This year we made Farmgirl Susan's Green Tomato Relish (front) again, as well as a new recipe for Green Tomato Salsa (back). Once again, I got overwhelmed with all the chopping and my sweet husband ended up doing most of it for me.

We used this recipe I found on the Gardenweb forums for the salsa, except I changed it to be 6 cups green tomatoes and 3 cups onions, (instead of 5 & 4) because that seemed to be a lot of onions for my taste. I checked the Blue Book, which said the tomatoes are more acidic than onions, so I figured it was a safe substitution. We only got 4 pints out of it instead of 5 like it says. This is the full recipe:

Green Salsa

Yield: 5 pints

6 cups chopped green tomatoes
1 1/2 cups seeded, chopped long green chiles
1/2 cup seeded finely chopped jalapeños
3 cups chopped onions
1 cup bottled lemon juice
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 Tbsp ground cumin*
3 Tbsp oregano leaves *
1 Tbsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan and stir frequently over high heat until mixture begins to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Ladle hot salsa into pint jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Adjust lids and process in a boiling water canner 15 minutes at 0-1,000 feet altitude; 20 minutes at 1,001-6,000 feet; 25 minutes above 6,000 feet.

The relish was once again delicious, and the salsa wasn't bad either! It was definitely tart, which might not be to everyone's liking. However I really like tart things, and so does my partner, so we both thought it was very tasty.

I had it on burritos with spanish rice, roasted frozen bell peppers from the garden, onions & potatoes with oregano & cumin, and Soyrizo. The peppers, onions & potatoes came out so tender and tasty!

The only thing I did different this time was roasting them on 425 instead of 375 or 400. The higher temp was just right. I think it took about 40 minutes - stirred once in the middle.


Here's the whole burrito. It was so big I could hardly fold it into a wrap. I had to eat it with a fork and knife. Mmm just looking at it is making my mouth water. I love Mexican food!

More Autumn Garden Leftovers

Remember these Acorn Squash? They were an accident in my garden this summer, since I thought I bought yellow summer squash but apparently it was labeled incorrectly. Eventually, I realized, hey! these are acorn squash!

The plant grew HUGE! It was way too much for my small garden, as you can see above. Then, to top it all off, evil Squash Vine Borers decimated the plant in August.

The good news is, as you can see from the picture on the left, the squash were mostly ripe. I picked around a dozen of these.

Two or three of them had those weird scratch marks on them, so I didn't eat those. But the rest had at least a good patch of yellow, so I figured they were ripe enough to save.

Of course, in the middle of summer, I had no idea what to do with them - 90 degrees with high humidity is not exactly roasted veggie soup time.

So instead of eating them then, I gave a few away and roasted the rest, then froze them.

I finally made soup with it the day after Thanksgiving. It was super easy - I just poured the frozen pieces of roasted squash into a pot with the leftover Imagine No-Chicken broth that we used for the stuffing the day before. Then I added some fresh rosemary, thyme and red hot pepper flakes. S & P to taste, pureed with an immersion blender and voila! delicious creamy soup. It really was tasty!


A few days later I added nutritional yeast to the leftover soup and poured it over whole wheat spaghetti mixed with spaghetti squash as a kind of cheesy-ish sauce. I didn't take a picture of that one, b/c I'll admit, it wasn't very beautiful. But sometimes, ugly things taste great! My partner wouldn't touch it b/c he doesn't like squash, but to me, it was delicious! I love squash, any and all kinds.

I still have about 2/3 of a bag left in the freezer, so I'll definitely be making this soup again in the cold winter months.

Thanksgiving Garden Eats Part 2

Here are the promised pictures of the food I made for Thanksgiving with garden produce.

Turnip Mashed Potatoes with Turnip Greens:Baby Carrots Roasted with Brussels Sprouts, Rosemary, Thyme, Shallots & Garlic:

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the Arugula Salad with Pomegranates & Pecans, b/c my camera battery ran out and I forgot to bring a spare to my mom's. So instead here is the recipe.

And here is a picture of the whole dish, actually leftovers a few days later since I had no battery. But both my husband and I thought it was even better the second time! Oh how I love Thanksgiving food!

Clockwise from the top: Turnip Mashed Potatoes, Roasted Veggies (including roasted cauliflower not mentioned above), homemade Maple Cranberry Sauce, Green Bean Casserole, Celebration Roast and Herb Stuffing in the middle, all smothered in a Marsala Brown Gravy.