Category: Around the Kisner Homestead

Garden Update August 9, 2021

August is the month when the garden comes to fruition! Yesterday, the kitchen was hopping…and warm! Time to process the last of the beans and deal with the pile of tomatoes that are ready now.

Luckily, the carrots have just begun to fill out. We’ll munch on these for a while and let the rest get bigger.

Lavender

The lavender is finally flowering so I’ve begun cutting a few of the stems. A tray of lavender will be sitting around for the next few weeks as they dry. When dry, I’ll rub off the flower buds and let them dry some more. They’ll be useful when I make lavender-infused olive oil.

Dehydrating Beans

This was the last picking for this second planting of beans. We pulled the plants as we picked. I snapped the beans, blanched them and chilled them in ice water.

Then I laid them out on the dehydrator trays. They filled 4 trays.

And 10 hours later…

It always amazes me how little space dehydrated beans take up, compared to putting them in the freezer. Since I use them mostly in soups and stews it’s a very efficient way to store them.

Cooking Tomatoes

We have eaten the first tomatoes to ripen. This larger batch of tomatoes will be cooked enough to soften them but I won’t put them in the food processor to make them smooth. I’ll use these in vegetable soup.

The tomatoes are washed. I cut the tops off to get rid of any ugly stems. Then I turn each tomato over and cut an X on the bottom.

Next, I bring a pot of water to a boil and drop a few at a time into the boiling water. In less than 1 minute the peel starts to split and separate from the tomato.

Then, I quickly transfer them one at a time to a big bowl of cold water with ice cubes. That helps loosen the peel.

Then, I stack them gently into a bowl until I’ve done them all.

Now, I sit down at the kitchen table and take each tomato, remove the peel and cut the tomato into smaller pieces. These go into a pot that will go back on the stove to simmer until the mixture is soft and some of the water is boiled off. The time depends on if I’m going to run them in the food processor or not. I like a chunky mixture for my vegetable soup. If I’m making spaghetti sauce, I’ll cook them longer uncovered and let more water boil off.

They really are quite easy to peel at this point!

This is how much I put in the freezer yesterday…and the tomatoes are just starting to ripen! It’s going to be a busy August!

Bert just came in with more tomatoes! Yikes!

More Beans?

The next planting of beans is still pretty small, but they look good. I’ll be watching the weather in early September to see if we get any beans before the first frost.

So that’s what’s happening in my kitchen the second week of August! I know I’ll appreciate it in the winter when I want to make soup! Enjoy!

Please comment or email me directly with questions at marykisner@comcast.net.

How to Save Echinacea Seeds

The Echinacea plants in the garden are looking very pretty, especially because we have several different varieties. Three plants I purchased at a local plant sale. Bert started the rest from seed indoors in the early spring. A friend asked if I would save some seeds for her so I decided it was time to research how to do that.

I found a wonderful site online where the author walked through the steps to saving the seeds. It even had an embedded video clip of him putting the dried seed heads into a coffee can and shaking them hard to loosen the seeds! I won’t try to embed videos in my blog, but I will post a link to the article I found helpful.

Written by Joe Foster. https://growitbuildit.com/harvest-echinacea-seeds-an-illustrated-guide/

Step 1 said to cut off the seed heads when the blooms have faded and turned brown. Already I could see I would have a problem, because I have several different colors…when they are brown how would I know which is which?

So first, I went out to the garden and took some close-up pictures of the plants. Then I numbered them on the picture and made markers to put beside the plants. In the fall, when they are all brown, I should be able to keep the seeds I collect separated by color (theoretically!).

The markers I made out of skewers for the grill and wind corks we had saved. I wrote the number and color on the cork with a marker.

Then I went up to the garden and placed the markers beside the plants. I did not mark every plant, because the way we planted them and where the picture shows them along the fence should be enough.

Anyway, at least now I don’t have to remember what color is where. When they start turning brown, I’ll continue with Step 2!

Step 2 said to store and dry the seed heads in a paper bag. Great…I’ll have to go get some paper bags…maybe lunch bags??

Step 3 said to knock the seeds off the heads. The author did this by putting several seed heads into a coffee can and shaking vigorously. This should release the seeds from the seed heads.

Before storing, the seeds should be allowed to dry another week or so exposed to the air. They can then be tossed gently in a strainer to separate out the chaff that gets mixed in.

Step 4 said I can then store the seeds in an envelope for several years.

The only issue is…I don’t know if the original seeds we bought were hybrid seeds, in which case they will not necessarily reproduce the same plant when grown the second year. If they don’t, oh well…at least I’ll know how to do it for the future!

So, while I’m waiting to continue this process, I’ll just enjoy the colorful flowers in the garden! Enjoy!

Please comment or email me directly if you have questions at marykisner@comcast.net.

Trying my air fryer…again!

Two years ago, we invested in an air fryer. We thought it might keep the house cooler in the summer instead of turning on the oven. Who doesn’t love crispy foods without all the oil? Most of the folks we talked with said they were great to prepare frozen French fries so they turned out crispy. Very few people we knew actually prepared recipes from scratch. Our daughter also uses hers as a toaster!

We have a great toaster/oven we use all the time, so we didn’t think we would replace that appliance. We really don’t buy or eat frozen French fries. Most of the recipes I found started with a breading of some sort made with eggs and seasoned bread crumbs. Since I avoid coatings like that because of my allergy to eggs, I first tried making chicken “nuggets” by cutting up boneless chicken breasts, coating the pieces with oil and seasoning and cooking them in the air fryer. That worked well, but certainly made a mess inside the fryer. Too much oil! Broiling them in the oven on foil was much easier to clean up! Needless to say, storing the air fryer was a real pain! It was finally relegated to a cupboard in the garage.

Fast forward to today. We recently enjoyed veggies that were skewered and cooked outside on the grill (thanks Todd!). We love grilled vegetables! How could we get them more often? There are just two of us and we usually don’t bother firing up the grill for a quick meal. We wondered if the air fryer could be useful?

First, I had to locate the air fryer in the garage cupboard and figure out where to set it up. I have a small kitchen without a lot of counter space. Before the Pandemic I had just a table for a work surface in the kitchen. During the Pandemic, Bert stayed busy by building me an enclosed table/cupboard that was just the right height to knead bread…my main request.

This table/cupboard has a shelf that slides out so I can store three large appliances. I rearranged appliances and made room for the air fryer. I can move it to the table when I want to use it. (see the pictures below)

Our air fryer is called the Instant Vortex Plus. I think it’s made by the folks that made the original Instant Pot popular.

Our air fryer comes with two shelves and a rotisserie basket. It rotates as it cooks so I don’t need to flip foods halfway through the cooking time. I guess I could also use the long skewer and do a whole chicken or roast, but I’ve not tried that…yet.

I found the instruction manual and picked up a new cookbook that looked like it might have smaller portion sizes. Turns out, much hasn’t changed about air frying…most all the foods needed a batter of some sort, which won’t work for me. I did find two recipes online that sounded like what I had in mind: one was for air frying vegetables, another was for baking a potato with a crispy skin.

I could see the basket would be helpful for the veggies…I wouldn’t have to flip anything halfway through the cooking time.

Air Frying Vegetables

The first thing I noticed in the recipes was foods were sprayed with spray oil, like PAM. I think that would cut down on the drippy mess of too much oil. I didn’t need a lot of seasoning, so we started with salt, pepper and a simple Garlic & Herb Salt Free seasoning (from McCormick).

The first batch had green beans, asparagus tips and onion. The second batch had red sweet peppers, broccoli and zucchini.

We preheated the air fryer to 360 degrees (took about 4 minutes) and put the vegetables into the basket, one batch at a time. When the air fryer beeped to tell us it was preheated, we put the basket in and set the timer for 7 minutes. I tried to take a picture of the basket rotating…but obviously it’s a still picture. Haha.

The basket was a little awkward to open when hot, but it worked great!! Just perfect with our pork chops for dinner.

Now that I have a place to store the air fryer in the kitchen, and have figured out the details, I think we’ll do this more often. It’s great for just one or two servings without heating up the oven or the grill. I consider my experiment with the air fryer a success! Enjoy!

Notes:

–An air fryer with a non-rotating basket or drawer should work just as well. You will have to take the basket out about halfway and give it a shake.

–Next time I think we’ll increase the temperature to 370 degrees and give it about 8-9 minutes to crisp up the edges.

Please comment or email me directly at marykisner@comcast.net.

Garden Update July 24, 2021 Second try!

The garden is going into production mode! With over 6″ of rain this month so far I’m just grateful the garden drains well and the sun comes out once in a while. Time to show you how things are growing.

First, we have the row of lavender and the first row of carrots. Hope you can see the lavender buds ready to pop. I’m so hoping the whole row will eventually be in bloom at the same time. I have memories of the lavender fields in California that were so impressive. Plus, I can dry the buds and use them in my soaps and skin care products.

The second planting of carrots are doing well. The end of that row has a few late green bean plants. That’s where we tried to grow beets, but nothing came up. Must be the seeds. Oh well…I can buy beets at the Farmers’ Market.

I couldn’t resist pulling a few carrots just to see how big they were.

This section had two rows of green and wax beans. My California granddaughters helped me pick them and we ate them right away! Very tasty!

The extra beans went into the dehydrator and now fit in this little bag. Storage is easy and they are ready to toss into soup anytime.

These two rows were the second planting of green and wax beans. Yesterday I picked the largest green beans. Today, the largest wax beans were picked. By Monday many more will be ready to pick.

We have lots of tomatoes…only one was ready to pick.

The echinacea is finally making flowers. Who knew we had such a mix of colors? I hope the bees enjoy them.

As I walked down the hill, I passed the cucumber plants and peeked under the leaves. Surprisingly, the few plants that are left are making cucumbers!

So, this is my early morning harvest today! There are still some hot days ahead this week so things will start ripening faster.

We do not have a huge garden this year, but it is fun to check it out each morning. If I really want a quantity of produce, the Farmers’ Market is still my best choice. At the end of each season, I can usually get large bags of cucumbers or tomatoes to make into relish or spaghetti sauce for a good price. Enjoy!

Please comment or email me directly at marykisner@comcast.net.