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Baked Potato Soup

by Amy on September 6, 2008 in Recipes

This is my favorite soup recipe ever. We haven’t made it in months for some dumb reason but it used to be a weekly staple. It’s on the menu with potato rolls tonight!

Baked Potato Soup

Ingredients:

½ – 1 lb bacon
½ medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, chopped
½ c. celery, chopped
5 lbs potatoes, peeled and diced
8 c. water
6 bouillon cubes
8 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded

Directions:

Fry bacon in Dutch oven until crisp, remove bacon from pot, drain fat reserving about 2 tablespoons. Fry onion, garlic, and celery in bacon fat until tender, not browned. Add water, potatoes, and bouillon and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer, and cover, simmering until potatoes are tender. Use a potato masher or immersion blender to smooth out the soup some if desired. Stir in cheese until melted into soup. Stir in crumbled bacon, and serve. We like to top it with IMO/sour cream too. Serves 8 “real” servings.

General growy-ness

by Amy on August 15, 2008 in The Growing Garden

Just a general update on how things are going in the Garden of Eatin’ today.

The weeds are taking over. I need to get out there and attack with the weed whacker, it’s that bad. It’s not stopping things from growing, so that much is good! But it won’t happen in the next few days…yesterday we had 100F+ temps, today we’re due for 105F and tomorrow is supposed to be 100F, and Sunday 90F…temps should be back in the mid 70s on Monday, so I’ll plan on going lots of work in the garden then, with before after after pics.

The tomato stake experiement has literally been a giant FLOP. As soon as the tomatoes started getting big, the plants got so heavy and thick they’ve tipped over, breaking the stakes and I have lots of tomatoes on the ground at risk from bugs…trying to keep them UP but they just keep growing and falling more :help

The corn is nearly 7′ high with lots of ears. I think we might have some grilled steak and corn for dinner tonight.

The lemon cucumbers are finally growing, well….like taking over their corner of the garden. I definitely planted too many. And the little vines have built in protection to keep me from picking too early, their thorns leave me bleeding when I try.

The strawberries stopped producing fruit all together after giving us hardly anything and are producing runners like crazy. I tried stopped that to see if it would encourage fruit, but it didn’t.

I’ve gotten 6 gigantic zucchini now and there’s lots more growing. I’ll be shredding and freezing it this weekend. Those suckers grow fast!

The crookneck is finally starting to grow fruit, but only after the plant grew to “Little Shop of Horrors” porportions.

Out one pumpkin is about basketball sized and just starting to turn orange.

Potatoes will finish being harvested tonight, there’s 3 plants left and I want to make potato salad. I forgot to write down the ingredients I used last time, I’ll do that this weekend and post the recipe

How to get your vinyl floor to shine with potatoes

by Amy on August 3, 2008 in General

I’m afraid the dog ate most of the visuals before I could get pictures, so please just imagine if you will….

To start, go out to your potato patch and dig up enough red potatoes for dinner. We’re roasting them, by the way. If you liked mashed, this method of floor shining won’t work.

Scrub your potatoes clean and cut them up into small pieces…the smaller the faster they cook, but don’t make them microscopic or you’ll end up with mashed taters anyway.

Assemble your ingredients…. olive oil and your preferred herbs and spices. I like rosemary, thyme, pepper, salt, some garlic and onion powder and whatever sounds good at the time. Get a one gallon ziplock, dump the taters in, followed by the oil and herbs/spices. Seal the bag and start tossing.

The key to this though is to make sure the ziplock isn’t fully sealed. While you’re tossing, the bag will open, spilling the oily potatoes all over your vinyl floor. Your dog might help with clean up and go outside to throw up, it’s ok, dogs are dumb like that. What she doesn’t eat, either throw away, or wash off, making sure to remove all the dog hair, and retoss, this time actually sealing the bag.

For the floor, get a mop and scalding hot water with a little floor cleaner and start scrubbing…your floor will shine in no time. Maybe it’s from not being scrubbed in a month, maybe it’s from the oil, but thanks to those potatoes, and maybe a small part your inattentiveness with a ziplock zipper, your floor is now shiny and clean!

Still here

by Amy on July 11, 2008 in The Growing Garden

Not much to say…very busy with non gardening stuff!

The garden is still doing great, I have about 6 or 7 zucchini , 2 summer squash, a bazillion tomato flowers but still no fruit (what’s up with that?), the corn is waist high, the remaining taters are huge, one pea vine is at least 7-8 feet tall, I have twice as much parsley as before I dried the last batch (that was a pain in the ass to do, will be finding a dehydrator as soon as I have the funds – this being poor shit sucks)… lots of growth…I wish the tomatoes would FRUIT so I could do something with them before we move dammit.

I died.

by Amy on June 28, 2008 in General, The Growing Garden

Really. When I saw the thermometer in my van and it said 106F, I died. Thankfully the a/c brought me back. Well, maybe not so much, it’s still 80 degrees inside my house at 11pm and I’m miserable. I’m sure I sound melodramatic, but I tend to get awful migraines with the heat (got one yesterday) and it just makes me feel so horrible. Blech. I’m really not thrilled about this climate change stuff!

The garden is doing marvelous (I felt compelled to use that word, I don’t know why)…I finally have a teeny tiny oh-so-cute little green bean that I will get a picture of tomorrow. I dug up a little russet tater too, so see how they were doing, and it looks excellent. I will be cutting and drying parsley tomorrow, it’s taking over! I wish the basil would do so well. And the oregano and thyme…and chives…I’m getting the distinct impression my herbs don’t like this soil, at all. Time for a container herb garden?

The peas are producing like crazy. So far, no one else likes them much so they are ALL MINE! HA! Their loss! I found I much prefer the sugar snap to the Oregon snap, better flavor and crunch, but the sugar is tasty too. Lots of strawberries, and the kids and Chris report they are awesome. Tiny little things even fully ripe, but very juicy and tasty. The pumpkins, zucchini and crookneck squash are growing very well, getting big and leafy, but no blooms. I’m guessing in the next 2 weeks I’ll see some.

See you soon!

Today: News! Tomorrow: Pictures!

by Amy on June 19, 2008 in The Growing Garden

I’m so excited I can’t stand it :lol

I bought plant stakes at the Grocery Outlet yesterday and got plant tape at Lowes today (last roll in the whole store) and went out and took out the tomato cages I had (they were given to me, so no loss) and tied up the tomatoes to the stakes… everything I’ve read about the cages say they are just bad business for growing good plants. Pictures tomorrow – they’re starting to flower! I do have to take back what I said about the tomatoes loving being flooded, the 4 of them that got the most water aren’t so thrilled. I’m letting the area dry out well (not too well) so the roots can recover from being drowned.

Then I tied up the sagging peas… had I done the trellis vertically in the first place, the peas would have a good hold on the twine, but they are heavy now and have a hard time holding themselves up. The tape helped immensely – they’re much taller! And – I have pea pods! At least a dozen, both sugar snap and oregon snap, with a couple ready to pick so I did. I haven’t had snap peas in many years and I might be biased, but they were really freaking tasty. I’ll get pictures of the smaller ones I left on the vine tomorrow.

There are many more strawberries with a couple turning red, which of course I’ll get pictures off, and I dug into the potatoes and found a teeny little russet and a teeny little red potato…I covered them back up to keep growing and can’t wait til I can take a picture of their harvest!

The broccoli is growing quickly, as it the lettuce and the parsley – I’m going to have to cut some soon and dry it. I bought more basil seeds, 4 types and will try them again. The corn is crazy…we drove by some corn fields yesterday on the way to visit my dad and mine are thicker and much livlier

I want to be able to buy a house with land so I can farm so bad!!

Tater blooms and other eye candy

by Amy on June 16, 2008 in The Growing Garden

As requested, the russet potatoes in bloom (these are the organic store bought ones, the red seed potatoes I got aren’t too far behind):

While I was outside I wanted to snap a shot of the lettuce, which is amusing me with the growth. These were all transplanted at the time time, but some obviously were more thrilled with the process then others:

And one of the new broccoli (don’t let the picture fool you, it’s really only about an inch in diameter):

Holding steady

by Amy on June 15, 2008 in The Growing Garden

There hasn’t really been much to blog about. I’m back to watering, the rain went away again. The weather’s perfect, been about 70 so not too hot. Everything is growing well except the damn basil. I’ll replant. Oh, the watermelons aren’t doing great either. Seem to be a lot of bugs getting to them – they didn’t get a nematode application. The potatoes are flowering, very pretty purple and yellow blooms. I need to get more tomato cages, a couple more are finally big enough to need them. That’s about it today :cool