#simple eating

With prices being what they are I like a good deal on groceries when I can find it. Sometimes that leads me to buying large quantities of things.

This week the local scratch n dent market had 5 pound bags of golden potatos on sale, 2 for $4. We like potatos so I snagged a few bags. Since i had 2 from last week's groceries I decided to pick through them all.

I tossed a few rotten ones and sorted out the good from the ones getting on the going side. The good ones I put up in a storage tote (a cooking pot for now) for later cooking.

These ones are the contenders for the weekly meal/freezer prep. They had some funny or funky spots, things that can be cut off and thrown away or in the compost. I clean them after washing them well.

As a heads up, it's not suggested to feed chickens raw potatoes. So leave anything with raw potato bits in the trash or the compost bin.

The bad bits.

If you feel need to you can wash them up again. I move to peeling after words.

I save the peels for breakfast potatoes, or to make soup.

A few peeled spuds.

Afterwords, depending on how many potatoes needed to be processed will decide what im making. This time I had enough potatoes to do cubed potatoes and hashbrown potatoes.

Cube potatoes, then blanch them till all Dante in a pot. (Not quite to mash potatoes softness, but not crunchy.)

Drain, cool quickly. (If your into water conservation, save the water for your plants once cooled) I cool till just under warm and lay them out to drain/dry a bit.

Then take a pan and lay out a clean kitchen towel on it. Pour dry potatoes on and place in freezer till frozen.

Store in container and use like regular frozen potatoes.

Moving to hashed potatoes

Similar to the cubed potatoes except I grated them.

I like to destarch my potatoes a little so I do a soak for about an hour, drain and then blanch.

I did about 5 minutes to blanch the hash, every couple minutes fish out a peice and test it to see if it's crunchy or just firm. Drain, cool asap.

Lay out to drain and dry a bit.

Lay towel on baking sheet. Place drained hashed potatoes on top. Place in freezer and freeze a few hours.

When frozen package up. Date and use as necessary :)

Other potato freezing/preserving resources

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/how-to-freeze-potatoes

https://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/dehydrate-potatoes-for-various-uses-zbcz1507/

3 'Meatless Monday' Recipes To Jump Start Healthy Eating In The New Year

Looking to eat healthier in 2017?

How about cutting down the amount of meat in your diet, even for just one day a week? It's a movement called "meatless Monday," and Here & Now resident chef Kathy Gunst brings Here & Now's Robin Young three satisfying dishes that put vegetables front and center.

Yesterday was a busy day! As I cant grow/process everything we eat (yet! Someday maybe the majority, but until then I'm good with growing as much as possible.) it was grocery shop day. Then Did meal prep for the week, I usually do a short bit of meal prep on grocery day but I tried to be a bit better with it this week to try and save time so I can get some pattern work and sewing done later. :)

The start of the meal prep, veggie portion. I like to wash my produce with water and baking soda. (I save the rinse water for the flower patch) ratio for me is a half sink of water, 2 tablespoons of baking soda. Mix to dissolve.

Pictured~

shredded cabbage, carrots (shredded, noodle sliced, coined), mushrooms (sliced and cubed), diced tomatoes, bell peppers (diced. Julienned, coined and a few snacks), jalapeno (coined and diced), onion (diced and frozen), honeydew, potato salad

Salsa (tomato, onion, pepper, jalapeno), dumpling mix (ground pork, minced cabbage, minced carrot, onion, ginger seasonings), bag of veggie soup start.

Fermented fridge pickles (pickle solution, cucumber, onion, jalapeno, pickle seasoning)

Start of apple cider vinegar. I'm going to try and make it again for personal use.

~~~~~~

Super small garden goodies~

Our first radishes of the season!

Plus this lovely web I spotted this morning

As well as an update on the sweet potato flowers

The blooms don't last long, ive noticed most fall off the next day.

I did a little online sleuthing and like regular potatoes, sweet potatoes can make seeds (though vines are the best way to propagate them) It's advised that the seeds might not really produce anything decent but I admit I'm curious more to see how it grows now and goes through seed development. If they produce seed I'll save them for a future grow experiment and experience.

I'll likely be pinching the flowers off from the other vines so they continue producing vines and greens. I've liked having a form of fresh greens available for soups, stirfrys and omlettes.

That's it for now, I'm off to do some critter care~

The cucumbers are starting to come in, ive picked 8 that are about 11-13 inch long with more to come :)

The front side pics only today, since the back is weirdly sparse at the moment.

Guranteed there will be a few hidden ones ive missed too. This is 3 or 4 plants, a couple died before taking off almost overnight so I'm not entirely sure.

These are a striped variety of armenian cucumbers, I like them because~~~~~

🌱once they get going they are very prolific producers on few plants.

🌱Fruit can be 12+ inches long and I've found some as thick as a watermelon once (was not tasty. The chickens loved it tho!) Bigger than 1.5 inch wide tends to start getting seedy.

🌱They can get some whacky shapes.

🌱If established and given a watering 2x a day for about 10-15 (early morning, sunset/dusk) before heat hits heavy, they will generally continue producing long after most other plants have finished. For my area that's about 3 days of sustained 105+*f. These cukes kept producing right through the summer with little stuttering.

🌱Did I mention they produce a lot? I'm not kidding, we grew I think 6 plants the very first grow (other varieties have done very poorly) and got over 200lbs of cucumbers. It felt very much like the zuchinni grow season joke. We had enough for us, The chickens and regular gifts to at least 5 other households with plenty extra to gift to coworkers and classmates. 😂

🌱They are pretty set em and forget them, trellising them this year is something new im trying so I can work out ways to produce more food on a urban sized lot.

🌱personal notes, no cucumber urps :D so if ya suffer from them, this could be a variety to try.

I've tried a few other varieties (pickling, lemon, straight 8s, english) and not been as successfully as these have been. At this time their gonna be the ones we grow from now on. I'll try others, but like said just haven't had luck with them.

They either grow too slow, weak and sickly or the 2 times we got fruit they were waaaay to bitter.

These seeds came from a packet at one of local libraries seed library. I'll be trying to figure out how to save the seed this year to return some back (which is all they ask folks to do, is return seed if possible) if it's viable.

I'll be for sure bringing some nasturtium and hollyhock seeds in the next time I'm up since both produced well this time :)

I don't wanna endorse any one seed page specifically at this time for addutional grow info, Since I like to get seeds from local or regional growers (small business's or gardeners and hobbiest most preffered), thankfully there's at least a Wikipedia page with some interesting info and an edu page too :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_cucumber

https://extension.usu.edu/yardandgarden/research/cucumber-in-the-garden

That's it for today :)

🌱🌱Happy Homesteading and Gardening 🌱🌱