What are you eating from your garden today?

Yikes!!  Sfg friends!  Make no mistake there were several (or more ) attempts this year that didn't prevail in the typical sfg success story. Overall It has truly been a goofy summer around here.  

We  would have been eating watermelon this afternoon, the seeds were sown in late April in the glasshouse , well established seedlings some four inches tall were planted out in the last week of May .
The flowers have only just appeared today and some how I don't think Jack Frost will allow them to turn into big juicy globes.

So we made up for it by attacking two pints of beef cubes that were put up in Weck jars in January 2014 in " From the garden home made veg stock "
 I crumbled the cubes of beef  into a big pan,  added a pan of fried & lightly browned veg which included  our fine chopped onions, garlic and a couple of fine chopped glasshouse tomatoes , a big pinch of herbs like our dried celery , a bit of rubbed sage and 1/4 of very fine fresh  fine chopped chilli that's grown amazingly well in the glasshouse.
 
Cooked it up , made it up in a light thin corn starch sauce and also did a large pan of peeled lightly salted cubed spuds  which were creamed with butter , milk and a pinch of nutmeg . I made the creamed spuds fairly stiff so they didn't fall if made into a peak

 When the spuds were fairly cool I spread out the mash on the chopping board to about 1/2 " thick .
Then filled six small oval dishes with the meat mess and carefully cut the spread out  potatoes in oval shapes  to fit the dishes , used the fish slice and a palette knife to lift the spuds off the board and slipped them over the meat to make a sort of shepherds pie lid in warm mashed spud .
 
The final assault was to give a three inch thin line squirt of tomato sauce along three of the dishes and spread it evenly over the potato .
 Next , gently using a dining forks tines I made lots of fine criss-crosses over the potato , smoothed it over with the  pallet knife and repeated the exercise. to leave the top full of tiny diamonds flavoured with the tomato sauce


 When things had cooled a tad more I cling filmed four pies and slipped them in the freezer so we can have them as a ready meal over the next few weeks .
 
The two remaining pies  were kept aside for a quick tea ( munchkin was to be playing her flute  in the school orchestra )  a quick three minute nuke in the bomb and a two minute brown up under a medium grill saw them served with microwaved  buttered gingered marrow , carrots & boiled buttered  batons from  half a four inch dia crisp crunchy kohl rabi ..

 The troops loved it .

That sounds really nice, plantoid. I love shepherds pie, but haven't had it the traditional way -- I just throw whatever meat I have on hand into it, which usually means either chicken or pork roast, mixing it in with sauteed veggies and mushrooms and pouring some gravy in to fill up the spaces before topping with mashed potatoes.

What kind of sauce do you make? What is the liquid that you're thickening?

Spaghetti Squash!

@Marc Iverson wrote:That sounds really nice, plantoid.  I love shepherds pie, but haven't had it the traditional way -- I just throw whatever meat I have on hand into it, which usually means either chicken or pork roast, mixing it in with sauteed veggies and mushrooms and pouring some gravy in to fill up the spaces before topping with mashed potatoes.

What kind of sauce do you make?  What is the liquid that you're thickening?

The sauce  in the pie to keep it moist and tasting even better is the vegetable stock that the meat was canned in ( remove meat lumps ).
Boil it  up & thicken a bit with a couple of heaped teaspoons of shop purchased beef flavoured thickener  ...... ours is called BISTO .

 All the thickener is , is a mix of corn flour (starch ) , salt , various chemical flavour enhancers like MSG , some sort powder  of sugar ,anti oxidants , preservatives,  dried or liquidized tomatoes and caramel colouring.


 You can make your own thickener  don't use too much corn flower or it will end up like wall paper paste add some milk and cold water stir to get the cornflower mobile and gently pour it into a hot pan of meat & stock . boil up to expand the starch particles and then add any flavours you like .

Make your own caramel colouring if you like by partially burning a teaspoon of sugar so it goes dark brown  ......but do take care it will be ******** hot.
When it's cold ,stand it in a cup & pour half a cup of boiling water over it 7 start stirring gently the colour soon develops , add that to your stock finally add a pinch of salt & a couple of twist of pepper .


 We have ready made liquid gravy browning over here , in about 1/3 pint bottles ..   Our bottle is still on the go after seven year it only gets used when we are cooking previously roasted ort boiled meat as nine time out of ten it's not bee browned up with onions in a big heavy pan before being cooked .



 Slightly dark fine chopped fried onions not only gives colour it also gives lots of flavour to pre cooked meat dishes .

Agree on using the onions that way -- I'm a big fan of onions at any stage of caramelization, or just wilted a bit, dissolved by slow cooking in soups or even raw. They're how I start flavoring virtually anything I cook. Recently I made a half dozen dishes for a sick neighbor who hates onions and garlic, and I found myself hard-pressed to come up with ways to flavor any of them.

Thanks for the explanations and for the tip on using caramelized sugar to darken sauces. I'll definitely give that a try.

Made roasted chicken along with from my garden - Kennebec potatoes, Nantes carrots and Polish white garlic.....comfort food.

for dinner we had another skillet dinner from the garden and our hens


Potatoes, banana peppers, tomatoes, spinach, green onions, eggs & smoked sausage..... toped with cheese and baked....yum!

to top it off.....1st apple pie from our sons apple tree...and boy is he excited and proud!





happy gardening
rose

Awesome, how great for your boy!

Your dinner sounds like a little bit of everything. I usually love that, but I know plenty of people who want things with only one taste at a time, and not too many things. Your variety sounds great to me!

@FamilyGardening wrote:to top it off.....1st apple pie from our sons apple tree...and boy is he excited and proud!





happy gardening
rose

OH YUMMY....*swoon*....well done, Son!

What kind of apple tree?  Although, it doesn't really matter...

I love pie!  EVERY kind!

CC

My husband grew watermelon for the first time ever and wow they are huge weighing between 8 and 12 LBS each and there are at least 6 melons. And the taste is indescribable with juice running down a persons chin with each bite. They were just regular watermelon seeds nothing special and my husband is a novice so that is why this is so cool.
Denise Turpin, Creswell, Oregon

Pie looks wonderful, Rose.  Please tell son "congrats!"

Hi Warriorwoman45!  See this is your first post.  Welcome to the party!

Glad your watermelons did great!  Unfortunately, ours didn't, so glad someone's having a good time!

Lots of folks from your area, so you'll get some great advice here.

@warriorwoman45 wrote:My husband grew watermelon for the first time ever and wow they are huge weighing between 8 and 12 LBS each and there are at least 6 melons. And the taste is indescribable with juice running down a persons chin with each bite. They were just regular watermelon seeds nothing special and my husband is a novice so that is why this is so cool.
Denise Turpin, Creswell, Oregon

Nice! Lots of people seem to have low yields with melons -- at least ones I know or have read posting -- so you definitely must have done something right to get six of them.

Just harvested & washed tonights supper...

Had lunch today, grilled ham, cheese and apple on fresh asiago cheese bread. Apple picked off our tree. Picked tomatillos for tomatillo and apple salsa. Picked two containers of raspberries. Tonight is a first for me. Leek and potato soup, picked the leeks this morning, can't wait.

Tonight's main dish going into the oven-



roasted garden rattlensnake and KY wonder green beans, german red garlic cloves, onions, several varieties of tomatoes, bell and cubanelle peppers, olive oil and spices. We like this so much the spaghetti and meatballs will be the side dish

Oh, that looks so good.  Delish !!!

   
 Yolos!

 The house is smelling mighty fine at the moment.

CC -- is that a green tomato I see lurking in the lettuce leaves? Do you fry 'em up green?

And I guess those are fall peas, eh? I'll probably try them again someday, but they were a real bust for me last year. Yours sure look nice and fat.

llamamomma, that looks good!

Johnp, how did the leek soup turn out?