Gordon's Living Site

Canned Green Beans

First canned produce of the season! Hopefully there'll be much more as there are lots of blooms on the beans in the garden and in the front yard.

DIRECTIONS

Wash beans and snap in 1/2 or desired length. Pack tightly into clean pint jars. Sterilize lids by boiling, add boiling water to jars to 1/2 inch of top. Place lids on top of jar and put bands on. Be careful not to tighten bands. Place in pressure cooker for 20 minutes. When done, let cooker cool down so no pressure is left and remove jars to counter top to cool. Lids should set within a few minutes. If any don't, you can reprocess by removing lid, wiping jar and lid seal and repeating process.
This time, I canned 9  1/2 pints.

Home-grown vegetable medley

It's really nice to serve a dish that you've grown yourself. The ingredients in this medley were determined by what I grew and harvested in my own garden. I found some onion in the frig that I didn't grow, but you can't throw out good food, can you. I don't quantify some of the ingredients since I use what I have sometimes. You can adjust the amounts to suit your own tastes.

INGREDIENTS

Asparagus
Green beans
Yellow squash, slice less than 1/4 inch thick
Lemon-pepper seasoning
2 T butter
2 oz. Feta cheese

DIRECTIONS

Wash and break the green beans into a desired length. Boil until tender. In a large saucepan, melt the butter and cook the squash until tender and beginning to brown. Add asparagus and cook about a minute. Add the green beans and cook another two to three minutes, adding lemon-pepper seasoning to taste. When done, turn off fire and sprinkle crumbled Feta cheese over top. Let set two to three minutes before serving.

Fried Catfish

Can't remember if I've blogged catfish before, but I made a few mods on my seasoning that I liked. The crust came out really well, a golden brown that makes a great tasting dish look great, too.
INGREDIENTS

5 whole catfish or several fillets
2 c corn meal
1 c all-purpose flour
3-4 c buttermilk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp garlic
1/4 tsp paprika
vegetable oil

DIRECTIONS

Mix by hand the salt, pepper, garlic and paprika. Mix the corn meal and flour in a large zip-lock bag. After rinsing fish, dry them thoroughly with paper towels. Dip in buttermilk and sprinkle seasoning over fish. Place in bag and flip to completely coat with meal. Heat oil to about 160F and place fish in oil. Cook until lightly browned and drain on paper towels. Serve with lemon juice or tarter sauce. But please NO CATSUP.

New garden pics

I've really not taken many pics of the garden this year. So, I'm really behind and the garden has virtually exploded in growth! Guess all that mulch that I work into the soil is really working as fertilizer. Here's several recent pics of my daylililes as well as veggie garden for you to enjoy. There's a pic also of some of the green beans I harvested. Cooked up some and canned the rest.    

Chicken Breasts with Zucchini Pappardelle

This is another recipe from Gourmet magazine. I did buy some zucchini for this, but I could have used some of my yellow squash to good effect. The fresh basil leaves I was able to harvest from our garden was a perfect compliment. It helps if you have an adjustable slicer for the zucchini so you can make even slices. If you look closely to the photo, you'll see I also added just a wee bit of asparagus. I didn't list it below since there was just a little I could harvest from my garden. We found the chicken to be a bit dry so a sauce might be desirable. Another variation I might make would be to grill the chicken, slice and then combine ingredients as shown below.

INGREDIENTS

1 large zucchini
2 garlic cloves, diced
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 T olive oil
1 head broccoli
1 cup torn basil leaves

DIRECTIONS

• Slice zucchini lengthwise and set aside.
• Slice chicken crosswise into 1/3s or 1/4s. Season with salt and pepper. Heat oil in skillet and saute chicken until browned and cooked through. Reserve liquid as you brown chicken. Set chicken aside.
• Add zucchini, broccoli and garlic to reserved liquid and cook briefly until zucchini begins to tenderize.
• Add chicken back to skillet and toss in basil leaves. Cook very briefly to soften leaves. Serve warm.

Fresh corn pancakes

Can you tell I got my Gourmet magazine today? I was scanning through it at lunchtime and ran across this recipe. Not exactly what you normally eat for lunch, but it sure did solve the munchies! This calls for fresh corn (didn't have any) but I used frozen corn instead. Mintie and her friend, Emily, liked the flavor, but didn't care for the whole corn kernels that were in there. I'll admit, I didn't care for it, either. But the 1/2 cup prepped as described really worked. I'd recommend that anytime.

INGREDIENTS

1 c all-purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 T sugar (I forgot this, but it still worked)
2 c frozen corn
3/4 c 2% milk
2 large eggs
2 T olive oil
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled

DIRECTIONS

• Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.
• Puree 1/2 cup corn with milk and strain through a sieve pressing liquids through and discarding solids.
• Whisk in eggs, oil and butter.
• Combine all ingredients and whisk until just combined. Add a little milk if needed to get right consistency for pancakes.
• Heat your skillet and add olive oil to heat. Place about 1/3 cup of mixture on griddle until bubbles form, then flip and cook till golden brown.
• Serve with your favorite syrup.

It's time to start enjoying the fruits of our labor

We've already enjoyed some yellow squash from the garden. One of the easiest of fresh veggies to prep for dinner. We just slice it, season with Adam's Lemon/Pepper seasoning and fry in a little butter. Just can't be beat. We're also enjoying fresh leaf lettuce for our salads. Even though I planted it way late, it's producing enough for us and Todd and Dee across the street. It was done as an after thought. I had dug out a trench in a new flower bed and filled it with potting soil and put in tulips (also way late). When they died back, I dug the bulbs out and put in the lettuce. If I can find another place for the tulips, I might just put the lettuce in the spot this winter.
Today, I harvested a few pieces of asparagus. I'm not having much luck with this. After two years in this bed, I only get enough to add to a few salads. Not enough for a single serving at dinner.
I also harvested a head of broccoli. I didn't realize I'd planted this until lately. I've never planted any before, so I wasn't sure just what was coming up in that spot. Wish I had a whole lot more. We'll only get enough for a few servings this year. Next year I'll definitely plant a whole lot more!

Apple/Pear Pie

I found the original inspiration for this recipe in a magazine while Mom was having her hair done. I found one good recipe so I jotted it down on a subscription form. The original called for two frozen pie crusts to be placed one on top of the other and then rolled out to 16". How in the h*** that got that one to work is beyond me. Luckily, I had a spare package of pie crusts in the freezer, so I made a more conventional pie. When I get a chance, I'll do this with a homemade crust and put a crust on top. I may try it with a graham cracker crust, too. You can buy those or crush the crackers really fine and mix with some butter to get them to stick together. I made some other changes to customize the pie, but I'll not bore you with the details. This is easy to make, so I hope you'll give it a try.

INGREDIENTS

2 9-in pie crusts
small jar of orange marmalade; you'll use around 2/3 of it
3 Jonagold apples, sliced 1/4 in thick (and roughly no more than the size of a quarter)
3 pears, slice 1/4 in thick (and roughly no more than the size of a quarter)
2 T lemon juice
1 tsp freshly grated ginger (freshly dug from my garden!!)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 T plus 1 tsp sugar
sugar to sprinkle on top
1 egg, beaten

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350F.

Spread marmalade on the bottom of both pie crusts. Toss together fruit, lemon juice ginger, cinnamon and sugar. Divide between the two pie crusts. By hand, sprinkle additional sugar over the top. Brush the beaten egg on the exposed pie crusts. Bake until crust is golden brown, around 50 minutes.

Grilled Tostado

I only made four of these for me and Joel. Should definitely made more. I wasn't sure grilling would work, it was really a leap to risk dinner, but it turned out to be the very best way to make these that I could have come up with. This recipe makes four. If you are making this for anyone but yourself, you need to scale it up, because your guests will want 2nds and 3rds.

INGREDIENTS

2 T olive oil
3-4 mushrooms, sliced
1 Anaheim chili pepper, sliced very thin (Poblano would work well, too)
2 cloves garlic, diced fine
1 c whole kernel corn
4 flour tortillas
Colby grated cheese (Mexican or Monterey jack would also be good)
1/3 c Picante or Salsa
lettuce

DIRECTIONS

Start by browning Anaheim and garlic a moment then add mushroom and brown a little more. Add corn and allow to heat well. Add Picante sauce and allow to warm up. Warm tortillas in tortilla warmer to soften them. Place your tortillas on something easy to transport and add mix to each one. Add a little torn lettuce and top with generous helpings of cheese.

Preheat grill. Spray oil on it and place tostados on grill. Reduce heat to minimum and close lid. Grill for 3-4 minutes until cheese is completely melted. Serve hot.

You can see, I've made a couple of suggestions of variations you can make. You could use different cheeses or peppers. Try salsa instead of picante. Try different mushrooms. I didn't brown the corn very much, but you could try browning it more, or even grill corn on the cob, cut the corn off and put that onto the tostados.

Easy gumbo

Gumbo makes a great meal when served with rice. It's really a mix of materials so there is no set recipe for making it. It may be meats or fish or both. One of the few fixtures of gumbo is that most is made using okra. Here's an approximation of my recipe. I didn't measure much and kept it flexible.

INGREDIENTS
Package of seasoned sausages
Breast of smoked turkey
1/2 dozen homemade meatballs (see recipe a few weeks back)
4-5 celery stalks
Couple of good handfulls of chopped onion
5-6 cloves garlic, diced very fine
2-3 Anaheim chiles sliced very thin
1 bell pepper, sliced
okra, enough for your taste, this also thickens the gumbo
1 can whole tomatoes, slice them as you add them
1-2 cans water
1 1/2 cups chicken stock, homemade
2 T olive oil
Rice

DIRECTIONS

Slice sausages about 1/4 inch thick. Chop up turkey breast. Cut each meatball into 1/3's. Brown onion, celery and green pepper in olive oil. Throw everything except rice into large pot and heat to a low boil for at least 1/2 hour. It's better to have a little too much water, you can let it cook uncovered to cook it down.
Cook your rice according to directions. A flavored rice works well with this recipe. Serve gumbo over rice.