Eclipsed $100 in Produce out of the garden

Just went over $100 dollars of produce out of our garden.  Harvesting something everyday now.  Tomato's are averaging 1-1.5 pounds every couple of days!   By far it's been the biggest producer.  Here are some highlights:

19.5 lb of Tomato's

3.5 lb Red Potato's

5 lb of Russet Potato's

2 lb Bell Pepper

Ton's of little Thai Chili's

3 lb Cucumber

1 lb Okra

1 lb Lettuce

1.5 lb Green Bean

2 lb Beetroot

1 lb Squash

Good start so far this year.  Hopefully continued production as the blueberry's, blackberry's, and grapes ripen in late June.

Solar Cooking: Solar Brisket and a Potato Bag Harvest

Solar Brisket

 

Recipe

 

1 Brisket

8-10 Mushrooms

1/2 Large Onion

3 Carrots

1 tbsp Chili Powder

1 tsp Onion Powder

1/4 tsp Cayenne

1 tbsp Lawry's Seasoning Salt

1 tsp Garlic Powder

Not adding any liquid at all

 

Steps

 

Mix the spices

 
Rub the brisket with the spices
 

 
Rough chop the carrot and onion, leave the mushrooms whole
 

 
Add around the brisket in the pot
 

 
Cover and place in the solar cooker.  I'm shooting for 250-300 degrees for 5-6 hours.  Like I've said before, when I'm done "cooking" I just won't re-aim the oven and let it cool to warm (180-200 degrees)
 
Results
 




 
Looks great and look at all the fat and liquid.  Take note, added no liquid to this and put the brisket in frozen.
It turned out terrific, juicy with a slight spice to it.  Definitely a keeper.  No Lessons Learned on this one.
 
Potato Harvest
 
Decided to pull a grow bag of potato's tonight and here are the results.  Pretty decent harvest but the best part is the boy digging through them finding the treasure!  3 lb 7.8 oz
 

 

 

 
BTW, we have recouped over $57 at this point.

Recovered over $45: Dinner completely out of the garden and some garden pests and problems

After being out of town for four days, I returned to an abundance!  The growth in that little time was amazing.  The next two pictures are what I harvested Sunday night. So far, we have recouped over $45 dollars out of the garden!  Only going to get better!

For dinner tonight, I fried the okra in a milk batter and sauteed the onion, green bean, Thai chili, and squash. I also took some of the tomato's and made a pint of tomato sauce for use later.

This reminds me, I need to clean the stove top!  Ooops.

For the pests, came across a couple.  The dreaded squash bug and the corn earworm!  The squash bugs I killed by soaking the plant with water and waiting for them to crawl up away from the water.  Then spray them with a mixture of dawn soap and water.  They die pretty quickly.

I inspected the corn and found one ear with the silk dead and discolored.  Opened it up and low and behold, hello mister corn earworm!  Killed it and looked through the rest of the corn and didn't see anymore, but they are still out there.

I did have some blossom end rot using the grow bags.  The watering hasn't been consistent enough and when it isn't, calcium can't get to the fruit and thus the rot.  Probably about 10-12 tomato's.  I've since placed some of the bags in a kids pool and kept an inch or so of water with great results.

Solar Cooking: Beef Stew and a Garden Update - Reaping the Work

Cooking some beef stew today in the solar oven.  The difference today is that i'm going to add the ingredients in stages based on the cooking time so we don't have a bunch of mush.  Changes after cooking are annotated with a *

Recipe:

1 lb stew meat

4-5 medium potatoes

1/2 onion

2 stalks celery

3 carrots

2 tbsp steak seasoning

1 bay leave

2 tbsp dried onion

1 tbsp salt

1/2 can tomato paste

1 cup water (*change to 1 1/2 cup)
1 tbsp corn starch

1. Pre-heat the solar oven
2. Put the stew meat in the middle of the pot
3. Quarter the potatoes, about half a golf ball sized, and place around the stew
   
4. Mix the water, tomato paste, and seasonings and pour over the roast
   
5. Place the roast in the solar oven and adjust the aim
6. Cut the celery, onion and onion flakes, and carrots and set aside
   
7. Cook the roast for 2 hours
8. Add the corn starch and stir well
9. Add the carrots
10. Cook for another 30 minutes
11. Add the remainder of the vegetables
12. Cook for another 30 minutes and allow the stove to cool slowly by not adjusting the aim (target temp around 200)
13. Enjoy when you are ready.

Results:

Wow, the meat almost melts in your mouth.  This was really fantastic and timing the vegetables going in was a great call.  This was a great recipe.  I did add 1/2 cup more water a little later so I'll adjust that.

Lessons Learned:

Nothing to change or add to this one.  A winner.

Garden Update:

Just wanted to show a screenshot of the excel doc I created to track how much we were recouping from the garden throughout this year.  I didn't keep track of what I spent to compare but now that I have a template I can do that as I go along now.  The workbook actually has 4 tabs, rain collection requirements calculator for both agricultural use and personal use, a plant 'needs' calculator based on family size, recoup calculator you see below, and a cost calculator to bounce of the recoup.

I based the recoup on organic prices I researched and this would have to be updated occasionally.

I'm willing to share it, I'm continually trying to improve it.  Just ask if you want a copy.

Solar Cooking: Solar Pasta with Meat Sauce

Thought it would be fun to experiment with a 'put it out and leave it' recipe that would require little maintenance other than aiming to solar cooker.  To real lesson to learn is how much liquid based on the absorption of the pasta.  Changes are annotated after cooking by the *

Recipe:

1 box pasta (preferably a penne, ect)
1 lb ground beef - if you live in the San Antonio area, you need to check out Bandera Grassland for your meat.  You won't regret it!

1 can tomato sauce

1/2 can tomato paste

3 tbsp sugar (*Change to 4 tbsp*)

2 tbsp salt

1 1/2 tbsp oregano (*Change to 1/2*)

2 tbsp basil

2 tbsp dry onion

2 tsp garlic powder
2 cans water (from empty tomato can)(*Change to 1 3/4 cans water*)

1.  Crumble the ground beef in the container.

2.  Mix the rest of ingredients with the meat and stir well.
3.  Stir in the pasta (all I had was fettuccine so I broke it up).  I put it all together the night before so we'll see how much water is soaked up over night.  My guess is it will help the speed of the cooking bu it also could have been a bad move.  We'll see tomorrow.

3.  Preheat the oven and place dish in oven around 1:30 pm due to the cloudy weather today.  (This is for south Texas)

4.  Adjust the solar oven aim every 30 min.  Cloudy today so this is going to cook at a much lower temp so I had to adjust more.  If it were sunny would only aim for first 1.5 hours.  225 - 275 degrees instead of 340-360 degrees that I would see on a clear day.  Good to test in a worst case scenario.

5.  Let sit until you are ready for dinner.

Note:  Oven will slowly cool to a warming temperature when not directly aimed.

Results:

1. It turned out really good, noodles were cooked well with soaking.  
2. A little too much oregano but the sugar / salt contrast was pretty close.
3. Meat sauce came out really good.

Lessons Learned:

The weather affected the cooking temperature a lot more than I thought it would.  Good test though.
Next time, I'll add the pasta at the start of cooking.  I'll try it again like this to see the difference.

Other than that, thought I'd share our salad tonight.  Completely out of the garden.  Roasted beets, lettuce, tomato, radish, and cucumber.

Solar Cooking: Pizza

We were making some pizza dough this morning for dinner tonight and I thought, why not try a small pizza in the solar oven after the tomatoes are dehydrated!

Brilliant!  Don't know how it's going to go, but I've made bread before so I guess we'll find out together.

Recipe:

The pizza dough recipe is just a basic recipe you can find anywhere, or buy it in the store.

Choose your toppings, this will be a straight up pepperoni.  I dredged the sides with a little olive oil to add some fat to the exposed dough.

The oven is at 225 degrees.  With the sun today, expect it to get to 350 degrees.  No cover on this one, just like bread.

Here we go.

I let it cook for xx minutes.

Results:

So I could actually see the oil bubbling on the crust on the outside!  Looks like even with SHTF, we can still have pizza!

The crust was soft, but had good structure and a little crisp.  With trapping moisture like this I don't think you'll ever get a "crispy crust," but this is better than nothing.

Lessons Learned:

1. Next time I would wait for a pre-heat to 350 degrees but not necessary.
2. Alternatively, you could pre-bake just the dough, then later (20-30 minutes) put the toppings on and cook again.  It would probably crisp up better.

Solar Cooking: Chicken with New Potatoes and Asparagus

I'm getting addicted to cooking like this.  It's so easy, and any meat is so juicy because it's not loosing its liquid.  Tonight for dinner we are having Chicken, cooked with new potatoes and some asparagus.  The timing on this seems to be the biggest risk.

Recipe:

2 Chicken Breasts

4-5 New Potatoes (from our garden!)

1 bunch Asparagus

1/2 slice Onion

4 Baby Bella Mushrooms

1/4 cup Orange Juice

1 tbsp Herbs to Provence

1 tsp salt

1 tsp fresh cracked Pepper

4-5 Sprigs Fresh Rosemary

Pre-heat the solar oven.  *by noon the oven was at 350 degrees.  

1.  Put the chicken breasts and potatoes in the cookware and add sprigs of rosemary.

2.  Pours in the orange juice and add the herbs, salt, and pepper to the chicken.

3.  1/2 the baby bella's and place in the cookware.  1/2 the onion slice and place on the chicken.

4.  Place in oven 1.5 hours before dinner and re-aim the oven every 30 minutes also checking the moisture level in the cookware.  It shouldn't lose much.  More than likely, you'll have more than you want.

5.  After an hour, place the asparagus over the chicken for the last 30 minutes.

The result: 

The asparagus was just to the point of still being crunchy which is the way we liked it.

I wanted to show you how much liquid stayed in the container with only 1/4 cup OJ added.

Lastly, everything on a platter.  Once you slice the chicken, place it back in the juice, it will retain moisture as it cools.

The chicken was moist, the mushrooms and the potatoes were perfect and the asparagus was just the way we liked it.

Lessons learned:

1. Totally clear day all day, clouds came out 15 minutes after I put the chicken in.  Went from 360 degrees to 225 degrees!  Would put it in earlier and let the oven cool to a warm by not aiming it.  Likewise, if the sun isn't cooperating, you can cook longer at a lower temp and not miss dinner.
2. Lastly, not as much a LL, but cooking outside kept the oven from heating the house, in turn forcing the a/c to come on, saving us money.

Garden Update: Everything In Full Swing

Just an update on all the growth going on.  It is happening so fast at this point.

Roma Tomato:  Over 30 tomatoes on it

Nectarines growing great.

Blackberry's from flower to fruit.

Some Betsy Tomatoes starting to turn red

Succession garden growing great

Collard greens and a radish for a salad.  Look at the size of that radish!  And look how beautiful those greens look.

Cucumbers all over the place.

Three sisters garden is like a jungle.  How compact I planted the corn may have stunted some of the stalks.

Squash are emerging every where now.

Grape flowers have turned to fruit.

So lots of changes in very little time.  This week we canned 9 pints of meat sauce, though I didn't take any pictures.  Lazy!  We also made chicken stock and canned 4 quarts.  Again, Lazy and didn't take any pictures.

Propagating Tomato Plants From Cuttings

I have to give a hats off to Texasprepper2 on Youtube.  I never would have thought to try and root a tomato cutting this way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLWB7XiKuF0

I decided to snip a sucker that was about 10 inches long and try to root the cutting.  I placed it in water and in about a week you can now see the roots appearing out the stem.  Pretty Cool!

I wonder what else you can try and do this with?  I'll try some other plants as well.

Solar Cook'in Again: Hocks with Beans and Rice

Cooking solar is so different from any traditional method.  You really have to practice it with different recipes   and learn.  The point is to know how to use it before you are forced to use it and make critical mistakes.  I'll share any problems or issues I have with these recipes with the help of my wife who is a Chef.

When we begin harvesting the garden, my wife will be blogging on how she is utilizing everything and I'll be sharing canning and other preservation.

On to the Hocks with Beans and Rice.  Put a couple of Hocks in the granite pot followed by two cups of rice and .3 lb Navy Beans, .3 lb Lentil, .3 Split Pea.  I did NOT soak the beans overnight.  That may come back to bite me but it's part of the experiment.

 I covered it with a mix of spices to include:  Tomato bouillon, salt, thyme, garlic powder, onion powder, parsley, tiny bit of cayenne, and 2 bay leaves.  I covered with water to about an inch above the contents.

The solar oven has been preheating but it's been partly cloudy day to that may play into the cooking time as well.  I've stirred it occasionally as I've adjusted the aim of the oven.  It's sat around 250 most of the day.

Here's after I stirred it one of the times.

The clouds had a little effect, but it finally cleared up and the oven is a consistent 325 degree's.  I had to add more liquid as the rice and beans soaked it up.

It's finished.  Some lessons learned:

1. Too much rice and beans.  1 cup rice and .25 pound beans (not soaked).
2. Cooked beans with meat for 2 hours (or more depending on how hot the oven is) making sure water is always present.
3. Add in rice, stir, and cook till rice is tender.

I guess the big lesson learned to anything you make is to add ingredients based on how long they traditionally take to cook so it all comes together at once.

Overall though, great taste.

Canning Salsa

If you are not linking from my wife's blog.  You can go to this URL to see her salsa recipe and steps.

PENDING LINK

We have enough for 16 pints of salsa.  It makes it real easy to have salsa anytime you want without the work every time to make it.  This is a great recipe and a hit with family and friends.

These are our two canner's.  The one on the right is the first one we ever owned.  Something cheap with a rubber gasket to just try and learn and get comfortable.  The other canner is a 21 Quart all american metal to metal lid.  It's awesome.  Love it!

The first step is to sterilize the jar's and lids.  All new lids as these are jar's we've used before.  Just boil the jars in the canner and put the lids in a pot with water on medium low to heat up.

Now that the jars are sterile, we fill each pint with hot salsa to a 1 inch head space and make sure there are no air bubbles.

Wipe all the jar lips and fasten the lids finger tight.

Make sure the jars are covered by at least 2 inches of water.

Once it comes to a boil, process for 45 minutes.  It will heat faster if you put the lid on.  I didn't seal either one though.

Remove from heat and let stand to cool to room temperature.  This is where you will hear the classic "pop" as the lids form a vacuum.  Any lids that do not form a vacuum you should refrigerate and try canning again or use in the next week or so.  We've had very good success with all our canning.

Now enjoy anytime you have a hankerin for some salsa!