Winter Cooking and Canning

Dan and I think of winter as "soup season." Our favorite cold weather lunch is soup and grilled cheese on pumpernickel rye.

The soups are always delicious and never the same from day to day. This is because all summer long I put our leftovers into peanut butter jars that I keep in the freezer. I add to them daily and fill the gaps with leftover vegetable water, cooking broth, gravy, etc. To make soup, I defrost a jar and add a pint of homemade bone broth. What's left goes back into the fridge and is added to the next day. Always a winner.

Evening meals have been a lot of one-pot meals.

gnocchi and meatballs

The gnocchi is made from my goats milk ricotta. I made a gallon of it or so last summer and froze it. The sauce is is canned from garden tomatoes. Sprinkled with a little homemade mozzarella and served with a greenhouse salad, it's a 75% homegrown meal.

Winter is also when I like to do some of my canning. I used to make and can pizza sauce in winter, but I've changed my recipe and no longer have to store tomatoes in the freezer. Now, it's mostly fruit that I freeze for jams and jellies. My most recent batches were muscadine jelly, blueberry jam, and red raspberry jelly.

Making grape jelly from frozen muscadines

Making blueberry jam from frozen blueberries

Making raspberry jelly from frozen raspberries

The yield was 11 pints of jam and jellies. Even the raspberry jelly turned out dark, even though the berries are such a pretty red. 

So, I'm staying warm and being productive too! How about you?

Winter Cooking and Canning © Feb 2025 by Leigh

at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Garden Notes: January 2025

 Rainfall

• 5th: 0.17" 
• 6th: 0.66"
• 10th: 0.41"
• 18th: 0.22"
• 28th: 0.41"
• 31st: 0.5
• Total: 2.37 inches

Snowfall

• 10th: 1.0"

 Temperature

• range of nighttime lows: 14 to 38°F (-10 to 3°C)
• range of daytime highs: 26 to 69°F (-3 to 21°C)

Greenhouse temps: for the lowest overnight temps of the month

• 9th: outside 16°F (-9°C), greenhouse 25°F (-3.5°C)
• 20th: outside 17°F (-8.3°C), greenhouse 26°F (-3°C)
• 21st: outside 18°F (-7.7°C), greenhouse 26°F (-3°C)
• 22nd: outside 14°F (-10°C), greenhouse 22°F (-5.5°C)
• 23rd: outside 16°F (-9°C),  greenhouse 24°F (-4°C)

Greenhouse Notes

• With the temps, I'm looking at two things
• the lowest temps
• persistent low temps
• So far, the cool weather veggies have fared well. Only the potato plant died.
• There hasn't been any frost on the greenhouse plants. I reckon because they are protected from dew, so they are protect from frost (?).
• As an experiment, I've just planted some of the empty pots with lettuce, to see how well they germinate and grow in the greenhouse this time of year.

Garden Notes

• Freezing temps have pretty much killed everything off.
• Except the kale and collards.
• And I'm harvesting well-mulched turnips for both us and the goats.
• One pleasant days I continue to work on bed and aisle clean-out and mulching.
• I haven't made a big seed order so far this year. Rather, I'm buying select packets at the stores I shop at. Most of them now carry a choice of organic and non-GMO seeds, so a little here and a little there is easy on the budget while building my seed collection.

Harvested

• kale
• turnips
• lettuce
• chickweed
• Jerusalem artichokes
• dandelion root
• hopniss

Planted

• lettuce (greenhouse)
• Egyptian walking onions (hoophouse)
• thyme (hoophouse)

Photos

Photo was taken Jan. 5th of our last summer tomato,
ripened inside, with some of our greenhouse lettuce.

The only thing alive in the garden: kale and collards

Turnips store will in the well-mulched ground.

Hopniss (sometimes called ground nuts) are good boiled or in stew.

Greenhouse greens: chickweed, lettuce, and kale.

Also broccoli! This is actually from a plant I had last winter.
Somehow it survived the summer, even with a lot of neglect.

We're in a warming trend (yay!) Yesterday was our warmest day this month, but we're not sure how long it will last. We're still grateful for it.

How is everyone else doing? Anyone making garden plans for next year?

Garden Notes: January 2025 © Jan 2025 by Leigh

at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Winter Reading

Sam not reading.

Like much of North America, we are hunkered down to endure the frigid cold. We haven't broken any record temperatures, but this is the longest sustained stretch of cold that I recall in quite a few years. With critters, we still have outside chores and checks to do, but we have more indoor time, and for me, that means more time for weaving and reading. After keeping a book list last year, I'm inspired to do another one this year. Here are the first of my entries. 

 

Of physical book reading, I just finished Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell. If you like historical fiction, you'll find Bernard Cornwell to be one of the best. His work is extremely well researched and the stories are captivating. The Sharpe's series was about the only thing of his I hadn't read, because our library doesn't have the entire series, including this one which is the first book. But Dan got it for me for Christmas, and I'm hooked. 

Historical fiction acts as a springboard for me, as I wonder what the historical facts actually are and what life was like in that time period and region (in this story it's India in 1799). The book I've just started on is nonfiction, focusing on a small "undeveloped"  region in northern India.

Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh by Helena Norberg-Hodge is an extremely interesting book in two more categories I like: culture studies and agrarianism. The author spent a number of years in rural northern India as a linguist, experiencing their culture and witnessing the influence of encroaching global industrialism. While most of the world sees this influence as necessary and positive, the author saw the gradual destruction of a healthy, self-sustaining eco-community being pushed into dependency on modern consumerism. It impacts not only their so-called "standard of living" but also their mental, physical health, and cultural health, and not for the better. Her message is that we need to heed and preserve the benefits of such ancient socioeconomic systems. 

When I'm weaving or doing other handwork, I listen to audiobooks. 

While I was reading Sharpe's Tiger, I listened to G. A. Henty's The Tiger of Mysore, also fiction, also set in the same place and time period. It gave me a slightly different perspective and different details, which is another reason I like historical fiction. (The link is to Librevox, where you can listen to it for free, the physical book is available here.)

I thought Henty told a good story with interesting facts, so I chose another of his works to listen to next. This one related to my interest in genealogy, Wulf the Saxon: A Story of the Norman Conquest. (That link is to Librevox. Physical copy can be purchased here.)  It's interesting to hear how one branch of my family tree fought and conquered another branch. That became a springboard for what I'm listening to now, William the Conqueror by Edward Freeman (title links to Librevox, physical copy here).

While I don't usually plan my reading too far ahead, I do have the next paper book and audiobook lined up: Sharpe's Triumph, the next in the Cornwell series, and The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond on CD.

How is everyone else faring the cold? Are you reading? What are you reading? Any good recommendations to share?

Winter Reading © Jan 2025 by Leigh

at https://www.5acresandadream.com

The Greenhouse Is Almost Done

The last time I blogged about the greenhouse, Dan had just repaired the rainwater collection system. Several rains later, I can tell you that it leaks no more! Gradually, a little here and a little there, we're at the point where our greenhouse to-do list is pretty much checked off. 

For setting up the inside, it took me awhile to figure out what I wanted. When we first got serious about plans for the greenhouse, I collected all sorts of neat pictures of greenhouse interiors. Some of them had shelves for pots, others planted directly into beds dug into the ground. I spent a lot of time trying to envision our greenhouse and what my goals were.

I was initially assumed I just needed shelves, until I started thinking about how I actually want to use it. For one thing, I want cold weather veggies for fresh eating in winter. I also want a place for spring seed starts, and someplace to store pots, potting soil and compost. For spring starter trays, shelves make a lot of sense, but I knew I didn't want to plant lettuce and broccoli for the winter in small pots. It made more sense to use larger pots to give the roots some room. 

 First Dan finished the interior walls beneath the windows with cement board.

Then he made a bordered bed from old mill lumber, given to us by a neighbor.

Then I moved in the lettuce, kale, and chickweed I started outside in gallon pots, and tucked them in with spent straw from the barn.

Surrounding the pots with straw will act as good insulation. 

The bed can hold 14 one- and two-gallon pots pus 3 half-barrels from 55 gallon drums. There's enough room on the end for more pots if I want.

Then there was the other wall. 

This is where Dan built the bench.

The shelves are made from the tongue-and-groove boards he tore out of the front bedroom in anticipation of remodeling its closet. I have plenty of storage space for pots and buckets of soil and compost. The top shelf has plenty of room for starting spring plants. 

The other thing checked off the to-do list is the hose for the rainwater tank. 

The wand type nozzle I attached works well for potted plants. I got it from Amazon.

Still to do is stone for the floor and finishing the trim around the house door. Oh, and I have a little more painting to do. In the meantime, I've got stuff growing in it! And that's the main thing. :)

The Greenhouse Is Almost Done © Jan 2025

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

A Little Snow

Not as much as was in the forecast, but it was snow nonetheless.

Kale, my lone garden survivor.

It measured one inch before turning to "wintry mix" by afternoon and rain by evening. Overnight was well below freezing so that this morning, everything was covered in a coating of ice.

Mini icicles on the goat gate

Vine covered hoop house

Icy tree limbs sparkling in the sun.

It's been three years since we've had snow, so I suppose we were due for some. This winter has been one of persistent cold (20s to 40s with occasional overnight lows in the teens), whereas the past few winters have been periodic cold, i.e. 20s to 50s with occasional dips down to the single digits. 

Happily, I had the foresight to do my weekly errands the day before the storm. Except for critter chores, I was able to spend the day indoors making split pea soup, baking a hot fudge cake, and working on a weaving problem. 

I'm guessing most of it will melt today, but it's back into the teens again tonight, so likely more ice in the morning. But it's winter, so this is what we expect. 

How has everyone else fared that nasty winter storm? Everyone doing okay?

A Little Snow © Jan 2025 by Leigh

at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Recipe: Scalloped Apples

This time of year we have a number of seasonal dishes, all from Christmas leftovers! One of them is split pea soup. It's my favorite way to use that Christmas ham bone. Another is scalloped potatoes and ham. I use a basic scalloped potatoes recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook, and add the bits of ham I cut off the bone before tossing it into the soup pot. It makes a wonderful casserole. But it needs a side dish, and yesterday, I made scalloped apples.

This is an old recipe from my grandmother, whom I believe got it from her mother. I always loved it as a kid because it was like eating dessert with dinner! (Plus we got "real" dessert too). 

The apples were a gift from our neighbor. He bought a huge box at the farmers market, ate his fill, and then passed some on to us. There was enough for a couple of apple pies (one for us and one as a thank you for our neighbor), a half-gallon of apple sauce, and plenty for eating. The scalloped apples were inspired by those apples.

Scalloped Apples

NOTE: being an old fashioned recipe, it assumes the cook knows that the apples are to be pared, cored, and chopped, and that the cooking time is until the crumbs are browned on top.

Cook together till tender:

• 3 cups apples
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 cup water

Add: 

• 1/2 lemon, juice and rind
• 2 cups soft bread crumbs mixed with
• 1 stick of butter, melted

Layer bread crumbs and apple mixture in a buttered baking dish. Have crumbs on top. Bake at 350° (180°C).

Everything is already cooked, so I find about 20 minutes browns the crumbs nicely.

Does anyone else make traditional dishes from their holiday leftovers? 

Recipe: Scalloped Apples © January 2025

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com