Homemade Tomato Soup!

Tomato harvest, what to do? Tomato soup for dinner!
3½ pounds of  Principe Borghese and a couple of Brandywines.

Chop up one onion and smash 6 cloves of garlic.

Saute onions & garlic until soft.

Add tomatoes, smash so their skins break.

Let simmer for about an hour.

Into the "witch's hat"!

Put through food mill to remove seeds and skins

Don't forget to scrape all the thick goodness from the outside!

If it's thick enough for you now ... EAT!
If not, continue reading ... 

Melt ½ cup of butter

Whisk in ½ cup of flour until it's thick ... 

continue cooking while constantly whisking
for a couple minutes so the flour cooks
and doesn't taste "floury"

Quickly stir in a ladle full of the soup, keep stirring!
Add a few ladles until it's no longer thick,
then add to the soup while constantly whisking!

DONE!

Enjoy with a grilled cheese sandwich!

Best March ever!

As of today, this month is on track to be the warmest March on record here where I live with an average temperature of 49°. I am loving it!
The daffodils are in full bloom, and the tulips should be very soon! Rhubarb is up, and so are the chives!
There is little else as fine as a baked potato with the first chives of the spring on it! Yum!
I already have radishes sprouting in the garden, and the weather shows no sign of changing too much. Since radishes don't mind cool weather, it can drop down quite a bit and I'm betting they'll still do fine. I also planted broccoli directly in the garden. I was all set to start it in pots, but thought "Why? It will grow outside just as fast, maybe faster, than in pots" ... so I also planted that! I put in some spinach too. All these like cooler weather, and in the past when I've waited during mild springs, I've regretted it because all of a sudden it would get too hot and they'd all bolt and I'd get nothing. I figured I'd go a different route this year, after all, it's just a few seeds and I can always replant if we do get a major snow storm or something!
I have a lot of cleaning out to do too. It appears my strawberry patch has been over run with weeds and only a few plants have survived, so I'll be digging those out and relocating them, then removing the mass amount of weeds. They never did well in that spot anyway.
My blueberry bushes are looking pitiful. They should be 5 feet tall by now, and they're only about 3 feet tall. I am not buying anything from that company again, too many bad experiences. They replaced the bushes when they failed to grow, but only after I could prove to them when I'd bought them and sent back the original packing materials and the original receipt and the original shipping label. Such a hassle, but thankfully I had kept all that after reading their return policy. The new bushes are growing, but not nearly as well as they should be.
Now, our last frost free date is April 27 here, so I am really pushing it, but I like living on the edge! lol! The lilacs are all leafy, and they know better than I when spring has sprung, so I'm going with them. We'll see how my bet pays off!

Spring gardening

I'm trying desperately to get my gardens in this year and keep them up, but I'm already feeling behind and it's only May! I have a knee injury which keeps me from kneeling, stooping and crouching ... all important movements in the life of a gardener! My condition has even been nicknamed "gardener's knee" because it's often caused by crawling around on the ground. Mine was caused by my "day job" a little over a year ago, which involves all those movements dozens of times a day. Ironically, it was fine all winter and then in about March it hit again. Of course, there's no way to "prove" it was caused by work, so no, can't get any workman's comp or anything like that for it ... but I don't care about that! I just want to garden! Anyway, I bought some "new" tools at garage sales that are helping a bit ... a very old, very sturdy and very well taken care of cultivator that is a monster at pulling out deep weeds without getting down on the ground! I just love it and only paid $1 for it! I had lettuce that came up on it's own from seeds I planted last fall, so I am eating fresh lettuce from my garden and of course the chives and things that grow on their own. I did get 6 new blueberry plants in also, and put hay all around them so they are done for a while. So, I'm working slowly but surely on getting the gardens in ... Wish me luck ... this weekend hopefully peppers and tomatoes!

I want to be 100% Organic! Baby steps!

In my opinion, it is important to switch as many things in your life as possible to organics. The reasons for this are numerous and new evidence seems to be added almost daily. I am taking baby steps to reach this point, it's expensive I know ... but I do believe it can be done!

The obvious, of course, is to avoid putting toxins and poison into your body in the first place therefore not having to detox to get rid of them!

Less obvious are things like the poisons used by farmers getting into our water supply, as well as the earth itself. Don't even get me started on people who spray their lawns with chemicals to get rid of weeds ... it kills weeds for god's sake and then their kids are out there playing on it! YIKES!! Good rule of thumb ... if you have to warn people to stay off/away from something, you probably shouldn't be spraying it all over the place!

It's been said the most important place to start switching is meat and dairy. Maybe just milk at first, then cheese, then eggs ... cut out some junk food to offset the higher cost. To enter a contest to win coupons for free Organic Valley products, visit this blog ...

http://thriftyjenny.blogspot.com/2010/03/organic-valley-giveaway.html

(Ends 3/30/2010)

Grow a few vegetables in your yard! Don't buy those chemical "miracle" fertilizers or soils though ... use organic! Your yard may not be 100% pure, but it's better than store bought and it doesn't get any fresher! If you live in an apartment and have a balcony you can still grow a few things. Tomatoes can grow in a pot, peppers, lettuce, herbs whatever you use a lot of and have space for. Consider using edibles instead of flowers in your front yard. Some of them are just as beautiful as they are delicious. one thing to watch for though is chemical spraying neighbors and dogs walking by ... they like to pee on plants and personally, I'm not thrilled with the idea of eating something I suspect has been a bathroom for the neighborhood hound! So, keep it away from the sidewalk and from the neighbor's property line (unless you know they don't use chemicals). Lawn chemicals will kill most veggie plants anyway ... that's their job, to kill anything and everything that isn't grass!

I also think that we should use only natural cleaners, after all whatever goes down your drain ends up in the water eventually! Remember the news story about the prescription drug levels in water supplies? Using natural cleaners can save you enough money to spend a little more on organic food! I'm not talking about the so-called natural cleaners on the market, many of them are using the term very loosely because right now it's "hip" to be green ... I'm talking about simple, effective cleaners that you probably already have in your kitchen! Things like lemon juice, baking soda, vinegar and hydrogen peroxide! They cost pennies and do a wonderful job at cleaning AND disinfecting! But that's a subject for another day.

100 reasons to be a hyperlocavore http://budurl.com/brs6

Check this out! 100 reasons to be a hyperlocavore http://budurl.com/brs6

First a definition, a hyperlocavore tries to eat as much food as close to home as possible, in order to reduce the food miles that his food travels. It is an extension of the term locavore. A locavore typically tries to eat seasonally within 100 miles of her home, to reduce food miles and to develop their local economic base. A hyperlocavore wants to bring food even closer. And what's closer than your neighborhood? We have a time crunch, we have land and property that is loosing value fast, we have kids who don't know where their food comes from, and we have a climate crisis.