Junque Food: MATERS!

We are heavily in the midst of canning season here at the micro-mini ranch.

So many things to can, so little time!

If you have the canning bug, than this scenario is very familiar to you:

I had between 7-10 gallon sized freezer bags of tomatoes in the freezer. Since tomatoes don't ripen all at the same time, it's necessary for me to freeze them for awhile until I have enough to do a canning session.  The hubster and I had planned on doing up the tomatoes this past Sunday.

And then I went to the Saturday morning Farmer's Market.

And bought another bushel of tomatoes.


!!!


I couldn't help it!! They were extremely affordable, and we were gonna be canning anyway!!!

BTW, if anyone wants to know how much a bushel of tomatoes is, it's about the equivalent of a paper grocery bag filled to the top.

With a zillion tomatoes.

And it's heavy.

When it was all said an done, By the end of Sunday night, we had canned 17 quarts of tomatoes That's QUARTS. not pints. it's a lot. See here:

I googled this image, and it came off kitchn.com's website, but the URL is from apartmenttherapy.com. I hope I've given all credit where it's due here.

In addition, I also processed and canned 4 quarts of pickled banana peppers.

I was pretty chuffed by the end of Sunday.

And sore.

And tired

More pics later.  LOL

Junque Food - Yummy Mom's Mo' Relish

Isn't this gorgeous?

This relish is bounty of nature's goodness. We used to call it Moe's Relish, after a family friend who made it for my mom several years ago. Since we haven't had it in awhile, and my Mom made this yesterday, I decided to switch it up and call it Mom's Mo' Relish.

It is totally worth the extra apostrophes, I promise.

The beauty of this relish is that it's very versatile. This particular relish was make with zucchini, yellow squash, red and yellow bell peppers, celery, carrots, onion, and a few tomatoes. All finely chopped. A wee bit of olive oil, and your choice of vinegar.  This one has apple cider vinegar, but I believe it was originally made with Balsamic vinegar.  Spices are simple: basil, salt, pepper, maybe a little garlic. If you need to cut the bite of the vinegar, a tiny bit of honey or stevia will help it out.

See what I mean? You can totally use whatever you have on hand to make Mom's Mo' Relish. You can mix it up if you want, adding cucumbers, or get a little wild, and dice up a hot pepper or two. Change the spices to ones that you enjoy. It is literally a universe of veggie goodness in a bowl for your culinary pleasure.


What what do you do with it when you've made up a bowl of this garden goodness?

I am so glad you asked that question... (heh)

Mo's original relish was a condiment used for sandwich wraps. A tortilla, your choice of lunch meat, and a little cheese, then slather the relish on, wrap it up, and YUM!


But what if I'm attempting to do the Paleo Diet thing, Mrs. Junque? I can't have the tortilla, the lunch meat has nitrates in it, and the cheese is right out!!!

Well, yes, that's true. And we did pause for a bit, thinking about all the things we could put this relish on. We finally decided there wasn't much you couldn't put Mom's Mo Relish on.  I mean, really. Think about it!

Last night we had it on top of baked fish. Totally. Nummy.

This morning we are going to put it in an omelet.  For realz!

Grilled chicken?  You betcha!

So, if you can't find anything to put Mom's Mo Relish on, then you aren't thinking very hard.

This stuff is the cat's meow, y'all.....give it a try!

The Junque Yard - seedlings!

Well, these little guys are not out in the yard yet. But they have been sitting in my computer room window with a light hanging over them for a good 12 hours a day.  We have 2 types of tomatoes (Rutgers and Romas), and 2 types of peppers.  Of the two, the Rutgers, are outgrowing the Romas by quite a bit, and there’s one pepper plant that didn’t take off at all. But I’m just jazzed that I was able to get seedlings started early this year, for once.  I never do, and then end up buying starts from the Farmer’s Market.  But I have all these seeds, and gosh darn it, there is no reason for me not to. 

These guys are about 6 weeks old.  They will soon go out into the raised beds and covered in Wall o Waters.

Oh? You’ve never heard of Wall o Waters???  They are the COOLEST way to get warm weather plants outside and into the garden early. 

I heard about Wall-o-Waters from my favorite magazine Backwoods Home Magazine . I know I've mentioned them before, but they have great articles for people who are looking to go the old time ways, like the Hubster and I am.

I was trying to find an accurate link for them to show you guys, but there are 2 sites with similar URLs and I can't tell which one is the original Wall-o-Water people.  We ourselves bought ours from a local home center store, but II know Amazon sells them (if you buy them from clicking this link, you'll give me a little boost, and I would greatly appreciate it. 

 

WALL O WATER 3 PACK 

Junque Food - What's Been Cooking at the Micro-Mini-Ranch

The name of the game the last few weeks (and into the indefinite future) is: "Use what you have." Since I am off work due to hand surgery, and Mom's currently looking for work, there's only daMan currently bringing in a full paycheck. Money is tight, as it is for most of you out there. But as a result, we've set upon ourselves the challenge to not grocery shop, except for necessities. We've been hitting the pantry, the canned goods shelves, and the last of the garden growings for our meals. And we are getting pretty creative about the whole thing too.

I'm a nut for tacos, and I've made fish tacos, meat tacos and I had a yen for chicken tacos, but I wanted something different, so I thought we'd try our hand at enchiladas. I didnt have a can of enchilada sauce in the pantry, though, so I pondered how to make it from canned diced tomatoes without blending. I do have a blender/food processor combo, but I'm not fond of it. It was a $10.00 cheapy thing I got at Walmart, but it's loud, and frankly, it scares the poop outta me. I really only use it to grind up cukes for making relish. Yeah, I'm a chicken. BAWK.

So anyway, how to get a sauce out of tomato chunks? I can, and have, used a potato masher. It does OK, but I have limited use of my hands at the moment, and mashing tomatoes as they simmer takes a long time. I'm just going to have to have chunks. Which is fine with me. Then it hit me. V8 juice! I usually have some on my pantry shelves. I like to throw a can of it in chili when I make it in the crock pot. Perfect.

Since we are going to have chunky enchilada sauce, I decide to go all the way, and con Mom into chopping up an onion, and some jalepenos I just picked out of the garden before they got frost on them. One was pretty close to being ripe, and it was so pretty I had to take a picture of it. Who knew that peppers turned red on the inside first? I didn't!

So the sauce was shaping up to be pretty decent. We used a large can of diced tomatoes, half of a very large onion, a good cup of diced orange bell pepper, and metric ton of Cumin (we love Cumin), a little bit of orengo, 2 cans of V8 juice, and simmered for an hour. Viola! sauce!




I used up some corn tortillas I had in the freezer, which was perfect, they were pretty dry and crumbly, and the sauce perked them up quite a bit.

I used a can of chicken, threw some diced onions in with it, rolled it up in the tortillas, and smothered them in the sauce. Served with a side of refried beans covered in gooey cheese and even more onions.

it was OH. MY. GOD. good. It officially deserved the NOMmy title. And that was Friday.  :)

Junque Yard

This morning is muggy but not hot. We had some rain overnight, but not enough to get rid of of the humidity. I'm debating turning of the AC, but I think I'll leave it as I do my chores. Sweating is over rated anyway.

We are finally starting to see some color in the tomatoes! Heavy with fruit, the tomato plants seemed to have been in an indefinite holding pattern. It's been warm enough, the sun has been out, they just seem to be taking their sweet time ripening.  But last night I spied a few lil buggers starting to tinge orange. YAY!

The peppers are growing like weeds.

The cukes have flowers like you read about. heh. I love that phrase, even if it doesn't make any sense.

My poor pumpkins. Still no female flowers. All male. My brain keeps wanting to make inappropriate same sex jokes, but I've refrained...so far.

The raspberries are almost done. Did I say that last week? I really mean it this week.

I finally filled the bird seed feeders, and put up a new nyjer sock for the finches. They love me now. We seem to have an over abundance of birds in our yard this year - with or without the feeders. I think it might be because we haven't had to mow the lawn for over a month (not enough rain for the grass to grow). We have a lot of clover and thistle, and I think the birds are eating it up. We also have a LOT of worms, and the robins are feasting.

My flower garden in the front yard is pathetically choked with weeds. I really REALLY need to get off my dufus and take care of that.

*slurps coffee*

Maybe later.   :)