DINNER TIME! Cream of Asparagus and Ham Soup

We've moved and we're no longer suburban. We'll now be known as The Cheapskate Rural Dweller since we live at least a half hour from anything that could be deemed a city or suburb.

Time to ease back into the blogging grind and we'll do it with a recipe.

It's been cold up here in Northern California and it's great soup weather. Here's one I came up with this week.

INGREDIENTS
1/2 bunch of asparagus
1 cup spinach
1 cup shredded carrots
1/2 medium onion
1 medium pasilla chile
1/2 pound cubed ham
1/4 cup sherry
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons Kosher salt
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon tarragon
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Start by putting a stock pot half full of water and 2 tablespoons of salt on the stove and bring to a boil. Cut the crown spears off of the asparagus.

Put in a strainer and hang in boiling water. Cut the rest of the asparagus into 2 inch lengths.

Slice the chile into strips, remove the seeds, and then cut into 1 inch squares.

After the asparagus crowns have boiled for 5 or 6 minutes, remove and set aside. Put the chile chunks , asparagus stalks, carrots, and spinach into the boiling water. Boil for 8 minutes and strain out all but one cup of water.

Put the boiled vegetables, the onion, and the one cup of reserved water into a blender and puree for 5 seconds.

Pour the mixture into a saucepan, add the sherry, garlic, parmesan cheese, and simmer for one hour. Stir every 5 to 10 minutes.

10 minutes before the simmer period is over, add the ham and asparagus spears.

5 minutes after turning off the heat, stir in the cream.

Serve and sprinkle the cheddar over the top.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2019 - All Rights Reserved

Carrots for Mental Health

Recently, my son had a bout with depression and anxiety. While we spent many hours with professionals, I thought of something we could do at home to take his mind off of things. I had him plant a mental health plant.

To do this, I showed him our collection of vegetable seeds and let him pick one. He picked carrots.

Taking a red solo cup and poking holes in the bottom, we filled it up with mix and he put the seeds in. He's been taking very good care and watering it every three days. Now it's time to transplant.

The picture above shows the plants ready to go, with a beer-bottle filled with a B1 mix to prevent transplant shock.

Now in the whiskey barrel, we'll see how these carrots do.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Sufferin' Succotash!

Well, I'm back. Sorry that I had to take a little hiatus there but there was a family medical emergency that consumed us and my blogging time was one of the things that had to take the hit.

I've got a three-day weekend due to Labor Day so I'm scrounging in the garden to see what I can find.

There's some sweet onions, ready to go (above) and some chiles.

I pick a few and head over to Fresh and Easy (that's Tesco to my UK friends). In the day-old bin, I find some good looking summer squash and some grated carrot at marked-down prices.

I add the last of our zucchini, some baby gold potatoes, chop up an onion with three of the chiles.

It all goes into a recycled plastic bread wrapper (yes, we try to recycle everything here).

Throw in a dash of olive oil, some salt and pepper, shake up in the bag to mix everything up and coat well. Then I empty it on a sheet of foil paper.

Grill it on indirect heat for half an hour and serve with our entree. In this case, a very tasty flat iron steak.

Entire meal is around $6, shared with two people, most of that coming from the meat.

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Recipes for a Cheapskate Gardener - Barbecued Veggies

One of the best things about gardening is being able to create your own food from scratch...I mean REALLY from scratch...having everything in your dish come from your own yard.

You don't even have to go to the supermarket...

Among other crops this year, we grew corn, summer squash, onions, tomatoes, and carrots. This is how I use them in a summer barbecue.

First, I pick the squash, onions, carrots and corn and wash them thoroughly (except the corn).

Next, it's on to the tomatoes. Same thing...wash them well and set aside for later.

Chop up the squash, carrots and onions. Chop the onions very fine.  Dice the tomatoes and set aside separately.

Get a large ziploc bag. Put the carrots, squash, and onion in it. Also drop in around 3 tablespoons of olive oil, a teaspoon each of kosher salt, pepper, and chile powder. Seal the bag and shake it vigorously.

Now, get a sheet of foil paper and dump the contents of your ziploc bag on it. Loosely gather up the foil paper so that everything is wrapped up. Loose is the key word here, leave some gaps for the heat and smoke to permeate.

Start your barbecue, coals on one side (or if gas, leave at least one side unlit). Put the veggies in foil on the indirect heat side. Leave with lid covered for at least 30 minutes...you can use this time to cook the meat on the barbecue too.

About 15 minutes in, I throw the corn with the husks still on on the indirect side of the grill. These should be done at the end of the original 30 minutes too...they don't take as long to cook as the carrots do.

Serve as is on a plate and sprinkle some of the diced tomatoes and parmesan cheese on the veggies. The picture at the top shows what the veggies and corn looks like with my fabulous grilled duck breast. 

Aside from the meat, this meal probably cost me less than a dime. It is also fresher and tastier than anything you can get at a supermarket or a farmers market.  Can't you just imagine how good it tastes?

-Darryl

Copyright 2012 - Darryl Musick

All rights reserved

Carrots...Are They Worth It?

This is the second year we tried to grow carrots. They're not hard, until it comes to harvest time.  Not real easy to know when they're ripe and the roots tend to tangle in themselves.

Carrots are a great food. Very nutritious, easy to cook, and tasty. When kids try veggies, this is one of them that they usually end up liking.

So is it worth it? Maybe is you have more room than us. On our tiny plot of land, the carrots tend to get crowded. When you pick them, there is a lot of cleaning to do...after all, the edible part is covered with dirt.

You need to take off the crown and wash the bejeebus out of them.  If you get nice and straight carrots, fine...you can easily peel them with a potato peeler. If they get all tangled up with each other, like ours do, there's not much a peeler can to. You also end up with a lot of trash.

This is about 1/3 of our harvest this year. After spending a lot of effort to clean the last of our crop, I ran it through a food processor and will freeze it so we can use it whenever we need it.

Delicious things but thinking of the work, the water, and the fertilizer that went into this...and then seeing a bag of clean, peeled, baby carrots at the store about four times as big as this for $1.26...I'm going to say it's not worth it for us to keep carrots in our garden.

Live and learn, not every crop is going to be for you.

Darryl
Copyright 2012 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved