Our Fall Garden...

is growing strong :)

It is such a treat to pull open my creaking and quite visibly crooked garden gate with my kitchen bowl in one hand and a the warm fingers of my little one in the other as we tromp together through the weeds and grass that have now taken over the paths between the rows and search for the delicious treats that are waiting beneath their coverings.

We have been enjoying the extra beets I planted this summer immensely! Oh my goodness are they yummy. All of the children love them so I've been boiling them up by the pot full for our dinners and eating the leftovers cold in salads and the turnips are a special treat for me :)

The cold weather has begun here and the temperatures have been dropping to just above freezing or slightly below at night. The perfect temperatures to sweeten them up just right. Who new one could get so giddy over vegetables *grin*.

Along with the vegetables there are a few flowers and herbs still thriving. One of my favorite herbs is my Mullein (verbasacum) with it's giant fuzzy leaves and towering spears of little yellow flowers reaching for the sky. The kids love to pick the leaves and rub them on their cheeks as they are just as soft as a bunnies ear :)

They are a wonderful herb for coughs and asthma to. The leaves and flowers contain mucilage which can be very helpful in soothing coughs and acting as an anti-inflammatory for the lungs. I myself make a tea from the dried leaves and flowers and drink it to help with my own asthma :) Another wonderful thing to make with it is to make an oil with the flowers to treat earaches. So many wonderful uses and it self sews rapidly providing fuzzy leaves the first year and flower spears the second year :)

Do you have a fall garden planted? What sort of vegetables are you growing?

Hugs,
Rosina

Purple-licious Beet Ravioli ~ Recipe

I promised you a great beet recipe and here it is!
A delicious pasta made with fresh beets from your garden and turned into a stunning purple ravioli :)

Don't you just love the color of this?!

To get your dough started you need to cook 3 or 4 fist sized red beets with their skins intact and just the tops trimmed off. That will keep them from bleeding to much in the water as they cook. It takes roughly 30 minutes for them to be fork tender when tested and once they are cooked you can dump them into your sink and you just grab them and give them a bit of a squeeze and they will pop right out of their skins *grin*.

You need two cups of pureed beets so add them chunk by chunk into your blender until you reach the 2 cup mark and then you will continue pureeing them along with 1 egg and 1 tablespoon of olive oil until they are nice and smooth.

To finish your pasta dough you will need:

2 eggs
3 1/2 cups of flour
1 teaspoon salt

Place your flour and salt in a large bowl or directly on your counter and make a nice big well in the center. In the well add your eggs, and beet puree.

With a fork slowly start to beat your eggs, mixing them into your beet puree and then start to gradually pull the surrounding flour into your wet ingredients until it has taken on a dough like consistency and you can start to work it with your hands. It takes about 10 minutes to get a beautifully soft and silky dough by hand or about 6 minutes if you are using your mixer with the dough hook attachment :)

Once you've finished kneading cover your dough with a greased bowl and let it rest for 20 minutes.

Now comes the fun! Using your pasta machine work your dough through it, dusting it with flour as necessary and gradually tightening the rollers until you have a really thin dough roughly 3mm thick. If you don't have a pasta machine you can definitely use your rolling pin to roll out your sheets of dough as well!

I made a really quick potato, bacon & cheese filling by steaming potatoes until tender, mashing them smooth, adding 1/2 pound of cooked and crumbled bacon, one medium sized sweet onion that I diced and sauteed, stirring it all together and then seasoning it with salt & pepper.

My husband loves this perogi type filling but you could easily use spinach & feta or pine nuts & chard with goat cheese or... well the possibilities are endless *grin*.

Place a teaspoon sized blob of your filling in increments roughly 2 inches apart down the length of your first piece of dough and then top with a second rolled out length of your beet dough. Then using a butter knife or pizza cutter slice each section of dough apart and fold each edge over itself and lightly press it with a fork to seal each little ravioli pocket.

That's it! You've got some beet-a-licious ravioli to serve your family :)

To cook your ravioli bring a large soup pot of salted water to a boil and cook your ravioli for about 10 minutes. You don't want to cook them at a rapid boil though as this might tear your little raviolis apart so reduce the heat so they gently boil in the water. This will reheat your filling and make sure that the thicker folds of dough around the edges cook through.

You know I completely forgot to take a photo of them cooked! We were so excited to taste them that we devoured them before I even thought to grab my camera *grin*. I can tell you that it was plenty for our family of 5 for dinner with fresh garlic bread (there's a really easy recipe here) and a cucumber salad. Mmmm, so good!

Have fun making some for your family :)

PS. Check out the Wholesome Whole Foods and Food Renegade weekly link up for more great recipes and articles :)

~ Rosina

Pickling Beets

I think I must have lost a day just boiling and chopping beets! *grin*. Today I finished the last batch of pickled beets with the 2 canner loads I picked from my moms garden the other day :) I've got 16 quart sized jars full of the little maroon beauties.

I also found a great way to add my pickling spice to each batch of pickling brine.... I used my tea ball!! Instead of tying up the spice in a cheese cloth each time I just refill my tea ball and drop it in with each new batch. Love it :)

I'm tempted to go and pick some more beets tomorrow and I've got a great beety recipe all planned for you on Friday *grin*.

~ Rosina

Bumper Crop of Beets

My mom has an AMAZING vegetable garden every year and this year she has a bumper crop of beets. Of course she is more than happy to share her vegetable wealth with her daughter LOL.

So this morning after feeding the cow the kids and I walked over and brought our wheel barrow along with us *grin*.

My mom and I plucked out beets by the handful and my dad cut off all of the beet tops. Dad's getting out of the house more now so it was great to see him doing something he enjoys :) By the time we were finished there was heaps of beet tops that are going to be a wonderful treat for the cow tomorrow morning....

and plenty of beets to take home and cook up! I boiled up 2 big canner loads this afternoon. I just love how easy they are to prepare! After they are cooked their skins just pull off like butter and tomorrow I'm going to chop them all up and make pickled beets. SO GOOD.

Beets freeze really well to so I'm going to get a couple more canner loads sometime this week and get them frozen up so we can enjoy them all winter long :)

~ Rosina