Pie from sweet potatoes frozen in paper lunch bags.

You might remember my experiments with freezing squash in brown paper lunch bags. Yesterday, Em found a bag in the kitchen freezer that said, "Sweet Potatoes for Pie - 10/09/09" and took it out to defrost. He was ready for his sweet potato pie.

Neither of us feel well yet after he caught the cold/cough in Northern Nevada at the end of last month and shared it with me, but he went to the store and bought two frozen pie shells and was determined to make this pie. That was yesterday. He asked me to find him a recipe for it and I had that ready this morning right out in the open for him to read along with a stick of butter and the bag of sweet potatoes that we'd put in the frig overnight, but he fell asleep instead. So, I asked if he'd like ME to make the pie for him and he said, "I'd LOVE for you to make the pie; I only seem to have enough steam to walk to the couch and lie down."

My plan was to begin a tradition of Frugal Friday meals starting with some tuna/quinoa patties mentioned at What's Cooking?, so I went outside and scrounged up an onion or two and some cilantro for that one. After I made the pie, though, *I* only had enough steam to walk to the couch, so we're having frozen pizza tonight and Frugal Friday will be tomorrow night. That explanation was to explain why the ingredient photo for the pie includes onions and cilantro.

The equivalent of two sweet potatoes were put in 3 layers of brown paper bag. After defrosting, I was able to save all 3 bags; they weren't wet at all! Of course, I had to scoop them out of Em's hands before he threw them away.




The batter still had some lumps because I hadn't fully cooked through the sweet potatoes as indicated in the recipe I sorta used (with changes based on reviews). They were simply the sweet potatoes "processed" and then defrosted.



We both helped lick the bowl from the batter and we're gonna LOVE it.

Lower fat, lower sugar crockpot granola or I wonder why we don't get sick from eating old food.

My insanity kicked in again this week, so I made granola (still using the crockpot) using less oil & sugar. Here it is cooling.


The recipe was the very first recipe in Google's list. I stopped there because I had all the ingredients and because I probably tend to eat a bigger bowl of granola when I eat granola than some other people might and every time I dish it out I think, "Well, there's about 1000 calories."

While the granola was cooking, I decided to make something REALLY healthy for lunch. REALLY healthy means low-fat AND incorporating fruits/vegetables. As I said, my insanity kicked in again this week. I ended up cooking quinoa, adding cottage cheese, frozen peas (defrosted slightly via rinsing), chopped onion, orange bell pepper, watermelon, black grapes and several dashes of white pepper. I couldn't remember the ratio for water to quinoa, so did another google and learned here, "Quinoa should be stored in the refrigerator or freezer if storage beyond a month is desired. " Say WHAT? The quinoa we ate today was purchased in May of LAST year, frozen for several weeks just to kill any insect eggs that might have been in it, and then put into what looks like a repurposed glass salsa jar in the pantry. The sunflower seeds and flax seeds I used for the granola today are even older than the quinoa, and they may not even have been frozen before going into the pantry. My dried fruit doesn't get used often enough to be eaten anywhere remotely within the expiration dates (if they even have any - I usually pick them out of bulk bins).

No. 1 shared a watermelon with us on August 22 and we're still eating off of it long after she said that her portion went bad. Looks fine TO ME, and tastes delicious:


Sometimes I'm too ignorant to know when food is designated "bad". No. 2 cut the grey/brown parts out of avocados when she was here, but I just ate those parts along with the green parts and never noticed any taste difference between green and grey. Sometimes I simply don't care to know when food is designated "bad" like when the dried blueberries MIGHT be more black than blue. Sometimes, I think it's wasteful to throw away food stuffs that look and smell fine. Other times I think either there's not a lot of credence to these food storage guidelines or that my storage conditions are superior to those used to develop the guidelines. The watermelon has been at the rear of the top refrigerator shelf (where temps are inbetween those of a refrigerator and freezer), for instance, and the indoor temperature of our house never fluctuates much beyond 75-85 degrees with low humidity. No. 1 and her husband closely follow guidelines with NO exceptions, so I must be careful to serve them only the freshest food if they eat here. Do you follow guidelines or tend to use your eyes and nose to make your own decisions?

Back to Gardening.

A week off for vacation and then another week off to nurse chicken pox led to insects trying to walk away with my garden. As if the heat of a Texas August isn't enough of a deterrent, I'm also still too tired to do much, but I'm going to start with a little each day and work myself up to the larger tasks. Weeds (mostly grasses) are a concern, but I'll worry about them after I get the insects in check. The plants are all large enough to compete with the grasses for nutrients, but insects can wipe out a mature plant in a matter of days.

Not enough squash left for squash borers to be a problem, but there are plenty more willing to wreak havoc in a North Texas garden. This week, I'm spraying stems and leaves with a home-made concoction which consists of a little bit of rubbing alcohol mixed with a squirt of dishwashing liquid, two pinches of sea salt and a pint of water. I'm doing this as the last phase of mealy bug control. While I was off doing other things, these bugs totally wiped out a Costaluto Genovese tomato plant and made inroads on surrounding plants. The first day, I pruned and used the Q-tip removal method on large infestations. Now, I'm down to the mild infestations coupled with prophylactic precautions. My largest spray bottle only holds a pint, so I've been making one bottle each morning and each evening, making my way from the infected area to other areas. I'll probably continue doing this even after I've sprayed every area, doubling back to spray again as the need arises.

I tend to greet Spring with high garden ambitions, make too many gardens for one person to tend, and then fall down in the summer heat. This year is no exception, but I intend to continue the gardens into the fall and maybe even year-round this time, so might use the heat of this summer like many people use the cold of the winter and plan methods of controlling grasses/insects before the fall planting. The trick will be matching the budget to Em's aesthetic requirements. I'm also rethinking a few other practices that relate more to my philosophies than anything else. I might address that in a future post.

We're finally getting some chili pepper fruit, so Em's licking his chops in anticipation of some firey dishes. Unfortunately, the tomatoes aren't fruiting right now, so salsa won't be an option. Here's a photo of the south end of the east fence garden. I don't have a zoom function on my camera, but maybe you can discern the Peter Peppers along with zinnias and a Black Krim tomato.



Ripe Peter Peppers look like red penises, it seems. I swear I didn't know that before I planted them. Heh. They're only about 5000-10000 on the Scoville Scale, so somewhat hotter than a jalapeno, but not as hot as the Chiltepin growing nearby:



The asparagus are still ferning (their first year), competing with grasses much like everything else. They tend to want to lay rather than stand up straight, so I MAY think about some kindof sling support to gather them closer to the fence and away from where there's SUPPOSED to be grass in the yard. As it is, they fall into the grass and unless I'm there to hold them up, Em either can't mow there or mows over them. Neither is desirable. I haven't seen any insects interested in the asparagus or sweet potatoes [knock on wood]. Maybe it's too early for them.



The sweet potato plants are all still doing well, if I ignore how the nearby gardens are encroaching on their beds. The culprits shown here are Fox Cherry Tomatoes.



The three I picked before vacation are now cured, so we'll be eating those shortly. I'm thinking about ways to store the ones yet unpicked. Basements are rare in North Texas because there's rock under us. I'm thinking I could put them in a large picnic-type cooler with maybe a few cold packs in a closet somewhere, swapping out the cold packs once/day or so to maintain a temperature higher than a refrigerator yet lower than the temperature inside the house. Suggestions are welcome. The four beds I have this year came from the smallest of last year's one bed (left on the bathroom windowsill like an elementary school science project most of the winter in water. Last year's one bed was started from a section of sweet potato purchased at Kroger that sprouted before we got around to eating it.

The fruit bushes planted this year had few successes. It looks like one raspberry plant is making an attempt to fruit, but it has a little damage which I MIGHT have attributed to being next to the Costaluto Genovese tomato I lost to mealy bugs or even the zuccini that I lost to squash borers, but I have a 2-year old raspberry plant on the west side of the house that looks the same way.



LOTS of the 25 bushes I planted in early spring ended up doing nothing. I don't blame the vendor for that, as they sat in my office for several days (maybe even a week) before we got them into the ground. Bottom line: The plants got here before I was ready for the plants. On a sadder fruit bush note, Em hired some guys to mow the lawn in the front and sides because the lawn mower Em was using lost the ability to propel itself. These guys didn't mow down the 2-year old raspberry bush on the west side of the house, but they totally (POOF!) eliminated the two 2-year old blueberry bushes on the east side of the house. Without a Trace is NOT just the name of a TV show. SO disheartening! They were JUST starting to look like they'd adjusted.

Overall, the state of the gardens right now is "waiting on tending" while "taking over the world". They're trying to run together and grow all over each other while grasses, weeds, and even trees take advantage of the chaos.



It's that time of year again.

Summer Squash Freezing Experiment.

Surfing for information on the absolutely EASIEST method of freezing summer squash, I ran across the following entry:

"I got this advice from a friend of mine who puts up lots of veggies for the winter. I have put the yellow squash in my freezer according to her instructions, but have not actually taken any out and cooked it. She says they will keep 3 or 4 months with this procedure. Wash the squash and dry. Do not peel. Prepare brown paper lunch bags by slipping them one inside the next until you have about 4 layers, then slice the squash and place them in the inner bag. Fold the tops down a couple folds and staple the bag shut. She has been doing this for a long time with large amounts of both yellow and zucchini squash, so I trust her that this works. Harlean from Arkansas "

Never having tried to freeze ANYTHING from my garden previously, I was impressed with the simplicity of this method. MOST begin with blanching. But, who wants to blanch if blanching might not be necessary?

So, I sent a smoke signal up for Diane and we started discussing this "paper" method when I ran across a later post from the same OP.

Notice how 4 bags went to 3: ThriftyFun. Diane and I got to talking again, and I decided to give it a try as soon as I found my brown paper lunch bags (which happened today).

I was up to 4.5 squash today (with the .5 losing half due to squash borers), so I chopped 1.5 for the first batch (sliced) that used 4 paper bags, 1 squash for the second batch (sliced) that used 3 paper bags, 1 squash for the third batch that was left whole and used 3 paper bags.





Put all three in the chest freezer in the garage and will wait a respectable time to allow the bags to fall to the bottom and offer the test of time before reporting on results.

Opinions are welcome on whether 4 brown paper lunch bags represent a bigger carbon footprint than one plastic freezer bag AND (assuming this method works) your guess on WHY.