Crustless Quiche

Fresh spinach, greens and green onions from the cold frame.

Last night I looked in the cold frame for some ideas for supper. What I really wanted was turkey and dressing. That's about my favorite meal of the year, a turkey big enough to have lots and lots of leftovers. Turkey pot pie. Turkey sandwiches. Turkey hash. And finally, turkey soup from the bones.

But... it's not Thanksgiving yet and I wasn't going to cook a turkey just for supper for the 3 of us. So, back to the cold frame search. I chose a colander full of spinach, I had some ham in the refrigerator, I'd make a quiche. Barbara and Josh both like quiche.

One of my medicines (Cyclosporine), which is one of the anti-rejection drugs I have to take in order to keep my kidney, has pushed me to the border of type 2 diabetes. What that means, if you don't know about such things, is to get extra exercise and eat little or no white foods. Why white, you may wonder? White foods include bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, sugar, pastries, and yes, pie crust. I can eat a small amount, but the less I eat, the better for my health and quitting the anti-rejection drugs isn't an option. So I decided to make a no-crust quiche. I've done it before but I never write the recipe down. Maybe if I put it here, I'll remember for next time.

I started with 6 cups of fresh spinach leaves and put them in a glass bowl in the microwave. I pushed the "vegetables" button and let the microwave wilt the greens. While the microwave was doing its work I chopped a heaping tablespoon of onions and about half that amount of chives. Green onions work just as well. When the spinach was wilted, I drained the liquid and set it aside.

In a bowl I beat 4 eggs and added 1 large can of evaporated milk. I added a tablespoon of cooking sherry and about 1/4 teaspoon of hot sauce. Next I grated 1/2 cup cheddar cheese and mixed it in.

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees F. I have a favorite clay, deep dish pie pan from Hess Pottery (you may remember my earlier postings about them at the Reeds Spring Farmers Market; they've had national publicity for their perfect-baking pie pans) and sprayed it heavily with olive oi. I put a layer of already cooked and coarsely chopped bacon - 3 slices in all. On top of that I spread the wilted spinach leaves. I poured in the egg/milk and cheddar mixture and added 1 cup of diced ham and stirred in around slightly.

Tom Hess' pie plates bake perfectly on the bottom of the plate better than any others I've found.

The quiche baked for about 40 minutes then I checked to see if it was done by inserting a knife blade in the center. It needed to cook another 5 minutes, then I let it set for about 10 minutes while I got a salad ready - also from the cold frame.

And there it is, no crust quiche, easy and out of the garden. Here's the list of ingredients in case you missed them in the text:

See, it really doesn't need a crust.

No-Crust Ham and Spinach Quiche

6 cups fresh spinach, wilted and drained (or you can substitute 1 1/2 cups frozen, thawed and drained)
4 eggs
1 can evaporated milk
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
3 slices cooked and cut up bacon
1 cup diced ham
1 tablespoon cooking sherry or brandy
1/4 teaspoon any brand hot sauce
1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons green onions
Salt and pepper to taste

A pretty healthy dish. Spinach, onions and eggs, all came from right here on the farm.

Winter Cold Frames

Swiss Chard grows well in a cold frame.

I grew up reading Organic Gardening and Mother Earth News magazines. As early as the late 1950s, my mother was composting kitchen scraps and garden debris, turning it into rich soil from the directions in Organic Gardening. I remember stories in both magazines about Helen and Scott Nearing, a couple who retired and moved to the Green Mountains of Vermont in 1932 to establish their self-sufficient farmstead. In the articles they wrote, they explained how they were able to grow vegetables the year around, even in the harsh Vermont's winters by using cold frames. In 1952 they moved to Maine where they continued their back to the land experiments in gardening and self-sufficiency.

This is over a raised bed, 3 1/2 ft x 30 ft. long.

Eliot Coleman was another pioneer in the use of cold frames and wrote for the magazines I've listed. In 1968 he moved to moved to a farm in Maine, on land purchased from the Nearings. He used a simple hoop house made of bent pvc pipes, covered with 2 layers of plastic. You can see more of what Eliot promoted and his simple but effective methods here.

Over the years I have used the Nearing’s and Coleman's methods for growing winter produce by constructing simple cold frames in my own gardens. Our Ozarks climate is definitely milder than the mountains of Maine, and the methods are simple and even more productive.

The simplest cold frame I’ve used many times over the years is a rectangle built of bales of straw. One bale laid on its side makes up one end and 3 bales laid the same way make up each side, 8 bales in all. I wind up with a very basic cold frame with about 24-30 square feet of growing space. I till up the area inside with a hoe, smooth the soil and plant rows of lettuce, spinach, even onion and radish seed. (Mustard greens, kale, lots of other greens grow well, too). Then I lay down a little loose straw for mulch over the seed bed and cover the cold frame bed with an old window. Some years I use a couple of layers of clear roll plastic and hold it down with scraps of wood.

With only the sun for warmth, and ground temperatures, the hoop house produces all winter.

On sunny, warm days I open up the cold frame any time it’s above freezing. At night I pull the plastic or window cover over the top. Even in the dead of winter, when the ground is frozen and snow is piled up, I can go out to the cold frame, open it up and harvest greens and vegetables for the table. And the nice thing is, there are no bug pests in winter!

This year I’m using a somewhat different cold frame, more like Eliot Coleman's method. I used 8 ft. sections of 1 inch plastic p.v.c. pipe, bent into hoops over an existing raised bed. The bed is 3 1/2 feet across and about 30 feet long. I braced the hoops with a single pipe at the top of the peak, held in place with duct tape, then covered the whole frame with 6 mil. clear plastic. Currently I have spinach, cilantro, 3 kinds of lettuce, carrots, onions and radishes growing. Using this method you can replant and grow vegetables all winter long, like the Nearings did on their farmstead in Maine.

This simple cold frame hoop house produces food all winter.

This is a bit like Eliot Coleman's method except that I'm using a single layer of plastic rather than the double layer he used. Since I'm in the Ozarks and not in Maine, the extra insulation isn't needed. Rolled plastic has become somewhat expensive, too. I paid $68 for a roll of 100 x 16 ft plastic and about $2.50 each for the 8 ft lengths of 1 inch p.v.c. pipe.

The bent hoop in the foreground is an intentional brace for the smaller end of the tunnel.

Here's a read-made cold frame, below, that I bought last year and have used it for 2 seasons. It's too small for our use, but the nice thing is it easily comes apart and stores flat for the summer season. I can grow small amounts of greens without much work.

It just doesn't get any fresher or local than this!

What a Bee Sees

Ever wonder what a bee sees close up? Following here are a bees-eye view of what they see on their daily rounds through the garden. At the bottom of this blog post, you'll find a very brief survey. I hope you'll take my survey and let me know what you like reading here, and what you don't.

Bee on bean blossom.

Nectar from purple salvia tastes different from nectar from basil or bean flowers.

We, luckily, haven't had a killing frost yet (as of November 4) so the bees are still quite active every day. They're making up for time lost in the drought and heat of this summer when few flowers were blooming.

Up close and personal in a clematis flower.

Ever wonder if crepe myrtle flowers have a center? Just ask a bee!

If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you'll see it's almost sticky with nectar.

Obedient plant. Click it to see it up close like a bee.

I'm sure the bee moved on. This is a four-o-clock, inhabited by a spider munching on a fly. Yum.

You may not even realize that in the center of a zinna flower, are lots of little flowers. 

The tiny interior flowers of the green zinnia are less obvious and harder to see.

Tomato flowers, wonder what their nectar tastes like? 

Still, this late in the season, a cucumber beetle hides in the center of a rose.

Dew on a kale leaf. Bees see it as a drink of water.

Now for that survey I mentioned. It's quick, easy, doesn't hurt and I would greatly appreciate your answering my very simple, 5 questions about what you like to see and read here. Just click on the link and answer the quick questions. And thank you! I appreciate the feed back.
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22DPLE5TSDW

Ozarks Leaves

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I once ruined someone's dream. Not intentionally, but when the leaves start changing in our woods, I am reminded of the incident. I'd traveled to the jungles of West Papua, New Guinea to go trekking with a friend. We'd flown into the Belim Valley, a remote town with an airport so tiny all of the daily passengers could fit into one twin-engine Cessna.

The only accomomdations in the tiny town was a little guest house run by Ebu Hinkie, an elderly Javanese woman. The rooms were rustic, spartan, with a bathroom that consisted of a hole in the floor, and a concrete tank filled with water. To bathe, you dipped a bucket into the tank and poured it over yourself like a shower.

Ebu Hinkie (Ebu, or maybe it was Eboo, is a respectful term like Mrs. or mother) was large, always wearing big caftan-type dresses when she served our morning breakfast of fruit, eggs and toast. The dining room was a little room with a table and chairs, a big tea pot much like a restaurant coffee pot, always filled with boiling tea, and a little window. The wall behind the table and chairs, about 8 x 8 ft. held a mural of colored leaves in Vermont in October. It was a surprise to see a mural of Vermont, deep in the jungle of New Guinea, and one morning I inquired about it. "With this beautiful landscape all around you, why did you choose a photograph of trees in the United States?" I asked. Ebu Hinkie understood only so much English, and spoke less, but she replied, "It's my dream to some day, maybe see the place where trees are always like this."

She understood when I explained the leaves in Vermont are green, they only change to orange, yellow and red for about 3 weeks once a year. Ebu Hinkie's face fell. "Oh," she said and turned and walked away. Why couldn't I have kept quiet. I regretted crushing a simple dream but hopefully she had others that weren't so fragile. Here are the leaves in the yard this week. I wish Ebu Hinkie could see and enjoy them.

Sumac leaves. It's correctly pronounced shoo-mack.

Virginia creeper on persimmon bark.

Persimmons are ripe on our trees this week.

Hickory leaves.

Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) an herb, has yellow leaves and red berries now.

View of our Herb Shop with the hillside in the background.

I think the woods in the Ozarks looks every bit as good as Vermont in the fall of the year.

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Happy Halloween. Don't eat too much candy!

Fish House Green Tomato Pickles

This week I've been picking as much of the garden produce as I can before a killing frost comes. We've had 2 light frosts but even the basil plants haven't been hurt much. Yet. After a summer of drought and heat and low tomato and pepper production, those plants have gone into high gear, trying to catch up on production.

Adam, who I have written about here many times, left us with a fabulous fall garden. Too bad he didn't get to enjoy such lushness during the summer when he was farming the garden and selling at local farmers markets. (Adam left in mid September to work on a farm in Maryland for the winter; that farm sells at the DuPont Circle farmers market the year around).

Ten pints of fish house green tomato pickles.

I've spent the day today, putting up some of the excess produce. With all the green tomatoes, I wanted to use the smaller ones for fish house green tomato pickles. They're a favorite in the catfish restaurants in the South and it's a great way to use up some of the tomatoes. Josh plans on making green tomato mincemeat, too, for pies this winter.

Tomatoes ripening in the window.

The larger green tomatoes will simply stay on the kitchen windowsill where they will slowly ripen over the next couple of months. (I've used the wrap-in-newspaper method, which is a hassle, also the put-in-the-basement method, also a hassle to check every couple of days; on the windowsill, where I see the tomatoes every day, is the easiest and simplest and works just fine. Some years we have the last of our summer's ripe tomatoes on Christmas Day).

You can use green tomatoes in any recipe that calls for ripe tomatoes, too.

Here's the recipe in case you want to use up your green tomatoes:

Catfish-House Green Tomato Pickles

2 quarts quartered green tomatoes
2 cups chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped hot peppers
1/3 cup chopped sweet red bell peppers
2 cups sugar
3 Tablespoons salt
3 cups apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon yellow mustard seed

Combine ingredients in a large cooking pan and bring to a slow boil. Let simmer for about 5 minutes. Ladle into hot, sterile jars, wipe lip edge of jars, screw on hot, new jar rings and flats and lightly tighten. Place into a boiling water bath, with at least 1/2 inch of water above the jar lids. Bring to a boil and keep slowly boiling for 15 minutes (for pints). Remove and cool on a towel. Don't tinker with the lids, they will seal in a few minutes. Let cool overnight then label and store in the pantry. These are best after the flavors have matured, about 2 weeks or more.

Hot sauce with a kick, and green tomato salsa are from a single recipe. 

I also made a batch each of green tomato salsa and one of green tomato hot sauce. If you'd like the recipe for those, visit my recipes blog. Both are a combination of varieties of hot peppers and it's a tasty hot sauce with a real kick.

Freezing Pesto

Rows of sweet basil in our garden.

With predictions of frost in our area in the next week or so, friends have been thinking about ways to preserve basil. It doesn't have to actually frost, for basil to drop its leaves, just a very chilly night and the leaves start falling. I know my friends have been thinking, "pesto" because I've gotten 2 phone calls and an email, asking for a good pesto recipe. Here's my favorite and it can be frozen and kept for the winter months. Just fill ice cube trays with the fresh pesto, freeze, then pop out the pesto cubes into plastic bags and keep frozen until ready to use. And there's a simple trick to keeping frozen pesto tasting fresh (below).

Freezer Pesto

4 cups basil leaves, loosely packed
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons almonds or walnuts (you could use pine nuts, they're more expensive, but I like almonds better)
6 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt

Put everything into the food processor and blend ingredients until smooth. Scrape the edges to make sure everything has been processed.
Pour the mixture into ice cube trays, filling each section. Freeze for 24 hours, then pop out the cubes into Zip-Lock bags and keep frozen.

Now the trick. When you are ready to use pesto, combine it with half Romano, half Parmesan cheese, freshly grated if possible. Since those cheeses don't freeze well, the flavor of your pesto will stay much fresher if you don't put the cheese in the pesto before freezing.

Rose and Basil Pesto
Roses and basil taste great together!

2 cups fresh basil
1 cup fragrant *rose petals
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup pine nuts (I prefer walnuts)
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon food grade rose water
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice (don't substitute bottled juice)
1 cup Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
1/4 cup Romano cheese, freshly grated
Salt, optional

Peel and coarsely chop garlic, then add rose petals, basil, nuts and olive oil in food processor. Pulse blend until everything is well pulverized.
Add remaining ingredients and mix well. This can be stored for up to 4 days in the refrigerator.

*If you aren't sure what roses you can use, visit my YouTube video for tips on using roses in food.

You'll find more of my videos at http://youtube/longcreekherbs/ as well.

You might also enjoy my book, How to Eat a Rose, available from my website.


Another suggestion about pesto. Collect the leaves from plants that aren't blooming, the flavor will be better. Lemon basil is tasty mixed with sweet basil or any of the varieties. Thai basil is the least interesting basil for pesto, but even that works if you've kept the flowers clipped off.

Sweet basil is one of the best flavored basils for pesto. Clip off and discard the flower stalks.

Lemon basil gives a fresh flavor to pesto, so use it in combination with other basils if you have it.

Rosalind Creasy, The Edible Landscape

I'm excited to share with you a garden I was privileged to visit a couple of weeks ago. Rosalind Creasy has been gardening and writing about gardening for decades. Back when no one had heard about local foods and heirloom vegetables, much less edible landscaping, Ros was plowing her garden and planting the seeds that are now part of a nationwide movement. Her first book, The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, was published by the Sierra Club in 1982. To get an idea of what she started with in the late 1970s, here's a view of her front yard:

Just an ordinary house on a small lot. The book, and the garden, had not yet been created.

Roalind Creasy is a landscape architect with a great eye for design, so it is no wonder the simple lot went from that, to what you see below. Instead of filling the newly cleared spaces with more green bushy things (the kind of plants I claim don't pay their rent, meaning, don't justify the space they take up in the landscape because they give nothing back) she planted edible plants everywhere. Here's almost the same view just 2 weeks ago:

Rosalind Creasy meets ust curbside in her edible landscape paradise.

Here (above) is that pesky dividing strip between houses, neighbors driveway on the left, Ros' driveway on the right. What's there besides the little hedge that acts as a curb? A few flowers, but if you look close, there are 3 very large eggplants and a planter filled with sweet peppers of several varieties. Just think, most people make this spot lawn that has to be mowed.

Still curbside, the bed is filled with herbs, vegetables and flowers.

 

I took 2 steps to the right after taking the curbside photo, still at Ros' driveway. Remember that photo in the beginning of the blank looking front yard? The street shows in the lower right corner, the driveway in the lower left of the photo, and everything else, between, is edibles. Great, arching rosemaries, potted figs, tomatoes, oregano, nasturtiums. Keep in mind, I'm still in the street, I haven't even stepped into the garden yet!

Standing at the front door, looking toward the street.

If you could look to the left, near the blue-green lattice fence in the left of the photo, you would discover the chicken pens. School children make a bee-line through the front of the garden almost every day to check on and see the chickens.

One of two chicken pens in the back of the photo. This is still curbside, too.

We're still in Ros' front yard. Several kinds of peppers and squash are in this bed, plus some herbs.

I didn't count how many raised beds and planters there were in the front garden, but many. Ros has blackberries, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, herbs, roses (remember my How to Eat a Rose book? Roses are edibles, too) and so many more vegetables and fruit I don't even remember them all. You could feed a family from the front garden and that doesn't even begin to describe the back garden!

Rosalind Creasy's first book, The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping can still be found on Amazon. Her second book, Edible Landscaping, newly released is also available on Amazon as well as through your local bookstore. It includes the basics for how turn your front (and back) yard into something other than grass and bushes. Learn about growing vegetables and herbs in containers, learn about organic pest controls, composting and a whole lot more. This is a large, hefty book, and it's overflowing with information from someone who knows gardening.

When I asked Ros if I could see her compost area, it didn't surprise me one bit to find a wonderful, working, well tended compost system, landscaped, of course! The chicken litter, garden debris, kitchen vegetable scraps and other organic compostables, all go into the compost and get recycled as new, rich soil into the garden beds.

Garden waste in, organic soil out and no fertilizer required to grow a garden.

And one more growing area, in the photo below, still in the front garden between the street and the house. The chicken pens are in the upper right of the photo, near the street.

Click to enlarge.