happy 2010 and cast iron mixed berry cobbler

first meal of 2010.

homemade buckwheat blueberry pancakes and caw caw creek bacon.

happy 2010 folks. i have many goals set for myself this year and will eventually gather a list up for you to include more details in regards to the following:

1. learn to type without looking at the key board. 

2. learn more and more about gardening/farming and take a few workshops/classes. 

3. get my butt in gear when it comes to my photography and enter a handful of shows. 

4. cook, cook, and cook some more in my cast iron cookware... hopefully even try cooking outside on an open fire/hot coals. 

5. start and complete some promised crafts to folks.

6. eat right and exercise more.

7. sew more. 

 i think that list will do for now, don't ya think? so far on the second day of 2010 i have done NONE of these things.... well i did make chicken fried vension cube steaks and a berry cobbler in my cast iron skillet yesterday for our new year's day feast. so let's talk about that so i can feel somewhat like i accomplished part of a goal. 

first i started with a little glass of organic red wine.

did i tell you that wine was on sale for 20% off a 1/2 case. so ray bought a whole case!

and not only did he buy a whole case of wine, but the little booger had all day thursday off as well. so i sent him down to the happy cow creamery farm store to pick up some supper supplies. and even though we reviewed the list numerous times and spoke multiple time on the phone, i still forgot some things. so here i was with no eggs (sorry no cornbread this year), no apple cider for braising the collard greens, no hot sauce for the beans and rice, and no buttermilk for the cobbler topping... oh well, i just had to make do with what i had. 

no apple cider..... so i used up the rest of a bottle of apple juice that ray found hiding in the back of the frig and juiced up some local apples that had been hanging out in the crisper for a few months. this actually worked out just as good, if not better, than the apple cider.

aaahhhh, new year's day feast.

*local organic collard greens braised in freshly juiced local apples flavored with caw caw creek bacon

(i forgot the onions in the greens, but they were still yummy)

*brown and wild rice with carolina plantation cowpeas

(again i forgot to add onions)

*organic mashed potatoes with happy cow creamery sour cream

*chicken fired venison cubed steaks fried up in local caw caw creek BACON FAT!!!!!!!

since ray has moved on to homemade morning muslix with yogurt for breakfast, we have some let over frozen berries in the freezer that need to addressed. so to move that along, i made a mixed berry cobbler. (blueberries, a handful of strawberries, and some left over wild blackberries that we picked this summer) it was awesome, cause not only did it taste wonderful, but i made it in my cast iron skillet. 

oh you so need to make one!!!!!

mixed berry cobbler with a biscuit like topping

for the filling: 

about 4 cups mixed fruit (mine was frozen)

1/2 cup water

2 T cornstarch 

(go for the organic non-GMO kind)

1 T lemon juice

about 1/4 - 1/3 cup sugar

(i use a organic raw sugar cause i like the taste and the big crystal are great when spread on top of the cobbler crust. you can also use more sugar if you like, but i don't like my sweets super sweet.)

for the biscuit like topping:

2 oz. butter

1 cup flour

about 1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup milk

2 tsp. baking powder 

(mine is a homemade baking powder of 3 parts cream of tarter to 1 part both baking soda and cornstarch)

1/2 tsp. salt

pre heat oven to 400 degrees. disolve cornstarch in water. add mixture to berries and sugar in the cast iron skillet. cook until the berries start to get mushy and the liquid starts to thicken. meanwhile, make the topping like you would a biscuit batter (although this will be a bit more like the consistency of a thick cake batter). add in the sugar and milk at the very last and try not to over mix. plop little dollops of the batter onto the berry filling all over and don't worry about spreading it out over the mixture. sprinkle a bit of the sugar over the topping. cook in the oven for about 25 minutes until golden brown and bubbly. cool for a few minutes and enjoy!

drivin' n cryin' over radishes

radishes at day 30ish

so the radishes should be ready, right? well crap. mature in 25 days my arse. and i was all ready for a seedling salad with radishes and buttermilk herb dressing. but no, this is what i get......

yummy roots?
well let's look a little harder.....

3 very small peppery tasty treats.

so i've been letting the radishes hibernate a little longer in the ground and i'm going to pull them up this weekend at 47 dyas and see what i get. i don't know what went wrong. did i not sow my seeds deep enough? hopefully it will just be that i picked them to soon and this weekend will prove to be more productive. but all in all, the north garden is looking really pretty. and even if i don't get around to eating anything from the fall garden, it sure has been fun watching everything grow. and if nothing else, i always have my swiss chard. i mean really, you can't kill this plant. i cut back some more leaves and pulled up a few sad looking plants that were getting shaded out by the bigger ones, and threw it all in a little pile underneath the garden hose and look what happened......

IT'S GROWING OUT OF THE TRASH HEAP!!!!!!!

and not just in one spot, but 3 separate spots.
CRAZY!!!!!

and it's hard to be too sad about the radishes when i still have the cutest puppies in the world....

sweet babies enjoying the sun.

and i finally got around to cooking up some more of the "ass load of deer meat" in the freezer....

what started out as a roast, turned into more of a stew.

and i had a little extra time last week to finally organize my cooking cabinet.....

can anyone say "sleeping with the enemy?"

and in fun stuff news, ray and i were able to catch a free in store appearance by my long time favorite band from atlanta, drivin n cryin. see that groovy dude in the back banging on the drums, that's my old friend dave. ah, brings back memories.....

hey what a minute.... i thought this amp went up to eleven??!!??

july 4th blackberry pickin

fresh and FREE blackberries!!!!!

no stinking serial killer is going to stop me from going into the woods to pick fresh and FREE blackberries!!!!!!! ok, so the serial killer is technically in gaffney, which is about 1.5 hours away, but i still got ray to come with me just in case. plus if i get attacked by bees or bears, someones gotta call 911. or i could just use my natural defense of scary faces and funny hats.....

really..... would you mess with this crazy lady?????

so for what i thought would be the last weekend of berry picking, off me and ray went to gather food. as it turns out, there are still quite a few berries that won't be ripe for about a week or so. therefore, i get one more round of picking before my trip. YEAH!!! here are some pictures from our blackberry excursion this morning.

a pickin we will go.
a pickin we will go.

oooohhhhh!!!!!!

yummy!!!!!!!!

you can't really tell in this picture, but all up in there is blackberries galore.

oh so many.

and still there is more.

well yesterday was the 4th of july, of course, but since we drove all over last weekend for the farm tours (pictures coming soon), we decided to take it easy this weekend and stick close to home and try to relax. after a quick trip to the farmers market in the morning and a stop at the raw dairy where i totally scored a pound of raw sweet butter, we decided to make a tasty, and pretty darn local, holiday lunch. ray cooked the venison tenderloin to juicy perfection and i made us a quick fresh summer salad that we enjoyed out on the back porch with a beer and the puppies.

fresh summer salad:
fresh garlic (that grew up from the buried kitchen scraps in my garden) sauteed with local onion, local organic zucchini, and dried herbs from my garden.
fresh local corn cut off the cob and kept raw for the salad.
organic grape tomatoes from florida.
topped with fresh basil from my garden and some spinning spider goat cheese that we picked up, fresh from the farm, last weekend on the farm tours (i swear, pictures are coming soon).
all dressed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.

so good, so clean, and soooooo fresh.

and beer.......gooooooood!

cleveland was pretty tired, so he took a nap on the new rug.

maisy opted for her usual place of underneath ray.

and now today, since i cleaned yesterday, all i have planned to do is to work on making my small kitchen veggie scrap compost bin and for linner (lunch/dinner) i am making some sort of chicken enchilada casserole and blackberry bread pudding. i also need to work on my dress in the worst way or it will never be finished for my portland trip. some fabulous person left me a comment the other day asking how my dress was coming along, and to tell the truth it isn't. but today hopefully that will all change. but not if i don't hurry up and get off the darn computer.....

my dress so far..... the pattern has been taken out of the package.

time to feed the tomatoes.

while the tomatoes feast on compost tea and eggshells, while the air gets warmer with small bouts of heavy rain, and while i sit in here typing away on the computer, the garden is just going to town folks. it's getting harder to stay caught up. but i guess really, in truth, that's a good thing. i've got lettuce coming out my ears with plans on planting more, the brussel sprouts need to be thinned out and rearranged, i need to find or construct some space for crowder peas (like now!!!), and i need to cut down the peas to make room for the 2 squash plants we bought at one of the asheville tailgate markets this weekend. not to mention that i have yet to come up with a plan for the fall and winter gardens. and the cleaning around here NEVER ends (you folks with kids, how do you keep sane??). the dairy yesterday was out of butter and eggs, my legs are killing me from jogging, i haven't had a decent BM since i ran out of yogurt, i keep forgetting to order keifer grains, and ray is yelling from the living room that he is bored but doesn't like any of my suggestions of what to do today. but when you think hard about it, if those are my biggest problems right now, i am doing really great. we both still have jobs, the dogs are healthy (although cleveland has developed a wart on his muzzle that continues to grow. it's probably just canine papillomavirus, but i'm taking him to work sometime this week just to be sure), and two different farm tour weekends are coming up. so it's a local we will go. till then let's play a little catch up with some garden goodies and darn good dinners.

high in calcium, the tomatoes are supposed to like eggshells.
although i think they like the compost tea more.

back to the earth you go.
coffee and kitchen scraps ready to be buried under the t.v. dish.

lettuce.
seeds came from a packet labeled summer mix.
there is more where that came from.

not to mention all the strawberries around here right now.
we are having strawberries with just about everything.
strawberries with cornmeal pancakes and local pastured raised bacon.

little strawberry puddings.

homemade yellow cake and organic vanilla ice cream with a quick and easy strawberry sauce.

fresh garden greens, local strawberries, local pasture eggs, raw walnuts, and crackers left over from ray's lunch.

we also had a good bit of peas.
more than i though we would get from only about 9 plants.

venison burger with local onion and homemade roll.
fresh garden greens, raw peas from my garden, cucumber and tomato from local farm.

time to harvest the last of the spinach that was planted last fall.

first harvest of the rainbow silver beet chard.

i harvested the spinach and the swiss chard so i could make a savory tart.
cornmeal crust, spinach, chard, eggs, onions, and local feta cheese from split creek farm.
this my friends was GOOOOOOD!!!!!!!

so good in fact, that ray requested another one......

second savory tart with a few changes from the first.
this one had roasted onions and tomatoes with chard, yellow squash, eggs, and feta cheese.
it's so good and lasts for days in the frig making a few yummy lunches during the week.
can't wait for all the tomatoes in the yard to start coming in.
i see lots of tomato tarts in my future.

more fancy mixed lettuce harvested from the garden.

that lettuce was used to make a salad of fresh mixed greens, homemade wheat noodles, cheese, venison meatballs, and raw peas.

this weekend we bought some of the last asparagus from bi-low farms at the greenville saturday market. we ate some for breakfast the next morning with goat cheese and green onions from asheville, local pasture eggs, peas from the garden, and more local strawberries.

all this food is making me happy, but i am also sad, cause i am down to the very last few pecans that we collected from my grandmothers yard during christmas. but not to worry, i have already scouted out a few areas to forage for even more nuts this year.
there is a tree at work, a few trees here on the subdivision property, a co-worker of ray's says her sister always has more than she can use, and of course the 17 trees at grannies. hopefully, once we get a big freezer, i will be able to collect enough to last me a whole year.

i scream, you scream, we all scream for...applesauce!!

homemade local pink lady applesauce

applesauce, it is SO good. and i am not talking about that hideous crap you get in a jar at the store. we're talking homemade baby. oh no, you know what that means?? yep, let's add applesauce to the list to things that i will NEVER again buy at a grocery store. not only did this applesauce save the local pink lady apples that we have been storing in the bottom of the frig since october/november, but it was awesome and made a seriously good snack at work for a week. of course, it was after i made my sauce that ray saw on t.v., if you leave the skins on while cooking, they impart a nice floral taste. but then of course you need a food mill to remove the skins, which i do not have. so now that means i am on the hunt for a nice, but used, food mill. either fairly new or, hopefully, i can find a cool vintage one still in good shape. the hunt begins!!!!

i made mine in the crock pot and it couldn't have been easier.
peel and cut up apples till 3/4 full.
add 1/2 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
some cinnamon
cook on low for 8-10 hours
enjoy!!!!
(don't forget to keep the peels and bury them in the garden.)

and while we are on the subject of the crock pot. i also made some chili the other day which was super yummy as well. same basic chili recipe (just changing the veggies a bit) that i have used before, but instead of using canned beans (which i am trying not to buy any more), i broke into my stash of dried beans in the cupboard. i am not sure which beans these are, but i used two different kinds for the chili. one bean i think i purchased as a dried bean, and the other i got fresh but never used before they were starting to dry out, so i simply laid them out to dry all the way and stuck them in a jar. i don't know how well that works for long time storage, or what kind of bacteria i am subjecting me and ray to, but we ate the whole pot and survived just nicely.

i soaked the beans in some water for quite a long time before adding them to the chili to cook.


let's see, we have hamburger deer meat, carrots, onions, celery, can of tomatoes with the juice, the beans, a bit of tomato paste, tamarind sauce, salt and pepper.
throw it all in the crock pot and cook on high till beans are tender and everything is super yummy!!!!!


served with a little shredded raw milk cheddar cheese and some homemade thyme irish soda bread and you gotta a meal!!!

(OOPS..... so the bread that is pictured on the plate with the rabbit in the previous post, was not actually the irish soda bread. it was the super ugly loaf of wheat bread that i made. fortunately, even though it was really nasty to look at, it was tasty. my bad!)