Un-Stuffed Peppers

What do you do with all those extra banana peppers from your garden? You can make un-stuffed peppers, which actually is so easy and tastes great. Because of the simplicity it's great for a weeknight dinner.

Un-Stuffed Peppers

10 banana peppers, chopped (seeds removed)
1 lb ground beef
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce (24oz)
1 cup of brown rice, cooked
1 cup of shredded colby jack cheese
pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350.

Brown ground beef, drain fat and return to pan. Add garlic and peppers to pan. Season generously with pepper. Then add in spaghetti sauce. Mix and add in rice along with 3/4 cup of cheese.

Grease a 13x9 baking dish.

Pour mixture into baking dish. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top and place in oven for 20-25 minutes.

*Serve with garlic bread.

Little Garden, Lots of Work

I've posted before about our little garden and how well it was doing, which I am still thankful for but it has been quite a bit of work. I'm a little in awe of people who have large gardens, or even medium sized ones.

Now, I know we didn't have fields of corn but I made about 20 dozen ears of corn. Whether we ate it (probably 5 dozen), froze it, or put it into dinner recipes my husband husked and I made it. So I do consider that part of our gardening.

Freezing green beans too many times to count, canning banana peppers which I did again today, and canning chili sauce twice, well I was sick of our great little garden last week. I know during late fall and winter I will love taking something out of our freezer or off our shelves instead of buying at the grocery store but I had no idea the time it takes. I don't mind the work, but it takes a ton of time...especially freezing corn.

I need to give a great big round of applause to people who have medium or large gardens. I can't even imagine how much time and effort they put into it, I know it's a lot and I just think it's great. Congrats to you!

Basic Garden Vegetable Beef Soup

Anytime we start to get autumn-like weather, even if it's only for a day, my husband begins to ask for homemade vegetable soup. I always try to make a lot so I can freeze it and don't have to make it more than three times a year. It's really easy to make but it takes some time. With our green beans from the garden and fresh corn, I figured it was the perfect time to make soup, even though the weather isn't exactly cool enough to eat soup.

Diced potatoes cooking.

Basic Garden Vegetable Beef Soup

2 1/2 lbs sirloin roast, shredded (reserve 1 1/2 cups of beef stock)
2 large cans of crushed tomatoes (or use tomatoes from your garden)
2 cups red potatoes, diced and cooked (reserve 1 1/2 cups of water from potatoes)

2 cups fresh green beans
2 cups fresh corn (cut from cob)

Adding in fresh corn. 

1/2 cup carrots, sliced
1/2 cup peas

Place sirloin roast with 2 cups water in a crock pot (in the morning). Cook on low for about 6 hrs. or until you can easily shred with a fork. (I cut away all of the fat I can and season with salt and a generous amount of pepper before placing in crock pot.)


In large soup pot add crushed tomatoes and green beans. If you use fresh beans out of the garden they will need to cook just a little longer so I add first and cook for about 7 minutes. Add potatoes, corn, carrots, and peas. Stir and then add the beef stock and starch water to your desired consistency. Add in shredded sirloin and simmer for at least 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Salt and pepper to taste.

5 Easy Steps for Freezing Corn

Everyone in our family loves to have corn on the cob for dinner, actually I could eat it most nights for dinner, but they don't like to have it that often. My husband's grandparents have several fields of sweet corn and normally I go to their home and spend the day with them freezing corn for the fall and winter. This year, with two little ones, I thought it might be better to stay home and try to freeze several dozen. Might just be a little too much chaos for the great-grandparents and I can also do it on my own time and not feel bad if I have to stop because someone needs nursed. They gave us about eight dozen ears of corn and while my husband husked it, I came inside to get my stations set up and my large pots of water boiling. Everyone seems to have a slightly different method but mine is copied straight from my grandma. (She is such a wonderful person and she's been doing this for years, so of course she would know what's best.)

The first thing you need to do is husk all of your corn, within a day or two of picking or buying from a trusted vendor, so it's definitely fresh. I have never purchased corn on the cob from a large grocery store so I can't speak to how fresh this can be.

Stations
1. Boiling Station
Boil one or two extra large pots of water. Once the water is boiling, carefully place as many ears as you can into the pot. Boil each batch for about 6-8 minutes, when you start to smell the corn or when the corn becomes a brighter shade of yellow, remove each ear with kitchen tongs.

2. Cooling Station
Lay corn on a wooden cutting board or in a pan without stacking the ears so each one can cool just a little before you need to hold and cut - your hands will thank you.

3. Cutting Station
I suggest using a glass casserole dish and a very sharp knife to cut off the kernels. Place a corn ear in the center of the dish, holding upright with your left hand. Take the knife in your right and cut downward into the pan, cutting as much corn off the cob as you are able. Be careful not to cut into the cob and if this is your first time cutting corn, you'll become much better with each one.

4. Loose Corn Station
After cutting several ears and your dish is full, transfer loose kernels into a large bowl. You'll need to do this many times but it will make your job much easier than stopping after several ears to place corn into freezer bags and then returning to cutting kernels. It's also less messier to do it the way I have suggested.

5. Bagging Station
Once you have all of your corn cut and placed into large bowls use a measuring cup to put corn in freezer bags. Use your own judgement in distributing but for 2 adults and a 5-year old, I place 2 1/2 to 3 cups in each bag.

Now all you need to do is clear out room in your freezer for the bags. When you decide to use a bag in the fall or winter, (or in my case - about a week) pull out of your freezer and heat. It's so nice to have corn like this instead of canned corn.

Do you have your own special method or do you add butter or sugar? Please share your methods or steps by commenting on this post. Thanks!

Canning Chili - All in the Sauce

For first time gardeners our little garden did very well at the beginning of summer, my son and I were able to freeze a lot of green beans and can a ton of banana peppers. I'm not sure why everyone says 'canning' when they go in jars but that just shows my lack of experience. I'm sure there is a good reason, I just don't know it. Anyway, our tomatoes seemed to be just flourishing at the beginning of summer, lots and lots of green tomatoes, the vines seemed to be growing quickly, and both my husband and I thought we would get too many. Ok, that's not exactly true, I was afraid we'd get too many and I would be juicing them for chili for many, many hours without much help. Well as summer progressed the tomatoes didn't seem to be ripening and no matter how many time we tied the vines to stakes they always seemed to collapse. Now I became a little disappointed because I did want to have some chili sauce stored for fall and winter.

The worry of too many tomatoes comes from when I had juiced them once before when my son was just a baby. It was my first time, it took me all day, did I mention my son was a baby (2 months old) and I was a first time mom and my father-in-law set it up for me in my kitchen with a carpeted dining room attached and I don't like huge messes. I knew I had to do it but I really didn't enjoy it. I remember crying.

After that first experience I was a little hesitant to be excited about doing it again, five years later. I knew it would be great to have the chili but wasn't exactly looking forward to the process. Well this time was completely different - it was FUN!

My husband and I picked as many as we could and he had guessed that we had at least 20 pounds and they should give us a couple quarts. I washed and cut the tomatoes while he put the juicer and table together OUTSIDE! If you can do this outside, do it outside; the tomatoes and juicer make such a mess.

Once we juiced all of them, we brought the pot inside to mix the chili seasoning and bring to a boil. I boiled the chili sauce for about 15 minutes while I brought the cold water bath up to a boil. As you can see from the pictures we don't have the correct pot for the cold water bath. I put the chili sauce into the quart mason jars and my husband lowered, kind of dropped the jars into the water. I boiled the jars for about 20 minutes and then he lifted them out. We also don't have the jar lifters to lift them out so he used mining gloves and a set of tongs. I highly recommend buying the necessary equipment if you do this because we both burned our hands and splashed boiling water everywhere. He guessed from the pot of sauce we'd get six jars, I guessed seven - we were able to successfully get 7 quarts of chili out of our little garden.

Takeaways from today's process:
1. Juice tomatoes outside
2. Have help
3. Get the right equipment

Previous gardening posts
Momma's Little Gardner
First Garden, First Peppers

Momma's Little Gardener

After canning the peppers, my son and I decided we would try to freeze some of the green beans from the garden. He was not very interested in helping me pick the beans off the plants, mainly due to the fact he didn't want to search for the largest ones. We do have a couple really little beans in the mix but now there is a variety.

When I picked all that I thought could and came inside the little guy stood on a chair at the counter and helped me snap off the ends to get them ready to boil.

While he was busy snapping I got the large pot of water boiling. We placed all of the beans in the boiling water for about four minutes and while we were waiting those quick couple of minutes my son got the ice bath ready.

When we both started to smell the green beans we immediately cooled them in the ice water. This was my son's favorite part, mixing and dunking the beans in the ice. After they thoroughly cooled we placed them into the freezer bags.

This is such an easy process and perfect for a five year-old because other than the boiling water, he can help with everything. An additional bonus was that when his dad came home from work, he was able to go through the step by step process and tell what he did to help.

First Garden, First Peppers

This year my husband wanted to plant a small garden, he talked a lot about it to me and our son but had discussed waiting until next summer. I wasn't necessarily keen on the idea of starting a garden this year so I avoided the conversation and didn't ever bring the topic up. However, as you can clearly see from the post's title, we have a garden. I was extremely apprehensive because little potted flowers don't do well when I take care of them.

My husband planted beans, banana peppers, bell peppers and tomatoes. We thought he planted hot peppers but they are all banana peppers, we were kind of disappointed about this but we'll know for next year. Our family doesn't eat a lot of tomatoes unless they are in salsa but one year I juiced a ton of tomatoes to can the sauce for chili. My husband loved the taste and ease of having huge mason jars already prepared. So we have seven tomato plants and because this is our first time even having a garden we weren't really sure what to expect or how many we will get.

Our first garden.

I have to be completely honest, I wasn't actually sure we'd get anything to grow, I mean I know nothing about gardening. Nothing! But my husband is a natural.

Well the first thing our garden produced was two red ripe tomatoes. I can't even begin to tell you how excited and pleased I was that things grew. I spent a lot of days weeding our tiny garden - enough that it almost became an obsession to keep all the weeds out. In hindsight we should have sprayed weed killer all over before we planted anything but we are learning as we go.

Kids with first tomatoes
from the garden.

A few days after the tomatoes we also had about four banana peppers. We ate those but decided with the next batch that were ready to be picked I would try to can them. I searched multiple blog sites and popular recipes for jarring them but remembered that my aunt and uncle jar hot peppers each year and they are delicious, plus they stay super crispy, crunchy.

Their recipe is very simple but has been very effective for them; I'm hoping it works for me too.

Hot Peppers
Boil together:
1 Quart Vinegar
1 Quart Water
2 Cups White Sugar
2 Tablespoons Oil
Put peppers into jars with 1 clove peeled garlic and 1 teaspoon salt in each jar.
Pour HOT brine over peppers and put lids on, no need to cold pack.
Makes about 7 - 8 pints.

Now because we only had enough peppers for four small jelly jars I cut back the recipe to fit my needs.

My fingers are crossed that they stay good and crunchy, please keep yours crossed for me.

Banana Peppers