Potato Soup

We had another homegrown meal today. I made bread bowls and potato soup..yum!!

On the bread bowls, I used this recipe from AllRecipes.com. The only change I made was I only split the dough into 4 portions, not 8, to get decent sized bowls and I didn't do the egg wash. On the soup, I started out with a recipe from The Best Recipe (awesome cook book, highly recommend it to anyone learning how to cook because they explain WHY they tell you to do certain things). I made a few changes though, so here's what I actually ended up doing:

2-3 tbsp olive oil
2 small onions, diced (from the garden)
3 pounds red la sota potatoes, peeled and diced (from the garden)
4 cups vegetable broth
2 cups whole milk
toppings

1. Saute onions until translucent. Add potatoes and very briefly saute
2. Add vegetable broth and bring to a boil
3. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, until potatoes are very tender
4. Ladel portions into food processor (I have a kitchen aid, a blender would also work) and process until smooth
5. Stir in milk and simmer until heated through
6. Fill bread bowls and top with shredded cheese, bacon and chives


Was listening to our local gardening show on the radio this afternoon. I didn't hear much of it, but the part I did catch let me know that we are primed for lots of early blight and powdery mildew this year. joy. Like it's not bad enough in a normal year. We have been spraying neem oil and have had great success in cutting down on pest problems. Hopefully this keeps the early blight and powdery mildew in check as well (since we've already seen a little of both). TennZen also did a great post today about making your own insecticidal soap. Very cheap to make your own and will work great on pests. You can use left over soap to make your own clothes detergent. I didn't go that route because it hasn't helped me with powdery mildew at all in the past and I didn't feel like I had time to "play around" before getting everything under control this year.

Harvest News

We've been able to harvest some things from the garden. Rather than pulling everything at once, we are trying to eat out of the garden when possible, so we've been (for instance) pulling one potato plant and leaving the rest to continue growing. The exception is the onions, which have had to be pulled sooner than expected (either because they started to bloom or because the tops fell over on their own), but there are still plenty of those in the ground as well. Current harvest totals (starting from the first of April):

10.5 pounds onions
3 pounds potatoes
1/4 pound green peas
5 pounds of strawberries (not including ones we threw straight to the chickens as a treat)
4 peaches
about 10 carrots

Unfortunately, the peas were hit with powdery mildew. They handled the last of the winter weather well and were very tasty, so we'll be a little more serious about growing them next year (they were an experiment this year). The potatoes are currently giving about 1/2 pound per plant, but the longer they stay in the ground, the more that number increases. There are about 70-75 plants still out there. The strawberries are still blooming and covered in berries. There are plenty of onions and carrots still in the garden. One peach tree has given up all its peaches now (some to the squirrels...) and the other has set fruit and I suspect will be giving us peaches in June. The pear tree that bloomed is doing well and the pears are getting bigger. Beans, tomatoes and peppers have all set fruit. The chickens are giving us 4-5 eggs per day.

I Scream for Ice Cream

I decided to make ice cream yesterday and got a little creative with the flavoring:

Pina Colada Ice Cream
This was to fill a full size ice cream freezer, easy to scale down for smaller freezers

2 cans coconut milk
4.5 cups whole milk
2 cups sugar
1 cup shredded coconut (optional...I liked it, Sierra didn't)
1 small can crushed pineapple (I drained it)
1 tsp coconut flavoring (again, optional)
1 tsp vanilla
about 1.5 cups milk---to bring volume up to fill line (I used evaporated milk because it's slightly thicker and sweeter than regular milk and I had it on hand)

Mix all ingredients and freeze according to machine directions. Once soft set, spoon into containers and freeze for 2-3 hours before serving. Very, Very yummy.

Customer Service

Sierra is amazingly astute about the importance of customer service. I'm beginning to think that on her days off from school, she should be a trainer for a certain nation-wide fast food chain. Yesterday she was playing "restaurant" and I over hear her saying, "There you go Sir. You have a nice day!" When I told her it was naptime, she turned back to her game and said, "I'll be right with you, I have to go take a nap real quick".

We had another run-in with McD's recently and Sierra reminded me yet again that they just aren't very nice and we should eat somewhere else (believe me, we only go there about once every 2 months as it is since the last incident). This time around, I wrote a letter and got one back basically saying, "We'll be right on that". Yeah, sure they will. I have the distinct impression that since this location was locally owned and I was from out of town, they just didn't care. You'd think someone higher up would clue in that I don't care who owns what, I associate McDonald's with McDonald's, not a specific local owner. I've worked in retail. It's not fun. Sometimes you run into rude customers. By and large though, people are nice if you're nice to them. More importantly, I always had the very clear understanding that my level of service determined the number of customers, which determined whether I had a job or not. I can't figure out why that knowledge is lacking in the McDonald's chain.

(Oh, and for the record, yes, I write letters to complain, but I also write letters to compliment excellent customer service)