Harvest Suppers

Some of you know that I am not a cook. I would much rather be outside digging in the dirt. But, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. And fixing supper for Huny is one of those things even though I did make a full disclosure before we got married that I DID NOT COOK. I'm still trying to figure out how I got the bum end of this deal.

So, now that I have this garden and have all these vegetables growing, I'm trying to figure out what to do with it all. Salad's are wonderful and yummy, but I've got to do something different with some of it. I pulled out my ton's of recipe books (funny thing to have for a girl that doesn't cook) and tried to make sense of it all. I ended up making a partial Chicken Cacciatore. Partial because at the time I didn't have any tomatoes ready to come off the vine.

Partial Chicken Cacciatore (cooked in a crock-pot)

1 medium onion, sliced

4 stalks of celery, sliced

5 leg and thigh chicken pieces

2 cloves minced garlic

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon oregano

1/2 teaspoon marjoram

1 bay leaf

1/4 cup white wine

Place sliced onions and celery in bottom of crock-pot. Add chicken pieces, minced garlic, salt, pepper, herbs and white wine. Cover and cook on low 6 to 8 hours.

I served this with fried chunky potatoes cooked with rosemary and some sliced sweet banana peppers.

The last couple of nights Huny has wanted omelets.

Huny's Omelet

2 eggs

salt and pepper to taste

dash of milk

chives, cut

1 sweet banana pepper, seeded and sliced

1/4 cup bell pepper, seeded and sliced

1/4 cup onion, sliced

grated cheese (I used Marble Jack)

Saute, peppers and onion. Remove from pan. Mix eggs, salt, pepper and milk and add chives to taste. Pour into hot pan and cook until it's almost cooked all the way through. Place peppers and part of the cheese on one half of eggs and fold over the other part of the eggs. Allow to cook and then flip to cook other side. Place the rest of the cheese and more chives on top. Cover and let cheese melt. Serve.

Yesterday I added some of the chicken from the Partial Chicken Cacciatore.

Except for the eggs, chicken, celery, garlic, salt and pepper, wine and cheese, everything came from the garden. So satisfying.

My harvest from last night:

Sadness! My zucchini growing so beautifully and looking so healthy died! I don't know what happened to it, so I gave it a proper burial in the trash bin. May it compost in peace.

A Walk in the Wilds of Denton...

Down the street is an empty field that has wild blackberries in it. One morning I decided to go pick some. I walked down the street with my harvesting bucket and with my head filled with visions of blackberry cobbler, blackberry jam, blackberry pie.

After braving the thorns (ouch!) and fighting the birds for that one ripe berry, I came home with....

1/4 cup of berries.

Sigh.

Today's Harvest

I went for my morning walk and came home to see what was ready to pick for today's salad. Well, there are a few tomatoes, but they are not quite ready. I've eaten all the ripe cherry tomatoes, save one from today. Huny has given up on having some of those for the salad. I just can't help it! I love them!

Mom likes to tell a story of a time when I was a baby girl and got lost. They searched up and down for me and finally found me sitting in the middle of the tomato patch eating cherry tomatoes. Wish I could remember that. I'm sure it was pure heaven.

Our Sweet Banana Peppers are going crazy though! I picked one for the salad and the other two to slice and deseed and serve with some ranch dressing for an appetizer. There are still quite a few on the plants for tomorrow. These are just two and one hiding in background, but there at least five more on these two plants.

I still have lettuce going. I planted these from seed so that is whey they are still here but it is starting to get hot out so I don't know how much longer they'll be around.

I also got some chives and and a green top from the Walking Red Onion. It may not seem like much but this is good for Huny and me for our dinner tonight. I'll just add some feta cheese, olives, sunflower seeds and dressing and I suppose I ought to split that one little cherry tomato with him.

Piggly Wiggly, Down Home, Down the Street

Well, only for a few more days and then Piggly Wiggly is gone for good.

When I was a little girl I lived in El Paso, Texas. Across the street a ways was the local Piggly Wiggly and that is where we shopped for the necessities. For me it was chocolate candy, but for mom it was milk and eggs.

When we moved from El Paso, I never thought of it again until I met Huny and started visiting him in Denton. The directions he gave me that first time were to take a left where Piggly Wiggly is on the corner. Huh? I'll be durned - there it was - a Piggly Wiggly on the corner.

After I moved to Denton, the Pig was the place to stop for that one thing I needed for supper that night, milk for the morning cereal, or to do some grocery shopping. Even though the prices were kind of high on some things, I shopped there as much as possible because I have always been a big supporter of the local mom and pops. I always hit the vege aisle first because they would take their "day-old" veges and bag them up for $1.00! I saved a lot of money doing that and I got some good stuff too. Pigs carried a lot of local vendors in the store so that was even better. The regular employees had been there forever - some over 30 years - and slowly we got to know each other and they became somewhat of an extended family.

A few weeks ago I noticed that some things were going away - the magazines, books. The canned coffees were not being replenished - things like that. Slowly I started to hear rumors that the store was in trouble. Last week there were signs all over the place of 30% off - STORE CLOSING!

SADNESS!!

It all having to do with a bankruptcy. A local buyer was looking to buy, but that fell through.

So now, another neighborhood store is closing. I'll have to go to the big box chain grocery stores where I won't know the cashier and the cashier will be too busy to get to know me. I may have more of a variety, but at what cost? It just doesn't seem worth it to me.

I'll miss this icon of another time, the local neighborhood grocery store.