Delicious Pork Jowl Bacon : Less Expense, Higher Quality

Who knew it is SO GOOD when fried?!?!?! Oh my goodness... it is our new favorite variety bacon!

Sprouting Out Tomato Seeds For This Year's Garden

There are lots of seeds still in their little damp paper towels getting sprouted. Yesterday I took the varieties that have sprouted and moved them into their little seedling pots.

I saved egg shells to use for this, we will see how well that works.  We have a lot of calcium in our water, but places that don't might find this technnique useful to help prevent Blossom End Rot.

There are several previous posts about how to start tomato plants from seed. Click here to go to the first one, and when you get there, you'll see links to the others. :-)

We had thunder storms night before last, and this is a part of the country where the saying applies: "Thunder in February, Frost in April"!  I never plant before Easter because of late frosts, but I always start a lot of extra plants in case my first planting freezes to death!

Moving My Tomato Seeds Into Peat Pots

The little sprouts are ready to go into the seed starting medium now! :-)

How To Make No Knead Ciabatta Bread

The person who has never made yeast bread before might enjoy making ciabatta bread to start. This recipe lets you be very stingy with the Yeast and flour both, so it is super economical... and there is no kneading at all!  Although I used my mixer to stir it up, it would be about as easy to use a spoon. There's also no "mix the yeast with warm water and wait": the yeast goes right in with the flour.  The only thing is, you do have to start the day before!  Try it, and enjoy your own delicious artisan sandwich bread.

How To Make Olive Salad For Muffuletta (Olive Tapenade)

I took a few liberties to reflect some of the ingredients we have on hand, including using some of my own home-canned pickled onions and pickled green tomatoes. I suspect there are lots of substitutions one could make to perfect it as "your own". :-)

Grocery Diary Middle Of January & Thoughts on Panic Buying Before a Snowstorn

I started keeping a grocery diary to track how my shopping has changed since I began raising and canning much of our own food, and since I resumed stocking up as a part of preparedness. I don't have to shop as often, and spend far less when I do go to the store. It also takes less time to shop now that I only have to walk around the perimeter instead of up and down every aisle! :-)

How To Create A Morel Mushroom Habitat and Plant Morel Spawn

Morel mushrooms are a rare delicacy.  Like truffles, they have their own unique flavor that is nothing like the usual mushrooms that can be grown in cave-like "farms". They only grow in nature, and have peculiar habits.   I've never lived where they grew naturally, but I've heard tales about people passing knowledge of their secret morel gathering place down through the family.  They are expensive, and I have only tasted them once, when a restaurant used a small dried one to flavor a sauce for pork chops.



Who knew? Someone has a strain of Morel mushroom spoor that can be semi cultivated, and now we can each try our hand at developing a morel plot of our own. Here is my video showing how I dug my habitat for them. The link to the company that I bought them from is on the video comment. :-)

Black-eyed Peas with Sausage

This is an old favorite that I often made for supper year round when the kids were home. It is an easy dish to make after work. May God bless you and yours, and all of us, and may God Bless America again in 2015.

When a friend gives you Basil... make Pesto for the freezer!

My latest video gets you ready for one of the easiest, quickest, after-work home cooked meals there is: Pesto with  pecans! :-)  Enjoy!

Foraging Wild Foods In Our Yard

Introducing... Pecan Corner on You Tube! Canning, Cooking, Southern Food and Budget Abundance

As Paul has gotten better, he is now feeling like doing more even though he is still mostly house-bound. He has watched a lot of You Tube during this past year, and we've been discovering the amazing channels ordinary people have.   Now we are one of those!  :-)

Pecan Corner on You Tube won't have any political content (that is for the blog! :-) ), just my natural life-long "how to" preparedness. I have always kept a well-stocked larder, and we practice a concept I call "budget abundance" that allows us to still enjoy a high quality standard of living without debt and within a tiny budget. This is especially important during difficult economic times,

Videos so far include how to make prickly pear cactus jelly, canning apple pie filling, seasoning your own breakfast sausage, and inexpensive old fashioned home-cooked meals that can feed a family healthful food for very little. There are also recipes of products I make for my little Cottage Food home business - things to sell at farmer's markets and roadside stands. As we go along, I'm sure my other hobbies will find their way into it as well: letterpress printing, gardening, foraging wild foods, and our new-found fun: Living History and historical reenacting!

I hope you will subscribe, there will only be one a day so it won't overwhelm your inbox. They say You Tube now rates channels by subscribers as well as views, and I have monetized the channel so perhaps one day it will contribute a bit to the household. If nothing else, it is something fun we can do together, to make new friends and enjoy trading knowledge with others.

Here is a sample! Thanks for checking it out! :-)

The Odd and Wild "Texas Persimmons" Are Ripening Now

The Wild Texas Persimmons are ripe! These turn black when ripe, and unlike orange persimmons, they don't need a frost. The trees are small and look almost like an under-story live oak, except their bark and trunks remind me of crepe myrtles.  They would be a good landscape tree - but they are male and female so you need several trees for them to be fruitful. Here is an excellent page to help identify and learn more about them:  BackyardNature.net's Texas Persimmons Page

Our friend Herb gave me a bunch and I turned some of them into Persimmon Jam. The final product is very tasty, reminiscent of molasses - dark and thick and rich and full flavored. They are don't have much acid in them, so the rest of the pulp I canned in my pressure canner.  Our friends tell us it makes fantastic persimmon bread. They made a wonderful pie, using a recipe that is similar to a pumpkin pie, nicely spiced with evaporated milk. I'll post the recipe here when I get it.

These fruit are quite challenging to process, because they are so soft, and each contains multiple large seeds. Putting them through a collander or a jelly strainer leaves far too much waste. I tried several different methods of separating the pulp and finally settled on using a strong mesh bag with very small holes. The ones with diamond shaped netting are too large and allow seeds to escape into the pot, but the bags that grapefruit, oranges, lemons and other citrus come in, with small square shaped holes, seem to be perfect for it. I just scoop the whole fruit into the bag and squeeze it with my hands until all the juice and pulp is out. This method also cleans the seeds well  - they are surrounded by a tough membrane that is as edible as the rest of the pulp but otherwise difficult to remove.

The color is very off-putting for me. It looks and feels like working in crude oil or blackstrap molasses and gets everywhere.  On the plus side, while the unripe ones make an indelible stain, the ripe ones seem to stain at about the same level as plum peelings. One woman, Deb McClintock, has been using the green ones as yarn dye (and wow does she have some gorgeous colors), and also the green ones were used to make ink. But they seem to reach a point on the tree that they will go ahead and ripen even if picked - which is not the case with the wild orange ones in my experience.

 Overall, the reliable test of ripening speaks strongly for these fruits. The American Persimmon that I grew up with in Oklahoma is difficult to rely on because of the need to be certain every single fruit is ripe before using them. These black ones can be confidently used when they are fully black and soft - no astringency at all at that stage.

I was also excited to get these because I want to save the seeds. I have a little display of native wild flower seeds that I sell at our Farmers Market and other events, and I wanted to add this great Texas Native to them. Also, reenactors may know that persimmon seeds were used as buttons during the difficult times during and after the civil war when real pearl or metal buttons were unavailable. They are very hard and naturally smooth, as well as uniform in size, which makes for good buttons.

There are not many trees that offer such a wide range of potential products in such a small package!

How To Make Whipped Cream Without An Electric Mixer, Using Only a Whisk

A little secret about milk is that the higher the fat content, the longer it will keep in the fridge. So "Heavy Whipping Cream", which has so much fat you could make butter out of it, can be bought a week or two ahead of time to be used for making whipping cream at a moment's notice.

My grandmother, Mema, made whipped cream from scratch - we never had cool whip or dream whip. It tastes divine and once you have developed a taste for it, the other products taste artificial and waxy. She used an electric mixer and I usually do too, but for a small amount to serve one or two people, it is just as fast to whip it by hand.

Here is how you do it:

Buy only heavy whipping cream or whipping cream. You can't use coffee cream or half and half. You can't use "fat free" cream. Highest fat content is essential.  Keep it very cold, but don't freeze it - alas nearly every brand today has additives that cause it to separate when frozen.

You can freeze the BOWL though, and using a chilled bowl will make it whip faster.

Pour about 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup of heavy cream into your chilled bowl and beat with a whisk (any kind of whisk will work as long as it is clean - don't use a bamboo one unless it is new, because they are hard to clean completely and may retain oils and flavors of other foods they were previously used with).

Beat for about 1 minute, then add one Tablespoon of granulated cane sugar.  You don't need much sugar usually because the cream itself is naturally sweet. So take it easy, you can add more later if it isn't sweet enough. Also add 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract (vanilla also heightens the sweetness of foods, reducing the amount of sugar needed). Continue beating for another two minutes or so until the cream is stiff enough for your liking. Taste and see if it is sweet enough.

Pile it on top of cake or pie or ice cream and serve!

Refrigerate any leftovers immediately. :-)

O Tomato! Beautiful Heirloom Varieties I Am Gathering Now!

Tomatoes here are finally ripening and I am gathering about a peck or more each day.   I lost track of what tomatoes I have where since replanting them after the freeze, so as they ripen I am looking back at my lists to figure out what they are. We are having a lot of fun tasting these different varieties that we have never had before.

Chocolate Cherry - Just today I picked the first 4 of these, have not  tasted them yet. Weirdly, all of my cherry tomatoes are running kind of behind the full sized fruit. Maybe they will keep coming all summer though. 

Brandywine or Cherokee Purple? - I have a couple of plants with nice big 8 ounce pinkish tomatoes that have green shoulders, and the green is as sweet as the pink. Great flavor, nice and sweet. 

Rutgers are doing well too for me, making big red orange fruits. I think they would be great for fried green tomatoes because they are so meaty. 

Japanese Black Trifele (anyone know how to pronounce that?) is Paul's favorite so far. Wow, what flavor. I have gotten 6 tomatoes from the plant so far, and the new fruit is a long way from ripe. This is them, below - they have a nice mahogany brown color when fully ripe, and delicious complex flavor. 

Porter are awfully pretty and uniform. They look like pink eggs, weigh about 2 ounces, and have a good flavor. I am saving seed from them to plant again too.  Look how attractive they are in the two photos below!  They are producing to beat the band. 

Henderson Pink Ponderosa is doing great for me and I like them. They are a nice size, uniform and attractive. 

When you don't spray for bugs, the bugs do share the produce. This photo below shows different problems my tomatoes have - not many fruit have these issues, but a few.

The big Brandywine or Cherokee Purple (I have never see either - help is welcome) with green shoulders is one the grasshoppers have been snacking on. See how they kind of "mowed" along it?  That portion can be cut off and we can still eat the tomato but no one would want to pay for it.

To the left of it, in the top center, is a Pink Ponderosa that some kind of caterpillar or grub has drilled into - just as they have done to the Homestead tomato on the far left and the little cherry tomato.  These have to be thrown away because the damage inside is far greater than the damage outside. I don't even bother trying to "save" these fruits.

The white papery patch on the big Rutgers is sunscald. Although I let my plants sprawl, some are still exposed to constant sun, and it has been in the 90s all week. I don't see this on every variety, but perhaps these large fruits are more sensitive for some reason.

Yeeecccch. Enough of ugly tomatoes. Here is a prettier picture to end with, These gorgeous Costoluto Genovese are ripening...

I am mixing the varieties all together when canning, just using whatever is ripe to fill quart jars. That way I can put up two or three quarts at a time instead of trying to hold them. I am doing a water bath using my stock pot with a small rack, instead of my canner. Since I have a smooth top range, this works well for me.  

Remember to follow the instructions at the National Center for Home Food Preservation in ALL of your canning methods to be sure you are preserving safely. PickYourOwn.org also has a lot of great recipes and instructions.  Both are linked  from my sidebar, over to the right.  I don't get anything for recommending these - it is important that we learn how to look after ourselves in safe ways so that we feel completely confident in our own knowledge and ability. 

Tomato Vines Loaded with Green Fruit: Heirloom "Costoluto Genovese"

I have only picked a couple of ripe tomatoes so far, but the vines are all full of green fruit. This variety I grew from seed that I bought from Park Seed. They are called "Costoluto Genovese", an Italian heirloom tomato that is supposed have an intense flavor that makes them good for canning and sauce. I love the lobed shapes on these! 

I planted many different varieties, and in the first planting I had a nice chart of which were where. But after they all froze to death and I had to scurry to replant, I didn't track placement. So until they ripen, it is hard to tell which is which. These Genovese ones are unmistakeable though. 

Mid June Garden Update: Chard, Squash, Onion Braids, and Waiting For Tomatoes!

I think the rumors that this is finally an El Nino year may prove true. God has been watering my garden every week for about a month now - including one eight inch gully washer that really DID wash a gully into our driveway - washing the gravel down onto the side of the street with the force of the runoff. I need to go shovel the gravel back into place.

It was so COLD this year! Every time we thought winter was over we would have a cold snap! I think the temperatures slowed everything down. Many things kind of just sat there, waiting. Then the past couple of weeks, things have started happening. I've been gathering Swiss Chard for about a month, baby beets with their tops on for a couple of weeks, and yellow squash all this past week. Just picked the first cucumbers today.  The grasshoppers have arrived and we are having to share with them, but they are not the plague they have been the past two years. The Deer Fencing WORKS and deer have not entered my garden since I hung the mylar on it!

My onions are finished for the year. Have I mentioned that I really LOVE growing onions. You can plant them during that cabin-fever time when it seems like spring will never get here, freezes don't hurt them.
They mostly take care of themselves, and when they are ready to be picked their tops just fall over one night. They are easy to gather and store for a long time.

This year, I planted late so a lot of mine were small.  I braided the large ones to hang for storage, and tied little net bags for the small ones. If I can raise enough onions next year, maybe I can demonstrate how to make the braids at the farmer's market.

So far, so good on my tomato plants. The vines all have green fruit on them but none ready to pick yet. It was about 3 weeks ago when I saw the first baby tomato, and over time each other plant has developed fruit.  I have lost 3 plants to an odd ailment in which the  leaves curl up lengthwise and feel hard and leathery. The plants continue to flower and even put on some fruit but they seem to dehydrate from the inside out and gradually shrink in on themselves. There are no yellow or brown spots. Everyone else I have talked to around here has mentioned this happening to their tomato plants too. From what I have read, it may have something to do with the cold nights and hot days. I have fertilized them twice since planting.

The Eggplant is starting to set fruit and there will be peppers to pick soon (peppers are another thing I really enjoy growing, but I only planted two kinds this year). Only one melon plant came up so hopefully it will bear a few cantaloupes for us.  I need to plant black eyed peas and some more beets.

All my jars are washed, and I bought more Food Saver material rolls for freezing.  Ready to start preserving any day now.  I have already made one batch of purple plum jam, and hope to go next week to pick peaches at a Pick Your Own nearby - look over on my right sidebar for a widget to a great site for finding U-Pic farms and orchards in your area.

Now if those tomatoes will just hurry up and ripen!!! :-)

In The Garden After 8 Inches of Rain - and the Deer Fence is Still Working!

We have had torrential rains for the past few days. It has been wonderful - all the tanks and ponds are filling up, the trees and gardens got a good drink, and even the lakes from Brownwood to west Texas have received a good amount of runoff. It bodes well for a good summer. Thank you Father God for giving us rain in due season!

We got about 8" total at our house over the course of several days. Although my garden is on a drip irrigation, nothing will make it grow like a good rain. My dad says rain water is full of nitrogen. Seeds I planted a month ago never sprouted until the rains we had about 10 days ago, despite having been watered consistently with the drip.

I wish I had been able to plant more before this rain, but I needed to do some major weeding before anything new goes in. So...  I spent about an hour this morning pulling bermuda grass in the garden. YUCK Pulling weeds with tap roots is kind of satisfying, but pulling grass is just drudgery. I may lay carpet over it this winter to kill that patch that does not want to die.

The ground was still awful squishy but I wanted to get after that dumb grass. I got the front half of 4 rows done, need a couple more hours to finish getting the grass out, then I can move to the regular weeding. Hopefully I can finish before it dries out again. Daddy gave me my grandfather's cultivator which works great between rows and has helped a lot, but there are still a lot of careless weeds and such within the rows that have to be pulled.

The tomato plants mostly look good, with many blooms but I don't see many fruiting yet.  Yellow and White onions are nearly all ready to cure, and in  fact most of the yellow ones are laying out drying right now. The purple onions are still bulbing.

The chard and beets are finally getting going. My chard plants have done famously, and I was able to take some to the Farmer's Market on Saturday, but the chard seed waited on the rain to sprout.

My Deer Mesh Fence has been WONDERFUL! Can you see it in the photos? This plastic mesh fencing is almost invisible, and I tied strips of mylar along the top. Before I added the mylar, deer ran through it nightly - actually, they would jump the mesh, then get scared and run through it to go out. So I put a piece of mylar every 4 or 5 feet. Since then, they have not bothered my garden at all.  It crackles in the breeze and makes a noise which probably helps keep them out too.  That is pretty impressive because they LOVE swiss chard!

I used Easy Gardener DeerBlock brand - made in Waco Texas - and just attached it to T-posts with zip ties.  Some of the extra hangs over at the top to flap, and I let some excess puddle at the bottom because I have read that loose net barrier might keep snakes and small animals out. Seems to be working there too.  So for about a hundred dollars I have a good solution. I will take the mesh down at the end of summer and save it to use again next year.

How To Make Gumbo Using Browned Flour - In A Hurry and On A Budget

I have seen articles claiming that it is now "cheaper to eat out than to cook". That is simply not true, and this recipe is a great example. While the McDonald's "Dollar Menu" may have a lot of $1 items on it, you are not going to be able to feed yourself for $1. But I cooked this recipe at home, and we enjoyed real comfort food for a total cost of about one dollar per person for the entire meal.

In the days before fast food, people had shortcuts they used to make it easier to get dinner on the table. One of those tricks was to make up some things for the week in advance. My first mother in law made tortillas fresh every morning, but she cooked one pot of beans on Monday, put it in the fridge and dipped out of it each day to make frijoles refritos.  Many Louisiana cooks made up several days' worth of roux at one time, saving themselves about half an hour of stirring at the stove each day.

A trick we had not seen before is to brown flour in the oven to use as a base for the roux. I tried this and when I put it into the hot oil, it browned up beautifully in about 5 minutes.  Wow. This gumbo turned out great, and only required about an hour to make. Paul gave it two thumbs up. Ethan and Chelsey left the rodeo to come get a second bowl to take back and eat in the stands!  So without further ado, here's the recipe. And below the recipe is a breakdown of the cost.

How to Make Browned Flour:

Line a baking pan with aluminum foil and sprinkle two cups of white flour over it evenly. Place in a 350 degree oven and bake for 30 minutes. It won't look very dark but it is done by then. Remove from oven and cool. Break up any clumps with a fork or sifter. Store in a jar until ready to use.

Quick Chicken and Sausage Gumbo Recipe 

1/2 cup of bacon grease, shortening or cooking oil
3/4 cup to 1 cup of browned flour
1 bell pepper, chopped
2 onions, chopped
1 cup of chopped celery
2 to 4 cloves of garlic
1 to 2 quarts of water
1 pound german sausage, sliced and browned
1 rotissery chicken, removed from bone and chopped (or 1 to 2 pounds cooked chicken)
1 Bay Leaf
1 tsp Thyme
1 1/2 pounds sliced okra, fresh or frozen (two 12 oz bags if frozen)
2 cans diced tomatoes with juice
2 cups dry white rice, cooked
Creole Seasoning or Hot Pepper Sauce

If you use a rice cooker, get it ready with the two cups of rice and turn it on now. Mine requires 51 minutes to cook that amount of rice, and it holds it hot for a good half hour. Don't be tempted to cook the rice in with the gumbo - it will turn into a goopy mess. The rice must be cooked and stored separately.

Have vegetables chopped before starting on the roux. Also, make sure the little ones are safely occupied somewhere out of the kitchen during this first phase so that you won't have to stop stirring until it is done.

Heat grease or oil in a deep pot, then stir in browned flour. Cook on high and stir constantly until the mixture is a rich caramel color. Don't turn your back and don't stop stirring! This took me about 5 minutes.

 When the color is right, put the onions, pepper and celery in and stir it all together. It will be thick and clump up. That is ok, don't add liquid yet, let it cook for about 3 minutes.

When onions and pepper have softened up, after 3 minutes or so, slowly add a quart of water and use a whisk to incorporate the flour mixture well.

Add Bay Leaf, Garlic, and Thyme. DO NOT SALT - the Tony Chachere's and other creole seasonings have salt in them and can be added at the table to taste.  Of course you can season while cooking if all of your bunch like it hot, but sadly I can't handle the heat, so our hot peppers get added at the table.

Brown the sliced sausage in a skillet and pour it and the pan drippings into the gumbo.  Add the coarsely chopped, cooked chicken.

Bring a quart of water to a boil in a kettle or pan and add it to the mixture. Cover with lid ajar and turn heat down to low. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Add Okra, frozen or fresh, return to a simmer and cook 5 minutes.  Now add the canned tomatoes and their liquid. Simmer for another 10 minutes or until rice is done.

To serve: Put 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup rice in each bowl, and ladle gumbo over it.   C'est Bon!

It is even better the next day. This batch of Gumbo made about 15 big servings, and cost less than a dollar per person.

Here is how I managed that:

I could have reduced the cost even more if I had cooked my own chicken, but I wanted this recipe to save time as well as money. Most of us can manage an hour after work to cook dinner, and knowing we don't have to cook a chicken makes the prospect much more appealing.

I buy rotisserie roasted chickens at our grocery store when they are on sale and use them for things like this. This small one cost $5 and weighed about 2 pounds. You can either use all the meat in this gumbo, or use the dark meat and bits in the gumbo and save the breast to make chicken salad for a nice lunch.

The sausage was on sale. In this case, Eddy Brand, a regional Texas brand, was $2.50 for the one pound link of either all beef or beef/pork (I won't buy sausage with chicken in it). This is a great way to use leftover sausage after a cookout, too.

Bell peppers are expensive! But they are still perfect for cooking with even if they are starting to get a little wrinkled. I watch for them in the "reduced" bin, cut them in half and remove the seeds, then put them in a baggie and pop them straight into the freezer. Pull them out as needed and chop while still frozen.
So this whole large bell pepper cost 50 cents.

Frozen okra, store brand, was $1.00 per 12 oz package at regular price and I used two bags . I figure about 50 cents worth of onions, a quarter for celery, 80 cents per can of tomatoes, maybe a dollar's worth of rice, and 50 cents for oil and flour.  We fed six adults supper with no extra courses or accompanying dishes, two more bowls for Ethan and Chelsey later that night, supper for me and Paul with seconds the next day, and I finished it off last night.

Altogether, it cost about $14 to make, and we got 15 meals out of it. Nothing beats homemade in price OR flavor!

Delicious Budget Beans: Texas Style Hoppin' John Black Eyed Peas

Beans are incredibly healthy food. They are easy to cook, genuinely inexpensive, packed full of protein, freeze beautifully, and help our digestion work efficiently (one can leave off the expensive fiber supplements if one eats beans every day). Beans are also incredibly versatile, as we have been finding out at our house.

A couple of months ago, we made a decision to focus on a high-protein, high-fiber diet of mostly beans flavored with meat and vegetables. To help his incisions and nerves heal from the surgery, Paul needs a lot of protein.  He cannot use his legs yet, but he is still far too thin, so he needs calories. Others in this situation may need to avoid fats, but they are important for him right now. At his doctor's advice, he also has a snack of 1/3 cup of roasted cashews daily.

Paul isn't usually a fan of leftovers or repetition, so this was a bit of a challenge. By rotating between a few easily available varieties: Pintos, Limas (Butter beans), Navy Beans,  Black eyed Peas, and Black Beans, we have come up with a number of good dinners that taste good until the last spoonful. I thought I would share these recipes here over the next few weeks. Enjoy!

Black Eyed Peas, or Southern Peas, grow easily here, and there is time to make a couple of crops of them. Even from the home garden, you can let them dry on the vine to save for use as dry peas, or you can pick them and shell them while green - I will have recipes for the green ones when they come into season.

This recipe is for an old Southern dish called Hoppin' John (or less frequently, Hopping John). The origins of the name are lost to history, but this simple and tasty stew is served on tables all over Oklahoma, Texas, and the rest of the South. It is one of those great home-cooked meals that can vary depending on what you have on hand - or what you can afford.

Texas Style Hoppin' John Recipe

One pound dry black eyed peas, cooked (see below)
1 cup chopped onion
1 Bell Pepper (or other sweet pepper) chopped
3 Tablespoons Bacon Grease
1 Bay Leaf
One pound German, Polish or Cajun sausage
Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning, to taste (or substitute salt & Louisiana Hot Sauce)
2 cups white rice, cooked separately and kept separate from the peas (see below)

Take a one pound bag of dry black eyed peas, soaked overnight in tap water and drained, then cooked in 8 to 10 cups of simmering water for 2 to 4 hours until tender.  Do NOT add any salt.

If more water is needed, bring it to a boil separately and add the boiling water to the peas (just the same way you add extra water when cooking beans).

In a frying pan, saute the onion and bell pepper in bacon grease until soft and pour all, including juices and fat, into the cooked peas.  Add Bay Leaf to peas and continue simmering.

Slice the sausage into rounds or chop if you prefer. In the same frying pan, lightly brown the sausage and add it, along with its juices and fats, to the pot of peas.

Simmer gently for 30 minutes or so. Continue to resist the urge to add salt, as the Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning has salt in it.

If everyone in your house likes spicy food, add the Tony Chachere's just as you would salt, until it tastes just right. If some people are wimps like me, you can wait and people can add the Tony Chachere's to their own bowl at the table. It won't affect the flavor to wait.

Fill each individual bowl at the stove for serving. Put about 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup of cooked white rice in a soup or cereal bowl and ladle about 1 & 1/2 cup of peas and liquid over the rice.

Serve with cornbread if you wish.

Do not be tempted to toss the rice in with the peas at any time in cooking or as leftovers. I now remember why I never make soups with rice - the rice falls apart, soaks up the liquid, and turns a lovely dish into a mess of gruel. Not good. So keep the rice in its own container. If there is some leftover, you can refrigerate, then bring it out to get to room temp while the peas are reheating. Pouring the boiling peas & liquid over the rice in each bowl will heat it nicely.

Like all stews, Hoppin John is even better the next day. You can add a little water while heating if it is too thick. It also freezes well - this is a great dish to make and freeze in meal-sized containers, easy to pull out and warm for a wholesome and fast supper during the busy work week.

Growing Tomatoes From Seed, Part Three: Getting Their Second Leaves - and Their First Fertilizer

This year, I set myself the task of learning how to grow tomatoes, from seed to harvest. I've never had any luck with them, but others succeed, so surely I can figure them out too.  If you want to follow along, here are the links to Part One and Part Two of our thrilling adventures in Tomato Land.

When I planted my sprouted tomato seeds, I put them into Dixie cups in new potting soil that supposedly had fertilizer in it, so I did not think I would need to fertilize the seedlings until they had grown a bunch of
leaves.

I had two groups under the lights: the first, large batch that I had put in baggies about Feb 15th to sprout, and three other varieties that I ordered late, and didn't get sprouted until about 10 days later.  As of today, those last three seem to have caught up with the first batch, and about as many are sprouting second leaves on all of them.

The first batch grew like champs for a while - most sprouted within a week. I planted the ones that had not sprouted along with their precocious neighbors and most of those finally stretched and woke up too. I moved
them into little cups and they bounced right up and looked strong.

But then it was like time stood still. They reached a point and just stopped. I thought it might be a water issue, since the air and weather are so very dry here, so I stepped up their watering schedule. They still didn't improve.

Many of them started turning yellowish. So I read my little guide from Park Seeds, which said to fertilize them, and I read my fertilizer label, which listed a dilution for seedlings, and fertilized them.

The next day they were not improved - but they were no worse - so I diluted a half tsp of ammonia in a gallon of water and gave them that. (Not the whole gallon, but they each had a drink.)

Still no change the following day. So yesterday I watered them with fertilizer water again, just drenched them. FINALLY, today they are looking greener and starting to move forward with their second leaves.

Now to keep watching them. If it ever stops freezing at night, I will move them back into the sunny, South-facing laundry room, where they can get daylight. But for now, we are still alternating between 80 degrees one day, 30 degrees that night and 50 the next day. Springtime in Texas! LOL!

 Tune in again in a couple of weeks for the next episode. :-)

UPDATE: The results were fantastic!  Here are photos of some of the harvest!