Our Home Works

The OHW team ventured out once again this weekend to the Small Farmers Project, this time to secure a flat of the long-awaited black cap heirloom raspberries.  Coincidentally today, Eugene’s Register Guard newspaper ran a full feature on the farm and their special berries.

We also purchased 2 more flats of strawberries, since the last batch purchased at this farm was of such high quality and because we wanted more to eat fresh and preserve for later.  The strawberry variety we picked up this time was Seascape -  larger fruit, but just as flavorful.

So far, we’ve already made several uses of the berries.

Last night we baked a cobbler featuring the black caps, and added in frozen peaches from last season.  The cobbler recipe was from Joy of Cooking.

Today we made ice cream, two different flavors, one each featuring the two fruits.

Left is pouring the strawberry cream mix into the freeze can.  Above is scooping out the black cap after setting.

And here are the results, side by side:

Both taste great.

In process is another batch of strawberry rhubarb jam.  After all of this we still had a load of berries on our hands.  We decided to freeze these whole for later use.

Although we’ve had lousy weather for a good month here - a true damper on the area’s strawberries crops - there are still some good ones to be found.

Out of all the food preserving Amy has accomplished the past couple of years, my personal favorite  - and there’ve been many great ones - is a strawberry/rhubarb concoction that is billed as a jam, but it is a bit more like syrup.  It’s the perfect companion for pancakes and waffles.  At our house, maple syrup is not even in the equation anymore.

I recently polished off the final jar of last year’s strawberry/rhubarb batch.  That was a sad morning, but fortunately we’re back into berry season to replenish the supply.  A week ago, Amy ordered 2 pounds of rhubarb from Living Earth Farm via Eugene Local Foods, which I picked up on Tuesday.  Today, we were after the main ingredient and ventured out to The Small Farmers Project in north Eugene just off River Road.  This berry farm is an effort of the Huerto de la Familia organization.  They have both u-pick and they-pick options.  It’s a beautiful place with terrific product, we highly recommend a visit.

So far, we’ve been able to get all the rhubarb and berries cleaned and cut.  Tomorrow the canning action will take place.

Tonight we had a terrific grilled steak dinner (my pick on Father’s Day).  The beef was very special, a Xmas gift from my mom that we’ve been hiding in our deep freeze for half a year.  It was from her personal stash of beef that was raised on a farm near my hometown of LaMoure, ND = Prairie Road Organic Farm, (featured recently as FarmerHeroes by FarmAid).

Our feast was capped with a classic strawberry shortcake.  Amy used the Joy of Cooking shortcake recipe and we topped it with Noris Dairy cream (also from Eugene Local Foods).  Yum!

Tags: Add new tag

First, a disclosure: this is not a dish out of the OurHomeWorks kitchen.

It is a creation by my two talented sisters during a recent family gathering in Minnesota, and the first paella produced from this pan.  My role, beyond taking these pictures, was strictly charcoal production on a standard Weber grill and shuttling heavy and bulky cookware (that’s what brothers are for, right?).

Featured contents included chicken thighs, clams and shrimp.  An attractive combo as you can see.   The paella was as tasty as it was eye-catching.  The addition of mesquite wood chips to the coals was a wise and recommended flavor move.

The meal comfortably fed 11 adults and could have accommodated another 4 or so.

We are now inspired to add a paella to our repertoire.  I have been promised a cheat sheet on how to successfully produce one of our own.  Hopefully we’ll accomplish it this summer and report back on an authentic OHW creation from Oregon.

Kudos again to these fine cooks.

Above: The paella going onto the grill.

Above: Checking for done-ness

Above: It’s ready!

Tags: Big Twin Lake, Paella

The place Our Home Works calls home has moved. About 6 months ago we packed up and carted our belongings about one mile across town. We were not looking to move at the particular time, but an opportunity presented itself that we could not resist.

We also added staff. Just 6 weeks after our move, our daughter was born. A wise brother-in-law of ours informed us a few days before her birth: “get ready, business is about to pick up.”

And so it has.

And so explains our extended hiatus here at Our Home Works.

In one sense it was very hard to leave our original settlement. There’s a trail of blog posts on this site about the place that tells some of the story. We had expended wheelbarrows full of sweat equity in 2009, building up the foundation of an urban farm. Many square yards of sod were busted. 13 fruit trees and countless other edibles went in. A henhouse was procured and painted. By fall, it was really starting to shape up nicely. It was not all for naught.  The yard looked great and the property went to “sale pending” within a week of hitting the market.

The grounds at our current home offer much the same untapped resource as our former place did. It is a sizeable yard and lots of lawn ready to be transformed to a higher use. Key differences are better sun, but seemingly lesser soils now. Soils can be improved.

Our beloved hens. They indeed made the trip with us. There is ample room for them to roam here, although a slimmer ratio of rich composted soil to scratch around in. But remember that condition will get better. We learned a tough lesson about our new neighborhood, that it is stomping grounds of chicken predators.  Just one night of an open henhouse door led to the demise of our ultra-friendly fluffy white Cochins.  RIP Pancho & Lefty.   Our Brahmas survived without a scratch and without noticeable remorse.  From their perspective it was a big move up the pecking order.  Pepper is back to almost an egg-a-day pace and Buffy still looks pretty.

The transformation of the current grounds is on a slow pace. We’ve heard that caring for a newborn has that kind of effect on a couple? I have drafted a rough master plan, but we missed the best window to get trees and shrubs in. That will have to wait. We have opened up a little bit of ground for some herb and vegetable staples.

Likewise in the kitchen, we’ve adapted our efforts to complement the adjusted priorities of our time. Meals have become simpler and/or less exploratory. One aspect that remained a constant is that we are still very committed, more than ever, to sourcing our meals with local ingredients. Extra efforts we (Amy) made last year to preserve are showing their return on investment and the expansion of farmers selling their products on Eugene Local Foods have been the two biggest factors.

We had a great Mother’s Day today, our first from the parental perspective. To kick things off, I blended up some smoothies featuring frozen bing cherries and milk and yogurt from Noris Dairy. Meanwhile I baked up some Dutch Babies (an awesomely good and easy breakfast dish from the Joy of Cooking), these topped with peaches and raspberries also from our freezer. Our protein needs were covered by some linguica sausages, handmade at Benedettis Meat Market in Springfield.

We were well-nourished for a mid-morning hike up to and around Hendricks Park. At noon we made a run to Down to Earth for a few plants, and got a few of them in the ground before the thunderstorms hit. We went out for pizza tonight to nowhere special and now mom and baby have had a bath and gone to bed.

Our Home is different in many ways, but one constant is that it still Works.

A short mountain of green beans were transformed tonight - with the aid of fresh dill, garlic and salt - into a friend-favorite known as Dilly Beans.   

Beans were sourced from Thistledown Farm.

The stack netted 7 widemouth pints worth.

It was another canning extravaganza in the OHW kitchen this weekend.

Leading the way were pickled red onions.  Amy loves them on the salads served at McMenamins, so this is primarily an attempt to mimic those.  The ingredient list is simple - thinly sliced onions, white wine vinegar and peppercorns with a little sugar added.  The concoction is boiled and then finished with a basic canning process.

Next up is a jalapeno pepper jelly.  Again pretty simple: thin-sliced jalapenos added to cider vinegar and sugar.  Pectin is included in this mix for the gel effect.  Oh, and a little food coloring to brighten up the green.  I sampled this one and it’s a perfect mix of heat and sweet.

And last is the round-up of our remaining tomatoes.  Some whole, some sauce.  Lots and lots of quarts, still in process as of this writing.

Tags: pepper jelly, pickling

“I’m DONE with pickles.”

These were my co-author’s first words after she spent two near-full days of a splendid weekend cleaning, cutting, boiling, mixing, sealing, etc – in other words, canning - what is intended to be a two-year supply of staples here at the ranch. 

 A few days ago Amy made a special run to Thistledown Farm for the bulk supply.  The purchase included (3) 10 pound bags of pickling cucumbers and (2) 30-pound lugs of roma tomatoes.   Yes folks, almost 100 pounds of raw product.

The net end product of the pickles tallied 31 pint jars and 10 quart jars.  For the Romas, 21 quarts total.  Amy tells me this is about 1/2 of the tomatoes we’ll need for the 2-year goal, so another run will be undertaken soon.

While Amy sweated it out in the kitchen today, I worked the garden.  I harvested a few things: (more) tomatillos, the last of our corn, and a couple handfuls of golden raspberries.  The main effort was reseeding several rows of our winter garden that had failed, primarily due to our industrious free-ranging hens.  An extra task today was implementing a short wire barrier to keep the chickens out.   

Tags: canning, pickles, roma tomato

Buying a plant start of an unknown vegetable variety can be risky business.  Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  This is a story about a winner.

Coming off of a successful tomatillo experience in 2008, we decided to expand our horizons this year. A few months ago we drove down to Territorial Seed Company in Cottage Grove to pick up starts, primarily tomatoes.  While browsing their selection of tomatillos, we ran across a plant with an intriguing name and description.  A Pineapple Ground Cherry.  It was noted as having a unique flavor equal to its name, and characteristics much like a tomatillo.

Over the past 2 weeks, we have been harvesting.  As advertised, it is seriously sweet and does have a pineapple flavor.  The fruit is much smaller than a tomatillo, even smaller than a common cherry tomato.  Actually, more like a cranberry.  They do have the characteristic tomatillo husk, so factor that in with its size - they are labor intensive to extract in mass quantity.  But worth it.

Harvest is easy.  When the fruit is ripe it drops on the ground.  They are fine on the ground at least a few days, as the husks keep them well protected.  The process is as easy as lifting the vines and raking them with your hand.  

After husking, I ended up with several cups worth of them total.  I decided to substitute them into a Salsa Verde recipe from Weber’s Big Book of Grilling.   I’m not a stickler for measurements (and have a bad memory to boot), but here’s roughly what it involved, that I can remember:

          4 cups pineapple ground cherries

          2 small onions

          extra virgin olive oil

          1 fresh chile pepper, most of the seeds removed

          2 cloves garlic

          2 tbsp lime juice

          1/2 cup cilantro

          1/2 tsp salt

          1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Wash vegetables.  Slice onions into 1/4″ thick rings.  Coat with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.  Grill on medium/high heat for approximately 10 minutes, until outsides are browned and insides are soft.   Remove from grill and allow to cool before adding to food processor.  Add remaining ingredients and run processor until ingredients are well mixed and to desired level of chunkiness.  

Grab yourself a cerveza, and enjoy your salsa as a dip for tortilla chips or as a topping on any number of related dishes.

I also used this basic recipe with traditional green tomatillos, as identified in the Weber book.  In that case a little brown sugar addition is recommended - about 1 tbsp.

Tags: Ground Cherry

My co-author and I reached a major milestone in our partnership over the weekend.  10 years ago, we went on what we consider our first date.  I am a nostalgia and tradition guy, so I proposed we repeat elements from that initial connection - the basics being a movie and dinner.  The 1999 inaugural date included the flick “Runaway Bride” at Valley River cinema, a meal at Red Robin, and a ride to and from in my chariot, a ‘91 Camaro named Zeke.  No lie.  

Since our tastes have - shall we say, evolved - since then, the 2009 version took a little different path.  First, we rode our bicycles to the theatre.  Second, the theatre was the Bijou.  Third, we went to “Food, Inc.” a documentary about the industrialization of the US farm and food system.  And last, we had a fabulous dinner on the terrace at Belly.  By the way, I highly recommend both the movie and the dining spot - although a further recommendation is to reverse the order: dinner first, movie second.  

I’d say in 10 years, we’ve advanced ourselves in the dating category (although we both miss pressing Zeke’s gas pedal from time to time).

Sunday was just a great Sunset Magazine day.  We kicked it off with some Dutch Babies (from Joy of Cooking) featuring local blueberries harvested last week by good friends.  The left photo is of our niece overwhelmed by the sight of them!

We then made plans for our fall/winter garden, which included an assessment of our seed inventory.  Then it was a run to Down to Earth for starts and more seeds.  Supply was thin, so we just picked up a few packets of seeds (Amy actually went back today to pick up starts from a fresh order that came in).

Next stop was Benedettis in Springfield to stock up a little on our meat supply.  Love that place!

For lunch, I grilled up a couple of Benedettis specialty sausages and Amy made a green salad including fresh cherry tomatoes from the backyard.

In the afternoon, I worked away at neglected mini-projects on the side yard while Amy processed our first harvest of tomatoes into sauce.  

Meanwhile, the chickens were free ranging and taking dirt baths and bees worked blossoms all over our property (the top picture is of echinacea in our front yard).

In the late afternoon, Amy turned 3 rows of our fava bean field over and got them ready for new crops.  The hens were fans of this fresh dirt.  We ran out of gas and time, so seeding and planting will have to wait another day.

Dinner was a summer linguini pasta featuring a medley of fresh vegetables.  We had another green salad, this one featuring figs from our tree - roasted and folded into a vinaigrette.  Outstanding.

What a great weekend and great life.  The next 10 sure look sweet.

This week has been cherry madness in our house.  We ended up canning 16 half pints of cherry jam, several pints of cherry dessert sauce, drying some, and still yet making two half gallons of cherry sherry and one half gallon of cherry vinegar.   As Matt mentioned in his previous post, cherries are my favorite fruit, so I guess all of this craziness makes some sense.  I still plan on making some sour cherry jam.

I eat the cherry (and sour cherry) jam mixed with homemade yogurt throughout the winter and Matt puts it on english muffins.  The cherry dessert sauce is a new one for us - but we have high hopes that it will be perfect over a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  The cherry sherry is another new experiment.  I made strawberry sherry last year and it was amazing.  Hopefully the cherry sherry works out as well.  I only wish that it was easier to say - cherry sherry doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

Next up is pickled baby carrots.  I found the most amazing baby carrots (not the weird, nubby things in bags in the grocery store) grown by a local farmer, Herman Hemke of Quality Acres in Coburg, OR.  In addition to baby carrots, he also sells the most beautiful multi-colored carrots.  The man knows his carrots!  You can buy them at Eugene Local Foods.

Tags: cherries