sparrowgrass

When I lived out in Aberdeen/Hoquiam, I had to have my mom ship me stone ground corn meal. They just had that nasty little round box cornmeal from Quaker.

Let me just tell you all a couple of things I learned about leaf lettuce this spring. I picked my first washtub full last week, and it is delicious. (Fry some bacon, add some vinegar, a little sugar, a few slices of onions, pour the hot dressing over the leaves--Missouri wilted lettuce salad.) Number one: when you mow around the garden, point the mower AWAY from the leaf lettuce, or you will be sitting on the back porch with a tub of water, the hose, and the salad spinner until a week from Tuesday, picking and rinsing each little leaf to get the grass clippings off. Number two: If you mulch your asparagus with leaves, AND let the chickens out, don't plant the leaf lettuce within chicken scratching range of the mulch, or you will be on the back porch til a week from Wednesday, picking leaf bits out of the lettuce. (General Rule: Fugettabout the mulch completely if you have chickens. They enjoy it entirely too much.) I would have peas this week if the chickens hadn't picked all the leaves and flowers off the pea plants. Good thing I like real eggs so well.

Our local BBQ place makes "Terrible Taters"--giant baked potatoes topped with butter, sour cream, shredded pork or beef, and sauce. Might just have to hit the Warehouse for lunch.

I dice a couple of strips of bacon, cook til almost crisp, shred the cabbage and an onion, and stir fry in the bacon fat. Lots of pepper, please. I haven't tried this yet, but a friend quarters the cabbage, drapes bacon strips over it, and bakes until the bacon is done and cabbage is tender. Veggie soup with lots of cabbage?

Food TV had a thing about an asparagus festival--one of their big sellers was huge stalks of sparrowgrass, batterdipped and deep fried. Looked really good to me.

Vienna sausages -- those little squishy canned weinies. We call 'em Vie-annies, here. A favorite hunting snack--vie-annies and saltines.

Things I still don't like: Fruit cocktail. Bologna. Mayonnaise. The crumbly bits of cereal in the bottom of the box. We couldn't have a new box till the old one was empty, so somebody had to eat it. (I used reverse psychology on my boys with the bottom of the box--told them that was the sugariest part, and they fought over who got to eat it.) Potato salad. I don't think I have ever tasted it, it just looks vile. Oatmeal. Canned peas and carrots, always added to tuna casserole, "for color"--should be a felony. Things I wouldn't eat then but love now: Brussels sprouts, lima beans, green peppers, onions.

I lived in northern Minnesota for five years, and my overwhelming impression of that food was BLAND with a capital bluh. Not even salt and pepper, and heaven forbid you should toss a chile in something. Ketchup was a little too spicy for most.

Yep, same thing. Probably grown on richer soil and picked sooner than the ones you might pull out of the yard. If they have blossomed, the greens are too bitter to eat--you must pick them as soon as they emerge from the ground. Round here, folks eat them wilted with bacon grease and cider vinegar, and maybe a little sugar. Sliced onions tossed into the grease and vinegar, if you like.

Used asparagus from the garden and eggs from the henhouse to make a tasty quiche. Even the kid, who doesn't like things all mixed together, liked it. And the leftovers will be breakfast. I have about 10 dozen eggs in the fridge--the girls are providing me with about 18 a day. I usually take them in to work and have them all sold before I get to the office, but I have been sick this week. Anybody who shows up in the driveway will take home a dozen before they leave, even if they are Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons.

WELL, I edited my first post because I thought it might be a case of hard to decipher hand writing--BP (baking powder) instead of BB--but after I posted, I read the beginning of the post, where it says she spelled out baking powder in other recipes. I would try it with baking powder--could be a brand name that doesn't exist any more.

edited to remove dumbness. I don't have a clue.

Cathead biscuits are indeed the size of a cat's head. Baking powder biscuits made with buttermilk, to be precise.

Scrambled farm eggs, sausage gravy and cathead biscuits.

I found my first morels of the season on Saturday--just a few, because it is a bit early. Had them battered and fried, with the first asparagus on the side. Lord, I love spring.

Hey, Mongo, Extension is a part of your state's land grant university. We make information from the university available to people in the county, and it can be ANY kind of information, from child development to insect identification to septic tanks to livestock production to small business and other financial information, using the resources and research from the university. We also do 4-H, and some states still do extension homemaker clubs. You can usually find it in the phone book, in the county seat, under "_____ County Extension". You can also access lots of extension info on the web at www.reeusda.gov. You got questions? We got answers. This commercial was brought to you by the Iron County (MO) Extension Service.

Not hair, but a kitchen sanitation thing that grossed out a coworker. I made my son a hamburger patty, and it was sitting, raw, on the counter. I went outside for a moment, and didn't realize the eternally hungry cat had slipped inside when I went out. By the time I came back in, she had eaten an ounce or so out of one side of the burger. I reshaped the patty, put it in the pan, and cooked it up for the kid. He didn't mind, except that his burger was a bit light, but Betsy 'bout puked when I laughed about it at work.

Whoo-hoo!! Spring smells like garlic here. Long ago, when the first settlers came in with their sacks of seed wheat, they brought along the little bulblets of wild garlic, and it has really made itself at home. When you mow your lawn that first time in the spring, the smell makes you hungry. I haven't eaten it--I understand that if you put a few sprigs in your shoe and walk for an hour, you can smell garlic on your breath--stout stuff. The fields in the Mississippi bottoms, still not tilled, are a blue green haze--wild garlic. Of course that is not the only color in the palette. Greens predominate, with a bright lime from the winter cress with the yellow flowers, and kelly from the fescue coming up so strong in this cool wet weather. There are drifts of white from the white flowered cress, but most amazing is the red dead nettle, which covers whole acres in bright magenta. I tilled the garden with my new Troy Built Super Bronco. If it is possible to love a machine, this is my heartthrob. One pass leaves the garden looking like potting soil. I have peas, lettuce, spinach and potatoes up, and if the chickens would leave the broccoli and cabbage alone, it would have some leaves on it. I put the electric fence up, but a couple of the girls just slip right under, and walk the row pulling every leaf off the seedlings. "Soup!" I say, as I chase them out. I cut my first asparagus yesterday, and ate morels that my sis and I found. I love spring.

I keep a clean kitchen, but that hair just finds it way into stuff from time to time. I know it won't hurt me, my hair is washed every day, but gee-golly-gosh it grosses me out. And embarrasses the hell out of me if hair ends up in someone else's portion.

Sumac berries are red--sumac-ade is pink. I have never cooked with the berries, but I can see that they might make your chicken pink.

I used to make mine in a styrofoam bait bucket--got it at WalMart for ninety nine cents, I believe. Warmed the milk to 100 degrees, mixed the milk and starter in a quart canning jar, capped it and set it in the bucket. Poured the bucket full of water the same temp., set it on the counter, and took it out 10-12 hours later.

Burdock root is edible, and the same plant the Japanese eat. I understand it is very difficult to dig up--lllooooonnnnnnggggg taproot. Look for one growing in loose soil, and bring a good shovel.

I think I mean the verpas, but I am no expert. Just seemed to remember reading that someplace. I am at work, so I don't have my books handy.

The little black morel that shows up first upsets some folks' tummies, especially if they pig out. I have also heard that they affect the enzyme that allows you to process alcohol, so you might want to watch out for that, and not drink with your meal or for about 24 hours afterwards. (Inky caps are bad for that, too.)

I don't know how the pan warped. I use both the baking cycle and the dough cycle.