hobbit house hot cocoa

If anything, this is a hobby and/or lifestyle blog. Although it sometimes includes recipes, I don’t consider it a cooking or food blog. That said, I offer this promise to all of you: you will not have to read through any horrifically long, drawn-out event or memory of my life before you find our recipes. […]

fall beds, fall cooking

Today is a chili kind of day, but dinner got started late, because darkness at two-thirty is messed up and tomatoes need to cook down. While the remainder of our green tomato harvest roasted with onion and garlic, I headed outside to tend the fall beds. We’ve already had snow and numerous frosts, so I […]

no waffling over breakfast

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but… Trader Joe’s has a gluten free buttermilk pancake and waffle mix that is a one hundred percent sacrifice-free waffle experience. The surface browns and crisps, the center is fluffy. The flavor is pure waffle. Get a box for yourselves and try them. Just them on their […]

end of harvest soup

I harvested delicate things prior to the snow: tomatoes and herbs, planning for a batch of end of harvest soup. As the green tomato base roasted in the oven, I headed into the snow to harvest some hardier veggies: bok choy, carrots, and kale. (We opted to save the kale for something else.) Ground beef […]

the last fair day

Tonight is expected to hit freezing. So today, I pulled the rest of the non-hardy crops: tomatoes, hot peppers. And basil. I made my first pesto. We had no pine nuts in our pantry. Fortunately, pesto has become more of a framework formula than specific recipe: herb + oil + garlic + nut + sharp […]

charcoal: now and forever

I originally fought the charcoal option when we shopped for grills… I was raised in a house that came with a gas grill plumbed to the house gasline. Admittedly, my life’s experience with charcoal was camping and college cookouts on decrepit 20 year old habachi grills. Waiting hours for charcoal to be “ready” is burned […]

the first fall harvest

My husband’s Southern farmboy-ness is finally rubbing off on me. While I have attempted cooking my own mustard greens before, this time was wholly successful. The mustard greens are from our netted fall beds. While we nibbled out of it when I thinned the sproutlings, this is the first mature harvesting. My husband makes amazing […]

out of the garden…

…with the tastes of summer October! Pulling vine-ripened tomatoes on October 6th. The basil got blasted in the last cool spell, so I have to seek out good leaves, but about half of the tomato plants have lost their place on the calendar. This. This is the garden living we’ve been moving toward…

thinning the crop

I thinned out some of the fall brassicae, this time those I pulled to make room are large enough for food. The screen netting is working well to this point. Healthy, lush, greens are filling in and climbing taller in the crisp cool air. A broad mix of brassicae, with two varieties of Swiss chard […]

getting saucy

I made tomato sauce today. This was my first time ever blanching and peeling tomatoes. It might be an okay task… Per usual, I started with a recipe, but more for steps and times the measurements. Two cloves of garlic? No, one whole head. I also added more carrots than listed, mostly since we’re growing […]