Winter Greens Recipes

Winter Greens can withstand frosts, freezes and snow in the garden. These greens are full of vitamins and other things that are good for your body and health. Check out September post: Fall Garden for recipes on spinach and other tender greens.

Kale

Saute young greens in olive oil with garlic and a few pepper flakes. If you want to be 'old school' saute in bacon grease.

Frost on these veggies brings a more peppery taste to the greens. They also become tougher, so make sure you remove the veins from the leaves. You also have to cook them longer.

The typical southern way to cook these greens is in water or chicken stock with a ham hock. Today, you can use lean turkey bacon instead of the pig knuckle.

Use your slow cooker to make things easier and simpler. Serve with a strong vinegar, such as the garlic or pepper vinegar you made from earlier postings this month.

Collard Greens

Cook the same way as kale. You can always mix these greens together.

Mustard Greens

Much more peppery than the other greens.

To add more flavor and make your soups jam packed with good things, stir in a few handfuls of your favorite winter greens.

Roasted Tomatoes

Roasted Tomatoes

I believe there is nothing more special than roasted tomatoes. Certainly, there is no easier way to cook them.

Gather up all your ripe tomatoes, grape, pear, cherry, italian, slicers. Even your yellows. Cut them in half or quarters if large and place them in a shallow baking pan. Dust with your favorite herbs...rosemary, thyme, oregano. Salt and pepper to taste. Use fresh ground pepper if you can. It tastes better.

Finely chop garlic cloves to your taste. If you're making a large batch, you may even want to chop a whole head. If you plan to process these tomatoes, you can roast the garlic as well. Simply toss the cloves into the pan with their paper attached. Squeeze the roasted garlic from their paper shells before you process the tomatoes in the blender or food processor.

Coat your tomatoes with a liberal drizzle of good olive oil, toss and pop in to the oven set at 325F. Toss with a spatula a few times during the cooking process, especially if you've quartered them. Tomatoes are done when lightly brown on the edges and wrinkled.

Uses: Serve atop toasted French bread with cheese as a first course. Stuff a meatloaf for a grand surprise in the middle. Toss with pasta for a different kind of sauce. You are limited only by culinary imagination.

This recipe will freeze very well in a bag or container. You can also can it. A bit of lemon juice in the canning jar will assure a high level of acidity and safety to water processed canning. It will also add a freshness to the finished dish.

Happy Cooking!

Cheers, Mark

Classic French Vinegrette Recipe

How to use your homemade vinegars

This is a classic French vinegrette.

You can change this recipe and make it your own by changing the type of herb or herbs used.

No matter how much dressing you need to make, if you follow this ratio you will always have a balanced dressing.

1/3 vinegar to 2/3 olive oil...so if you want a cup of dressing you use 1/3 cup of your vinegar and 2/3 cup of oil. Don't worry about measurements. Eyeball it, like Rachel Ray.

1 to 2 tbs of Dijon mustard

Use salt, sugar and pepper to taste. If you're like me and live for garlic, finely chop and include a clove or to taste.

Tip: If you're using an herbal vinegar, chop some fresh to include.

In a bowl, combine all ingredients except olive oil. Whisk together. As you whisk, begin to pour oil. This will combine the oil and vinegar, emulsifying them. If you're as lazy as me and hate to wash dishes, combine everything, including the olive oil in a mason jar, screw in the lid and shake. Refrigerate the remainder.

Herbal Vinegars

Herbal Vinegars

Herbal vinegars are easy to make and are perfect for hostess gifts during the holiday season.

Through out the growing season, I'm saving unused wine in old glass jugs. One for white, one for reds. Just before frost, I make a trip to my favorite craft store and purchase decorative bottles of different shapes and sizes. Once home I run them through the dishwasher, then using thongs, dip each bottle into boiling water. I sit them on the kitchen table on a clean towel to cool.

You never have to worry about the safety of these gifts as the acidity of the vinegar will kill anything unhealthy.

Cut bundles of herbs, wash, dry and poke them into the bottle using a chop stick. You can use one type or a mix of herbs. You can even include the flowers. A dill white wine vinegar would look very pretty with the flower included inside the bottle.

A rule of thumb...Strong herbs will stand up to red wines. Sage, oregano, thyme, etc... Light herbs such as dill, basil, tarragon and chives are better off in white wine.

If you'd like to make garlic vinegar, steep the garlic in the vinegar mixture for 24 hours, then remove clove. The vinegar becomes too strong if steeped for longer.

I usually include about an inch of white vinegar in the bottom of the decorative bottle before I pour in the wine vinegar...that way I am sure the contents are acidic enough to inhibit anything bad from developing inside the bottle.

Fill the bottle with your leftover wine, leaving at least an inch of the bottle's neck empty. Cork bottle firmly. Store in a dark place for at least three weeks. Shake bottles every once in a while.

Tips: To make your gifts a bit fancy, melt wax in an old coffee can using a water bath. Color wax with a crayon. Dip the cork and the tip of the bottle in the wax. Set aside to cool. Tie colorful ribbon or raffia around the neck with a label.

Use your imagination and have fun. This is a great project for the entire family.

Cheers, Mark

Fall Harvest Recipes

Roasted tomatoes and Basil pesto

As promised, the following posts will give you some suggestions and recipes for the last of your veggie garden harvests. Included: roasted tomatoes to freeze or can. Basil pesto, How to make herbal vinegars for great holiday hostess gifts, Recipes for all sorts of southern greens. How to cook them when they're young and later when harvested after heavy frosts or freezes. If you have recipes you'd like to share, post them on the comment board or email them to me via this blog. Cheers and Happy Cooking! Mark

Plannting Garlic

How to Plant Garlic

Did you know that garlic reduces cholesterol, is a fungicide and antibacterial? The Roman armies used to carry raw garlic when they marched to keep their soldiers healthy.

I plant garlic in and around my roses for the same reason.

Plant garlic after the first frost. Why? Because you don't want any top growth before winter sets in. This will make the plant weak.

You cannot use store bought garlic heads because it has been sprayed with a growth retardant. Purchase your garlic from a seed catalogue, from the web or your local garden center.

Break apart the head into cloves. Do not remove the paper outer covering like you do in cooking. Plant the clove, point end up, root side down 2 inches deep in the soil. Cover. If you have compost or a bag of compost, top dress. Water and relax. The roots will grow out during the winter and the plant itself will push up in the spring after frost.

Harvest after leaves are 1/3 to 2/3 brown. If you wait until the plant is totally brown the bulbs will be inedible. Dig with a fork like potatoes or onions. Let the skins dry before storage.

Garlic is a member of the Allium family...as are lillies, onions, chives and society garlic. All look good in the garden!

Knock Out Roses

The Fearless Rose is a Knock Out!

By Mark S. Bowne

Throughout the centuries, roses have always evoked a rainbow of emotions; from the passion of a red rose on Valentine's Day to the anger and pain of a pricked finger by the cruel thorn. Fear; however, remains the emotion many gardeners associate with roses. Fear of pests, fear of disease, and fear of pruning. These fears may cause even the hardiest of plant lovers to run screaming from the nursery. Fear no more.

Enter the Knock Out rose. The so called 'no fear rose'. Bred by Mr. Bill Radler (one time director of Boerner Botanical Gardens of Milwaukee, WI) these roses are as tough as they are beautiful. Both resistant to pests and disease, Knock Out roses bloom spectacularly from May to hard frost of late fall. They are classified as a shrub rose and grow to about four feet tall, by four feet wide in a mounded form. They are very easy to grow. Simply cut them back to a foot tall in early spring (this keeps them bushy and compact) and feed them with your favorite rose food. I recommend Rose Tone for Espoma. Overhead irrigation is acceptable, but excessive water will reduce bloom and could rot this rose. It is very drought tolerant once established. You never have to deadhead this rose. It is self cleaning.

The history of the Knock Out rose is as amazing as the plant itself. Mr. Radler has grown roses since the age of nine and as a teenager made a promise to himself that he would develop a disease free rose. After many years and thousand upon thousand of trial roses later, Radler managed two promising candidates: the mother a shrub rose with strains of 'Carefree Beauty' and the father, 'Razzle Dazzle', an extremely disease and pest resistant plant with insignificant flowers.

Radler crossed these roses and held his breath. When the mother rose produced only one fruit (called a hip) that contained one seed, his dream almost ended. Luckily he managed to germinate this single seed and nurtured the seedling plant through the harsh Wisconsin winter. In the spring he planted the spindly rose in his trial garden not expecting much. Then it bloomed and it bloomed and it bloomed. Beautiful single red blossoms that never stopped.

In 2000, The Conard-Pyle Company of West Grove, Pa, (a wholesale nursery) introduced the new Knock Out rose to the horticulture industry. It was an instant hit and won the prestigious 'All American Rose Selection' award from the American Rose Society. The wholesale nursery's initial production run was for 135,000 plants. Today millions are grown. This makes the Knock Out rose the hottest selling rose in history.

Whether it's the original single red, the blush, the pink or the new double blossoms, plant this rose and FEAR NO MORE!