We went to the country for Thanksgiving. I love the area in the South Carolina Upstate where our families call home. It is a small town where one can still find a parking place at the store on Black Friday…even at Walmart. Much to my surprise and great pleasure there were many bushes and flowers still blooming. Here are a few photos of the Knockout Rose in the side yard. Even here at the end of November, it is full of blossoms. If you look really closely you can see the bird bath that is in the middle of the bush. I think my mother-in-law placed it beside the bush, next to the bird feeder and the rose grew up around it.
I was out in the garden today and discovered that there were quite a few flowers still blooming so I put together a bouquet of sorts for those of you to enjoy. I hope you all have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy the flowers!
Just in time for the Thanksgiving break, the post lady brought me two more seed catalogs, Vermont Bean Seed Company and Totally Tomatoes. I think I will have plenty of reading material for the weekend now. Just like with catalog number 1, I am unfamiliar with these two companies, but the catalogs appear nicely appointed with good photos and descriptions. One has a prodigious selection of bean seeds and the other, at first glance appears to be full of tomato and pepper seeds. Time to start the research for 2010! Have you started your research yet?
One of my favorite garden blogs is Skippy’s Vegetable Garden. Skippy, with the help of Kathy his owner, grows two beautiful gardens and shares them with us in the blogosphere. I understand that they will be featured in Fine Gardening’s “GROW” in January. My congratulations to them both! I hope you will look them up both in the magazine and on the blog.
With 2009 drawing to a close in a few short weeks, I have turned my attention to what I want to accomplish in the Carolina Victory Garden for 2010. This is not an exhaustive list, but a good start on the year.
- I will continue to grow my garden organically using either seed I have saved or open pollinated seed as much as possible.
- I will learn more about composting and have a usable compost pile by next fall.
- I will plant more of the things we like and be conscientious about laying by or sharing the excess.
- I will create a more effective layout for my garden.
- I will learn more about soil rehabilitation and apply that knowledge to the flower beds in front of the house.
- I will plant more herbs in front of the house.
- I will plant a couple of things that are just for fun and experimentation.
- I will make pickles AND chow chow.
- I will learn more about my camera so that I can take better photos for the blog in 2010.
- I will add a little whimsy to the garden.
So, there we are. I’ll review these goals quarterly to see where I am with each.
Did you achieve your garden goals for 2009? What are YOUR gardening goals for 2010?
I half jokingly mentioned Vinegar Pie as a possibility for a Thanksgiving dessert yesterday and Janet from over at Queen of Seaford asked about the recipe. So, straight from my grandmother’s cookbook collection, Favorite Recipes from Women of the Christian Church: Desserts, Including Party Beverages from the Chrisian Women’s Fellowship, Cloverdale Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Montgomery, Alabama, around 1967, page 254, is the recipe. Here we go!
Vinegar Pie
1 stick margarine
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 teaspoons vinegar
1 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup pecans
1 uncooked pie shell
Melt margarine; add remaining pie ingredients in order listed. Mix thoroughly. Pour into pie shell. Bake in 350-degree oven for 30 minutes. Yeild: 6 servings.
Submitted by Mrs. Brooks Winborne, Pres.
Christian Women’s Fellowship
Smithfield, North Carolina
My sister-in-law is taking the lead on Thanksgiving dinner this year so I don’t have many decisions to make…I have my marching orders, cranberry relish, sweet potato souffle and dessert. Now THAT is the problem…which dessert to make. I saw on the news the other night that pumpkin was in short supply so perhaps I should choose something else…perhaps an old fashioned apple stack cake, coconut cake or pound cake…or a couple of pies…apple, chocolate, pecan, butterscotch…maybe even the vinegar pie I saw a recipe for the other day. Wait a minute…VINEGAR? Yep, in the same cook book as the pumpkin pie I spoke of the other day….a vinegar pie. With only a few short days to make a decision, I had better get back to my cookbooks and make a decision pretty soon! What will you be making for dessert on Thanksgiving? I’ll let you know what I decide.
In a few days I will clean out parts of the two beds closer to the front of the photo of my back yard garden. I’ll leave the Kale, harvest the rest of the beans and leeks, pull out the weeds and continue to enjoy the marigolds and broccoli as it goes to seed. The leaves will get blown in to piles for composting. Here is the question: Should I pile them in the lower bed and empty spots in the others like mulch and then turn what is left under in the spring and why?
My daughter called me the other day. She wanted to prepare some fresh pumpkin for pies and other recipes but didn’t know how. Her phone call brought back memories for the first time I tried to cook fresh pumpkin to freeze for later use. We were living in Texas, out in the country north of Dallas when my mother in law called to ask the same question my daughter had just posed. I was surrounded by farmers and so I took a survey of the older neighbors to see what method they advised. Much to my surprise, even the oldest said to go to the store and buy a can. Well, I just wasn’t prepared to do that so armed with a pumpkin, several knives a stove and a microwave I started experimenting. It was entertaining I am sure. The long and the short of it is that I figured out that I could put the pumpkin in the microwave until the skin was tender. Then I could cut in to it easily, dispose of the seeds and then cook down the chunks on the stove. (One step I added later was to process the cooked pumpkin in the food processor to make it smooth rather than stringy.) That done, I realized that I had no idea how to treat fresh pumpkin in a recipe. Everything I read called for canned pumpkin which was very thick. My pumpkin was not thick at all.
My search lead me through all my cook books and on to my mother’s collection which was in my possession being her only daughter and heir. In one of her books, South Carolina Cook Book, Revised: A Collection of Recipes by the South Carolina Council of Farm Women, Edited by Members of the State Home Demonstration Department and published by the University of South Carolina Press, dated 1954 I found the best basic pumpkin pie recipe ever on page 318. Here it is:
1 1/2 cups cooked fresh pumpkin 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 eggs slightly beaten
1 cup whole milk 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 1 teaspoon butter
1 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Combine ingredients. Mix thoroughly pour into pastry-lined pan, bake in hot oven at 425 degrees about 25 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Serve with whipped cream if desired or serve while still warm.
NOTE: The recipe does not say so, but one would have known in 1954 to partially bake the crust before putting the pumpkin in the pan so the crust would not become soggy.
To give credit where credit is due, this recipe was submitted by Lucy K. Harter of Allendale County, SC.
Do you have a favorite pumpkin pie recipe?
I just received my first seed catalog for 2010! It’s from a company I hadn’t heard of before, Pinetree Garden Seeds, but I will enjoy soaking up the information on each page as winter moves in and I dream of warmer days. I totally missed the fall growing season in spite of my best intentions this year. We started a new business and I have been busy focusing on helping my husband get that up and running leaving no time for gardening. Now I can hardly wait for Spring!
