Month: March 2011

Green Bean and Potato Hash – March 2011

Posted on by AuSable

This is totally a random creation on my part, but a pretty taste one. It all started earlier in the week, when I cooked up some green beans to go with my dinner. Which ended up being nothing more then boiling 1.66 lbs of green beans for 5 mins, then adding them to a hot frying pan with a little bit of bacon fat, red pepper flakes and garlic powder, and just cooking them on medium high heat until browned (about 5-10 mins.)

It wasn’t until after I made all those beans, that I realized I needed to re-purpose those beans into another dish, since eating just a pile of cooked beans is boring.

As usual I dug into my memory banks, and the week before in Utah, JRR made up this hash for breakfast one morning with leftover steak and fingerling potatoes. As usual, I had a bunch of random stuff in the fridge, so here was what I came up with for a quick hash:

Ingredients:

  • A large handful of cooked green beans (using cooking direction above)
  • 4-5 russet potatoes, peeled, cubed
  • 1/3 lb of hot breakfast sausage
  • Rendered bacon fat
  • Lawry’s Season Salt
  • Black pepper

Technique:
It really could be simpler to make this dish. First thing, in a hot frying pan, brown the breakfast sausage until fully cooked. While you’re cooking the sausage, microwave the potatoes using this recipe. With the sausage cooked, and transferred to a bowl to cool, add the bacon fat to the hot pan, season and cook the potatoes using the same recipe. Finally during the last 2-3 mins of cooking time on the potatoes, add in the sausage and green beans, and toss until the green beans have heating thru, then serve and enjoy.

Side Notes:
1) The green beans were pretty good on their own, with the garlic powder, bacon fat and red pepper flakes. But they are out of this world with the potatoes and sausage, so this “recipe” is a keeper in my book.
2) When I originally made the green beans, I didn’t really anticipate using them for another dish. So they were fully cooked the first time around. This was part of the reason why I added the green beans at the very end of the potato cooking, since they really only needed to be re-heating, from being in the fridge overnight.

Spring is springing for 2011

Posted on by AuSable

We kind of had a little bit of a warm burst of temperature (highs in the upper 60’s) around St. Patrick’s Day, so I removed the large leaf pile from the hop rhizome beds, and tossed it into the compost bin. And as you can tell in the pics, I’ve already got a garden full of green onions/chives, plus the rhubarb & sedum flowers are putting out buds like crazy. And from the looks of things with the rhubarb, it going to be another bumper crop of stalks this year.

But this week the temperature has dropped back down to the lower 30’s. So for now I’ll just have to bide my time with all the seed starting that I need to do inside, instead of any outside work.

I’ve attached, kind of a panoramic shot of the back yard, so you can get the full effect of what’s going on this year so far.

One final thing, which is kind of off topic, but semi related to this conversation. Many years ago I had I picnic table on the brick patio in the backyard. Well I ended up having to get rid of that picnic table, but I never found anything to replace it. And as you can tell in the pics, I have plenty of chairs for the patio, just no table. So this year I thought that I would finally undertake the task of re-laying the patio bricks, and making a “rustic” table for the patio. Since it’s kind of a shame, that I’m not utilizing this space to it’s full potential in the summer time. So expect to see some updates in the future for this little side project.

2011 Seed Catalogs have arrived

Posted on by AuSable

Over the last three month, I’ve gotten three seed catalogs in the mail. Two were from Johnny’s Selected Seed, and the third was from Burpee. I was kind of hoping that I would get a catalog in the mail from Park Seed, but that doesn’t appear to be in the cards for this year.

I gave my seed inventory from 2010 a quick glance, and it appears that I’m in good shape for seeds this year, especially for seeds to use with the salad table. But for 2012, I’ll most certainly have to restock my inventory of saved seeds, since after this year I’ll be completely out of tomato seeds, certain hot pepper seeds, cucumber seeds (both pickling & slicing) as well as bean seeds (green & wax).

But lets move onto the fun part, seed starting. Last weekend I thought about starting the seeds for my tomatoes & hot peppers, but this weekend it’s going to happen for sure. Since I want some nice and strong pepper plants for transplanting this year. Plus I’m going to pick up some shade cloth for the salad table this year, in case we have another freak hailstorm around mother’s day, (see the Aji drama from last year).

Back from month long break

Posted on by AuSable

To say that I was a little bit burnt out with posting to this blog, is a very large understatement. So I basically took some time off during February and March, to take care of a large pile personal projects unrelated to this website.

But with that out of the way, I should be back to the usual posting schedule for this blog. And with gardening season right around the corner, you’ll start to see more gardening posts in the months ahead. Since I’ll need to get me tomato and pepper seedlings started in the next couple of weeks, so that they’ll be ready for transplanting around Mother’s Day weekend.