Using up the Strawberries!

*Note: Hopefully you'll be seeing better pictures on here soon! Our camera is five years old and apparently on the fritz. As soon as I get a new one I'll be able to snap some better pics!

In my quest to use up the strawberries from our garden, I've made two new strawberry recipes today: Buckwheat Strawberry Banana Bread and Strawberry Dumplings. I think I'll be making both again! And the strawberries are officially used up! The ones in the house that is. Since I haven't picked any in two days now, there are likely another 1-2 quarts ready for picking. Out of sight out of mind?

The Strawberry Dumplings recipe was based on the one in Gourmet.com. Being a city girl who really likes shortcuts I opted to make some changes, including making my dumplings with Bisquick since I'm familiar with that and it's so so easy! I also had a few peaches on hand that were starting to go bad so I threw those in too. It turned out great and was a lot like a warm strawberry shortcake without having to go through the trouble of making shortcake. So here's the City Girl version:

Strawberry Peach Dumplings
1 quart strawberries, large ones halved
2-3 peaches, peeled and chopped
juice from half an orange
1/2 c sugar or splenda
couple dashes of cinnamon

1 1/3 c Heart Healthy Bisquick
1/4 c plus 2 T skim milk
1 T sugar or splenda
couple dashes of cinnamon

Mix first 5 ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a low boil over medium heat. While that's heating up, prepare the dumplings by mixing the last four ingredients. Once the fruit is liquidy and bubbling add dumpling dough by spoonfuls to the top of the fruit. Cook for 10 minutes uncovered, then 10 minutes covered until dumplings seem dry on the top. Let mixture cool for a few minutes before serving.

The Buckwheat Strawberry Banana Bread was adapted from the banana bread recipe in How to Cook Everything. Here's the City Girl scoop:

Buckwheat Strawberry Banana Bread

8 T butter (1 stick) softened
1/2 c buckwheat flour
1 t salt
1 1/2 t baking powder
3/4 c sugar
2 eggs
2 overripe bananas, mashed
3/4 c mashed strawberries (about 1 pint fresh whole strawberries)
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 c shredded coconut

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan with butter. Mix dry ingredients. Cream the butter, and beat in the eggs and bananas. Stir in the strawberries. Then add dry ingredients and stir just until wet. Add vanilla and coconut. Pour batter into loaf pan and bake for 45 to 60 minutes until browned and toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean.

Enjoy!!

The Jam Adventure

So after picking 4+ pints of strawberries from my garden per day for 3 days in a row (and yes there are still more coming!) I decided I better try my hand at strawberry jam. I have NEVER canned before and for some reason began this experiment with fears of a jar of jam exploding in my face. I have no idea where that fear has come from but it was enough to make me read several different tutorials on making jam and consult several different recipes for the strawberry variety alone, which of course are essentially all the same. Once I realized I was on jam instruction overload I decided to just get going.

How'd it turn out? Okay. Tastes like jam, but a little on the runny side . I didn't have a candy thermometer and didn't even know I'd need one when I went out to buy canning supplies. So I tried to make due without. I must not have gotten the jam to the right temperature to set properly. But it still tastes good on bread! And will also make a nice strawberry sauce for ice cream, smoothies, or other desserts!

And only one mishap of the whole adventure....one of my plastic spoons kinda fell into the gas burner and melted there for a while before I noticed it....whoops! Guess that one's done for!

It also prompted me to pick up a book on canning so I can learn & experiment a bit more. So, despite the slightly disappointing results this city girl is up for more canning! I think I can...I think I can...I think I can...! And as one fellow blogger pointed out recently, hearing those little popping sounds as the lids seal is so thrilling and satisfying!

Wanna get started with canning and don't know how? I found the most complete advice from the USDA online in the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning. Happy Canning!

More glorious rhubarb....and strawberries!

The abundance of strawberries in our garden is starting to grow! The other day my four-year-old and I picked almost four cups worth of bright red beautiful strawberries. My netting is actually working to keep out the squirrels! Or is it the fake owl? Hmmm....

Curiously, for some reason we have many strawberries that are turning out with two little pointed ends instead of one. As my four-year-old describes it, "It has feet!" Good thing they still taste the same as the others!
So to use up a bunch of the strawberries and rhubarb from our garden I made a pie. My first strawberry rhubarb pie ever and my first time making a lattice crust on top. Turned out pretty good!

And to use up another bunch of rhubarb, tonight I made Rhubarb Pork Chop Bake. If you're looking for something new to do with your rhubarb this is a must try recipe!!! It was so good that this is going to have to be a tradition from now on in the City Girl household come rhubarb season. It's basically pork chops cooked with a sweet rhubarb stuffing. I'd say you could add a couple more pieces of bread than they call for. Mine seemed kinda scant...but it was still delish! And I got to serve it along side some salad made with greens from our garden and our Harmony Valley Farm CSA share topped with fresh CSA strawberries. Yum!!

Square Foot Gardening 101

So I have done my fair share of dabbling in the gardening realm, but honestly have never been that serious of a gardener. Sometime in mid-July I get pretty tired of the whole thing, start forgetting to water and weed, and just let the whole thing go by the wayside. I've been lucky and usually get a pretty good crop of tomatoes and lettuce regardless of my haphazard care taking patterns.

But this year I'm gonna get serious. For real. As part of my efforts to be more green I wanted to find an easy way to grow even more in my own back yard. You've heard of the whole locavore craze? Well this City Girl aims to take it 'bout as local as it can get! Her own backyard!

In order to keep things simple and easy, I decided to give square foot gardening a try. It sounds easy. Less weeds, no need to remove topsoil, till the ground, etc. And supposedly you can grow more in less space! Sounds perfect? I thought so too! And now you get to join me in my square foot gardening experiment!

What is it? In a nutshell - you build a raised garden out of 2x6's and mark off square-foot-sized plots, using weed-guard or cardboard beneath them to prevent weeds or grass. You follow spacing guidelines for your plant to plant one or more per square foot (i.e. if spacing says every 12" then you put one in the square foot sized plot). How do the plants grow in just 6" of dirt? You use a special mix: 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite that supposedly retains so much moisture that they do just fine. And anything that climbs you grow vertically instead of horizontally.

I was originally going to replace my old garden plot with a square foot garden or two, but due to my lackadaisical gardening style, it is now entirely overrun by strawberries which were already flowering by the time I got around to building my square foot gardens. I just could not live with the idea of getting rid of all those strawberries (even if the squirrels do eat them every single year BEFORE they are even ripe), so I kept the strawberry bed AND added two square foot gardens.

Here's the strawberry bed, with some new netting I added to see if I could keep out those squirrels this year.I have a feeling they will still find a way to eat those berries up! I'm halfway considering the advice I read on a message board from someone who literally puts dozens of plastic forks tine side up all over in her strawberries to keep out the squirrels. What do you think? Have any great tips on keeping those pesty guys outta there? See the rhubarb buried in there too? That's another one I just had to let be.

Here's the two square foot gardens BEFORE planting.
And here they are after planting. I have chives, onions, rosemary, Italian parsley, various lettuces (4 romaine, and 6 others), tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, broccoli and cauliflower.


Let's hope that City Girl can actually pull this one off! Next on my list? Figure out how to build a frame for my tomatoes and cucumbers to climb vertically. Stay tuned for updates as the adventure continues!