Kohlrabi

Well here is a little known vegetable. John started growing these a while back nd we have come to look forward to them. They are in the cabbage family so it is a winter crop here in Texas. You can eat them raw and cooked. We mostly eat them raw either by themselves as a snack or in a salad. You can also add to soups or stirfry. They taste like a cross between celery and brocolli.






To Prepare - cut off the leaves as shown and then peel and slice. They are crunchy and yummy raw.

Variations on Winter Soups

I make tons of soups in the winter. The family likes it and it sneaks in the all veggie meals with pretty much no resistance. The soups are also good because you start with a base recipe and then add whatever you happen to have handy in the garden. Here is a leek tip. Slice the leeks before you wash them and them clean the sliced leeks in a salad spinner.

Potato, Leek and Spinach soup.

3 cups of peeled yukon gold potatoes cubes
3 cups of sliced leeks
2 quarts of chicken broth
2 cups of other vegetables if you want (sliced carrots, parnips, zucchini etc) - optional
1 tablespoon salt
2 cups spinach chopped
2 tables spoons of butter

Simmer the potatoes, leeks, broths and other vegetables if you want for 30-40 minutes until vegetables are tender. Using an immersion blender if you have one (otherwise just blend in regular blender in batches) puree. Prepare the spinach for slicing bundles of the leaves in 1/4 inch strips. Add to soup and simmer for another 15 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons of butter at the end to finish and server. If you don't have leeks available I have been known to use onion. This is a pretty versatile soup you can substitute pretty much any of the ingredients. Swiss Chard for spinach. Onions for Leeks. I would keep the potatoes though.


Here is a 7 vegetable curried soup. Again use what ever you happen to have in season.
My sister in law Nora gave me this recipe many years ago.

Chop up 7 different kinds of vegetable about 1 cup each of chopped onions, potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, peppers, eggplant, turnips, carrots, parsnips, a few cloves of garlic. Swiss Chard, kales, mustard greens also work well. You can use any combination just try to have at least 7 including the garlic. Saute the vegetables in about 4 tablespoons of butter, coconut oil or olive oil. Add 2 quarts of chicken broth and 2-3 teaspoons of curry powder and a couple of teaspoons of salt to taste. Cook about 40 minutes and puree using a blender or immersion blender. Server

Green Chili

Last year my son Max gave us a bunch of hatch chili seeds from the restaurant he worked at. We started them as seeds last January and put about 6 plants in the ground in March. Peppers are sensitive in that they will not produce well if they are exposed to temperatures less than 50 degrees so you really want to wait until the weather is a little warmer before you plant them. They also tend to do very well in hot temperature so last summers 100 days over 100 degrees actually produced a bumper crop for us, in fact we turned off all water to the garden except the peppers in July. Hatch pepper are officially only Hatch if they are grown in Hatch County New Mexico. The same pepper is also called the Anaheim pepper. Since we live in Travis county my husband calls them Travis peppers here. They are great in salsas and pasta sauces but they are best roasted, peeled and chopped and made into green chili. After we harvest we freeze the chopped chilis in small containers so we can use them all winter. Here is my recipe for green chili which is great on burritto's, pork chops, eggs, chicken and pretty much anything grilled.

Suanne's Green Chili

4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flours
1/2 half Knorr chicken bouillon cube
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped green chili's
2 cups chicken broth

Saute the onions in the butter with the bouillon until soft, add the peppers and stir. Add the flour and make a roux. Let the roux paste cook for about a minute and then slowly add the broth and cooks until at low heat until thickened. This is really great on fried eggs.

Green Chili Pork Stew

1 tbls olive oil
1/2 pound pork (I used boned pork chop pieces) cut into 1/2 inch chunks
1 /2 cup flour
salt and pepper
2 cups chopped green chili
2 tomatilla chopped
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can of white beans (unless you have some already cooked from scratch - I made a batch of our lima beans)
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1 cup chicken broth
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Heat the oil in a large stew pot
dredge the pork in the flour salt and pepper
brown the the pork in the oil and add onions. Cook for 5 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 1 1/2 hours stirring occasionally.

Farm Fresh Eggs

While we are not hard core localvores we do try to eat as local as possible by growing our own food, going to farmers markets and buying eggs from a local farm. Here are some eggs my niece brought over from the chickens her boyfriends family raises. I love all the different colors. The yolks are a very deep yellow that you cannot find in the grocery store.

Daikon Radish

Daikon Radishes are thriving in the garden this year. Here are two we pulled. I like the diakon because they are a mild radish and they go well in salads or just to slice as snacks. I make a Daikon and Carrot pickled salad with them. You plant the seeds in September and we have been harvesting since December. They get quite large these are about 14 inches long. They did well in the frost although for some of the larger ones that had the root exposed, the exposed part did freeze. We just cut that part off but these should be harvested if the root is large enough to be exposed before a freeze.


Daikon and Carrot Pickled Salad

One Daikon radish - peeled and grated
2-3 Carrots (depending on size) peeled and grated.
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tablespoons sesame oil.

Use a food processor to grate the radish and carrot as its just easier if you have one. Combine all ingredients and let sit at room temperature for at least an hour. Serve with lettuce greens or by itself as a side.

Spinach

Here is our spinach patch. We can harvest spinach pretty much all winter. We plant from seed in September. John put the cages on the plants to keep the cats out. I use spinach a lot.
I can stir fry it and use for Eggs Florentine, I add to salads or make a spinach salad, I just stir fry it in a little butter or I add to soups.

Red Cabbage

I decided to make Schnitzel and Red Cabbage German style today. So I picked one of our heads of red cabbage. Cabbage is a slaw crop and we planted the sets back in September. These also do very well in the cold weather and they pretty much came through unscathed in the cold temperatures we had a few weeks ago in the the teens. To harvest I just cut the head out of the plant. You can then cut the rest off the root and compost.

My favorite way of preparing Red Cabbage is from one of my grandmother's recipes.

German Style Red Cabbage
1 head of red cabbage chopped
3-4 pieces of bacon chopped into small pieces
1 onion chopped
1/3 cup of apple cider vinegar
1-2 Granny Smith apples (peeled,cored and chopped)
1-2 tablespoons honey
salt
Caraway seeds

Chop the cabbage into small pieces and place is bowl of water. Fry the bacon in a large pots until crisp. Remove the Bacon. Saute the onion in the bacon grease for a few minutes until tender. Add the cabbage and stir fry over med high heat for about 5 minutes until somewhat soft. Add vinegar and honey to taste , cover and cook over med low heat for about 30 minutes. Add the apple and caraway seed, cover and cook 10 minutes more. Add salt to taste. Add bacon and server.

Brussel Sprouts

Here are some of our brussel sprouts ready for harvest. These were planted back in late September. They are large plants and require quite a bit of room so do not overcrowd them as they will not produce as well. We have about 6 plants in a 4 x 8 space. To harvest pick the sprouts from the bottom and the plants will keeps producing new sprouts. Since they are in the cabbage family they do just fine in the colder temperatures. It is preferable to pick after a frost as they get sweeter.


You can cooks brussel sprouts by adding to soups, steaming them, roasting in the oven or sauteing. I prefer to steam them for about 10 minutes and then saute in some butter with season garlic, salt and pepper. If you have a surplus you can blanch for a couple of minutes in boiling water and then freeze them for later use.

January thru March Planting guide

Here is a link to the Travis Country Planting guide for vegetable January thru March.

http://www.co.travis.tx.us/agext/garden/veggies/planting/janmar.asp


You can plant onion, leeks, lettuce, radishes, peas, carrots and spinach for a Spring crop. Check the link for a full list. We just planted onion sets which are available at the garden stores right now.