Category Archives: My Little Victory Garden

My Little Victory Garden, Oklahoma culture

My Little Victory Garden: Buttermilk Biscuit Throwdown, PLUS Cauliflower Isn’t Cabbage!

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Oh the agony of it all.

I recently received my first delivery from the Oklahoma Food Cooperative system and now I have to think about how to use my food!  In my mind the first thing I knew I had to investigate was the Buttermilk from Wagon Creek Creamery.   I wanted to know if I could bake with it, and how the product would act in a recipe.  My solution?  Have a Buttermilk Biscuit Throwdown and ask my family to judge the results.

Here is the description from their listing on the Coop website:

Our buttermilk is the direct byproduct of our buttermaking process. This buttermilk is not cultured (so it isn’t as thick nor as sour as what you purchase at the supermarket.) We freeze it to keep it fresh. Just thaw and use in your favorite biscuit, pancake, fried chicken, etc. recipes! Packaged in a sealed 8 oz. container. Because it is a by product of the butter making process, it may contain a little salt. Ingredients: buttermilk, salt.

Although I have always been fine using Braum’s Buttermilk, a small voice inside my head said, “Do it.  Order the buttermilk and see what it’s like.”  So I did.  I comes frozen in a plastic pouch.  I set it in my refrigerator on ordering day and noticed the defrosting time was about 48 hours.  This product sells for $1.99, so it’s clearly more expensive than the Braum’s counterpart.

Let’s look at the Braum’s product.  Here is the description of their half-gallon from their website:

Braum’s Grade A Pasteurized Buttermilk is real old fashioned buttermilk! Made with low fat milk fresh from our dairy herd on the Braum Family Farm…you can’t get any fresher than that! Great by the glass or use it as an ingredient in your favorite recipe!

Now for the ingredients: Cultured Grade ‘A’ low fat milk, stabilizer blend (modified tapioca starch, carrageenan, locust bean gum), gelatin, salt.  I’ll refrain from my commentary fighting to erupt out of my fingers right now. Continue reading My Little Victory Garden: Buttermilk Biscuit Throwdown, PLUS Cauliflower Isn’t Cabbage! →

My Little Victory Garden, Oklahoma culture

My Little Victory Garden, Entry 10: Teaoli, Delivery Day and “Garden Improvement”

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Sometimes I go back and re-read my posts then really cringe.  Take last week’s “Victory Garden” entry, for example.  Here are all the Blog Boo-Boos I found: a) I talked about Teaoli and didn’t even provide you with photos or information.  b) I wrote some sort of introductory statement like, “And now…here are the finished quiches, feast your eyes!” and followed that up with a photo of my broccoli. Wha?? And, 3) I talked about Teaoli and didn’t even provide you with photos or information.  The Teaoli little faux pas is worth two bullet points.

Nestled in the northwest shopping corner of 15th & Bryant in Edmond awaits a very special place for you to explore.  The owners would love you to come in and taste olive oils, infused olive oils, balsamic vinegars, blended balsamic vinegars, and teas…and teas and teas. Every time I go shopping for olive oil, I always want to taste it.  And now I finally can.  I’ve spent between $7.00 and about $30.00 for approximately 14-18 oz of olive oil.  Their 14 oz bottles are $14.50, a mid-range price-point for oils by and large from California.  I can recommend my first purchase: Arbequina Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  The description reads, “Fresh and lively with a mild to medium intensity with notes of green apple peel and herbs.” I just uncorked it again to take another whiff and see if I agree with their narrative.  (*inhale….okay, another inhale*) Yes. Continue reading My Little Victory Garden, Entry 10: Teaoli, Delivery Day and “Garden Improvement” →

My Little Victory Garden, Oklahoma culture

My Little Victory Garden, Entry Nine: Gimme a Little Quiche!

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One of my favorite Spring sights: Our Japanese Maple unfolding all its beautiful leaves to receive the sun's rays.

When I started these posts, I was a little worried about having enough content.  After my first two or three entries, however, I now struggle with CUTTING enough content to avoid overwhelming our reading friends with too much information!  This week was certainly another struggle.  Included in today’s post will be information about the bargain eggs at St. Francis of the Woods on Highway 33, the opening of the Edmond Farmer’s Market and some treasures I found there, a beautiful olive oil, tea and vinegar shop in Edmond, broccoli and why it bolts, and…101 ways to cook with spinach.  Okay, I’m joking about the spinach – I’m just sharing one way.  If I were going to write a book on 101 ways of anything right now, it would be, “101 ways to pack 12 gallons of cleaned lettuce in your refrigerator.”  We’ll get to that.  But first, my journey to St. Francis of the Woods… Continue reading My Little Victory Garden, Entry Nine: Gimme a Little Quiche! →

Homestead and Garden, My Little Victory Garden, Oklahoma culture

My Little Victory Garden: Entry 8 – My Veggies Are Talking!

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"Spinach - it's what's for dinner." That's all I said. One day, I'm out picking spinach while whistling a theme from the ballet Rodeo, and my spinach has been making fun of me ever since. Taunting me...seriously. It fancies itself Dana Carvey, and talks to me in "Western" vernacular, and makes fun of the fact that I like to read. How 'bout this. I'll even let you hear what it says...

(Link)

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce: We're eating SOOO-O-O- much lettuce right now, because there is so much! When I go to the garden and cut some more, this is what it says: "I have been chosen...."

Continue reading My Little Victory Garden: Entry 8 – My Veggies Are Talking! →

Homestead and Garden, My Little Victory Garden, Oklahoma culture

My Little Victory Garden: Entry Seven…Miles from Downtown Tryon

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Sunday night I’m standing over the sink washing my “first fruits” of the Black Seeded Simpson heirloom lettuce from my garden.  I’m probably drooling because there is just nothing quite as tender and mild as a first bite of the first cut from garden greens.  I rinse the leaves, put them in a big bowl, cover them with cold water, and began dreaming about my first salad.  I already have my Cordero Farms Sweet Italian sausage browning on the stove and my mission tonight is a beautiful ravioli dinner.

Here’s the story of how I made the dinner, how I visited Cordero Farms and loved on some lambs, and how I enjoyed a few moments with new friends of the RDC:

Two course dinner

When I make something like “first fruits” salad and homemade ravioli, I don’t mess with extras.  Sometimes, food is just too good to get distracted from by having extra vegetables or dessert.  Such was the case tonight.  First up – prepping the simple salad… Continue reading My Little Victory Garden: Entry Seven…Miles from Downtown Tryon →

Homestead and Garden, My Little Victory Garden, Oklahoma culture

My Little Victory Garden: Entry Six o’Clock Dinner Secrets

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My heirloom black seed lettuce will be ready for its first cutting this week.

I play lots of food games, kitchen games or garden games.  Mostly with myself, but they still entertain me for hours.  One of these activities is a game I like to call, “Beat the Restaurant.”  It involves ordering a dish I really love from a restaurant until I have “cracked the recipe code” in my own home kitchen.  Sometimes this takes a couple of years because we don’t really go out to eat that often, and the chances of Mick agreeing to go to the same restaurant just so I can order a dish I’m trying to deconstruct aren’t very high.  So what I’m about to share with you is special, and it has to do with my little Victory Garden.

My Garden Report for this past week?  Things are definitely coming along.  Spinach is now ready for early picking.  And I did, of course.  I cut about 1.5 cups of the most beautiful little perfectly deep green leaves and thought to myself, “I’m going to share my recipe for Cafe 501’s Spinach, Pear and Blue Cheese Salad!”  Other restaurants serve something similar, but I’ve never had it anywhere except Cafe 501 where they use the perfect dressing.  Yes, it’s perfect (in my head)…for a LOT of things.  I’ll tell you about the “lot of things” after I tell you about the salad, deal?  Here are a couple more photos for my garden report section: Continue reading My Little Victory Garden: Entry Six o’Clock Dinner Secrets →

My Little Victory Garden, Oklahoma culture

My Little Victory Garden: Entry Five-Egg Foraged Omelet

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Locavores breathe a sigh of relief during the Spring. Find out what we foraged this weekend, and how we created meals around our treasures.

Today is Sunday afternoon, March 20th, and my family is going foraging.  I have just a few veggies and herbs we can now eat, but it’s certainly not enough.  I know, however, there are more outside so I thought I would take you along with us.  I’ll also take you to Crestview Farms, just down the road from my house, and talk about home-produced eggs.  So…let’s get going!

Garden report ~ First things first, here’s how my early garden is growing: onions are now at the early green eating stage, Swiss Chard actually looks like it might do something, and a few sprouts are…oh, maybe one-half inch tall now? Lettuce and spinach are at the “micro-green” stage and if I wanted to get fancy, I’d be cutting.  I’m going to wait, however, because I prefer to eat mouthfuls of those luscious crops.  Broccoli and cauliflower look promising and are now about three times their planting-time size, and so far…no sign of potatoes.  My oregano came back and my asparagus is beginning to make so all-in-all things are looking okay.  I’m still contemplating our extra bed.  Mick and I have finally decided on a size and location.  And now, for the fun stuff!… Continue reading My Little Victory Garden: Entry Five-Egg Foraged Omelet →

Foodie Page, My Little Victory Garden, Oklahoma culture

My Little Victory Garden: Entry Four-Ever, I DO

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About Thursday at noon last week I realized that even Queens of Multi-tasking have limits.  Actually, I think it was 11:45 a.m. when I stopped and wrote three e-mails.  All of them canceling appointments I had previously set up because “I was going to be running errands around town for my daughter’s wedding and might as well take care of (X).”  I took off my multi-tasking crown and tossed it somewhere into the back of my SUV; it landed alongside three bags of clothes (dry cleaner, gym bag, sack of clothes I had to buy because I forgot my gym bag last week), four boxes of Mason or Kerr canning jars (drinking glasses for the wedding), six wedding presents for my daughter and her fiancee’ I had collected from church and friends over the last week, school books (both teaching and learning) and five crumpled pieces of paper.  If unwadded, lists of 10-15 things “to be done before the wedding” would be revealed on each of the paper balls.  They rolled to and fro on the floor of my car as I drove madly around town, forward when stopping and backward when I took off again.

Five days later, the crown is still resting haphazardly in the back and I’m not quite ready to don it again.  Rather, I’m still thinking about all the seeds planted in my Life Garden last week: memories, new friendships and relationships, a new marriage in our family and, well, more memories.  I’ll talk about those in just a minute.  First I want to honor this post by reporting on my garden.

“My Little Victory Garden” was neglected most of the week.  I took solace in the fact that our neighbor’s sprinkling system was watering my seedlings nightly.  Evidently last summer during a long hot week, Dennis (my neighbor to the west) told Mick that he was watching after my garden by adjusting two of his sprinkler heads to rotate 360 degrees, thus also covering my garden as well as a portion of his yard.  Nine months later, I thanked him in my head for that little gesture by commenting to myself, “Well, at least the garden is getting a little water at night. You rock, Dennis.” Continue reading My Little Victory Garden: Entry Four-Ever, I DO →

Foodie Page, My Little Victory Garden, Oklahoma culture

My Little Victory Garden: Entry Three

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Yukon Gold potatoes ~ the debate remains on whether or not you need more than one "eye" per chunk when you plant.

I was talking to my dad on the phone Saturday, sharing with him that I was getting ready to plant potatoes.  He said, “You’re not waiting until St. Patrick’s Day?”  I didn’t even know that was a THING. (Later, I felt slightly better when Mick told me ‘the sign said sometime between February 20th and March 15th.’  Heck, I wasn’t even being risky if we were using the sign’s standard!)

I wonder how many THINGS I don’t know?  I found out another THING while on the phone with him.  He recalled for me that my grandmother Porter (Julie At The Ranch’s great-grandmother as well) used to peel her potatoes fairly thickly, then simply plant the peelings, saving the core to cook for a meal.  Then he, my mother across the room speaking “through” my dad, and I had a third conversation:  How many eyes do you need per chunk of potato planted?  She said two, he said probably just one.  Knowing me, and my inability to identify exactly what constitutes as a bonafide eye, I’ll probably plant three or more.  It’s one thing for roots to be growing forth from the potato, hence easily identifiable makings of a plant.  However, are the little dents with tiny dots in them ALL eyes?  Who knows.  My potato chunks may have four eyes or more due to my lack of experience.

So, earlier that morning, prior to speaking with my dad: I was feeling a little guilty having only purchased three seed potatoes from the feed store.  I looked around a bit more and found a packet of last year’s cucumber seeds for fifty cents.  A discussion ensues…this time with Mick.

Mick: “Don’t you want to buy THIS year’s seeds?”

Me:  “Why?  Don’t you think LAST year’s will grow?”

Mick: “I don’t know.  It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Me: “Okay, first of all – that’s silly.  Of COURSE they’ll grow.  Secondly, I’m simply trying to find something to add to my potato purchase so the total will be over a dollar.  These are nice people and I’d like to spend more than eighty cents with them!”

Mick (known for always tipping the employees at Sonic more than he should): “Oh, yeah.  Good idea.” Continue reading My Little Victory Garden: Entry Three →

Homestead and Garden, My Little Victory Garden, Oklahoma culture

My Little Victory Garden: Entry Two

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One week before a business down the road from our home opened, torrential rains came and took out their entire retaining wall. In three days, however, the mess was cleaned up and crews worked around the clock to rebuild the wall and the structures it had pulled down. Now restored, the first business is OPEN.

The majority of Oklahoma experienced a sustaining drought throughout last fall and on through Winter 2010-11. No rain.  Zero.  When this kind of thing happens in the winter, it’s not quite as noticeable as it is when green things are growing.  However the situation was pretty bad: until just a few days ago fire warnings had been published, all our snow had only amounted to mere tenths of an inch once melted and the winter wheat was really suffering.

Then last week the rain came.  In torrents.  Although our whole state didn’t get moisture, a good deal did and that “good deal” included My Little Victory Garden.  Two days after Mick had plowed up the beautiful soil into a soft loam for planting, the rain came with a vengeance.  My yard still has “wavy grass” reminders, my garden was flooded and the aftermath is a now uneven, cracked plot with sand in it.  Why sand?  The rain was so hard it found a weak, lower area in our neighbors yard and drilled down behind our retaining wall, oozing out the native sandy loam through the cracks.  But that wasn’t the worst damage.  My garden got off easy.

Did you get a big rain? Did your yard look like this once the water subsided?

Continue reading My Little Victory Garden: Entry Two →

Foodie Page, My Little Victory Garden, Oklahoma culture

My Little Victory Garden: Entry One

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Daily Harvest - This one was from September 26, 2010.

Gardening means so many positive things to me that I was having a hard time finding just the right phrase to title my new series.  I gave serious consideration to “Kelly Does Dirt,” “Dirty Fingernails Are Nature’s Perfect Manicure,” “Fresh Veggies Are Better Than Making Whoopee,” …well, you get the picture.  In other words, I was having a hard core creativity block.

When I gave up brainstorming and closed my laptop, the title “Victory Garden” popped into my head.  I realized I didn’t even know the history of the term.  So, I “Wikied” it.  *I’m guessing I utilize the resource at least once a day.  Here’s what I learned:

Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany[1] during World War I and World War II to reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort. In addition to indirectly aiding the war effort these gardens were also considered a civil “morale booster” — in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown. This made victory gardens become a part of daily life on the home front.

What a gift! History had at that moment handed me what I needed.  It seems that there has been somewhat of a resurgence the past few years in private residence and public community gardens.  Further, my gardens have been my own personal morale booster; they truly have helped me feel empowered by the contribution to our family and health.  The “reward of labor” comes almost daily at the height of summer’s harvest.

My first garden's carrots, ready the last week in June, 2009.

Continue reading My Little Victory Garden: Entry One →