What are You Eating from the Garden?

[flowerbug]

I still have frozen pumpkin. I Thought you couldn't eat that after 5 months. How long have Yours been frozen?

sorry to have missed this question before ducks, we've had frozen squash in the freezer for a year or longer without any change in flavor as long as it was double bagged in freezer quality bags. since i'm very sensitive to the freezer burn taste or smell of any kind it's important to me to do it well and not lose the results due to spoiling via bag failure. it takes so much effort to grow it, harvest, store, bake, pack and then freeze that there's no way i want to lose even a small amount of that.

besides it is rare for us to have any go longer than a year because we love to eat it.

please note that the squash in the freezer is much different than the frozen squash left out in the garden...

 

[digitS']

I should have brought a bigger bucket. Wasn’t at all sure that there would be anything worth harvesting in the big veggie garden. After at least a dozen frosts, there they were!

“Eastern Magic” for this westerner

Steve

 

[Grandmas Garden]

The things I grew for the chickens are doing fine.
I gave a bunch of kale and marigolds to the hens today-

 

[Zeedman]

Finally got around to using the ground cherries - they keep pretty well, if stored where they have ventilation. After husking them there was just over 6 cups, which I figured was enough to make one coffee cake, and one pie. Made the coffee cake first... and it evaporated so fast I decided to forget the pie, and made a second coffee cake. I had added a few yellow raisins to the first one, to which I added some cried cranberries & chopped dried mangoes for the second.

Never would have thought I could have too few ground cherries.

 

[heirloomgal]

Finally got around to using the ground cherries - they keep pretty well, if stored where they have ventilation. After husking them there was just over 6 cups, which I figured was enough to make one coffee cake, and one pie. Made the coffee cake first... and it evaporated so fast I decided to forget the pie, and made a second coffee cake. I had added a few yellow raisins to the first one, to which I added some cried cranberries & chopped dried mangoes for the second.
View attachment 45638

Never would have thought I could have too few ground cherries.

Ooooh, that looks REALLY good. What all is in that topping mixture? It is remarkable how long ground cherries last after picking isn't it? I remember one year giving those to my daughter at lunch through January after a September harvest. No wonder they also went by the name winter cherries. Some were getting a wee bit wrinkled but the taste was still good. I've never tried cooking them, though I've always wanted to try them that way.

 

[Zeedman]

Ooooh, that looks REALLY good. What all is in that topping mixture? It is remarkable how long ground cherries last after picking isn't it? I remember one year giving those to my daughter at lunch through January after a September harvest. No wonder they also went by the name winter cherries. Some were getting a wee bit wrinkled but the taste was still good. I've never tried cooking them, though I've always wanted to try them that way.

And the storage time has an added benefit: any that may not have been fully ripe (hard to tell of course with the husk on) will ripen with time. All of the ground cherries we opened were either ripe, or brown & shriveled. I really don't know why that should have surprised me, given that most cultivated nightshades, such as tomatoes & peppers, will also ripen in storage. And for years, I've been telling people not to save the green ones... my bad.

Because they were stored in the husk, any which did spoil could not infect the others. My opinion of ground cherries has gone up a couple of notches, from 'a weed we can snack on', to 'maybe we could use a few more'...
... which could easily turn into a 'you asked for it!' situation.

Oh, the topping. Part of the flour/sugar/salt/butter mixture used in the cake batter, to which brown sugar, cinnamon, and chopped pecans are added. I pack that down, so it will be more crunchy than crumbly.

 

[flowerbug]

@Zeedman i know where i wish i was for breakfast right now. looks delicious!

lately we've been using up some of those small onion bulbs i harvested last summer, some garlic too and then also some beans that were extra that i didn't want to put into storage jars. these all were used for baked beans.

i still have a few lbs of small onions to use up after i sort them apart from whatever onion sets i want to put into storage that i hope will last until spring for replanting. it may take some time to peel and cut up the small onions but i hate throwing things away that might be useful and if i have the time it's ok. at least the real tiny ones are the ones that i'll keep for onion sets so it is only the bigger ones i'm processing. and ultimately if i get tired of them i can either take them outside and bury them in a garden or i can cut the ends off and then put them in the worm farm buckets where the worms will enjoy them.

 

[seedcorn]

Never grown ground cherries. What do they taste like-fruit or vegetable like a tomato?

 

[Zeedman]

Never grown ground cherries. What do they taste like-fruit or vegetable like a tomato?

More fruity than vegetable... like a sweet pineapple-flavored cherry tomato, with very tiny seeds. Sadly, much of the pineapple flavor was lost in the baking process, but the ground cherries were still sweet. They are much better when ripe & eaten fresh, although I never ate too many at one time. I've already eaten more of them in the coffee cake than I ate all summer.

 

[Dahlia]

I made a pumpkin pie from a homegrown pumpkin! Here is a small piece of it!