our salsa recipe

This amount fills our 12 cup food processor.

10 squeezed, meaty-type tomatoes (like Romas) that are about the size of baseballs **note below
2-4 hot peppers
2 cups sweet onions, chunked (I just kinda guess by the size of the onion)
1 cup tightly packed cilantro
1 t sea salt
3 T raw apple cider vinegar
1/2 t coarse black pepper

Layer above ingredients in the order listed into food processor. Pulse until desired texture is reached. Dump into large bowl and repeat. (We like BIG BATCHES of salsa, lol!) 🙂

We are alway taste testing while we go, so I should probably state that the above recipe is just a “base”. I’m sure we throw in a-little-more-of-this, and a-little-more-of-that, so it’s never exactly the same. 🙂

**Here’s how I prepare my tomatoes: I remove the skins & core, but leave them whole. I put one in my hands, hold it over the sink core-cut-side down, and gently squeeze the tomato so most of the seeds & water are pressed out. After 3 batches of squeezing, it is not uncommon for hands to cramp up, lol… 🙂

Processing tomatoes

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Despite the drought last year, we were blessed with a bountiful harvest – including tomatoes. 🙂

Here’s a snapshot of what we do with our maters. It is a true family effort – or I don’t know how I could do all.

When we first started doing this, I was COMPLETELY AMAZED at how many tomatoes it takes to create the same amount of tomato based products we used to buy from the store. We realized that we COULD NOT grow enough to provide the same “loot” in our pantry for one year. Because of that realization, we’ve scaled back on how much of it we eat, and we do our best to find healthier tomato sauces that we buy limited quantities of for our homemade pizzas. Thus reducing the amount of money we need to spend off-farm. This way, our energy goes toward the less time-consuming efforts like water bath canning whole tomatoes, juice, and our version of v(egetable)-8. We do make several canners full of tomato sauce, but can them in pints & they are treated like “gold”, lol. (I think last season furnished 10 pints for our pantry…) Normally, we focus on canning the whole tomatoes + juice for both ourselves and Mike’s parents, and his mom cooks down & cans the tomato sauce for all of us. (Group efforts are soooo nice!) LOTS of hours of stirring while it cooks down to the desired thickness, makes me feel a little protective of tomato sauce…and being SUPER conscious of not wasting it. These are good lessons that we are thankful to have learned. 🙂

The biggest bulk of our maters are canned as whole tomatoes. (We are big soup/stew eaters, and we like a marinara sauce once in awhile, too. Whole tomatoes are perfect for those recipes.) Once the maters have been washed, we drop them in boiling water until the skin breaks – usually not more than one minute. Then we plunge them into ice water for quick cooling. The boys like this job & usually bicker over whose turn it is.

My “station” is usually as the “skinner/chunker”. None of my boys like the messiness of this part, so by default, the job is mine. I don’t mind, though…my hands might be yucky, but I can still bark orders pretty good, lol… 🙂

Mike is usually the “floater” and “jar-stufferer”. 🙂

Last season we canned 48 quarts of whole tomatoes for our pantry and about half that for mom & dad next door. 🙂

When we are making juice/sauce & our v(egetable)-8, we don’t remove the skins. Just chunk the veggies so they fit into the juice attachment for our mixer, and it separates the seeds/skins for us. This is another task the boys don’t mind doing. 🙂

Last season we canned 8 quarts of our v(egetable)-8 juice and 22 quarts of tomato juice for ourselves + some for next door.

We also make several large batches of salsa & freeze it in 1 cup portions. Most of it gets ~~devoured~~ eaten fresh, but I think we managed to freeze 15 cups or so. 🙂

our chili recipe

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2 quarts tomato juice

2 quarts whole tomatoes (crushed up)

1 quart tomato sauce

4 pounds cooked ground beef

2 cups chopped green peppers

4 cups of mixed dried beans – softened* (see below)

4 t minced garlic or 8 cloves, minced

4 t sea salt

2 c chopped sweet onion

2 c chopped celery

2 T chili powder

1/4 cup evaporated cane juice (56g)

Add to pot. Heat & simmer over low heat for several hours, stirring occasionally. 🙂

Yield is about 20 servings.

*One of these days, I’ll get a post up about our dried beans. Here’s how we “soften” them. Take 4 cups (1 pound) of dried beans and pour them in a tall pan with water covering them by at least 2 inches. Bring them to a rolling boil for one minute (IF YOU ARE USING STORE BOUGHT BEANS, DOUBLE THE COOKING TIME.). Remove from heat & add lid. Let sit 1 hour. Drain/rinse. Add back to pot with water covering them by several inches. Bring to a boil. Add lid, and simmer 20-30 minutes. (SAME AS EARLIER, IF STORE BOUGHT, DOUBLE COOK TIME.)

our barley-stuffed peppers recipe

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Since we freeze these as individual halves, we make a big batch of the filling and use however many green peppers we have to fill. Leftover filling is great as a side or burrito filling, too!

1 pound “sausage”

2 cups chopped sweet onion

1 t garlic granules

1 pint tomato sauce

4 cups barley, cooked (5 c water + 1 cup barley + 1 t sea salt = bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cook covered about 45 minutes)

1/2 t dried thyme

1 t sea salt

1/4 t coarse pepper

Mix up above, spoon into blanched green pepper halves (place pepper pieces in boiling water for 3 minutes, drain in cold water). Place in ungreased baking dish. Cover & bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes or until peppers are to desired tenderness. Makes a bunch. 🙂

Stuffed pepper soup recipe

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3 pounds ground beef

2 quarts beef broth

2 quarts water

2 quarts tomato juice

2 quarts whole tomatoes (which I usually crush up with my potato masher)

1-1/2 cups barley

4 cups chopped green peppers

1/2 cup evaporated cane juice (112g)

1/2 T molasses or sorghum

4 t sea salt

2 t coarse pepper

In 8 quart stock pot, brown beef. Drain. Add back to pot with remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat. Cover and simmer until barley is cooked. Tastes best after day 1. 🙂

Yields about 20 servings.

Processing peppers

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Figured I’d finally get some harvesting posts up since I couldn’t find the time to do it “live”. As we get loads of green peppers, what I don’t eat raw (my favorite), we chop and freeze. When we have large batches at once, after washing & removing the stem/seeds, we send chunks through the chopper blade of our food processor. We freeze them in 2 cup and 4 cup freezer bags.

We have a stuffed pepper soup recipe that calls for 4 cups of chopped peppers, and we use 2 cups in our chili recipe – hence storing those sizes. I think last year we froze enough that we could make 8 batches of our soup and another 8 batches of our chili. We also like to make a bunch of barley-stuffed peppers which we freeze individually so we can just take out what we want. I place them side-by-side in a covered container until fully frozen, and then stack them in gallon sized freezer bags.

That’s pretty much how we calculate what we need for a year… When it’s time to cook, I like to grab what I need in the size that I need – kinda like our very own grocery store, lol! It really works great for the type of lifestyle we live. Ideally, someday we’d like to use less plastic, but we are not there yet. For now, being able to create a filling meal in a shorter amount of time is a higher priority. 🙂

Many of our hot peppers, we just wash & freeze whole. We like to throw a couple whole peppers into pots of “whatever”, just for flavor. We’ve learned to taste test while recipes simmer – because it doesn’t take too long for the “heat” to take over, lol…

Every year, my 3 boys try to make their own hot sauce. Found a recipe for a lacto-fermented hot sauce online, so they tried it last season. They sorted their peppers by “hotness” and made 3 different batches. They are still undecided if they really like it or not…(which in my opinion, means they must not like it, lol)

We froze the hot sauce in half pint jars, but didn’t have enough lids for them. Used foil & set them into sandwhich ziplock baggies in an effort to NOT stink up our freezer, but that didn’t work. Next season, we will have metal lids, lol. 🙂

Ricotta dumplings recipe

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In preparation for our crazy season to begin, I’ve been making big batches of foods I can freeze. I found the base recipe for these online, and have tweaked it for us. These dumplings taste wonderful and are nice to have as an option for a quick meal. 🙂

Fill a large stock pot half full of water & bring it to a boil.

While that is getting to temp, mix up the following:

1 pound ricotta cheese (or a mixture of ricotta & cottage cheese)

8 eggs

Then add & mix well:

6 cups of flour (726g) – I use King Arthur Unbleached Flour

3t sea salt

1t coarse black pepper

Place dough on a floured surface. Dough should be a little sticky. I usually divide my dough into 4 chunks or so. With my hands, I pat the dough to about 1/2″ thickness. (Make sure there’s enough flour under the dough so that when you cut your dumplings, they will be easy to pick up.) Cut dough into 1″ squares.

Water should be boiling by now. Drop dumplings in water and boil 4 minutes. Usually takes me about 4 batches to get all the dumplings cooked. Stir just to make sure there aren’t any stuck to the bottom of the pan. (Oh – and you may need to lower the heat on your burner. That should help prevent water from boiling over. Yeah, I always learn the hard way, lol!) Remove dumplings with a slotted spoon or hand-held strainer & place in a colander to drain. This way you can keep re-using the same pot of water to make all the dumplings. 🙂

These are great plain or under a variety of sauces! 🙂

Whey soup recipe

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I mentioned last year in my ricotta cheese post, that I’d post our recipe for “whey soup” sometime. Guess today’s the day! 🙂

1 quart of homemade chicken or beef bone broth
1/4 cup of noodles of choice (optional)
1t sea salt

[I’m adding these pics a day later than the original post was written. Michael just made a half recipe today, if you are noticing the smaller portion – fyi]

Heat to simmer and until noodles are fully cooked. Add 1 cup of whey – but don’t boil.

Since we normally use frozen whey “ice-cubes”, I turn my burner off, but keep my pan on the burner… Keep stirring until the whey has dissolved. (If necessary, heat it a bit until it’s to your desired eating temp.) That’s it! 🙂

This serves a generous 2 bowls of soup… Or 1 huge bowl for Michael, lol. He’d eat it everyday if we let him. I gotta ration some things around here or I’d never have time to leave my kitchen! 🙂

Such a great soup if you are feeling under-the-weather! A great immunity booster and wonderful healing food… 🙂

Rags instead

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Several years ago, we began the transition toward buying less of the “disposable” paper stuff. Needed to lower our expenses, so we could pay our bills + work on paying down our debt. At this same time, we cancelled our weekly trash pickup, too.

Everything we used to “throw away” was now separated into recycle, burn, or trash piles. When we first started, we’d have enough trash stuff for Mike to load up the truck and drive to the dump every 3 months. Then it was every 6 months. And now it is once a year! This was a huge blessing on two counts: 1) the price per truckload at the dump has risen EACH TIME, and 2) Mike DESPISES going to the dump, lol. Both of these were big motivators for us to remain diligent in reducing the “trash” pile. 🙂

Decided to cut up our old t-shirts…the ones with stains & holes – and use them for the same thing we used to do with kleenex and paper-towels. (Yeah, this is the same girl who just did a post about admiring old hankies – but that was TO LOOK AT, not keep one in my pocket all day, lol…) I wasn’t real keen on the thought of old-fashioned handkerchiefs (AT FIRST). In fact, they kind of grossed me out a little. So, the idea was born about making single-use but re-usable rags. Fashioned one of our kitchen drawers to be a “rag drawer”, and filled it with squares of t-shirt pieces.

Attached a basket to the wall in our basement stairwell where we throw our dirty rags and they get thrown in the wash with our other laundry.

Once we got into the new routine, it has been smooth sailing! 🙂

My goodness, I know we’ve saved a TON of money by not buying kleenex – we used to go through a box a week, easy! And, the rags are soooo much softer than tissues. In fact, we often DO carry our rags in our pockets now – yeah, JUST LIKE HANDKERCHIEFS, lol! Hmmm, what a good idea… 🙂

They are also great for kitchen clean-up. If there’s a spill or something I don’t want to use my crocheted dishcloth on, I just use a rag or two or three… If it’s something super yucky, I don’t feel guilty at all about throwing the rag in the burn pile, because I know we are blessed with an overabundance of future t-shirt rags – even plenty to share! 🙂

Do we still have rolls of paper towels? Yes, but that’s only because my dad bought us two packs of 15 rolls three years ago. According to my estimates, we use not quite 2 rolls A YEAR! His gift oughta last us another 8 years, minimum, lol. 🙂

The dark-colored rags usually go next door to be used in our dairy. (Makes it easy to tell which rags go where once they’ve been washed. (Or is that more of my control freakishness shining through…?) When we have enough dirty rags for a load, we wash them with homemade lye soap. Works great! 🙂

Our old, holey socks are also cut-up & have functions post foot-life. Top half works great for general cleaning & for a cotton ball substitute.

Bottom half, which never lies flat, gets thrown in a shoebox for the 3 boys to use in the garage. These are “disposable” rags for stuff like wiping up oil, paint, or other outside messes. They end up in the burn pile. 🙂

This paperless oddity has led to some funny conversations when new friends visit with us. “Where’s your trash can?” is answered, “Um, what kind is it – burnable, recyclable, or trash?” And “Could I have a kleenex?” leads to strange-but-polite-looks as we explain our single use/re-usable rags… 🙂

My 3 boys like to tease me about how much MORE money we could save by not buying toilet paper anymore, lol – but unless someone else takes over laundry duty, this lady’s gotta draw the line somewhere!! 🙂

Hanky pincushions

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Last year, I was gifted a box of my Grandma Cegelka’s hankies. I don’t know if she used them all or not, but I do know she kept them in her “special” box, so that makes them special to me. 🙂

She’s been gone several years now, but her memory lives on. Sure wish I would have asked her more questions when I had the opportunity.

I wanted to create some kind of keepsake gift with Grandma’s hankies. For the hankies with simple edges, I found this idea online. Was a fun way to use up some old buttons I had laying around. 🙂 I welcome any other ideas to try, as well…especially some kind of Christmas ornament… 🙂

Some of the other ones have crocheted edges, which are some of my favorites. I also have some of her crocheted doilies and some linen doilies that she or someone in her family embroidered. Funny, I would never really call myself a “girlie girl”, but there’s just something about these old treasures that speak beauty to me… Perhaps a future post of some of their pics will be forthcoming. 🙂

Lord willing, someday I’d love to create window treatments and/or a quilt using some of my favorite hankies & doilies. 🙂

Roberts' Farm Blog

Ramblings of a remade remnant…

our salsa recipe

Processing tomatoes

our chili recipe

our barley-stuffed peppers recipe

Stuffed pepper soup recipe

Processing peppers

Ricotta dumplings recipe

Whey soup recipe

Rags instead

Hanky pincushions