Oh! What do YOU do with turnips?

I forgot!  My friend gave me some turnips she had left at the end of the day yesterday (and some okra, but I know what I'm going to do with that!).  I don't think I've ever eaten a turnip.    ???????

She said I could slice them and batter them and fry them or she said I could boil them and combine them with some boiled potatoes and make a soup, which is what she usually does.  I'm guessing like a potato soup?

Help!

lol.

What do I do with these things?

Thanks!

Weekend

I'm sure you'll be SO surprised to know that I forgot to take a picture of the jerky after it was done.  lol.  Here's one I took after it had been in the dehydrator for a couple of hours.  I tried a new marinade 'recipe' (meaning I made it up as I went along) and it turned out pretty good.  Next time I'll add more red pepper flakes, though.

There was a small local celebration going on here yesterday and a friend asked if she could set up stuff from her fruit/veggie stand in the yard to try and take advantage of the people coming and going to the event and I said yes because it would be fun to hang out with her for the day and I know they are having a pretty rough time financially right now, so hopefully she'd make some money.

Then I decided, well, if I'm going to be out there, anyway, I might as well throw some yard sale stuff in out there and see how it goes.  I got up early Saturday morning and gathered up some stuff and this guy was on of the things I put out there. He was left in the house by the previous tenants and the landlord said to do whatever we wanted with him.  He's about five feet tall and in the morning I kept turning around and wondering who was walking down the hall towards me.  lol   He was about the 5th thing that sold, too!  

In the end, I made about $60 and my friend sold over $100 worth of stuff, so not bad for a last minute thrown together thing and considering the only sign we had was the one in the yard.

Small batch canning

I put up five pints of tomatoes today to use for soups and stews this winter.

I have some jerky drying but will have to show you that after it's done.  

All Tucked In

It took me a couple of days to get to them, but I finally got the tomatoes all wrapped in newspaper and tucked in for the winter.  I'm really hoping this works as well here as it did in NM, because I'd love to be getting ripened, wonderful, out of our own garden, tomatoes in the middle of the winter.

Wish me luck!  I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh, they are going to live in the garage, I just took the picture in the house before I took them out there.  :)

Baked Jalapeno Poppers

I usually do bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers on the grill but decided to try something different last week.

I cut them in half and stuffed them with a mixture of cream cheese and some cheddar cheese I had.

Then I dredged them in seasoned flour.

Then into a mixture of a beaten egg and some milk and more seasonings.

Then into panko crumbs.

Onto a baking sheet and in the oven at 375 degrees.  

After they'd been cooking a while.

Done.
YUMMY!

Replenishing the freezer

The good Lord blessed us with deer this weekend.  It made or a busy, productive and thankful weekend.
I package things in pretty big packages since there are six of us in this house.

Here is the breakdown so far:

Deer 1:
Roasts - 4 packages, 7 pounds
Jerky meat - 1 package, 2 pounds
Back strap - 2 packages, 3 pounds
Stew meat - 4 packages, 5 pounds
Grinder meat 1 package, 2 pounds
(This will be made into sausage/summer sausage/ground venison later on.)

Deer 2:

Roasts - 2 packages, 4 pounds
Backstrap - 3 packages, 5 pounds
Steaks - 1 package, 2 pounds
Stew meat - 8 packages, 8 pounds
Grinder meat - 1 package, 6 pounds
Jerky strips ready to marinade - 1 package, 2 pounds

The guys field dress them before they bring them home and then skin and quarter them and then I take over processing and packaging.  They kept me busy this weekend!

Not counting left overs, that's 28 meals in the freezer, almost 50 pounds of meat.  It's a GREAT start to refilling the freezer and while I'm tired, I'm very happily tired.

Pulled the tomatoes today

It's supposed to get down into the mid 30s tonight, so I went ahead and pulled the tomatoes.  I know I could have covered them, but since it's predicted to stay cool for a bit, I was afraid I'd forget one night and lose them all.  I still had a lot of barely getting red and completely green tomatoes out there, so I didn't want to risk it.  

Plus, the plants are starting to die back.  They are starting to look like this:

See?  Green tomatoes.  I know, I know, someone's going to say fried green tomatoes.
1.  I don't like them.
2.  That would be a LOT of fried green tomatoes.

I actually did leave most of one plant (after I pulled the tomatoes off) out there because I discovered that my buddy is still living in there.  I like him and like having him in my garden.  He's BIG and he doesn't seem to mind my messing around in there.  He usually doesn't even move from where he is while I'm in there pulling stuff.  So I'll let the one tomato plant in there until he relocates.  

This is box one of green tomatoes.

This is box two.

I'm going to wrap them in newspaper in boxes and put them in the garage.  I did this before in a different state and it worked well.  I just have to remember to check them once a week to get the ripe ones out and use them.