I wasn’t kidding when I said this was Kitchen Sink Chili – you never know what will be in it. For sure beans and your typical Tex-Mex seasonings but sometimes it will contain meat or extra vegetables. I feign ignorance of proper chili making since I live a ways North.
I do soak my beans following Nourishing Traditions. And I don’t hurry the process either by pressure cooking – I want the beans to be as free as phytates as possible, not just soft. Beans and grains are healthy, mineral rich foods, but only if prepared properly. Normally I soak the beans at least overnight, if not 24 hours, draining off the water and adding more. Then I cook the beans for the day too, if it’s summer they go in the crockpot, and if it’s cold enough to have a fire in the cookstove, they go in the dutch oven on the back of the stove. To prepare beans like this takes a day or so, but really they don’t need much tending and a pot of chili just gets better the longer it simmers. When it’s done it is slow food, that can be eaten fast.
Seasonings depend too on what you like – spicy, mild, salty, or slightly sweet. I don’t use salt when I can, so my tomatoes or tomato sauce are plain. And a little sweet from corn or cooked carrots adds to the flavor by balancing the salty and spicy flavoring. Most commercial canned products contain salt, and so does most chili powder, unless you are making your own. So add spices, starting out with a small amount, cook awhile and season to taste.
Kitchen Sink Chili 10 -12 servings
2 cups dry beans, pinto, kidney etc.
1 pound ground beef or stew meat – optional
1 large onion
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
celery or flat leaf parsley
1 pint tomato sauce, canned tomatoes or salsa
1 pint water
2 Tablespoons Chili powder
1 Tablespoon ground Cumin
Salt and pepper to taste
leftover vegetables – corn, roasted roots????
Rinse and sort beans, soak overnight or for a day, draining, rinsing and changing water as time allows.
Brown meat if using, set aside, leave any fat in the pan and cook onion, garlic and celery, until onion is translucent or caramelized depending on what flavor you desire.
Transfer beans to dutch oven or crock pot, add tomato sauce, water, meat/onion mix, veggies, and spices. Cook until beans are tender, at least several hours – check seasonings and adjust if necessary.
If we have leftover roasted root vegetables from dinner, I just put them in the chili pot. It’s a good way to get rid of the little dribs and drabs that always get left in the pan. We like this chili on the second or third day, just like a good soup or stew, cooling and reheating lets the flavors really develop. Let your pantry be your guide, recipes like this will vary a little each time you make them, but the results are always good 
Our Thanksgiving preparations were small. A local menu for sure, pork roast with fresh apple sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy and apple pie. None of us particularly care for leftovers unless it is stuffing and pie, so that was the menu plan. We snacked on veggies during the day and carbed out on pie and stuffing for dinner!
Plus, Hangdog wanted to swap out the coils in the wood furnace. He helped my brother install the last set in 1988, while my brother was battling cancer. And I am thankful that my brother was here to show him how, and explain how the system worked. So he decided to do this in segments, which meant plumbing parts, torches and the smell of soldering would be in the kitchen with Matron.
So I approached this meal by baking bread early in the week, so I could make it stale enough for dressing by Thursday 
What would the Pilgrims think?
After I milked Thursday morning, I grabbed some celery and parsley from the garden.
My favorite food group – anything fried in butter. In this case – garlic, onion, celery and parsley.
Add that food group to my now stale bread, along with more butter, chicken broth and enough salt, pepper and sage to make the dogs sneeze – and bake separately in a large covered casserole. I am thankful that my mom always made enough dressing to stuff a turkey and to fill a large dish too – dressing for breakfast is a good thing!!
While all the plumbing was going on just to the left of this picture – I was trying to bake a pie, as you can see the guard dogs are at the ready. No one told me the kitchen would be their sentinel post. Or that my kid would be taking photos and applying the cartoon feature to them. Good thing – pie dough and solder do not make for good food blogging Other key items in this photo: a bucket and crate of plumbing fittings, pressure cooker, water bath canner rack, coffee can of eggs, and the last of my Azure order that hasn’t made it to its final home.
I figure every apple that makes it to a pie, isn’t going to become applesauce. Just trying to save energy here… .
Pies should be fun right?
And pies should definitely be pretty.
Usually I draw pictures with a knife in the dough, but I got a larger star cookie cutter so I played with that instead. And if I look busy enough, I won’t be asked to hold up pipes above my head. I have to watch that pie you know!
This should be filed under “you know you’re a redneck when…”, you think a box of 180° return elbows are a romantic Christmas gift.
Ahhh, the coils. Note to husbands: to stay out of the doghouse, you must be in hot water. See you can’t win!!
And the lash-up. Our thermal siphon hot water system. Sixty-seven soldered joints, and twenty-seven galvanized ones. I’m thankful I only had to dry out the bread and make the pie!
postmarked - November 10, 1910
I promise this will be the final word on this years dry bean harvest. The final threshing of the beans were on my canning/preserving list, although I didn’t mention it. I like to add things to my list that I can cross off – that way I think I have accomplished something!
A sunny day in late November was my chance to bail and head to the barn, and throw open the south-facing doors. Applesauce and sauerkraut were far from my mind – again.
T bag and bean bags
Too hot for winter coats
My crew consisted of the usual velcro pups. One front and center, and one in the shade.
The Ruminatrix
Also the rear bagger was present. It’s always nice to have company to talk to while you work
That’s what 18 pounds of beans look like. I did the plastic feed bag trick on these too. On a food safety note: I bought this old baby bathtub at an estate sale, there is no telling how many babies’ behinds have graced it
All this chaff got me to thinking about a simple way to get rid of the chaff.
Loading the poor man’s fanning mill. And presto, it works!
The final tally: 35 1/2 pounds from 200 row feet.
Dry beans are a touchy crop in our area, but these are heirloom seeds handed down to me so I feel obligated to keep them going. Definitely not a money-maker, but a good addition to the variety of food we can grow for our own table.
By pulling the plants and allowing them to finish drying, and then threshing by hand, I was able to minimize the waste. About half dried before the fall rains, and I could have harvested the remaining beans as fresh shell beans, but that would have defeated my purpose of having one more vegetable that I could store as is. Fresh shell beans would require canning or freezing – dry beans can be stored indefinitely.
A farmer friend commented earlier about his yield in a similar growing situation.
Great post, as always. Those look a lot like the Boston Favorites we grew this year, our highest yielding dry bean. I’m surprised that you don’t get dry pods earlier. We’re also up at 1000′, although our South aspect might help, and the lack of cool air draining from higher (I suppose we’re also on the West Side which is a bit of a banana belt). We ended up pulling most plants, which were fully dry, in August.Josh’s experiment shows how important knowing your microclimate is in gardening. Our location is usually lumped into USDA zone 8, which really doesn’t help a vegetable gardener at all – that would suggest we could grow warm weather crops easier than someone in a zone 5 garden. But that is not true, while Western Oregon has mild, dry summers, we do not have very many warm nights in the summer. That is what counts, not how cold it is in January.
While Josh’s venture is commercial, ours is home scale, we both have the same objectives. Growing a good amount of food using dryland and low-input methods is on our minds.
My observation on these beans this summer was that I had a huge difference in yield from one row to the other, due to soil conditions. I did not keep the rows separate when harvesting because of weather constraints, but my best estimate would be that the poorer row produced maybe 12 pounds of the total, with the remaining 23 pounds coming from the second row. For the most part the plants in the first row produced approximately 10 – 12 pods per plant, they were more stressed during the hot weather and therefore dried their pods down faster. On the other hand, the plants in the second row had 25 to 30 pods per plant and were better able to handle the hot, dry conditions better, however they did not get in any hurry to dry. From a nutritional standpoint, I would have to say the stressed plants and resulting beans would not be as strong in nutrients as the other beans that did continue to grow and never really showed any signs of stress.
That is where we sometimes lose ourselves in the business of food. If I am tunnel visioned and my only objective is to get beans dry, then I am not paying attention to the actual conditions of the plants throughout the growing season. It may be a matter of opinion only as to what is more important. Yield, dry down, or nutritional value.
The other question I am sure that is bugging some readers here is why bother with 35# of beans that you can buy? I checked Azure Standard and I can purchase 25# of organic pinto beans for $22.00. But, that is the slippery slope of only counting the end price at the store. My beans at a farmers market may be worth $5.00 a pound, or if I had a CSA they could be metered out for winter shares, or in a farm/restaurant setting they would be part of a value added menu item. The costs of working off the farm are high too, by the time I went to work, to earn the money to buy the beans from Azure, I think the expenses including taxes, time, etc., would be the same. For me, I would rather stay home and earn non taxed “wages”.
I won’t lump my produce in with Azure Farms commodity organic fare. They use lots of off-farm inputs to bring their crops to the warehouse – they are certified organic, and doing a great job, but while their farm is only 75 miles from my house, the food miles add up to much more than that, if you take into consideration all the inputs, large equipment etc. If I can grow my own beans, with a hoe, wheelbarrow and a few recycled feed bags, I should leave those beans at Azure for someone else who can’t.
Kitchen sink chili
windfall
I want to set a goal for finishing my canning/preserving activities for December 1st. Apples I had expected to pick and keep to eat “fresh”, suffered through a wind storm and became windfalls overnight. So plans change. Sigh. Chunky applesauce they will be. I still need to process my naked seed pumpkins, so maybe I will make my pumpkin pickles. And my Harsch pickling crock is crying out for sauerkraut – even though I have been thinking lately, that crock looks pretty good stored in its box, and the cabbage is looking pretty good in the garden. And not really on the preserving front, I am thinking of going AMA (against milking advice) and drying Della off. Lots of milk in the freezer, but not long enough to last for her dry time. But, I have milked her too long, and I need to quit for her and her baby’s sake. I will miss milking – not too sure how she feels ’bout that though… .
I guess I am dying a slow death by canning, now the latest thing to fear is BPA in canning lids! And if you look closely my apples are touching an aluminum colander, and probably because my dogs stick to us like glue, I have canned numerous dog hairs that I haven’t even seen. Would that be denatured protein, pressure cooked dog hair? We live in a modern world and its full of contaminants. I don’t really see anyway to avoid many of them. I, frankly am tired of being constantly bombarded by fear mongers. The media (all types) constantly is warning of this and that. Probably if you live in a new airtight house, and drive a new car that has lots of plastic in it, and have a cell phone or ipod at your disposal, you’re being exposed to lots of toxins. So, since I live in an old house that can breath, drive an old rig, don’t own a cell phone or ipod, maybe I can cash in my credits and still do some home canning. I will not run into the other ditch and buy all new Weck jars – what’s in the gaskets? Probably not real rubber anymore, but something that no doubt could harm you, if you’re not careful.
When I think of the things I do everyday that could be dangerous, if I worried about them, I wouldn’t do anything. Della could go off the deep end and gore me, or kick me in the face. Then I would have to come in and do different spread sheet and figure out just how much that raw milk is costing me. Not to mention I would have to hire a relief milker to milk while I was convalescing. The guy sighting in his high power rifle on our trees, could decide to not back down and leave when I bitch him out asked him to. But I still have to tell him to leave, because if I let him keep pumping lead in the trees, it could leach and travel a mile to the creek, that then would go 3 more miles and fall over a water fall while a tourist communed with nature and littered at the same time. Then I would be liable for lead poisoning of the prolific, but fragile Swinus americanus.
So I proceed with caution every day. I eat mincemeat out of the jar that was not cooked to death, but still canned against (which BTW tested low acid enough for water bath) the governments advice. I still will feed my cows sometimes by putting my pickup in gear, get out and let the pickup drive itself while I get in the back with a weapon (pocketknife) and cut twine (dipped in rodenticide) from the bales, and meter out the hay. I will play with matches now until May most every day and eat vegetables straight from the garden. I won’t wash my hen eggs. I will probably conduct science experiments with bad things like lye and fat. I may be stupid enough to grab the cast iron pan without a potholder, and will burn my hand rather than drop my precious lid. And if that isn’t enough I will most likely be eating eggs everyday fried in butter! And it is a wonderful, unsafe life!!
Cranberry walnut sweet rolls
Are you on the roll call to bring rolls to the holiday dinner? Maybe this recipe will help. Use one recipe and make savory rolls for dinner, and sweet rolls for the morning after.
I’m posting the recipe and method over at Simple-Green-Frugal Co-op today
Pesto and pumpkin seed savory rolls
I would be rich if I had a dime for every time someone has asked me why we grow most of our own food. Usually the reasoning is that you can earn money and just buy your food at the store. We try to explain why we believe the food we grow and eat is better for us and the land, or that it doesn’t compare with store fare. One glance at the orange egg yolks would show the difference.
The next part of the debate is the inconvenience of having to grow your food and then do something with it – like cook it and eat it. It’s hardly inconvenient to have a fresh or local ingredients on hand to cook almost anything. Or to go dig carrots for a snack mid-day. For me it would be inconvenient to go to work to earn the money to take to the store and buy food. And frankly, I don’t think I could make enough money to afford what we grow here. The disconnect between me and questioners is that I see a huge difference between my golden, grass-fed butter in the freezer and what is available. They do not. They assume my butter is only worth $2.50 a pound – I would venture if you could even find true grass-fed butter it would more than likely cost about $12.00 per pound.
Food for too long has been on the back burner, so to speak. It is hard to explain that, yes, we like being entertained counting pollinators on the parsnips, instead of going to the latest event in town. Trust me there is no instant gratification in going from seed to table. Change that to seed to seed and we’re looking at 18 months. The same argument comes into play here too, why spend anytime growing seed, just buy it. Sure, I know it doesn’t pencil out to spend 18 months dealing with these parsnips just to get a jar of seed for the next year. But every time we let someone else do something for us we lose a little.
Truly, are people really that surprised when they see movies like Food, Inc? What do they expect? When you give control to someone else for something that should be very important to you – you can expect said person, company, fill in the blank, to do things differently than you would. And since food and farmers have taken a backseat in modern times, here we are. Food needs to become important again. And I mean good, clean food. Not Wal-Mart organics. We have become a nation of specialists. Most farmers grow one or two types of products – they do not grow their own food. I know it’s the old joke about the plumber whose pipes leak, but really, it isn’t very economically viable to put all your eggs in one basket. A crop failure or surplus and you may be wiped out. Several friends have expressed dismay at the current shortage of pumpkin pie filling. On one hand it was a rude awakening for them to realize that the pumpkin pie filling they purchased this summer for cheesecake was last years pumpkin, and also that they have to have pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner! So I guess as consumers, we have a long way to go… .
And even if you do decide to eschew the big box store, and buy at the farmers market, you will still have to do a fair amount of homework to learn what practices you deem the most important in the growing of your food. What is more important to you, fresh, local, organic, humane…the list goes on and on. To some, chemical farming does not matter, if the product is fresh. However, if you have cancer in your family, it might pay to look at what the risks are. Maybe that organic produce at Wal-mart whose origin is dubious may not be such a good buy, seeking out a local organic farm may be better.
By making food just fuel we have lessened food’s importance to us. Why bother learning how it is grown? It will always be one trip to the store away. But the store is like the freeway – as long as everyone stays in their lane, does their part and behaves, the freeway is great. But, one little blip, and the freeway becomes a disaster. Our present subsidized food system isn’t far from that.
Growing our food takes a lot of my time. It is in fact more than a full-time job. I can’t think of one thing we do that isn’t really involved in our own foodweb. If we cut wood, it is to keep us warm, but we also cook with wood 8 months of the year, and the ashes go on the garden or in the orchard to replace what we have taken. Unrelated things are still connected if we choose to see the connection.
The other day as I was working over the last of the dry beans – my daughter took a break from her school work, chatted awhile and then fell asleep in the sun. Despite the bean rustling, and the dogs chasing the cats, she got a few winks in. It reminded me of sleeping on gunny sacks while my gardening mentors (babysitters) chopped hay with the hammermill. They lived a subsistence life, and every bit of their hay was used. By chopping it, and sacking it, they could feed it out to their sheep flock with minimal waste. Some of farming and gardening is by osmosis, I was too little to help chop that hay, but it was a winter time chore that was done periodically. I always felt cosy, and safe on my gunny sack perch, despite the noise and dust. It’s hard to put into words the feeling that providing for a “flock” gives you, even if you are just observing . But it is real and rewarding, and it is what we give up when relegate our food to a mere commodity.
parsnips for next year - the cycle continues.
It’s been a great wild mushroom year already. We have eaten our fill and carefully tucked some away in the freezer for the winter. So I was pleasantly surprised to see these the other day when I went to do the daily paddock shift for the cows.
A new flush of mushrooms means all best laid plans are off. The apples that were waiting while I worked on the beans, are still waiting. A day in the forest hunting mushrooms is more fun than canning applesauce anyway.
Luckily I had chili on the back of the cookstove, so no meal worries.
And to ease my guilt about the apples, I made a rustic apple pie - peels, blemishes and all!
So now in addition to the windfall apples that I do need to process, I have lots more Chanterelle mushrooms too. We do eat well, I can say that much!
I’m still not done with those darn “dry” beans! Sunny days are a precious commodity this time of year. And as usual 10 things need doing right now – but everyone including me has been getting tired of skirting this hill of beans. It rained so much that the pods on these plants that were dry, were starting to draw dampness with all the rain we have been having. So I had to move them to a sunnier spot and then cover the pile each night. I did manage to get them dry again. And bad thoughts of throwing the whole mess in the shed for bedding were starting to cross my mind. So yesterday, when the weatherman was wrong, and it did not look like rain to me, I set about the chore of consolidating this pile into something more manageable.
Having the right attitude about a large, tedious job helps it go a little better…but that wheel barrow looked pretty empty and the pile of beans looked huge. It gave me the same feeling of pulling into the hayfield and looking at all the hay that needs raking or all the hay bales that need picking up. Getting started is the hardest part, and after that it seems to just go along at a good pace.
My plan was to strip the pods into the food wheelbarrow and put the stems in the manure wheelbarrow to make cleanup easier.
Starting to make some headway.
Finally. One wheelbarrow of pods, and 5 wheelbarrow loads of stems for bedding. The bean pods still need more drying before I can thresh them. To do this I have to bring them in the house, so this all fit in three 50 lb. mesh onion bags (the beans don’t weigh that much though) that I can hang until the pods are fully dry. The mesh bags will allow for good ventilation so I can finally finish this job. I am curious to see what my total yield will be.
These were in the bottom of the wheelbarrow – chili is on the menu!
Now is the time to start planning next year’s winter garden. We will harvest throughout the winter from crops that were started as early as February. Most of our winter veggies are planted by mid – July at the latest. So in order to do that, I need to make my garden plans now to allow for planting my winter foraging crops alongside my summer crops. Maybe the hardest part to think about concerning winter gardening is that you will be harvesting your crops – not watching them grow. Some greens will grow slowly if planted late, but for optimum nutrition and plant hardiness, most vegetables should be mature by the time the short days of September arrive.
Root crops are the most common. Beets, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, and celeriac are our mainstays for winter fare. All of these are good candidates for leaving in the soil where they grew and mulching, allowing you to harvest as needed. Celeriac is especially useful, if properly mulched, the tops also survive through the winter and provide celery flavor for soups and stuffings. These are all candidates for the root cellar too if you are so inclined.
Another mainstay in our winter garden is Kale. One of the most cold hardy plants we grow, and oh, so productive. We can eat it all winter and it provides plenty of greens for the hens too. It tolerates repeated freezing and thawing, and survives the winter only to put on large amounts of tender flower stalks or rapini for that first taste of spring broccoli. It is best for the plant to not totally pick all the leaves if you want the plant to survive the winter. Leave some leaves for protection from the inclement weather. Better to plant several plants and harvest a little bit from each for your meals. I start my winter kale in June, for July transplanting and we don’t start harvesting until the cool weather hits. Like many fall and winter crops, cooler temperatures enhances the flavor of kale. And geez, the shapes and colors of the different varieties are fascinating – kale fits the ornamental bill too!
Two things to remember about winter harvesting, and the sun is involved. If your kale or other greens are frosted like these kales shown above – wait until the frost or ice is gone to harvest. If you harvest when the leaves are frozen you will end up with mush. In the winter, plants also concentrate nitrates in their leaves on cloudy days, so if you can time your harvests for sunny periods that is much better.
Another overlooked vegetable is over-wintering cabbages. This is January King, started in June, transplanted in July, it will mature between December and March. I have grown this for years and find it to be trouble-free, and very tasty. Another contender that has a long growing season is over-wintering cauliflower. Planting a few of these types of plants can provide a fresh vegetable in the lean months of April, when the new garden is just getting started.
Pore over seed catalogs and look for varieties that are cold hardy, and have long growing seasons. As a general rule, we have an overlap of varieties in our garden, the beets I grow for summer eating are different from the variety I over-winter, and the same goes for carrots. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try different varieties and different seasons. Kale in July and August is not something I would choose to eat, but in October what a difference, after a few light frosts, sweet and delicious!
Bring on the seed catalogs!!
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