Homemaking Organized Blog

Posts Tagged ‘vegetables’

I’m all about easy cooking, but it has to taste good. Many Sunday’s a month we cook dinner and invite our extended family over for a meal and fellowship after church. Since we are part of the support system in our church (I’m one of the pianists etc..) we are there early and leave later than most. So making dinners that don’t take all day to cook (unless I’m using the crockpot) are key.

Usually fish is the fare of choice. Salmon to be more precise. It’s a tasty item that cooks up well and quick. But we like to change things up a bit. You may have seen my post about Chuck Roast in Foil. That is a delicious keeper that we make up regularly but recently we decided to cook another dish that I make for the regular family meals. It’s easy and is actually in the healthy, low fat section of one of my older cookbooks.

It’s from Sunset Casserole Cooking, 1980.

Baked Turkey Legs and Vegetables

Serves 4

Bake time 2 hours

Prep time about 15-20 minutes

4 Turkey drumsticks for 2 drumsticks and 2 thighs (3-3.5 lbs total)

1/2 cup chicken broth

1/2 cup white whine (I use apple juice here)

1/4 tsp pepper

1/4 tsp paprika

1 tsp salt

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1 tablespoon oil

1 clove minced garlic

1 large onion sliced into rings

2 large carrots cut into 1/4 inch thick slices

2 stalks celery cut into  1/4 inch thick slices

1 large potato ( I use more like 2 or 3)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place the turkey pieces into a shallow casserole  or 9×13 inch dish. You are supposed to remove the skin but I never do.

In a small bowl mix together your chicken stock, juice/wine,  pepper, paprika, salt, and cornstarch.

Heat oil in a pan and saute your onion, carrots, and celery. Cook for about 5 minutes. Add garlic and just when you smell it (about 15 seconds or less) gradually add your broth mix.  Continue cooking the mixture until it boils and is slightly thickened.

Pour your cooked broth/veggie mix over the turkey legs and cover with foil. You can refrigerate this until the next day or bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Meanwhile dice the potato and place in cold water until you’re ready to add to the casserole. After an hour pull it out of the oven, add diced potato, recover and bake another hour until done (or meat near the bone is no longer pink.

We serve this with a cooked veggie. Or you can omit the potato and serve over rice which is what we do for Sunday dinner.

Enjoy!

We have the potatoes out. They are in Smart Pots. I purchased 3.2 15 gallon and one 30 gallon. I’m trying German Butterball potatoes from Seed Savers. We’ll see how they do. According to the potato in a pot article I linked to earlier you start off with the soil halfway and then fill it as the plants grow. I won’t tell you how I planted potatoes the first time many years ago. It’s a wonder they grew at all and the reason I read so much.

We had a really warm day here early in the week and since my little almanac thingy says that the end of April is supposed to be a good time to plant after the last frost I went for it and transplanted my tomatoes, cucumbers and we started the corn….big mistake.

First off I was replanting a cuban oregano for my mom and I made the grave error of setting the pot on the banister right above a tomato plant. It promptly fell off and beheaded the plant.

Secondly the next day we experienced cold wet weather complete with heavy winds. Since you only plant two plants per pot about 4 of mine look like wilted lettuce. Extremely wilted lettuce.

Thank goodness a few weeks ago I had a feeling I was going to have problems with my first batch of tomato seeds so I started some more. They are growing nicely under the lamp.

Thirdly the cucumbers just died period in the wind. They couldn’t take it at all and it’s hard not to burst out laughing whenever I look at them. I’m only planted two plants and even though I wasn’t committed to them I think I’ll try again after reading a bit more about them.

The onion starts are doing well considering they are all in too shallow of pots. I’m just leaving them and I’ll see what happens. If nothing else we have some nice green onions.

The carrots have sprouted but I have some teeny round ones I would have rather planted than the Nantes that I did plant.

The strawberries continue to do well and it will be interesting to see what they produce. It’s been so long that I’ve had them I’ve forgotten what variety they are. Either June bearing or ever bearing. I think they are the ones that produce twice a year but then I think I say that every year. I have moved with them 5 times over the last 15 years and have been keeping them in a rather too small pot until they find their permanent home. They still aren’t home but I decided then needed a better pot.

My lettuce in a pot indoors has sprouted and well…we’ll see. The lettuce out doors (the ones from starts) are doing well and we had some amazing turkey with Caeser dressing sandwiches last week with them. There wasn’t enough for an all out salad yet so we just had them on some sandwiches.

The main thing is we’re having a blast. Yes it would be nice if something actually came from all this but I did not use all of my seeds so there’s always next year. Well that’s my update so far.

So the last time I bought lettuce in the grocery store my little nice bag of freshly washed lettuce went bad well before the expiry date.

I thought about buying the lettuce that is still growing in the little pod thingy but then I decided that I really wanted my own lettuce. You know from my own home. Sometime in 2007 I posted about how a serious gardening friend of mine harvested her own lettuce through the winter from her back porch so I thought I would grow my own lettuce.

Well I really didn’t know what I was doing and really didn’t read about it. Sadly my daughter and I just sowed a few seeds in a miserly fashion in a couple of pots that let us (lettuce Hahahah!) know mad they were by not really taking off.

So I sent an SOS call to my friend and she gave me a few tips on having a better harvest.

Whilst we await the new shipment of lettuce seeds I went and bought some organic lettuce starts which we transplanted this morning. You can see them below…

This is Romain and Butter Crunch. Shortly after I placed them outside it rained kind of heavy so they look flattened. I’m wishing them well and moving on.

Oh a little tid bit on my potting mixture. I’m feeling rather farmer like these days as my garage is packed with potting mix, lime, vermiculite, fertilizer etc.

So the salad greens are in a mix of potting soil, vermiculite, and peat moss with a dollop of fertilizer. I mixed like I cook and so it’s pretty much a third of each (except fertilizer) with a little less of the vermiculite.
I’ll let you know how it does. I did the same with a teeny pot of cilantro I’m messing with.

Meanwhile I also landed upon this blog post… Growing Lettuce Indoors and decided to give that a try. I had about 25 seeds of a lettuce mixture from seedsavers.org left over so I used that. Just go to the url and look up lettuce mixture. There is only one (unless you’re a member). That’s the one I used and I’m giving that a try below…

Stay tuned…