Category: Edible

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Recent food and beverage

Some tepary beans mixed in those refried beans! The hot sauce is Chimayó pepper mostly. 01/25/2024.
Homemade pasta with homemade pesto. 01/24/2024.
I finally roasted the yaupon holly leaves instead of just having it dehydrated. It’s actually a nice tea now! I did 300 F for somewhere over 1.5 hrs on a cookie sheet. 01/22/2024.
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01/07/2024 making lemonade out of lemons

Pile of month old oak logs along the back wooden privacy fence. A squirrel is eating birdseed on the feeder in the foreground.
We had to get the lone red oak trimmed back by the power company. This resulted in a pile of fresh oak logs. The Chef was inspired by a book we listened to recently called To Boldly Grow by Tamar Haspel. It is available from the Norman Public Library as an audiobook.
Two of the chosen oak logs standing end up on the concrete patio.
And what was he inspired to do? First, The Chef chose several big logs. He wants to grow… mushrooms!
Metal conduit stands upright out from the edge of the concrete block compost area. Leaves cover the ground.
After a household discussion and reading about shiitake requirements, The Chef leaned some conduit over rebar and old concrete blocks near the compost structure.
The chef holds a log down with his booted foot while drilling holes wearing work gloves.
The Chef drills holes for the plugs.
Paula taps mushroom plugs into one of two visible logs, on top of the workbench outside.
Paula taps the mushroom plugs into the drilled holes. To the left you can see the beeswax candle the Chef made for this purpose.
I point at wax seal spots on an upright log that’s been finished.
The plugs are sealed in with clean beeswax.
Five logs are leaned up against the metal conduit rail.
We ended up with five logs full of mushroom plugs. We shall see what happens!
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01/10/2024 Chili times

A bowl of salad, a bowl of chili, and a biscuit on a cloth napkin
A multi-bean venison chili by Paula. This includes Alabama black-eyed butterbean lima beans from two summers ago, vaquero beans, Inca pea beans, Christmas Lima beans, and whatever else dried beans from the garden we had in a small mixed jar.
Another salad in a bowl. Chili cheese dog on plate with a side of skinny shoestring fries
Leftover chili becomes a chili dog a few days later!
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01/05/2024 before dark

Before it got dark yesterday we did the winter (structural/shape) pruning on the fruit trees. The buds were fuzzy. (Summer pruning is supposed to be about reducing tree size for those of us who want the trees smaller.)
Everybody who’s a fruit tree in this picture got a haircut!
The dwarf peach tree mostly needed a few crossing branches in the middle removed. Otherwise it looked good.

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12/21/2023 flan

A perfect round egg-colored flan with an apple-tinted syrup in a white bowl with black stripe around the edge
Paula brought back eggs from her family’s chickens (very free range!) and the Chef decided to make flan. I’ve never had it before. I’m scheduling this to post after we visit home so Judy doesn’t guess we’re bringing her some of these eggs, haha!
A spoon slice of flan scooped away so you can see the silky interior
It was delicious! He topped it with a sauce made from the crabapple syrup (the less-jellied jars of jelly).