Karen, I try to head herbs off from flowering too, except for the oregano and thyme. I constantly cut basil back. . . right now have four good clumps of it--way more than I'd use. But I can't help myself. I must keep it cut back. lol .

Mil. . . I wasn't a huge beet fan until I began roasting them in foil. Now I LOVE beets--still love em best pickled, though.

Nancy, anything special about the way you roast a beet? I was sort of amazed at all the recipes out there for them... guess if you don't care that much for something, it sort of isn't on your radar at all. I may have to pickle some today... they look about right.

Roasted vegetables are easy, and don't get that mushy boiled/steamed taste. We all know I like easy. I like sauted veggies, but I always end up with SOMETHING that isn't done yet. We like to take a mixture of root veggies to roast. Cubed about the same size. Just drizzled with olive oil, maybe sprinkled with thyme or oregano. I use golden beets, so they don't bleed. I look forward to Nancy's recipe, too.

PS, I put a picture of my beets on my Facebook. My cousin commented that beets were the one thing my gram wouldn't eat or can. I know my youngest son hates them.

Maybe I have just resisted new things. ;-) I do sauté/stir fry. The veggie determines the heat I use. For me it is a fast easy way to do sweet potatoes or sweet potato and apple combination. Very tender greens, with stems removed, wilt down fast. I try to cook with very little water. I may need to branch out and try golden beets. You know what they say about old dogs and new tricks... it's not about can't, it's about resisting change. LOL

Could not be easier. The important thing is do NOT peel them first. The skin really does just slide off after they're done. AND this way, there is no bleeding--they turn out beautifully dark red just like they should.

1. Oven temp, 375
2. Coat beets lightly with oil (I use olive oil)
3. Wrap in tin foill, and roast on baking sheet approximately 45 to 60 minutes. I wrap them separately if they're big, but spose you could wrap them together. Basically it's just like baking potatoes.
4. Remove from the oven, let cool for 10 minutes, and then peel and slice into 1/4-inch thick slices.

Thanks Nancy, I have been googling. ;-) It's just a different form of cooking, but if it's anything like baked potatoes, it can change the flavor. I have grown beets and pickled them for too many years to count. My DH loved them just cooked with butter and salt... I would eat some, but not very enthusiastic about them. Found may ideas for doing mixtures of root vegetables. I can see I need to try something new. Millie

I eat the skins. I do not peel anything. I cut in half along with other roots and put on a pan with some sort of fat (bacon grease) cut side down salt it all if you like and cook slow and low. I use my toaster oven so I don't heat up the kitchen

I have baked potatoes cut in half and oiled, but not low and slow... I am usually just looking for a faster baked potato and I like the browned flavor. I have always preferred my potatoes oiled and baked without wrapping so the skins are a bit crispy.. yum. Grandma always baked them that way just laying on the oven wrack in an old wood kitchen range. Not sure why that way was always best. Maybe related to why campfire food always tastes good.

We planted beets late, after we discovered the beds were contaminated with herbicide. Strange how some plants are not bothered at all and others haven't a care in the world. Beets were happy campers.. today was the day to pull them. I made pickled beets for the first time in 9 years. The last time I had garden produce was 2007 as my DH was diagnosed with a bad form of cancer that shut his kidneys down in April 2008. Now I am the garden instigator for my son. LOL

I'm sorry about your husband, Millie. But it is good you are passing garden knowledge on to your son! This is the first year beets actually grew for me. Something in my garden kept them from growing. I wish I'd had more.

Yes, Mil, I'm sorry too . . . life is fragile and fleeting, isn't it. And yes, let's hope we can all encourage others to garden. I haven't yet grown beets either, but am going to begin soaking the seeds, and then succession plant.

Try crushing up those beet seed clusters.. works for me... and do soak them before planting.

My husband's kind of cancer was due to Agent Orange in Viet Nam... I never knew that it was the same thing that happened at Times Beach up near St. Louis until I did some research on it and learned that it was the same chemical herbicide. The military used the term "Agent Orange" to simplify the identification. Turns out there were several chemicals and all were identified by color bands around the barrels rather than name. The Viet Nam vets won their case against the government when the Federal Government acknowledged the contamination in Times Beach and bought all that property. It's quite a story, but he was lucky that it was his last tour of duty before retirement... meaning he was in his forties when he was exposed, otherwise he would have died much younger. After his diagnosis he got busy contacting all those he served with and found only one man who had not come down with one of those things associated with exposure. Many of those men were young had either died, or were suffering from prostrate cancer. A friend of ours died at 64 from 3 kinds of cancer linked to that exposure... he also was older when exposed. Prostrate cancer can kill young men much faster than older men. It is sad that Viet Nam is still killing men 47 years later and most people are unaware of it. Not looking for sympathy, he signed on for it as a career, it's just that you don't expect to die from some crap that your own government claims is safe. And believe me they denied it as long as they could.... so what else is new. Millie

Hey, sorry, didn't mean to unload. It's been 6 years, but still makes me mad. He was very lucky to make it to 84. Guess what bugs me is that he was so darn healthy until he wasn't. He taught high school science here in the 1970s. When he was 48 he took a Biology class for a 6 mile hike in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. He challenged those high school boys to race him back to the bus the last mile of the hike. The parents said he was sitting in the driver seat as cool as a cucumber when the they all got there. LOL He told me later that he hoped they never took him up on that challenge again and the following classes didn't... the word had gotten around.

Oh, so sad, Mil! Oh dear.

Millie sharing and unloading are what we do here that's what makes this corner so special. Everyone here knows more about me than even my own family. I am honored to know you and so thankful to your husband and others like him who gave their lives directly and indirectly serving our country and us personally. Don't fear sharing here.

Millie, I am grateful for your husband's service to our country and so sorry that he was one of the victim's of agent orange. I'm sorry you lost him too soon to a cancer he might not have had without the exposure to agent orange. The government's long denial of the role that agent orange exposure played in the health problems endured by Vietnam veterans was disgraceful and heartbreaking.

You should feel free to unload here all you want---we are not just gardeners bound by a common love for growing things (everything, anything, all things) but human beings bound together simply by being human. Since this is a regional forum, we all have so much in common and I feel we become very close to one another because of it. On this forum, in the 12+ years I've been a member, I've seen this group support one another not only in terms of gardening, but through life's many challenges----illness, recovery, the illness and death of loved ones, disasters like tornadoes and flooding, marriage, divorce, moving from one home to another and leaving behind a beloved landscape and garden, the birth of new babies and grandbabies and so much more. No matter where we live or how we garden, what we have in common is that we are a loving, caring, supportive group. You always can share your feelings here and people will understand them. What is gardening if not life?

Y'all, try beets for fall. They're not hard to grow and I do soak the seeds before sowing. They sprout a lot more easily and more quickly in autumn's warmer weather than in springtime's cooler soils and cooler weather.

Dawn

A Special thanks to all of you for allowing me to rant. I seem to do that once in awhile. Truth is, I should be grateful that I didn't lose him 20 years sooner like another friend did. I remember when she got the letter complaining that he and his men had a chopper fly over and spray the darn stuff on them while they were eating lunch. My husband was in administration by that time, so his exposure was probably through inhalation of dust while driving in mostly open vehicles. I read a report on Dioxin that said it was one of the most deadly agents on the planet. The VA now considers anyone who has had "boots on the ground" in Viet Nam to have been exposed.

You know when they make out their "Will" before leaving that you could lose them to the enemy in front, but never think of an enemy behind them. These same chemical companies are making the herbicides that are contaminating everything to this day. Must be nice to have the most powerful government in the world to protect you... too bad they can't seem to do that for the troops.

Back to gardening. We had a nice cool down, but looks like business as usual weather wise for us. Even though we have had to tuck plants into places we had never thought to plant in, we are getting enough from the "garden" to enjoy fresh vegetables. Since the whole back yard, except for a strip of grass to the outbuildings and back alley, has been mulched for 3 years, it is all in pretty darn good shape. My son (Raymond, for future reference) is on second round of mustard in some beds and third on others. Some of the tomatoes weakened by what must be run-off herbicide fell prey to white fly, but not too badly. Strange how you can find a leaf here and there that looks sickly and find the flies on those, but not on healthy looking ones. I had always read that insects were attracted to stressed or unhealthy plants.

We did our summer pruning of young fruit trees to control height today. I am really getting into Ann Ralph's method of controlling the size of backyard fruit trees. We have our first big load of peaches on a 4 - 5 year old tree, that has been kept at about 6' tall. Not sure about the age because the tree had been planted into the ground.. pot and all, but was way tall and must have had more than an inch caliper. I held my breath and cut it down to knee high. Was not sure if it would bud and bring forth three or four scaffold limbs, but it did. We had the space for full sized trees in MO, but not here on a city lot. Then I begged for space at my grand-son-in-laws place for more trees. We planted 2 Pluots, and 3 apples over there. I try not to say "I" all the time.. I should say "the instigator caused" this or that to happen. LOL Maybe I can get away with "we". Millie

Interesting, Jerry, I never thought about a yeast roll for a cover. When I heard grape leaves kept pickles crisper I attempted to buy some fresh grape leaves. Not even Whole Foods had any. After searching and not finding any and making pickles without, I read about tea. I have lots of tea. Geez. I also didn't know dill was strongest at yellow flower stage. I should go cut some now. I have made fermented dills. I'm not big on dill pickles. I like bread and butter. But fermented dills are good and I help eat them. Last year I fermented Anaheim peppers, too.

Oh, and Millie, vent anytime you need to. We all do.

Jerry, you may have answered and old question of mine. Grandma (who was born in 1883) used to crumple up a grape leaf to place on top of her jar of dill pickles. I wonder if it was anything more than a way to hold them down under the brine. She was raised by her grandmother, so no telling how old this idea was... she may not have known why... just that her grandma taught her to do that. I remember her saying they used to make their own yeast using grape leaves. She showed me how to do it once and then add cornmeal until it was crumbly... let it dry and she had a form of dried yeast. I suspect this was backup because she said that before commercial yeast was available, she held back a "lump of dough" in a pint jar to which she added a bit a of sugar over the top. Since she baked everyday during harvest season, she never mentioned anything other than placing it in her wood stove's warming oven. She was up at 4:00 am to set her "sponge". I suspect this was the secret to good whole grain bread and I have pretty much proven that to myself. A long sponge will change the taste and character of whole grains. Thanks for posting this. I have read about salt brine pickles/veggies before.

I remember my mother salt brining some meat in a wooden barrel.. had to have enough salt in the brine to float an egg. Giving in to modern convenience has cost us a lot of old "how to". Millie

Now Here is Southern Lime Pickles. This is a sweet pickle recipe to die for if you like a sweet pickle these have a zing and a crunch beyond compare.

The way I always made them is almost exactly the same recipe that is on the Mrs. Wages pickling lime package even today except the sugar amount.

7lbs of Pickles

1 cup pickling lime

2 gallons of water

8 cups of 5% Vinegar

8 cups sugar (My old recipe only uses 6 cups but this is how sweet you like them)

1 Tblspoon pickling salt

1 Tblspoon Pickling spice.

First mix the cup of lime in the water in a NON aluminum container. This stuff is a little caustic so plastic or glass only, no metal and handle accordingly.

Now slice your cukes in medalions about 1/4-3/8 thick. A wavy chip cutter is nice.

Add the cucumber slices to the lime water and let soak overnight for 24 hours.

NOW HERE IS THE IMPORTANT PART FOR SAFETY that gets every one in trouble. Lime can neutralize the vinegar if you do not rinse it off properly.

After the lime soak you HAVE to get ALL the lime off the outside of the pickle chips.

You need to rinse them good AND let them soak for an hour or so and do this at least 3 times getting any white residue OFF. I do 3 good rinses to be safe. if your skeerd do 4. What soaks into the chips is converted and of no worry to you, just any residue on the outside.

Next soak them in ice water for a couple of hours to chill them way down. They will be super brittle at this stage so you have to be careful about breaking them up from here forward. Yes they are that crisp.

Drain the ice and water and combine the Vinegar, salt and sugar and pour over your chilled chips. Now drain this into a non aluminum saucepan, Add pickling spice and bring to a boil for 35 minutes stirring occasionally.

Now pack your sterilized hot jars with chilled chips and pour the hot syrup over them until you have a 1/2 inch headspace at the top. Remove bubbles and wipe the rims. put on your lids and bands as each jar is filled. Some people add a drop or two of green food coloring here for extrra purdy but I don't.

Process jars in a water bath 10 minutes for pints and 15 minutes for quarts. Let stand in water for 5 additional minutes and place on a towel in a draft free area to cool.

In 24 hours check the jars seals remove bands and enjoy the crunchiest almost translucent little sweet pickles you ever had.

Mil I never heard of making yeast with a grape leaf. I guess thats another of those lost secrets you never hear of now.

Amy, The bread thingy is the way Hungarians and some Chechs do it. Sorry i don't have a good Bread and Butter pickle recipe. I'm just the opposite of you in pickle likes but I can eat bb pickles if thats all I got. To much German in me and got to have the dill thing going on. I have even been tempted to make a limed dill quick pickle but this would NOT be a USDA approved recipe of course. That doesn't bother me, my family has used the stuff for years and Its nothing to be afraid of if you use it right. Its just a pretreatment process.

I want to try fermenting tomatoes this year too. I found a lady from Russia that has a good You tube how to video, I'm going to Try it!

Jerry, it's ok, I have a good B&B recipe.

One of the few things my mother canned was watermelon rind pickles. She would can one batch during summer, and they only came out for special occasions.

Thanks, all of you, for the recipes! Oh, my, I adore food. I adore pickles. I had so much fun going through some of the recipes in the Ball canning book I received the other day. . . such exotic and luscious things! My thought was, "So little time left, so many things to eat!" It's not like I have a family to feed. And though I adore pickles and relishes and side dishes. . . I have a problem. I don't eat much anymore!! AAGGHH!!! And what we love most, both of us, is good plain food! Like tonight's meal of roast pork, mashed potatoes and gravy and a large tossed salad (with peppers, cheese, onions, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, black olives, radishes). A recent meal of ONLY chicken pot pie. A small great seared steak with a baked potato and again, salad. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy and corn. Sometimes just creamed potato soup. At least once a week, breakfast for supper, with pancakes or biscuits and gravy and bacon and eggs. Sometimes just a giant chef salad, the other night just BLTs, but two of them for me and 3 for GDW! I might be in a rut--I adore adventurous eating, but I also adore our favorites.

But the bottom line is that I just don't/can't eat that much anymore. Not fair. Fifteen years ago when I was employed vs retired, I ate lunch, snacks, dinners, late night snacks, and was 30 lbs heavier--but it was sure fun eating. Fabulous restaurants, fabulous foods were a favorite thing of mine. But most of the time on weekends, I'd be so busy, it would never occur to me to eat lunch. (And I have never ever eaten breakfast. I know. Sacrilege. Well, I couldn't. NEVER could. Always slowed down my metabolism, even as a kid. Would be droopy and sleepy in class if I ate breakfast, so by 3rd or 4th grade, faced it as the truth and quit. Once in a great while, I'll test my body to see if it's still that way and it ALWAYS is. And so when I got down here (knowing GDW said he never ate lunches), I was thrilled. He has a light breakfast, often, of something really bad like a cinnamon roll, or frozen biscuit, sausage and egg. And once in a while I fix him a fun breakfast of bacon and eggs, and partake myself in small part. Me. . . I eat once a day at dinner time, without ever a thought to calories. We do it up rich and luscious if that's what's called for.

But it makes me sorry, kind of, for all the luscious exotic or different or exquisite foods out there that I no longer have room for! I have 5 jars of pickles/pickled peppers in the fridge right now, and only think to put them out once in a while. And that's for ME. GDW is far too interested in the main dish(es) to add the extras. I'd make them all like crazy if I knew who would enjoy them. . . but I don't even know that. So. As much as I love all these things, I must remember who the audience is! LOL, but kinda not.

Oh do I hear you Nancy. When I first started canning I made all sorts of relishes and chunky pickley things and they were so yummy but it's just me. My 2 dearest friends are gone that would always take a jar or two. And I am too sweet to have all that extra sugar. None of my kids like them either.

I have people who would take them, but often not enough cukes. I calculated what the bread and butter pickles are for 1 pint.

1 cup sugar
1 cup cider vinegar
1 1/3 T salt
1/4 t turmeric
1/4 t celery seed
1/4 t mustard seed

I can then make one jar, or 2, instead of 6.

Someplace I have a recipe for a single jar of dill pickles, too, but I usually do refigerator dills if I only have enough for 1 jar.

Hmm. Well, just realized I could take them to church for some of the groups we support in the area. Hmm.

Thanks everyone for sharing the recipes! Can't wait to try some of them when I have excess. Will ask my father-in-law to grow watermelons (if it is not too late) too so I can try the spicy watermelon pickles. With limited land, budget and experience, I've to instigate and scavenge when it comes to gardening and canning. One day, I will find a pressure canner at an estate sale.

Millie, I'm mad about Agent Orange too. My husband's mother's family lived in Times Beach in Missouri and needless to say, all of them were plagued with health problems. He lost his mom when he was 10.

Nancy, I think you got the right mix of quality and quantity of your food intake. I wish my husband and I would eat light. Our metabolism have slowed but we are still eating. Definitely not a good thing in the long run. Right now, we are trying to compensate with exercise but we really need to eat healthy.

Eileen, researching Agent Orange was how I learned that it was the same chemical (Dioxin) in both cases. I know a man who grew up in Times Beach... he told me all about what happened there. He says he feels like he is sitting on a ticking time bomb. Said he rode his bike up and down those roads. It will probably turn out like Thalidomide (flipper babies), they just changed the name and it is now being used as a chemo treatment for Multiple Myeloma (blood cancer) at $10,000. a pop. God help us all, doesn't look very promising that anyone else will.

Jerry, no wonder they call them Bread and Butter pickles, but where does the butter come in. Grin!

AND, There off.

Been busier than a beaver in a sawmill this morning.

Finally got enough at one time to fill the jar without someone around here eating half of them up in salads
ain't she purdy?

Authentic, Spreewalder style salz-gerkin.

Authentic German not included. See you in about 7-8 days and Ill break out me green lederhosen and suspenders. ;7)

did-a-did-a-dida-dit

did-a-did-a-dida-dit

did-a dit dit dit dat dit.................oh, sorrry.

LOL Jerry, are you confusing Irish green with real Deutsch "leather" hosen? Yeah, I have seen some green on them. And, the music would be umpah, or are you communicating in Morse Code? Still having a good chuckle.. such enthusiasm over a jar of pickles. Wish the darned things still got along with me. But I would enjoy a good Munich beer.

Well Lederhosen can be green, black, brown. Mine are green. Hey the other half is Irish so its all good.

The typo- babble was my poor poor rendition of the Chicken Dance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdrvki3p_1U

It's said that the Chicken Dance is not even from Germany, but this ain't Germany sister, ITS OKLAHOMA. so were having fun darn it. Ha.

I am sure there has been many changes in Germany since I was there last in '69. The first time I went there was '58 and you would seldom see any colors of clothing other than black, brown, or gray. Very few people had cars... streets were jammed with bicycles. No refrigeration, so daily shopping for the women and most had their German Shepherd dog with them. The dogs would be lined up outside the greengrocer, meat market, bakery, etc. No leashes were needed... when mama came out her dog would just fall in step with her. I was so impressed by those dogs and the level of training... beautiful animals. I later learned that their kennel club would not accept a dog that did not have job training. They were classed as "guard dog", "sentry dog", "police dog", etc., and were tested before acceptance. No strays to be seen or mixed breeds... dogs were serious business over there... at least, at that time.

Trying to visualize the chicken dance done in lederhosen. LOL Enjoy the pickles.

You'll have to go to an Octoberfest Mille, then you can see red-neck Okie's do the chicken dance in lederhosen. Or maybe you'd rather not ;)

Amy, you are kidding, right???? LOL I have been to the real Oktoberfest at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich long ago. We were stationed there at the time.

I also went to what was supposed to be one in a small German town in MO... can't remember the name anymore. Somehow hot dogs, canned sauerkraut, and Budweiser just didn't do it for me. LOL Some of the music wasn't too far off the mark.

Recipes: speaking of recipes, Amy, saw a picture of your tomato sandwich. Got a recipe for that? It stuck in my head, and would not leave until I had to go make one. Yummy! :)

Cow peas

In large pot

cook bacon take out and crumble. fry onions in grease. Add water peas and pepper hot mild or none. Boil until tender. Put bacon in pot serve and try not to eat it all.

But eating it all is the best part!

amunk01..... did you ever find anything out about the sign off of Waterloo about goat's milk?

Melissa I didn't. But there is a lady out of Guthrie. Im waiting on her to PM me on FB. I know a friend of mine has purchased from her before. I believe she comes to Edmond often, but I'll need to confirm that. I haven't forgotten about you!

Melissa, the goat milk lady in Guthrie is Angela. Phone is 405-410-9823. She's expecting a call

Later today I'm going to dehydrate some shitake mushrooms. Millie, do you have any advice?

Not really. All I had was a cheap Walmart dehydrator with no thermostat. Shitaki mushrooms are tougher than the white button kind in the grocery, so I suspect they will take a bit more heat. Brush them off gently, you can wash before rehydrating them. If you plan to grind stems.. break them off and dry alongside the cap as it will probably take longer for them. They are pretty doggone hard, so you will need something with some umph to turn them to powder. I used a Vita Mix... the old stainless kind from the 1970s. That thing was a life saver for me. I ran my tomatoes raw through that and then through an old Wear Ever cone shaped potato ricer to take out skins and seeds. Bring to a boil before filling jars and processing to take out the excess air. Fast way to make the 40 quarts of so of tomato juice my DH could go through in one winter. Same with berries of all kinds, only I froze the pulp for making jam whenever we needed more. Peaches, plums, etc. went in raw. Apples, however, were washed, stemmed, quartered and then cooked.. they went directly into the ricer. Mostly they were turned into apple butter. We had keeping apples that held for most of the winter, in cold storage for fresh use.

I'm rattling on again... sorry. I must be getting old. LOL Millie

Thanks amunk01 !!!

Mil--the cone-shaped potato ricer was a blast from the past! I didn't realize it was a potato ricer! I thought it was a canning tool! Hahaha. Yep, when I was helping my mother can as a teeenager, that was one awesome tool--now I gotta google it and try and find one!

When living in MO they were not so hard to find... you know that is "flea market land". LOL It was one of the only things I kept from a set of Wear Ever cookware dating back to 1952... so, yep, it's a blast from the past. Once Aluminum cookware went out of favor, I gave up on it. Do you ever remember seeing the Wear Ever "drip coffee pot" from that era? It was a three piece thing.. bottom looked like a regular old top-of-the-stove pot, then there was a top piece that held the boiling hot water and a coffee basket that screwed onto the bottom of that. Flat paper filter papers were used in the coffee basket. Made the best coffee of that time... at least for home use.