Yep , dismal here 53.

HU

Yes, and now it's suppossed to warm up a bit, but more or less like this through SUNDAY! Argh, Dawn send any left-over vegetable boats.

Nancy, it is nasty here. We did go to Ft. Smith, I think Madge wanted to get out, so we took 3 trash bags of clothes to Good Will in Ft. Smith. We have had those clothes in the car for months. Every time I would want to buy potting soil the clothes were in the way.

I did check the two gardens in the yard, they are liking the rain. So are the plants in the pots. I now have six mineral tubs with plants in them, think I will try for 3 more. I still have 6 plants to plant.

I made a large place to plant flowers yesterday, and should have planted before this rain. I still have over 1.5 lbs of flower seed,and I don't have that much bed ready, and it is going to be too wet in the wildlife for a while , especially if we get the rain that is forecasted.

Mostly I stayed indoors. I did a walk about the garden. It all looks fine. Still a couple of mysteries that I'm working on....

Dismal. Yes.

Nancy, we focused on our hips tonight in Pilates. Her style of pilates is relearning to use our bodies correctly because most of us have developed ways of moving that aren't how our bodies are meant to be moved. I thought of you because we were focused on hips. Our classes are still taught through Zoom. It's fine--not ideal. Finbar wouldn't get off my mat. Diana and Juno got into a hissing "fight", I accidentally left the basmati rice on a low burner and ruined it, a giant spider came strolling thru, so I had to find the spider catcher and move it outdoors. Not quite as relaxing as the studio. haha!

HU, the Red Candy looks like a brighter red to me. And the Red Creole is a darker red--less bright, more faded--maybe a bit purple.

I made Thai tonight. It's one of my favs for the spring time. I'll put a link here in case y'all want to use some of your garden veggies. I was able to use my own spinach and asparagus. I could have used an onion because it calls for a small onion, but I want my own to bulb up a bit more. And I had one from the store. If you don't grow asparagus, but have spring peas--those could work too. Also, if you have carrots. My carrots aren't ready.

It's vegetarian, but you could put shrimp or fish or chicken..maybe pork?

If you like Thai, try it. It's good and it's a good way to use your garden produce.

Green Curry Thai food

Yum.

HU

I have no idea what would be fixing your mom's nails, H/J. It must be supplying some nutrient that she was missing. The herbs are anti bacterial, maybe anti viral and probably anti fungal. Maybe she had a nail fungus. I'm inclined to think it was just some nutrient she wasn't getting regularly before. Maybe it's the cloves. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/benefits-of-cloves

HU, my husband bought a 2 burner propane stove a couple of years ago, supposedly so I could can with it. (He wanted it and used me as an excuse). I have 2 artificial hips, one artificial knee and have enough trouble going out the back door And down the steps by myself, let alone carrying anything. I don't like canning on my electric stove. I had to buy a heavy duty burner that stands up higher because the lip of the stove caught the edge of the canner. Then, too late, I realized the microwave was too close and warped the side. The large burner on the other side is in back and blocks the controls, because, you know, people are too stupid to have the controls on the FRONT of the stove. Stupid designs by people who probably don't cook. Rant rant rant. I can't lift a full water canner to the stove any more. Husband will have to help this year. But, anyway, when I was researching my canning problems I read a lot about people who canned outside. The biggest issue is making sure the temps are consistent and the flames don't get blown out. Temps are important. In fact, somewhere I read that electric stoves weren't optimal because apparently some cycle on and off making temps go up or down.

80s Thursday WTH. I broke down and turned the heat back on this morning. Tired of being cold.

No real gardening happening here. Ron played with the cement mixer the last rain free day we had. He dumped old pots into it. He gets in trouble for this. He always grabs something he shouldn't.

I'm going to have to harvest and freeze spinach. The ones planted first never got very big. It was a new to me variety called Beaujolais. Red stems and veins. I wonder if it didn't like our warmer days.

Oh, Nancy, I don't know how you can use both a Mac and a Windows platform. Macs drove me crazy. I couldn't go back and forth.

I need some blue eyed grass and some violets (I think I bought SEEDS). And apparently a Tigers eye staghorn sumac. Lisa had a post that mentioned them and I'm enamored.

That does look like a good one, Amy. Do you freeze kale? Do the rest of you? Do you blanch it first? So I can freeze it, apparently, but should use it in 4-6 weeks. Maybe I'll blanch some and some, not.

I used Macs exclusively for about 15 years, Amy, so thought I was used to them. Well, actually, I always had Dells at work, and the Mac at home. LOL Note to self, do not use Alt C to copy and paste on the Mac.

I meant to tell you, HJ, that I got my Oofos clogs a week or more ago. They're super comfortable. I was NOT happy that only the very shiny black-patent-leather-looking ones were available in my size. They're so ostentatious for gardening clogs!

I need to run into town and get more SAM-e pills and look at the garden. Have a great day, all.

Nancy , any greens need to be blanched for about 3 minutes before freezing. It'll last for a year in the freezer. https://www.theartofdoingstuff.com/freezing-greens-for-the-winter/

I blanch and freeze collards and kale every year , when I have it. Makes good stir frys when mixed with onions and such.

Amy , I just ordered a 3 burner propane stove for outdoor canning that should work well.Like under a porch or garage out of the wind.

https://www.simplycanning.com/camp-chef-outdoor-canning.html

HU

Oh my, such a change, warm and muggy now with intermittent clouds and sun. Rain still expected each day though.

Thanks, HU. If I can get enough without them being eaten first by. . . who eats kale down to the ribs? Can't believe aphids are doing it. . . but the kale at the school is nearly nonexistent (out of 12 plants), and mine here has some damage. The pumpkins on a stick (eggplants) all got eaten, as well. I will be so glad to have all the herbs and flowers show up there, to help get a good pollinator population and a balance in the insect population.

It got up to 75 today, and I planted many more plants at school. I was going to throw my extra pepper plants in the compost and thought that was ridiculous. I don't know what the school will do with 30 peppers, many of them hot or Chile peppers--but makes me laugh to think of it. Maybe we can teach the children to love and to make Chile sauce for their chili. A lot of the native plants I grew are still too small to take there. However, I'm so excited that I see zinnias, tithonia, sunflowers, marigolds, cosmos germinating there, as well as here. AND it looks as though I lost very few plants there due to the adverse weather and wind. I just had to chuckle at all the things that are growing. . . should be fun. I planted a wildflower mix right down the middle of the bed I'm growing peanuts in, and it's all coming up. No idea what's in it, precisely. Okras are up, bush beans, cucumbers, watermelons. . . in short, everything. I haven't yet received the sweet potato slips I ordered. And I still have to plant one bed of JUST melons. I'm not going to get the fence climbers in for now. ,. . I'm waiting on the guys to get a bed built again the fence. We decided there was just too much bermuda around. I did solarize a 3 foot wide area for several months, and cleared it up--but the Bermuda is already encroaching--hence another raised bed in the works. John and Suzanne will be flabbergasted when they see all those plants and flowers grown up. They have no idea. heh heh

AND I talked them into putting in for a grant of milkweed plugs. She called a couple nights ago and said she couldn't do it (of course she couldn't, nor could I--she didn't know my part and I didn't know hers), so we did it over the phone together, and I sent her my spreadsheet so she could copy and paste. They wanted 2 nectar plants for every milkweed. It really was an onerous application. BUT no problem-o. I've been on top of this for the past year. We have 60-70 nectar plants, with well over half being native. Oh, yes and John's 7 Vitex, our elderberries and oaks. SEVEN Vitex??? LOL. I told him it was going to be positively outrageous in that garden.

This is so much fun. . . I only pray that the children will be able to visit. I miss them SO much and worry about them even more than I miss them. Made me weepy just now. Well. Best to all of you.

Oh friends. Wild hogs took out over half of my garden at my daughters.

is it too late to plant bush beans? We lost almost all of those.

You can still replant bush beans but do it now. It's getting late.

What you need there is a good shotgun.

HU

My son is coming. He’s a good shot too

Jen, do you want an Autumn Joy?

ill be back in a bit to explain and to comment on stuff.

Kim! What in the world?! SO sorry.

Good grief. If it's not one thing it's another (wild hogs).

Jen, the autumn joy was dug up for a girl on a "plant traders" fb group. She drove by our property (I'm sure it was her) and didn't stop. I was watching. Maybe we look too hillbilly out here for her. I messaged her and she said she forgot and to forget it. I'm no longer a part of that fb group. Anyway...I dug it up last summer and it's still in it's little pot and doing fine. When we moved to our house in 2014, we only had one very small flowerbed to the west of our front door. It was filled with autumn joy. I pulled it all out and threw it on the back fence where it thrived. I did keep a small piece for my current front flower bed. Anyway, if you want it let me know.

HJ, sure! You know me, I'll take just about anything lol. How tall does it get? I'm looking for something to plant around a rose bush. The little bricks I had framing it weren't doing a very good job so I'm putting in some different border, which means I have to expand it, right? And that means I need to find something smallish to plant under the roses.

Someone asked about purple ruffles basil. I grew it one year & it was delicious in salads. Also added some to my tea blend & it gave a nice flavor. I think I planted some this year but lost to one of our earlier cold snaps. Now I remembered I wanted to throw out some & try direct sowing.

Woke up this morning to find a couple plants snapped by the wind & a container of peas flipped over. One neighbor has a pretty good chunk of shingles missing, another has a huge branch in her yard (& she doesn't even have a tree on her property).

Kim, that stinks about your garden. I agree with the people who said it was time for a barbecue.

And now that my computer has FINALLY finished installing updates, it's time to log in for work.

Nancy, there will be green caterpillars on that kale. You have a dilemma. You can get rid of them with BT, but BT kills any larva that eat it. You won't want to spray it around any butterfly plants. You can hand pick, but they are hard to see and look like the leaf ribs on the underside of the plant. Maybe diatomaceous earth, which kills a broader group of insects than BT. The pretty white butterflies flitting around are the culprit. they will decimate brassica, and I've found them on lettuce. Your best option, in the future, is to cover with insect netting.

Yes, I blanch and freeze kale and collards. Ron cut some yesterday that was past it's prime and bitter. Supposedly bitter greens can be blanched and drained and then cooked and it will take out the bitterness.

Kim, it broke my heart to see you had hogs in your garden.

HU, I don't have a convenient covered porch. Logical place would be the back patio, but only umbrellas for shade on the south side of the house. It wasn't feasible for me. But hubby has his stove if the power goes out. Of course he's got a gas grill with a burner, too. We came home on Christmas Eve one year and a power surge had killed the stove. He cooked dinner for the whole family on the gas grill with a turkey roaster for the ham.

It is nice to look out the back and see green in the garden. I should take pics today if it doesn't rain.

XOXO

Jen, it’s about a foot tall. I trim it maybe once a year to keep it this size. It sends up purple flowers later in the year.

Here it is... next to the shamrocks that Megan gave me.

Nancy, glad you like your shoes. I want to get a second pair. One for outside and one for inside!

Jen, I'll try the ruffle basil with tea. I just think it's so pretty.

We pulled up a tarp where compost had been sitting for about a year. Now the ground under it is delightfully clear. I see that as "YES! Grass free! What can I plant here?!"

Tom probably see it as "YES! I can finally mow a straight row here!" Poor guy.

I would like a small tree/bush that can take partial shade that doesn't get taller than 6 feet. Any suggestions?

You didn't give conditions (moisture especially), but if it's fairly moist, I'd like to nominate oak leaf hydrangea (probably want one of the dwarf selections?) or clethra.

Yes, dbarron! I second that--both the clethra or the oak leaf hydrangea!

So sorry about the feral hogs, Kim! We've got them in NE OK now. Haven't yet heard any reports of them in the Whitehorn Cove area, but we're mindful. Saw a dead one about 2 miles from here--presumably hit by a car.

Amy--what was/is weird is that I haven't found any of the nasty little caterpillars--not at the school, not here. I remember them (and the cabbage butterflies) from 2-3 years ago on the broccoli and cabbage. Took delight in smushing the caterpillars. Since kale is new for me, didn't realize it was a brassica! AGGHH. But still puzzled that I didn't see the caterpillars. And I looked quite closely. Sneaky #$%^&.

I've got the granddaughters here because Jana and Chris both are working, so I know I'll never catch up on this thread, but I'll try. I'm going to work my way from bottom to top because it is easier for me to remember what I just read.

Jennifer, I like dbarron's suggestion of an oakleaf hydrangea and that is exactly what I would have suggested myself. They are gorgeous in every season and tolerate our Oklahoma weather much better than most hydrangeas do.

Nancy, I second Amy's thoughts about you having some sort of brassica-eating caterpillar on your kale, which is also a brassica. Not all of them feed during the day. Some are sneakier and feed at night or in the very, very early hours of the morning. They've been eating my kale, but I cannot catch them doing it. I'm watching for them though because once they reach a certain size, they tend to feed more and longer, and that is why I finally start seeing them and not just their damage. If it isn't them, you likely have snails or slugs that also are feeding at night. I've been finding lots of snails in our garden. Sometimes that sort of damage is from grasshoppers, but if you have those, you'll be seeing them and they'll be feeding on all kinds of plants. If the damage is restricted to brassica plants, it is much more likely you have cabbage loopers or cabbage worms....or the cats of diamondback moths. All of those feed on brassicas.

Kim, I am so sorry about the wild hogs. They have plagued our county ever since we moved here and are so horrible and so damaging. They also can injure people. I finally gave up walking our dogs down our country roads after a particularly scary encounter with a large wild hog. Nowadays Tim walks the dogs and he is welcome to that chore---never, ever again am I going to go through that sort of encounter and fear again. Wild hogs scare me more than encounters with aggressive bucks and aggressive coyote-dog hybrids. People who live along the river here with very sandy soil can barely walk on their property without stepping in the holes and damage left behind the by rooting hogs., and they can trap and shoot them endlessly and more just keep coming. You still will have them doing damage in areas with clay soils too, but they are a lot more abundant in sandy soils and sandy loam soils.

Replanting snap beans this late is very risky as air temperatures above 85 degrees can cause bean blossoms to drop without forming beans. Some varieties will produce beans even at temperatures of 90 degrees, but not all of them will, so your success with a late snap bean planting will depend strongly on the weather you have over the next two months. If you feel like your air temperatures are too close to hitting the 85-90 degree range down there in Denton for the bush beans to have a change to produce, then you could sow southern peas in that area now and then sow bush beans in August for a harvest in Sept-Oct-Nov. I usually sow fall bush beans here between Aug 10-20 but you might need to wait until closer to late August to do it down there since your heat is a bit more prolonged that far south. I have noticed that Lima Beans, whether bush or pole types, produce beans at higher temperatures than regular snap beans do, so I often plant bush beans early, Lima beans a bit later than that, often in May, to carry us well into summer, and southern peas a bit later than the Lima beans to carry us through late summer and fall. Part of the staggered plantings is so that I'm not trying to harvest, snap and shell all three kinds of beans at the same time. I love beans, but don't want to overload the kitchen and the gardener/chef, lol, with all of them at once.

Amy, Lifting heavy canners does get more and more challenging as we age. Another reason I prefer boiling water bath canning is that the canner is not as heavy as the pressure canner. With things that need pressure canning, I simply prefer to freeze them than to can them nowadays. I haven't used by pressure canner in ages, but I hang on to it in case I ever want to use it again. I wish my friend, Jo (Fred's wife) was still here so I could ask her how in the world she kept canning until she was well into her 70s. She was a tiny, petite woman too, and I think Fred or Billy Fred must have been lifting full canners for her in those later years. I have trouble lifting them now.

Jennifer, It is a wonder you get enough peace to do pilates at home.

Larry, I hope the rain is missing you so that you can do more planting. The rain didn't miss us, but we only had a half-inch from last night's storms, so it wasn't so much rain that it is a big problem. Granted, when you add last night's rain to the earlier rain from a few days ago, we once again have big puddles all over the yard, but I expect they'll dry up quickly in the sunshine and heat as long as more rain doesn't keep falling every day or so.

dbarron, Wish I could send you some vegetable boats. All we have now is fire ants. Perhaps they could row, row, row the boats. lol. I'm thinking you get too much rain pretty much all the time. Does it ever get dry there? We are pretty much guaranteed dry weather in the summer months.

Nancy, Being a firefighter is hard on those firefighter bodies. He thoroughly messed up one shoulder, injuring it very badly when bringing an injured person off the roof of a building on one of his first calls as a professional firefighter, and then re-injuring that same shoulder at least twice more at work. I don't remember how the second shoulder injury occurred, but the third one occurred when he saved a fellow firefighter from drowning in high-speed rushing water. It took years and years of constant shoulder issues, pain and therapy before the shoulder stopped hurting constantly. Now, I fear the same thing will happen with the knee. He fell at home yesterday and couldn't get up off the floor, and Jana had to come and get him up out of the floor. He has not been cleared by the doctor to return to work. In fact, he was specifically told to not go back to work until the doctor cleared him, and then his boss called him yesterday and wanted him to come in today anyway and his boss is not a fool who doesn't understand workman's comp rules. He is, however a guy who is desperate to fully staff his fire station today. Chris' next doctor's visit is tomorrow., and now his hip on the same leg is hurting, probably because of how he is trying to shift his walking strait to accommodate the injured knee. He went in to work today because he is a team player and doesn't want to let down his team---they are particularly stressed due to the large number of firefighters (two fire stations' worth of them that worked a particular couple of shifts) out for Covid-19 testing, and the need to enforce mandatory overtime on other firefighters to cover the holes in the staffing at this time. Chris will count as a person on paper to meet staffing goals, but he'll have to stay on a desk type job and can't respond on any calls. He can barely walk. (sigh) Since firefighters already work 24-hour shifts, you can imagine how hard it is on them to be held over for mandatory overtime for a second 24-hour shift. Just being away from their own home and family for 48 hours straight is an issue, and doubly so since some of them have kids who no longer have school/day care to go to, so the parents are scrambling to be sure one parent or the other is home at all times. Chris knows that by being at work, he can spare one of his station's firefighters from having to work that mandatory OT, and he and Jana always can leave the kids here with me, so they have more flexibility than most of their co-workers.

At Jana's hospital, furloughs and layoffs are hitting and even with the extraordinary measures the hospital system is taking now, they don't expect to return to financial profitability until the end of the year. It is same at every hospital in every town around us except for ours, and if ours is laying off I haven't heard anything about it, and some of these very small rural hospitals may not survive. It was the elimination of all elective procedures that is hurting the hospitals---that is the money that keeps them going, and most hospitals in our area never have had more than a couple of Covid-19 patients at one time, so not enough business to make up for the elective surgeries that were cancelled. Jana still has her job and thinks she won't be furloughed, but she had been selected for the Extern program for 3rd year nursing students and was really excited about her Externship, and then her hospital cancelled the whole Extern program for this year. These are crazy times when someone healthy like you with a bad hip is afraid to go to the doctor's office (and understandably so) for fear of contracting Covid-19, and hospitals that were expected to be overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases have not been, and now find themselves unprofitable and furloughing staff.

Jennifer, With your mom's nails, it might just be the vinegar in the Four Thieves vinegar as vinegar is a well-known 'cure' for nail and skin fungi.

We need for the sun to shine today. It comes out periodically and then the clouds come back over and send it into hiding. We need to have the sunshine warm up the water in the pool so the girls can swim. In the meantime, four kittens and two girls = a three ring circus indoors, and irritated dogs outdoors because the kittens are sucking up all the attention that the dogs otherwise might be getting. I never have had any particular aspiration to live right in the middle of a three-ring circus, and yet here I am. (grin) I guess I should go make lunch for everybody.

Dawn

The last three years, there has been minimal need to water anything all year long. Last year, I think I used the hoses in the front yard, once? The back yard (more moisture intensive swampy plants, like cardinal flower), three times? I don't believe I had to water in-ground shady plants at all (like ferns). And, the wetland stuff is reseeding all through the lawn area...which since brown eyed susans (rudbeckia triloba) are four feet tall, I mow. I don't want to have copperheads and cottonmouths swimming through the weeds invisible (that being said, all I've seen is garter snakes).
Based on what I'm seeing so far this year, I think the Bermuda may have died (or mostly) from last years constant wet..impossible you say? I'm sure some of it survived, just didn't thrive.

Well I went and took a look at the garden. It’s rough but not gone.

the kale herbs chard and some carrots cabbage roselle peanuts and most beans are gone.

i don’t want to plant anything until we get a fence up.

I will see then what my time frame is.

I am planting major black eye pea crop at home. They finally got done tearing it all up. Black eye peas are good money. And there is a quarter acre I can plant

gardeners gotta keep going

Can't go wrong with a big planting of cowpeas ( and okra).

Blackeye , crowder , cream , pinkeye , any of them.

HU

I bought 10 # of pinkeye purplehull seed yesterday, they seem to be getting hard to find, I drove to a farmers co up 65 miles away to get these. I well save some of my own seed this year.

I still have seeds I want to plant, but my soil is still too wet in the wildlife garden. I got a bag of brown top millet to plant for the birds, but they are not hurting, because there is grain from last fall and other native seeds they they can mix in with the insects to keep from starving.

Just keep planting more peas , That's all you can do now. And maybe okra.

God bless us all.

HU

Favorite "heirloom" beans for fresh snap beans?

Lots of beans to choose from.

And peas

HU

I have a question for you, HU, and you, Larry. Most of the rest of my friends here have discussed this with me. But still, the rest of you can chime in, because I'm addressing something kinda new from my point of reference. This pea/bean thing. It just totally escapes me. I grew up in Wyoming and lived there until I was 37. We had green beans, and we had peas. Regular ole green peas (which I love). Then lived in Mpls for 30 yeas, with those same green beans and peas. Now I'm here for the past 5 years. And I for the life of me cannot digest all this crossover bean/pea, and then cowpeas, and all the rest. I wish I could understand it.

THEN, okay, kale was a challenge. At my age, couldn't stand kale. I have finally made my peace with it. Still not really because I love it, but because it's so good for us. And okra--for the life of me, I do not get okra. I won't bread it and fry because I'm too fat already and it's not good for me. But I would love to see a few "to-die-for" recipes that maybe I'd really like???? I'm growing Stewart's Zeebest and Burgundy at the school. Growing green bush beans/haricot vers here and at school.

Dawn, I cannot bear to hear how many bad injuries Christ has already had. This is. not GOOD. My son Wade had life-threatening injuries as well as many others (cracked spinal discs, closed head injury, compound fractures in both lower leg bones on the right, and the thigh--fractures in most phalanges on both hands, and arm and wrist on both.). Yes, he experiences SO much pain. It's amazing he's not addicted to drugs. It amazes me about a lot of us. Amy, Larry. . .

I will tell you all something that just cracked me up. YOU know I've been hurting a lot the past couple months. Well today, I was at the school planting sweet potatoes, and John and Suzanne came zooming in, in the van. I waved. John jumped out and came in to visit. Then he said Suzanne couldn't get out of the van. Her knee. She couldn't move it. I laughed so hard--so walked over to say hi. She rolled down the window, and bless her heart, she was almost in tears. It's been bothering her for a few weeks. And I just burst out laughing. I couldn't help it. So then she began laughing, and John laughing hardest of all. (I wanted to tell her she made my DAY!! She's 20 years younger than I am!! But I didn't.). But I did say "JOHN!! You need to get some new unpaid employees--obviously these ones are defective. Not those exact words, but to that affect.)

But It made me feel so bad for Chris. He's only going to hurt lots worse the older he gets. Prayers for him, as I pray for my son Wade.

Okay, thanks to Amy and Dawn. Yep it had to be caterpillars on the kale at school (and here, tho they haven't gotten far with their damage here.) And yes, Dawn, thank you!!! YES, those little ________ are sneaky. I was over again today and not one insect/caterpillar to be found. I'm now so interested in finding out which ones are the sneaky little ______.

Indeed, HU, God bless us all.

Kim, can you shoot a gun? Can you learn? I could easily shoot a feral hog, no prob.

I would (will?) absolutely FREAK if I find feral hogs or their damage here. I'm slightly comforted by the fact that it's very rocky here.

I have only 2 4x14 foot beds empty at the school. All melons will be in one. . . The other--what would you choose? squash, okra, more melons? Something that could be planted now.

We're watching "The Crown," finally, Amy. Good stuff.

Well , there's beans and there's peas. They in the same broad family but I consider them 2 different vegetables. Beans are in a class to themselves.There's many different varieties of beans , green snap beans , shell beans ,bush beans, pole beans. And then there's peas. There are 2 basic types of peas : "Green peas" and Southern cowpeas. Green peas are cool season. Cowpeas are warm season. People up north grow green peas but most have never even heard of Southern cowpeas. There are many different varieties of green peas and cowpeas. There are several different types of cowpeas: crowder , zipper cream , pinkeye purple hull , speckled peas with several different varieties of each type.Shell beans are more closely related to cowpeas more so than to green peas.But they taste very different and so I consider them as 2 different vegetables.

Does that answer the question?

HU

I think our taste have much to do with how we grew up. I have lived within 25 milesof where I live now all NY life. My taste is more old country farm food. Not that it is any better than anything else, its just what I am use to. I never learned to like sea food, but some people think it the best stuff you can eat. I think another thing is some foods we just don't know how to prepare it. Some of the food we eat now is the same we would grow and feed our livestock, like turnips, corn and rape, just to name a few.

I started in Wisconsin Illinois and Pennsylvania before coming to Texas at 15 years old. I definitely had Yankee tastebuds. But now out of 3 of my siblings that still live here I am the only one head over heels in love with southern cuisine. I mean southern comfort food. I love it all cream gravy cowpeas chicken fried steak biscuit cornbread sausage gravy. When I moved back to PA and married my childhood sweetheart and cooked southern for him he was not impressed with bean soup aka as pintos lol and my chili was not appreciated. My mil came and had a talk with me and tried to get me cook scrapple and hog mal ? Uh no wonder the marriage didn’t last.

i was very excited to see the turnips were mostly in tact. I have been craving turnip greens.

I have eaten a fair share of the world's cuisine (not claiming more than 1/2...but still adventurous) and I appreciate much of it, I'm true to my roots (or it's actually better), but nothing beats all the great things of southern cooking (pot of pintos with ham, red beans and rice, biscuits and gravy, cobblers, cowpeas with ham (ham is good for everything), fried chicken, etc).

And despite being usually simple fare, it's very fulfilling to me. That being said, I think I counted nearly 20 ingredients as I made red beans and rice two days ago. Maybe it's not as simple as I make it out to be...just used to doing it.

I saw an article about how WWII French survived the war by eating Jerusalem artichokes, rutabagas and kolrabi. These foods are just now making a comeback because the people who had to live on them during the war never ate them again. Foods are emotional triggers.

Nancy, slice up okra, lay on a cookie sheet, spritz with olive oil and salt, pepper, any seasoning that pleases you and roast in the oven. Okra is VERY good for you. I like the little ones raw in salad. No, I don't fry it either, but I have coated in a cornmeal mix and roasted as described above.

Cowpeas are a southern thing. I think they were actually a slave thing. I believe they are native to Africa. Personally, I hate black eyed peas. Pink eye purple hull are good, I like most of what I grew, except the cream didn't go over well. I think most people cook them with ham hocks, but I like them cooked in chicken broth. (Don't judge me Okies, I was raised by Yankees). I also cook greens in chicken broth, sauteed.

Next year you might grow collards instead of kale, maybe a little milder green. Collards and kale can be blanched first and water discarded, which is supposed to help with bitterness. There's also Asian greens like pac choi, tatsoi, misome.

Favorite snap bean? Bush: Contender, Tanya's Pink, Royalty Purple pod, Woods Mountain Crazy bean. Pole: I like Kentucky Wonder (boring I Know), Blue Coco. I HAVE seeds for rattlesnake (supposed to tolerate nematodes) and Cherokee trail of tears to try this year. I have volunteer cowpeas coming up. I think they're probably Whippoorwill which seem to like my garden.

I don't mess with "green" peas anymore. I like edible podded peas, Ron doesn't. I've never gotten a decent harvest. Let me rephrase that, the harvest has been acceptable, but you don't get enough bang for your buck. I like snow peas, too, but not enough to give up space in the garden.

XOXO

Amy, I have cooked crowder peas (and black eyed) with chicken broth AND ham....nothing says you can't do both.

This talk of food. I was raised in Wyoming. The kind of food most long-time Wyoming people cooked was akin to southern foods. My theory on that is that most of the early pioneers who homesteaded migrated north from the Texas area. Well, I actually know they did, because I knew many families.

The other area where many Wyomingites moved from was the Basque country. (GREAT food!!--Flavorful and pleasantly spicy.) There were other people moving in with Nordic or German roots, and of course there were native Americans.

I was never really around the people whose families came from the Nordic or German areas.

And my own parents ended up there from Iowa. Mom was not a great cook, and didn't like experimenting. Further, Dad was strictly meat and potatoes. I remember he hated mushrooms AND garlic. And although he was the perfect Dad otherwise, not with food! lol

But typical Wyoming food, if there was such a thing: flavorful spicy chili, chicken fried steaks and fried chicken. . . biscuits, gravy, venison and elk stews and dishes; but not a lot of variety in veggies, perhaps because of the short growing season? beans and peas, beets, corn, carrots, turnips, strawberries. . .

Then I moved to Minnesota for the next 30 years. Bland! NOT my cup of tea--I remember one lady fixed rice pudding for dessert. It was boiled rice, drained with sugar and milk added. Blew my mind! LOL Still does. You may have heard MN is the "hot dish" country. Kinda was. Lots of tater tot casseroles, lots of cream canned soups. But definitely no exotic spices! LOL I'm kinda poking fun at them, but truly. Having said that--many first rate wonderful restaurants in Mpls/St Paul of varying cuisines.

One of my favorite regional styles is Cajun. Love Cajun. And, in fact, I had to special order some file gumbo spice for the gumbo I never got around to making. But I spent a good bit of time with jambalaya fixed many different ways. Dirty rice? YUM.

Canned cream soups are banned from my pantry, having had one too many MN "hot dishes." For any recipe that uses cream soup, I will use a Bechamel sauce flavored various ways.

I'm always up for trying something new,

Unfortunately, Garry is Wyoming old school meat and potatoes. He does enjoy Tex Mex spicy. I miss meeting Amy, Eileen and Rebecca and spouses for lunches in the Tulsa area. We have no fine dining in Wagoner.

Yes, Amy, I spent part of this morning reading about the history of cowpeas. Very interesting! And yes, it appears the people from Africa who were brought here as slaves did consider cowpeas standard fare. I had African American friends in Mpls, and though they schooled me on collard greens, ham and beans, and the right way to fix mac and cheese, I don't remember any of the three of them ever mentioning cowpeas. Interesting.

I LOVE food. My confusion was around shell beans and cowpeas. Since you say the taste is so very different. HU, I reckon I will just have to plant both cowpeas and shell beans. Thank you. What I also realized in my thinking about vegetables is that I have a very narrow appreciation for vegetables and I don't much like admitting that to myself. I bet that comes from the first 20 years of my life. I'm trying to be more open. I love avocados, artichokes, summer squash, spinach, corn, beets, green peas, dried beans, and cooked cabbage. (I don't count potatoes; who couldn't like a potato!) I like broccoli, beans, and cauliflower okay. Thing is, there isn't enough time or meals to eat to find it necessary to go out of our vegetable-growing comfort zone.

Amy, I have the collard seeds ready to go in at the school in July! I'm going to grow a bunch of it--and more kale here, not there. I grew some giant red mustard here--it is ouchy mustardy/spicy! Funny stuff. I had to look up some recipes for it.

I'll try the cowpea/shell bean experiment, just for the fun of it--at the school. And I have six okra plants in there. Bergundy and Stewart Zeebest; I should get more in, but am running out of room there. Is there a good reason why more don't grow peanuts? Is it not a good "bang for the buck" in terms of production? (That's why I don't grow corn or the brassica.)

We have 2 inches of rain so far today and pretty windy at times. I'm glad I got the school's sweet potatoes in yesterday. I can see I won't be doing any yard work, probably today and the next 2 days.

I'm tickled with how well the 2 paw paw saplings, the 2 Amer beauty berries and the 2 oakleaf hydrangeas are doing here. All six like where I put them, I guess.

I had so much fun thinking about food. . . you all sent me on a trip with it! Thanks!

Years ago, oh my, high school years! I had an African American friend who served us a soul food dinner. Among the guests were 2 exchange students. She made chitlins. I couldn't bring myself to eat them. Collards cooked with some gosh awful spicy pepper. What else? I don't remember but one of the exchange students ran to the water faucet and tipped his head under it trying to quell the collards fire.

Oh how I know MN bland, and hot dishes. But my gramma and aunt were good cooks. My dad was meat and potatoes. Butter on all bread, even if you were putting mayo on after. Mom liked hot dishes. There was one called mock chow mein that we all swore never to eat again when we moved out. I can no longer do the lactose in cream soups. I miss New England clam chowder. I miss potato soup. I will eat green bean casserole at Christmas. My childhood memories trend to homemade ice cream and watermelon, strawberry shortcake and Dad cooked pretty good ribs on the grill. Vegetables were all canned, except Mom made my aunt's wilted lettuce salad with leaf lettuce occasionally otherwise, ice berg lettuce.

Oddly our power went out. It’s barely sprinkling and there is not crazy wind right now. Or Lightening. I wanted to join in the food talk, but dislike posting from my phone.

Nancy

Wisconsin must be just like Minnesota. Bland casseroles. We had the German flair because our family but mostly bland and canned

LOL, Kim. One of my favorite restaurants in Mpls was the Black Forest Inn. . . not for the spectacular food, but for the spectacular garden! Ahhh, now I'm all homesick. The food was good--I just wasn't crazy about German food, other than the sauerkraut balls, German potato salad, and the yummy sausages. It REEKED with wonderful atmosphere, though.

https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x52b332b50ac5e82b%3A0x179f1465a2897ed2!3m1!7e115!4shttps%3A%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNq7o_DDMn14di6CQPzE9vjtmO783gu7-hP6CZm%3Dw240-h160-k-no!5sphotos%20of%20the%20black%20forest%20inn%20minneapolis%20mn%20-%20Google%20Search!15sCAQ&imagekey=!1e10!2sAF1QipMQG0SUAJTGotRKWeuhVu6qBfVVxaVJ9EyBKBA7&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiOscO-97bpAhUHSa0KHc6QC0UQoiowE3oECBEQBg

We went to a German restaurant in Tulsa, too, didn't we, Amy? Was that Margaret's? Ahh, yep. I much preferred Siegi's Sausage Factory! :)

BUT. Speaking of German potato salad, I need to make that. Bet GDW won't care for it, but I love it! I'll warn him first. heh heh

Oh, and Dawn, yes! The damage was exclusively on the kale. There are a couple big spinach there--nada. So thank you for the help!

We got a flash flood. I don't know how much it rained, but much more than we needed. I still want to plant more people food in the wildlife garden, I may just fix up some cardboard boxes of potting soil and sit them where I want them ( with seed already planted in them) , then push compost up around them. Squash and pumpkins are the only things I want to plant over there now. I can clean up the tractor ruts later in the year.

dbarron, We have had Bermuda grass die out temporarily when rain puddles set in a given spot for a long time, but then the darned stuff always recovers and takes back the bare ground. I wish excessive rainfall would kill Bermuda grass permanently.

Kim, Want to drive people crazy? Plant ALL the different kinds of southern peas: black-eyed peas, pink eyed purple hull peas, lady peas, crowder peas, cream peas, and then when they comment on your peas, carefully (like an OCD type person) point out which ones are lady peas, which ones are crowder peas, etc. and watch their eyes glaze over. lol. I guarantee you that no one appreciates all the many kinds of southern peas like we do. To most people they're all just blackeyed peas, but we know better. Remember too, that the hulls of all southern peas can be used to make pea hull jelly and it is good. The hulls of PEPHs make one that looks purple and tastes sort of grapelike, but other kinds of southern pea hulls will make a jelly with its own color and flavor. It is a pretty fascinating way to get a jelly harvest out of a pea crop.

Larry, This year when I ordered seeds, I ordered enough PEPH seed for two years because a lot of our seeds are mass-produced in other countries that are dealing with Covid-19 and its economic fallout and we have absolutely no idea if seeds from those areas will make it to the USA for next year's gardens. I'll also probably save some seeds this year. I didn't want to take any chances on not having southern pea seeds next year, so now I have about 15 varieties.

Nancy, I refer to all southern, heat-loving peas as southern peas because that's how I was raised, but a lot of people call them all blackeyed peas or pinkeyed purple hull peas. They can tolerate heat, drought and poor soil in a way that green beans cannot, which is why they are so popular here in the southern region of the country. Where I live, in probably 8 years out of 10, snap beans stop producing by the end of June because of the heat, and sometimes earlier than that, so if you want fresh legumes all summer long, you plant more than just the snap peas. To get a good snap bean harvest this far south, you must plant in late March, baby your plants through late freezes, and get your harvesting, eating and preserving done by the end of June. Then, you move on to Lima beans and southern peas. This whole southern pea thing dates back to the time when families, like my dad's in the 1900s-1930s grew all their own food, and had no money to spend on purchased food, were any available to purchase. If you wanted to eat it, you grew it, and you had to grow and preserve a lot to carry a large family from one harvest season to the next. Traditionally, green peas like English peas don't produce well from zone 8 southward because it stays so hot so much of the time, so you have to have alternatives for southerners. Nowadays we have sugar snap peas which tend to produce a better harvest in the south than green English peas, but their season ends abruptly when the heat arrives. Down in Fort Worth where I grew up, they often are done by April. I really appreciate growing up with a Dad who grew up dirt poor, because I learned to grow and eat plants that would produce in zone 8, and learned to do it on a different schedule than all those nationally-oriented gardening books outlined. Had we planted in Texas when those nationally-oriented garden writers said to plant, we wouldn't have had much of a harvest back in the 1960s and 1970s. I don't remember there being many publications oriented to the southern part of the country back then.

So, I guess my point is that if you and Garry had to live off only what you could grow, you'd have a very deep appreciation for southern peas because the summer doesn't slow them down or stop them. Try that with green peas and green beans in our climate and summer will be legume-free in hotter years. We had one wetter-than-average and probably cooler-than-average summer when my green beans produced all the way into August and the shock of it just about killed me. I believe that was in either 2010 or 2012. I was picking, processing and freezing beans like a crazy woman all summer long and could barely keep up with it all because the peas and Lima beans were doing well at the same time. That's one year out of 20 or 22 years here that the green beans laughed at the summer weather and kept producing all summer long. Not good odds, so I know to grow a lot of snap beans in spring and fall and southern peas and Lima beans in between. Green peas of any type, including sugar snap peas, tend to be a crap shoot this far south---often we have the kind of heat that shuts them down arrive at about the same time they begin to produce their first harvest, so you cannot count on them as a meaningful part of your diet. We don't even try to live off only the food we grow, but there have been years that we have basically done that--in the good years when the weather cooperated and I processed and put up 2 or 3 years worth of any given harvest in that one year. Not all years are like that, and most aren't.

HU, Are you looking for favorites cooked as snaps, as green shellies or as dry shellies because I'd choose different ones for different purposes.

Kim, I married a Yankee from PA, as did my uncle. So, when Tim and I got married, my Aunt Judy, who grew up somewhere near Philadelphia I think, gave me a wonderful Amish cookbook (that I love) full of stuff like the dishes you mentioned, and I've never once made those traditional Yankee dishes, but I've converted Tim wholeheartedly to living off southern cooking. Fortunately, the Amish cookbook also had stuff in it that I consider normal food and I made a lot of those recipes. My aunt was one of the best southern cooks I ever knew (actually probably the best southern cook ever), and I don't remember her making any traditional Yankee dishes either, so I guess my uncle converted her to being a southern cook as well. I don't think a Yankee food eater can peacefully live forever with a southern cook and vice versa, so for a marriage to last, somebody has to adapt, or they both have to cook what they like to eat and maybe take turns with the cooking. When Tim starts trying to get me to cook some foreign (i.e. Yankee) dish of dubious origin, I tell him that he should make it for me and show me how and, other than rhubarb pie, I've never been able to get him to cook those Yankee dishes he remembers so fondly. lol. Of course, he's lived in the south almost 40 years now, so he is about as southern as he can be.

Amy, I won't judge your cooking. lol. You can use chicken broth all you want. As a child growing up in a southern family, I thought the whole purpose of ham and bacon was to flavor veggies. I had no idea people ate pork as a main dish. We rarely did. I grew up in Texas so it was mostly beef and chicken and, of course, the chicken had to be fried in a cast-iron skillet and fried in either lard or bacon drippings or a combination of both. Maybe every now and then we'd have fried pop chops, but my mom fried them until they were like shoe leather, so no one really wanted to eat them. Maybe we'd have ham as the back-up dish to turkey at Thanksgiving or Christmas, but otherwise, bacon, ham and salt pork were for flavoring veggies. It is hard for me to eat green beans that aren't cooked with bacon drippings. What is the point of eating bland old green beans? Now, put a little bit of bacon drippings and crushed up cooked bacon in those beans and I'll eat them all day long. Corn bread made with cracklins is another southern delicacy that is hard to find any more. Eventually Tex-Mex became a Texas thing too, but I was pretty much grown up and married by then. My parents like eating Tex-Mex but my mom never really mastered preparing it.

I suppose kids who have grown up in more recent years eating convenience food and fast food have tastes entirely different from ours? I guess it depends on what their parents did or didn't cook when they were growing up. I love that our food traditions pass down through our family and it doesn't matter which home we're at for the holidays, the means are pretty much the same and you know what to expect. I thought that our food traditions might die with our generation, but have since learned that our nieces and nephews sometimes cook those traditional southern meals for their kids (and grandkids!), so we still do see some of the food traditions being carried on. People who grow vegetables seem to be more interested in maintaining traditional southern veggie recipes, while those who eat purchased veggies don't seem to be quite as interested in doing so.

I need to go make dinner, which is BLTs for all of us, including the grandkids. I'll try to make it back here later and try to finish catching up. I feel so far behind, but y'all should be happy to know that the kids have had at least 4 hours of swimming each afternoon, which is mind-numbingly dull for me but a huge thrill for them. We had to start earlier today in order to get the swimming done before the rain finally made it this far south.

Dawn

Yay, power is back!

Our meals were pretty boring. My Dad was a meat and potatoes guy, although he would eat sides of veggies, mostly canned veggies. Sometimes corn on the cob or fried okra when in season. I have no idea what he ate growing up. They were poor and lived in the country. I know they raised rabbits and chickens.

Mom said he nearly vomited the first time he tried pizza. He grew to like it and to like Mexican food too. He wasn't a picky eater, but he wasn't a big eater either. Mom said she had to scale way back when she married him. She was used to cooking for her dad and two brothers who were HUGE eaters. My Grandma had a beauty shop so it was my Mom's job to cook.

My sister and I loved it when Mom would fix liver about 4 times a year. We were allowed to walk to McDs on those rare occasions. Otherwise, we had to eat what she fixed...take it or leave it.

My Dad is from Nebraska. I don't remember much about the food during our visits to Nebraska relatives. I just remember they never had ice tea. When I asked for it, they would bring out a jar of instant tea. Gross.

At about age 18, I wanted to eat healthier and cooked for my family some. Bless my Dad's heart, he would eat my fruited chicken salads in pineapple halves...or whatever else I came up with.

Oooo...anyone's mom make that nasty Chinese food in a can with chow mein noodles? I liked it as a kid....but ew. It was a Sunday night thing at our house. We always ate at Dodson's cafeteria for Sunday lunch except if Grandma decided to cook.

I've never enjoyed meat even though it was always on the menu.

Except....my grandparents would always have a pot of brown beans on the stove and a pan of cornbread. Always. Everyday. It was their regular lunch. If they had tomatoes in the garden, Grandma would slice them up with cottage cheese. And the big bottle of Sweet and Low for her tea when she started going to Weight Watchers. Oh, and my grandpa always had a loaf of white bread on the table with every meal. I can't really remember their dinners, but I'm sure gravy was involved every night because he used the bread to sop it up. I tried to mimic that, but didn't like it. That memory just came back. They grew onions and he would use a green onion as a straw for his sweet tea.

I think tastes can change (depends on the person, of course) because my Mom likes all the food I make now. Our favorites are Thai, Mediterranean, Italian, Mexican. I love food. I love to cook food. I also like all types of peas and beans. I'm sure I cook them differently than my grandparents did (like dbarron mentioned--20 ingredients) because I've developed a taste for some spice. Also, when you don't eat meat you learn to make food really good so the meat eaters enjoy it too.

And anything I can make using garden food is a bonus and a thrill!

We like fried okra, but you have to learn to cook it right. We discovered fish fry to coat it last year. Yum.

It's probably something that is acquired. The youtuber that I sometimes watch, Calikim, is in California and she grew okra for the first time last year and you could tell she just wasn't thrilled with it. I think it's good drizzled with oil and grilled too.

It was fun to read y'all's food posts.

Dawn you’ll have to tell Tim this story

my son and I were in PA about 6 months when I was being talked to seriously about cooking more yankee foods like scrapple. My son said

grama what is scrapple?

she replied something about it being a bunch of scraps of meat,pork I think, pressed into a shape and MY 4th grade son said oh grams we have those in Texas right mom but call them hot dogs

Kim, That is too funny. Our older granddaughter won't eat hot dogs at all (perhaps she correctly suspects they are mystery meat) but the 5-year-old loves them.

Because I enjoy William Woys Weavers heirloom vegetable books so much, I read some of his books on historical PA cooking, and tried to gain an appreciation for the food of Tim's ancestors. I think I failed. Tim's great, great-grandfather came to America from County Cork , Ireland, in the 1800s. Since we know that the Irish ate lots of potatoes, that is the form of historical Irish cooking I'm good at---growing and cooking potatoes, and of course, eating them.

I don't think Tim ever was a fan of traditional PA cooking. Luckily for him, because his parents both worked in the 1960s and beyond, they had a part-time housekeeper who at least started dinner most nights and had it either fully cooked or ready to pop into the oven when they got home from school (his mom was a teacher) and work, and Mrs. P. prepared a lot of ethnic food for them---mainly Polish and Italian, so that is the sort of stuff Tim likes to this day. Sadly, I don't cook Polish style food and don't even know how, though he has tried to explain to me some of the dishes he remembers, but he and I both prepare a lot of Italian food. I keep thinking I'll make him some of Mrs. P's 'pigs in blankets', also called something that sounds like halupki though I am unclear on the spelling, which are not the pigs in blankets (hot dogs wrapped in crescent roll dough and cooked) we grew up eating in Texas a few decades ago. They are some sort of meat and other stuff wrapped in and cooked in cabbage leaves. The main Mrs. P. recipe that Tim and his sisters taught me in the 1980s or 1990s was for homemade Stromboli. Hmmm. Just thinking about Mrs. P's Stromboli makes me want to make some. Perhaps I'll do that this weekend and teach the kids how to make it. They love learning to cook, especially the 5 year old. She takes great pride in helping with each meal, and loves making homemade pizza, so she probably would enjoy making and eating Stromboli, as long as we put pepperoni in it, which we always do.

Last night's BLT sandwiches were a huge hit with the girls. They told me they already had had BLT sandwiches at home with Chris and Jana, using their own home-grown lettuce but with store-bought tomatoes. I assured them that BLTs are even tastier when made with home-grown tomatoes, and they seemed to agree. I tried to make the meal as traditionally southern as I could by serving southern peas with snaps and bacon, corn, fried apples and sweet tea. If I'd had more time and a can of creamed corn I would have made corn casserole instead of just regular canned corn. I think that this afternoon it will be too cold for swimming---roughly ten degrees cooler than the last two days, so we will need a project. After spending 4 hours per day in the pool the last two days, the girls may have swimming pool withdrawal today. I'm thinking we'll teach them how to make home-made ice cream the old-fashioned southern way from scratch. It will be too wet, obviously, to do any lawn or garden work, and there's more rain in the forecast for today. We were mostly missed by yesterday's storms, at least in the sense that nothing stalled over us and dropped several inches of rain or any hail either, so we just had a normal thunderstorm and are not suffering from flooding like so many people a couple of counties north of us. I understand that at one point Paul's Valley had a foot of water in the streets yesterday after receiving several inches of rain in a very short time frame. Tim had to run on two weather-related fire calls---a single-vehicle rollover on the interstate at the height of our heaviest rain, and then a lightning-caused fire a few hours later after we'd already gone to bed. Really, though, the rain was just a mild disruption here. The air feels so cool and inviting today outdoors compared to the higher heat and higher humidity we have had the last couple of days, and I'm hoping the rain maybe knocked down a lot of the pollen that was in the air.

Jennifer, Ugh. Our mom made us eat liver when she made it. I thoroughly hated it and mostly chewed it endlessly as her liver was always incredibly tough (my mom overcooked all meat except for roast beef and fried chicken) and then discreetly buried the chewed liver in my paper napkin in my nap until I could convince her that I'd eaten enough of it to be allowed to leave the table. Walking to McD's wasn't an option for us as it was probably 5 miles away. Tim likes liver and onions and I prepared them once for him early in our marriage. He loved them and I told him that if he ever wanted to eat them again, he could prepare them himself because just looking at raw liver and cooking it turned my stomach. I haven't cooked liver and onions since, and I think he's only prepared it once or twice.

My parents mostly used commercially canned vegetables too when I was a kid, and maybe that's why I don't like them. Once I was out on my own and could prepare fresh produce, or could use frozen produce, I really didn't buy and use many canned veggies, and I don't even like to can most of them. I prefer frozen-fresh-from-the-garden produce so much more when I am preserving and cooking produce we have grown. We do have quite a lot of commercially canned veggies right now because I stocked up on them when the corona virus was in China and I was preparing for possible supply chain disruptions. Costco sells several basic veggies by the case, so that was what I bought and what we have been eating. I just try to dress them up when I cook them.

I remember that horrible chow mein from a can. My mom hated cooking, so tried to spend as little time as possible doing it, so we got all sorts of junk like that for meals. She was all into convenience meals that took as little time as possible to prepare. On the weekends my dad would cook, glorious southern home cooking every time, and we all pigged out on his meals on the weekends. My mom could have cooked that way because her mom certainly did, but she didn't like to cook so she didn't bother. She also didn't like sandwiches, so never made them for us. My dad made me a sandwich for my school lunch every day, but I don't remember mom ever making us one. I was shocked when I reached middle school age and realized how many of my friends ate sandwiches every single day, both at home and at school. Sandwiches were not something we kids in our family grew up eating, which now just seems weird to me.

Ditto on meals using garden produce. My dad could harvest stuff from the garden and turn it into a meal in the blink of an eye. He'd chop up potatoes, onions, peppers and okra and pour them into cast iron skilled filled with bacon drippings. Then he'd drizzle corn meal right over the sop, add chopped-up raw bacon, nad stir-fry it all together and serve it hot. It was a delicious meal. He also fried okra the traditional way all the time. One thing he never did was stir together okra and tomatoes and cook them as a side dish. He had no love for slimey okra, and neither do I. I like to slice okra, drizzle it with oil and roast it, sprinkle a few herbs on it and then eat it fresh. We call this roasted okra okra chips. Beck's Big Buck okra is ideal for this because the pods are big and wide and fat.

Nancy, We never ate casseroles growing up, so I didn't even know what they were until I became an adult and had a friend who used them a lot to stretch a little meat to go a long way while she was a young mom who still was a college student and had a family to feed on a tight budget. I liked her casseroles but they were like foreign food to me.

Traditional southern cooking tends to be heavily flavored with spices and herbs, perhaps to make up for some of the cheap food that often comprises southern meals. I think the theory is that you just keep adding more flavor to it until you make it tasty. Just last night Lillie was talking about eating pickled pigs feet with her Great-Grandmother on her mom's side of the family. She liked them when she was little, she says, because she didn't know any better. Now she thinks the idea of pickling pigs feet and eating them is gross. I told her I could buy her some pickled pigs feet at the Fischer Meat Market in Muenster and she assured me that it was not necessary. Just remember that I offered to keep Grandma Ruth's tradition alive. Sadly they lost Grandma Ruth in December.

With regard to shell beans and shell southern peas, I think the southern peas have an earthier flavor. I like shelled southern peas more than shelley snap beans in general, and usually harvest and prepare the snap beans as green beans. It seems to me that people like Tim who grew up in the northeast eat a lot more shelley snap beans than people who grow up in the south---maybe because our fresh green bean season is so short in the south.

Amy, Your story about chitlins reminds me of high school. It was the late 1970s and our high school offered elective courses like "Black American History", "Mexican American History", etc. and a lot of us took them as juniors and seniors to fill our school day. For "Black American History" we drew group project assignments (for a team of two) from a hat and the assignment that my friend and I drew was to prepare and serve, to our class of about 15 people, a traditional soul food meal. We were in a panic because we really didn't know what soul food was. After doing research, I calmed down because it turned out I had grown up on a lot of white soul food that was not very different from black soul food. This was a revelation to me---but then I realized that if you came from a traditionally poor southern background, you were eating the same foods basically prepared the same way no matter the color of your skin. It was more of a new thing for my classmate whose family was more upwardly mobile and didn't eat what we then jokingly referred to as white trash southern cooking. We did make a dazzling soul food meal that our classmates enjoyed and we liked doing it and eating the meal. We did not, however, make chitlins. We did make crackin' corn bread and collards, among other things.

A lot of historical southern food, whether prepared by slaves back in the day or by poor white southern subsistence farmers (aka as sharecroppers) like my dad's family were about the same thing, though I didn't realize that until I was in high school. It was all about using every single part of the animal or plant because you didn't have enough food to waste any part of it. My aunts on my dad's side could can anything and they did, including green weeds, and they did that because that canned poke sallet or canned lambsquarters might be the one thing you had that helped you survive the long winter's non-gardening season without going meal-less. They did grow greens and such in the winter as the weather allowed, but it was hard to raise enough in the Dust Bowl years to keep a large family fed and alive. I learned a lot from them, but never acquired my dad's family's fondness for pickling every single food item known to mankind and then eating it. Our family gatherings always seemed to include about 15 kinds of vegetable pickles of all kinds, which seemed excessive to us children of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. That's how they ate though because they always pickled so many veggies when they were relying 99% on the food they could grow.

Our lives are so much simpler nowadays by comparison and we are so spoiled. I still try to grow and preserve as much of our food as possible, but I don't do it in hugely excessive amounts like I did 10 or 20 years ago. There is no reason to put up three years' worth of produce every single year, but it took me a long time to learn that.

I need to get off the computer and get busy before the girls wake up.

Dawn

My husband can't technically be called a Yankee because he was born in Louisiana at an air force base. His mom was from NJ and his dad was French Canadian from Maine. She said he boiled everything and even wanted to boil the Thanksgiving turkey. Ron grew up poor. They had things like bologna salad on day old bread. Think a roll of bologna chopped up and prepared like tuna salad. So he's never waxed poetic about childhood meals and never, ever suggested scrapple. What he missed when he moved here was pizza, Philly cheese steaks, cheesecake and pork roll (a Jersey thing). When he joined the Marines he was really skinny. The Marines let him eat all he wanted, and he did. He was based in North Carolina, so he was exposed to southern food there. He was adventurous and liked to try all different kinds of food, so he introduced me to a lot of new things when we got married. He's big on Italian, Greek, Chinese and of course Polish, since his mom was Polish. He was used to Jewish food, too. He was NOT big on Mexican, MY favorite. Although Ron's an excellent cook and cooked special meals, when the kids were still home I did most of the cooking. The joke was you could even eat it 4 days out of 5. I'm really good at getting burned rice out of a stainless steel pot, though. We ate spaghetti once a week. We got pork loin from Perry's very reasonable, so breaded/baked pork chops were a regular (I do not fry). There were several go to chicken dishes which probably were more international than American. Ground beef was pretty cheap back then. When the kids were teens, we had burritos once a week, though it was an Americanized recipe that (gasp!) used cream of mushroom soup. I bought mostly frozen veggies. I don't think my kids could say they got any specific region's style cooking growing up, but they were introduced to many styles and foods. Ron taught them all to cook. And if you left the table hungry it was your own fault.

Dawn, haluski is right. The spelling changes regionally, I think, with the alphabet translation. We called them cabbage rolls. My maternal grandmother was Polish and Lithuanian, born and raised in Chicago’s working class Eastern European neighborhood, first generation in the US. Lots of recipes online. We had those, pierogi, nales niki, and a dish we called baby fingers, which was a kind of boiled dough with poppy seeds. None of us liked the baby fingers.

I know nothing about how my paternal grandmothers cooking, but I assume it was country based stuff. My grandfather and his siblings grew up in Alva. She was not known as a very nice person, and people leave it like that. I never met her.

Moms family were ranchers in Noble county, even though my grandfather was born in Hollywood, California, a block off Hollywood and Vine. So there’s my love of homestyle American cooking, meat and potatoes, biscuits, apple butter, hearty breakfasts, big salads, homegrown tomatoes, pickles, and fried chicken. And good barbecue.

A research project I hope to be able to do someday is into the different regional cooking styles in the US and their relationship to the original immigrants who settled there.

Speaking of cooking, I have some to do. Not a gardening day today.

This rain is going to finish driving me nuts. No gardening done today. I did check the wildlife garden, I have a few things coming up,but not as I had hoped.

I am afraid to check into my ancestry, some stories I have heard make me believe some of it was very colorful. But for the most part I know nothing.

Rebecca—Do you know if your grandfather was born at the cottage hospital there in Hollywood?

Nancy—Aside from southern peas doing well here, they also don’t require soaking before you cook them to make them digestible. They’re a nice alternative to beans when you don't have time to soak!

I’m a second-generation Californian on one side (via Missouri and Nebraska, and farther back, Ireland and Germany) and a second-generation American on the other (via Sweden). Food was never a huge thing in my family, but I lived in Los Angeles for a decade and am lucky to be an adventurous eater. Outside of me, we aren’t really a family of cooks, though my grandmother made fantastic fried chicken and mashed potatoes, and all of my comfort foods are Swedish things my mom made me growing up. We did, however, have barbecue. My great-uncle was a cattle rancher along the Central Coast, and there is a particular style of oak-fired barbecue native to that area, influenced by Spanish, Mexican and Basque cowboys. My dad didn’t have sons, so I was brought up to follow in their footsteps—I am afraid most men, especially here in Oklahoma, are terribly alarmed when they find out I do all the grilling in our family. 😆

Something managed to mow down my last remaining eggplant, but that is the worst of what I have to report. Pulled some weeds and I need to bag the arugula I’ve let go to seed. My melons and cucumbers have been extremely slow to germinate this year (I’m blaming the fluctuating temps), but they’re finally catching on. I got the tomatoes supported today and trimmed the lower branches now that the plants are good and tall. The fennel and scallions are starting to pop up in earnest and look great, and the tomatillos have really taken off. I am going to start some more eggplants and see if I can manage to get some in the ground for late summer harvest. One can hope!

—Marleigh

Amy, Tim pulls that "I am a southerner by birth" crap with me because he was born in Virginia, but they moved to PA when he was about 18 months old, I believe, so he still was reared as a Yankee. In all fairness, as soon as he graduated from college, he found a job in Texas and moved south. He always said "I moved to Texas as soon as I could", and he was very quick to embrace all the traditional southern foods, and particularly bar-b-q, steaks and beef of any kind, and Tex-Mex.

I like the fact that your kids were exposed to many kinds of food growing up. I wish we had been. My mom did try to make spaghetti and tacos when we were probably in our early teens, but they were somewhat-bland Americanized versions and lacking in the spices and herbs that make them so delicious. For example, she used plain tomato sauce from the can without spicing it up to turn it into pasta sauce. This must have been in the pre-Ragu days. At least she tried, even though we didn't really appreciate her efforts. My dad was exactly the opposite---he was like a mad scientist with spices and herbs in the kitchen, always experimenting and adding more, more and more. One thing that saved me from learning how to cook in my mom's style was that I went to work in a steak restaurant when I was a teenager, and we had an old guy who once had been a cook for the railroads back when the railroads still had dining cars. That gentleman, who was named Shadrach, could make a delicious southern meal out of anything, and he taught all of us how to cook delicious veggies, soups, stews and some main dishes (like Salisbury steak, meat loaf and beef pepper steak) southern style as well as lots of soul food type stuff that was becoming hard to find in restaurants, except for little local joints on the poor side of town. While many people came into the restaurant for actual steaks and burgers, he developed quite a following who always asked first "what did Shad make today?" before they'd consider ordering plain old stuff off the menu. Most would rather have his southern style turnip greens or collard greens than a big baked potato. Shad's food was the best and he was a very old man by then who wanted to pass on the art of southern cookery to anyone who would listen to him. We all soaked up all the knowledge from him that we could even though many of us were still teenagers at the time. We knew a real southern chef when we encountered one despite our youth. It was sort of like having your grandfather teaching you.

Rebecca, Thanks. So, haluski it is and now that I know how it is spelled, maybe I can look up recipes for it and surprise Tim one day. He speaks fondly of those and peirogis.

It is fascinating that your grandfather was born in Hollywood. I bet it was a really interesting place back then---more so than now. My mom's fried chicken absolutely was the best, and none of us can replicate it exactly even though we try. It was our favorite meal that she made and we all would have eaten it weekly, but she only made it maybe 4 times a year. I think the closest I have come to replicating the exact flavor of it is when I use a free-range chicken raised organically versus standard commercially grown chickens, so perhaps that is the difference---she was using real chickens back then, if you know what I mean, because factory farming hadn't taken over chicken production yet.

It wasn't a gardening day here either on Saturday, with rain all day long. We tried to make it fun for the girls by making home-made ice cream, and then their favorite meal (spaghetti with meatballs) for dinner. Then we watched a movie and prayed that the sun would shine on Sunday (and it is).

Larry, The rain returned and found us from late Friday evening through early Saturday evening. I am so extremely disappointed. We have about 4" total for last week and are under water again. Everything I've managed to get planted has been doing very well, but there's areas not even planted yet, and now it is all wet again. This has been the longest, most miserably wet spring. In a lot of ways, it is worse than last year at our house because we stayed wet all winter too.

I was hoping all the rain might somehow miss your place, but I was watching the rain and knew you were getting more rain too.

All 4 of us kids are adopted (different birth parents, different backgrounds) so when we hear something "exciting" in our family's ancestry/history, we just shrug if off and say "I'm glad we aren't related to them by blood". lol. Mostly, though, our family history is dull and boring, with mom's family largely being of Scottish descent and Dad's being a mix from the poor white south (Virginia and Tennessee in the late 1800s/early 1900s) who fled to TX seeking better opportunities and still found themselves perpetually poor and pretty much starving---same life, different location. Their heritage goes back mostly to England and Scotland. There really isn't much exciting in our past, especially compared to some of our neighbors here in OK whose ancestors were, um, colorful and might have been bank robbers and cattle thieves who fled from TX to OK before OK statehood in order to escape from the long arm of the law and the Texas Rangers. Fred grew up here in the 1920s so he knew the local family histories pretty well and was happy to share that info with me, even when I didn't know who he was talking about because we hadn't yet lived here long enough to know who was who and really didn't even care whose family bought their land decades ago with ill-gotten gains. Fred always thought it was important to know the local history though and it aggravated him that most local folks whitewashed their family's somewhat criminal pasts.

Marleigh, I am laughing at the way your grilling expertise might be intimidating to men here in our state. They do (my husband and son included) take great pride in being the masters of the grill, don't they?

Your eggplant might resprout from the ground if it had a good solid root system.

I agree with you that cool soil temperatures likely are impeding seed germination and growth of the true heat lovers like melons. I never plant mine until mid-May most years for exactly that reason. It also helps if my herbicide-loving neighbors already have nuked their pastures and fencelines in the mid-April thru mid-May time frame before I plant the melons, so planting later is better for the melons. Since my garden got hit by herbicide drift the week before last and again last week, it might be safe now to sow melon seeds. I wish I didn't have people around me who use herbicides carelessly and let them drift, but it is what it is and I just have to work with it.

There's nothing new or exciting here. The dry weather was rather nice while it lasted, but now the rain came back and ruined everything. The swimming pool is uncovered and soaking up the rays of the sun this morning and the girls are counting the hours until they can get into the pool this afternoon. We put a floating thermometer into it so we can accurately tell them if it is too cold without getting into a prolonged discussion about how cold is too cold. The hummingbirds are flying around madly this morning, happy for the return of the warmth and sunlight. It already is close to 80 degrees here, which is a big improvement over yesterday's high in the mid-60s, and it isn't even noon yet, so today will feel more like May than early April.

Dawn