Mrs. Polk's Banana Pudding

This recipe is from one of my mom's PTA Cookbooks and usually I'm against instant/semi-homemade because I enjoy the challenge of from scratch cooking but every now and then there is a recipe that I just don't care! This is one of them!!  Great to make the night before a potluck or easy dessert for your southern dinner part.


You'll Need:

1 Large box instant banana Pudding Mix (requires 3 cups milk)
Small Tube of Cool Whip
8 oz Tube Sour Cream
Box of Vanilla Wafers
3 Rip Bananas Thinly Sliced


Follow pudding mix directions.  Then fold in 1/2 the container of cool whip and 8 oz sour cream. (I find that mixing the sour cream up first helps fold it in more smoothly)
Layer wafers, then pudding mixture, then banana pieces.  Do this Twice and top off with extra Cool Whip if you like.

Prep time: 15mins

Tastes better if made a day or two in advance

Keep it in the fridge over night for best results.

Yellow Summer Squash

One of the most simple and delicious side dishes my family makes is southern style summer squash; a recipe that Great Grandmother Bush would cook. We've changed it ever so slightly to make it a bit healthier but the heart is still there and tastes even better if it's squash taken from your own garden!!



You will need:

 1 Sweet Onion Chopped
2.5-3 lbs Yellow Summer Squash Chopped
1 Table Spoon Butter
Salt and Pepper to Taste

Serves 4-6 as a side dish

Ingredients

Prep & Cook Time 2 hrs give or take

Preheat the largest skillet/frying pan you have this can be done as you prep and chop.  Start by chopping the onion a ruff chop is fine everything breaks down as you cook perfection not needed just a ruff uniformity. Once you have the onion chopped put the pad of butter and onion is the pan and let them sweat down a little.  Then go back to do more chopping, this time the squash.

Again you are just looking for a ruff uniformity chopped squash not perfection.  Stir the onions occasionally as you chop and add the squash as you get them all cut up. Stir occasionally it's fine if you get a little color on the squash and onions but you're really just looking to cook out moister and soften the squash.  Once all the squash and onions are chopped and in the pan turn down the head to medium-low stirring occasionally for the next hour and a half.  You want to cook the squash down until its all tender you can cover the pan or add a splash of water if you fell it's getting too dried out.

 

Chop Squash

Chop Onions

Quarter Squash for Chopping

Cook everything down for an hour and a half

Great side dish for grilled or fried chicken!!

Starting My Square Foot Garden

After leaving college a little less than a year ago I moved back in with my parents to save a money and pay down my student debt.  In an effort to keep sanity and help with the cravings of wanting a homestead I convinced my parents to give me a little space to grown a few veggies.  I've done a little reading about different forms of growing along with watching YouTube videos of urban gardeners or self sufficient homesteaders and felt that a intensive growing in a square foot garden would work best for a jumping off point. 

For ease and economy I went with two 4x4 ft. raised bed starter kits, they are ceder, hold up well to the weather and safe for growing food.  The idea of intensive square foot gardening is to have maximum productivity in a small space for this you need a good growing base, soil enriched with loads of compost.

 Between the two beds I filled them with several bags of good quality top soil, a bag of composed cow manure each, a bag of mushroom compost each and one bag chicken manure divided between the two. Once this was done I stalked out each foot and made a grid using jute so I would have square foot planting spots.

 In the 32 square feet I have 8 Heirloom Tomatoes plants (Homesteaders, German Queen, and Cherokee Black), 2 Ichiban Japanese Eggplant, 2 White Eggplant, 3 Mammoth Jalapeno plants, 1 Golden Cayenne, 3 Black Beauty Zucchini, and 3 Yellow/Summer Squash Plants.  These have onion and marigolds planted in amongst them as a companion crop and pest deterrent.  I hope to do more research into companion crops and have a larger garden next season.  Biodiversity is the best think for keeping a balanced healthy farm or garden in my opinion.  

Things I've learned so far:

• Weeds are not a problem in such a small space and the squash shades out anything that isn't already established

• I have spread coffee grounds as a natural slow release nitrogen since I've planted such heavy feeders (Plants that take a great deal of nutrients out of the soil as they grown like tomatoes
• Once the marigolds get shaded out you have to cut them at the base of the stem and compost them so as not to let them rot and cause disease
• I planted two squash/zucchini seedlings per square still not sure if I should have thinned to one as they need male and female flowers to fruit only real disadvantage to having both seedlings that I can see is the heavy shading of surrounding plants and if the surrounding plants aren't taller and well established it could cause problems.    
• Plant 2/3 of your tomato starters in leaving 1/3 above ground to get a good stalk and well established roots.
• Keep up on your tomato pruning snipping suckers (the shoots that form between stem and existing leaf stalk) asap. (I'm guilty of not keeping up with this)
• Cage tomatoes sooner rather than later.
• Always keep an eye out for slugs!!

In the beginning...

I thought I’d make the first post a short one, a kind of crash course bio / pseudo-manifesto. So here we go!

My father served 30 years in the USAF giving me a wonderful childhood and a tour of the world; I’ve lived all other from different parts of the US, Europe and even over to Japan.  I grew up with family sit down dinners all most every night.  My parents are both good cooks and if I can say so without sounding too narcissistic I think some of it rubbed off on me.

Since having Facebook I’ve been posting pictures of different meals and baking projects I’ve done along with the occasional veg I’ve grown.  A couple my friends wanted the recipes for the pics or tips on this and that so I’ve created this blog!  Most will be about cooking followed by the small amount of gardening I do and maybe the occasional book review of tomes related to the kitchen, farming and sustainable practices, all related passions of mine that should come up in the blog.  Really I'm just a guy trying to make my own Eden and share it with the world.