Kraut Pickles

Another hot week here at The Acre. We had a few passing thunderstorms that gave us about an inch of rain on the garden and pumpkin patch, so we will put up with the heat. We did some preventive spraying on the pumpkin patch and squash. We mixed up a few tablespoons of baking soda in a gallon of water and sprayed everything down. This keeps the PH levels high enough to defeat the blight, which has plagued The Acre ever since we started planting a garden. So far so good. We really like fried squash, so fingers crossed.
We start off this week with  the food pictures. And how better to start than steak? These are from the whole sirloin we cut ourselves. We did packs of two, then cut the two in half for a total of four steaks at prep time. This week we hit the cast iron skillet just right so we had some smoke rolling off of the pan before we dropped the steaks. We got a good crust on the outside and the inside we could still cut with a fork.

We had another boil this week. Pops is a big fan of the boil, and we kind of like it ourselves.

We've been getting fresh veggies from the garden, so we always have fresh food on the table. This one is a summer time favorite. Cucumbers and onions in vinegar sauce. We slice them up and let the cool in the fridge until dinner time. You just can't beat this one.

We also have a fresh salad every day for lunch. Lettuce, tomatoes and onions straight from the garden. You'd think we would be healthy?
Our last food related item this week is prep for this coming weekend. Everyone knows we go to Dude's Drive In every Saturday night for a burger and fries. Every week except one, the third week of July. That's the week Dude's gives everyone a vacation while they spruce up the joint. That means fresh french fry oil, but it also means we have to do something different for dinner on Saturday night. We thought this would be an excellent time to smoke the whole pig leg we picked up a few weeks ago. We've had it in the freezer, so we took it out for thawing. We will be good to go by next Saturday.

A couple of projects this week were also food related. Earlier in the week, we picked a few heads of cabbage from the garden to make kraut. We had to cover the cabbage because the girls mow down the heads if we don't. The funny thing is that everywhere we read about keeping chickens, one of the things we see is give the chickens a head of cabbage to keep them fed and occupied. We bought a couple of heads at the local markets, but the girls will not touch them. We had two rot, untouched. So we figured chickens didn't eat cabbage. Then we had a whole row of cabbage last year that got mowed down as soon as the heads started to form. Our only guess is the birds know something we don't about store bought cabbage?

We chopped them up and got our crock up and running. Six weeks from now we look forward to sharing some jars of kraut with our loyal followers.

Second item this week is pickles. Our cucumber plants are running wild and we pick three or four new ones each day. After we get a "mess" we make a batch of pickles. Looks like we will be headed to town for more wide mouth pint jars very soon.

We have already stocked up on jar lids, for just such an emergency.

Our last project for the week is berries. We've been picking all our berries as they come in. We freeze the handful here, handful there until we get enough for a batch. This weekend we had enough for two rounds of jelly making.

One day's worth of work equals fourteen jars of jelly and a few more jars of dill pickles. Not too shabby for an old couple.

Our last picture this week is from a guest photographer, our pal Steph. She took a break from all things bachelorette to enjoy a glass of foxgrape wine on her front porch this week. We can't wait to make more this year.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K