Let’s get you growing Joi Choi! This is the Pak Choi (aka Bak Choy) everyone can (and should) grow.
There are few veggies that bring me as much JOI in the garden and on my plate as this veggie, so I’m declaring myself a founding member of the Joi Choi Fan Club! She’s as delicious as she is beautiful!
This has consistently been one of the easiest veggies to grow. It is ready also one of the fastest maturing early spring veggies, ready to harvest within 30 days of transplanting in all but the coldest spring weather. This means I can usually get at least three successions of Joi Choi in each season in my zone 4 gardens.
It is way more heat tolerant than other Pak Choi I’ve tried. Meaning it keeps growing a lot longer, and therefore bigger before it bolts. I mean look at those Thick stalks! All that stem equals weights of close to 2 lbs. per average plant if harvested all at once. Last fall I harvested a single Joi Choi that was over 4 lbs heavy and still tender and crisp in October!
Nothing ushers in summer like fresh-picked strawberries and red-stained fingers, shirts, faces… so let’s get you growing strawberries too!
To save that fleeting, sweet taste of summer we’ve got tips and tricks and the reasons why growing homegrown or grabbing all the local berries you can is worth it. I promise, your winter self will thank your summer self.
Strawberries are one of our little homestead’s most anticipated foods—by every member of our family. So, we spend some time prepping and loving on the gardens so they produce to their fullest.
Grow Great Berries
Growing strawberries is as close to instant gratification as you can get with a perennial fruit. I recommend planting bare root plant, as you have more options for variety. They’re also less expensive than potted plants, and the plants seem to do better in the long run. The catch is you want to plant them in late May, before the heat of summer comes on too strong. You’ll soak the roots for an hour or two before planting. During the first growing season, plan to pinch off the first few buds that form, but let the next rounds of flowers mature to pick fruit later in the season.
This soup is such a perfect blend of sweet corn nostalgia and winter comfort that I can get a craving for this soup just about any season… but it feels especially fitting during that ‘hungry gap’ when many of the frozen veggies are gone and we’re down to sprouting potatoes and mason jars from the pantry.
This recipe can skew simple or a little more involved depending on how you’re feeling, but on way or another, make this while it is still soup season!
My latest version included the last of a batch of ‘corn and vegetable stock’ from the summer. This simple seeming stock is rather magical in my opinion. You make it from the leftover cobs after canning the sweet corn this past summer. This just pulls all the deliciousness out of every cob of corn.
After you cut off the corn kernels off the cob, just toss cobs, and onion peelings, celery leaves, carrots (or just their peelings), garlic and a bay leaf into a pot and simmer for at least 4 hours, strain off the stock and either freeze (leaving a good inch of headroom in the jar) or pressure can with the cans of corn.
Like all my recipes, especially soups, there is a lot of leeway to use up veggies and ingredients that you have on hand. If you have zucchini but not celery, go for it- or parsnips instead of carrots- OK! Make this recipe yours, you are in control in hte kitchen!
There’s so much information in the pages of our book, Small-Scale Homesteading we know it will both inspire and educate you!
Stephanie and my collective knowledge has been distilled down to what we wished we’d known when we started down this homesteading road.
…And I know that’s said about a lot of books by a lot of authors, and I understand why- we write what we know. We end up knowing a lot about what we love.
And we love homesteading, in all it’s beautiful forms.
The twist with this book is that these pages hold BOTH of our combined experiences and the different ways we’ve settled into doing different homesteading skills. We’re obviously big believers in there being more than one way to do just about everything.
This vegetarian squash lasagna is comfort food and pantry cooking combined! Using large, thin slices of squash as noodles creates a hearty, satisfying lasagna without the carbs. Did you know that pasta has about SEVEN TIMES the carbs as squash! There’s also something that happens with the baked squash and cheese that makes it’s own sauce, so no need for extra cream here.
Fancy enough to impress guests but cozy for a small family meal – and it makes great leftovers. Hello “Meatless Monday”!
We use the old stand-by winter vegetables of butternut squash, potatoes, kale and red onion with a few tweaks. This recipe can also both work as vegan if you sub in some vegan cheese.
Squash
Using the top solid part of a butternut squash (or slices of Delicata, Autumn Frost or Kabocha) for this lasagna recipe will help it hold together better. You can use the bottom part that you scrape the seeds out of for the smaller chopped pieces for roasting, even adding to a warm winter salad.
You do have to start this process with a sharp knife, but the slicing effort pays off in the end.
My last harvest of curly kale, last week…
Kale
Another start ingredient in the recipe is kale. Yes, I’m obsessed; eating kale makes me feel good, so I’m not going to stop anytime soon- but my northern garden has stopped producing it now. While I still have one bag of the fresh stuff left, I have many bags (and pucks) of frozen kale just waiting for me. This recipe works well with either frozen or fresh kale. I like options… lots of kale options 😉
In the interest of keeping this recipe more local, you can try the hot house grown “Bushel Boys” during MN winters, Grown in Owatana- which is just around 19,000 miles closer than California, the largest producer of tomatoes in the US. I think the greenhouse grown versions are not great for eating raw but they are perfect for this recipe. Unless you have whole frozen or canned tomatoes waiting for you…
Let’s get cooking!
Winter Squash Lasagna Recipe
Ingredients:
1/2 butternut squash 1/2 medium Red Onion 1 small bunch kale 2 medium Yukon gold potatoes, 6-8 oz. provolone cheese 2 small tomatoes 1/2 C grated Parmesan *Optional – thin sliced ham or bacon EVOO, S&P
Directions
Heat oven to 425F
Get all the ingredients prepped: Peel and slice the butternut, (I like half circles) Slice potatoes into rounds Slice red onion into rounds, remove stems and shred or chop kale into bite size pieces
Slice provolone Slice tomatoes EVOO in bottom of pan and start layering:
Squash, then onion, then kale (optional meat) drizzle EVOO S&P Then Potatoes and half the provolone Then more kale, more EVOO S&P Then onion, tomatoes Top with rest of the squash and last of provolone
Bake for 30 minutes covered.
Drop temp to 400, and add parmesan to top. Bake uncovered for another 10-15 minutes until potatoes are cooked through.
This is a new favorites- Let me know what you think! I always love to hear when people substitute ingredients too!
Dig In to this cozy comfort food and let me know what you think! Michelle
Let cool for 10-15 minutes before serving.
Dig In to this cozy comfort food and let me know what you think! Michelle
Like anything you grow at home- ginger just tastes better than store bought. And with how much I love ginger’s bold and distinct flavor of course I grow it. Plus, growing an exotic, tropical plant up in zones 3 and 4 is pretty darn empowering.
Then there’s the fact that most ginger sold in the U.S. is imported from China, Brazil or Thailand…and has been grown without much regulation and then shipped thousands of miles. Add in that is a beautiful plant that smells amazing and you’ve got to try growing this at least once!
Ginger Botany
Zingiber Officinale roscoe Classified as an aromatic herb, the part of the ginger plant we most often eat is called a rhizome, the underground stem of a plant. But with homegrown ginger you can enjoy the stems as well- I chop the stems and enjoy them in tea!
Native to Southeast Asia this plant likes if hot and humid. So if you have a greenhouse you’re a step ahead, but dedicating your warmest space to this plant should get you a happy harvest too. Growing ginger is an 8-10 month project, so we try to get started at the end of January here in Minnesota zone 4. And yes, these plants will be LARGE before they head outside, so plan for space similar to a tomato and they may even have to stay inside longer.
Here’s A Ginger Growing Timeline
Jan 20-Feb 20- Start soaking your rhizomes
Jan 27- Feb 27 pot up into soil, in a tray to sprout
March 1-15 pot up again into deeper pots with ample space
June 1- 15 Once temps are 65+F outside, you can move to final growing space outdoors
I’m finally slowing down enough to take the time to get in that frame of mind where I can rewind and somewhat clearly peer back at 2022, the year in review.
Thankful for 2022
I distinctly remember being so very grateful for the late spring as I was frantically writing/editing/revising so many pages (so many times) along with Stephanie Thurow for our upcoming book, Small-Scale Homesteading.
I felt lucky that the maple sap held off until we got back from our March vacations. We brought home and raised a new brood of chicks into a healthy, happy (and spoiled) backyard flock. I took my local Master Gardener coursework and completed 50+ hours of volunteer hours. I helped grow vegetables and flowers at my son’s elementary school.
New Additions to the Homestead last Spring
We took time up north in Minnesota to walk through and wonder at creation. I taught classes on companion planting, composting, growing garlic, garden planning and preserving the harvest, wrote for magazines new and old. I got to manage our 6th annual Winter Farmers Markets. My family all got Influenza A at the same time and we nursed each other back to health with homegrown remedies. And I grew as much food as ever- including so many new favorites.
We celebrated life as we lived it. What a year both in and out of the garden!
Click HERE to watch some fly-over drone footage of the garden from this summer.
Are you ready to take your cocktail game to the next level? With a DIY cocktail infusion kit, you can create deliciously unique flavors at home, transforming your favorite spirits into personalized concoctions that will wow your friends and add a special touch to any gathering. Making your own infused spirits to add flair to your cocktails is simple and fun!
I love playing in the kitchen—being able to coax out intense or subtle flavors from high quality ingredients lets you taste the herbs and spices in new ways! Infusing spirits feels like magic to me…
And magic is always a good gift to give!
Remember to save a jar or two so you can gift yourself as well. 😉
I’ve gotten rave reviews from friends who’ve sipped the results of these infusions so far. They are simple to put together and fun to give—and better than the store-bought versions in so many ways (especially because you can pronounce all the ingredients!). Plus, they can shine bright in their presentation, or be as homey as you like!
For more holiday gift ideas visit my Gift Guide to give from the heart
Gather Ingredients for Your Cocktail Infusion Kit
Similar to mixing and matching herbs for teas from dried-up leaves, infusing imparts flavors (or healing properties like in calendula oil for making salve) without the heat. Letting herbs and spices impart their flavor at room temperature takes longer—but also brings with it subtler scents and layers of flavor.
I have just started seeing these kits in a few specialty shops and farmers markets and they are not cheap! But luckily, making them at home is quite inexpensive.
If making for yourself, you can use fresh ingredients (fresh orange or apple slices and cherries), but these make really fun gifts when fully dehydrated ingredients are added to the jars. Gifting dehydrated ingredients lets the person who receives the gift choose when they want to make the infusion themselves. You can gift with a bottle of spirits or without.
There are few crops as funky, dependable and well loved as garlic. For good reasons too! Garlic, and the other bulbs in the Allium family (like onions and shallots) add the base flavor to meals the world over. They’re easy to grow, easy to store and easy to cook with.
Humans have been cultivating garlic for over 7,000 years! In that time, we’ve selected variations in flavor, size, growth habits to come up with roughly 700 current varieties.
Welcome to summer at its best – Fresh Garden to Table Eating that celebrates so many of our favorite flavors of the season!
This is a great flexible recipe that can be changed to what you have on hand.
We eat this is as a chilled meal during high summer. While some might call it a salad, I see it as more of a base to add other things to; from leftover grilled chicken, some sourdough slathered with pesto… We’ve also added cooked and cooled cannellini beans to this for a protein boost. If you add beans, plan to add more dressing to keep the flavors balanced.
We’ve garnished with balsamic vinegar, pesto, fresh mozzarella, parmesan, olives, or whatever Italian flavors feel right that night. The main idea with this meal is to let the flavors from the garden shine. All the herbs in this recipe are easy to grow.
You can make this with regular pasta or use zucchini noodles (zoodles) or both if you have split family preferences like we do.
