Squash Soup

 Our snow melted here yesterday but woke up to a cold 28 degree morning and another 1.5 inches of fresh snow and a little ice. This winter has been a snowy one for us. 

 I received an email recently from a young cook asking questions about how to use her canned, dried and frozen food preserves. So I decided I wanted to do a couple posts about cooking with home preserved foods. People ask me all the time what do I preserve. The answer is what grows well in my area, what preserves the easiest and best and what I have developed recipes for over the years that I know my family will eat. These are not fancy recipes but rather just old fashioned stick to your ribs cooking on a budget. 

In a time of rising  food prices and increasing shortages it seemed an appropriate subject to cover. I started to name the next couple of posts recipes cooking by the seat of your pants. Maybe guerilla cooking!

Anyway I thought I would post recipes for a bit showing how I use my preserved foods from my gardens and how I keep a stocked pantry and freezer. 

I am going to start with a recipe for squash soup. In the picture above are 3 vacuum seal bags. Two are yellow squash from my garden sliced and cooked until done then partially mashed but still with a few squash chunks. Once mashed I put them in square rubbermaid containers and freeze. Once frozen I remove them from the container and slip inside a vacuum seal bag and seal. They are then stored frozen in my freezer. They stack well this way.  I have several recipes that I have developed over the years that I use this in. One is squash soup. The other bag is a bag of frozen chicken broth and a quart of canned chicken broth could be substituted. 

I add them to a pan on the lowest heat and slowly let them melt and simmer a bit. 

Then I run my immersion blender though it for just a swipe or two to puree it. 

Since this is a cream soup my next additions will be dairy. Remember you do not want to boil dairy but just a soft simmer is best. I did throw in a Tablespoon of chicken base for a deeper flavor and a small cup of diced ham that I had in the door of the freezer chopped up well.

Next I added a cup of water to a quart jar and 5 Tablespoons powdered milk. To this mixture I added 4 Tablespoons All Purpose flour. Put the lid on and shake well.  I want to make the point here that if you have it half and half or whipping cream could be added instead. However I keep powdered milk, evaporated canned milk and shelf stable milk on hand almost always. I added my milk and flour slurry to the hot squash mixture and stirred while adding and continuing to simmer and stir until thickened.

I threw in a hand full, maybe a cup, of sharp cheddar. I also threw in a small chunk of pepper jack that I found in the bottom drawer of the fridge. It gave it a nice little bite. 

And there you go! My cream of squash soup with ham and cheese added for a little something extra. Thick and rich with a little cheesy goodness. The perfect warm and rich soup for a nice bowl on a snowy winter afternoon. We will have this for lunch and any leftovers for supper with some ham and cheese sandwiches. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

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Supper

Ten bean and sausage soup. Just a mixture of 3 cups of 10 dried beans washed. Then water, onions, garlic lemon juice, half pound sliced sausage, salt, pepper, and chili powder and let simmer on the back of the stove all afternoon. 

And skillet AuGratin Potatoes made with those Hickery Holler homegrown dehydrated potatoes.

Add a small pan of hot rolls and you have a meal : )

Hope everyone has a great meal and see you Monday morning!

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Cooking from Scratch

The bitter cold has returned to the holler. Those days where the morning chores are done in a hurry. The animals provided with lots of feed, hay, clean bedding, and water that is not frozen and the farmers head quickly back to the warmth of the house. Most of the day is spent helping Baby O with school work and working on inside chores. Many of these chores have been saved for just such a day. 

On these brutally cold winter days nothing is better than a big pot of soup bubbling in the crock pot.   I get quite a few emails anymore connected to this blog. And one that recurs frequently is the question about how to cook with what you have canned and preserved all year. I want to post recipes in the upcoming weeks that focus on cooking from scratch with canned, frozen, dehydrated and smoked foods fresh from the farm. In a world where recipes consist of canned soups and boxed mixes this might be of help to some of you just starting out.  

Yesterday I wanted to make a soup but I wanted something different that we had not had lately. After rooting in the freezer I found some chunked ham that caught my eye and immediately thought of a ham and corn chowder. So I took out two small bags of frozen smoked ham chunks as  the starter to my soup and started building from there. 

Next stop was the pantry. There I snagged some canned potatoes, canned corn, dehydrated onions and green onions and we had soup ingredients.

I have to say for those of you who have never tried it the dehydrated sweet onions that we made last year are wonderful. Not at all strong like the dehydrated onion flakes in the stores. These sweet onion flakes taste almost like candied onions with the sugars concentrated from the dehydration process. Most of my soups start out with a hand full of these anymore. So in my pot goes a scant hand full of dehydrated sweet onions. 

Added to the crockpot were 2 quarts of those canned potatoes from last year with the juice.

And one quart of that canned Kandy variety corn that I grow every year went in with those potatoes. With the juice also. 

Next went about half a hand full of those dehydrated green onions. These too take on an almost sweet taste when dehydrated and are great in soups and casseroles.  Then I added some garlic powder, dehydrated celery, and parsley to the pot. Now throw those defrosted bags of chunked ham in the pot with all those veggies. Add some salt and pepper to taste. Remember not too much as you can always come back and tweek that later. Now I threw in about half a stick or 1/4 cup sweet cow butter and topped the pot off with some canned chicken broth to make sure there was enough liquid to cover everything. Then I turned my crockpot on High and let it cook for about 4 hours or until the soup is bubbling around the edges. 

Once your soup is simmering hard in that crockpot then I add 1/2 cup flour mixed with 1 cup heavy cream and add slowly to my crockpot while still simmering hard. Stir well and return lid. If your soup was simmering good then the soup should thicken once it cooks for about 15 minutes or so. And there you have it a wonderful thick milk based chowder bursting with chunks of potatoes and sweet corn. A hot meal served all day with green salads dressed with pickled beets, boiled farm eggs, homemade croutons and green peas from the freezer. 

Once you learn how to use your home preserved foods they can be just as convenient as those packaged mixes without all the chemical and preservative additives. A healthier meal can be put on the table for a much smaller cost. It's like everything else it just takes some practice. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter 

Shrimp Chowder

Cajun Gumbo

Having grown up in Southern Louisiana it didn't take me long to realize that it is different than growing up in any other part of the United States. Much of what one thinks of when they hear of Louisiana comes from the southern part of the state. New Orleans, Cajuns, sugarcane fields, swamps and bayous.  I grew up eating gumbo all my life . Gumbo is an African word for okra an ingredient found in most gumbos. Like most Louisiana recipes it starts with a roux. Which is a mixture of fat and flour browned in a heavy bottomed pot until brown and then adding vegetables, stock and a mixture of meats. Today I am making a sausage and shrimp gumbo.

I start out with a large iron pot. I use a magnalite pot or large cast iron pot depending on the size of my gumbo. I love my magnalite and have had them for over 30 years. First I add half a cup oil to my pot and then 3/4 cup of all purpose flour and stir over low to medium heat. This will take from 1/2 hour to 45 minutes stirring almost constantly. This is called making a ROUX ( PRONOUNCED REW).  Most french soups, gravies and sauces start with a roux. 

Cook and continue stirring until it turns the color of a copper penny. It is hard to tell the color by this picture because of the light above the stove. Do not burn if you think it is burned throw it out. Start over. 

Add 1 onion chopped, 1/4 cup green peppers, 1/4 cup celery, and 2 Tblsp minced garlic. Saute until onion is clear. 

Add 4 cups chicken stock or seafood stock. Below are frozen blocks of chicken stock that I make homemade and freeze in 2 cup plastic bowls and then put in bags to freeze. Each block is 2 cups. Easy to pop in microwave and melt to throw in pot.

I also added a quart of home canned stewed tomatoes and okra, and 1/2 pound of sliced smoked sausage. If you can find a Louisiana sausage called andouille it is wonderful for this.  1 bay leaf and a drop of liquid seafood boil, a drop or two of hot sauce

and a tsp. of Tony Chacheres cajun seasoning.

Simmer on low for about 3 hours or longer. Stirring occasionally.

Remove Bay leaf and add peeled and deveined shrimp. Cook for about 15 minutes or until shrimp turn pinkishin color. Do not over cook or you will make shrimp tough.

Start a pot of white rice to go with it.

Serve warm over a bowl of fluffy white rice with crusty french bread.

A  votre sante

(To your good health)

Blessings from the Holler

The Canned Quilter