In the Immortal Words of Larry The Cucumber ...

Poor Tomato. Isn't it Sad?

That's the grand total result of my vegetable gardening this year. Seriously. One tomato. One. Smaller than a golf ball. Still green.

Maybe next year I'll water them.

And, uh, not plant 10 to a tiny pot and never thin them.

You think?

So I totally forgot to take pix and blog about my late spring, early summer, mid summer, and late summer flowers. And I was terribly negligent about deadheading the blooms on all the plants that like that kind of stuff. Maybe because I was so busy caring for my tomato. Yeah.

But here's what's blooming in my garden today, at the very end of September.

Clematis still working to make flower buds:

A surprise Snap Dragon that I did not plant, appearing out of nowhere, and blooming, and then apparently planning to bloom some more:

My veronica is still trying hard to make a few blooms out at the ends of the spent bloom stalks. They're sparse, but still a beautiful color.

My hydrangea is dusted with pink:

And my sedum is the prettiest color it's ever been, a beautiful deep pink. I'm very pleased with it this year.

By Popular Demand ~ The Cornbread Recipe

I am pleased to share this recipe with you. (With much extra rambling!) Not only is it very good, but it's also fairly healthy! I got it from the Real Food Living's Real Food Digest, which I'm not sure exists anymore. It was an email loop thing, and later a yahoo group. About using whole/real foods. Whole grains. Natural sugars. Stuff like that.

ANYway, we've always liked this corn bread. Even The Grand Lunar, who likes sweet 'candy' Jiffy Mix cornbread most of all. ;-) Don't go looking for that type of Jiffy Mix**. I'm making up that title, sweet candy cornbread. Because it's so sweet. You know? But this whole food recipe is sweet enough.

Plus, it's great because, if you eat strict vegetarian (um, except for the honey) you can use flax seed to replace the egg and butter, and it's still good! Or you can make it with those things, and it's still good! Or you can mix and match your healthy choices, and it's still good!

Oh, so the recipe is written assuming you've got your grain mill and whole grains and are milling it fresh for the recipe. Which I did for awhile, until my grain mill choked on a popcorn seed and I found out that it's lifetime warranty doesn't help much if the company goes out of business. So now I (gasp!) buy store bought cornmeal and store bought flours and, meh, it's good enough for us, for now. I do want to say that the King Arthur brand "white whole wheat"* is pretty good, for store bought whole wheat. Yeah yeah, I know it's healthier to mill your own. Enough already, on with the recipe.

Ultimate Corn Bread

If you want to make it in a skillet:

1/2 C. honey
2 eggs **or** ~2 T. ground flax seed
1 tsp. salt
1 C. whole wheat flour (try freshly ground pastry wheat)
2 C. yellow cornmeal (try freshly ground popcorn seeds)
1 TBSP baking powder
1 TBSP butter, melted ** or ** ~4.5 T ground flax seed
1 1/2 C. milk or buttermilk or rice milk

Or if you love it and want to make MORE:

3/4 C. honey
3 eggs **or** ~3 T. ground flax seed
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 C. whole wheat flour (try freshly ground pastry wheat)
3 C. yellow cornmeal (try freshly ground popcorn)
1 1/2 TBSP baking powder
1 1/2 TBSP butter, melted ** or ** ~4.5 T ground flax seed
2 1/4 C. milk or buttermilk or rice milk

Beat eggs together then beat in honey, melted butter and milk. Sift flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt together. Stir into wet ingredients until well-mixed. Spread into oiled or buttered 10" or 12" skillet or the larger recipe in a 9 X 13 inch pan -- Bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes (maybe a little longer in the 9x13 pan). Serve hot, with extra honey to drizzle!

I cooked mine 25 minutes in my heavy skillet for this latest batch, and used eggs, rice milk, and ground flax instead of the butter.

You can make it with all purpose flour instead of whole wheat, but it's really good (and not 'whole wheaty' WITH the whole wheat, so why not go for one step healthier?)

*White whole wheat flour is whole wheat. It's made from white wheat instead of read wheat berries, so it's lighter in both color and flavor. Many of the nutrients are lost quickly after milling, but it's still a little healthier than all purpose flour. Store it in the freezer to keep it as fresh as you can.

**Did you know Jiffy Mix is from Michigan? I didn't. But now I do. And so do you!

Hey You Pone-headed Crackpot!

So my hillbilly and/or southern friends keep talking about eating "soup beans"

No, not bean soup.

Soup Beans.

When I asked for a recipe, I got a vague description. Which was, essentially, "Ya cook beans and add some salt. And eat it with a pone."

Well, I was both suspicious and intrigued. I pressed for more information and found that some people season them with more than salt. Ham seasoning. I hadn't heard of that, either. Sounded a little creepy, actually. And I found that pintos or great northern beans are the favored beans. Folks used to cook it with their ham bones. And that there's no recipes. Just 'what my grandma used to do' and the like.

So I went to WalMart and found me a bag of beans labeled "HamBeens". Seriously. They looked to be pinto beans, with a packet of artificially flavored ham seasoning. And, just to be true to the not-recipes, I bought some additional "Ham flavored soup base" and some actual ham. With bones. It was hard to find a small amount of ham-with-bone that wasn't sliced. But I did it.

Now you know me, I cook without recipes all the time. Which is to say, I read a lot of recipes and then kimodify them until they bear little semblance to any originals. But starting with NO recipe to make something I've never seen nor tasted? That was a little harder.

So I rinsed the beans last night, and then soaked them overnight. This morning I poured off the soaking water, rinsed them, and put them on to slow-cook, covering them with about 2 inches of water, in my crock pot. Sometime in the evening I added a little onion, some garlic, and some of that "ham seasoning". And later the actual ham, diced up. I tried hard not to season it all to death, as I am wont to do, because I wanted it to be as close to authentic Soup Beans as I could make.

And I made me a pone of corn. Turns out pone means a round or oval cake. It's just cornbread. But they gotta call it something funny to make Northerners feel weird, I guess. I cooked it in my heavy skillet, to be as authentic as I could.

The Grand Lunar and I had our soup beans over our corn bread. I used my usual corn bread recipe, of which I am very fond. The kids had their corn bread on the side. All in all, most of us liked dinner okay. Two small children didn't really want to eat it. Although Baby Buzz had several servings. And it was quite filling. I might make it again. But certainly not weekly. Unless it grows on us. We'll see.

Thursday Thirteen ~ My Parents!

Thursday Thirteen: In Honor of My Parents

1.) Today is my parents' 30th plus Thirteen anniversary. Forty-three years! So this Thursday Thirteen is about them.

2.) My parents are the reason Thirteen people are here in this world! Their three children and 10 grandchildren!

3.) My parents are a key part of my faith in God; Taking us to church when we were little resulted in my "asking Jesus into my heart" in the 4 year old Sunday School. I may not have understood it all at the time, but I believe that was the first step in many as God has called me His own and brought me closer to Him in this world.

4.) My parents have set a wonderful example of lifelong learning. They continue to take up new hobbies and become experts in small areas, somehow even retaining that knowledge in the early parenting years. From mushrooms to monarchs, paper folding to problem solving, they are living examples that you're never too old to learn new things, and that there's lots of neat things out there in the world.

5.) My parents, although they didn't homeschool us, are great models for us as homeschoolers! In addition to their own lifestyle of learning, my dad's story of going from a poor "bluejay" reader to an excellent well read man by finding books that he enjoyed, and of being a very (!) young boy carrying rocks to the local university geology department for identification, encourage me to try to control less, to let my children run with the things that interest them.

6.) My parents actively participate in our lives of learning, my mom regularly bringing arts and crafts and science into our home, not as formal lessons but as a fun part of life. And dad is always willing to explain how things work, from chemistry to grocery prices ;-).

7.) My parents are active in our lives, period. They come regularly to play with their grandchildren. They take us places. They cook us food. They let us hang out at their house. They are an integral part of our lives, and we are so thankful for that.

8.) They're just neat people. Living in the same town where I grew up, a lot of people know my parents. I can't tell you how often someone finds out who my parents are and says, "Your mom is a really neat lady!" (Sorry mom, I'm not trying to embarrass you. But it's true!) and "Oh I know your dad, he's a really interesting guy!" and stuff like that.

9.) My parents taught me about credit, and using it wisely. That it's okay to use it in lieu of cash, but not to rely on it as credit.

10.) My parents nurtured a love of creativity. When we were little my mom used to let us dictate stories that she would illustrate, or illustrate stories that she wrote, and other combinations of writing and drawing. Little stories about our lives, like The Girl Who Wanted Oatmeal For Breakfast Every Morning (that was my sister). I don't remember mom ever complaining about getting out arts and crafts things. And she still doesn't. Which amazes me, now that I see what a mess they can make in a short time.

11.) My parents taught me to cook. I don't remember many formal lessons (if any) but they showed us how to cook-on-the-fly with whatever was in the house, and not rely on recipes. We learned that a few recipes were worth learning and following, but for the most part a dash of this and a handful of that and trusting instinct, taste, and smell would go a long way towards a good meal.

12.) My parents are smart! Not only are they not afraid to use the computer, like some people their age, but they used to run a computer store, and mom used to be the primary technician. Dad gave me a love for Scrabble and mom didn't squelch it, even though she'd long since given up playing when Dad was around. Mom can fix anything with duct tape and glue. Except my gold shoes, but that's a different story. ;-)

13.) My parents have been a wonderful example of commitment. I remember having friends whose parents were divorced, or got divorced. I never worried about my parents getting divorced. They didn't lecture us about commitment, but they lived it, and are still living it today.

Happy Anniversary, Mom & Dad!!!!!