Salsa, Homegrown, Organic, recipe for kids, by kids.

Cale and Quinn’s easy salsa recipe

1  Take skin off 4 to 5 pounds ((2 kg) of large ripe tomatoes. If you put the tomatoes in boiling water for a few seconds and then carefully drop them into cold water the skins come off easily.

2  Take the cores out of the tomatoes and chop them up.

3  Chop up one large cooking onion.

4  Take the seeds out and chop up one green and one red pepper.


5  Chop up two, three or four hot peppers, depending on how hot you’d like the salsa to be.

6  Mince two or three cloves of garlic.

7  Put all these ingredients in a large pot.

8  Add:  
  • a small can of tomato paste,
  • 1 tablespoon salt,
  • 3/4 cup white vinegar,
  • 2 teaspoons paprika, and
  • 1/4 cup sugar

9  Bring everything to a boil and simmer for one hour or until it has reached the thickness you like. Stir from time to time. This makes a large batch of salsa that can be used as is or preserved in jars.



From Kids Who Grow Their Own Food, facts, notes and helpful hints.

521.

to check out this new book by award-winning author Ann Alma go to 
http://www.annalma.ca/books/KWGOF.html

pyrahi recipe: easy squash/pumpkin pyrahi.

PYRAHI RECIPE

Squash/pumpkin pyrahi kids can make.

The filling is best made the night before.

Wash hands.  Set the oven at 390°F

1. Cut medium-sized squash in half.  (Pumpkin can be used too, but it is runnier and therefore more difficult to make the first time.)

Scoop seeds out. Cover squash with tinfoil and bake for about 40 to 50 minutes or until done. ( the baking time depends on the size of the squash). When baking is done, remove squash from oven and let cool.

2.  Scoop the squash out of the rind and add 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons honey.

3.  Mash the squash until it's fine and put it in the fridge overnight.  (or at least for several hours.)

To make the pyrahi.

1.  Wash hands.  Set the oven for 400.

2.  Mix in a bowl 2 eggs and 1 1/4 cups (310 ml.) sour cream.

3.  In another bowl mix:

     2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

     1 tablespoon baking powder

     1/2 teaspoon baking soda

      1 teaspoon salt

4.  Grate 1/2 cup cold butter using a grater.  

5.  Mix the butter into the flour.  Rub the butter and flour mixture between your hands until the butter is totally mixed in and it's a fine, crumble mixture.  

6.  Add the sour cream and egg to the flour and mix into a ball.

7.  Spread 1/4 cup of flour on the counter and put the ball of dough on this.  Roll and knead the ball around in the flour until all the flour has been absorbed and the ball holds together.

8  Divide the dough in half.  Roll one half of the dough into a log about 12 inches (30 cm.) long.

9  Cut the log in half (6 inches/15 cm.) and then cut each half in half again.  Cut each piece in three so you end up with twelve equal pieces.  Do the same with the other half of the dough.  You will end up with twenty-four pieces altogether.

10.  Roll each piece into a little ball and roll it in some flour.  With a rolling pin flatten each ball into a round pancake.

11.  Put a spoonful of squash mixture on the first pancake.  Dip your fingers in flour (so they are not sticky) and take the top end of the pancake between your two thumbs and index fingers.  Pull the top of the pancake over the squash and pinch down firmly into a pleat.

12.  Take the next top section of the pancake and pinch it together.  Slowly close the pancake around the filling in about six or seven pleats.  Make sure you do not pinch so hard that the squash moves off the pancake, but hard enough that the pancake stays closed around the filling, with a bit of the squash peeping out.  For the last pinch close the pancake around the last of the squash.  You will end up with a dough pocket (pyrahi) enclosing the filling.

13.  Repeat numbers 11 and 12 for all twenty-four pyrahi.

14.  Put the pyrahi on cookie sheets and bake for fifteen to twenty minutes or until lightly browned.

15.  Eat with melted butter and a dollop of sour cream or yoghurt.  

From the book KIDS WHO GROW THEIR OWN FOOD, facts, notes and helpful hints. http://www.annalma.ca/books/KWGOF.html

Roasted pumpkin seeds 
&
 Happy pumpkin carving.

Benn, from the book Kids Who Grow Their Own Food, facts, notes and helpful hints, grew his own pumpkins for Halloween.  He made a Jack-o-lantern, and roasted the seeds.  The recipe is below.  Have a great and safe Halloween everyone. 

From Kids Who GROW Their Own FOOD.

  What to do when you have too many vegetables in the fall?  How to store them without a cold storage?  

  I dig a hole, about 60 cm. (2 feet) x 60 cm. x 45 cm. deep.  I dump a layer of potatoes, a layer of beets, a layer of carrots and a layer of parsnips into the hole.  I cover the hole with the soil I dug out, put a board on top and heap up straw left from mulching.  Now the vegetables are stored for winter.  
  Where I live it's too difficult to dig up a few carrots during the winter because we have lots of snow.  So I put a tall stake by the hole so I can find it during the winter.    

Here you see the hole when I am still filling it.


The smaller beet tops are great for eating in your favorite vegetable dish.

This is what grew in my garden shed this summer.  Friends said I should get rid of it, but wasps are good for pollinating and they help with insect control.  This is the nest of a paper wasp.  
It started as a tiny nest but ended up to be about 35 cm. from top to bottom.  Now the wasps have gone, since we already had a frost here.  Wasps live only for a year, except the queen.  She will build a new nest next year.  
For more about paper wasps, the magazines  Gardens West, Gardens Central and Gardens East have a great article on it.  Go to  http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=c72643729204be7292d82041a&id=c93476f3d2&e=%5BUNIQID%5D 

canning plums

The bear stayed away from my fruit trees this year so I got boxes full of tree-ripened, juicy plums.  I canned them without any extra water or sugar.  I simply washed the plums, took out the pits, crammed as many as I could, skins and all, into jars, leaving an inch of space at the top, and processed them.
This winter when the snow flies they will be great just as they are, or in a pie or fruit crumble.  Yummmmm!!!
Benn, from the book KIDS WHO GROW THEIR OWN FOOD, facts, notes and helpful hints, made plum jam with his extra plums.  A great idea as well.  
Have you ever canned fruit?  Try it some time.  It's quite simple.  Just Google canning fruits.    

Fall is on its way and heavy sunflower heads are ready for picking.  Earlier on in the growing season bees pollinated the flowers so the seeds could grow. 

Cale and Quinn's sunflowers are so huge, they cut them up with an axe and a saw.  They dry the flower heads and eat the seeds.  The small heads go to the birds in the the winter.  They save some of the seeds to plant next spring. 

   Roasted sunflower seeds.  
Spread hulled, raw sunflower seeds on an oiled cookie sheet.  Sprinkle with salt and cumin.  Roast in preheated oven at 325 for 5 minutes.  Turn seeds.  Roast for another 5 minutes.  Eat warm.