While walking into the office yesterday, I noticed that one of the planters out front had been decoratively planted with swiss chard. I was surprised to see a whole lot of veggie goodness being used as decoration.
Shell Plaza and Tranquility Park has veggies growing in containers. But I wonder what they are going to do with the swiss chard when it gets too big?
My mom always used to make stuffed celery for the holiday dinners when we were kids. She would buy the little jars of flavored Kraft cheese spread and spend a good couple of hours stuffing pimento cheese as well as pineapple neufchatel cheese into the celery. With 4 kids at home, it was a quick and easy option.
This year I decided to make my own version of stuffed celery. I bought some Pimento Cheese Spread made by Janice Schindler at the City Hall Market (Janice is usually at the the City Hall, Rice University, and Eastside Markets). For the other spread, I took a can of crushed pineapple, drained off the juice and mixed the pineapple into a container of Swede Farm Dairy Simply Texan Plain Chevre.
I liked how the chevre recipe turned out. Next time I will use pineapple tidbits and chop them roughly so I get slightly larger pieces of pineapple in the cheese.
I’ve started making my stuffing base.
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
2 cups celery, chopped
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup of bell pepper (I used a mix of green and red bell peppers from my garden)
3/4 cup mushrooms, roughly chopped.
Pepper to taste
1.5 lbs of breakfast sausage from Revival Market, casing removed
.5 head of roasted garlic.
1 tsp Tarragon
1 tsp rubbed sage.
In a skillet, put the olive oil and butter and wait until the butter is melted. Add celery, onion and mushrooms to the skillet. Sweat the mix until semi-soft. While the celery, onion and mushroom mix is sweating, cut the casings off the breakfast sausage links (if you haven’t already) and crumble into the skillet. Cook through until veggie mix is soft and sausage is cooked through. Add spices. You’ll have a mixture similar to the one below.
Note: I didn’t add any additional salt. Between the sausage and celery, none is needed.
Note: I’ve also used Harrison Farms Pan Sausage for this recipe.
This morning’s breakfast was quick and easy because I was dawdling a bit. A whole wheat english muffin topped with some of the strawberry preserves I make this summer and some Ste. Maure Cheese from Pure Luck Farm and Diary (available through the Houston Dairymaids).
I love snacks like this. Take 1 apple and slice in chunks. Take 2-3 tbsps of cajeta and put into a small dish of some sort – I used a small jelly jar. Enjoy.
Regular Cajeta from Blue Heron Farm. They also make a bourbon flavored Cajeta as well.
I have a confession. With everything going on at work, I’ve been substituting fast food for local food. I’ve made it my goal for this month to eat out of my pantry and to eat locally. Today I was hungry because I didn’t stop for a snack at one of the numerous places to get junk food at. I’ll have to get better about making sure I have enough snacks packed with me.
The interesting part of this self-challenge will happen later this month when R. and I travel back to Iowa. We’ve already discussed cooking a roast or something before we go on the road because neither of us like the idea of eating in the chain restuarants while on the road. When we travelled to Iowa a year ago in August, we ate lunchmeat sandwichs all the way up along with cut fruit and veggies.
Janice selling some of her fabulous Pimiento Cheese Spread
This morning’s breakfast was a couple containers of yogurt that I had in the fridge. Part of my lunch was salad left over from dinner last night and Black Bean Tamales from the City Hall Farmer’s Market. Tonight’s dinner was BBQ hamburger with leftover bread from last night.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do for tomorrow, but I’ll figure it out. I’ve got oatmeal in the pantry, some dates, and some cream. I think I’ll slice a couple pieces of bread for lunch tomorrow. I got a tub of Pimento Cheese Spread from Janice Schindeler of Words and Food at the market today and if I pair that with a salad, I’ll be in great shape for lunch tomorrow. I’ll post my progress on this little self adventure.
BTW, Janice’s Pimento Cheese spread is really the best stuff around and it’s totally addictive.
Synchroncity worked at her very best this morning when I was checking in with Facebook. One of the ads that popped up was for Texas Art Asylum, the first art store in Houston that features recycles, gently used, and reclaimed materials. Since I’ve been working my way through The Artist’s Way (you can see the details on my personal blog), and I needed an Artist date that would beat the heat, I decided to stop by and check it out.
Owner Ramona Brady founded Texas Art Asylum after leaving a security monitoring company. Ramona hadn’t decided what she wanted to do after leaving the security company and decided to do some creative projects of her own. While searching for supplies for her projects, Ramon found a online site for a similar shop in another city. She liked the idea and when she found Houston didn’t have such a shop, she decided to research what it would take to open one (you can read about her journey here). An idea was born and in May a dream came true. Ramona’s former co-worker, Jennifer McCormick, joined her and now works with her.
The description on the web site that Texas Art Asylum is part craft store, part thrift store, part antique store, and part salvage store is right on the mark. Inventory in the store is from individuals and businesses across the Houston Metroplex. I saw dolls, appliances, law books, sewing supplies, embroidery supplies, dice, jewelry, and lots of other items available for sale. Some things are 5 cents, many things are $1-$5, and there are some more expensive items as well. Check out the pictures below to see just a few of the items they have.
Texas Art Asylum is located at 1203 Houston St. Houston, TX 77007.
While everyone knows that they should recycle, it’s not always easy to figure out where to take the stuff that you’ve recycled. For example, I can recycle plastic, paper and aluminum at the bins down the street, but what about the tin cans?? And the glass? What recycling center on the south side of Houston takes those items? To get the skinny on which centers take what, I head over to www.recycleinfo.org – the web site for recycling information in the Houston – Galveston Region.
Sponsored by the Houston-Galveston Area Council and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Recycleinfo.org, has the following information
There’s two PDFs on the site. The Houston-Galveston Recycling Guide gives quick tips for various types recycling as well as general information about the impact of recycling. The Recycle Center Guide PDF lists the various recycling facilities in all 13 counties, location and contact information for each center and what each location takes. There’s also a search function on the web site that is powered by earth911.org that lets you find recycling facilities close to you based on what you’re recycling.
Oh and if you’re on the southside of Houston, you can take your cans and glass to the Recycling Center at Ellington field.
Well after 3 weeks of no gardening (1 weekend due to snow, and two weekends due to being sick) I finally got back into the garden to do some cleaning up. This is what I started with.
A bunch of bolted lettuce (the tall stuff on the left side of the picture), a lot of dead bean vines, dead squash vines, and dead tomato vines.
The first stop was cleaning up the purple hull cowpeas (think black-eyed peas if you are wondering what these are). That didn’t take long but the ground turned out to be a little soggier than expected. At one point the mud sucked my shoe right off my foot. Next up were the green, burgundy and wax beans. I got every thing cleaned out and was inspecting my work when I found this guy:
Not sure what kind of snake he is, but he’s not a very happy snake at this point. After this, I cleaned off the fence where I had my pole beans.
Then it was off to clean out the bolted lettuce. Bolted lettuce can be kind of pretty.
Both the Red Romaine and bright green oakleaf lettuces have bolted.
The best part of the day happened when I went to get the glove hanging on the fence post so I wouldn’t get a blister while I was moving the dead stuff over to the compost bin. A green anole (they can change like chameleons which is why he’s brown) came out of glove to visit with me.
When I tried to stick Mr. Lizard on a tree so I could go back to work he ended up checking out my hand and arm.
I think he needed a bit of a nap, but I wanted to go back to work.
I finished up with pulling the tomato vines.
The only thing I did after pulling the tomato vines was some weeding and breaking up the dirt. Hopefully by Christmas Eve Day it will dry out and I can start planting again!