Crockpot Potato Cheese Soup

This is an easy, simple, and delicious soup to put in the crockpot on those cold wintery days! The whole house will smell so good all day and you'll come home to dinner waiting for ya! ;)

Prep Time: Less than 10 minutes Cook Time: 3-6 hours, unattended Serves: About 8-10

Ingredients

• 2-3 lbs. potatoes, scrubbed & cut into chunks
• 14 oz. broth
• 10 oz. water (or more broth. or beer.)
• 3 green onions, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 hot pepper, remove stem & leave whole
• kosher salt (to taste)
• black pepper
• Fresh rosemary, parsley, oregano, & dried basil (or your own favorite seasoning blend)
• 2 Tbsp. butter, melted
• 1/3 cup flour
• 3 cups milk
• 2+ cups cheese, shredded

Directions

1. Wash and cut potatoes (peel if you want, I leave the peel on). Use any type of potatoes that you like.
2. Add potatoes, chopped onions, garlic, hot pepper, and broth to crockpot. Add additional liquid (water, broth, beer) as needed to just cover the potatoes.
3. Add kosher salt, black pepper, and herbs. 
4. Cover and cook on low for 5 hours (or high for 3).
5. When crockpot has 30 minutes or less: Melt butter, add flour to butter, whisk until blended. Add milk. Mix.
6. Add milk & flour mixture to crockpot. Stir well.
7. Add cheese, blend well.
8. Allow to cook on low another 30 minutes.
9. Top with extra cheese, scallions, sour cream, crumbled bacon, or your favorite toppings and serve with homemade rolls, bread, or crackers. 

I Love My Western Sky: Sunset

From my backyard on the eve before the first snow fall of the winter (and year), January 27, 2014...

Make time at least once this week to watch the miracle of the rising or setting sun. 

This Week at Ramsey Farms

Happenings 'Round Here...

• Cold frame installed & seeds planted! It can easily reach 70 degrees inside the cold frame when it's sunny and outside temps are in the 40s. You can see the pics by clicking here.
• Tossed out my broccoli sprouts - they smelled bad! Ewww! I will try it again with the seeds made just for this purpose.
• Harvested some more kohlrabi.
• The cantaloupe and watermelon seeds (inside germination trays) have multiple sprouts along with my sweet basil seeds. Finally the red pepper seeds sprouted - took them 14 days. I made a seed testing tray to see if my seed inventory I've had in my freezer and fridge since 2008 and 2009 is viable! LOL Laugh all  ya want but those watermelon seeds that are now 3" tall seedlings are from the 08 stash.
• Another cold snap - my sweet daughter helped me to cover the remaining broccoli, kohlrabi, cabbage, kale, garlic, herbs, and the cold frame with the snazzy retro sheets! Left the sheets on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as the temps barely rose about freezing (if at all) each day. I did remove the sheet from the cold frame's plastic top about noon so that more of the bright sunshine could get through the opaque plastic and further warm the soil and air for those seeds but Friday our temps never reached 32 so I just left it on for insulation. Saturday it finally got warm enough to uncover all but my tender broccoli.
• Made croutons for our kohlrabi leaf salad! So easy...take a loaf or slices of "day old" bread. If it's not dry enough,slice it, and bake it on 200 for 10 minutes to dry it out. So butter each slice of bread then cut into cubes, spread out on a baking sheet, sprinkle with powdered garlic, onion, or whatever dried herb blend you wish. I used rosemary, basil, garlic, onion, cumin, and black pepper. And bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 10-15 minutes. (Watch them! Burned croutons aren't good.)
• Conducted a new seed swap with someone on the American Seed Project page! They are sending me lavender and heirloom pumpkin seeds. I sent lemon thyme, lettuce, and green bell pepper seeds.
• Easy Pumpkin Muffins: Mix 1 box cake mix (flavor of your choice) and 1 can pumpkin. Fill muffin pans. Bake following time & temperature directions on cake mix box. Cool. EAT! These are great for dessert, snack, breakfast on the go, or even brunch! :) Kids loved them!
• It's cold so Chris has been out there splitting and chopping and stacking wood...thank you! :) We love a good cozy fire in the fireplace on these 20 degree (and lower) nights!

It was fairly busy 'round here this week. If you missed any of the posts this week, here is the list of new posts below - be sure to check 'em out! 

• Make Ahead Refrigerator Dough - Easy dough to whip up & use for meals for up to 2 weeks!
• DIY All Natural Laundry Detergent - Simple, inexpensive, no harmful chemicals or fragrances!
• Rosemary Hair Rinse & Body Wash - Easy hair rinse will make your hair so soft & voluminous!
• See the pics of our newly installed Cold Frame - the first outdoor seeding of 2014!
• Compost - Pics of the ever exciting compost bins, worm bin, and the end product: Gastony Gold, fertilizer of champions! ;)
• 40 Minute Hamburger Buns - Quick, easy, & fresh homemade sandwich rolls in under 1 hour!

I hope this past week has been fun & exciting for you too! Tell me about your week - what's happening in your world?  Y'all drop on by "the farm" this week for lively conversation or just to sit a spell & relax or enjoy a cup of coffee or some fresh-from-the-oven bread with me while we daydream about warmer spring days to come...whatever you do, make it the best week it can be! :)

Easy 40-Minute Homemade Hamburger Buns

One reason many people don't bake bread at home these days is time. Simply put, as a culture, we are just too busy. Well here is an easy and relatively fast recipe to bake delicious, fresh, homemade hamburger buns (hotdog buns, sandwich rolls, etc) in just 40 minutes!

All that remained following our hamburger dinner! (See the bits of green onion?!) :)

For whatever magical bread reason I don't understand, this dough doesn't have to rise! But the rolls turn out fluffy, light, & delish! I added a couple tablespoons of finely chopped scallions to my dough just when I turned it out to knead so there are fresh bits of green onion mixed all into the buns! YUMMMMMMMY!

2 tablespoons active dry yeast
1 cup warm water, plus
2 tablespoons warm water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
3 -3 1/2 cups flour

Directions

1. In a mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water.
2. Add oil and sugar and let stand for 5 minutes.
3. Add the egg, salt and enough flour to form a soft dough.
4. Turn onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 3 to 5 minutes.
5. Do not let rise.
6. Divide into 12 pieces and shape each into a ball.
7. Place 3" apart on greased baking sheets.
8. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes.
9. Bake at 425° for 8 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.
10. Remove from pans to wire rack to cool.

I got this recipe at Food.com, where I find most of my recipes because I love their search filter options. You can click HERE for the direct link to this recipe. (I do not receive ANY endorsements or credit or anything from food.com, I just like their site.) Post a comment below if you make this bread - what do ya think?!

Compost

Why compost? 

Create the best, free nutrition for your garden! Recycle! Good for the environment by not using chemical fertilizers. Reduce waste in our landfills. I like the fact, too, that the plant life goes back into the earth to nourish more plant life. Ahhh....life! It's a wonderful cycle.

What goes in? 

Egg shells, banana peels, apple cores (until I learned I can make my own apple cider vinegar with them!), onion paper, vegetable scraps, fruit peels, tea bags, coffee grounds & filter, hair, paper towels, yarn & fabric scraps, dryer lint, dead leaves, grass clippings, and more. Here is a great link with a long list of items you can compost and what those particular items added to your compost!

What comes out? 

What we get from our compost is rich, organic fertilizer full of nitrogen & other nutrients for the soil to raise healthier veggies, fruits, herbs, flowers, bushes, trees, and houseplants.

"Gaston Gold" pure compost

Compost fully lining the new cold frame on top of a healthy mixture of soil & more compost

And don't forget the worms! The new worm bin will increase our compost production with high-test vermicompost

Grow Healthy ~ Eat Healthy ~ Know Your Food

The Cold Frame! UPDATED

Scroll to bottom of post to see most recent pics!

The cold frame is 4'x4'

Installed: January 19, 2014. Late this morning it was 40 degrees outside but the thermometer inside the cold frame with the lid closed was over 60.  By the time the outside temps reached the low 50s, it was 70-75 degrees inside the cold frame!

Compost added

Planted 1/20/14: (Top down) Celery, lettuce mix, mesclun mix, 4 rows of carrots & radishes, 2 rows green onions

 

70 degrees inside cold frame ~ outside temp 46

Jan. 28, 2014: Snow! Left snow on cover to insulate against cold temps

Jan. 31, 2014: Radishes are sprouting!! (11 days since planting) See near center of photo.

Feb. 2, 2014: Radishes and Mesclun Mix Sprouts

2.6.14 Can you see the "rain" falling from the inside of the lid?

2.6.14 Lots of radishes, mesclun, 7 onion sprouts, 1 lettuce, maybe celery popping up!

2.8.14

2.9.14

Green onion sprouts! Feb. 9, 2014

Radish sprouts Feb. 9, 2014

2/12/14: About 2.5" of snow on the cold frame (I brushed it off after pic)

2/13

Happy Valentine's Day 2/14 to all the little green sprouts! :) Now the carrots have sprouted up alongside the radishes!

2/15: Preemie Radish Sprout I picked today. I washed it then ate the whole thing. OMG it was so good!!!

2/15

2/15

2/16: Reseeded celery for succession planting/harvest

2/16: Radishes getting bigger leaves!

2/18/14: Sunny and high of 67 degrees ~ Onions & radishes getting tall!

2/22: radishes (carrots are the tall thin leaves)

2/22: mesclun mix

top - radishes, lower - onions

March 2, 2014

March 9, 2014 (I trimmed the stems of the onions and used as scallions!)

Radish Harvest Started on March 12

March 13: Mesclun mix and radish salad! Homemade creamy ranch dressing made with herbs from the garden!

Happy Spring! March 20, 2014

March 27, 2014 (All radishes harvested & reseeded)

March 30, 2014 (You can tell we've been eating salads!)

April 6 - Things grow and change rapidly here!

April 13 - Wow everything got so big the past 7 days!

May 4, 2014 - Look how big the carrots have gotten! Yum, the few we've already eaten have been delicious!

May 11, 2014 - The salads are delectable!

Onion bulbs getting big! May 23, 2014

May 23, 2014

July 11, 2014: Picked clean but for the one celery plant and several radish plants gone to seed!

And...I think that's it for this year's cold frame! Stay tuned to the website for future garden plans that are highly likely to be at our new farm in Georgia...Ramsey 7.17.14