DIYS Gardening: Tomato Pie
Once again if you don't eat the tomatoes you'll wake up with them under your bed. There the tomatoes will try to turn you into pod people and make you worship the Green Man.

So it's tomato pie to save your life.

This recipes come from Simplyrecipes.com:

Tomato Pie

Ingredients

* 1 9-inch pie shell (or you could make a pie crust, but that adds on more time)
* 1/2 yellow or red onion, chopped
* 3-4 tomatoes, cut in half horizontally, squeezed to remove excess juice, roughly chopped, to yield approximately 3 cups chopped tomatoes
* 1/4 cup sliced basil (about 8 leaves)*
* 2 cups grated cheese (combination of sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack, or Gruyere or Mozarella)
* 3/4 cup mayonnaise
* 1 teaspoon (or more to taste) of Frank's Hot Sauce (or Tabasco)
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper

*To slice basil, chiffonade them by stacking the leaves on top of each other, roll them up like a cigar, starting at one end slice the "cigar" crosswise in thin slices.
Method

1 Preheat oven to 350°F. Place pie shell in oven and cook for 8-10 minutes or longer until lightly golden. If you are starting with a frozen crust, you'll need to cook it a little longer. If you are using a homemade crust, freeze the crust first, then line the crust with aluminum foil and pre-bake it for 20 minutes, then remove the foil and bake an additional 10 minutes.

2 Squeeze as much moisture as you can out of the chopped tomatoes, using either paper towels, a clean dish towel, or a potato ricer.

3 Sprinkle the bottom of the pre-cooked pie shell with chopped onion. Spread the chopped tomatoes over the onions. Sprinkle the sliced basil over the tomatoes.

4 In a medium bowl, mix together the grated cheese, mayonnaise, Tabasco, a sprinkling of salt and freshly ground black pepper. The mixture should be the consistency of a gooey snow ball. Spread the cheese mixture over the tomatoes.

5 Place in oven and bake until browned and bubbly, anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes.

Serves 6.

Some Suggestions

1. Cut the amount of cheese in half.

2. You can caramelize the onions before placing them into the pie shell.

If you want to make the Technomage heart attack version of this pie try this:

1. Add 1 pound of cooked bacon, crumbled to form a layer between the tomatoes and cheese.

2. Instead of mayonnaise add some more milk and an egg to the cheese mixture. This will make the pie more quiche like. I haven't try this yet, but it is next on the list of the things to try.

DIYS Gardening: Tomato Sauce
Last year I had more tomatoes than I knew what to do with. One of the reasons? I was unwilling to peel my tomato. It seems a little to much work. Then I found this wonderful YouTube video on blanching and peeling tomatoes. This video change my cooking life and let me try a different tomato sauce from the one I posted last year.




This sauce is pretty good. It just takes hours to cook. Start this one after lunch. The sauce is a little sweet, but that could be due to the Big Girl tomatoes from my garden. Try cutting the sweetness with more wine, wine vinegar, or salt. Try adding small amounts while cooking and tasting the results.

Homemade Tomato Sauce I

Ready In: 4 Hours 30 Minutes

Servings: 6

Ingredients:
10 ripe tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
1/4 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/4 cup Burgundy wine
1 bay leaf
2 stalks celery
2 tablespoons tomato paste

Directions:

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Have ready a large bowl of iced water. Plunge whole tomatoes in boiling water until skin starts to peel, 1 minute. Remove with slotted spoon and place in ice bath. Let rest until cool enough to handle, then remove peel and squeeze out seeds. Chop 8 tomatoes and puree in blender or food processor. Chop remaining two tomatoes and set aside.

2. In a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat, cook onion, bell pepper, carrot and garlic in oil and butter until onion starts to soften, 5 minutes. Pour in pureed tomatoes. Stir in chopped tomato, basil, Italian seasoning and wine. Place bay leaf and whole celery stalks in pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover and simmer 2 hours. Stir in tomato paste and simmer an additional 2 hours. Discard bay leaf and celery and serve.

Recipes Courtesy allrecipes.com

Nothing says "Hi I'm a serial killer" more than Hello Kitty Ductape. All I need now is a white van with a sign on the side that says "Free Candy"

Who at the ShurTech Brands, lost their mind and thought this would be a great idea?

DIYS Gardening: Eggplant
I'm growing two type of eggplants: Purple Blaze (Shown here) and Little Fingers. I avoided eggplant in the grocery store, but I don't know why. Maybe it's because the only purple foods I've eaten are grapes and blueberries, so a purple vegetable puts me out of sorts. However my eggplants have been growing like gangbuster! So what to do? Eat them! I heard of Eggplant Parmesan in every cookbook I've ever had, so why not give it a whirl.

Eggplant is a bit of an annoy vegetable, which is probably why people avoid it. The eggplant taste great, but you must prepare it properly. Eggplant needs to be drain of excess water before you can cook it. Usually this mean slicing the eggplant and putting it into a colander in between layers of kosher salt for 2 hours. That what makes most recipes for eggplant stretch past the three hour mark. After drain my eggplant, I found it helpful to give the eggplant a good rinse to get rid of the extra salt. Then press the eggplant dry between paper towels. When your eggplant is dry and rubbery (Not the word I want but it fits, and the eggplant taste so much better than rubber), you are ready to cook.

I find that eggplant chips battered and fried like onion rings can be quite yummy.

Eggplant Parmesan
Ingredients

* 2 lbs (about 2 large) eggplants
* Kosher salt
* 1 28-oz can whole peeled tomatoes
* 1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
* Olive oil
* Freshly ground black pepper
* 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup fine dry breadcrumbs
* 4 large eggs, beaten
* 1 1/2 lbs of fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
* 1 cup grated high quality Parmesan cheese
* 1 packed cup fresh basil leaves

Method

1 Cut eggplants lengthwise into 1/4 inch slices. Arrange one layer in the bottom of a large colander and sprinkle evenly with salt. Repeat with remaining eggplant, salting, until all eggplant is in the colander. Weigh down the slices with a couple of plates and let drain for 2 hours. The purpose of this step is to have the eggplant release some of its moisture before cooking.

2 While the eggplant is draining, prepare tomato sauce. Combine tomatoes, garlic and 1/3 cup olive oil in a food processor. Season with salt and pepper to tasted and set aside.

3 When eggplant has drained, press down on it to remove excess water, wipe off the excess salt, and lay the slices out on paper towels to remove all the moisture. In a wide, shallow bowl, combine flour and breadcrumbs. Mix well. Pour beaten eggs into another wide shallow bowl. Place a large, deep skillet over medium heat, and pour in a a half inch of olive oil. When oil is shimmering, dredge the eggplant slices first in the flour mixture, then in the beaten egg. Working in batches, slide coated eggplant into hot oil and fry until golden brown on both sides, turning once. Drain on paper towels.

4 Preheat the oven to 350°F. In the bottom of a 10x15 inch glass baking dish, spread 1 cup of tomato sauce. Top with one third of the eggplant slices. Top eggplant with half of the mozzarella slices. Sprinkle with one third of the Parmesan and half of the basil leaves.

5 Make a second layer of eggplant slices, topped by 1 cup of sauce, remaining mozzarella, half the remaining Parmesan, and all of the remaining basil. Add remaining eggplant, and top with the remaining tomato sauce and Parmesan.

6 Bake until cheese has melted and the top is slightly brown, about 30 minutes. Allow to rest at room temperature for about 10 minutes before serving.

Serves 8.


Recipe courtesy of Simply Recipes

I Love Animeiowa - 2011

It's like Halloween and my favorite hobby store rolled together in one great big ball of repressed teen desire.

Actually, Animeiowa was quite fun this year. I saw a few of my students, recognized several more custom without asking the cosplayers, and spent more money than I ever thought I would.

I'm sure you all recognize Pikachu and the other lady is from "Oh, my Goddess", but don't put money down on that.

Technowiz becomes an Eagle Scout!

Technowiz as a cub scout.

Gardening and Genealogy

My hobbies take me some weird places.  One of them is cooking.  When you are staring at 20 pounds of tomatoes, and you are tired of freezing, canning, stewing and making spaghetti sauce, what do you do?  Well, find new ways to cook your tomatoes of course!  This also answers the question what to do with all those other vegetables in the garden as well.  I spend my time searching for recipes I would like to try and keep the recipes I like.

Which bring me to the second instance: family reunions and get togethers.  How many times have you been sitting around your great Aunt Bernice kitchen thinking, "OMG, this is the best Sun Drop Carmel Cake I have ever had! I need this recipe before she dies."  A little cold to be sure, but there is some truth to the situation.   Good food can take you back to the past memories of your life.  It would be a shame to lose them.  I amazed how many times when talking to relatives about the past or family history does the subject of food come up.

In both cases, you end up with a binder full of clippings from the newspapers and magazines, hand written notes scrawled on the back of a grocery list, or pages of printed websites.   I've found a wonderful aid for keeping track of all those recipes:  MacGourmet Deluxe

DIYS Gardening : Water, Water Everywhere!

A good garden filled with your average plants; tomatoes, Swiss Chard, Peppers, and etc requires at least 1 inch of rain every week.  The past few weeks in Iowa have been in the 90's.  The plants grow well but must be water frequently.  For my 4 foot by 8 foot raised bed, that's 20 gallons of water each time they need water.  My water bill jumped by $40 last month.  The High Priestess says my garden is taking up all the extra water.  Perhaps, but I got $40 bucks that says the three teenagers who spend all morning in the bathroom have something to do with it as well.

I've been looking at rain barrels for quite awhile now.  Especially since the state climatologist predict a drought this summer.   I missed the chance last year to pick up some $40 rain barrels the city was selling to family gardeners, so I spent a lot of time looking since then.  Most rain barrels will run from $80 - $150 with an insane upper limit of $300.  That price was from a lawn and garden place trying to sell  art deco styled rain barrels.  Most rain barrel come as just a container with a spout at the bottom and a hole in the top.  You have to provide the method of getting the water to the barrel and keeping the mosquitoes out of the standing water.  I found this at my local hardware store: Fiskars 5998 Salsa II 58 Gallon Rain Barrel with DiverterPro - Spice Granite.   I picked up three at $100 a piece.  IMHO, well worth the price because it come with the hardware to integrate the unit into your downspout.

The instruction that came with the unit were easy to follow, but I found it is best the remove the downspout before cutting the section for the diverter.  So set up your best barrel in nice flat stable surface , then measure and mark the downspout.  Then take down the downspout, make the appropriate cut, install the diverter and remount the downspout.  If you do it that way it should take you 30 - 45 minutes to finish the set up.

Some side notes:

1) Each barrel holds 58 gallons of water.  One gallon of fresh water is about 8 pounds.  When full each one of these beast weight over 465 pounds.  Make sure the area can support the weight.  About 1/10 of rainfall on an average roof of a small house (1000 sq. ft) with fill a rain barrel.

2) The spout is mounted about a foot from the bottom of the barrel, so you really only get access to about  50 gallons of water.  This is a good thing because it mean any sand, or shingle grit settles to the bottom of the tank and you get clean water.

3) The spout is made from hard plastic (nylon).  You need a hose with a plastic (nylon) hook-up, because the metal hook-ups do not fit properly and will tear up the spout.

4) Don't expect the water to flow at the same rate as your house faucet.  The flow rate out of the spout depends on the water level height in the barrel above the spout.  (This is really a nice little physics problem.)   In simple terms, don't expect to hold the hose and walk around your garden spraying water everywhere.

After spending one day in the hot summer sun trying to water my garden, I decided I need a better way.  Using some PVC pipe and some odds and ends for the hardware store I came up with an irrigation system.  The pipe is just held to together by friction so I can change it around or take it apart.   All of this took me an 1 hour to put together and about $20.  Now, I can run a hose to the nearest rain barrel and just turn on the spout.  It about the time it takes me to finish a cup of coffee my watering can be done.  Of course, you can use the time to weed or harvest.   The system works quite well, but you need to make sure your don't have too many holes in your pipe.  Otherwise not everything in your garden will get water.

DIYS Gardening: Season 2 - Two Months and Counting

If you are in Iowa you must try growing some corn.  Those of you who know me realize the completely passive approach is not me That's where the Daisy PowerLine 901 Pellet Gun comes in handy.  Now I haven't actually killed anything with the gun, but i have given all the rabbits, squirrels,  birds and other vermits something to think about when approaching my garden.

First, I'm never going to plant from seed again, if I can possible help it.   The only planting that work last year were my sunflowers.  This year my corn and sunflowers are doing well, but my watermelon never sprouted.  Last year I must have spent $5 per plant trying to start them inside before the last frost, only to have them all die after transplanting.


However, I did find the tomato plants I brought last year at the farmer market for $2 a piece have grown like wildfire.  This year I decided to use starter plants for everything.  I have: peppers (green, banana, jalapenos);  Eggplant (Purple Blaze, Little Fingers); pumpkin; zucchini; and tomatoes.  I have gotten mid summer crops from everything expect the pumpkins and zucchini.  I've paid between $2 - $4 for each plant and I'm very happy.  That being said there is only one problem going to the farmer's market: Veggie Envy.


Remember back in high school (or junior high for some) that first gym class with mixed grades?  You are standing with your ninth grade in the locker room with all the upperclassmen and the thought goes through your head:  "Hmmmm....  my zucchini is not as big as everyone elses....  "  (I suppose with the young ladies it goes something like: "Hmmmm  Mary's melons are bigger than mine and Molly's are just Frickin' HUGE.)


I was happy with my banana peppers until my last farmer's market trip.  The High Priestress suggest I use some fertilizer.  So, I've started using a little Miracle Grow with every other watering.