Apple Cinnamon Waffles

Since the apple jelly never did jell, we needed something to use it with. This morning I made a double batch of apple cinnamon waffles. For a single batch, you will need:

3 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup melted butter
1 T. vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 T. baking powder
2 tsp. sugar
1 apple peeled and shredded
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 waffle iron
spray oil or oil and a brush

Put your liquid ingredients in a bowl and mix (in my case with a hand beater) well. Add your dry ingredients and also mix well. Add the shredded apple.
Spray your waffle iron and add the batter by large spoonful and spread out. Don't put so much on that it will overflow down the sides (it always manages to at least once). Cook until lightly browned. Cut apart the waffles and serve.

Here they are with the apple syrup on them. Don't they look wonderful?! My double batch made 19 waffles. The girls ate some and I froze the rest. I wrap them in saran wrap in sets of 4 with wax paper between them.



Growing Garlic from Bulbils

There was a time when I had no idea what you would use fresh garlic for. I used garlic powder and that was it. Luckily things are different now.
So winter is coming and I still am in my gardening mode and the fall garden of cabbage and broccoli just grow too slowly for my gardeners spirit. While looking through the seeds on eBay (I bought my tomato and peppers seeds for next year), I came across some garlic bulbils, 100 to be exact, for $3. I do like to try new things and I understand that I likely won't get usable garlic from these the first year but I went ahead and got it.
The bulbils came in yesterday. They are tiny!I decided to plant them now in the greenhouse and see if I could keep them growing through the winter.
I soaked them first in plain water for just a couple hours;

Here is the potting soil I will use. It was marked down at a local Dollar store;

Here are the pots:





Pots must have drainage. Poke holes in the bottom of the pots.

Fill with soil and then try not to get too frustrated putting those tiny wet bulbils in the soil. Needless to say mine may come up anywhere in these pots and not look exactly neat and tidy.

Water and wait, that is all there is to do now. I'll have other posts on these as we go along.

Canned Garlic Onion Potatoes

Potatoes are on sale in the stores right now and I always buy as many as I am able to. This year however the potatoes just aren't storing well. I usually just set them in my kitchen but this year, within a few days, they are starting to rot. I am not sure why this is but I imagine it has something to do with how they are handled when harvested. So I have been buying them and canning them.
My canner is small and I don't like wasting any potatoes so I always measure mine as I cut them. I peel them, cut them into chunks and then drop them into the quart jar until it is full, then put those potatoes in the pan they are going to be boiled in. That way I don't boil more potatos than my little canner can hold.

Once I have the amount of potatoes I need, I cut up one onion. Doesn't matter how you cut it, just get it in the pot with the potatoes. You'll also need garlic. I put a big spoonful of garlic in the pot (a tablespoon maybe).

The potatoes are cooked for 10 minutes.

While it is cooking you can heat up your canner, get your jars ready and also heat to boiling another fairly large pot of just plain water.

After the potatoes have cooked for 10 minutes it is time to start loading the jars. Put the potatoes in:

Put in more garlic. About this much.

And then put in water from the pot of plain water that you boiled. Leave about a inch of headspace.

These have to be canned at 10 lbs pressure for 40 minutes (quarts). Here they are fresh out of the canner.

These are great mashed, fried or just heated up and eaten.