Tea hibiscus. The massive plants got pushed over by the rain we had from Florence but they’re doing ok.
I’ll be at the Charlotte Regional Farmers Market tomorrow with:
chestnuts, hibiscus roselles (for tea), Carola & Huckleberry Gold potatoes, sweet bell peppers, sweet banana peppers, jalepenos, Tobago seasoning peppers and 3 kinds of eggplant: purple, Rosa Bianca Italian and mini fairytale, hard red winter wheat, sweet potatoes.
Chestnuts are here! I wish ALL vegetables and fruits grew inside a treacherously spiny hull like that.
I’ll have our 100% grass fed & grass finished, Animal Welfare Approved Angus beef in these cuts:
NY strip, sirloin steak, skirt, osso bucco, short ribs, stew beef, philly steak, oxtail, cube steak, brisket, sirloin tip roast, eye of round roast, boneless chuck roast, liver, and hot dogs made from our 100% grass fed Angus beef, no added nitrates or nitrites.
Ground beef special – Buy 5, Get 1 free.
Bulk pricing on our beef: quarters, halves and wholes – $3.50 lb hang weight plus the cost of processing (.75/lb)
This recipe for hibiscus lemonade arrived in my inbox just yesterday, from Anthony William. He says that hibiscus has antioxidant properties similar to those in red wine. Who knew?
4 cups water, divided
2 teaspoons dried hibiscus
½ cup fresh lemon juice
4 tablespoons raw honey or maple syrup
Directions:
Bring 1 cup of water to a boil in a small saucepan. Remove the water from the heat and add the dried hibiscus. Allow the resulting hibiscus tea to steep for at least 10 minutes, and then strain the tea into a mug and place it in the fridge to cool.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the remaining 3 cups of water with the lemon juice and honey until the honey has completely dissolved and a smooth lemonade has formed. When the hibiscus tea has cooled, stir it into the lemonade base and enjoy! For a more medicinal tea, double the amount of hibiscus.
He also says it can be frozen into ice cubes to add your water anytime-awesome idea.
Chestnuts – how to roast! Here is a link to some really cool info on roasting that I wasn’t aware of, but all that aside, simply score the flat side with an “X”, spread onto a sheet pan and roast at 350 for 20 to 40 minutes or until the kitchen smells amazing and the shells are curling up at the X. They will mostly just pop out of the shell when you break them, although sometimes there is still shell attached which can be eliminated according to the info in the link.
AND I made something so delicious while we were in the house during Florence. Sweet Potato Hot Fudge Cake. Fudgy cake that’s not too sweet and makes it’s own hot fudgy sauce. Holy bleep. So good. We killed it in one night and it was amazing, except it has coffee and cocoa so I was up til 2 am, sigh. Definitely a keeper though.
So this is the creek on Saturday morning (I really REALLY enjoyed my day off, BTW 🙂 Note the height of the banks.
And here it is Sunday evening. Completely overran the banks and flooded the woods and the road to the creek. You can’t even see the creek from here, it’s several hundred yards up the road. That little speck beside Shane is Bug, she loves to swim. Yep, she’s swimming.
Flooding across another road…
By Monday morning it was all gone and we just had a couple trees down and no damage, if you don’t count the waterlogged brussels sprouts that are now dying. I count them.
Cleaning out the tomato hoop, one of my least favorite things to do… every season is always my favorite when it gets here, but the weeks that drag on and on during the end of summer are always my least favorite time of year. And tomorrow is the first day of fall!! Woohoo!! I’ll see you then 🙂