Hamilton Farm

01/01/2017

To start the New Year off right---2 loaves of Honey Whole Wheat Bread in the oven! Happy New Year!

11/16/2016

For Annie!

SWEET AND SPICY LIME VINAIGRETTE for Kale salad. Our friend and well known good cook Dean Bair sent us this recipe for a delicious and nutritious kale salad:
1/2 Cup plus 2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup wine vinegar
Juice of 1 lime
3 Tablespoons honey
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon chopped jalapeno pepper
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
Toss all ingredients into a blender and blend until just smooth. Four to five hours or more before serving, remove the ribs and coarsely chop the kale. Toss with a generous amount of the dressing and refrigerate until ready to assemble the salad. The refrigeration time allows the kale to soften. Extra vinaigrette can be refrigerated and stored for several days. Here I used our winterbore kale, cherry tomatoes, edamame and toasted sunflower seeds. With the marinated kale this made a festive summer salad. I think that I will try mango slices and toasted pecans when I need a more elegant salad! To your good health!!!

11/10/2016

November 10th---here are photos from our garden taken today and showing just some of the veggies that are still thriving there:

09/16/2016

Lots of the flowers we grow are for our bees and to attract butterflies. While we generally have bees buzzing around, this week there have been an abundance of butterflies! And we were quite pleased to see more Monarchs than we have in past years! Hurray!

09/03/2016

Spicy Shish*to Pepper Dip/Sauce! We have grown these tasty peppers for several years. Although many of our friends and customers love them we have not eaten many ourselves. Then I stumbled across this simple recipe, perfect to serve as an appetizer! Here it is:
6 oz. or about 1 pint shish*to peppers
3 T EVOO
2 T sour cream or more for a creamy sauce
2 cloves garlic
salt to taste
Saute peppers in 1 T EVOO until blistered all around. Cut off stem ends. Blend all together until smooth. Spread on tomato slices for a taste treat!!!

08/22/2016

Another wonderful summer salad---Fresh Tomato, Edamame and Corn salad! I've taken several salad recipes and combined them to produce this perfect August salad.
About 2 C shelled edamame (drop pods into boiling water 5 min.)
1 Cup corn (blanched and removed from the cob---2-3 ears)
2 C chopped fresh tomatoes with their juices
1/4 C finely diced sweet onion
1 clove garlic finely minced
1 T EVOO
1 T White Rice vinegar
1/4 C chopped cilantro
1/2 t ground cumin
Salt and pepper to taste
Combine all, adjust for taste and enjoy!

08/08/2016

Although we no longer participate in Springfield's Farmers Markets, we love and support our Markets! They are the best place to get the very best produce.

08/01/2016

Baba Ghanouj! Springfield's own Food Guru, the late and fondly recalled Julianne Glatz, always said that Neon Eggplants made the best Baba Ghanouj. Here is my simple Baba Ghanouj recipe using these lovely eggplants: Heat oven to 350, pierce and roast 2 one pound eggplant until soft and collapsed. (Unpierced eggplant will explode in your oven!). Scoop out pulp and discard stem and outer covering. In a blender combine pulp of eggplants, 1/4 cup EVOO, 1/4 cup tahini, 3 T lemon juice, 1 large clove of garlic. Blend until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with crackers, pita bread, veggie slices and of course, falafel. Enjoy!!!

07/17/2016

Our abundance of cucumbers had us in a pickle! We will relish our efforts this winter.

07/12/2016

Our red cabbages are nature's artwork!

07/06/2016

Sunflowers!---For a rainy, gloomy summer day. We love our sunflowers!!!

06/26/2016

When you have a bumper crop of beets, when you are in that sort of pickle, what do you do?!?

06/19/2016

HOW HOT IS IT?!? It's so hot our bees are sitting out on their front porch...

06/11/2016

Thornless Blackberries! This year we have finally gotten these vigorous plants under control. They are a really nice feature in our herb and flower garden.

06/03/2016

In the "They Grow Up So Fast Category"---Our fuzz ball baby goslings have their adult feathers and coloration although they are not yet flying. Their parents are still protecting them.

05/17/2016

Our new bees and our strawberry harvest

04/25/2016

Springtime at the Farm

03/24/2016

A CHILLY EARLY SPRING DAY PERFECT FOR CHILI!!! This is a wonderful vegetarian chili recipe that even the carnivores in my life LOVE and it utilizes some of last summer's stored vegetables!
Poblano, Black Bean and Butternut Squash Chili

3 C peeled, chopped butternut squash
2 T olive oil
1 medium onion chopped
2 banana peppers, seeded and chopped
1/2 - 1 t hot red pepper flakes
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 15 oz. can black beans, drained and rinsed
3 C vegetable broth
2 roasted, peeled and chopped poblano peppers
1/2 t allspice
1 t ground cumin

Preheat oven to 425. Drizzle 1 T olive oil on chopped squash, place on a baking sheet and bake for about 20 minutes until just browned.
Heat 1 T olive oil in a large saucepan. Add onion, banana peppers, pepper flakes and garlic and cook until onion is translucent. Add beans, broth, roasted poblanos, squash and seasonings. Heat through and simmer until squash is tender. Salt to taste. Serves 8.

01/12/2016

BANANA BLACK WALNUT CAKE
I love to cook and bake and try new recipes. These cold months allow me the time to indulge these interests. This cake appeared in our local paper last November and has become a special favorite, good enough to serve as a birthday cake at a recent family gathering and good enough to share! It has a couple ingredients that we always have around---over-ripe bananas and our indigenous black walnuts! Just increase the bananas to 2 for a really moist cake and let the cake cool completely so that it comes out of the pan easily.
http://relish.com/recipes/banana-black-walnut-cake/

11/26/2015

A Short Amusing Animation That Explains the Differences Between Sweet Potatoes and Yams

From our house to yours---Wishing all our FB friends a very Happy Thanksgiving!!! And for a bit of entertainment, here's some root vegetable trivia in a humorous animated video:
http://laughingsquid.com/a-short-amusing-animation-that-explains-the-differences-between-sweet-potatoes-and-yams/

With Thanksgiving just one week away, many people are flocking to their local grocery store to purchase the mounds of ingredients needed to prepare their holiday dinner. One such ingredient however…

10/21/2015

Poblanos!!! Before the weekend frost we harvested all our peppers. We had a mountain of poblanos. We've whittled it down to a smallish hill. So time for chili rellenos! These are rather time consuming but wonderful! I blanched the chilis prior to slitting and removing the seeds to make them more pliable. Fresh poblanos crack easily otherwise making this a difficult job!

10/17/2015

We love our flowers!!! Frost tonight will mean the end of our flowers... Flowers in the garden always translate to bouquets in the house. We cut as many flowers as we could today and will have these bouquets to enjoy. 'Til next summer!

09/14/2015

Morning in the flower garden!
So pleased that butterflies and hummingbirds love our flowers. I tried to get a picture of the pair of hummingbirds out there this morning but they move too quickly for me...

09/09/2015

Surprise! By this time of year we have conceded some areas of the garden to weeds. This year it was the place where we had planted butternut and acorn squash. Wading into the weeds to see if there were any squashes at all we were greatly surprised with our harvest---2 wheelbarrows full of beautiful squash!!!

08/28/2015

Still Cooking! Here's a Martha Stewart recipe I tried for the second time ever last weekend. I really like this recipe because almost all ingredients are now available at the Farmers' Market (and in our garden). I also like it made ahead and reheated in a 350 oven for 1/2 hour before serving. This allows the flavors to meld! Mmm...
http://www.marthastewart.com/921630/provencal-vegetable-tian
Good additions are garlic and grated Romano or parmesan cheese. Enjoy!

08/27/2015

We took the day off yesterday to venture to Urbana-Champaign to visit our good friend Ken McPheeters, see his garden and the Idea Garden and Trial Gardens at the U of I. Great Day! Great weather, wonderful plantings and good company!!!

08/17/2015

Saving Summer. Red and yellow tomatoes for soups, stews, pasta and chili this winter!

07/07/2015

Flowers for a gloomy day. These photos were taken yesterday before the rain. We still love growing flowers!

06/22/2015

Because we haven't yet mastered downsizing---off to the Food Pantry with our excess produce! Pleased to be able to share what we love to do---Grow Vegetables!

06/17/2015

Cherries Galore!

06/11/2015

Perfect growing weather---lots of rain and sun! The garden looks great and tastes even better!!!

05/29/2015

Our spring crop of goslings---8 little ones this year!

05/19/2015

How our garden grows