Patsy Bell Hobson is a garden writer and a travel writer. For her, it's a great day when she can combine the two things she enjoys most: gardening and traveling. Visit her personal blog at http://patsybell.blogspot.com/ and read her travel writings at http://www.examiner.com/x-1948-Ozarks-Travel-Examiner. 

I'm fanning through the seed catalogs, looking for seed that will eventually become my favorite dishes. Such as gazpacho, ratatouille or tabouli.

I seldom use a recipe without tweaking it a little. This is The Cook's Garden's recipe for Vegetable Soup. I am sharing the recipe with you because I like the idea of harvesting all these beautiful vegetables from my garden. It is on their website along with many other tried and true recipes for your garden bounty.

Add a can of chick peas or any vegetable you like and skip the ones you don't.
Photo by Harris Graber 

Vegetable Soup

The idea, which you can see as you read the ingredients in the following link, is to grow your own soup vegetables and harvest, store or preserve your very own veggies. Your hard work will be rewarded by your delicious home garden medly.

Ingredients: Click here for the list of ingredients: Ingredients For Vegetable Soup. The herbs in this recipe (garlic, bay and basil) are merely suggestions for an herb gardener. Add many more herbs if desired. (Click here for the full recipe: Vegetable Soup.)

Directions: To prepare this soup, saute cut meat, minced garlic, onions and chopped celery in olive oil and add cup of stock as ingredients cook. Transfer ingredients to a large soup pot and add remaining ingredients. Cook under low heat for many hours. (You can fork test the vegetables for tenderness.) Soup can be thickened easily by using cornstarch or pre-sifted flour. When serving, remove bay leaves. Leftovers are a bonus. A quart of this soup in your freezer is a perfect too-tired-to-cook meal that is much more tempting than fast-food.

Vegetable soup is a medly of your garden.
Make some version of this as your signature soup.
Photo courtesy  The Cook's Garden

My Tweaks: Right before that last hour of cooking, take out enough soup to fill a container and freeze for later. Potatoes and carrots should not be completely cooked through; they will finish cooking when you reheat the soup. Season this portion of the vegetable soup with herbs when you reheat. Herbs are also best added during the last hour of cooking. Add a salt-free, all-purpose combination of bouquet garni. Bouquet garni, it is a traditional French herb combination of savory, rosemary, thyme, oregano dill, marjoram sage and tarragon. If you are unfamiliar with this herb combination, only add a teaspoon to your soup. With this big batch of vegetables, I would probably start with a tablespoon of bouquet garni, or a similar combination of these individual herbs. Also, you can skip the beef or chicken if you like. The Cook's Garden has several great recipes on their website that will showcase your vegetable harvest at its very best.

At first, I was drawn to The Cook's Garden catalog by their broccoli romanesco. This vegetable is an heirloom that has been around a long time but is new to me. I try something new in my garden every year, and this year I chose broccoli romanesco.

I found broccoli romanesco seeds at The Cook's Garden, Territorial Seed Company, Seed Savers and several other seed sources. Although broccoli and cauliflower have always been a challenge, I'm going to give it a try this spring.

HOW TO ENTER

Three randomly selected readers who comment will receive a packet of broccoli romanesco seed.

• Post a comment below: What's your favorite heirloom vegetable to grow from seed? Courtesy The Cook's Garden.

• End date:  April 4, 2010 (12:00 AM, Central Time) UPDATE: Time's up!

And the winners are...

Brenda Davis in
Viroqua, Wisconsin

Lauren Benard in Phoenix, Arizona

Sara O'Shea in Crystal City, Missouri

Expect your seed packets to arrive in the mail directly from The Cook's Garden. Thanks for reading my blog.

Patsy Bell Hobson is a garden writer and a travel writer. For her, it's a great day when she can combine the two things she enjoys most: gardening and traveling. Visit her personal blog at http://patsybell.blogspot.com/ and read her travel writings at http://www.examiner.com/x-1948-Ozarks-Travel-Examiner. 

Chili rellenos are one of my favorite Mexican restaurant foods. Last year, when I had a bountiful crop of mild chilis, I attempted to make chili rellenos. I never got the hang of it. The best I could do was make a greasy, cheesy mess. I did become a master at charing peppers.

The cook at El Acapulco Mexican Restaurant in Cape Girardeau, Missouri showed me the secret. Ramon Soriano Cruz is the cook at El Acapulco. He shared the secret about how to make chili rellenos from scratch..

Ramon had already blackened, peeled and stuffed the peppers. That is how the restaurant is able to serve chili rellenos in less than an hour.

    
Gradually add flour to eggs a little at a time. Five egg whites are beaten until stiff.
Photo by Patsy Bell Hobson

My lesson started after the whole peppers were charred, peeled and stuffed. At this point the chilis were frozen. Ramon began by rolling the frozen chilis in flour and set them aside while making the batter.

Chili Relleno Instructions

Separate 1 egg for every chili. Beat the whites until stiff then sprinkle in flour to the egg whites as they begin to stiffen. With Ramon's expertise, he mixed an unmeasured amount of flour into the eggs—I think a scant ½ of a cup of all purpose flour. He set aside the batter and rolled each frozen pepper in the flour again.

Then, he used the kitchen's deep fryer to cook the chilis. At home, heat cooking oil 1- to 2-inch deep in a big frying pan to about 375 degrees.

Hold the chili by the stem, dip it in the egg batter until well coated. Use a rubber spatula to help spread batter if it doesn’t cover the entire chili.

Ramon Soriano Cruz can serve a full restaurant. The sauce served over the chili is a mild seasoned tomato sauce.
Photo by Patsy Bell Hobson

Gently place the battered pepper in the hot oil, carefully turn the chili until it is well browned. You can cook two or three at a time, just don't fry so many that it lowers the temperature of the oil. As each chili is browned, place it carefully on the plate. Ladle heated tomato sauce, over the pepper. Serve with beans and rice.

Once the beans and rice are on the plate, a quick zap in the microwave insures the complete meal is served steamy hot.
Photo by Patsy Bell Hobson

Look for ancho or poblano pepper seeds or plants. Find seeds and plants in most of the seed catalogs. Wait on the last frost date in your area and hold off for another week or two before planting peppers. The seedling and plants do not like wet feet.

Thanks Ramon!
Photo by Patsy Bell Hobson

Resource: El Acapulco Mexican Restaurant; 202 South Mount Auburn Road; Cape Girardeau, MO, 63703; (573) 332-1465

Photo by freeariello/Courtesy Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/freeariello/