Our Kitchen Garden
August is Eat Local Month and the kitchen garden at the Phoenix Mill House takes us back to the original eat local days, when a patch of 
dooryard was planted, tended, and harvested. In our kitchen garden, we are growing beets, carrots, parsnips, beans, potatoes, and culinary herbs. Our little kitchen garden is just beginning to yield and we have begun preparations for the launch of this year’s Hearth Cooking Saturdays series.
On September 12, we open the series with a day focused on preserving the harvest. The menu includes Salted Beans, Pickled Cucumbers, Pickled Beet Root, Turnip Soup with Vermicelli, Chicken Pie, Bee Hive Oven Bread, Blueberry Jam, and Rhubarb Pie. Stop by that day to learn about drying, pickling, salting, and other methods of keeping food over the winter. As always, guests can sample the dishes, ask questions, share their knowledge, and stay for a few minutes or an hour.
Today, our resident culinarian Lorraine Walker (wearing her very cute 1830s housewife outfit) harvested some beets and beans so that she could begin the pickling and salting process. Did you know that folks used to salt vegetables to store them for the winter? Lorraine plans to salt the beans she picked today. On September 12, the beans will be removed from the salt, washed, cooked, and we will find out if this is great way to preserve a bumper crop!
At the close of last year’s cooking series, we had a leftover pumpkin that had gotten a bit squishy and we tossed in the kitchen garden to compost. We were surprised this spring with a vigorous vine that now has three perfect pumpkins that are destined to make a nice pie for our holiday menu in December.
Hearth Cooking Saturdays will be held on September 12, October 17 when we will be serving breakfast foods and talking about housework in the 1830s, November 14 when we will feature a Thanksgiving menu, and December 12 when we will be making Christmas favorites. Hearth Cooking Saturdays are free but we appreciate donations to help us offset the costs of our ingredients- as productive as our little garden is, it doesn’t supply us with everything!
