Mmm, Mmm Good!

We're having one of those cold spells again. Temperatures had dropped into the 20s by sundown yesterday, and a strong wind made it feel a whole lot colder. Today, it's been somewhere in the 40s, and tonight, it's going back down into the 20s. It will be like this through the weekend. And I love it!

I love wintertime! I find the season stimulating. In the summertime, the heat can overtake us by mid-morning, and we retreat indoors to cool down in the air conditioning. For anything that needs to be done outside, we usually do "rock, paper, scissors" to see who'll go. Sometimes, we have a sudden death round of arm wrestling to clarify who's going out into the hot Georgia sun. In such extraordinary heat, already bloated from drinking gallons of ice water in an effort to cool down, we rarely eat more than salads and sandwiches.

But when it's too cold to do anything outside, I find indoor projects to keep me busy, and my favorite project is cooking. I love to be in the kitchen cooking when it's cold outside. On a really cold day, I usually pull out my biggest pot and make a big batch of soup. Turkey and Chicken Soup are old standards. I add diced potatoes, rice, or sometimes, pasta to the meat and vegetables, a can of diced tomatoes, a few dried herbs, and maybe a secret ingredient or two! I also go through the refrigerator to see what else I can add. My soup recipes rarely repeat because there's always something new to add. The last time I made chicken soup, I added some leftover lima beans and collards, and some smoked sausage.

Over the last year or so, I've been trying to add healthy grains to our diet. Barley is one of the healthiest grains you can cook with. Since Dad, John, and I are all diabetics, barley is a much better choice than potatoes, rice, or pasta. Personally, I love the texture of barley more than that of the other choices. Of course, I'm speaking of pearl barley, not regular barley. Regular barley is cut to cook quickly, in about 20 minutes, but the texture and flavor just aren't there. Pearl barley, on the other hand, takes 45 minutes to cook, but is a natural thickener and has a much more appealing taste and texture than regular barley. So today I used pearl barley and made a simple Beef and Barley Soup.

You can add anything to any soup as long as it appeals to those who will be eating it, but some soups are meant to remain simple, and I think beef and barley soup is one of them. You can certainly spice it up to suit your individual taste. There are many ways to do that! But in its basic state, beef and barley soup is delicious, and healthy, and oh, so comforting!














Beef and Barley Soup

1-2 quarts beef or chicken broth
1 cup pearl barley
1 large carrot, diced small
1 large rib of celery, diced small
1 onion, diced small
1 lb. ground beef
1 tsp Italian Seasoning
salt and pepper to taste

Start with one quart of broth and bring it to a boil. Add the pearl barley. Return to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes. While the barley is cooking, brown the ground beef over medium heat. Drain the beef well when it has finished cooking.
When the barley is ready, add the drained ground beef, the diced carrots, celery, and onion, and the seasonings. Add additional broth to desired consistency. Simmer another 30 minutes, until carrots, celery, and onion are soft.
Serve with a nice crusty bread!

Five Acre Farm

I've been living in Georgia for 13 years. The last seven of those years have been spent here at Five Acre Farm, just northeast of Atlanta. Winters here have been varied, usually cold, with some warm spells, sometimes cold and wet, and usually, just before winter takes its last bow, we get a light snow or ice storm in late February or early March.

This year, however, winter has been exceptionally warm, and frequently wet. For the most part, temperatures have remained in the 60s, even the 70s, and rainy. Every couple of weeks we've had a cold spell, with rain, and temperatures dropping into the 50s, 40s, or even as low as the upper 30s for a couple of days at a time. When it isn't raining, it's usually overcast more days than not.

We had a huge storm yesterday morning, and then, surprisingly, the sun came out for just a little while. I ran outside with my camera and took a few pictures of the house and garden. I don't have many clear shots of the house. In the spring and summer the trees and flowering bushes are so full, you can hardly see the house.

As you can see from the photo above, the house isn't some romantic old farmhouse (I wish). It's just a manufactured home that my late father-in-law placed on the land when he cleared it some 27 years ago. His vision was not a working farm, but a comfortable home and a little bit of land to work when he felt like it.

My father-in-law's landscape plan for the area around the house was ingenious! The first rays of morning sun come up from the bottom of our property, the bulk of which is beyond that bank of naked forsythia bushes in the photo at left. Even in the hottest part of summer, it can be reasonably cool at the back of the house early in the morning. The sun is practically over the house before we feel the real heat, and that's a good thing since the summertime sun in Georgia is hot and intense!

At the front of the house, which faces southwest, a bank of tall Poplar trees, naked in the wintertime, let the warm rays of sun through; but in the summertime, when they're full, they block the harshest rays and provide a rich, dappled shade that lets in just enough sunlight to feed the camelia bushes, azaleas, crepe myrtles, and other flowering plants. Besides being beautiful and comfortable, this layout of the property means our heating and air conditioning bills are very modest, which works for us on our limited income.

Here are a few older shots of the farm in spring and summer.
(Left) View from the road, looking up the driveway. (Right) Azaleas and Camelias blooming at the front of the house. (Below Left) The back of the house. (Below Right) The Poplar trees in the front.