The Family Table: Recipe - Easy Pulled Pork Cowboy Candy Pizza

This is a "new" and  delicious variation of my BBQ Chicken Jalapeno Pizza recipe from years gone by. A simple build-your-own pizza method using whatever meat & veggie blend you have on hand. I made this new version for the first time today and I'm delighted to report it was a 100% hit with the whole family. 😊

In this recipe I used leftover pulled pork from this recipe, and canned cowboy candy from last summer from this recipe. You can use any pulled pork recipe you prefer, and any sort of pickled or candied pepper relish you like. 

Almost any recipe I've ever used to make pulled pork there is so much left over after pulled pork sandwiches, so I like to find simple recipes that incorporate it easily (soups, stew & chili all work really well!), and this pizza recipe works perfectly.  This recipe is so versatile, that you can easily substitute any cooked & prepared meat with a veggie combo for whatever you have on your pantry or freezer shelves. For an easy example, prepared taco meat plus diced tomatoes & onions make a fantastic taco style pizza, with some added sour cream, guacamole or taco sauce/salsa on the side for toppings.  

This recipe is for 2 medium, thin crust pizzas.

2 prepared medium sized pizza crusts

1/2 c. pizza sauce (divided)

1 lb. pulled pork (or any prepared meat - divided)

1/2 cup Cowboy Candy (divided)

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese (divided)

1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (divided)

Pre-heat oven to 450 or whatever your pizza crusts indicate.

PULLED PORK COWBOY CANDY HOMEMADE PIZZA

Prepare each crust with 1/4 cup each of pizza sauce, applying in a spiral fashion and smoothing all the sauce into an even layer over the crust. Layer on half the pulled pork followed by half of the Cowboy Candy in an even layer. Top with 1/4 cup shredded cheddar and 1/4 cup shredded mozzerella for each crust. 

Bake each pizza for 10-12 minutes. 

Thanks for stopping by. 😊 I'd love to hear from you if you've tried this recipe. 

Please feel welcome to leave your thoughts in a comment. 

The Family Table: Keep a Running Jar of Onions

When I was a little girl and heard the phrase "running jar of onions" I was pretty sure I had no idea what it meant, it was just something the older folks said. In my imagination of course I pictured a jar of onions running away from someone chasing it. 😂  

In thinking about it now, it's probably what inspired me later in life to turn fruits and vegetables into cartoons.

I grew up in the 1960's with grand parents in my daily life that used language that many of us don't use today.  Their language developed out of how they did things in their day. Long before the days of rushing off to the grocery store for this or that, and even into the days of the Great Depression when you had to learn to "make do", if you hadn't already been making do.

As it turns out, keeping a running jar of onions means exactly what it sounds like.  It means saving every little scrap of onion, green onion tops, onion skins & onion ends, and letting them dry out either naturally, in a warm oven or with a dehydrator. Doing this every time you use fresh onions & sticking the odds & ends pieces into a jar until it's full.  Once it's full, they're ground down to powder either using a mortar and pestle or any type of modern appliance like a little Bullet blender. 

Voila - fresh, home dried onion powder to be used in all sorts of recipes to add a savory, deep level of umami flavor to any dish without having access to fresh onions. I use one single jar for all onion scraps (red, yellow, sweet, etc.) so my onion powder has an amazing flavor that store bought onion powder can't even come close to. I discovered the joy of making my own seasoning blends several years ago and onion powder is a staple ingredient so I make my own quite often. I've even been known to buy extra onions at the local market, just to make my own onion powder. 

It's not lost on me that if I were writing this 100 years ago in 1925, most folks would think I'd lost my marbles since this was a completely normal, every day thing many wives and mothers and grandmothers were doing already. It would be along the same lines as writing a step by step article telling folks how to brush their hair, or tie their shoes.  

Over the years society has traded "making do" with convenience and simple things like drying your own veggies and herbs became a thing of the past for most people.   

I have a lot of little things like this I do these days that started out as a simple challenge for me to try, to see if I could actually make do & save on the grocery budget the way they used to.  Some of those things became so enjoyable to me that they're just now a part of the way my kitchen is run. 

Thanks for stopping by. I sure hope this has blessed you in some way. 😊 Please feel welcome to leave a comment or question. 

Garden 2025 Update #3: Companion Planting

At the beginning of every garden season I like to take a refresher course on companion planting. There are so many combinations of herbs, flowers, fruits & veggies that you can do that it's hard to remember them all and some years you want to change things up a little! 😀 Not to mention, this is only my 6th year seriously growing so I'm not exactly a professional. One of the most enjoyable things about it is continuing to learn how it all works the way God designed it to work. 

My sources on this vary from books at home to YT videos from seasoned gardeners & homesteaders. The latest one I watched was from Grace Walk Farm - Companion Planting for Beginners She explains it well: 

"Companion planting is my favorite way to manage pests and improve the quality and quantity of harvests from our backyard farm." 

Companion planting of herbs & flowers around your garden has a wide variety of benefits from improving the soil heath, attracting bees & butterflies as well as attracting other beneficial insects that ward off pests.  It's also a really great way to add pops of lovely color and make your garden even more enjoyable to spend time in.

My short list of companion planting I'll be doing this year: 

• TOMATOES with Basil, Marigolds & Cosmos 
• STRAWBERRIES with Sage
• PEPPERS: Thyme, Marigolds & Yarrow
• CUCUMBERS: Dill, Echinacea & Sunflowers
• LEMON BALM: English Lavender

Companion plantings are usually the last thing I plan after I have the rest of the garden planned out for what will go where.  Now that this is done, the garden planning for 2025 is done (mostly!) & ready for the snow to melt. 

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope this helps you in some way as you begin to plan your 2025 garden.  Please feel welcome to leave a comment or question & have an awesome day! 🌺

 

Garden 2025 Update #2: Garden Planning & Seed Starting

My garden planning updates are mostly for me to keep a journal of what works, what didn't, and what I can do to improve my efforts.  I've decided to make them public to help anyone who might be along the same gardening  journey as me. I sure hope you find them helpful!

After my first garden update of the year where I had not yet planned out the 2025 garden... I've since remedied that, and all raised beds are now (mostly) planned out. All said & done there will be 14 raised beds this year.  All 14 growing areas already exist but there are only 9 raised beds I've built in those growing areas. So I have 5 more to build to tidy up the garden this year. 

There's just something about clean lines & defined edges that make the garden even more inviting & enjoyable to work in and to keep tidy throughout the season. So, 5 new beds it is.  Three of them will be 1'x8'x8" and the other two will be 1'x4'x8". These two smaller 4 square foot beds will be on either side of the garden cottage doors where I've had strawberries, day lilies and bee balm growing in multiple different containers (grow bags, plastic pots, etc.).  My ultimate goal is to eliminate all the containers and keep all the flowers in these raised beds and then move all the strawberries into their very own bed by the blackberries. 

The other two 8 foot raised beds will be for cucumbers and *yet undetermined* along the south wall of the fence already known as "Cucumber Lane".  16 feet of the lane flooded last year after repeated heavy rains, so it was time to for an upgrade for sure, with a couple of raised beds there instead of simple in-ground growing space. I'm still undecided on what's going in the 2nd, eight food bed. I used to grow 16 feet of cucumbers but I'm downsizing this year. 

Seeds I've started in 2025:

• January: Walla Walla Sweet Onions.  As I've mentioned before, this is the one crop I tend to struggle with the most (I'm blaming the chipmunks, they love sweet onion seedlings) and I'm hoping this year is my first successful onion year! 😊 

I planted these mid January and they were already about 5 inches tall. I had a brand new packet of seeds this year and I'm pleased to say I had nearly 100% germination rate. In years past I've struggled through poor germination and I'm almost certain it was simply old seeds. They just got their first "haircut" today and now I'll keep track of how fast they grow back to 5-6" inches (it seems to usually take about 2 weeks) and trim them back every couple of weeks until 2 weeks before I'm ready to put them outside. Like most seedlings started indoors, these will be going out into the garden in early to mid May. 

Because this is a challenge crop I had to plan out where they'd be in the raised beds this year so that I could then further plan how to protect them. It worked out that these onions will be in just 12 square feet of the raised bed I always use for my peppers. My hope is, if I can keep them protected from the chipmunks until they're bigger, stronger and more pungent than sweet, hopefully they'll leave them alone.  I purposely chose Walla Walla since a big part of my family is from there, and Walla Walla sweet onions are what I grew up eating so they're my absolute favorite onion. 😍

Opal Basil - a gift packet of seeds from my sister. 😊 I enjoy growing a wide variety of basil so this purple one is a welcome addition. Simply planted in the kitchen window under a grow light. Good germination and many seedlings so hopefully it remains strong until spring when I can put it out in the tomato patch with other basil varieties.

Winter sown in January: Purple Coneflower (Echinacea), Milkweed, Sunflowers & Yarrow.  I've never winter sown anything before but have heard of this process for some time, and finally decided to give it a go with some lovely plants that attract pollenators that I've been meaning to put into the garden. I'll definitely update on the outcome of winter sowing. I'll share pics once some of the snow melts.  As of today, the three bins I've used are completely covered in snow. 

February: Peppers & Ground Cherries

Twenty four pepper plants that include Jalapenos, Shepherds, Bell & Cayenne. Our family is really big on pepper based goodies. From Cowboy Candy to roasted red peppers for soup & dips, salsa, red pepper flakes & powder, jalapeno flakes & powder, pepper & onion spice blends, and about a hundred other ways to eat & enjoy peppers. All the peppers were sown in 3 inch pots sitting in drip trays over heat mats, under basic grow lights. 20 of these will be in a raised bed, and the other 4 will be in containers on the deck. 

Aunt Molly's Ground Cherries.  These were an experiment a couple of years ago and while I was excited to see how they'd do, the seeds never germinated, unfortunately.  So when I recently saw a packet of seeds I decided to give it another go. Technically they're annuals but if you let some of the fruit fall to the ground & fully ripen & fall apart, they're well known to re-seed themselves and come back year after year. I'm really leaning hard into more perrenials so I'm hoping these lovely little gems do well for me.  Same growing conditions as the peppers, with heat mats & grow lights. 

Next month I'll be starting all my tomatoes, and that will be it for indoor seed starting this year. 

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope this helps you in some way as you begin to plan your 2025 garden.  Please feel welcome to leave a comment or question & have an awesome day!