Hodgepodge

So it's July, so that means everyone in Nova Scotia is making hodgepodge. When I posted this on So that's exactly what we're going to do today. So went down to the market just at the bottom of our hill here. We grabbed some new potatoes, some potatoes that are not super mature yet but We're going to use raw milk from our cow but you can use any whole milk from the grocery store. Lots of butter, salt, lots of pepper and we're going to throw it all together and make what's called Nova Scotia hodgepodge. So how you chop up your potatoes is totally up to you but I Obviously this is quite a large one so we'll cut that one down but you want and same with the beans, same with the carrots, everything is large chunks. We're not cutting super small. We're keeping them really nice and big. So we're just going to go ahead and slice up all of our vegetables and then we'll show you what to go from there. So with my beans everyone does this a little bit differently but usually I just take the ends off if there's an end. Most of these don't even have an end and then I just cut them right down the middle so I My grandmother would make this for us all the time in the she would just throw everything in a great big pot, simmer it on the stove and add the milk and butter. We would have hodgepodge but you're going to want about 4 to 5 cups of potatoes and then about 2 cups of yellow beans. About 2 cups of green beans. This isn't going to be quite 2 cups. I actually don't So 2 cups of each, put them in the pot. The trick with carrots for hodgepodge is you want them fresh right out of the garden and you want them washed but not peeled. So you want to keep those peelings on. They have to be really fresh carrots in order to do that and then you can cut them up however you'd I That's what my grandmother always used to do is she would just kind of leave them. We always had wonky carrots. Just You want about 2 cups of your carrots into your pot. You want a nice big pot so obviously you can tell it's getting quite full. And then finally we want about 2 cups of peas. It doesn't have to be quite that much and sometimes I don't put them all in. 4-5 cups of potatoes, 2 cups of yellow beans, 1-2 cups of green beans, 2 cups of carrots and 2-ish cups of peas. Now we're just going to fill water up over them and put them on the stove to simmer until the potatoes and the carrots are soft. So the trick with hodgepodge is you want to boil it until everything is just starting to soften. So you don't want to boil it until everything is fully soft and the reason for that is because we're going to also add, we're going to strain this off, add milk and butter and we're going to simmer it again. So it's almost You want it so that the potatoes are just starting to get soft and they're just starting to get soft now. Then we're going to strain it off and we're going to add the other ingredients. And then you're just going to strain off all the water except a tiny little bit on the bottom. And you don't have to leave some, it's just less kind of milk that you have to put in. I tend to d So this even probably went a little too far. You'll see these are quite soft. So I left it just a tad long on the stove but that's fine. So we're going to take the rest of the vegetables, d So at this point we're just going to cut about a half a cup of butter into the pot. Make sure it'salted butter, of course. Half a cup, sometimes I put a little more in. Again I usually don't measure. So you can go half a cup, you can go three quarters of a cup. I mean the more butter the better, obviously. So you're just going to mix that through and the potatoes are going to start to come apart. That's fine. That's why we keep them nice and big. You want that butter to kind of mix all the way through and then you can kind of see the water down at the bottom there. And if you're someone who I don't love a really creamy hodgepodge and traditionally hodgepodge is made with heavy cream and I personally choose to not use heavy cream. I use whole milk and I leave water in the bottom and it, for me, is perfect. But if you want it creamier then strain all that out. So we're going to go ahead and pour our milk in. It ends up being about three cups of milk, four cups of milk if you strain all the water off. Okay, so we left a decent amount under there. You can see that butter in there and we're just going to kind of bring this up to a boil and simmer it again, add lots of salt and pepper and that's pretty much it. And then we're going to have our hodgepodge. I'll show you exactly what it looks We're just going to scoop in there and we get a whole bunch of all of the ingredients in the pot. And then what I like to do is kind of just go back for a little extra milk and then season with salt and pepper and I promise it is the most delicious s And it's actually so good on a hot day. So definitely try it. Let me know if you try it.