Salsa!

It looks like the tomatoes are being kind this year and not all ripening at once, at least so far.  But they are ripening in batches large enough that we were able to make a shakshuka (about 2 2/3 lbs.) for dinner for the weekend and still have at least 6 lbs. to make a batch of salsa today.  I had a mix of Roma, Early Girl, Big Boy, and Beefmaster to work with.

 

I use Ball's Spicy Tomato Salsa recipe, which is in the Blue Book but which I can't find online to link.  It uses 6 lbs. of tomatoes, 9 dried hot chili peppers (I use chipotles), 3 cups diced red onion, 1 1/2 cups chopped cilantro, 15 minced garlic cloves, 6 jalapenos seeded and diced, 1 tbsp. canning salt, 3/4 tsp dried red chili flakes (I skip these), and 3/4 cup red wine vinegar.  The tomatoes get peeled, seeded, and diced; the dried chilis get seeded and reconstituted for 15 minutes before pureeing.  Then you put everything in a big pot, bring it to a boil, and simmer for 10 minutes (or more, if you want it thicker).  The recipe expects you to get 6 pints out of it, and I usually do.  You can it with 1/2 headspace for 15 minutes, not at pressure.  I've made this recipe a lot; start to finish it takes me about 3 hours.

If you haven't done water bath canning before, one of the steps is, after you have finished your processing time, you turn off the heat, take off the lid, and let the jars stand in the water for 5 minutes.  I have messed this step up before (forgot to turn off the heat when I took off the lid), and that's the only batch I've had go bad: it had flat sour, which is a generally not harmful but definitely not tasty bacterial thing that can happen if you don't follow the steps correctly.  It affected every jar in the batch.  Luckily that year I had a tomato bonanza and made four batches of salsa instead of my usual three, but I also pay more attention now when I'm doing the water bath steps.

If you don't want a smoky chipotle salsa, you can use others; I made my first year's batches with ancho chilis because they were what I could find.  The next year I couldn't find them and substituted chipotles, which my husband loved, so I've kept using them.

We go through 12-15 jars of salsa a year most years, so this generally works for us.  We probably aren't saving money, but we're generally getting a lower-sodium salsa this way, and in a flavor we like.

Jelly

One of my favorite things to make and can is jelly (or jam).  Most recipes can be finished in two hours or less, and they're easy gifts.  I had a bunch of frozen blueberries, and I know several people who really like it, so I figured I would free up freezer space and knock out some Christmas gifts at the same time.

Except I didn't have as many blueberries in the freezer as I thought, whoops!  The basic blueberry jam is 9 cups of crushed berries and 6 cups of sugar.  I had about six cups.  Rather than try to math a smaller recipes (not recommended! Bad for food safety!), I found a different recipe.  I've got the Ball Blue Book, but for this I pulled out Ball's Complete Book of Home Preserving.

The recipe I used was the jam with liquid pectin; it used 4 1/2 cups of crushed berries, 7 cups of sugar, 4 tablespoons of lemon juice, and 2 pouches of liquid pectin. The benefit of this recipe was I didn't have to figure out if it was gelled enough; I am not great at it because I mostly do liquid pectin recipes. 

Blueberry jam comes out super sweet with either method, while keeping a strong blueberry flavor.

If you haven't made a jam or jelly before, they are a very easy entry into canning.  They generally aren't much more plus fruit/juice plus sugar plus maybe some extra acid (usually lemon/lime juice or vinegar) plus some pectin, depending on the fruit.  You cook it, put it in hot jars, and process according to the recipe.  They're usually a water bath process, so if pressure intimidates you, you aren't dealing with that.  You don't even need a fancy canner - just a pot deep enough to cover the jars with water and some way to elevate the jars off the bottom to get good heat circulation around the whole jar.

This blueberry jelly recipe made me 8 jars plus a little extra; if you eat a lot of peanut butter and jelly, this can be a great way to get jelly flavors you can't find anywhere else.  I have done pina colada flavor, kiwi daiquiri, and (my hands-down favorite jelly) jalapeno.  If you're looking for a new cooking skill to pick up, I definitely recommend it.

Zucchini Cake

After a disappointing garden year last year, it is once again the Season of Squash.  We made a squash casserole for dinner, and once it came out, the zucchini cake went straight in.

I used my grandmother's zucchini cake/bread recipe - the difference is mainly whether you do it as two loafs or a 9x13 pan and frost it.  The recipe itself is pretty easy:

• 2 c flour
• 2 c sugar
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 2 tspn baking soda
• 1 tspn baking powder
• 1 tspn salt
• 1 c salad oil vegetable oil (canola oil)
• 2 tspn vanilla
• 3 eggs
• 2 c shredded zucchini
• raisins, nuts optional

Mix it; grease pan.  350 oven for 50 mins.

Usually it's just a vanilla frosting, but I did cream cheese this time since I had some to use up.  The next round will be trying it with gluten-free flour to take to work. There is currently a lull in the zucchini (maybe 2 on the plants, but more flowers), so I'll probably have enough by the end of the coming week to make them.  I may try it with a bit less oil, as well; it is plenty moist, and it doesn't help it not stick to the pan.

The yellow squash are not slowing down, so I may have to experiment with some kind of baked good with them, as well. 

Lazy Soup

I've been making chicken soup a lot the past couple weeks, and it is a version I call lazy soup, because it's fast to put together, and you can prepare and freeze the vegetables to be even less work at cooking time if you want - just make sure to defrost them before you start.

Ingredients:

• 2 carrots, peeled and sliced
• 1 stick celery, chopped
• 1 sweet or yellow onion, chopped
• 1-2 tbsp neutral oil
  
• 2-4 skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 32 oz. unsalted chicken stock
  
• 1-2 tsp of Penzey's Revolution
• 1 bay leaf (optional)
• 1/3 cup of rice or 2 oz. of a small pasta (orzo, alphabets, etc.) 

Preparation:

I use a 5 quart pot for this.  I prepare all the vegetables and add them to the pot as I go, then add in the oil and turn it to medium.  Then I cut up the chicken and put it on a microwave-safe plate and cook it (covered) in 2 minute increments until it's done (usually 4-6 minutes).  Stir the vegetables periodically while preparing the chicken to keep them from burning.  By the time the chicken is cooked, the vegetables will probably have softened.  Add the chicken and its fat/juices, stock, seasoning, bay leaf, and rice or pasta to the vegetables.  Turn the heat to high and bring it to a boil.  Once it boils, turn it down to medium or medium low to simmer and set a timer for 10 minutes.  You can cover it to keep more of the stock from cooking off.  After 10 minutes, the carrots should be done and the rice or pasta should be cooked.

We do this as 2 servings.

Lazy soup just before boiling

Hobbies: Cooking

So I inventoried the spices yesterday, because I got a cross-cut miter box for Christmas and I want to build a spice rack, because spice racks with ~100-jar capacity are basically nonexistent.  I probably won't build 100-jar capacity; I need to go through the list and denote which ones are recurring purchases and which are one-off spice blend purchases that we probably won't replace.  But either way, we have... a lot of spices.

I did not expect cooking to be one of the things I did a deep-dive into.  Baking, yes.  I like baking, because I like cookies, cake, etc.  Also baking is basically chemistry, and I like chemistry.  Cooking is frequently less precise and more improvisation.  That's fine too, but it frequently requires more active time, and I like set-it-and-forget-it food production.

For a variety of reasons, we have home-cooked food six nights a week; salt is the biggest reason, hence the prodigious variety of herbs, spices, and spice blends taking up space in the cabinets.  (We effectively have two shelves' worth of spices in the cabinets.)  This has also meant finding recipes that we can make flavorful with minimal salt, and that MSG is a regular part of our seasoning plan, to reduce the sodium and boost flavors.

Although my grandmother was the one with the reputation as an outstanding cook, the bulk of my cooking techniques that I learned before moving out came from my mother (baking, stove-top cooking, slow cooker cooking), and a little bit from my father (primarily for pancakes; I still have not mastered skillet potatoes).  There are some foods I have not bothered to learn to cook well, because my husband fills that niche (steak, most pasta dishes that are not lasagna, tacos).

Cooking for dietary needs means I've tried recipes from a wide variety of cuisines, mostly through cookbooks and online recipe sites (especially the New York Times cooking section).  Recent dishes include moo goo gai pan (100% will make again), hot chocolate cookies (100% will not make again), and chicken cordon bleu (100% will make again, with improved technique).

Moo goo gai pan

 

Some things I've learned for time-saving and not wasting food over the years include weekly meal planning to build the grocery list (we use a shared Google doc); making extra rice to freeze in 1-cup portions when I make rice; and making the entire 5-lb. bag of potatoes as mashed potatoes and freezing the extra, rather than letting the potatoes languish and rot.  (Buying potatoes in 5-lb. bags is cheaper per pound at our grocery than buying loose potatoes.)  I've also stopped looking for recipes that only serve two and just freeze leftovers now to take for lunches or have for dinner on Wednesdays I'm too tired to cook.  My husband and I split the six nights we cook at home equally, but I usually make something that will cover two nights on Sunday, since Monday night is D&D and it's easier to do leftovers, and Wednesdays frequently end up freezer food if I'm too tired to cook.  Egg dishes are a frequent Wednesday meal, as well.

There are still some cooking techniques I would like to learn, primarily in the realm of candy making; my next goal is soft caramels.

Broccoli cheese frittata

I do a lot of egg dishes (mostly frittatas) on Wednesdays because by mid-week I'm too tired after work for anything intensive for dinner.  The broccoli cheese frittata is the most recent modification.  It's also pretty easy.

Ingredients:

• 1 yellow or sweet onion, chopped (the ones I use are usually baseball sized)
• 16-oz bag of frozen chopped broccoli (you can use another cut of broccoli like florets or cuts, but the chopped is nice and small for easy eating in the frittata)
• 2 cups shredded cheese (I use the pre-packaged macaroni and cheese blend)
• 12 eggs, beaten (I do this after step 4 below so I can use the bowl I cooked the broccoli in)
  
• salt, pepper, paprika, and/or msg to taste

Steps:

1. In a 12-inch cast iron (or otherwise oven-safe) skillet, cook the onion until translucent.  Season to taste with salt, pepper, and/or msg.
   
2. Cook the broccoli according to the package. (I usually microwave it while I'm cooking the onion.)
3. Turn off the heat under skillet during assembly.  If your broiler needs to preheat, move the top rack up to broiler position and turn it on high.  (This is also a good time to check that you aren't storing anything in the oven, which used to be where we kept the iron skillets.)
   
4. Spread the onion evenly on the bottom of the skillet, then layer the broccoli on top of it. (I use a slotted spoon so as not to get too much of the broccoli liquid into the skillet.)

   

   After adding the broccoli to the onion

5. Spread the cheese evenly over the broccoli.

   

   After adding the cheese

6. Pour the beaten eggs evenly over the layered vegetables and cheese.  Gently smoosh down anything sticking up through the eggs. (It may not all be under the surface of the eggs, which is okay.)

   

   After adding the egg

7. Sprinkle with paprika if desired.
8. Turn the burner back on medium to medium high and let cook till you start to get bubbles up through in the egg.
9. Turn the burner off and transfer the skillet to the oven under the broiler.  Cook for about 10 minutes or until the egg is set and the top has browned slightly.

   

   Done

 We do this as four servings, but you can probably do six if you're serving it with something else.

Turkey pot pie

So Wednesday I made stock with the 19 lb./$7 turkey we got back in 2021.  My husband is the champion poultry carcass cleaner, so he got 20 cups of meat off it; 3 containers (15 cups) went straight into the freezer.  Thursday, after letting the fat congeal, I canned 16 pints of turkey stock.  This all led up to tonight's dinner: turkey pot pie.  This is a faster, altered version of the New York Times Cooking tarragon chicken pot pie.

Ingredients:

• 1 pie crust
• 3 cups frozen mixed vegetables
• 1 onion, chopped/diced
• about 3 cups of turkey, cut into bite-size-ish chunks
• 3 tbsp. butter
• 4 tbsp flour
• 2 cups stock
• 1 cup milk
• salt/pepper/seasonings to taste 
• 1 egg
  

This falls into that category of recipes that are shortcuts; I use a pre-made pie crust and frozen vegetables to cut down on the time it takes to get this in the oven.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

I cook the onion for 2-4 minutes in the microwave, covered in a glass dish.  While that's going, I start the gravy: melt the butter over medium/medium-low heat, add the flour, and combine with a whisk.  Add the two cups of stock and whisk the flour mixture well to avoid lumps.  Add the milk and keep cooking until it starts to thicken, whisking to keep it from burning.  Once it's thickened, I stir in some salt, pepper, and herbs (in this case tarragon).

Combine the meat, onion, frozen vegetables, and gravy in a 10" deep dish pie dish.  Cover with the pie crust; brush the crust with egg and cut slits in it.  Accept that the gravy is going to bubble out the sides anyway and place a cookie sheet on the lower rack of the oven to catch drips; place the pie plate on the rack in the middle of the oven.  Bake for 15-20 minutes, then reduce the heat to 375 and bake another 25-30 minutes.  Let the pie rest for 10 minutes before serving.  (Like lasagna, it will set up some and be easier to dish out.)

I do this as six servings, but it could be more or less.

Something new from the garden!

The first summer after we moved into the house, I planted a grapevine along the back fence.  That was 2011.  This year, for the first time:

green grapes straight off the vine

That is approximately six quarts of some kind of green wine grape.  After picking out all the ones the bugs got to first, there were about four quarts of good grapes left.

Yesterday, I measured out about enough for juice for jelly.

green grapes in the pot for juice preparation

The seeds make it pretty clear that these are not table grapes:

cooked grapes with seeds

At this point they smelled like grapes!  Somehow that made it more real.  Four cups of juice plus seven cups of sugar plus a packet of liquid pectin:

juice & sugar in a pot on the stove

I got a bit over eight half-pints.  They look like cider jelly:

green grape jelly in jars

It's a good thing we got English muffins at the grocery, because I have not had time to make any with tomato season being on.  (See the stove in the first picture, haha.  So far I've done ketchup, two batches of salsa, and one of sauce.  This weekend will be tomato paste.)

The Summer of Pickles

For the longest time, if you asked me about foods I didn't like, the answer would be pretty much the same:  pickles and mustard.  I ordered burgers ketchup-only for probably 35 years.

Then I discovered spicy mustard.  The problem with mustard wasn't mustard itself, but with the plain yellow mustard that you find everywhere.  Give me a Dijon, a brown, a whole-grain, something laced with generous amounts of horseradish--no, the problem wasn't really with mustard.

The jury's still out on pickles, but I'm running out of freezer space, and the garden's still going.  The tomatoes haven't even really started ripening.

Ignore tomato #2.  Most of the tomatoes are still entirely green.

To use up some of the extra zucchini, I went with Ball's "End of Garden Pickles" recipe (I've got Ball's Complete Book of Home Preserving to work with, besides Betty Crocker & Joy of Cooking).  It called for three cups of sliced zucchini, and three cups of green beans, and I didn't grow beans this year, so I was thinking - great, I'll use up these two big zucchini!

No, I used up one big zucchini.  So I've got three zucchini on my counter still, but five pints of mixed pickled vegetables - zucchini, carrots, onions, peppers.

Five pints of pickles

These are the zesty variation of Ball's "Traditional Bread and Butter Pickles," peeled since I didn't plant pickling cucumbers this year.  Next year I may plant pickling ones again just so that they're easier to process when we're tired of eating them.

5 pints of relish

 As you can see from the film on the jars, I forgot to add some vinegar to the canner when I processed the cucumber relish (from Ball's Blue Book).  This was not the pickle relish I was intending to make - I was just going to do the sweet pickle relish on the next page.  When I went to get started, this one was similar enough that I didn't notice the difference until I got to the "let stand 12 to 18 hours."  I've been skipping brined recipes for the most part since I want to do single-day projects.

Six pints of red sauerkraut there on the left if anyone wants some

I've got plenty of jam left - pineapple, jalapeno, cranberry, kiwi, apple butter - so I'm probably good there for a while.

This wasn't even the whole cabbage

These were still in the canner when I started this post -  six pints of sweet pickled cabbage.  I don't like sauerkraut, and my husband's had to cut back on his salt.

Once the tomatoes start ripening, I can process those either just straight up or as sauce.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the rest of the cucumbers and zucchini yet, but I've got a lot of recipes I can try.

Garden, Round... 7?

So this is apparently Year Seven in the garden, although we haven't been in the house seven years yet, since we moved in during the winter.  I didn't expand it this year, but I did buy some garden soil to mix into the extant dirt to try to improve the nutrients in it.

The setup this year has brassicas (cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccoli) and cucumbers on the right side of the walk; I put the fencing in for trellis shortly after I turned it over to get them out of the way, and I'm using hay for mulch again since that seems to distract the rabbits.

On the left, following my brassica/nightshade rotation, I've got tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and peas.  (A rogue potato from last year came up, as well.

I put onions and carrots around the whole edge, although the onions are doing much better than the carrots.  Some carrots did come up, so at some point I'll hopefully get at least enough for one meal.

As usual, the peas took off first.  This is from four weeks ago, and I've picked about six quarts of pea pods since then.  They've grown about two feet taller than the  fence and are now cascading down the other side.  (If I remember (unlikely), I'll get another shot at this angle, because the zucchini plants cover the whole space in front of the peas now.)

Gratuitous shot of the overflowing blackberry bush from a few weeks ago - they're just starting to turn mauve now:

I've picked five zucchini, two cucumbers, the aforementioned 6 quarts of peas, and I pulled up four onions for dinner tonight.

Since my goal for the garden this year was to be able to make sides for dinner in-season, I think it's going pretty well.

The tomatoes are still green, but the grape tomatoes are just starting to turn.  In another couple weeks, I'll probably be inundated with them.

Thanksgiving menu

I like cooking for other people.  I don't know that I'd like it if it were my full-time job, but if cleaning the house wasn't a corollary to most events involving feeding people, I'd probably be doing it more.

Anyway, here's the menu for Thanksgiving this year:

Turkey: I cut out the spine for faster cooking - recipe from the NY Times

Mashed potatoes: 3 lbs. of Yukon gold, using the 1970s Betty Crocker cookbook mashed potatoes recipe

Squash soup: I wanted something squash besides pumpkin pie, and soup fit into the menu - recipe from the NY Times

Rolls: I do them crescent-style (since my gramma does), but the dough recipe is the one my mom uses, from Food from the Heartland

Cranberries - 3 ways: a can of Ocean Spray jelly, cranberry jalapeno jam, and sugar-free cranberry sauce (basically from the back of the bag of cranberries, substituting sucralose)

Dressing: I haven't found the perfect stand-in for Gramma's dressing yet, so I'm trying yet another recipe this year - recipe from the NY Times

Carrots: I started fumbling around for "something orange" recipes since I wasn't sure if I'd find a squash recipe I'd want, and finally settled on carrots as an acceptable vegetable side - recipe from the NY Times

Brussels sprouts: I don't know how I'm cooking the Brussels sprouts yet, but I cut down three stalks to finish off the garden on Saturday, and we have... a lot of them
Broccoli salad: I picked this for a vegetable side (and something not-warm) before I realized how many Brussels sprouts I had; the recipe is from the library cookbook

Gravy: hopefully with turkey fat, but if not I have some schmaltz in the freezer for a poultry-flavored gravy

Pies: 2 pumpkin (one with sugar, one with sucralose, the Libby's recipe), 1 apple (Betty Crocker recipe), and a nutmeg-maple cream I haven't tried before (recipe from the NY Times)

I'm breaking the cooking out over three days by what refrigerates/reheats best so that Thursday isn't overwhelming.  Luckily the rolls make like 32, since I'm making them today and will probably eat ~5-8 when they come out of the oven.

Donuts

I made donuts yesterday.  Not out of any particular longing for donuts, but because I had just fried a bunch of chicken wings and had the oil there, hot, needing something to do.  Apparently the first thing that comes to mind, barring the presence of pork tenderloins or catfish, is donuts.

These were just the basic Betty Crocker cake donuts recipe from the 1970s version of the cookbook, albeit halved because there are only two of us and the recipe said it made two dozen donuts.  They weren't particularly pretty since I ended up using a biscuit cutter, and they turned out a bit smaller than the ones you get at your standard Chinese buffet.  But they're cinnamon and nutmeg flavored, and I think of the 22 small-biscuit size you get from half a batch of donut batter, there are maybe five left.

Nope, I was wrong; only three.

Anyway, this was a hazardous process.  Not so much the actually making donuts part, but because now that I've done so once, I know that a) it's really not that hard and doesn't take that long once the oil is hot and b) I can make cider donuts now.

The first thought that succeeded these wasn't actually cider, but chocolate, followed by orange with orange glaze, then by replacing Little Debbie donut sticks with homemade versions, at which point I thought maybe I could get a donut cutter since the biscuit cutter doesn't really work for it.  Then I remembered cider donuts.

But not that I've remembered them, they're probably going to happen on Monday.  If I make them earlier than that, it's all I'm going to eat all weekend, and I have Haagen Dazs ("Mayan Chocolate") and bread that I need to make into grilled cheese to use up first.

So... Monday baking.  Challah?  Cider donuts?  Both?

... I wonder how many donuts a gallon of cider makes.

Crock Pot Preparations

So I think this turned out to be an hour and a half or two hours of prep for five eventual meals:

Chicken, chicken curry, pork roast, chili, and beef stew, now frozen blocks in the freezer, to eventually become crock pot meals.

The chili was probably the easiest to assemble - a pound of precubed stew beef, a can of kidney beans, a can of tomatoes, a package of prediced onions, and all the requisite spices, thrown in a gallon bag.

The meat portions of the rest were similarly easy - stew beef, a pork loin roast, and four skinless/boneless chicken breasts split between the two chicken ones, cut into pieces.  I think I used about a pound to a pound and a quarter of potatoes for each of the non-chili ones; based on the options at the grocery at the time we went, I ended up getting a ten pound bag of russets, so I peeled them before quartering.  (Red potatoes I'd leave the skin on.)  Those four also got a yellow onion in eighths, except the curry, for which I sliced it.  The chicken, pork, and beef three also got about six carrots' worth of carrots each, and a stick of celery.  The curry got a can of pineapple instead.

I added miscellaneous spices - pepper, tarragon, dry mustard, parsley, etc. - based on the meat.  The beef, pork, and plain chicken then got four cups of broth; the curry got a 14.5 ounce can of broth and a jar of curry sauce (with coconut mixed in or I'd have added a can of coconut milk).

Thawing overnight in the fridge will probably be preferred so that it heats more evenly, but I could probably put them in the crock pot frozen before I leave for work and have them turn out okay by the time I get home ten hours later.

These were just the initial five test flavors, so if they turn out okay there will probably be more.  I'm only aiming to feed two with these, with not a huge amount of leftovers - this was a quarter of the recipe for chili on Ball's site, for example, that I've done in the past that made six pints or whatnot.  A pint is a lot of chili, even if the meat is amazingly tender.

Freezing doesn't have the same advantages as canning does - it requires freezer space, and doesn't take advantage of the gazillion quart jars I have (although maybe it could in the future?).  On the other hand, canning in a home canner has limitations on some food types, although not the ones here.  Pasta, for example, and dairy products tend to be discouraged in home canning, presumably for food safety reasons.  Batch sizes can also be an issues with canning, and the process is much longer.  Canned food is a lot faster on the reheating end, though, since it's already cooked. All in all I think the crock pot is winning on the active time savings for dinner options.

Breakfast Bowls

So at some point, my husband started paying attention to how much salt he eats, and ready-made breakfast products tend to be pretty high in it if you want something you can just throw in the microwave in the morning and go.  Some of these are pretty simple egg concoctions, and I can throw together a week's worth in maybe a half hour or forty minutes.

The ones I've been making him are pretty basic: onion, another vegetable, three eggs per bowl, some milk for fluffiness, cheese shreds, and a meat.

To start, I put about a cup of diced onion an a couple tablespoons of oil in a large skillet and set that on low while I'm preparing the other ingredients.  If I'm using diced peppers (about a cup or one pepper), I add that with the onion.  If I'm doing spinach (a whole box or bag of the baby spinach from the bagged salad area of the grocery), I wait until I've got all the eggs cracked, since it wilts down a lot faster.

While that's on low, I crack fifteen eggs (five days) into a bowl and add a half cup to a cup of milk and beat it all together well.  Once the vegetables have cooked a bit, or the spinach has wilted, I pour the egg mix over it and cook like for scrambled eggs, periodically scraping the skillet to let the uncooked egg get to the bottom.  At some point I'll add cracked black pepper, as well.

As soon as the egg is cooked, I turn off the burner and let it cool a bit, then portion it into five freezer-safe bowls.  I've got a ton of Ziploc two cup bowls, so I generally use those.  I add about a third cup of turkey sausage crumbles on it, then about a third cup of shredded Swiss cheese (if spinach) or Monterrey jack (if peppers).

Overall the sausage adds a bit of salt, and depending which kind of cheese, a bit more, but it's noticeably less than the pre-made egg scrambles he had been getting.  I put them in the freezer, and he just pops them in the microwave for a couple minutes, and they're good to go.

Pickles

So, yeah.  Cucumbers.  I'm at the point where when I go out to mow today, the cucumber vines that have breached the border of their bed will no longer be spared.

I had about a dozen cucumbers on my counter this morning; now there are five.  The rest?  Here:

Or rather, they're in that crock, down in the basement, because our basement is 81 degrees right now pretty steadily, and that's the closest I'm going to get to a constant 86 without making them available to mice and such.

I don't actually like pickles, but my husband does.  He did not, however, like the last recipe I tried for them, and I think it's because he's used to salt-cured pickles.  The USDA put out a bulletin on making fermented pickles 90 years ago (called... "Making Fermented Pickles"), which I eventually tracked down on Google books.

Besides cucumbers, I also had a good quantity of dill out back (had, since it's in the pickling crock now), and I picked up a one gallon pickling crock at Ace Hardware for - after the member discount - less than $20.  Now that I know how much fits in one, maybe I should have gotten the two gallon.  I might yet to try making sauerkraut.

Anyway, with the mandolin we got for making zucchini lasagna, slicing up the cucumbers was fast, the brine was just a quarter of the brine recipe (they use a four gallon jar or crock as the default small batch), and I added dill and a bit of coriander for flavor.  I put a saucer on top since it fit well enough, and after I took it downstairs, I put a quart jar full of water on top of the plate as a weight.

Now I just have to remember to check it periodically to skim off the scum, and we should have pickles in 10-14 days.

Cucumbers

We went on vacation at the end of July, before I'd gotten much besides a jalapeno from the garden.  The cucumber patch, however, was making its annual attempt at escaping into the yard, so I was expecting to have some when we got back.

Some.  Yeah.

We came home to twelve (and the zucchini and the beginnings of the blackberries).  Now we're getting six to twelve a week.

So besides shoving them at everyone I know trying to unload them, what do you do with a huge number of cucumbers?  Besides pickles, I've gone with two main options: cucumber soup and slice as dip conveyance.

The cucumber soup I've been making is from the Joy of Cooking.  You basically peel, seed, and dice enough cucumber to make about a cup and a half; this takes two to three cucumbers depending on their size.  The diced cucumber goes into two and a half cups of boiling chicken stock, and then it gets simmered for ten or fifteen minutes; it should be a bit translucent.  Once it's gotten to that point, you add a can of condensed cream of chicken soup and another half cup of stock or water.  Bring it back to a boil and you're good to go.  The original recipe calls for adding clam meat and some other stuff, but this works well enough for a fast soup.

Slicing them for dip is super fast now that we've got a mandolin.  The first dip I made rather than bought was a cup of sour cream, two tablespoons of mayonnaise, a bit of salt, and enough onion powder to make it oniony.  The dip sticks better if you slice the cucumbers the night before and put them in the fridge; they'll loose enough surface moisture for the dips to stick.  Sour cream is versatile, so you can throw in whatever flavors you want to it.

I have managed to whittle my current stock of cucumbers down to one, but I'm expecting another six or so this week.  Guess what I'm having for lunch? >.>

Nostalgia: Complete

At the end of the Sausage Supper soup post, I included the recipe for the peanut butter balls.  Unfortunately the only way to get them around here is to make them... so I did.  So here they are again, with pictures.

Start off with 4 cups of powdered sugar and 3 cups of rice cereal (Rice Krispies or a knock-off) and mix them well together:

Melt together over low heat a half a cup (1 stick) of butter and 2 cups of peanut butter:

Once the mixture is melted together, pour it over the cereal and sugar mixture:

Mix them together well; make sure you get down to the bottom of the bowl, since some dry stuff tends to hide down there:

Form into balls about 1" in diameter and spread on a cookie sheet; a teaspoon (eating, not measuring) works well.  Put them in the refrigerator to chill:

Once they're sufficiently firmed up, melt some of the chocolate in a double boiler.

Dip each ball in the chocolate and put it back on the cookie sheet.  Once the sheet is full, put it back in the fridge to firm up the chocolate.

Once the chocolate has hardened, put them in a container, layering with wax paper between them.

The ingredient list again:

• 2 cups creamy peanut butter
• 1/2 cup butter
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 3 cups crisp rice cereal
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips 2 bags of chocolate chips 

Also I have a stomachache now, because I ate too many.

Nostalgia in a Soup

I grew up going to the same church my dad's family has been going to forever.  I don't know if they still do it (I've moved away and whatnot), but when I was a kid, they had an annual sausage supper in the fall.  The menu was set: sausage, sauerkraut, applesauce, and navy beans are what I remember; coinciding was a bazaar, a quilt raffle (quilt made by the quilting group), and (I think) a silent auction.  My great-grandmother made chocolate peanut butter balls (also known as buckeyes or peanut butter bon-bons, depending where you live) for them every year, sold for a quarter or fifty cents for a bag of three at the bazaar.  Since my siblings and I generally got to, you know, hang out at the church while my parents were working the kitchen or serving at the supper, we blew a lot of our accumulated money on the peanut butter balls.

Anywho.  The soup is actually the other flavors of the sausage supper, because although chocolate-peanut butter soup would probably be tasty (thinking something like a cream-based soup), it wouldn't really be supper, per se.

The change I made?  I don't like sauerkraut, so I went with straight shredded cabbage.  It's not the prettiest of soups, but it packs a pretty good flavor punch.

The soup:

• About a pound of link sausage, preferably a bratwurst type, cooked & sliced
• 1 small cabbage, shredded
• 2 huge or 4 medium potatoes, peeled & cubed
• 2 apples, peeled & cubed (I used McIntosh, but I think I might go with Granny Smith next time for the sturdiness and strength of flavor)
• 1 pound of navy beans, rinsed
• 8 cups of chicken stock or broth
• Onion to taste - I'd have added half an onion sliced, but my onions were... unpretty, so I threw in about an eighth cup of dried diced onion
• Salt & pepper to taste
• About half a teaspoon of garlic powder
• About a teaspoon of powdered mustard
• About a quarter cup of white vinegar

Throw everything in a slow cooker and cook on low for eight to ten hours.  I layered it, bottom to top, beans-potatoes-apples-cabbage-sausage, but only because that was the order I prepped them in.  Once it's done, stir through it to distribute the ingredients.

The chocolate peanut butter balls that I didn't think about making until just before I headed home tonight:

• 2 cups creamy peanut butter
• 1/2 cup butter
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 3 cups crisp rice cereal
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips 2 bags of chocolate chips

Melt the peanut butter & butter together over low heat.  Mix the cereal and the powdered sugar together, then pour the peanut butter mix over it and blend it together.  Form this into balls (recommended about 1"), put them on cookie sheets, and chill them until they're firm.  The firm part is important, because next they're going into chocolate chips that you've melted in a double boiler.  The recipe calls for about one bag, but I've never gotten away with fewer than two bags.  So thoroughly coat them and drop them back onto cookie sheets lined with wax paper.  Once the cookie sheet is filled, they go back in the fridge to re-firm up.

Jammin'

A couple weeks ago, a woman I went to library school with mentioned strawberry-rhubarb jam in passing on Google+.  I asked for a recipe, and it was disarmingly simple.  I'm still working on getting it to actually set (I'm kinda new to jam), but it tastes amazing.

6 quarts of strawberries, crushed

As much rhubarb as can be held in 2 hands, chopped

Cook 'em with some sugar, add some pectin (ignore the scary stove)

Prep your jars

Fill & seal

I've also been making pickles from my disturbingly productive cucumber vines.  I've been using a zesty dill recipe and trying to stay ahead of the vines.

Yes, Mr. Took, they come in pints.

Grilling

So a couple of weekends ago, since I've started using the chiminea in the back yard, I decided I wanted to try grilling.  I had never actually used the grill myself before, although my husband has a couple times.  I couldn't find the charcoal lighter (we have one somewhere), so I tried the Flamedisk we had.  It works pretty well - lights easily, heats up fast.  The main downside is you can't close the lid with it, or it'll go out.

The first time I kept it simple - hotdogs and bratwurst.  I'm not a huge fan of hamburgers cooked at home; I'm not really sure why.  The second time, I got some sausages from the farmer's market at the college, and then picked up some premade vegetable skewers as a side.  Both times turned out okay.  This time I tried something a bit more complicated:  bacon chicken (and some marinated chicken) and corn on the cob.

Why bacon chicken?  I was initially at a loss for what to do with chicken for flavor.  And, well, bacon.  So I got some skewers while we were at the grocery.  The bacon sort of goes on like mummy bandages, then gets skewered in place so it will stay on while grilling:

Bacon-mummified chicken breasts

The two remaining chicken breasts went into a marinade: 3/4 c. lemon juice, 1/4 c. oil, 3 tbsp. rosemary, 1 tsp. garlic powder.  It was okay, but really a bit too lemony for me.

... marinating.

The corn on the cob I had to look up how to deal with.  I opted for foil over husks, though I think next time I may go with husks for the doneness clues the husks give you over foil.  Each ear went into a square of foil with oil, salt, and pepper.

Then it gets rolled up.

I did three ears total.

I was going to do after-cooking pictures, but it turned out that we did have a raid tonight, so I got a bit rushed at the end.  The corn got slightly burnt on one side, but not enough to make it inedible.  The bacon chicken was well received, and neither of us had had grilled corn before.  Oh, my God, grilled corn.  How had I missed out on it?  Even with one side a tiny bit charred, it was still leaps and bounds more amazing than boiled corn.

So, ah, I will probably be perfecting "not burning corn" this weekend if cools off enough around supper time to grill.