Been busy

We've been really busy lately, and don't see anything changing soon. But, we did end up staying home this weekend and I stopped by the farmer's market yesterday morning and found these flowers--couldn't pass them up.

Have a good week-

Another dinner.

Local.

Green beans from the farm garden.
Tomatoes from the farmer's market and our home garden, with basil (home garden), fresh mozzarella (store), and a little vinaigrette.
Bread--from the bread machine as always (we never buy bread anymore!)--made with whole wheat and white flower plus shredded zucchini for extra moisture!
Beef: Made by my husband! Slow cooked in port wine with onion.
Eat--beef with tomato salad on the bread. Yup.

Elderberry liqueur!

Elderberry liqueur--courtesy of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook!

This was very easy to make. I harvested elderberries at work last Friday and put this together over the weekend.

Just: wash berries, put in jars, add lemon peel (no white pith), fill jars with vodka. Let sit! For weeks! Then open jars, add sugar to taste (maybe about 1/3 cup for the whole batch according to the website above). Yes.

Now that I've done this, I'm considering doing other infused liquors. Citrus vodka when citrus is in its high season? Berry flavor? Peach? Hmmmm....

Garden love.

This is one day's harvest from our work garden, plus some wild-collected fruits!
On this day we collected:
-Basil
-Too many (too big) zucchini
-Small yellow crookneck squash
-Baby pumpkins
-Pickling cucumbers
-Tomatillos
-Green beans
-Red bell peppers
-Carrots!

And, we wild-collected:
-Box of elderberries!

From this so far I have made:
-The start of a batch of elderberry liqueur (takes a while--has to sit in jars; pictures to come)
-Dill pickles (pics to come)
-Zucchini yeast bread (not sweet, excellent toasted with blackberry jam!)

I will make:
-Extra tasty carrots sticks for eating raw
-Steamed green beans with butter and lemon
-Grilled squash

My coworker is also going to make pesto with the basil. Delicious!

PS This photo was taken by my coworker! Thanks!

Food. Frozen. Fresh. Fantastic.

My house is clean. It is Thursday evening. Well for you it might be Friday. Which I think is better, so lucky you.

This post is about two things:

Bananas

Basil

.

First, the Bananas. (Which can be breakfast, or dessert. Or dinner.)

On The Kitchn I found this recipe for ah-mazing peanut butter chocolate chip milkshakes. 

I made them once for dinner on a Friday...I was totally hooked!

Now I make banana peanut butter (omit the chocolate...I know, that's kind of illegal but I'm trying to be more healthy) shakes for breakfast a few days a week. They are so easy and delicious! 

Basic recipe and instructions:

Frozen bananas

Milk

Spoonful of peanut butter

(Chocolate chips if you want...or if you want really decadent, Reese's PB cups)

Blend with hand blender! Done!

I pre-slice and freeze ripe bananas and keep them in freezer bags. 

Just peel, slice, lay out on parchment or wax paper on a cookie sheet, and freeze. 

Then transfer to bags to store. 

Easy! Those shakes are awesome, and so is this.

On to the basil! 

(Interruption: After typing the whole thing about the bananas, I had to go make a shake for dessert...no chocolate though!)

Tonight for dinner I made: 

Pesto (from scratch)

Thin spaghetti

Sautéed zucchini

Grilled mahi mahi (<--Husband grilled this)

The pesto was amazing! I made a huge mess with olive oil during it (all over the counter), but worth it:

Eventually I might get a better camera and improve my picture-taking skillz.

Yes that is sunshine on my zucchinis! I do love all of the windows in our house.

We ate garden-fresh tomatoes as a snack while I cooked. This photo is mostly to show the hard water spot ON THE GARDEN FRESH TOMATO. Straight from the garden. <3 hard water.

By the time I was done making dinner, I was so hungry I ate it without taking pictures of the finished product...sorry. It was great! 

Approximate recipe...

Pesto (based on The Joy of Cooking)

2 cups basil leaves

1/3 cups pine nuts (I used toasted walnuts)

2-3 cloves garlic

1/2 cup grated parmesean

Whirl in food processor into a thick paste. 

Then drizzle in 1/3-1/2 cup olive oil while processor runs.

Eat. 

Cook thin spaghetti. 

Wash, slice, and saute zucchini in a little olive oil until soft. 

Grill mahi mahi filets (ours were 4 oz each) about 4 minutes per side over med-high heat. 

Mix some pesto with the pasta, top with zuc and a dollop more of pesto, top 

with mahi mahi...squeeze lemon over the top. 

Have a great weekend! We are going adventuring...

Realities of a first time jam session

I read a lot of blogs that have beautiful, glamorous pictures of home preserved foods. Like on Food in Jars, or my friend (and amazingly wonderful wedding photographer) Caroline's blog, Coeur de La. I love these blogs (like other non-food blogs) because they have great photography and great information! 

However, my first canning experience looked and felt nothing like this (meaning, I'm totally jealous and hope someday my jamming looks like that! Obviously I should take a jam class!). 

My first jam experience looked like that photo above. And like this:

Yeah. 

We have hard water. REALLY, REALLY, HARD WATER. 

I knew this, but I didn't realize how this would affect my canning.

Well, to start, it coated my pots with white film 

(not a total surprise, but this was coating to a whole new level).

It also totally encrusted all of my jars in the same thick, gritty mineral film:

Not exactly jam-dream material! 

When I first pulled them out of the water bath I had to make a worried phone call to my friend/coworker/master food preserver mentor to ask if this had ever happened to her before. Nope. Dang! Just my luck to live in a neighborhood where everything that gets touched by water turns frosty white! 

Alas, while nothing was pretty about the experience, 5 of my 6 jars did seal, and the jam is pretty good. 

I did learn:

*Definitely prefer doing low sugar recipes using the low-sugar pectin

(This first recipe I did was a full sugar version--8 cups fruit to 7 cups sugar! 

WHOA! Probably won't do that again any time soon...)

*After getting my mineral-frosted jars, I looked up a solution online: add 2 T of white 

vinegar to your canner water bath. I doubted this would work (did you see those jars?!), 

but I tried it (experimentally simmered a jar for 20 minutes in the vinegar 

water bath)--NO buildup. VINEGAR WORKS! Amazing! 

Wish I'd known that one before I started...

*I love canning

*I'm on a health kick, and I'm thinking I'm going to use canning as my new 

hobby to replace baking (I'll let you know how well that works...) 

(I gave away almost all of the jam btw)

*My pots at home are too small to do anything larger than 

4 oz (tiny) jars--they are not tall enough, so when processing, 

the boiling water will massively overflow if you have 8 oz jars in there. 

Learned that the hard way. Ordered a water bath canner and rack this evening! 

*Pickles are my next project

*Someday I will be as glamorous (or able to take those glamorous 

photographs) as the blogs I mentioned at the beginning of this post! :)

Frosty. Gritty.

My friend/coworker/master food preserver mentor got me 

the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. It's awesome! 

The step-by-step directions are awesome for newbies 

and there are tons of recipes. I made the first recipe in the book, strawberry jam, 

but I used their variation to make "Lemony Strawberry Jam" (adding lemon zest). 

My other food preserving interest: dehydrating. I'll keep you updated! 

Not. Glamorous. 

PS The jam is quite good on waffles. I just ate two as my pre-bike-to-work-power-snack!