This Is Why We Don’t Visit The Bakery Very Often.

Strange things happen to my children when we enter the land of sweetened carbohydrates.

Strange things, indeed.

So THAT’s What New Zealand Smells Like!

I am so glad to finally be able to appreciate the beautiful scents of the other side of the globe.  Thanks to the lovely folks at P&G, I can now get a whiff of New Zealand every time I fill up my kitchen sink.

Look, there’s a dirty coffee mug. I can get it clean and pretend it’s summer* all at the same time.

I really wonder if the team who came up with this particular fragrance have ever been to New Zealand. I would feel really slighted if I ever found out it was a bunch of Yanks who’d never been closer to NZ than, say, some kiwifruit in the grocery store.

But until my fantasies are dashed by a giant dollop of reality, I’m going to close my eyes, put my hands into this sink full of warm water, and pretend I’m on location for a Lord of the Rings shoot.

*Not that New Zealand = Summer, just that it’s winter here now in the Northern Hemisphere.  Boo.

More Tomatoes

This year I bought two boxes of Roma tomatoes (one bushel total) for $18.  I made a batch of catsup, which yielded 4 halfpints and 5 4-oz jars.  The catsup was a little sweeter than I remembered from the batch two years ago.  I made the newer version of the catsup recipe on PickYourOwn.org.  Bet I should have made the older/spicier recipe.  It’s still good, though, and ought to make a nice condiment for the eight million meat loaves we’re going to be eating this winter while we use up all the ground beef in the freezer.

I also made a batch of salsa, and tonight I processed the rest of the supply into crushed tomatoes.  I got 8 pints and 6 halfpints using the waterbath method in the Ball Book.  While time consuming, they really do taste a lot fresher than commercially canned tomatoes.

 

Salsa!

I did some canning this year, but it’s been more of the small-batch, gourmet, let’s-see-if-we-can-win-a-ribbon-at-the-county-fair* variety than serious, I-don’t-want-to-starve-this-winter, marathon mega-canning.  I’ve come to terms with my neurotic food hoarding as well as my ridiculous overzealousness when it comes to new things to try in the kitchen, so this year involved an impressive but sensible number and variety of jars.

Tonight’s festivities centered around a zesty roasted salsa, my take on the venerable Ball book’s “Zesty Salsa” recipe.  I did go a little overboard with the roasting, which is not called for at all in the Ball recipe but a step which I, personally, find almost obligatory these days.  After discovering the absolutely breathtaking sweetness of roasted onions and the depth of flavor that dry heat lends to peppers, I wouldn’t make it any other way.

This is the third year I’ve made this recipe.  It’s not difficult, but it is quite time consuming, especially with all the chopping and roasting that’s involved.  Personally, I think it’s all worth it.  If you aren’t impressed by roasted veggies, then you probably ought not try this recipe, or you’ll be very tired and somewhat underwhelmed after it’s all over.  But if you’re in the know, by all means – give it a try.

I heated my oven to 450 degrees F, then lined two baking sheets with aluminum foil.  I took a bunch (yes, that is a very imprecise number) of Roma tomatoes and halved them, then placed them cut-side down on the sheets, cramming as many on each sheet as would fit.

I roasted them for 30 minutes, at which point I took them out and tossed them into a paper bag.  I sealed up the bag and let it sit in a large bowl (to catch leaks) for another 15 minutes, or however long it took them to cool off so I could handle them.  The bag causes the tomatoes to steam somewhat, making them super-easy to peel.

Meanwhile, on the same pans, I placed two yellow onions, peeled & quartered, and two red onions, also peeled & quartered.  The onions were very large, a bit bigger than my fist.   I also put about a dozen cloves of garlic, UNPEELED; then there was room for about three very large bell peppers (halved, seeded and de-veined) and a handful of semi-hot peppers (whole).  Roast the onions and peppers for another thirty minutes.  Take the garlic out after about 15 minutes or it will get mushy.

The recipe then becomes as follows:

• 10 cups roasted Roma tomatoes, peeled after roasting and most of the seeds removed (I wasn’t overly picky about removing the seeds)
• 5 cups roasted onions, a mix of red and sweet yellow, chopped.  I got about 4 cups out of the onions I roasted, then added another large red onion, raw, chopped, to make 5 cups.
• 5 cups roasted bell peppers, seeded & chopped.  Again, I had to cut up a few other raw peppers to make the five cups.  I peeled the roasted ones.
• 2-ish cups of roasted semi-hot peppers, peeled, seeded & chopped.  If you like things hot hot hot, leave some seeds in.  Or add hot pepper sauce.  Or use hotter peppers.  I was going for zesty rather than eye-watering, so I took the seeds and veins out.
• a dozen cloves of roasted garlic, peeled & chopped.  I like roasted garlic.  If you roast it longer, it will get soft like butter and you can use it as such.  That’s a different recipe, however.
• a Tablespoon of dried cilantro, or a couple Ts of chopped fresh cilantro.
• 1 1/4 cups of apple cider vinegar.
• 1 tsp salt.  I don’t think it even needs this much, to be honest.  The original recipe calls for a T and I think that is serious overkill.

Start your jars going in the waterbath canner and get the lids heating up (don’t boil them, of course).  Put all the ingredients into a large pot and start cooking.  When the pot reaches the boil, reduce heat slightly and cook at a strong simmer for about 10 minutes, until any raw veggies are softened and the salsa thickens up a bit.  Turn off heat.

Fill jars with hot salsa, leaving 1/2″ headspace, and process in the boiling water canner for 15 minutes for pints, 20 minutes for quarts.  I got 7 pint jars and 1 1/2 of those 8-oz jelly jars out of this recipe.  The jelly jars are nice to give as gifts, or if you just want “a little bit” of salsa.  I wouldn’t bother with the quarts unless you go through some serious quantities of it at one time.

*We did.  Three, as a matter of fact!

Why Was I Not Informed?

Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about the absolute bliss of hummus as a condiment?

Until recently, I have happily enjoyed my hummus the way normal, non-Middle Eastern Americans do: dipped on carefully trimmed triangles of storebought white pita bread.  Oh, sometimes those triangles are toasted, but that’s about as crazy as we get.

Speaking of crazy hummus, please don’t bring up the whole issue of things like jalapeno hummus, forty-six-spice hummus, or chunky pesto hummus.   I’m really not going in that direction at the moment.

No, I am simply talking about taking hummus (whatever variety you happen to be enjoying, because that part is just not relevant) and spreading it over your whole, un-triangled pita with a knife, like you might spread mayo or peanut butter on a traditional western (read: American) sandwich.

I’m sure it is absolutely ludicrous to most of you that someone would be so thrilled at discovering what is probably a totally normal, everyday occurrence in other kitchens that she would bother to write an entire blog post about it (especially on a dusty blog that averages about 36 posts per year.)  But I am just that enthralled with my newest favorite-est condiment.  I’m on my second bag of storebought white pita bread, since I have been making salad wraps à la the vegan restaurant in town (sans tamarind dressing, though)  at least once or twice a day for a week now.  And they are tasty.  And good.

And hummus is also good for my diet… which is an entirely different blog post.  But I’ve posted three times in as many days, now, so I need to hold back. I don’t want to spoil you people… all three of you (who I personally blame for not telling me about this sooner.)

You know who you are.

Sad News

I think my coffee pot is dying.

When it works it works fine, if that makes any sense.  The trouble appears to be with the circuitry that controls the on-off button.  Sometimes the pot just won’t turn on, other times it won’t turn off after it’s done brewing.  It has a “gourmet” button that makes it brew a little differently than the standard drip-coffee-maker way.  I won’t pretend to understand exactly what it’s doing, but it involves about 30% more coffee grounds and more water per cup and it makes a noticeable difference and that’s how I like my coffee now.  And sometimes the gourmet button won’t work, either.  Damn.

But I am stalling at buying a new pot, because this one’s only a year old.  Plus, the problem is only intermittent and I can usually, with some swearing-under-the-breath and some plugging-and-unplugging of the device, get it to work with the gourmet button (because without it, I would just pull out the French press and not even bother with the electric thing).

I have become suspicious of my coffee pot, though, and nice features like the set-ahead timer and the automatic turn-off after an hour aren’t reliable and make me nervous, so I unplug it as soon as it brews and put the coffee in a vacuum carafe instead of using the warming plate.  I probably ought to just get a new one.

And really, in the time it took to write all this down and complain about it, I could have just gone over to Amazon and bought it already.

Things to Make with Fruit Besides Jam

My friend L and I have been making batches of jam for a couple of summers now, but I’ll be honest: sometimes it is nice to have a recipe that does not involve expensive pectin, a truckload of sugar, and hours of stirring over the hot stove. Sometimes, you want to just put the fruit in a jar, forget about it for a few weeks, and then pull out something delicious (not to mention safe to consume). Enter the world of vinegars and cordials!

Today, I’m in the process of putting up some really phenomenal raspberry vinegar, the kind you keep in your pantry along with your other vinegars to make people think you know something about cooking. This is also the kind that might go in a stealthy, unmarked bottle, a mysterious elixir whose secret properties are known only to the alchemist in whose murky kitchen it is found. (My kitchen isn’t really murky, but I thought that was important to the metaphor.)

Fruit infused vinegars, then, basically involve taking a quantity of fruit (in the case of raspberries, about a quart) and a similar quantity of vinegar (in this case, five cups) and combining them, mashing the fruit slightly to release some of its juice; then covering the mixture tightly with plastic wrap (or a jar lid), and letting it stand in a cool, dark place for a few weeks.

I turned the jar over every couple of days to keep the vinegar and berries working.  After three weeks, this particular batch seemed just right; the mixture had a robust, distinct raspberry aroma that nearly masked the vinegar scent.   From there it was just a matter of straining the berries out and processing the vinegar for ten minutes in a water bath canner.

Another delicious non-jam recipe we are trying is a raspberry cordial.   Similar to vinegar, this recipe asks you to combine the fruit, a bit of sugar, some vodka, and put it all in a cool, dark place for a couple of weeks.  I have since strained the cordial and left it to settle, and after a week or so it can be “racked” (fancy term for siphoning off the good liquid and leaving any sediment at the bottom of the container).  The cordial ought to make a delicious treat in winter, perhaps stirred into hot chocolate or reduced and drizzled over ice cream.

Or perhaps, depending on how cold, dark, snowy and long the winter becomes, we’ll just sip it straight, out of glasses.

Be Careful What You Wish For

I probably spend waaaay too much of my already-excessive internet usage looking at the weather.  Aside from email, my most-often-visited bookmark is not Google, or Facebook, or even Ravelry, but weather.gov.  It’s an illness, I’m sure.

In February, which somehow manages to be the longest, darkest, coldest, most miserable month for having the fewest calendar days, we had a lovely 14″ of snow.  We got 20.6″ of the white stuff in March.  Both months were almost 50% above average precipitation.  I vaguely remember wishing for less snow.

In April, we got our wish: no snow.  Instead we got rain.  Lots and lots and lots of rain.  It rained 20 out of 30 days in April.  We had 6.87″ of it,  practically 3.5″ over average.  In May there was even more: 8.32″, more than twice the normal amount.

By June everyone was either bailing out their basements, drunk or moving to another climate.  But finally, the rain stopped.  We ended up with just 2″ of rain that month, and only 6 days with any noticeable precipitation.  However, it was cool-ish.  I didn’t mind, but some foolhardy folks got greedy and wanted it to be summer or something.  They must have practiced some seriously powerful weather voodoo, because we got summer.  We got it’s-the-equator-of-the-sun summer.  We got the kind of summer that is antithesis to our Ohio winters, the hole-up-and-hide-in-the-house kind.  Because it’s now been like two weeks with temperatures in the upper 90s, more than 15 degrees above average.  And now we have a drought.  

JULY 23 MAXIMUM: 90

JULY 22 MAXIMUM 98

JULY 21 MAXIMUM 97

JULY 20 MAXIMUM 93

JULY 19 MAXIMUM 89

JULY 18  MAXIMUM 91

JULY 17 MAXIMUM 89

JULY 16 MAXIMUM 87

And I am rather disappointed with these statistics because they don’t take into account the oppressive humidity and thus the heat index, which yesterday was 102 degrees F.

I promise to never complain about snow again until next February.

Encore Performance

Two years ago, I bought this “Bleeding Heart” from a community plant sale.  I dutifully took it home, put it in a shady garden spot, and watched it wither away to nothing.  The following year brought neither hide nor hair of this cool-weather plant, and I assumed it had been lost forever.  However, I spotted something pink in the shrubby brush that is my main shade garden this spring.  Lo and behold, the bleeding heart has come back!  Its blooms are now gone, since this picture is about a month old, but the plant looks lush and green.  Maybe it was just lost among the weeds.  In any case, welcome back, little plant.  Hope to see you again next year.

Ouch.

Nasty blister from raking the garden.

 

Nasty scraped knee from falling off my bike.

 

Just goes to show you that hard work and exercise are NOT all that they’re cracked up to be.