Showing posts with label kitchen experiments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kitchen experiments. Show all posts

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Garden Fun—favorite easy recipes!

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My garden this year—kept it pretty small and contained after I completely failed to keep up with last years garden.  It is a new spot (since we are in a new house).  We put it in late and added nothing to the soil (no manure, fertilizer, anything).  It has grown slowly, but really provided just the right amount for our family.  Plus—the weeds grow much less quickly!!!  Oh and it is also a bit of a patchwork since Joseph went plant shopping with me and helped pick out some items, plus snuck a few in the cart.  We have soybeans, two kinds of melons, and sweet potatoes which I have never grown before.  My carrots and cucumbers are much more successful then they ever were in my other garden bed—not sure why.  Peppers and pumpkins were very unproductive.  I love the challenge of growing and then using what is in the garden. 

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Here are some of our current favorite recipes:

Kale chips

Tear washed and dried kale into little pieces, toss with olive oil and a little salt and pepper.  Bake until crispy

Beans with milk

Boil yellow and green beans until tender.  Drain and add a little milk and butter immediately.  Serve in a bowl.

Bean casserole

Boil beans in water, drain, mix with garlicky bread crumbs and sour cream, salt and pepper.  Bake.

Squash casserole

Same as Bean Casserole but with any mixture of summer squashes

Sautéed garden veggies

Obvious

Kale pesto

Process kale, basil, pine nuts (or other kinds of nuts), olive oil, and parmesan

Tart with garden veggies

Spread out a thawed frozen puff pastry and stick any of your favorite veggies on it, maybe some cheese.  Pre-cook veggies if necessary.  You can make very pretty arrangements as well. 

Refrigerator Pickles

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/easy-refrigerator-pickles-10000001646440/
My
new favorites—so easy and yummy.
 

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Garden to table to jar

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Tomatoes EVERYWHERE!! 

We love our garden so.  This year we planted kale, lettuce, broccoli, green beans, onion, sunflowers, zinnias, green peppers, red peppers, hot peppers, basil, rosemary, parsley, tomatoes (A LOT of those—Roma, some normal kind. and grape) cucumbers, pumpkins, summer squash, winter squash, and zucchini.  It is such a fun challenge to try and figure out how to use all the produce we have! 

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So far: spaghetti sauce, ketchup, pizza sauce, tomato soup, creamy tomato sauce, more sauce, and more sauce (my favorite recipe yet), more soup.  Basically every night I think, “what is a different way I can use tomato sauce?”

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Making Christmas Pickles—Joseph’s favorite. 

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The garden—a few of the sunflowers were knocked down during Irene.  More importantly though, the garden used to be at the edge of the woods, but we cleared (well—hired our bud Leo to clear) some of the brambles and enlarged the yard area.  So lots of grass growing work as well! 

How does your garden grow?  And I would love your favorite table and preserving recipes!

Monday, August 15, 2011

Summer Fun 2011:

I started this list last summer and thought it would be fun to look at again this year.  So, I updated and reflected on all the fun we have already had and the things I would like to do in these (hate to say it) end-of-summer days.

X-camp at Branbury   

__-bake bread

X-July 4th parade and festivities

__-family parties—including Nora’s 85th

  __-try fishing

__-make a book with J

__-see a Circus

__-start losing weight instead of gaining it

XXXX-SWIM SWIM SWIM (lake, river, pool, pond; anywhere and everywhere; as much as possible)

X-swim lessons for J

__-a class for me? sewing?

X-Addison County Field Days

__-make something out of wood 

X-summer soccer for J

__-new, healthy foods

X-pick strawberries, raspberries, and blue berries

X-BEACH!!!!! (I wrote this at the beach actually ;-)

__-put food by—freeze and can fruit and veggies

X-veggie garden

__-ORGANIZE HOUSE!!

X-donate lots ’o stuff

X-hike (here behind our house and other places)

__-read my own books

X-festival-on-the-green

X-boat ride

X-Selma visit

__-Visit museums (Shelburne, Rokeby, Echo)

__-Invite more people over here

__-crafty projects

__-less TV (which means ending my habit of turning the TV on for J while I take my shower . . . yikes)

__-go to a baseball game 

X-hang out with J and friends at his school

__ -visit state parks and historic sites

X-stay home and do “nothing”

X-girls night out

__-Echo lake?

X-craft nights with my crafty ladies

X-catch up with old friends

X-plant some flowers 

__-ride a horse

__- PROJECTS with J: crafts, learning, nature . . .

X-read lots with J, and visit the library every week

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Food favorites

I am LOVING this granola—so simple and incredibly yummy.  We just finished our first batch yesterday and plan to make more tonight.  I dream of someday kicking boxes out of my kitchen, and would especially like to get rid of all over-priced, over-sugared, over-commercial, over-processed cereal.  I made it with (using what I had on hand) only sunflower seeds for seeds, chopped walnuts instead of almonds, everyday whole wheat flower and vegetable oil, Dole mango juice, and of course our very own maple syrup. 

Also making me very happy is baking bread!  I go through phases with this, as it isn’t always the best for my waist line, but it sure is enjoyable.  My grandmother makes bread often and gave me a copy of her go-to book:

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

It is so easy and yummy.  I make the Light Whole Wheat bread.

Cookbooks are sort of a passion/obsession of mine, and I am very happy (thanks Bob!) to finally have a whole bookshelf dedicated to my collection.  However, I collect so many that I still have lots to discover.  Here are some of my other current favorites:

  • The Fanny Farmer Cookbook
  • Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Sienfeld
  • First Meals by Annabel Karmel

I also very often use allrecipes to find recipes, enjoy watching the PBS cooking shows, and get lots of cookbooks out of the library.

Today for fun in the kitchen Joseph and I made bird “muffins” (just peanut butter and birdseed mixed together and frozen in muffin tins and hung outside) and SNOW ICE CREAM.  We still have some kinks to work out with the bird muffins (they fell of their strings the first time so are in the freezer again for another try), but the snow ice cream was a big hit.  It was incredibly easy and fun.  All you do is fill a bowl with snow, mix in some sweetened condensed milk, and a tiny bit of vanilla.  Joseph really wanted chocolate so in his bowl we added cocoa powder.  I am sure we will be doing this again.  It received many thumbs up and lots of Joseph-style enthusiasm.

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We love playing in the kitchen!

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

From the garden to the kitchen

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I never am able to put as much time into the garden and preserving as I would like, but every year (this is my third year with a garden) I learn a bit more.   It sure is fun!

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I made a couple zillion batches of zucchini bread and froze a lot of it.

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Clearly zucchini and green peppers are what I have the most of.  I made two batches of zucchini relish and even had fun fooling with the recipe the second time (by adding mustard).

 

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I also made salsa for the first time.  I actually made it too spicy for Joseph, but I figured out a fun way to use it.  Now I put half a jar into my meatloaf (plus cornmeal instead of breadcrumbs) and, TADA, a yummy, extremely quick dinner, with veggies, that J will eat!!  Win, win. 

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My favorite experiment so far has been zucchini and summer squash pickles, using a recipe from Debbie (thank you!!).  I throw in lots of green peppers from the garden too, and then purchased onions and red peppers.  I think it is beautiful and yummy! Summer in a jar. 

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Also, with absolutely nothing from the garden, today Joseph and I had fun concocting and devouring these Halloween treats (idea, much more nicely executed from here):

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Sunday, June 27, 2010

Strawberries, sunshine, and summertime plants=more June

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With all our strawberries, we made yummy popsicles and jam!

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ACR at the Bristol Pocock Festival (where Bob helped by watching J.  This of course was a picturesque calm moment.  But the gravel marks on his head reveal the more rockus moments.  They got silly on the swings, ending up with a head-first dive onto the rocks.  Bob stepped right up and cuddled Joseph for a minute while I got ice, and in no time J was right back on the swings.)

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Hangin’ at the beach.  Can’t wait to be back there!!!!!

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I’ve been playing with plants a lot lately, though not all is success.  My garden is pretty lame, but I hold on to hope.  Today I found a baby rabbit in there, so that probably isn’t helping things.  However it was pretty fun to see the little guy.  Joseph and I watched him for a long time and I even got to touch him! 

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Hmmmm . . . Maybe next year my little helper wont be naked all the time? Doubt it.

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I LOVE my geraniums!  They are my first real potted flowers.  They were a gift (thanks Debbie) and very well chosen.  They are marked as deer resistant and I think that they are also rabbit, goat, and chicken resistant, which is very important around here!

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 I repotted most of my indoor plants and tried to get a little creative.  I put the cactus (gift from the other Debi!) in a cool yard sale find, and a rosemary plant in a mason jar.  Brad thinks I’m crazy, but I found it entertaining.

 

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We also have some plants on our parch, which is quite fun.  For the first time we have strawberries and enjoy them every day right now ;-)

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

May I suggest

If you need something to bring to your family festivities, I highly suggest pecan pie! It is soooo easy, yummy, and--for some reason--impressive. I have tasted MANY pecan pies in my life; during one particular trip to Texas with my father I pretty much lived on pecan pie. We traveled together around southern Texas, stopping at local dinners, BBQ joints, and restaurants of any kind as they appealed to us, and at each I ordered pecan pie. To be honest, I hardly tried anything else to eat. I was about 12 and you do weird things at that age. Anyways, in my very informed opinion, one of the best pecan pies is from the recipe right of the back of the corn syrup bottle (in case you didn't know pecan pie is mostly sugar of different forms) and this is the recipe I have been making for years.

Give it a try:

http://www.karosyrup.com/pecanPie.asp

I'm still debating whether to reveal my crust recipe . . .

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

in the kitchen and around beautiful VT (September pics)

"Helping" make bread



First loaf




Major "spin round" obsession.







Trying to spin Daddy


Yummm. We love our bread!







At the park with Ben





At the library. I do love libraries. I am now volunteering at the Platt Library (Shoreham) once a week, plus I usually take Joseph their every week, and we almost always go to Wednesday morning Story Hour at Ilsley in Middlebury. Lots of library time is good!












Ballon Festival with the Wells, Jordan, and Jason




Playing baseball



My peach jam! Yummmmy (and easy!)







With Anya!



Nora, Eileen, Joseph, Anya (Pat's daughter), and Pat (Nora's sister)=wonderful



Apple picking (we went apple picking twice and fall raspberry picking three times)






We love Megan!
Lilypie Third Birthday tickers