This Week in My Kitchen :: Blog Hop

Another awkward summer week of limited childcare, evening shifts, and general overwhelm, so I really have to give myself (and C, for his part) a small pat on the back for somehow managing to keep us all fed (and photographed to join Heather for This Week in My Kitchen blog hop):

Smoothies are the staple around here, especially in the warmer months. We have so much kefir now that I have to keep up on the culture every day, and prefer to dress it up rather than drink it straight. I keep it simple, and just throw bananas, berries (still using up frozen from last year’s picking!), and sometimes nut butter, coconut oil, and/or flax. The extra gets poured into popsicle molds for cool probiotic treats anytime.

So, the oven is broken. Again. It needs a new, expensive part, so I’m not sure how long it will be, but if I can get my hands on a cast iron pizza pan, then my whole world will change. Because, really, my first thought was…but pie season has only just begun! As long as the grill holds out, we may make it through just fine. With pie.

No kitchen post would be complete without sharing whatever wound up in a jar this week. Our lemon balm patch is diminishing…weird, I know, but there it is. I was only able to harvest just enough for one batch of our new (since last year) family favorite, Honey Lemon Balm Jelly, but no more for drying. Although Heather says this “isn’t really the kind of jelly one would slather between two slices of bread with some peanut butter,” that is our preferred way to use it! Of course, it’s wonderful with soft cheese on crackers, especially a tangy chevre, but for school lunches and on-the-go snacks, cheeses never fare well (for us). If you make this, please do give it a try with nut butter, also! The sweetness is subtle and the herbal bouquet soothing. It’s like delicious tea that you can spread. I’m encouraged now to try it with other teas, like earl grey…anything that wouldn’t be too weird with lemon juice.

What’s happening in your kitchen?

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This Week in My Kitchen :: Blog Hop

So, I might have to rename this blog Brine and Stuff in Jars, because most of what happened this week in my kitchen (following along with Heather for This Week in My Kitchen) is sitting in brine in jars.

A Clean-Out-the-Fridge pickle ferment with radishes, the last of the garlic scapes, carrots, dill, and probably a few other odds and ends; Dilly Beans using the perfect, hasn’t-failed-me-yet recipe I will forever be grateful to have stumbled upon; Good Ol’ Sauerkraut with green and red cabbage and a sprinkling of caraway seeds.

There are now herbs in jars, as well. Oregano and chocolate mint, so far. We use these all year long, and I’m hoping to go heavier on the mint this year, as I ran out before springtime and, well…that just doesn’t work for me. If there’s still snow on the ground, I want hot mint tea. It’s sort of a joke around here, asking me “What kind of tea would you like?” Ugh, predictable. Anyway, we made it with the garlic (harvest to harvest), so I’m determined to keep myself in mint, too. I prefer to hang dry, but in this humidity, I finish it off with a couple hours in the dehydrator, just to be sure it’s free of moisture before I store it. In jars.

I did not forget I promised a pesto recipe, but here’s the thing. It all went direct to freezer, and I was hoping to photograph it on some gorgeous meal. I will admit this here and now: I overdid it on the garlic scape consumption these last two weeks. Absolutely every meal has been drenched in the compound butter and so I haven’t had any desire to use the pesto right now. I find it most comforting and delicious in the cooler months when I’m craving something bright green and tasting of hot days in the garden, anyway, so I’ve put it all by.

I’m going to make it easy and just provide some pesto tips. Really, you can incorporate garlic scapes into any of your favorite pesto recipes, using it in place of garlic, replacing up to 1/3 of your herb/green of choice.

For straight-up garlic scape pesto, I simply roughly chop scapes and fill my food processor to capacity. Whirr them ’round until minced fine, and then it’s play time. A lot depends on the intensity of your scapes, but I like to add about a cup of walnuts or whatever nuts I have on hand. I found the most recent blend with cashews to have a nice flavor. The sweetness of cashews and/or pecans is a nice compliment to the bite of fresh garlic. Next is a generous splash of lemon juice, and then with the machine running, I add oil until the consistency is like a thick paste or batter. Mostly, I go traditional and use the best quality olive oil I can afford (read: whatever organic extra virgin is on sale), but I ran out half way through this batch and made up for the rest with avocado oil. It’s nice! Now comes the part where you have to taste it and add salt, pepper, and possibly more lemon juice.

Because I made this batch intending it to go straight to the freezer, I did not add cheese. It is lovely without it, but often, I will add finely grated Romano to the thawed pesto before using it, in a 1:1 ratio. I highly recommend freezing your pesto in ice cube trays and then transferring to a freezer bag, btw. You’ll get to know how many cubes you need for specific uses. For example, I use three cubes for pizza, two for making pesto burgers, one for omelettes, etc.

Oh, and also a day late was my installment for this week on Luminous Traces. Our topic/prompt is Skin. Enjoy!

One Shot :: 19 and This Week in My Kitchen :: Blog Hop

This shot of pure, liquid gold in the afternoon light required no editing. We lost our bees, but what a precious gift they left behind. It took months, but we finally borrowed an extractor and liberated sweetness from the hive frame graveyard.

Today, I’m joining Heather for This Week in My Kitchen.

This week contained many a garden meal. I realize a garden post is well past due, but it’s not quite peak and there is so much that has such a very long way to go yet, that I’m not sure it would be interesting. Peas are happening, though, and I’m pretty sure I’ve harvested the last garlic scape. Our first round of greens have all bolted, so when I learned that daylilies could beef up my scape/pea saute instead of the bok choi I’d set out to harvest, I had to give it a try.

It’s so simple I can’t even pretend to give you a recipe. Snow peas and garlic scapes sauteed in butter, with daylily buds added in the last two minutes, whole flowers in the last thirty seconds. Salt and pepper, and you’re there. So good.

Speaking of butter, I am still in the midst of preserving oodles and oodles of scapes, and while most of them will go into the pesto recipe I’ll share tomorrow, and mixed vegetable ferments, I used them the other day for this compound butter. I didn’t bother with mincing or sauteing, but just threw 12 raw scapes into the food processor, whizzed ’em around a bit, and then added a 1/2 pound of softened butter. And yes, I’ll be holding back at least another 12 from tomorrow’s pestofest so I can make another batch of this stuff. We’ve been using it every morning to cook our eggs in, and tonight I’ll use it to baste chicken on the grill.

Oh, and it tastes delicious on heart-shaped bread, too.

What’s going on in your kitchen?

This Week In My Kitchen :: Blog Hop

Joining Heather today for This Week in My Kitchen.

The last week and a half has been a jumble of four schedules and two cars, and if, like us, you live at least a half hour away from the nearest everything, then you know how little time there is for anything else besides planning for driving and actually driving. Somehow, I managed to keep everyone fed, except for the day they fed me (to celebrate another trip ’round the sun…whoosh!…more on that later), but I did not photograph it. Really, I just felt lucky to have a few moments each night to sit with my family and enjoy a meal together before the rush of bedtime for animals and child, and preparing for the next day.

One of the things that happened amidst the comings and goings was that we finally got things set up in the goat house to keep the babies separated at night. This means we get the morning milk; a half gallon every day! We have not yet been able to encourage the young ones out to pasture, but the mamas have no problem leaving the littles to their own devices for the day, so perhaps we’ll soon have them fully weaned. Mama’s Day Out consists of rotating browse, and then they come home to ridiculous, violent nursing. I recall some days like that in my own life as a working mother of a nursing babe…

Pictured above is the first yogurt experiment with milk from our girls. Three quarts, brought to 180 degrees and then cooled to 110 before adding starter. I’ve made hundreds of quarts of successful yogurt with raw cow’s milk, but I find it to be much trickier with goat. Precise temperature seems to be much more important, as is the incubation time. We’ll see how I did when I make this morning’s smoothie.

Stay tuned for some ideas for using garlic scapes, of which I’ve just harvested a bazillion. Pesto is a favorite all year long, so I’ll be whipping up several batches today to put in the freezer, as well as brainstorming some ferment projects.

What’s happening in your kitchen?