Welcome back!

It's been a while since I have blogged.  I've had friends tell me recently how much they liked reading my bog so I am going to try and get it going again.

Today is my community garden's potluck dinner.  We all gather under the old mulberry tree and bring food made from the garden vegetables.  The past couple of years, one gardener has been growing hops so there should be home brewed beer tonight.

I am making potato salad with mustard vinaigrette.  I planted fingerling potatoes this year as in years past and the plants did very well.  Knock on wood, the potatoes have never had a problem with beetles.

This is going to be a very simple salad.  Potatoes, chives and vinaigrette.  The chives are from the front yard.  The herbal vinegar is something I made early this summer.   My garden friend Edouard gave me some purple basil plants.  They taste very strong and would not make a good pesto so I tried steeping the basil in red wine vinegar, along with other herbs from the garden - thyme, marjoram, oregano, chives.  It's a pretty red color.

The tomatoes are still producing.  I went out to West Virginia one day and helped on farmer Allan's  land.  In return, he gave me two 5 gallon buckets of tomatoes.  Here is what I did with them

The canning shelf!  11 quarts of tomato sauce, bread and butter pickles, dilly beans, pickle relish, strawberry jam, strawberry syrup, honey from my mom's bees.  The one disappointment this year is there are no figs therefore no fig jam.  All the fig trees in the city were killed off by the harsh winter.  Luckily the large fig tree at the community garden is re-sprouting from the ground.  In the long run, this is a good thing because it had grown too large for anyone to pick the figs from the top of the tree.

Here are just a few tomatoes picked from my garden this week,  I am going to dehydrate most of them to make tomato powder.

The potato salad!

Back from Hiatus

It's been awhile since I have posted.  This summer has been a tough one because my work environment has become very toxic.  My friends and family keep advising me to detach but I am finding that hard to do so I am going to try and come back to the blog.

My vegetable garden has done fairly well this summer considering we had a cold May and lots and lots of rain.  The peas failed which was a disappointment because there are always enough to freeze but there ended up only being enough for a meal or two.  The asian beans, on the other hand, grew like crazy.  I froze and pickled some.

So far this summer I have made strawberry jam, strawberry vinegar, spicy dill beans and bread and butter pickles.  There are enough cucumbers for another batch of pickles so I am going to make the freezer pickles I did last year.  I received a whole bag of tomatoes yesterday from farmer Allan so I chopped them and cooked them done and ran them through the food mill.  Next step is to cook down the tomato sauce and then can it.

There isn't much food in the house because the beanies are in Los Angeles.  Tonight's meal was made out of the fridge.

Tomato Pea Shrimp Risotto

The helper

Yum yum

Condiments - so many condiments

I'm not as bad as Sean.  He needs a separate small fridge for just his condiments.  He can barely get any real food into the fridge, it's ridiculous!

I need ideas on how to use my condiments - I know there are ones that you just always have to have available like - like - like what?

My fridge door

What can I make with all this?

Jam:  strawberry, raspberry, vanilla rhubarb, fig, apple butter
Syrup: strawberry
Chutney: apple nut
Preserved lemon puree (this is a staple to always have)
Tomato:  powder, sun dried in oil, dehydrated not in oil
Dulche de leche sauce
Hot sauce
Hot pepper relish
Zucchini relish
PIckles:  Dilly beans, zucchini, bread and butter, cornichon
Ginger
Lemon, lime, key lime juice
Ketchup
Dijon mustard - 2 kinds
Mayo
Rhubarb Vodka
Fish sauce
Horseradish
Worcestershire sauce
Siracha
Curry paste
Hoisin
Pickled green peppercorns
Capers
Anchovies
Almond oil (bought to make homemade bath scrub)

Peach Vinegar

Sean also has peach vinegar and loves it - I don't know what he is using it for since I only make vinaigrette with it.

I need ideas!

Fruit picking

Last week, Sean, the kids and I went fruit picking.  The kids weren't too keen but I twisted their arm.  We went to Homestead Farms for strawberries and sour cherries.  With four people, the picking goes fast.

I think we ended up picking close to 20lbs of strawberries and maybe 10 lbs of sour cherries.  The first thing I did was to clean several trays of berries and freeze them - once frozen, pop into bags.  Emma likes them in her smoothies so this will last for the year.  The next task was to make a batch of jam.

My helper

The beanies, picking cherries

Sean can reach the high branches

Cherries

More cherries

Strawberries

Mashing the berries

The jam!

For the rest of the strawberries, I made a mousse with pureed berries and whipped cream.  Then I pureed up the rest of the berries with sugar, water and mint and froze in ice cube trays.  Been having strawberry daiquiris!

For the cherries, I pitted them all and froze them.  My colleague gave me a recipe for a chocolate cherry snack cake that I will try this weekend.

It's April!

I would blog more often except my daughter, who happens to have her own laptop, prefers to use my computer to do work.

Yesterday I transplanted the spindly tomato plants - not sure how they will do.  There were certainly enough of them and I ended up putting some into the cold frame too.  Here are some pictures of the various blooming plants around my front and backyard garden.

Spindly tomatoes!

Transplanted into bigger pots. Now resting on the back porch

A cardinal on the garage roof

Lungwort

Another kind of lungwort

Leftover broccoli seedlings - I planted a bunch around the back yard.

Quince, ready to flower

Mahonia berries

The last of the winter leeks, harvested on Saturday.  Destined for leek and potato soup tonight

The history of my granola recipe

My granola recipe is dedicated to Jackrabbit Johannsen.  Who?  He's the man accredited with introducing cross-country skiing to Canada.  He was also the grandfather of my friend and roommate in college, Chris.

How did I possible come by a recipe dedicated to this person.  It's a long story!

I went to college at McGill University in Montreal.   At the end of my second year in school, I was planning on moving off campus and was lining up people to live with.  My friend Julie said yes and she suggested another woman who lived in her dorm, Rachel.  Over the summer, Julie decided not to return to school so Rachel (who I barely knew) and I ended up living together, in an apartment not far from campus.

It was the perfect match!  She was calm, easy going and loved to cook.  How could we not be compatible.  We spent a lot of time that year cooking as I had recently become a vegetarian and Rachel and I loved to procrastinate by baking bread.  Although, we discovered that making bagels was really not worth it, given we lived in Montreal, home of fabulous bagels.  I had a friend Pete, who would go out jogging and leave a bag of bagels on our doorknob (I found out later that he was trying to woo me with bagels but I was a little dense about that).

Anyway, Rachel and I decided we wanted to keep living together our senior year but we added another friend Beth to the mix.  Beth decided that it was time to move out of Molson Hall (yes, you got that right) and asked if she could move in with us.  We said yes and I had planned on going up to the city over the summer to find us a place to live.   During out conversation about the living arrangements, I had asked Rachel if she wanted her boyfriend Chris to move in with us too and she said no.  Well, during the summer, she called me and asked ever so nicely if Chris could indeed move in with us.  (I have lots more stories about Beth - she is one of my best friends and we had many adventures over the years, before we were married and were traveling together.  Ask me about the toe-sucking Moroccan on the train from Barcelona to Madrid)

So the four of us found a lovely apartment that was near St. Lawrence Street.  As luck would have it, our other good friend Melissa lived around the corner from us on St. Louis Square.  The five of us spent the year eating, laughing and hanging out a lot.

Kneeling: Stacey.  Left to Right in back: Melissa, Beth, Chris and Rachel.


What does this all have to do with granola you ask?  Chris grew up in Mont Tremblant so for that year, we all spent quite a bit of time visiting his parents there.  One weekend we all went up to chop and split their wood.  We did a lot of cross country skiing and hiking.  I had my first experience with being in a sauna naked and then running out into the snow as Chris had a sauna in his house!  Chris's mother was Norwegian and the daughter of Jackrabbit.  She would cook LOTS of food for us when we would go up to visit and for breakfast, she would serve this wonderful granola.  I asked for the recipe and she pulled out this community cookbook and showed me the recipe and how it was dedicated to her father.  I don't remember much of the story but I don't think the recipe author actually knew Jackrabbit, only that the recipe had been developed in honor of someone who loved the outdoors.  My recipe is now on a fading piece of paper that is 27 years old.  That is ok, since I know it by heart.

As an aside, I bought a picture book years ago for my daughter and lo and behold, the dedication was to Jackrabbit Johannsen.    The title is Race of the Birkebeiners by Lise Lunge-Larsen.  This is a wonderful story and the illustrations are lovely.

oh, and Chris and Rachel were married a couple of years after we graduated  and now have 4 lovely children and live in Seattle.  Beth is married with two beautiful girls and lives in London.

Crunchy Granola

5 cups rolled oats

1 cup sesame seeds

1 cup sunflower seeds

1 cup wheat germ

1 cup powdered milk

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup honey

1 cup coconut

1 cup raisins

1 cup nuts

Mix dry ingredients (first 5) and add oil.  Mix well.  Bake at 300 for 45 min, stirring every 15 min.  Take out of oven and add honey and the rest of the ingredients.  Bake for another 15 min. This makes a very sticky granola.

The only modification over the years is to cut back on the oil and honey. I use 1/2 to 3/4 cup of oil and honey.  I usually use pepitos instead of sunflower and I add all sorts of dried fruit instead of raisins.  I also don't measure the coconut, fruit and nuts but just put in handfuls of the stuff I want.

Cooking from the empty pantry

I've been away for a few days to Charleston, SC.  There is a conference there every year and this is the third time I've attended.  It's a librarian conference, focused on collection development, acquisitions, electronic resources, technology among other topics.  Sean came with me this year and let me tell you, we ate like kings.  Sean's birthday was Wed night so our three friends joined us for dinner at Fig.    Thursday night, several of us were treated to dinner at Poogan's Porch by one of our vendors.  The last night there, we went to Jestine's  I ate mac and cheese, collards and butter beans with a slice of coconut cream pie to end the evening.  Needless to say, it's water and stale bread for me for awhile.

I got home this afternoon and decided to make something for the next few days.  On the way home, I stopped at my garden and picked greens (mustard, lettuce, arugula, mizuna).  I opened my fridge and realized there wasn't much there and there was no way I was going anywhere out of the house.

I dug out a lentil stew recipe and miracles of miracles, had all the ingredients (well, I made substitutions)

Shallots, garlic, potatoes and tomatoes, all from my garden

Mustard Greens picked earlier

Spices (coriander, curry and cumin) and brown lentils

Vegetable base for broth and cilantro lime sauce to add at the end

Lentil Vegetable Stew

2 tblsp olive oil

1 onion chopped

1 tblsp minced garlic and ginger

1 tblsp curry powder

1 tsp each cumin, coriander, salt

1/2 tsp cayenne

1 cup brown lentils

3/4 lb red potatoes diced

29 oz veg or chicken broth

1 10 oz bag of spinach

1 cup shredded carrots

1 tomato diced

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Heat oil, saute onion and cook 4 min,  Add spices and garlic and ginger and cook another minute.  Stir in lentils, potatoes, broth.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 min.  Add rest of the ingredients and cook for a few minutes.

Cooking from the pantry

As you all know, my freezer and pantry are full.  Luckily, my pork delivery has been delayed a couple of weeks so there is still time to reduce the inventory of pork products.  I decided that Sundays would be a good day to "cook from the pantry".  I'm hoping the dark day challenge that I did last year will be hosted again this year - a perfect way to cook my way through all the food I preserved.

I defrosted a bag of sausage, a bag of tomato puree and several tomato cubes.  The idea was to make a sauce to serve with Pasta.

Tomato puree with cubes

Sausage

I heated some olive oil and sauteed crushed garlic and shallots (both from my garden).  Added about 2/3 of the bag of sausage and browned.  Poured in thawed tomato puree and cubes.  Seasoned with Penzy's Italian Herb mix and some salt.  Simmered for several hours.

Went to the vegetable garden today and picked a nice assortment of greens

Served sauce over Penne (not homemade!)

Bitter Melon

Last week in my CSA share, there was a bitter melon.  Having never encountered this vegetable, I had no idea what to do with it.   I have a wonderful reference/cookbook called Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, by Elizabeth Schneider and there was a section on bitter melon.

The melon

Sliced, a 1/4 inch thick.  Salt and let sit in a colander for 30 min.  Rinse and pat dry

Heat oil and stir fry until brown

Drain on paper towel, then toss with paprika, salt and lime juice.  Delicious!

I had some leftover rice so stir fried with soy sauce, ketchup and brown sugar.  Added edaname and peas.