Meg In the Kitchen

I've been putting our garden veggies to use, this week!

First up: a freezer meal.

There's a restaurant in Gilroy called OD's Kitchen that serves an awesome breakfast dish called The Kitchen Sink.  It's basically homefries with ham, onions, and peppers with cheese and an egg fried over medium on top. You get the crispy savory goodness of a breakfast skillet, but the eggs and cheese add a heavenly gooey heart attack that makes it the best breakfast over.

So, why not have the Kitchen Sink in my own kitchen?
#1 The Kitchen Sink:
I diced up some peppers and onions from the garden, and gently boiled the potatoes and diced them up. I froze everything on a large cookie sheet for a couple hours so it didn't stick together, then separated it into freezer bags in serving sizes for our family.  Now, I can just dump the bag onto a hot skillet with some oil or butter, wait 15 min for it to brown, then add the cheese and egg.  Dinner in less than 20 minutes! I made four bags plus a bag of plain diced potatoes and the only thing I had to buy was a package of ham for a few bucks.

#2: Pickles!  Homemade pickles are sooooo good.  I haven't made them in a few years, but if you want the recipe, click here for the 2009 post when I made a fazillion pickles with Jerushia.  One thing we learned is to NOT process them. The batch we processed in a waterbath got really mushy and the batch we left alone stayed nice and crunchy.
The best part about homemade pickles is that they are fast to make.  We whipped up 10 quarts of pickles tonight in about 45 minutes from start to finish, and it would have been even less time if I had done them by myself. Fast, easy, delicious, free!

#3 Veggie Pesto Pizza. 
Pizza dough recipe found here (CPK pizza dough)
Pesto recipe found here (Elena's recipe)

Seriously, how good does that look?  And y'all know I am a terrible photographer, especially when it comes to food pics.  This is actually as good as it looks and even my kids ate it.

For the perfect garden pizza, thinly slice up garden veggies. We used bell peppers, green and yellow squash, onions and tomatoes.  I thought about adding spinach, but forgot to get it out of the freezer to defrost in time.
toss with a little EVOO in a bowl.
Spread a thin layer of pesto sauce on pizza.
Top with veggies.
Now, add drained black beans (optional) and mozzerella cheese. Fresh mozzerella is better. All we had in the fridge this time was homemade gouda and white cheddar, so that's what we used, and it was still awesome.

Bake.
Chiffonade  some basil and throw it on the hot cheese right when it comes off the stone.

Eat.
Pat yourself on the back because dinner was great.

Tomatoes

Remember me crying, a few years ago, when I killed our smoothtop stove?
Learn from my (expensive) mistake and don't ever can on a glass stove. Ever.
I discovered the perfect solution last week. Two portable single electric coil burners.

Boo. I just typed out a fab tutorial on canning tomatoes, and my internet crashed when I tried to post it. I had to reboot my laptop and nothing was saved. Meh. I'm too tired to type it out again. If you want to know how to can tomatoes, just come over and I'll show you how.

Blueberry Morning 2010

Remember our little blueberry picking adventure last year?
We went blueberry picking early this morning. We might gotten a little carried away. I picked two gallons, and my parents also picked two gallons. It was a lot of fun and the kids loved it...especially Corbin, who gave me a little "thank you" present in the form of a blue diaper this afternoon.

We spent the afternoon using recipes from this site to make blueberry syrup and blueberry jam. Yummy.Uh, never mind the shiny face. We're in a heat wave, it's humid here, and it was 1,000 degrees in my kitchen.
Ta Da!

I've gotta get some pancakes in me!

We also canned Hatch Green fire roasted green chilies (that my parent's brought with them from Colorado. Looks gross, tastes awesome.)

Mmmmm......

155 lbs

Grape.

This morning I bought a 1/2 bushel of Concord Grapes. I had no idea how good grapes could smell! My kitchen smells absolutely delicious right now. Concord grapes have a very dark skin that removes easily from a gummy flesh with large pit-like seeds inside. They have excellent flavor, but the texture and seeds make them a less enjoyable snack eaten alone. It's like chewing grape jelly with a grainy seed in it.
$10 for a heaping 1/2 bushel.
Wash.
Pull off any unripe green or tough grapes from the vine and discard. Place grapes in a steam juicer. (has a water reservoir in the bottom). Steam on high for 45 minutes-1 1/2 hr (depends on temp of stove), turning the grapes over with some tongs halfway through. Don't stir too much....you will get more juice, but it will be grainy with hard pulp.
Squeeze clamp and collect juice in a HOT, sanitized jar straight from the dishwasher.

Wipe rims clean.
Place a simmered canning lid and sanitized ring on top.
8 Quarts of homemade grape juice concentrate. Dilute with 1-2 jars of cold water and add as much sugar as you desire. It is so good, I don't know if I can go back to store bought. AND so cheap! $10 for 8 pitchers of preservative and additive free 100% juice. yum.

Tomorrow...my first attempt at grape jelly.

"Because they like to say, 'SAL-SAH'..."

What to do with 30 Tomatoes , 7 Bell Peppers, 6 Jalapenos, and 3 Serrano Peppers all ripe at the same time?

Make 9 QUARTS of SALSA!

Things I learned:
Don't cut your thumb open on the first bell pepper.
Don't cut your thumb at all, you idiot.
Canning anything takes forever.
It is more fun with a friend.
It is even MORE fun with 80's music.
Canning while the husband is out of town is an excellent idea, because even if you start the process at 8:00 pm, you will be canning salsa until 2:30am and end up sleeping over in said friend's guest room with your kids.
BLT's with avocado are awesome.
The recipe calls for 1/4 cup of canning salt. NOT to be mistaken with 1 cup. Oopsie!

Stay tuned for ROUND 2, where I make another batch (minus any salt), open every bottle of salsa that we made last weekend, mix it with the new batch, and re-bottle everything.
What a pain!
Good thing I have more vegetables.
And a good friend to do my canning with.
I actually glad I screwed it up, because now we get to play Suzie Homemaker again.
Thanks for your kitchen, Kasey!
I'm so glad you take everything I say 'with a grain of salt'.

"How Do You Not SMELL That Peppa?!"

A great money saving tip to cut the grocery spending is to buy peppers in bulk when they are in season and on sale, then dice and freeze them. Nothing compares to the taste of fresh green peppers, but if you're going to cook them anyway, you can't tell the difference if they've been properly frozen.

We have a HAUL of green bell peppers in the garden. I picked a few the other night, and counted 12 more that would be ready to be harvested by the end of this week. I had hoped my tomatoes would ripen at the same time and I could use them in salsa, but everything seems to be on a schedule of it's own and the tomatoes are turning red only a few at a time. They are delicious, though!

Preserving Sweet Peppers:
Unlike green beans and other veggies, there is no need to blanch your peppers before freezing them!
Just wash and remove the stem, seeds and membranes.
Slice or dice peppers and place in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Jelly roll pans work nicely, because you don't have to worry about spilling peppers over the edge if you are clumsy like me and your tray tips a little.

Place in freezer for 1-2 hrs until pepper pieces are individually frozen.
Doing this prevents the peppers from sticking to each other in the bag later and creating one giant hunk of pepper.
Transfer to a ziplock freezer bag, label, and place immediately back into the freezer.

Using your frozen peppers:
Now you can reach in and scoop out any desired amount of pre-sliced bell peppers to add to any dish, any time of the year! Peppers stay pretty crisp, and even after being frozen they are still great for fajitas, pepper steak sandwiches, or this quick dinner:

I call anything that can me prepared from pantry/freezer items alone a "pantry meal", meaning it requires no fresh ingredients from the grocery store. I added some shredded cheddar and tomatoes from the yard to mine last night, but we usually eat it without the fresh ingredients.
We sort of came up with this recipe after eating Emily's fettuccine recipe. Aaron is not a noodle lover (I know-sad, right?) so I tried to make a healthier version of her delicious fettuccine using similar ingredients, but mixed with rice instead of noodles. We love it, and so do the kids. Enjoy!

Sausage Bowls:
1lb Lean Jimmy Dean Pork Sausage
2 cups Instant Brown Rice
1 c diced bell pepper
1/2 c diced fresh mushrooms or 1 small can diced mushrooms
1-2 sliced green onions
1 TBS olive oil
oregano
garlic salt
italian seasonings

directions:
Brown sausage in oil
add peppers, mushrooms, green onions
season to taste with above listed goodness.
Cover for 1 minute to cook veggies to preferred texture, I like them with a little crunch, Aaron likes his overcooked, so I usually dish my serving out and let it sit on the stove another minute before he loads his plate.

Serve over cooked rice. If you are not a brown rice fan, use white, or mix one cup of each. The rice absorbs the oil and flavors from the meat and it is SO yummy!
Simple, filling, and delicious, and now you too can say,

"Ooooh, it smells like peppa up in here!"

Peanuuuuut, Peanut Butter! And JELLY!

Once a year...
I buy berries.

Lots.
and LOTS of berries.
And I make my own jam.
LOTS and LOTS of jam.

This year I recruited the help of Sleeping Beauty, and the Naked Chef.
We smashed the berries.
Changed "costumes" and put hair "pretties" in.
Added sugar and fruit pectin.
Took breaks for "flying lessons" and removal of the hair pretties while the pectin cooked.
Poured the finished result into containers, and....

TA-DA! Our one year supply of jam.

We go through 2 of those little guys a month, so I made 24 jars worth.
That's 176 ounces of Strawberry, Raspberry-Blackberry, and Mixed Berry Jam.
Freaking awesome jam.

On Being a Domestic Goddess...

Oh don't I just feel like Suzy Homemaker today...

I busted out the wheat grinder (love it!) today, and turned 7 cups of this:

(hard white winter wheat)

into 10 cups of this:

(freshly ground whole wheat flour)

Then while this was mixing and rising...
I turned 8 cups of this:
into 13 cups of this...to make into cornbread another day.
I made 3 loaves of homemade whole wheat bread from scratch. I felt like the Little Red Hen when I asked my kids, "who will help me to grind the wheat?" only to be rejected with dissappointing responses that were all too similar to the "'Not I', said the rat...'Not I' said the cat....'Not I' said the pig" in the fairytale.

Lucky for the girls...this Little Red-Aproned Hen decided to be nice and share her fresh, tasty bread with the cat, the rat, and the pig at dinner time...but not until after they had "Ooohed" and "Aaahhhed" properly over it's deliciousness. The recipe I used is one that I made every two weeks when we lived in Green Bay. I made it once, shortly after we moved here, but it turned out awful! I decided to give it another shot today, hoping that my failure before was due to lousy yeast. I am SO glad I made another attempt, because IT. IS. AWESOME!

I'm also glad that I decided to make bread right after milling the grains, because the aroma created in the process of grinding wheat is not a good one...it sort of smells like cooking oil...but very green, like the smell right after mowing the lawn.
Now my home smells like a bakery. YUMMY!
here's the recipe...

90 Minute Bread:
...I guess I should call it 100 minute bread if you include the 10 minutes it took to grind the wheat...but I did other things while the bread was rising and baking, like cook dinner, clean up an ENTIRE roll of toilet paper that the girls wrapped themselves up like "mummies" in while the grinder was going and they were left to their own demise, blow dry the hair of all the doll house people that the girls bathed in the dollhouse bathtub using the water from Quin's sippy cup that Reese opened...oh and don't worry-she also added 2 squirts of hand soap so it could be a BUBBLE bath. They had no idea why any of this should bother me. I guess it shouldn't, they were only playing...and having a good time, but seriously?! TEN MINUTES Of neglect and this is what happens? I made Reese roll the toilet paper back up and she will be using it all week as a consequence for being wasteful, but they thought that was a game too, and Quincy kept laughing and saying, "Again?"
Oh well. At least the bread is freaking good.

Ok, sorry for the tangent...here's the recipe for real this time.
100 Minute Bread:
4 cups warm water
4 TBS (or packages) active dry yeast
8 TBS sugar
4 TBS vegetable oil (can substitute 1/2 out with applesauce... I chose not to this time, because I was testing the recipe in this climate)
8 cups whole wheat flour
1 TBS honey (not raw...from the bear) optional*

Dissolve yeast in water, let prep a minute or two
Mix all ingredients in a kitchen aid (adding flour last-1 cup at a time)
Let rise 30 minutes
Pour (yeah POUR....it is a VERY sticky, runny, dough) into three greased loaf pans
Let rise another 30 minutes
Bake at 400* for 30 minutes
turn out onto wire racks and devour one entire loaf immediately with butter, honey, or homemade mixed berry freezer jam.
Let the other 2 loaves cool before transferring into large ziplock bags for storage.

MMmmmm. Yeah. The first loaf was long gone before the camera came out.
I am suprised at how much lighter the color of the bread is from using home ground flour vs. store bought whole wheat. The bread is lighter and fluffier too.