28 Eylül 2012 Cuma

Eat Make Grow Thursday Blog Hop #7

To contact us Click HERE

Welcome to this week's Eat Make Grow Blog Hop where you share what you have been eating with your family, growing in your garden or making with all your creative impulses. Eat Make Grow is a collective link party that is shared across three blogs and runs every Thursday-Tuesday. Whichever blog that you choose to link up your post, it will show up on all three sites! Eat Make Grow is a way to share with many people posts about your domestic doings, whether that’s growing veggies, hosting parties, sewing, mixing up cleaning supplies, or trying out a new recipe. We want to learn about it! Every week, we will feature the most popular link, and one chosen by the the host. This week, your host is Foy.

Your Hosts 
Foy from Garden. Cook. Write. Repeat. Marigold from Hideous! Dreadful! Stinky!
Miranda from Pocket Pause




We’re not big fans of rules so there are just two of them:
No big corporation or business advertising or promotional posts. Let’s not dilute Eat Make Grow with junky posts. We don’t mind helping out the little home grown businesses of independent bloggers or handmade merchants (Etsy, etc.).
Please link your posts back to one of the hosting blogs. This is a common blog hop courtesy. This link helps build the Eat Make Grow community by sending your readers to all of the other participant’s posts. We will feature two posts each week and we will only consider posts that have a link back. A text link is fine, or you can grab this button and put it anywhere on your blog:


Our featured bloggers this week:



The most clicked on post was how to make Cream of Mushroom Soup from Camille at Growing Up Gabel.  She shares her recipe for making your own cream of mushroom so that you can make all those delicious casseroles, soups and other recipes with out all the sodium and processed gunk in canned soup.  Her recipe is only five ingredients!  I love the idea of having this on hand in the freezer. 


Foy's hostess pick of the week is Michelle's at Simply, Live, Love: Homestead Update 9/4 ~ Ready to Build our Passive House!  I got so excited reading about their plans for a Passive House.  What a boon to have a Certified Green Builder husband and a brother-in-law architect. It's interesting to see common sense and advanced technology working together in a house.  
Is one of these featured posts yours? Grab our “Featured Blogger” button to post on your blog and show off how cool you are. You can also visit our Pinterest Eat Make Grow Featured Bloggers pin board to see some of our past favorites.


Show us what you've done this week!




Gönderen zaman: Hiç yorum yok:

Harvest Time

To contact us Click HERE
Sophie and Josh have been leading the charge this September for both the CSA vegetables and animals.

Harvest season is in full swing.  I have a peck of peppers in the garage, a bushel of apples in the laundry room, tomatoes simmering on the stove, tomatoes in the dehydrator and the ingredients for salsa just waiting their turn in the boiling water canner.  Oh and a herd of fruit flies multiplying on the kitchen counter.

Here's what the truck at Hawkin's farm looked like this morning as we prepared to divide the vegetable shares.  Those squiggly light green squash on the right are 'Rampicantes'.  We decided they look like undiscovered creatures living in the deepest darkest part of the ocean.

Coming soon, I'll share some of these recipes for how I am preserving all this biomass, but right now I just need to keep slicing, stewing and freezing.

In the mean time here are a few timely posts:

  • The Great Tomato Post - All my tomato posts from 2010 together
  • Garden Veggies Roasted with Polenta - Recipe
  • Making and Freezing Fresh Basil Pesto - Recipe
  • Crunchy Fall Apple Crisp - Recipe
  • Acorn Squash stuffed with Wild Rice - Recipe


What's going on in your kitchen and garden this week?
Gönderen zaman: Hiç yorum yok:

Eat Make Grow Thursday Blog Hop #8

To contact us Click HERE

Welcome to this week's Eat Make Grow Blog Hop where you share what you have been eating with your family, growing in your garden or making with all your creative impulses. Eat Make Grow is a collective link party that is shared across three blogs and runs every Thursday-Tuesday. Whichever blog that you choose to link up your post, it will show up on all three sites! Eat Make Grow is a way to share with many people posts about your domestic doings, whether that’s growing veggies, hosting parties, sewing, mixing up cleaning supplies, or trying out a new recipe. We want to learn about it! Every week, we will feature the most popular link, and one chosen by the the host. This week, your host is Marigold!

Your Hosts 
Marigold from Hideous! Dreadful! Stinky!
Foy from Garden. Cook. Write. Repeat. Miranda from Pocket Pause

We’re not big fans of rules so there are just two of them:

No big corporation or business advertising or promotional posts. Let’s not dilute Eat Make Grow with junky posts. We don’t mind helping out the little home grown businesses of independent bloggers or handmade merchants (Etsy, etc.).
Please link your posts back to one of the hosting blogs. This is a common blog hop courtesy. This link helps build the Eat Make Grow community by sending your readers to all of the other participant’s posts. We will feature two posts each week and we will only consider posts that have a link back. A text link is fine, or you can grab this button and put it anywhere on your blog:
Our featured bloggers this week:



This week, your host is Marigold!  Our most popular post last week was Little Homestead on the Hill's Filling Up My Freezer. Lisa Lynn shows us what her freezer looks like when she, quite literally, got the whole hog. By the way, I have never been great at thinking ahead in terms of food preservation, but since starting this hop, I have learned so much and have actually started filling up my own freezer with extra veggies from our CSA boxes and such.


And my favorite post last week was Noelle's Cinnamon Sugar Doughnut Mini-Muffins. That's right. I said Doughnut Muffin. I don't think I need to say any more.

Is one of these featured posts yours? Grab our “Featured Blogger” button to post on your blog and show off how cool you are. You can also visit our Pinterest Eat Make Grow Featured Bloggers pin board to see some of our past favorites.



And as a reminder, PLEASE remember to add a text link or button for Eat Make Grow to your blog when you link up. We've had to pass up lots of great posts to feature because of not having a backlink :(

Gönderen zaman: Hiç yorum yok:

How to Freeze Sweet and Hot Peppers

To contact us Click HERE

Can you say "bumper crop of peppers"?  Yes, 2012 was the summer of the pepper.  I harvested this lovely half bushel of peppers at Hawkins Farm.  It's mostly wrinkly ones or ones with holes or other issues. The kind that aren't nice enough to go in the shares.  And even after I picked these guys there were still tons more.  Every plant of bell peppers has at least 10 peppers in various stages of development.  The banana and hot peppers easily have twice that many.  I hadn't wanted to freeze peppers.  They weren't in my Plan to Preserve.  But since they are prolific this year, I added them to my list.  
When I think of what a pepper costs at the grocery store, I can't help but feel giddy about having this many to put up for the winter.  Right now a green pepper is 88 cents and red, orange or yellow pepper is $1.69.  The organic peppers are more than twice that!  These are even better local *and* organic.  I probably have $100 worth of peppers right there.  Four cups chopped pepper went into canned salsa and the rest I am freezing.  
Frozen peppers are not as good as fresh peppers for salads or other places where fresh is best.  However, they are excellent for recipes where they get cooked like soups, egg scrambles and curries.  
Here is how I do it.  
How to Freeze Peppers
Start by cleaning all of your peppers well.  Sometimes there are included lobes that make it difficult.  I just cut those open and scrub them out.  Then I cut the pepper in half, remove the stem and seeds, remove any icky spots and cut into the size I want to use.  Look at the recipes you make most in the winter to decide whether you want strips or cubes.  I cut strips for pizza toppings, dices for soups, stews and scrambles and chunks for roasting and curries.  
You do not blanch peppers.

Next arrange your cut pepper onto a metal baking sheet in a single layer.  It is important that the tray and the peppers are dry.  Extra water will make prying the frozen peppers off the sheet a trial.  

Then put the tray of peppers flat into the freezer.  Make sure you can fit your tray into the freezer first.  I balance mine on top of the sliding basket thing and it has to go under a metal divider bar thing too.


Several hours later the peppers will be frozen solid.  Use a spatula to scrape them off the tray quickly and put them into a zip top bag before they defrost. Label the bag with the date and note if they are sweet or hot peppers.  Then put them back into the freezer and they are ready to go when you are cooking.  Pretty easy, no?

Hot Peppers
The process is the same for hot or sweet peppers.  However, if you are working with hot pepper wear latex gloves.  I didn't realize one of the peppers was hot.  I thought it was a banana, but it was a Hungarian wax.  An hour later my fingers were burning from the capsaicin oil.

I washed my hands well with dish soap and then used a scrub of one part olive oil and one part white sugar to remove any remaining hot pepper oils.  In about an hour the tingling was gone completely.  And as a bonus, my cuticles were the cleanest they have been this growing season!

What do you have for a bumper crop this season?  
Gönderen zaman: Hiç yorum yok:

Eat Make Grow Thursday Blog Hop #9

To contact us Click HERE

Welcome to this week's Eat Make Grow Blog Hop where you share what you have been eating with your family, growing in your garden or making with all your creative impulses. Eat Make Grow is a collective link party that is shared across three blogs and runs every Thursday-Tuesday. Whichever blog that you choose to link up your post, it will show up on all three sites! Eat Make Grow is a way to share with many people posts about your domestic doings, whether that’s growing veggies, hosting parties, sewing, mixing up cleaning supplies, or trying out a new recipe. We want to learn about it! Every week, we will feature the most popular link, and one chosen by the the host. This week, your host is Miranda!
Your Hosts Miranda from Pocket PauseMarigold from Hideous! Dreadful! Stinky! Foy from Garden. Cook. Write. Repeat. 

We’re not big fans of rules so there are just two of them:

No big corporation or business advertising or promotional posts. Let’s not dilute Eat Make Grow with junky posts. We don’t mind helping out the little home grown businesses of independent bloggers or handmade merchants (Etsy, etc.).
Please link your posts back to one of the hosting blogs. This is a common blog hop courtesy. This link helps build the Eat Make Grow community by sending your readers to all of the other participant’s posts. We will feature two posts each week and we will only consider posts that have a link back. A text link is fine, or you can grab this button and put it anywhere on your blog:



Our featured bloggers this week:

Who doesn't love a good DIY? Lazy people, i guess. Our blog hoppers must not be lazy in that case, because our most popular post came from Brown Thumb Mama. Her submission last week had some great ideas for projects you can do at home yourself, including this yummy looking taco seasoning. I've been making all of my seasoning blends for years. Although i love that addicting MSG flavor, i'd rather not sprinkle it onto everything i eat.


As some of you may know, among my multitude of businesses and homesteading skills includes soapmaking and concocting other herbal remedies. I make and sell herbal salves, but they really are so easy to make yourself! I have yet to try using plantain (a common and very soothing herb/weed) but love calendula and chamomile. Maybe These Light Footsteps will try a new blend sometime soon. Check out her great post (including links to info on Plantain) on how to make a healing salve right at home. Fancy tins not necessary, but certainly attractive and professional looking.

Is one of these featured posts yours? Grab our “Featured Blogger” button to post on your blog and show off how cool you are. You can also visit our Pinterest Eat Make Grow Featured Bloggers pin board to see some of our past favorites.



And as a reminder, PLEASE remember to add a text link or button for Eat Make Grow to your blog when you link up. We've had to pass up lots of great posts to feature because of not having a backlink :(



Gönderen zaman: Hiç yorum yok:

27 Eylül 2012 Perşembe

What I’m Having for Dinner: Roast Pork Loin

To contact us Click HERE
My stay with family in Western New York is quickly coming toan end, and I’ll be traveling back to San Francisco on Friday. I do have onemore new video recipe to post before I go, and as a little tease, I’ll say itwill certainly be a controversial one.
In the meantime, I thought I’d repost this brined roast porkloin recipe, since this is what I’m making for dinner tonight. I’m sure I’lltweak it somehow, I always do, but I’ll use the same basic technique seenherein. To read the original post, and get the ingredients, follow this link. Enjoy!
Gönderen zaman: Hiç yorum yok:

Ham with Red Eye Gravy – Something From Nothing is Something

To contact us Click HERE
In this age of cutting back on fat whenever and wherever wecan (and by “we” I mean “you”), we forget that throughout most of history, thiswas the complete opposite. Fat was a concentrated, powerful fuel that literallykept people going, and this red eye gravy is a little taste of those times.
The challenge in tough times is to make those greasy pandrippings more palatable, more interesting, and more delicious. It’s not likefamilies struggling through the depression had pots of demiglace reducing onthe stove, or bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon sitting around to deglaze theircast iron skillets – heck, they probably didn’t even have a decent Merlot. Sothey used what they had; like a splash of leftover coffee.
Is this a recipe that would have been developed based solelyon how awesome it tastes? Probably not, but that’s not to say it isn’t stillvery tasty. It is. The way the bitter coffee marries with the sweet, smoky fatis far from unpleasant, and infinitely better than simply pouring the pandrippings over your food.
By the way, the name apparently comes from the fact thatwhen the sauce is poured in a bowl and brought to the table, the fat and coffeeseparate, it takes on the appearance of a big, reddish eye. Of course there’sanother legend about how General Andrew Jackson told a hung-over cook to make agravy for his ham that was as red as his bloodshot eyes.
I’m pretty sure whoever made up that story also had very redeyes, but not from whiskey. Anyway, like I said in the video, I did this asmore of a culinary experiment than a “you have to try this” recipe, butregardless, I think it’s an interesting dish, and one I’d be interested inhearing about if you do try. Enjoy!

Ingredients for 2 portions:1/2 cup of chopped fatty ham scraps1 tbsp vegetable oil4 thick slices of ham1 tsp flourabout 2/3 cup black coffeeblack pepper and cayenne to taste
Gönderen zaman: Hiç yorum yok:
Kaydol: Kayıtlar (Atom)