Buffy gets a workout

When my daughter started school, she announced that she wanted a Buffy the Vampire Slayer lunch box. That required some hunting on eBay. We paid something absurd like $17 for it but she's  still using it four plus years later.

She's been asking to pack, because she realizes school lunches are mostly crap. We haven't had much money in the grocery budget and school lunches are cheap-- especially since she qualifies for reduced cost lunch.

But today is Tuesday, and Tuesday is processed chicken crap day, usually some form of "popcorn chicken." I have plenty of processed crap here that the grandparents brought while child at the stomach virus last week. 

So I packed a lunch that combined processed with wholesome at minimal cost.  

So here goes:

- cloth napkin

- juice box

- danimals yogurt (blame the grandparents) with an ice cube since lunch is at one

- big old apple

- grandma's leftover meatloaf (homemade) with ketchup and baby leaf lettuce on one slice of Italian white bread (grandparents brought that too. I really need to start baking bread again)

- homemade, home canned dill pickles made from local cucumbers and dill we grew ourselves

She's really excited.

Easy dinners

This weekend groceries are low and I threw my back out hand-washing pizza pans at work. 

Last night my husband fried some hot dogs and tossed out some chips, made more palatable by special condiments like wasabi mustard and my own homemade pickles from dill that I grew in my own garden.

Tonight I made a sauce of garlic, sesame oil, honey and low sodium soy sauce for some frozen sugar snap peas. We served these with boxed mac and cheese made with coconut milk and adding bits of bacon leftover from a bacon-and-egg dinner Thursday night.

Fish stick sandwiches

This morning I made mega smoothies-- bananas, strawberries, homemade almond butter, Carnation breakfast essentials vanilla flavor, almond milk and strawberry Noosa.

Lunch was salad wraps with Parmesan cheese and a side of baked potato sliced and smothered in butter, extra virgin olive oil, salt and garlic pepper.

Now, for dinner, I'm making fish stick sandwiches since my husband (who loves fish sticks) blames the child for their ending up in the cart at the grocery store.

Child will eat raw carrots as a side.

The sandwiches will be served on grocery store bakery bread, with romaine lettuce and homemade tartar sauce.

This was my original attempt at tartar sauce:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2012/05/flounder-with-homemade-tartar-sauce.html?m=1

Today I used about:
- 1/4 or so Miracle Whip
- about 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- about 2 teaspoons honey mustard
- 2 dill pickle spears, diced, home canned from last summer's garden
- 3/4 teaspoon garlic pepper

Spicy pickles

I started some pickle liquid this morning making this into my brine:
- Ball dill pickle mix
- Indian chili pepper (powder)
- crushed red pepper
- white vinegar
- a few splashes apple cider vinegar
- water

For the "pickles"
- 4 medium pickling cucumbers (from my garden)
- 1 spicy pepper (from my garden)
- 1/2 a large red onion

Kale and tuna

Daughter made lunch today. Open faced tuna sandwiches with spinach dip and cheese on an English muffin, kale chips, and homemade basil pickles from the pickling cucumbers from our garden.

More garden pickling

Three more fairly large pickling cucumbers so we made three more jars of pickles and let our neighbor friend help.

We made one dill jar, one basil dill and one chive dill. (Using herbs from my garden.)

We used the Ball Blue Book as our guide.

Mini burgers and canned goods

I made cinnamon raisin bread and multigrain bisquits today.

So for dinner my husband made little slider burgers while I made a side of fresh steamed broccoli.

We opened bread and butter pickles and firecracker carrots from our canning session with Gayle at the end of July.

Firecrackers

FIRECRACKERS
Gayle saw this made many years ago on Good Eats on the Food Network. She adores the host, Alton Brown and was quite sad when she gave up cable and no longer could watch the show.

Ingredients
1-1/4 pounds Baby Carrots
1 cup Water
1 cup Sugar
1-1/2 cups Cider Vinegar
1 teaspoon Onion Powder
1/2 teaspoon Mustard Seed
1-1/2 teaspoons Kosher salt
1 teaspoon Chili flakes
2  Dried chilies

Instructions
Place carrots in a spring-top glass jar. Bring the water, sugar, cider vinegar, onion powder, mustard seeds, salt, and chili flakes to a boil in a non-reactive saucepan. Boil for 4 minutes.

Slowly pour the hot pickling liquid over the carrots, filling the jar to the top. Place the chilies in the jar. Allow the carrots to cool before sealing. Refrigerate for 2 days up to 1 week.

We cut up the chilies and added them to the carrots, made the brine and packed them in pint size jars. We processed them in a hot water bath for 15-20 minutes.

Dilly Beans

Haven't tried this one yet, I made my own version.

The first one is from the Ball Blue Book, 1974

DILLY BEANS

2 pounds green beans, trimmed
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
4 cloves garlic
4 heads dill
2.5 cups water
2.5 cups vinegar
1/4 c salt

Pack beans into hot jars leaving 1/4 inch head space. To each pint add 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper, 1 clove garlic and 1 head dill. (Mom put this on the bottom!) Combine remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Pour, boiling hot over beans, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Adjust caps. Process pints and quarts 10 minutes in boiling water bath.

Yields 4 pints

Note: let beans stand for two weeks before tasting to allow the flavor to develop.


Gayle is sure that this is the recipe her mom used (the page is awful stained in the book). Her sister disagrees and thinks it's this one from the Better Homes and Garden Home Canning Cookbook. (1973) The ingredients are similar. Again, a stained page.

2 pounds green beans, trimmed
1 cup white vinegar
2 tablespoons pickling salt
2 teaspoons dillweed
1/4 teaspon cayenne
2 cloves garlic, crushed.

Yields 4 pints. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Pickling

Some of Gayle's mom's pickling recipes that we made on Monday.

Her mom's recipes were short on details. All should be processed in a boiling hot water bath leaving a 1/4-1/2 inch headspace when packing the jars.

Make sure you use new lids and be sure reused rings are clean and free of rust. Jars should be clean and hot when you fill them. (Straight from the dishwasher is great. If you do them by hand, fill them with hot water to reheat them.) Also put the lids and rings in a bowl of hot water to heat them.

Use a jar grabber to remove jars from pot. Place on the table or counter that has been prepared with a layer of newspaper, covered by a kitchen towel.

In a few minutes you should hear them start to "pop".

In 24 hours check your seals. If the lid moves up and down, it's not sealed. Put those in the fridge and eat them!

BASIC BRINE (many of Gayle's moms recipes start with or say to use "Basic Brine.")

3 cups vinegar
3 cups water
1/4 cup salt

Adjust volume depending on quantity that you are canning.


PICKLED BEANS, CARROTS and CAULIFLOWER

2 pounds cauliflower
1-1/2 pounds green beans
2 pounds carrots
1 tsp tumeric
1-1/2 tsp mustard seed
1-1/4 top celery seed

Cook each vegetable separately. Drain. In a pan combine the turmeric, mustard seed, celery seed and basic brine and brine to a boil. Pack veggies in jars and cover with liquid. Seal. Process 15 minutes.

YIELDS 8 pints


PICKLED MUSTARD WAX BEANS  

4 c. vinegar
1 c. water
3 c. sugar
1 c. prepared mustard
6 qts. blanched yellow beans

Cut beans in pieces or to the size of the jar. (Mom always did the size of the jar.) Blanch. Boil brine. Pack beans in hot jars and cover with boiling brine. Clean and seal. Process 10-15 minutes.


BREAD AND BUTTER PICKLES (sweet and salty)   

6 large cucumbers, sliced
4 onions, sliced
1/4 cup salt
1 pint white vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon mustard seed

Use fresh cucumbers; wash and slice. Slice onions. Mix vegetables with salt and let stand 1 hour.

Drain and rinse with 2 cups cold water. Combine vinegar, sugar, celery and mustard seeds and heat to boiling. Cook 3 minutes.

Pack vegetables into jars, add hot vinegar mixture, leaving 1/4" headspace. Seal at once and process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Store pickles in a cool, dark place. Ready to eat in 3-4 weeks. Keeps for up to 1 year.

Makes about 6 pints.




BREAD AND BUTTER PICKLES (savory)

12 medium cucumbers
6 onions (sliced)
2 cups vinegar
2 cups water
2 tsp celery seed
2 tsp mustard seed
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp turmeric

Wash cucumbers and slice. Let stand 2 hours in salt solution (1/2 salt to 2 quarts water) Bring rest of ingredients to boil and boil 5 minutes. Add veggies and let heat thoroughly. Jar and seal. Makes 6 pints.

Pickled Green Beans

During the weekend, I picked the ripe green beans in the garden. I never got around to cooking them. I was going to toss them in the compost when Gayle suggested using the 100 degree heat to pickle them. Why not?

So into the pint jar went salt, pepper and lots of garlic. Two handfuls of dill from the garden. Child shoved in green beans. I filled jar with equal parts white vinegar, balsamic vinegar and water.

In the sun it goes.

More pickling

The first jar of solar pickles lasted less than 2 days. Child and I decided to repeat the experiment, using up our leftover farm fresh cucumbers and carrots.

We used one pint sized ball jar for each.

Ingredients
(in the order we put them in the jar)

In the cuke jar
- a big handful of dill from the garden
- between 1/2 and 3/4 teaspoon fresh ground salt
- 3/4 teaspoon minced garlic
- 3/4 of a large farm fresh cucumber, sliced, and artfully stuffed into jar
- 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
- fill half the jar with apple cider vinegar
- add 2 teaspoons It's a Dilly (I'm hoping the lemon flavor will add some pizzazz to my pickles)
- fill the rest of the jar with water
SHAKE

For the carrots:
- large amounts of dill from the garden
- 1 heaping teaspoon minced garlic
- 3/4 teaspoon fresh ground salt
- 3/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
- carrots, in sticks, to fill jar
- fill half of jar with apple cider vinegar
- fill the rest of the jar with water

Green-laden ham sandwiches

Today's sandwiches made me wish I had more of everything for another round, but I don't. Sad.

-Archer Farm Seven Grain bread
-a hearty layer of Lost Gourmet's kale-cream cheese- zucchini dip
- lettuce, sorrel and spinach from the garden
- the last of the homemade pickles
- a handful of the market pantry six blend Italian cheese
- market pantry applewood ham slices

That was practically a Target/garden sandwich.

Using the sun

Although I don't have the right ingredients, and we all know I never do, I decided to harness the power of the sun and make new pickles. Gayle did some research and sent her mom's recipe, which I posted here.

We don't have pickle cukes, but since we have some from the farmers market and they are super fresh and crisp. I plan on eating these later today or tomorrow so I'm not worried about them getting soggy.

While looking in the basement for my spare butter dishes, I found one of those really big jars which I washed out and started a batch of sun tea in.

I went out to the garage and retrieved my Ball jars, the pint sized ones. Washed one and put some garlic, probably too much, and a big handful of dill from the garden in the bottom. Added salt. Had the child fill it with cucumber slices and tossed in some carrot sticks.

Poured in some apple cider vinegar, filled the rest of the jar with water, layered the lids on, shook it well, and put it in the sun beside the tea.

Now, we wait.

Sun pickles

Got this message today from a friend:

"My sister brought up "sun pickles". I thought, what fun. Think E and mommy would love it.

I have quart jars if you want to do this...

Use qt size canning jars. In the bottom of each jar place
1 piece of dill weed stem
1 clove of garlic

Now pack into the jar as many whole pickle cukes as you can. (Our mom used the little ones.)

Add 1 tsp kosher salt
1/4 cup vinegar
water to fill jar

Close jar with canning lid (got those too!) and put out in the sun for the afternoon.  You'll have nice crispy pickles. I don't know about long term storage. Ours never lasted that long.

I looked online for others.

Naturally knocked-up slices hers:
http://www.naturallyknockedup.com/recipe-dill-sun-pickles/

And this one from cooks.com uses a sun tea jar. That's a lot of pickles!
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1836,144160-245199,00.html

there is many, many more on the web.

If you make them, blog it. I'll come over and help eat them!"

I was very much looking forward to this, and almost went out to the garage to look for my jars when I discovered with horror that my tortoise ate all but one of my 12 cucumber plants. Don't worry, she got the last one the next day. :-(

Cornichons

So my mom brought me these cornichons today... yes, because they were French. Stay tuned as I incorporate them into our lives.

Chicken Salad on Pecan-Raisin Bread

The chicken salad I made this morning came out nice, but what made the sandwich was the bread.

I served with fresh strawberries and "new pickles," both from the farmers market.

My husband hates pickles, but he likes the new pickles because they are salted cucumbers more than pickles. My husband hates vinegar .

I am posting the photos from lunch, because presentation is important. And I like to share.