Grilling

My husband realized that we hadn't had our grill out this summer... We both had a hankering for hamburgers so...

We made this masterpiece.

Local corn, silk removed, soaked in ice water 15 minutes than sprinkled with A1 dry rub and put on the grill for about 25 minutes. Turning frequently.

Hamburgers from the freezer. My husband had made hamburgers the last time he bought ground beef. We have a small charcoal grill, and he didn't expect them to cook so fast so dinner was 4 pm.

Local zucchini. Sliced. Marinaded in balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing and also sprinkled with the rub.

Apple Butter 2013

I slept until 9 this morning, but that didn't stop me from having apple butter assembled in the crock pot by 10.

The family starting peeling and chopping and we had the crock pot full of apple chunks.

My daughter scooped about a tablespoon of local raw honey into the pot with some cinnamon and ground cloves. I poured in some lemon juice. We set it on high, put the lid on, and stirred it every hour.

At 1 p.m. we had applesauce and I scooped it out to have with lunch.

The whole house smells like apples and the flavor was delightful but a tad tart. We used Jonagolds from a local farm.

By 4 p.m., the applesauce had turned a lovely caramel color and I removed the crockpot lid so more liquid can evaporate. As soon as the liquid boils off, I can process in a hot water bath.

After about seven hours, the last hour with the lid off, I loaded the dishwasher with my Ball jars and got the hot water bath ready.

It's been about eight hours now and the dishwasher is approaching the rinse cycle and the apple butter looks like this:

My daughter is getting so adept at filling jars, I couldn't keep up! She also ate the last jar-- you know the one that wasn't quite full enough to process?

Roasting peppers and tomatoes

I greased a baking sheet, put my oven on broil and prepped some peppers and tomatoes from the garden of the woman who owns the chickens we are watching.

I took one yellow and one red pepper and halved them, cleaning out the stems, seeds and pith. I laid them on the sheet. I also added some small tomatoes of various varieties.

I placed the cookie sheet on the middle oven rack and broiled for five minutes. I pulled the cookie sheet out and sprinkled the tomatoes with garlic powder and four color pepper. I flipped the peppers.

Put everything in again for another five minutes.

Shook the tomatoes around and flipped the peppers one last time.

Broiled a last five minutes and placed everything in my Pfaltzgraf casserole dish and covered for about 30 minutes. They will finish cooking and cool on the counter, no more heat, and then I'll peel the skin off.

Fête Nationale

Slept in this morning and since it is "Bastille Day," my husband had procured croissants from Wegmans.

Coffee, croissants and jam from the farmers market.

Lasagne soup

The title is a joke.

I made lasagne in a bread loaf pan because I only had 8 no boil lasagne noodles.

So I layered plain sauce, noodles, ricotta from Klein Farm, heaps of spinach, some garlic powder and some Italian seasoning.

I didn't do the egg and multiple cheese thing. Wanted to keep the dairy to a minimum and keep the recipe quick.

It was tasty even if it was soupy.

Farm visit

Spent $41.25 (thank you, Mr. Visa) at Klein Farm today.

Smoogurt (their yogurt smoothies) were buy one, get one free so I bought 2 blueberry, one egg nog and one vanilla maple.

I got a pound of bacon.

The medium jar of unprocessed local raw honey, a quart.

A pint of raw milk.

Garlic pepper cheddar.

Ricotta.

And a dozen jumbo eggs.

Sunday Reflections

Food is such a vital part of our lives, and since I'm finishing school, interning at USAID, trying to be productive on the library board, and laying out the GLVWG newsletter, I'm stressed. Oh, I forgot my job at Target and the job hunt. Two interviews this week.

I decided that since I'm stressed, I'm making an extra effort to eat more whole and less processed food. I have a tendency to eat less healthy when I'm stressed and then my physical performance suffers.

This week I ate a lot of salad wraps. Homemade apple butter. Fresh feta from our favorite deli.

Today I stopped at Nature's Way for some funky flours-- some gluten free, others not. My family doesn't have gluten issues but many of the gluten-free recipes incorporate a better balance of carbohydrates/protein than wheat.

I have a long history if requiring a certain blend of carbohydrates and protein with lots of good veggies to keep from self-destructing. I experience incredible weakness if I skip meals that can't be fixed without hearty protein. Testing my blood sugar reveals that it's "fine," but that I feel ravenously hungry with a blood sugar of 90.

Anyway, my adventures with flour hopefully will start with multigrain biscuits.

Then we went to Kline Farm where I got yogurt, dill Colby, a huge pumpkin, apple cider, ground beef, sausage and pork chops.

I planned to make a "quick" 4 course meal before I go to work, and realized I must be delusional.

We started with a salad and big glass of water.

Next I heated my spiced apples in my skillet with pecans and butter and served with vanilla ice cream.

Now I'm frying pork chops in the same skillet I warmed the apples to capitalize on any apple flavor. I'm also heating corn we froze off the cob this summer.

Apple butter, part 2

So if you read Saturday's post, you know I left off with a crock pot full of local apples.

Three hours later I had the best applesauce ever.

Five hours later I had runny apple butter.

At that point, I transferred it to the stove to boil off some of the liquid for an hour.

I processed in a hot water bath for ten minutes and have the equivalent of four pints of apple butter.

Really incredible stuff.

Today, I filled half the crock pot with apples with the same basic honey/spice recipe to get some more apple goodness.

Some spiced apples. Maybe applesauce. If some remain, apple butter.

Yield: 2 pints spiced apples and turkey sausage with apples in the crockpot for dinner.

BLT

My husband made BLTs for lunch: bacon purchased at a local farmer, tomato given to us from someone's garden, lettuce and spinach on a bagel (mine was everything) that my mom brought from Dunkin Donuts. Of course, I had horseradish instead of mayonnaise.

Served with a side of sweet potato chips from Aldi.

Apple Butter, part one

I have wanted to make my own apple butter for a long time. My daughter loves the stuff. I occasionally like it. My husband is not real fond of it. So if I buy it, it often goes moldy.

We have awesome apple orchards locally so the idea of canning our own apple butter makes sense.

We can preserve the butter in smaller jars that won't spoil before we use it.

I found a recipe online using the crock pot, from Simply Canning, a canner I also follow on Facebook: http://www.simplycanning.com/canning-apple-butter.html

My Better Homes and Gardens canning book also has a standard on the stove recipe, but that one requires lots of liquid. The crock pot version has no liquid.

We overfilled the crock pot with chunks of fresh apples. 6 pounds seems to be the estimate provided on the recipes. I added a few splashes of local apple cider, a few splashes lemon juice, some local raw honey (about 1/4 cup) and spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and just a pinch of ginger.

The Simply Canning web site says to cook on high one hour, stirring, and leave on low overnight. By morning you should be able to whisk instead of stir.

We've almost done loading the crock pot.