Lunch

I was out in the garden this morning checking on things. First I noticed that the storage carrots were doing very well. I had good germination in both sets of carrots. The fresh eating carrots on the other hand were pretty spotty. So I resowed the empty spots. I don't know if they will come up or not as I can't cover them or water them every day as that would be bad for the ones that are already up. But maybe they will come up.

Then I noticed that my lettuce patch was getting crowded out by the bunching onions. They were supposed to have been picked a month ago, but I picked them by thinning as I needed them. And I didn't need them all so they grew.

They grew huge. Doesn't this look more like a leek than an onion?

So I cleaned up half the lettuce patch. I'll do the other half after I've eaten these.

And how do you get rid of a buttload of bunching onions? Well I slow cooked them down until they started turning brown then put them in an onion frittata . Or maybe it is a crustless onion quiche. I did use coconut milk, so it is probably more quiche like than frittata like. The nice thing about this is that I get to eat it for three more days as all those onions made a lot.

I've been having a lot of nice lunches from the garden recently. This is a vegetable pancake. I used to call them Okonomiyaki, but mine have little in common with the Japanese version anymore except for the heavy use of cabbage. I put in herbs like parsley, cilantro, or sometimes mint. And the toppings here were strawberry chutney and a horseradish mustard sauce.

I made a chard and onion soup that was nice hot the first day and nicer cold the second day. I ate it with leftover herbed quinoa and poached eggs. And you might not know it but I had stirred some sauerkraut into the soup. The day before I'd eaten my kraut on the side, but found it tasted really good with the soup.

Most of my lunches are inspired by what needs to be eaten. I had a couple of left over tortillas so I put in some guacamole and some fried eggs. Yum. From the garden I had coleslaw, sauerkraut, and cucumber salad.

Some fried eggs over leftover rice with sides of garden broccoli and some zucchini fritters.

Probably my most common lunch looks like this. An open faced egg salad sandwich. I adore egg salad. With sides of garden veggies with a little kraut.

Have you noticed a theme with my lunches. I tend to eat eggs - lovely pastured eggs with bright orange yolks. I know they are supposed to be breakfast food here, but I eat them for lunch almost every day. I eat whatever veggies the garden gives to me, but I prefer to eat some kind of green if I have it. And I'm eating a little of my fermented food every day too. I tend to eat it in rotation. So the first made gets eaten first. But when I finally get pickles that might change (the first pickles are being made now). I don't think I'd be able to resist eating dill pickles with my egg salad sandwiches.

Gooseberry Jam

I had just under 6 pounds of gooseberries in my fridge. I decided to make jam out of it. I give gifts of jam to my neighbors at the holidays and gooseberry jam is nice as you can't buy it anywhere. I ran my gooseberries through the strainer. I should have had a nice photo of it up in action, but of course forgot about it until it was already clean.

My jam is pretty simple. I added sugar until it tasted like jam which turned out to be four cups. Though I'm a bit worried about that. I don't eat sugar much anymore and my tastes have changed. I worry that I might have made it too tart for the average American. I also added a few tablespoons of lemon juice and a tablespoon of cinnamon. I like to use my mongo big fry pan to make jam as it boils down fast.

My biggest problem with making jam is getting the gel right. I tend to over gel my jams even though I never use pectin. I think when I first learned, someone told me that when you drag a spoon through the jam it shouldn't go back into the trough right away. It kind of stuck with me. But the reality is a well done jam won't quite do that unless it has started to cool. The other issue is the fear of getting syrup instead of jam. But honestly jam that doesn't spread well is almost as bad. My last strawberry jam was like that. So I'm trying to be better. The reality is that I like soft jams, so I shouldn't be afraid of them. I hope I got this one right.

I got six half pints out of it. The last jar which I'll keep for myself is filled with foam as it was the last scraping from the pan. No matter how much foam one scrapes from the surface of the jam, more always seems to pop up. I know you can add butter to keep the foam down, but I don't like the idea of butter in my jam for some reason. Seems silly doesn't it as I've got nothing against butter on my toast before I add jam. This won't win any prizes at the fair. I doubt any of my jam would as I can see small bits of foam in every one, but I'm not going for looks. Taste is everything - and that gel issue. But still they don't look bad. The cinnamon really made my green gooseberries turn a pretty burnt red.

When it rains

When it rains I tend to do my indoor chores. Several of them involved new recipe for my garden fruits and veggies.

The first was strawberry chutney. It was pretty good, but I didn't like the amount of cumin in it. Too much. Next time I'm going to cut it down by a quarter or maybe just get rid of it all together. This wasn't a recipe to can, but just one for the fridge so I could play with it and not worry if it was acidic enough. Which is nice as I like to play around with recipes. I rarely take a recipe and follow it. I'm more likely to read 10 recipes and take what I like from each one. Or add something else.

The second was some kohlrabi fermented pickles. Katz suggests a 5% brine for your first try. So that is what I did. For me that was 1.5 tablespoons of sea salt to two cups of water. I put some herbs and spices on the bottom. Some dill, garlic, mustard seed, and dill seed. I packed the jar as tightly as I could with kohlrabi spears about a quarter of an inch thick. Then poured over my brine. I capped the top with part of a kohlrabi leaf and put on my weight. I used an airlock. I'll taste them in about three days to see how they are.

Brining the cabbage

The kohlrabi was easy, but I wanted to try making kimchi. It is a bit more daunting. I read up on it a bit to try to get an idea of what I wanted. Kimchi involves brining vegetables for 3 hours to a couple days depending on the salt content of the brine. Then you rinse it off once the vegetables are salty enough. You make a paste with rice flour cooked in water. You add seasonings to the paste. You massage the paste into the vegetables. Then you ferment it for a few days. That is so much more involved than something like a pickle or sauerkraut.

The recipe I'm giving is the one I used, though it is my own mix of things that I thought sounded good. I have no clue how it will turn out. But my hands smell really good right now, so I'm hoping it turns out well. I didn't use a whole cabbage. I didn't want to do that for my first try. So I used two pounds, which is about half a cabbage. I don't have diakon radishes, much less the Korean radishes, so I used my turnips instead. Also I can't eat peppers, so mine is not spicy and it won't have that pretty red color. I thought about using some of the last of my other radishes up to give it a pink color instead, but opted not to.

My weirdness in this recipe is dried cherries. I've never seen a kimchi with them. I have seen one with raisins so I figured it can't be too crazy. I would have loved to put an Asian pear into it instead of honey, but I didn't have one. I did have an apple but it has been sitting around my fridge for a while. I figured fruit that has seen better days is better for cooking than for fermenting.

Daphne's First Try Kimchee

• 2 lbs Chinese cabbage sliced in 1/2" strips
• 4 oz Japanese turnips julienned
• 1 carrot julienned
• 3 T salt

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• 1 T sweet rice flour
• 1/2 c water
• 1/4 c white parts of green onions
• 1" length of ginger grated
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/4 c cilantro
• 1/2 T fish sauce
• 2 t salt
• 2 T honey

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• 1/2 c green onions (green part) cut into 1 1/2" length then quartered the other direction
• 1/4 c dried cherries, chopped

Mix the first four ingredients together. I put it in a 2 quart mason jar but any non reactive container is fine. Cover with water and weight it down. Let it sit for six hours.

To make the paste dissolve the rice flour in the water and cook until it becomes gelatinous. Let it cool. Mix all the rest of the ingredients in that group (through the honey) and put it in a small food processor and process until smooth.

Mix everything together in a bowl. Then tamp down into a quart jar until the liquid comes to the top and over the vegetables (if it doesn't let it sit a couple hours and try again). Put a cabbage (or in my case a kohlrabi) leaf over the top to hold things down and weight. Cap the jar with an airlock. Let sit for three days then move to the fridge and enjoy.

I had about a cup leftover from this. The recipe would probably be more accurate for a quart jar with about 1 1/2 lbs of cabbage. But the extra cup won't go to waste. I put that in a half pint jar and put a lid on it. It wasn't an airlock. Currently I only have wide mouth lids with holes for airlocks. I might have to get a few for smaller jars. I could see doing a pint of turnips some day. Or maybe carrots.

Now they sit decorating my dining room. They are right next to my jars of seeds. Mustard seed, fennel, and dill. I'm going to test the sauerkraut again on Thursday I think. I just hope I like it. It was kind of salty the first time I tried and not nearly sour enough for my tastes. Oh I hope I like these. It is an easy way to preserve a lot of cabbage.

Consequences of Planting Corn

Rose arbor entrance to the garden

The other day when I was planting the corn I noticed some of the rose petals were dropping on the bed. Rose petals have been used for flavoring food for centuries. I've thought about harvesting some in the past, but never had. They are just too beautiful and smell divine in the garden. Cutting off the flowers seemed too hard. But I've been reading books on Middle Eastern cuisine. Rose not an uncommon ingredient and it seems a good cuisine for my food problems. Yes it uses beans, eggplant, and peppers, but unlike something like Mexican cuisine or Indian, I can eat most of the food with just mild changes. And I love the flavors. I never knew that mint and cilantro tasted good together. What would a rose taste like?

I only picked a handful to see how I like them. They certainly made one of my prettiest harvests. I pulled the petals off and laid them on my dehydrator sheets. I didn't use the dehydrator though. I'm just letting them dry naturally. When they are almost done I'll finished them off for an hour to get the last water out. Our climate is pretty humid and herbs (or rose petals I'm assuming) can mold if I don't use my dehydrator. The house smelled so good that first day. Heavenly.

While I was planting the corn I also noticed some white roots under the nearby row cover. I don't go down that path all that much and hadn't checked on them in a while. The row cover is over the broccoli, but I often under plant with turnips. These are Japanese turnips - Oasis - and most will tell you they are best picked at about 1" in diameter. I tend to like them just as much at 2" which is good as some were pretty large.

I'm glad I noticed them before they got way too large and woody. Strangely most of the turnips were ready to pick. Usually I'll find with turnips, especially under planted turnips, that they grow large sporadically. I rarely have a row of them ready at once. Much less a whole bed of them. Most were trimmed of their leaves, but I left a bunch on. Those I sent over to my townhouse mates. I figured they might appreciate the turnip greens and if not they will end up in my compost pile anyway.

These turnips were just lovely too. I often get some root maggot damage despite the row cover. In fact I lost one broccoli plant to them near where they were growing. But I think the flies like the broccoli more than the turnips. For the cabbages it seems to be the other way around.

While I was under there I got all the weeds out, though it wasn't all that bad. And I took off any yellowing leaves from the broccoli. And of course checked out how the heads were forming. They are looking good. It won't be long now. This one seems to be the farthest along. One though - damaged but not killed by the root maggots - hasn't even started to form. It is still trying to gather enough strength for it. It is about half the size of the other plants.

Gleaning at Appleton Farm

Yesterday was my first gleaning trip of the year. I glean with the Boston Area Gleaners. We go to area farms that have produce that they aren't picking for some reason - more than they can sell, a bit past its prime, not enough workers to pick it. This time it was tatsoi and boc choy that was starting to bolt. We typically spend about three hours in the fields picking.

And no I don't keep the produce, though I could bring a small bag back if I wanted. I really didn't need either this week. The produce gets distributed to different food banks in the area.

One of the best parts about being part of the gleaners other than helping people of course, is visiting the farms. This one is part of the Trustees of the Reservation so they are big on stewardship of their land. We got to see their pastured cows being moved from one field to another. They have chickens on real grass. But the farms we visit are very diverse. And sometimes it is a small field tucked into woods. Sometimes it is a vacant lot being farmed in the city. And sometimes it coincides with my mental image of a New England farm with nice rolling hill vistas.

Lunch

My only issue with gleaning is eating lunch at the end. I get home late and then I have to cook myself something. If I were smart I'd cook it the day before and have it in the fridge. In fact I didn't even have any greens picked and in the fridge. Well except lettuce though recently I've been eating my daily salad at dinner. So after spending hours picking tatsoi on the farm, I came home and picked some tatsoi from the garden so I could eat. Tatsoi, a little garlic, olive oil, some eggs, and salt. I had some homemade tortillas in the fridge that needed eating so I crisped them up and tossed them on top.

I was still hungry so had some dessert. Mangos and strawberries. Yum. And a slice of bread with butter on the top.

Fermenting

If you all remember this year I was going to learn to ferment/culture a few things. The first one was kefir. I've been doing it for months now and it is just too easy. Kefir has grains that when it is done you sieve out and use them to start the next batch. I've elected to just use a slotted spoon and transfer it to the next jar to make more. As you can see I don't make much every day. But about 3/4 of a cup per day is certainly enough for me. I go one farther though and add lactase into my jars. Goat milk kefir doesn't have a lot of lactose, but even a little upsets my system, so I make sure all that lactose is gone. Then it sits on the counter for the day to ripen and put in the fridge for another week before it is used. It takes about three minutes of my time each morning. Easy.

In addition I've started making cultured buttermilk. I LOVE the taste of buttermilk. Goat buttermilk is thinner than cow though. I tend to use it in my homemade salad dressings and in my baked goods. It too is cultured at room temperature, so very easy to make. I started with a powdered culture and mixed it in and just put the jar on the counter for a day. Then I used the lactase drops again and put in the fridge. It tastes better after abut a week in the fridge. So good. The company I bought it from says that you can keep the culture going about four times without trouble then you should probably start again with more powdered culture. To reuse the culture I use up the jar until it just has about a quarter of the amount in and then fill it back up and put it on the counter again. I've just started doing this. And so far so good. I've found that I like having two pint jars though instead of a single quart jar. I use one until it gets down to a quarter then take it out of the fridge and culture more. While that is happening I still have the other jar that I can use. And I rotate.

They look deceptively small but they are pretty large leaves

The third one had me out picking the Michihili cabbage. Aren't the leaves just beautiful? The heads aren't full sized yet. I debated with myself on and off yesterday until I finally convinced myself to start picking them. There is that little devil's voice in my head that tells me if I wait longer it will get bigger and I'll get more. But the reality is that I can't deal with six cabbages all at once. These things are tall and hard to fit in the fridge when they are full sized. Though I've kept them a couple months in the fridge, they just wouldn't fit.

Once it was picked the question was what to do with it. I still have bok choy that I'm eating at lunch every day. So I decided to make sauerkraut. I've never made this before and to me it is more daunting than the milk cultures. I'm not sure why. As a kid I saw my parents make both kefir and sauerkraut. They had a big crock for the job. I'm using a quart mason jar. I brought out my "The Art of Fermenting" and read over again how to do it. He said five pounds of cabbage for a gallon of kraut. I wanted a quart so I weighed out 1.25 pounds and 2.25 teaspoons of salt. It wasn't enough by far. I think I added another half pound to the mix. And more salt. He and others that I've read say to pound it down and let it sit for a couple hours and pound again. Keep doing it until the water covers the leaves. This can take 24 hours. Well Chinese cabbage seems to be wetter than European cabbage. I had no trouble making enough liquid before I put the lid on for the first time.

I had bought some airlocks and lids off of Etsy. And some glass jar weights. I'm supposed to keep all the cabbage off the surface, but how the heck do you keep those little tiny floating ones off? My next issue is when do I decide to try it? Some people think it tastes best after three days. Some go for a week. Some a couple weeks. And then there are those that say four weeks is best if you want to have all those good bacteria. If I keep it closed, the mold won't grow (or so I'm told). If I open it to test it at various times I might have more contamination. And then there is the issue of taste. Will I like it? I hated sauerkraut as a kid. But then I hated zucchini as a kid too and I'm growing three zucchini plants. I even bought some zucchini from the store this spring when I ran out of my preserved (it isn't nearly as good as what I grow). Maybe I'll love it. Maybe I'll hate it. Maybe I'll like a sweet kimchi style better. I've got a lot of experimenting to do this summer. Both with the Chinese cabbage and our typical ones.

Preparing for Winter

Yes summer hasn't started yet and I'm getting ready for winter. Last week I froze one packet of spinach which I know isn't much, but it was a start. This week I've been doing more. Since one of my rhubarb plants came out, I used all the stalks to make rhubarb butter. A couple years ago I made this but it had a lot of sugar. I wanted something that had no more than a teaspoon of added sugar per serving of two tablespoons. Last years recipe had about three teaspoons of added sugar per serving. Sugar is something I've been trying to reduce to get well again. I'm at the point where I'm OK adding a bit of sugar, but not to the degree of a typical jam.

Personally I think it tastes really good. But my tastes have changed. When I make jam or butter, I tend to share them with my neighbors during the holidays. Will they like the more tart butter? Or will they dislike it? I think when I make strawberry jam (and it looks like it will be a good harvest of strawberries this year), I might make two batches. A small one for me and a bigger one for the neighbors.

Tart Rhubarb Butter

• 2 1/2 lbs rhubarb
• 2/3 c sugar
• 1/3 c OJ concentrate
• 1/4 c water
• 1 T cinnamon

Wash and chop the rhubarb into small pieces. Hopefully yours are redder than mine so your butter won't look like puke. Mine tastes good and is productive, but not all that pretty. Put it all into a large pan. I used a huge monster frying pan because it cooks down really really fast that way and I don't slave over a hot stove as long. Cook as long as it takes to get to the thickness you like. It will thicken up a bit, but this is not a jam and won't set like one. You have to boil out the water to make it thick. Transfer it to a smaller pan and use an immersion blender to puree it into a smooth butter. If it still isn't thick enough cook it down some more. Can it in a hot water bath for 15 minutes. Or at least that is how long I did it for. Rhubarb butter is not something on the USDAs list of things they have tested in their canning. 10 minutes is probably enough as that is the time for apple butter, but stewed rhubarb is 15 so I gave it that.

Today I'm dehydrating some sage. The sage is all in bud right now. Supposedly herbs are best picked before they bloom. I've done it both ways, but I needed to cut this one back anyway as it was starting to take over. Tomorrow I'll do another batch until I've gotten rid of most of the sage buds.

I'm going to leave the one in the herb circle though as I can see it from my kitchen window and it will be pretty. I don't think I need so much sage right now as to have to chop all the flowers off. I don't mind collecting some after blooming time. My chives are in bud too, but I only harvest chives when I want them for something. I've never dried them.

Harvest Monday, 2 March 2015

This was the week that I used up the greens in my freezer. I do have one lone spinach packet, but I've been eating two per meal for a while now. So it won't even make one meal for me. I now have fresh broccoli and asparagus from the store. And some bought frozen spinach and kale. I was wondering what to do with the spring fava bean bed. Obviously I need to grow greens to eat during the winter. Kale or broccoli as I've already figured out a way to add in another spring spinach bed. I like broccoli better fresh. But I think I like kale better frozen.

The above meal is pretty typical of my dinners in a way. Lots of greens. But I always also have some kind of non green vegetable too - squash, carrots, or sweet potatoes (which are still holding out well). And as many of you noticed and asked about. . .

When I make squash, most of the time it is a squash casserole. I put my original recipe in the blog ages ago. But it has changed over the years to be healthier (no sugar or butter anymore). I still make close to that recipe when I bring it for parties as it is fine to have such things on occasion, but for every day I'd prefer it to be mostly squash, not mostly other ingredients which my old recipe was. Also I got rid of the soy milk and gluten. The last two substitutions were a godsend really. I substituted the flour for cornmeal and the soy milk for coconut milk. The mixture of coconut milk, cornmeal, squash, and when I add it maple syrup go very well together. My everyday version won't have maple syrup though. Bummer as it goes so well.

Daphne's Squash Casserole Take 2

• 1 egg
• 1 c to 1 1/2 c pumpkin puree
• 1/2 c coconut milk
• 1/2 t vanilla
• 1/4 t cinnamon
• 1/8 c corn meal
• 1/2 t baking powder
• 1/4 t salt
• (2 T butter or coconut oil melted, optional)
• (1/8-1/4c maple syrup, + 1/8 c corn meal optional)

Mix the wet ingredients together. Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix them both together. It can barely fit into two 1c ramakins if you don't add the extra ingredients. Or as in the picture above you can use 2 x 1 1/2c pyrex dishes. Or cook it all at once in a larger dish. Cook it at 350F until it doesn't jiggle anymore. That is usually 45 minutes for me, but it varies. My squash measurements aren't perfect. I have some containers in which I freeze pureed squash. They can hold anywhere from a cup to a cup and a half depending on how full they get.

So in a way it is much like pumpkin pie if you add the sugar. I'd call it a pumpkin custard if I didn't add flour to it. But I love it. I often eat it after dinner and think of it as dessert even without the sugar. Squash is sweet. I found after a while of almost no sugar, my taste for sugars in food have changed.

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.

This and That

We have had some really nice fall days recently. Perfect for being in the garden. Not that there is a lot to do there. I'm half done with screening my compost and am now bored with it so I'm avoiding the rest. I should finish, but instead I took a bike ride. This morning though I did get a few things done in the garden.

When I planted up my front planter, I didn't use an ornamental sweet potato. I used a real one - Garnet. I had bought a chrysanthemum to replace it, so it was time for the potatoes to come out. One pretty Garnet plant gave me 3lbs 14oz. Not bad for an ornamental plant. It makes me think I should put sweet potatoes in more spots that need a trailing plant. Like the rock wall garden in front of the zinnias. Decorate and eat at the same time. Sadly the chrysanthemum is a bit small for that pot. And I knocked off a huge branch. Oh well.

The spinach germinated a bit patchily. Usually I just don't worry about it. But since I had some that were too thick I decided to transplant. Usually I won't do this as transplanted spinach doesn't do as well. But it won't hurt. If they die I didn't lose anything. Just spinach plants I would have thinned out anyway.

I had to take out some plants in the cabbage patch. The Napa cabbage is not doing well. It has NEVER done well here. Well one spring, but that is it. I will not grow it again and just grow the Michihili cabbage that does do well. This fall it seems infected with something. One seem fine, but the other two were pretty bad off so I had to take most of the leaves off. I decided I'd take what I could and blanch and freeze it. I'm not sure it would last in the fridge. The one good one I'll use fresh over the next week. I also had to take out two kohlrabi that were getting too big. I'm hoping they aren't woody. I'll find out when I eat them. They at least will last. I've weighed them and put them in the tally, but I may have to remove them later if they aren't edible, or only party edible.

One of my doctors thinks all my health issues (of which I have a ton) are because of a leaky gut. I'm inclined to agree. So now I'm not just nightshade, legume, and mushroom free. I also am not eating gluten and casein (though the trace amounts in butter I'm deeming acceptable however mostly I'll use ghee). And no sugar, just small bits of honey or maple syrup for things like salad dressings. Sigh. The quiche above is a gluten free, milk free, cheese free quiche. I made it with some homemade turkey sausage, kale, green onions, and zucchini. I thought I'd miss the cheese a lot, but I didn't. It was very tasty. But it was way too rich. I used coconut milk instead of regular milk and the fat content of even low fat coconut milk is too much for me - well at least with pie crust. Next time I'm going to use part coconut milk and part almond milk and see how that works.

Compost Time

I finally got my butt in gear yesterday and started to turn the compost pile. Well it isn't just one compost pile. First I had to play musical chairs with the other bins and sift out the finished compost along the way. Typically bin 1 (pallet bins numbered from the left to the right) has the most recent garden waste in it. Bin 2 has older garden waste that was turned over from bin 2. Bins 3 and 4 are leaf holding bins. Some Years I can wait until I need compost to turn over the piles but bin 1 was bursting at the seams and needed to be turned.

Since Bin 3 still had some leaves in it I moved them to bin 4 sifting out any finished leaf mold as I went. Since Bin 2 was a mix of finished compost and things that hadn't decomposed, I sifted through it. All finished compost went into Bin 3. All decomposed items went into the overflowing bin 1. I did part of that yesterday and part today. But finally bin 2 was empty.

Once it was empty I noticed that a lot of compost had fallen in back of the bin over the years. I have my cedar fence back there and I don't want that to decompose on me, so I took out the pallet and scooped up all the excess. I'll do that with the other bins when I get them empty next time. Though the fence looked fine as it wasn't really buried, the bottom board of the pallet had decomposed. I flipped the pallet over and around so the undecomposing boards will be in toward the compost. These have been here for about 3 1/2 years. And considering they are cheap wood, they have held up pretty well. If I can get seven years out of the pallets I'll be really happy. I can get free pallet easily enough just by asking around, but dragging them back and taking apart the piles to replace them is a PITA. I'd rather they last a long long time.

Once bin 2 was empty I started turning bin 1 over into bin 2. The top part is all new additions that are getting turned. As I turn them I'm adding a bit of eggshell that I've collected from the kitchen (the bag on top of the compost). And that is where I left it. I'll have to finish turning. And once I get down far enough I'm sure I'll find more compost to sift through. Hopefully it will be done before the weekend.

In totally non-compost non-garden related news, the Macintosh apples were in at the farmers market. I picked up a few to make my husband some applesauce. I'm going to be canning every week I can get my hands on more apples. He doesn't eat a lot of fruit and applesauce is one that he loves. I make it very healthy when I make it for him. No sugar and I use a stick blender to blend the peel into the sauce. I think if I make 75 jars he might be happy for the year. I'm not sure I'll have time for that many, but I'll try. I would also love some applebutter for me.

Other People's Food

I think I must have been bored with my own food this week. I have a three week meal plan that I rotate through. I don't follow it religiously, but it does help keep me from having spaghetti every week. I'd been looking for a replacement for my turkeyloaf. The turkey loaf was a replacement for meatloaf when my husband quite eating beef. It was OK. But then I couldn't eat mushrooms anymore and they were an integral part of the flavor. Now the recipe is borderline to me. I'd eat it but I'd rather be eating something else.

So when Mark posted his Kofte (Turkish meatballs) meal, I commented that I'd have to try it when it got cooler as his was very stew like. But it stuck in my head. At lunch I thought I could make that for tonight. I'd turn the stew into a gravy and it would be good.

I made mine with turkey as my husband doesn't eat lamb. The recipe I used said to put it in a pita or over a bed of rice. I thought saffron rice worked well. I also made some tatziki (got to use up those cucumbers) and it went really well with it. The gravy was an onion turkey gravy. I have turkey stock in my freezer as roast turkey is one of my rotating meals. I sauteed an onion and pureed it into the stock and added a few spices like cumin, cinnamon, coriander, salt and pepper. I cooked it down until it was thick. It worked well, but I thought we needed more gravey. Next time I'll do an onion and a half or maybe two and some more broth. I cooked the carrots in the gravy as it was cooking down.

I liked the meatballs a lot, but thought their way of mixing made the meatball a bit tough. I'll hand mix it next time. Usually I would mix everything but the meat together and then add in the meat without mixing too much. Using a food processor like that is not the perfect texture. Though the meatballs were good, the carrots were to die for. They were so sweet and delicious. Joel liked the flavors too. I usually don't dry the regular mint, just the peppermint for winter teas. But I'll have to do that so I'll have the seasonings over the winter.

And as a side note, have you ever noticed how meatballs are just fritters? It wasn't something that had ever hit me before. But last week I was making zucchini fritters. This week meatballs. They are both just breadcrumbs, eggs, spices, and either meat or vegetables depending on the fritter. Yes the proportions are slightly different (meatballs have about twice the meat) but the idea is the same. I could see making these as vegetable balls if I were cooking for my vegetarian friends. I'd have to use a vegetable stock. I really need to make up a stock since all commercial ones are toxic to me. I get chicken and turkey stock all the time as I make it after I make roast chicken or turkey, but I'll have to actually schedule the vegetable stock so I have it on hand.

The second one (well really the first timewise) was from Bek. Her blog title was "The best quick, easy dinner in the world...". Well I wouldn't say making Okonomiyaki is the quickest dinner in the world. To me that would be melted cheese on toast. But it is quick and for a meal that forces you to cut up all that garden produce it is fairly easy. A lot of the recipes for this called for miso paste or dashi. I can't eat the first and the second is not a staple in my pantry. So my batter was pretty plain: 1/3c whole wheat flour, a heaping T of corn flour, 1/4 t salt, 1 egg, 1/4c water. To that I added the vegetables which were about 2+ cups of mixed vegetables mainly thinly sliced Chinese cabbage (yes I still have some from when I picked it a while ago, the Michihili keeps forever in the fridge and I have recipe like this one that use a leaf or two now and again), carrot matchsticks, finely sliced scallions, and grated garlic and ginger. I mixed them all together well and fried it up in a pan making a circle about 3/4" thick.

Okonomiyaki is traditionally topped with some things I don't have, but the sauces I could at least approximate. For the first sauce I used 1 T Worcestershire sauce and 1 T plum sauce. I spread that over the top. The next one is traditionally plain Japanese mayo, but I used my mayo horseradish sauce. You are supposed to use a squeezer to make nice patterns on the top, but I used a spoon. It might not look as pretty, but it still taste good. I really LOVE this recipe. It is made in a lot of different ways. I took a twist with mine. I used cheese. I put half the mixture down in the fry pan. Then I laid down a few slices of mild cheddar cheese than topped with the other half of the mixture. I think the cheese version really adds a nice creaminess to the pancake. Yum.

The last in the list of other people's food that I've been eating this week has nothing to do with a recipe. We have a friend who made a smoker at the maker space in Somerville. He was talking to my husband and I got sent a couple of smoked spice rubbed chicken thighs. Oh my so good. I never get this kind of food as smokers are always contaminated with things I can't eat. Plus they always rub it with things that have pepper in it. The rub he used had black pepper, but I can eat that.

I sent back four ears of corn. He said it was the best corn he had ever eaten. My husband thinks the same this year. He is going to send me more smoked goodies when he cooks them. So I sent my husband in with some melon since what is coming out of my garden now is really really good melon and I had more than I could eat. He said it was the best cantaloupe he had ever had. What gardener doesn't eat up such praise. Though I think so too. I don't know why my Halonas are so good this year, but they really have been the best. Even better than when I successfully grew Ambrosias one year. Last year they were good, but not the BEST. The year before they were just OK. That year they were fighting wilt since I planted them next to the cucumbers. I know never to do that again. But why are they so dang good this year? I really want to replicate it.

Anyway I'm off the subject. It has been a good week for other people's food. I'm not usually so inspired to make new things. The idea often has to germinate in my head. I'd read about something on a blog and I would make it a week later. This time I read both in the morning. One time I made it for lunch that day. The other for dinner.

This and That

Sometimes I take photos and they never get put into the blog. It happens a lot. Usually I have things to say and the random ones don't get posted. Or they are taken with a post in mind, but then I don't write the post. They eventually get moved into into the old photos folder and forgotten. I was about to do this today, but figured I'd just do a random post. As frankly I have nothing to write about right now. The garden is quiet. All I do is take down the old corn stalks and weed. Ok maybe the weeding is wishful thinking. But I swear I'll get out and do some soon.

This one is for Susie. I told her some days I just want to eat melted cheddar on rye bread. So some days I do. This was dinner. When I go lazy like this I feed my husband a low fat pulled chicken*. I can't eat pulled chicken as I can't eat BBQ sauce. But I always have some in the freezer. I also have premade turkey and bean chili for him. That way when I want what he can't eat, he can eat what I can't eat. It seems to work.

*Pulled chicken is so easy to make too. When I make roast chicken, I roast a couple of extra breasts. Once it is cooked I debone it and toss it into the crockpot with some BBQ sauce. I cook it for a few hours like that. Part way through I pull the chicken apart with a pair of forks. I freeze them in muffin trays which if piled high makes a good serving size. Once frozen I dip the bottom into hot water for a few seconds and they come right out. I store them in a ziplock bag.

I usually make bread one loaf at a time. I use the second pan upside down over the top when it rises to keep it moist. I've never been into the damp towel method as it always sticks for me and my bread might deflate a bit. But now that I can't eat store bought sliced bread (it usually has soy in it which I can't eat), I find that I had better have sliced bread in my freezer at all times. So I've been making the loaves two at a time. I've obviously found other ways to let the dough rise and stay moist. The above method even lets me see how far it has risen which is a bonus.

I make two kinds of sliced bread. One is a 100% whole wheat bread dough (above) which is great with almond butter. Yum. It is a take off on a King Arthur recipe. But the toast with melted cheese on top requires a rye bread, which right now is just 67% whole grain. That one is a take off on Dave's rye bread.

Isn't he pretty? And I'm amazed how well he blends in. I've found quite a few in my garden this year. Most of them are green like the one above, but I saw one that was brown in the corn. I just hope he isn't hunting the bees and wasps above his head on the garlic chive flowers. I know they will eat all bugs, both good and bad. I wish I had the gumption to move him to a place with an aphid problem (do they eat aphids?). But I find him a bit scary as he is so big.