Harvest 2011

My entire post just got deleted. It was a long one. Sorry, but the second one is going to have a lot less writing.

We had a very hot and dry summer, which means that some things in my garden thrived, and other things didn't. The part that didn't was the tomatoes, corn, lettuce and carrots.

Clearly, the part that did was the peppers.

Lots and lots of hot peppers, which, as you can see Michael is very excited about.

Oh, should talk about the carrots. Remember Mr Carrot Pants from last year?

Well, apparently, he grew up over the winter. Haha. He also found a wife with pretty sexy legs.

Apparently they had a busy winter and produced a whole family! Mom, Dad, baby and kiddo!

We had some other freakish carrots too.

The twist.

Chicken foot?

Oh, back to the peppers. Since Michael has been slowly but thoroughly enjoying his pickled peppers from last year, we decided to can them again.

Step 1: face the daunting task of slicing. all. those. peppers.

Step 2: mixing them in my sink because I had not other vessel large enough.

Step 3: Michael made a thing for the bottom of my pot out of coat hangers to keep the jars from bouncing.

Step 4: Realize we clearly do not have enough jars and make a mad dash before Canadian Tire closes in 30 minutes.

Step 5: Admire the finished product. Wonder how long it will take to eat this many jars, since it took a year to eat the 12 from last season.

If you like really hot pickled peppers, let me know...we're sharing!

Chickpea Pesto Pasta

So, I was gifted some basil seedlings from our neighbour, which I planted in my garden. It grew wild. I decided to try making pesto and put some of it to use.

Then I had to come up with a dinner quick one night, so I decided to use said pesto (which I had frozen a few batches of), cook some pasta and in an effort to add protein, I dumped in a can of chickpeas. It was surprisingly tasty!

Doesn't it look yummy!

Pesto is way easier to make than you think, by the way.

best. potato. salad. ever.

So, I hosted a BBQ for life group and decided to stick with standard BBQ food (it's early enough in the season that no one is sick of it yet). That meant potato salad. I figured that the best place to get a recipe for potato salad would be from Mennonite Girls Can Cook. I read over a couple of recipes and combined a few things, adjusted based on what ingredients I had on hand and came up with my own marvellous creation.

Here it is:

8-10 medium sized red potatoes

8 eggs

1 bunch green onions

1/2 cup mayo

1/2 cup greek yogurt

fresh ground pepper

1-2 tsp of salt

2-3 Tbsp of pickle juice

Boil potatoes and cube. Boil eggs and slice/chop. Chop green onion. Stir in large bowl with mayo, yogurt, pepper, salt & pickle juice.

Taste, and adjust seasonings.

Enjoy!

Here's some pics:

I haven't tried this yet, but I'm pretty sure you could use all yogurt and it would turn out just fine, it's the part that makes it so creamy and good anyway. Which, would be pretty sweet, since you can get great tasting fat free greek yogurt.

I have also only ever used the hot n spicy pickle juice, so I'm not sure what other ones would taste like. It's really not that spicy (below mild salsa in heat).

Tips:

• it is much easier to cook potatoes ahead of time and let them cool completely before you cube them
• after you boil your eggs, crack the shells all over and soak in cold water for about 10-15 minutes, they will peel much easier.

cheapest sacred date ever

Michael had this great idea to have our supper picnic style at the Leg (pronounced like ledge if you're from Winnipeg). So, that's what we did. Then we headed over to the Bay Downtown:

We went to the 6th floor to check out an art exhibit where one of our friends had stuff on display. Totally cool.

Then we explored all the other floors, looked at china, furniture, etc. I happened upon this nice silicone spatula with a bamboo handle. Michael offered to buy it, I said forget it, thinking it would be seriously over priced.

Nope, it was $4!

Awesome! The whole date cost $4 and I had a great time and something to remember it by! Sweet!

using the meat grinder attachment & making jam

As many of you know, raw meat is not my favourite thing to work with. We have a lot of stew meat in our freezer left from our last bulk beef purchase. Everything else is gone. I don't use stew meat all the often, especially now as summer approaches. So, since I have a meat grinder attachment for my kitchen aid, I decided we should try it. Michael was a great sport and joined me so I wouldn't have to do the disgusting parts (ie: touch the meat).

Ew, look at that hand digging into that raw meat!

We ended up grinding a little more than I wanted to cook, so we put it into containers and into the freezer (with the chopped onions on top). Next time I want ground beef I just dump it into the pan! Awesome!

I also set about using some of the frozen BC fruit in my freezer (thanks again Dad for doing that!). I made raspberry jelly (only the second time I've ever made jelly). It turned out quite nicely, and is so worth it (I hate raspberry seeds stuck in my teeth when I eat my toast, don't you?).

creamed honey & other random things

So, I got a good deal on some honey, but it was all nasty and crystallized. I happen to love creamed honey the best, so I did a little internet research to find out how it's made. All those things you think about cream being added or egg whites, or it just being whipped like crazy? False.

Creamed honey is actually crystallized honey, but it's done in a controlled way, to create really tiny and smooth crystals that feel good on your tongue.

There's lot of great websites out there with really great instructions, but basically you warm your yucky crystallized honey until all the crystals are melted. Then you stir in some creamed honey that is crystallized the way you like it and store it in a cool place for a couple of weeks (about 54 degrees fahrenheit). When you check on it you will find it has all turned into the lovely creamed honey you stirred in.

Cool, no?

I've recently acquired some new 'manly' stamps, so I set out to try them.   

I ended up only making one 'man card' and playing more with the other free flowers & cute sayings set, but here's my handiwork.

a few random things

Broken Door:

On the 24th after the carol service we headed out to Michael's parents. Only the doorknob to the garage suddenly didn't work. I had Henry come over to remove it on the 27th (while Michael was away) and came up with an alternative way to use the door.

Making Fudge:

This was the disaster of my first attempt. I have never had something go quite this wrong. For some reason the recipe I was working from (hand copied) was missing the sugar from the list of ingredients. Since I had made fudge before, I knew it contained sugar, so I put some in, and somehow saw it on the recipe, made up a quantity and carried on. I 'read' that it called for one cup of sugar. Above is the result. Looks more like poo than fudge.

After I called my mom to figure out what went wrong, I discovered the missing ingredient and the correct amount (4 cups). I went right back at it and tried again. This time it worked!

Chocolate & Peanut Butter!

Yum!

Sewing Day with Cate!

Cate helped me with sewing a make up bag, that she got to keep.

We also did some water painting...

replacement

Remember how sad I was over my broken mixer? Well, the new one is finally here! It's pretty sweet too, bigger bowl, and a bigger motor.

I decided to test the motor by baking a full recipe of Shirley's buns (rather than the usual 75%).

It worked beautifully, except for the fact that my yeast didn't quite do it's job.

Ice Cream Maker!

where do mixers go when they die?

my beloved kitchenaid mixer went to the repair shop a few weeks ago. i feel kinda lost with out it.

the saddest part is that it's not coming home. it needs so much repair work that it's not worth fixing. sniff.

the only good thing about it (and really there isn't much) is that it is going to make a trip to the states worth it, so we're going in december! the mixer you see above is on loan from my winnipeg parents, who thankfully have two, so they could spare it. so, at least i can do some baking in the mean time. i was getting tired of haystacks and puffed wheat squares...

a very cool product!

So, Michael shared this article with me. I'm not sure how he came across it, but since it's food related he sent it to me. The link is no longer working, sorry. But it was from some kind of Food Review thing sort of like the Cannes Film Festival, only for food.

Anyway, the product is pretty neat, especially since I've taken up tea drinking in a big way. I even bought this really cool travel tumbler that has a strainer so you can drink loose leaf tea straight out of it from Starbucks. I have also fallen in love with a local tea shop called Cornelia Bean. It's honey, but it's dried so that's hard kinda like a candy, but it's still 100% pure honey, individually packaged so that you can take it with you, and enjoy honey in your hot beverage without the mess of trying to stick honey in your purse!

I found mine at Sobey's, but the website lists other stores where you can purchase the stuff.

canning

Our Garden did incredibly well this year! Manitoba had such a wet summer, that we really didn't have to work hard at it either (read: I can remember turning on the garden hose only a handful of times). This year, we decided to try something different with the hot peppers we grew (two years ago we dried them). We pickled them!

I wore latex gloves to do the chopping. By the end the gloves had holes in them. These were hot peppers! Habaneros, chilli, and banana peppers. We even got a few sweet bell peppers from our garden this year (first year we've had success with that).

Then according to what I read online, we blistered the bell peppers to get the skins off (apparently the skin gets really tough).

That's the completed bowl of chopped hot peppers.

The finished product!

Michael says that they are hot! The first time he ate them, his lips turned very red. I won't even try them. I've increased my tolerance of hot food quite a bit since I met Michael but I don't think I'll ever catch up to him!

cookies!

Our friends that moved away in July, were here for a visit and they stayed with us since our basement was available. It was great to see them again and to hang out with their daughters. I finally finished knitting Sofia's dress, which was supposed to be finished for her second birthday, which has come and gone. I don't want to even admit how many months ago. I also baked cookies with Sofia, which was a lot of fun. Especially when she discovered that the cookies dough tasted good, so she would touch the cookies on purpose just so she'd have to lick her fingers!
Here's a little video to sum it up!

cheese, chocolate & summer living

Michael and I like cheese. We also like a bargain.

So, when cheese goes on sale (our threshold is $1/100g), we stock up. Cheese usually has a date of at least 6 months, sometimes even longer, so we've never had a problem with it going bad before we can eat it. Although sometimes I wonder if we eat too much cheese.

Summer is a great time to eat ice cream (then again, I think anytime is a great time to eat ice cream). There's a local ice cream shop called BDI, that has spoiled me with the most delicious hot fudge (I can't even eat Dairy Queen's now). Problem is, it's not particularly economical to go there every time I want a little ice cream. So, I thought to myself, I wonder if I could make hot fudge sauce at home? I started with a google search. Found a recipe that sounded good to me on the Eagle Brand website. I decided to go all out and use some of my swiss chocolate instead of cheap chocolate chips.

It was super easy, sweetened condensed milk, chocolate, a little butter & water melted together on the stovetop, add some vanilla, and voila, hot fudge! I'd say it's pretty darn close to the stuff from BDI. I also doctored mine up and added a bit of cinnamon, because in my books chocolate and cinnamon go together like peanut butter & jelly.

Michael and I recently spent an evening at a friend's place. They had turned their gazebo into an outdoor living room, which we thought was just great. So, we decided to cozy ours up a bit too. Michael started by hanging some lights.

He also found this chain downstairs leftover from hanging our chandeliers, so he put that up so we can hang lanterns from it.

Then we dragged our ikea chairs in, so we had a comfy place to sit.

After all this was set up, we decided to test it out by having an outdoor movie night.

It was lovely!

And, last but not least, here's an update of the garden growing: