Can Jam Posting #1-January:Citrus

As I mentioned previously I was thinking of a citrus syrup (perhaps for cocktails), but my mom suggested an orange marinade-and after a small attempt at both I think the marinade wins! In any case it's my "entry", submission, whatever we want to call it for the January segment of the Can Jam.  I ended up with a jurry rigged water bath canning system in a large soup pot, b/c the canner I wanted was gone when I finally got around to the hardware store, but it worked out with a layer of screw top lids in the bottom of a stock pot. Just for safety's sake I also checked the pH of my final product with pH paper (it was about 4.2) before canning.  The half pint is a wonderful thing my friends-and small batch canning-oh what a joy. The final marinade has many ingredients, but now it's all done and preserved all I have to do is pour it over chicken or pork and *pouf* tasty meal! I had fun doing it and am looking forward to Feburary's project!Here's a photo of my lovely jar.

Orange Marinade (for chicken or pork)

Note: Best on chicken or pork. Yields about 3 half pints. Can be scaled up if desired. Be careful to avoid squeezing the pith into the mix when juicing the oranges, when heated it becomes VERY bitter.

2T seasame oil

2t red chile pepper flakes

3 shallots

8 garlic cloves

1/2 medium onion

3T diced fresh ginger

1.5 quarts organic, pulp free orange juice (such as Simply Orange)

Juice of 1doz medium navel oranges

1c sugar (depending on the sweetness of the oranges)

1T salt

1/4c tamari

Infuse chile flakes, ginger and garlic into oil, by placing all in a large, deep skillet over low heat. Crank the heat up to medium and add shallots and onions to the mix and carmelize. Add remaining ingredients and simmer until reduced to about 3 cups. Pour into sterilized jars and process 10minutes in a water bath canner.

Just a quick garden note-seeds are ordered!

Seeds were ordered yesterday and today...3 main companies were: Seed Savers Exchange, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Irish Eyes. SSE is from my home state, about an hour or so from my mom's house, and I love their mission and approach-so I order from them despite the fact that it takes lots of diesel (well at least some) for it to make the trip. Southern Exposure is local-ish being in VA so they know and recommend what will do well in this area and it keeps at least some of my seed mostly local. Irish Eyes is new this year-beacause they are 1) unproven to me and 2) so gosh darn far away in Washington State I only ordered a few things from them, but they have a HUGE selection of potatoes and they are a family run, employee owned company so I like that. I didn't order any from them(yet), but some unusual seeds and varieites are available at Bountiful Gardens, another non-profit seed organization. I did break down and order Burpee zukes-the hertiage varieties are just not what I want-small, not productive, and very disease/bug susceptible. I NEED my zukes, but I thought I'd order with my mom so as to reduce some shipping.

Varieties and suppliers are as follows:

Beets	Detroit Dark Red	SESE
Beans, Green	Provider	SSE
Beans, Lima	Henderson Bush	SSE
Carrots	Early Sugarsnax F-1	Irish Eyes
	Paris Market	SSE
Cucumber	Little Leaf	SESE
Garlic	various	Gourmet Garlics
Onions	Big Daddy	Irish Eyes
Okra	Burmese #69109E	SESE
	Clemson Spineless #69103E	SSE
	Hill Country Red #69111E	SESE
Peas, snap	Oregon Giant	SESE
Potatoes	Yukon Gold	Irish Eyes
Spinach	America	SSE
Tomato, early	Glacier	Irish Eyes
Tomato, grape	Currant, Sweet Pea	SSE
Tomato, heirloom	Crkovic Yugoslavian	SSE
Tomato, paste	Hungarian Italian Paste	SESE
Zucchini	Burpee Hybrid	burpee 62364-A

 

Black and White Cabbage Soup

After all the crazy new year eating-lots of binging on not-so-good-for-you stuff I thought it might be time for something a little more healthful-apparently every other food blogger out there thought so too, because recipes are abounding. I started with several recipes for cabbage soups from all around the web, but my base starting point was Heidi's Rustic Cabbage Soup from 101cookbooks. (yes, I know it's like one of the most recognized food blogs, I'm just not sure what the etiquette here is). I wasn't sure about cabbage in soup; in general I hate wilty things in my soups and I despise escarole or the other candidates for greens. Cabbage ended up working out, it gets soft and almost noodle like without being too strong. It may also help that I diced it pretty thin and used a napa style that was very firm to start with. Anyhow, it was pretty and tasty, although I do suggest a bouquet garni for the peppercorns, biting down on them was an unwelcome surprise. The photo also contains far too much cheese for a single bowl which I found out after I took the shot.

Black and White Cabbage Soup

1/4 napa syle white cabbage diced

      very thinly

2c black beans, precooked, drained

     and rinsed well

4 small gold potatoes, diced

1onion, diced

5 cloves garlic, minced

3T olive oil

4c chicken stock

2t mixed peppercorns

1/2 c grated parmasean cheese
Add olive oil to large soup pot, warm and add potatoes. Cook until just starting to stick. Add onions and garlic and cook until fragrant and starting to carmelize. Add stock, beans, and peppercorns. Simmer until potatoes are completely soft. Add cabbage and simmer for 5min more or until you find the texture of the cabbage pleasant. Ladle into bowls, top with a smattering of cheese and serve.

An Attempt at Duck and Veggie Beef Stoup

I have come to a very important conclusion-I should not try to cook whole poultry. I'm bad at it, and it's a giant pain to cut it all up. I know that makes me lazy and a shame to my ranching heritage-oh well.  And so I will share this photo a a sort-of pretty duck that Aaron and I made after Thanksgiving. He was very helpful with the pulling out of guts and cutting off of extra bits and so on, for which I am very grateful, but I don't think we'll repeat the experience. We used all the spices we had spilled on the counter while filling our Christmas gifts of homegrown herbs to dress the little guy up too!

On a different note the fact that it's been crazy cold out has kicked in the comfort foods-and the soups. Aaron insists this isn't a soup, but I'm not sure it really qualifies as a stew either. So we'll call it stoup. In any case it's tasty, easy and pretty darn good for you.

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Vegetable Beef Stoup

Note: This can be made entirely veggie by just leaving out the beef. It's also better after a whole day in the crock pot, but can be consumed as soon as it's done cooking as well. I prefer the petite diced tomatoes, but the regular ones are fine too. The batch in the photo is missing its limas, because I forgot I didn't have any

1whole onion, roughly diced

3 cloves garlic, sliced

1 pound beef stew meat, 1/2in cubes

3 cans diced tomatoes

2c broccoli florets

2c cauliflower florets

6 medium potatoes, diced

1c lima beans

1c each frozen corn and peas

1/2c pearly barley

In a medium skillet heat 2T olive oil. Carmelize onions and garlic. Put into slow cooker crock. Add meat to skillet and brown thoroughly on all sides. Add to crock along with tomatoes, potatoes, lima beans, cauliflower and broccoli. Allow to cook on low all day. 1hr before serving add barley, peas, and corn. Mmm!

Fried Rice

I admit, some nights I'm lazy and don't want to cook. Other times I realize I'm missing a key ingredient (despite careful list making) and don't want to go to the store for a third time that week. So we order out. Chinese takeout has become a favorite, because you can make not super bad choices and it usually gives us about 3 meals. Meal 1: initial attempt, Meal 2: leftovers, Meal 3: fried rice from the automatically included white rice that comes with every meal and we never eat.  This is a great way to use leftover rice and (if you watch the sodium content) could be quite healthy. I always used to make it in my stainless pot and it stuck like crazy. With my x-mas gift of a beautiful Le Creuset dutch oven it didn't stick at all-amazing! Also, I apologize that the photo is lacking in eggs-I took it before I remembered to add them.

Veggie Fried Rice

Note: Another sticking issue can happen if you don't have enough liquid and/or oil when you add the rice. You can also use whatever veggies are on hand-it's flexible. Be sure to get your garlic and ginger small-it's tough if you bite into a big piece.

1/4 vegetable oil or enough to coat the bottom of the pan, plus 2Tto be added later

2 eggs

1/2c chopped carrots, onions, squash, mushrooms and/or other veggies

1T finely diced ginger

1T finely diced garlic

3c cooked rice

1/2 c teriyaki sauce

2T soy sauce

1T seasame oil

Coat the pan with vegetable oil and allow to heat until shimmering. Beat eggs together and add to hot oil, making an egg pancake. Allow to cook through and remove from pan. Lower heat to medium-high and add remaining oil and veggies. Allow to cook, stirring often, until crisp tender. Add sauces and seasame oil, followed by the rice. If it has been refridgerated it will need to be crumbled to separate the grains. Chop the egg and stir into rice and veggies. Serve hot.

Date Bon Bons and Haystacks

So, I don't actually have the recipes for these-mom does-and I could call her and get them, but I'm lazy. So here's the basics and someday I'll add the real quanitities.

Date Bon Bons (on left)
 Peanut butter and chopped dates dipped in waxed chocolate. Super yum, makes a huge batch.

Haystacks

A 1:1 combination of butterscotch and chocolate chips, some honey roasted peanuts and chow mein noodles. Mixed and portioned. Yum.

Substitution Pancakes

One lazy weekend morning we hemmed and hawed over the various breakfast possiblities-waffles? french toast? something lunch like? frittatta? Nope-we wanted pancakes. Only to discover, part way through that we were missing some important ingredients-milk and baking powder. Usually the staples are around-but my baking powder was missing (I found it 2 weeks later in the potato bin of all the places) and the milk I thought we had was sour-way beyond use. So we dug around and looked up substitutions and ended up with these pancakes. They might still need a little tweaking and they take longer to cook than normal pancakes, but we like them better.

Using up leftovers we also topped them with whipped cream-oooh was it decadently good!

Subsitution Pancakes

Note: You can subsitute back in 1.5c milk and 2t baking powder for the cheese, water and cream and the cream of tartar and baking soda respectively to make a standard pancake.

2 eggs

1/4c canola oil

1/2c cream

1/2c ricotta cheese

1/4c water

1/2c sugar

2c flour

1T vanilla

1T cream of tartar

1t salt

Combine all ingredients and adjust for consistency (may need more flour or liquid) and cook about 1/4c at a time on a hot greased griddle. Top with your favorite topping!

1/2T baking soda