Food

  • Vegetable and Fruit Portraits

    Yellow Pear Tomato | Vegetable & Fruit Portraits

    I have to say that these are going down as one of the most prolific tomatoes I have ever grown. They are giving my sungolds a run for their money on abundance. Last night I was picking the golden fruits off the vines in the last bits of light before dusk, I was reminded of black plum tomatoes that I grew in Florida. The shape is different but I was instantly missing my seeds and tomatoes from then. It really is interesting growing tomatoes in a different climate. If I were in Florida still, the vines would have been ripped up for about a month now, or at the very…

  • Food

    In the Kitchen | Key Limes & Cucumbers

    Back in March I saw a post on Food in Jars about salt preserved key limes. I bookmarked it and finally the other day I saw key limes for sale at the store. In Florida we had a small key lime tree I grew from seed—even managed to get a few fruits off one year—and while most ‘wild’ citrus was oranges or grapefruit, I once came across a key lime tree! That’s a good find! Staring at the photos on Food in Jars I was entranced and could just imagine sipping a homemade limeade from the juice I would ferment. Oh, it looked so good; I had to make it!…

  • Food,  Thoughts

    One Year of Being Vegetarian

    I’ve officially been calling myself vegetarian for a year! Time has flown by and while I knew I would make it this long I think I wasn’t sure how long I would keep it up beyond this. Since things have been going swimmingly I plan on keeping this as my food lifestyle until I decide otherwise. That said, I *am* looking forward to my birthday because I plan on eating a large portion of sushi. Throughout this year I’ve read various food blogs, some meat eating, some veg, some into the primal/paelo thing, others into organic/whole living, and there are many thoughts you can glean from them all. In all…

  • Food,  Gardening

    Soup From The Garden

    We had a scattering of beets that survived a round of seed planting back in January. They were part of the bad carrot planting we had, rains too heavy and washing away the seeds. But a few stuck and it was finally time to pull them up and replace them with peppers. When we were pulling them I was reminded of this recipe from a new-to-me blog that I bookmarked over a month ago. I dug it up in my feed reader, looked it over and decided it was doable. As you see above, all of that came from our garden. The only thing that did not come from the…

  • Food

    The Final Product| Sauerkraut

    Last week, about a month into the fermentation of the sauerkraut, I skimmed off the last bits of mold that had formed on the surface water and jarred up the sauerkraut. I gave it a taste beforehand and it tasted pretty good. Still crunchy and there was no mold growing on the actual cabbage itself. Will I make sauerkraut again? Maybe. I know we will have more cabbage in the garden in the future and it is hard to eat it all so I may end up doing this again. I might try the jar method next time. I only put the sauerkraut in the jars and stuck them in…

  • Food

    The Great Sprout Experiment

    A few weeks ago I was at a local garden center, The Arbor Gate, and they had some seeds on clearance. I found a package of broccoli sprouts and jumped at the chance to try them out. I thought it would be fun to see how it worked but also to have sprouts on hand, and a specific amount of sprouts at that. Of course it takes a few days to have sprouts ready, but if you were planning a meal for a few days out that involved sprouts, it would be easy to start. I always feel bad when I waste sprouts bought at the store because it is…

  • Food

    Fun with Fermentation

    Due to the large amount of cabbage we currently have, I finally decided to make the sauerkraut. I debated on what kind of receptacle to use, finally deciding to use the large dutch oven I bought Chris for Christmas. Apparently there are fermenting crocks one can buy, and perhaps if I make sauerkraut in the future after this initial experiment I will buy one. For now the dutch oven will work. I alternated between chopping up the cabbage, rinsing it and then layering it in the dutch oven, sprinkling it thoroughly with salt on each layer. The salt assist with drawing out the water from the cabbage. I went by…

  • Food,  Gardening

    The Garden Store

    I pulled all of this out of our garden plots today. I could have harvested more but it is much easier and better to go every few days and get what you need. Tomorrow night I’m going to roast the beets and turnips with carrots, then cook up the turnip greens for dinner. The tops to the beets will be saved to be added into my green smoothies. Some of the Chioggia beets were getting rather large. I am loving the striped pattern on the stalks! Also, a few of the turnips were rather large and I will probably work my way through the larger ones this week in order…

  • Family,  Food

    Transformation of a Cabbage

    Our Chinese cabbage has been doing great but they are starting to bolt. We’ve been making stir fry with some of the cabbage and it has been great. Ok, *Chris* has made the stir fry. Anyway, I have been dying to make my own sauerkraut after seeing my brother make his own last year so that is on my agenda to make but I’ve also wanted to make chow chow. My grandmother used to make it a lot, well she canned most things out of her garden or from the farmers market and had a shelf full of jarred items in a small hallway in the house I visited growing…