A First Time For: Pickling!

More garlic scapes!
Remember that garlic scape pesto that was so good? Well even that didn't use all the scapes.

So I decided to try my hand at pickling for the very first time.

Have you ever had Dilly Beans? They are pickled green beans usually with dill, garlic, and sometimes a bit of red pepper flakes. They are salty and sour with some crunch and a bit of heat.

Well believe it or not, there is such a thing as Dilly Scapes!
It was my first time ever trying to pickle something, and I've only ever tasted Dilly Scapes once. Because of this, I made three slightly different versions to test out which one people like best. 

Pickling Solution:
- 2  1/2 cups water 

- 2  1/2 cups vinegar (or apple cider) 

- 1/4 cup pickling salt 

Jars (1/2 pint each):
- 1 sprig dill
- 1 pepper corn
- 1/8 tsp celery seed
- 10 (ish) granules Pickle Crisp (optional)

- Garlic scapes cut to length

Variations:

* 1 sprig oregano (only to 6)* (in the future, make this a 1/2 sprig)

*1 Tbs sugar in brine (only on second batch)*

*I didn't try adding anything spicy, but 1/8 teaspoon of red pepper flakes would spice things up!*

Directions:
- As always with canning things, make sure all the jars and lids are boiled and sterilized.
- Working a couple hot jars at a time, place the dill, pepper corns, celery seed, and (optional) Pickle Crisp in the bottom of each.
- Pack in the garlic scapes tightly in the jars, making sure there is 1/2 inch of headspace (space between the food and the lid)
- Pour in the hot pickling solution over the scapes leaving
- Pack in a few more scapes if they will fit
- Seal jars as usual, and process in boiling water for 10 minutes
(Here is a great tutorial for Dilly Beans which is almost exactly the same as Dilly Scapes)


Fyi, this is usually what the kitchen looks like whenever I am canning things: a creative disaster!

The only problem? You then have to wait 6 whole weeks for the flavors to infuse before you can sample the scapes.

Well it just so happens that Grandma's 90th birthday party was almost exactly six weeks later.

At the party, I nervously pried open three jars, one of each flavor. I had to taste each one to make sure I didn't serve anyone ruined or rancid food. To my pleasant surprise they all turned out!

There wasn't a huge difference between the three flavors (original, oregano, and pinch-o-sugar) unless you were comparing them in one tasting.


The general consensus seemed to be that the oregano dilly scapes edged out the other two variations. I think in future batches I will use a little less oregano and a little less celery seed.

The funniest part was that even the young kids on Dear Husband's (DH) side of the family LOVED them... but my parents didn't care for them. I guess you really have to love sour, pickled things!

2016 Garlic: Pesto

This year's garlic harvest was the biggest yet.
Last year I had planted 2/3 of a garden bed.

Because I know that all the garlic will get eaten, and it is the lowest maintenance crops I have, I decided to go for it and planted an entire garden bed full of it.
(The garlic is in the front bed... the back one is all asparagus which didn't produce as well this year as I had hoped.)


What happens when you plant that much garlic? You get tons of garlic scapes! (Yay!)

I don't know what it is about garlic scapes, but I think they are beautiful. Something about the color, with the shape makes them feel so graceful. It helps that they smell amazing too.

You may remember that a few years ago I tried to make garlic scape pesto, but that only turned out so-so. This year I tried a different recipe and it was soooooo good! (I know I'm bias but even my foodie friend said so.)

I started with this garlic scape pesto recipe from "In the Kitchen & On the Road with Dorie Greenspan." The flavor was spot on, but it was STRONG!
I love garlic way more than the next person, but MAN! If you want to taste (and smell like) nothing but garlic for at least 12 hours, that is your recipe. Whew!

Instead of a thicker paste type pesto, I made mine into a much thinner bread-dip style pesto.

GARLIC SCAPE AND ALMOND PESTO

10 garlic scapes, finely chopped

1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan

1/3 cup slivered almonds (you could toast them lightly, if you'd like)

1+ cup olive oil (add more to dilute if desired)

1 tsp Sea salt

- Toast the almonds and throw them in a food processor (or blender) 
- Add the scapes, salt, and about half the olive oil
- Blend until smooth
- Add the Parmesan and the remaining olive oil
- Add more olive oil and salt to achieve the desired taste and consistency.

Dear Husband said that every time he eats crusty bread with the dip, he feels like he is in a fancy restaurant.

Above is the full recipe but because I had so many scapes, I cut the olive oil in half and froze it in an ice cube tray. That way I can let a cube thaw and add more olive oil for dip anytime.




We were also able to harvest a few other things from the garden including carrots and sugar snap peas, along with beets for the first time!
The beets were so sweet and tender, I will definitely have to plant more of those next year.

A few weeks later, over the Fourth of July, Mom helped me harvest the garlic bulbs from the garden. They now need to dry out and cure for a few weeks before trimming off the roots and leaves. A very rough estimate gives us around 100 heads of garlic.

I think I am going to be searching for some new recipes to use a lot of this and gift a lot more!


I'm thinking some roasted garlic....

Christmas Apple Butter

So I know this is a bit late, but did you have any idea that you can make apple butter in the crock pot? 

I had no clue until I was looking into making apple butter for home made Christmas gifts! 

Turns out it is super easy, it just takes forever. I'm sure you can use whatever recipe you want, and I found out my mom had nana's "secret" recipe which does have a surprising secret ingredient... shhh I can't tell!

Anyway, I did just a half batch at first to see if it would work and if it would actually taste like Nana's. I was a little surprised, but it actually tasted right!

So how do you do it?

1. Prep everything and throw it in the crockpot in the morning.
2. Set it on low for 8 hours and leave it alone. Dear husband (DH) said it made the house "smell like Christmas." Gotta love that!
3. Mash with a potato masher or immersion blender. You still want a few small chunks in there, don't make it too soupy with the hand blender like I did the first time.
4. Leave the lid off, and let it continue to cook on slow for 5-6 hours to thicken it up. You can help speed this up by thickening on the stove, but just make sure not to burn it. 

5. Package and enjoy! You can freeze, refrigerate, or can it in jars. I canned it so I could gift it for Christmas.


We gifted a jar to each of our family members, our close friends, and as host/hostess gifts for the holiday parties we were invited to.

It was great to just have a bunch of these on hand for the holidays, ready to gift if a situation came up!

Christmas 2015

We have been having a wonderful Christmas, and festivities are scheduled to continue through to the New Year. The best part of it is taking time off to spend with family and friends.

One of our gifts was a huge hit: a wookie pajama suit for BroP!
Believe it or not, he had a Chewbacca t-shirt on before he even opened the gift. He hammed it up and sported it for most of the night, certainly giving us a Christmas to remember.

We also got to spend a bunch of time with our sweet NieceM. This was her first Christmas and you could tell she was in aww of this magical time of year. (Amazing photo courtesy of BroJ.)









Even Eva got in the spirit with her Christmas outfit. There was a lot happening, and she didn't appreciate being distracted for pictures.

Christmas Eve also happens to be MomB's birthday! While it is great to all be together every year to celebrate, I always feel a bit bad that it gets overshadowed by Christmas festivities.
I usually make or help make a cake, but this year I wanted to try something a little more special.




I think it took me three hours, and about half the dishes in the cupboards, but I made a Yule Log cake (a.k.a. Buche de Noel). It is actual an old European tradition you can read more about.

This is the Yule Log Cake recipe I used, but I added a chocolate ganache frosting.

The cake doesn't have any flour or leavening ingredients (stuff to make it rise like baking soda, baking powder, or yeast.) Instead it relies on eggs whipped into a stiff meringue and folded into the batter.  This is much more technical than most of the recipes I attempt, but it is a special occasion. It's not difficult but does take a lot of focus, time, and attention.
Overall it actually turned out much better than I expected. It even kind of looks like a log!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from our family to yours!

Beer! Part 1

Hey everyone, welcome to the first spinoff episode of Vermillion Home Adventures, brought to you by Dear Husband (DH). For my birthday this year, the wife got me a beginner’s homebrew kit. Anyone who knows my family knows that homebrewing is in my blood (sometimes literally, hey-ooh), and I’ve been curious about trying it out for a while now. I made my first batch a few weeks ago, a pretty tasty oatmeal stout. I’m ready to start my second batch, and thought it would make for a good blog entry.

First step -- sanitize! Yeah this isn’t the fun part, but it’s pretty important. Soak all your equipment in a solution of 1 shot bleach per 3 gallons of water for about 20 minutes, and then let them air dry. There’s a lot of equipment to sanitize, so Dear Wife (DW) pointed out that it may be easiest to soak everything in the kitchen sink, but that I should probably scrub it out first. I mean, I love you and agree with you, honey, but don’t think you snuck that one past me.

Make Some Beer!

Now that you’re ready to start cooking, you’re going to add the beer-making mix (a magical bag of beer stuff -- all the grains you’re going to extract sugars from) to 2 quarts of heated water and keep it at 150 degrees for 60 minutes. This oatmeal-looking-stuff is the mash. You need to keep it at a steady temperature, so you need to occupy the time somehow without wandering too far off. I decided to pass the time by using a little toy we picked up recently:

Blue shells, I swear...

Once the 60 minutes is up, you’re going to heat everything to 170 degrees and move it to a strainer, collecting the wort (future-beer-liquid) in a big pot. The next step is to pour 4 quarts of 170-degree water over the mash to give you more wort. Put the wort through the strainer once more to collect more sugars from the mash. You’ll end up with more than a gallon of wort, but some of it will evaporate in the next step.

You’re going to heat the wort to a low boil to start off the next step. The liquid needs to boil for 60 minutes. For this particular recipe, you need to add half of your palisade hops right away, half of the remaining hops 45 minutes into the boil, and the remaining hops go in at the end of the boil. Some recipes will call for different hops to be added at different times, but this one only calls for one variety.

The wort looks a little different when it cools down

After the boil, you need to cool the wort down to 70 degrees, so fill up your nice clean sink with ice water and set the pot inside. The cooled wort then needs to be added to a one-gallon jug, which is where it will be spending the next two weeks. It’s important to pour the wort through a strainer. Yeast needs oxygen, and the strainer will help aerate the liquid.

Spare bathroom - the perfect place to keep the light away

Time to add the last ingredient, the yeast. If you taste the wort at this point, it won’t taste like beer, but it will instead be surprisingly sweet. Yeast reacts with the sugars to create alcohol, that’s what happens during the fermentation process. So add the yeast, shake the jug a bit to “wake up” the yeast, and add the screw cap. The byproduct of the fermentation process is carbon dioxide, so you’re going to connect one end of the tubing to the jug, and set the other end in a bowl of sanitized water.

The fermentation process will last two weeks, and there’s only two things to do in the meantime:

1) The beer will bubble quite a bit during the first couple days, but once it settles down you need to replace the tube with the airlock.

A watched beer batch never ferments, puppy

2) Collect empty bottles that you can use in two weeks when you’re ready to bottle the beer. I find that full bottles are a lot easier to come by than empty bottles, but emptying them can take some effort.

Better start prepping the empty bottles right away. Cheers.

Busy Bees Making... Jam?

A couple weeks ago Dear Husband (DH) and I were blessed with the chance to host his parents and Grandpa H (GPaH) for a fabulous weekend. 

We had a fantastic time and did so many things! We ate at a couple of great local restaurants, tried a few beer/wine tastings, checked out the carousel, found a great spot to view Lake Michigan, and were busy bees at home grilling and canning. Whew!

I didn't take any pictures while we were out, but Mom-in-law (MIL) got some great ones in the fun-house by the carousel.

At home, GPaH inspected my garden and I think he approved... (he even says he brags about it!) A few months ago he had sent me some pepper seeds, and I had just planted the seedlings I grew in the raised beds. So far they are surviving, but it hasn't been hot enough for them to thrive. 

One of the big activities I planned for the weekend was canning some jam. I have almost zero experience with canning. When I was thirteen I helped my Nana make a fantastic Strawberry Rhubarb jam, but that's all I have ever canned. I have been wanting to make that jam again for a long time, but was never brave enough. That's where GPaH and MIL come in. 

Both have more canning experience than me, so MIL lent a much needed extra set of hands while GPaH supervised and offered handy tricks and tips.

The jam turned out really sweet, but really good. Everyone approved of it on the next morning's English muffins! 

Easy Strawberry Rhubarb Jam:

- 6 Cups diced rhubarb

- 3 Cups white sugar

- 1 package Strawberry Jell-O (3 oz) 

1. Prep and dice rhubarb (remove leaves and base of stalk, skin if needed, and dice)

2. Combine rhubarb and sugar. Let sit for at least 3 hours (or overnight). This helps soften and take the water out of the rhubarb, evidently called "macerating." (see right)

3. Bring the rhubarb/sugar to a boil over medium heat. 

4. Reduce heat to low, and stir constantly for 12 min. 

5. Break down the rhubarb a little bit more with a potato masher. This depends on how chunky you like your jam. 

6. Remove from heat and stir in dry gelatin mix.

7. Transfer to hot, sterile canning jars leaving a "head space" of 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch.

8. You can either let them cool and store in the refrigerator, or process them in boiling water for 10-13 min. and store in the pantry. (I processed them so I could gift them.)

GPaH also supervised the guys making hot-wings from scratch. I think they even smoked them over hickory chips! They were really good, and they were HOT! Almost too hot for me but I have a bland, Midwest palate. Great job men, definitely a repeat!

Ants... Ew!

We had been lucky. In the year an a half we have lived in our house, we haven't really had any major "invasions" from creepy crawly things. An ant here, a spider there of course, but no infestations.

Last year while gardening I ran across a few ant colonies, but they were outside and easily taken care of. 

Last night I was cleaning up in the kitchen and just like the past year and a half, I didn't see a thing. 

This morning? Tons of little sugar ants all around the sink. 

Two days before the in-laws are arriving.

Perfect... just peachy perfect.

So before work I scrambled to throw together some ant bait and left it out. I went back at lunch to check on things, and there must have been three times as many ants. ICK! Don't worry, this is actually what I wanted. Let me explain.

There are worker ants that venture out to find food to bring back for the queen and babies. Then they report back where all the goodies are, and they come in droves. You can spray or put out poison that kills these ants, but you are treating the symptom not the disease: the queen and her colony. 

So instead, you give them exactly what they are looking for, sugar! (With a little sinister intention mixed in.)

They live long enough to take the solution back to the nest where the queen/larva get it and they send the "good" news to the other workers where the awesome food stash is. That means more ants get the tainted food, and you have a greater chance of killing the queen and larva. 

So what is this sinister sweetness? Borax. 

Found in your local grocery store in the laundry soap isle, it has a variety of uses but is known for it's detergent boosting power. (Check out this hilarious classic TV commercial!)

Sinisterly Sweet Ant Bait

- 1 part Borax

- 4 (to 6) parts plain white sugar

- 4 (to 6) parts hot water

- cotton balls

Mix together all ingredients until dissolved. (I use an old LABELED water bottle, and shake to mix. It will keep for up to a few weeks.)

Soak cotton balls with the solution, and place near the ants (out of reach of tiny hands and paws!) I find it easiest to place the cotton balls on a plastic lid that I was going to recycle anyway. That way I can put a little extra liquid bait in the saucer. 

Repeat this process every couple days, as the sugar-water will dry and harden. After 2-3 applications (less than a week!) you should hardly see any more ants at all!

After I came home from work, there were already fewer ants (about as many as this morning) but they were moving sluggishly and some were already dead. Yay!

Anytime I see an ant or two I set out a trap just to try and be proactive. 

So it's toxic for the ants, does that mean it is poison!? Yes and no... this is a fantastic site explaining what Borax is and isn't. Basically it can irritate the skin in strong solutions and is very bad if large quantities are ingested. So just be safe! Keep it away from pets and kids, and PLEASE remember to label any containers of ant bait!

Easter eggs and Eggbake!

Easter is always a great time for family and fun.

Our family has a great tradition of extravagant Easter hunts. This year we ended up everywhere from an Arcade (where we had to earn at least 500 points to get our next clue), to a Cajun/Creole lunch stop. It was a great hunt this year, as always. Skee Ball is a favorite of SisX's!

Another tradition is dying Easter eggs. Even though we are in our 20's we still like to color and embellish the eggs, then we make them into deviled eggs for the guys to devour.






I picked up an egg kit to make "Monster Eggs" and another for "Mustache Eggs." Check out the super cute results below!




Another superstar for the weekend was a couple of Breakfast Eggbakes I made.
This was only my second time attempting a breakfast casserole like this, and I was modifying the recipe so I was kind of nervous about it.

Overnight Sausage or Bacon Eggbake:
- 2 1/2 to 3 cups seasoned croutons
- 1 lb. spicy pork sausage (or bacon)
- 6 or 7 eggs
- 2 cups milk
- 1 can cream of mushroom soup
- 10 oz. frozen, chopped spinach (thawed and squeezed of all water)
- 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 cup shredded monterrey jack cheese
- 1/4 tsp. dry, ground mustard

1. Grease 9x13 pan with butter
2. Spread croutons on the bottom
3. Cook and crumble sausage (or bacon) on top of croutons
4. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining ingredients
5. Pour over the top of the croutons and sausage
6. Level, cover, and refrigerate overnight
7. The next morning, preheat oven to 325 (deg F) and bake for 50-55 min
8. Insert toothpick to make sure it is cooked all the way through
9. Let sit 5 min to solidify
10. Serve, and graciously accept praise 

I also made a vegetarian option, which was a combination of a couple of recipes...

Overnight Veggie Eggbake:
- 2 1/2 to 3 cups seasoned croutons
- 2-3 cans of artichoke hearts (drained and roughly chopped)
- 4-5 med. garlic cloves, diced
- 1/2 cup green onions, diced
- 6 or 7 eggs
- 2 cups milk
- 1 can cream of mushroom soup
- 10 oz. frozen, chopped spinach (thawed and squeezed of all water)
- 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 cup shredded monterrey jack cheese
- 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 Tbs dried thyme
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp dried parsley
- 1/4 tsp pepper
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp. dry, ground mustard

1. Grease 9x13 pan with butter
2. Spread croutons on the bottom
3. Chop and spread artichoke hearts over croutons
4. Saute` garlic and green onions until fragrant (about 5 min?)
4. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining ingredients and add garlic/onion mix
5. Pour over the top of the croutons and artichokes
6. Level, cover, and refrigerate overnight
7. The next morning, preheat oven to 325 (deg F) and bake for 50-55 min
8. Insert toothpick to make sure it is cooked all the way through
9. Let sit 5 min to solidify
10. Serve, and graciously accept praise

I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of the egg bakes, but they disappeared so quick! Besides... casseroles aren't meant to look good, just taste good!