It's "that" time of year again...

For the second year in a row, where my house smells overwhelmingly like tomatoes and my kitchen is stacked with bushels boxes! With help from my husband (read about the dangers of canning alone here), I've managed to "put up" two bushels of tomatoes in the form of sauce, and I've got to say, it's much yummier than last year! If you're like me and eccentric enough to take up the bizarre endeavour, then you probably want to check out the Bernardin website for the basic idea of canning and some recipes. I used their basic procedure for tomato sauce. You don't want to add any oils or fresh veggies since it alters the pH and apparently that can allow botulism to grow and potentially kill you and yours.

Last year, inspired by Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book, I used her recipe for Family Secret Tomato Sauce. However, I didn't seed or peel. I admit, that haste does indeed make waste, and the sauce was too bitter. I also wasn't crazy about the hint of cinnamon and nutmeg and the huge amount of basil (Sorry Barbara!). This year, I bit the bullet and did the seeding. Much tastier! However, I did add (without measuring, just to taste...):

1/2 cup brown sugar
6 tbsp of garlic powder
2 tbsp of dried basil
2 tbsp of dried oregano
2 tbsp of ground pepper
2 tbsp of sea salt
(***don't forget 2 tbsp of lemon juice PER 1L jar to maintain acidity***)

Boiled down for about 2-3 hours to make a moderately thick sauce. Divine!

Tomorrow is the big day, TomatoFest 2011, my now annual canning party. We've got 5 women and 7 bushels of tomatoes. The plan is to make diced tomatoes and whole canned tomatoes. Hopefully we get it done before the wine takes effect!

Gardening Season in Review

I didn't post throughout the summer, but it doesn't mean that I my garden doesn't make me feel like a proud mama to some baby garlic! Here's the season in review:

This was April...starting from seed. The kids did some watering and planting. But they also upended a whole tray a week later. So much for my careful labeling of the different varieties!
The garden in June...garlic was up nice and early in the season and made it feel like a real garden as soon as the snow melted! Though they are smiling, I think I was more excited about the bean teepee than the kids were!

July filled things in a bit...lots of kale (the nasturtiums and marigolds seemed to help keep the aphids away this year), way too much chard to possibly eat, beans, peas, spinach, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, unusual "banana legs" tomatoes, cucumbers, purple peppers, jalapenos, beets, dill, a few carrots, a failed zucchini (who can KILL zucchini you ask?), and a nice round pumpkin!
The biggest hit of this year was the addition of my garlic patch. You can read back about the planting part from last October here, but really, all that matters is that the results were AWESOME and so easy. We ate the "scapes" in June...

...and harvested 60 heads at the end of July. It was the juciest, tastiest garlic I'd even tried! I ate some right away and was advised that it was starting to smell, then I used some of the garlic to make 2 bushels worth of dill pickles (not my best batch, but I'll leave that for another day), and the rest is hanging in my basement keeping the vampires away.
Other than garlic this *could* have been my favorite harvest. These are my shiitake mushrooms. Dead easy, and delicious if you don't forget about them in the oven when you're drying them. Ahem.


Finally, our pumpkin!

Festive Treats

Despite my (admittedly inconsistent) efforts to control junk food, my 6 year old daughter's dentist just informed us that she has 8 (yes, EIGHT) cavities. The shame!
Oh well, I can take most of the blame, but man, they eat a lot of sugar at school! Birthdays are complete with cupcakes (that's 20 days with cupcakes), the warm weather has involved at least 5 occasions that involved freezies, and I believe the ice cream truck handed out free ice cream on the last day of school.
So, when my daughter asked if I would send something in for an early celebration of her summertime birthday, I wondered what would be appropriately "healthy" yet not be thrown in the garbage. We decided on fruit kebabs, and somehow in a moment of weakness I allowed a fruit candy to top each one. This, admittedly, is a pretty poor plan from a cavity point of view, but hey, at least it involved fruit.
Next year no candy, they are pretty enough all on their own!

Shroom Harvest!

My first shiitake mushroom "flush".
It was stupidly easy, but not without ups and downs. When I first got my logs, they were longer than I expected. I tried to fit them in the bathtub for a soak, but it wasn't really a great plan. First off, they didn't quite fit. They also got my tub filled with bits of bark and other outdoorsy crap. Then there was the issue of actual bathing. So, the logs soaked for about 5 hours before I moved them outside under the sprinkler overnight. Eventually I did get a few mushrooms, maybe 6 or 7. I'm pretty sure raccoons realized that shiitakes are tasty, because they started scratching out any teeny mushroom cap that attempted to pop out. Defeated, I chalked it up in the loss column of my garden experiment. After a few weeks, I got my second wind and took the logs to my dad's place, cut them in half and gave them a less half assed soak - this time for a full 24 hours. A couple of weeks later just when I'd almost forgotten about my 'shrooms - TA DAAA!
Above is the first true harvest!

Since I use this blog to be positive, I won't get into the story where I put most of my harvest into the oven to dehydrate them - and then forgot about them. I now have a big bowl of what can only generously be called mushroom "crisps". But that does bring us to the best part of growing mushrooms, you only have to wait a few weeks for the next harvest!

Black Bean "Brownies" (Seriously!)

We don't eat alot of dessert, but every once in awhile, I get a sweet craving. I'm trying to avoid dairy and wheat right now (as an experiment to get rid of chronic sinusitis), so that cuts out ice cream and most baked goods. I stumbled across a black bean brownie recipe at Whole Foods, and was surprised how many good reviews they got - and how good the pictures looked. I figured it was worth a try. They are super-quick, especially if you have a blender or food processor.

Now in all honesty, I cannot say that these health-nut alternatives are seamless substitutions for the real thing. I think to call them brownies sets them up for failure. However, if you just think of them as a dessert that has some health potential, they're totally passable, even yummy. We don't usually eat many "real" brownies, so my kids didn't really have a frame of reference. They especially liked eating the batter before it was cooked. I had to snicker to myself a little seeing them literally lick drips of black beans off spoons and even try to shove their little heads into the bowl to get more. The finished product didn't meet quite the same enthusiasm from my son (always the pickiest one), but he had a few. My daughter liked them, and most importantly, I found them to be a great wheat free alternative.

I made some very minor modifications from the Whole Foods recipe. See below:

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed (I like Eden Organics, since their cans are BPA free- btw the Canadian Government has recently passed a regulation to phase out BPA in all cans over the next few years.)
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup cocoa
2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecan-s (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Place the black beans, sugar, eggs, melted butter, cocoa, vanilla and salt in a blender (or food processor) and blend until smooth (use a spatula to push the stuff off the sides). Pour into an 8″x8″ pan that has been greased. Sprinkle chocolate chips and nuts on top (optional). Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until slightly puffed and set. Cool and cut. Eat!!!

Bite Sized Lentil Snacks

I've been looking for some creative vegetarian options lately. Mostly because we're running low on our organic meat supply and are due for a trip to the farm. It's also healthy and easy and cheap. I was searching for lentil recipes, since I've fallen out of the habit of soaking beans, and lentils don't need to be pre-soaked. I came across a recipe at Just Bento that I modified to include what I had on hand (sweet potatoes and peas). I served them as part of a "make believe" dinner (which means a whole bunch of stuff thrown together). I liked to dip my lentil bites into guacamole, my daughter dipped hers in ranch dressing, and my husband used his like falafel in a pita with lettuce and tomato. My son, however, didn't like them. No surprises there.
I brought the leftovers for my lunch for a couple of days and if nothing else, they were WAY yummier than anything the cafeteria serves up. I do highly recommend some sort of dip or else they can be a bit dry.

Snacker alert--they are great to have in the fridge and just pop one if you're feeling snacky for something savory and want to avoid the temptation of junkier items.

Lentil Bites
2 cups uncooked red lentils
1/2 cup cooked brown rice
1 big onion or 2 small, chopped into teeny pieces
2-3 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil (or coconut oil works too)
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. curry powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
1-2 tbsp tamari, soy sauce or Bragg's liquid
Salt and pepper
Sesame seeds or flax seeds (or a combination of both)
Optional additions - 1 small sweet potato (diced - I pre-cooked for a minute in the microwave), 1/2 c green peas, 1/2 c cauliflower (chopped into tiny pieces), pretty much anything goes here.

Rinse the lentils, and cook them (put them in a pot and cover them with about an extra inch of water). Cook for 15-20 mins. Skim the goo off the top. Drain off any excess water.

In the meantime, put the chopped onions, garlic, spices and olive oil in a frying pan with any of the optional added veggies. Fry until the onions are softened. Add the brown rice and tamari or soy sauce.

Mix everything together. If you're not deterred by the sloppy look (see above), you can just eat it right now. Or, if you're in the mood for something more tidy looking, let it cool. Once cool, scoop it out on a baking tray lined with parchment paper into golf ball sized dollops. You can flatten them or roll them or just leave them alone. Sprinkle with sesame seeds or flax seeds. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes or until the surface is a bit crispy.

Eat, freeze, or refrigerate, whatever works.

Experimenting with 'shrooms!

Okay, so I'm not referring to a foray into hallucinogens...it's a bit more tame than that. This week I placed my order for 4 logs inoculated with shiitake mushroom spawn from Mycosource. Apparently I just have to soak them in cold water, rap them with a hammer once or twice, and forget about them in a shady place for awhile. Word on the street is that I should be able to harvest a couple of pounds of fresh shrooms...ahem, I mean shiitakes, from each log...for the next 4-5 years! To a novice backyard garden geek like me, the idea of growing my own shiitake mushrooms this season with next to no work is mind boggling in it's own (non-hallucinogenic) way.

Shiitakes are gaining recognition for their health benefits. They contain lentinan, a component praised for anti-tumour properties. There is also evidence that shiitakes can lower cholesterol and stimulate the immune system. If that doesn't get you interested in mushrooms, then maybe the fact that they are just so much fun will. Get a load of these cool facts about growing mushrooms:
You soak the log in cold water to simulate winter...then they grow, you harvest them, and you soak them in cold water to simulate winter again which shocks them into growing again. Cooler still is the reasoning behind the hammer raps. The idea is that the jarring from the hammering simulates a tree falling in the forest onto the log. The mushrooms get the message that there is a new log to colonize and to get a move on and grow already!

Oh, the magic of mushrooms...heehee.