ok, now what?

So we have all these home grown vegetables.  Now what do we do with them? 


Unless you like to have a side of steamed squash with every meal, if you grow food you probably want to find a variety of delicious things to do with those beautiful vegetables.


This fritter recipe came from my sister, but I'm not sure where she got it.  It's a good one (if you're into an easy ingredient list and fried food)!


Vegetable Fritters
1 large carrot
1 medium zucchini
1 medium squash
1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black paper
1/2 cup vegetable oil


I've done this with carrot, squash, and zucchini or just with three squash.  Whatever you have, really.
Oh, and last time we used cheddar because we didn't have any Parmesan on hand and we liked it even better...but we are some cheddar-eating fools around here.


Shred the veggies and pat them dry with a paper towel.  In a medium bowl, mix the shredded veggies with flour, parm, salt, pepper, and egg.
In a 10-inch skillet, heat oil over medium heat.  Gently drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the heated oil.  As they cook, flatten slightly with a spatula.  Cook about 5 minutes (turning once) until golden brown.  Transfer to lined platter to drain.


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Since this is a Paula Deen recipe, you know good and well it's gonna be totally awesome.
I like squash and zucchini just fine, but I really love cheese.  This has both!
Squash Casserole

• 6 cups large diced yellow squash and zucchini
• Vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 teaspoon House seasoning, recipe follows
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 1 cup crushed butter crackers (recommended: Ritz)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Saute the squash in a little vegetable oil over medium-low heat until it has completely broken down, about 15 to 20 minutes. Line a colander with a clean tea towel. Place the cooked squash in the lined colander. Squeeze excess moisture from the squash. Set aside.

In a medium size skillet, saute the onion in butter for 5 minutes. Remove from pan and mix all ingredients together except cracker crumbs. Pour mixture into a buttered casserole dish and top with cracker crumbs. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

House Seasoning:

• 1 cup salt
• 1/4 cup black pepper
• 1/4 cup garlic powder

Mix ingredients together and store in an airtight container for up to 6 months.

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Dill Pickles

I've talked before about my grandma making pickles.  I tried, and they were terrible.  My memory is that her pickles were so good that it was worth the old "try, try again" bit.  And so we have.  By we I mean that I roped Chris into pickle-making too!  As a matter of fact, he's started making some hot/spicy pickles too by using a variation on the old recipe.
One huge plus to making these is that there is no actual canner involved. :)  You cook the brine, but then once the jars cool off they just go into the fridge.  Score.
So, this is her recipe with the changes we felt made them awesome.

1 quart vinegar

2 quarts water

1 cup salt

cucumbers (Just however many you want to do.  My recommendation is to start small.  See if you like them.     That way you don't have a zillion pickled cucumbers if you end up wanting to make changes.)

Fresh dill

Garlic

Jars, lids, & bands (We prefer the wide mouth jars as it's easier to get the pickles out.  We have used quart and pint jars.)

Wash the cucumbers and cut of both ends of each one.  Soak them in a bowl of ice water for an hour before you can them.  This helps keep the pickles crunchier.  During that hour you can prepare the jars and brine.  Once my jars and brine are going, I usually go ahead and cut the cucumbers into whatever shape/size I want them and toss them back in the ice water.  This makes the process of packing them into the jars much faster when the time comes.  I always do some coins and some spears.  I'll caution you to do the coins at least an inch thick so they won't get too soft during the actual pickling process.  

Put one clove of peeled garlic, 2-3 pieces of dill stalk, and 1 flower of dill seed (the leafy-looking part) in each pint jar.  Of course if you are using larger jars, just double these amounts.

For the brine, mix one quart of vinegar, two quarts of water, and one cup of salt.  Bring to a boil.  (We've used sea salt, pickling salt, and regular old table salt and can find no difference in the results.)

Once the cukes have been soaking for an hour and your brine is boiling, you're ready to can.  Pack the cucumbers into the jars.  You want to get as many as you can in each jar, but without crushing them.

Fill the packed jars with brine, leaving a 1/4 inch head space.  Put on the lids and bands.  Let the jars cool a bit before moving them to the fridge.

Sometimes Chris can only wait 3 or 4 weeks before he gets into them, but I recommend waiting at least 6 weeks.  

Let me know if you try any of these!
I'll try to let you know what else we're doing with our home grown goodness.  

pretty stinkin' fresh

At first I thought he was deep in thought about the berries...then I realized he was just trying to dig his shoes into the mud without getting in trouble! :)

I'm not sure it gets much fresher than this!  We went out to Southern Belle Farm yesterday morning and picked two gallons of strawberries.  I thought about doing this last year, but I just wasn't sure it was worth the money.  Since I use so much of the fruit I buy to make jams and jellies, I need it to be as cost effective as it can be.  I am pleased to say that other than a few berries the kids picked without asking us first, this was so much better than store bought!  The beauty is that you can pick exactly what you want without having those mysterious ones right in the center of the container that you can't tell whether or not they are any good. 

We picked yesteday morning, and I had eight jars of jam ready by dinnertime.  The four you see are strawberry, and then I made a batch of blueberry/strawberry/vanilla.  Yum!

mixed fruit

A few weeks ago my mom was by the house and got some jam while she was here.  One of those jars was a mixed fruit batch.  Yesterday she asked if I had any more of it.  
Sometime back in the fall (I think) I made some mixed fruit jelly.  This was sort of a fluke.  I had several different kinds of fruit, but not enough to do any of my regular recipes.  As such, I decided to take the blackberry plum jam recipe that I am so fond of and tweak it a bit.  In all this recipe calls for 2.75 pounds of fruit, so I came up with that much of whatever I had on hand.  I really only made this batch so that the fruit didn't go bad.  I never even had any of it, but since Mom liked it I tried today to recreate it.  
I think I have all the same fruits: plums, apples, blackberries, and strawberries, but I have no. idea. of the measurements.
I guess she'll have to tell me how close I got to the mark. 

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As long as I can remember, I have enjoyed some yogurt now and again.  I am not a yogurt-a-day kind of gal, but I'll pick it up at the store from time to time.  The only stipulation has been that it cannot contain any actual fruit.  If you know my history, you know that previous to 2010 I didn't care for fruit in anything.  Making my own jam changed that for me.  I still tend to buy fruit-free yogurt, but now sometimes I add my own.  About a month ago I made some pear spoon fruit.  No, I did not make that up.  When I very first started jamming I saw a recipe for Blueberry Maple spoon fruit in a Food Network magazine.  This pear one was actually supposed to be a jam recipe, but it was my first time using it and it didn't quite go as planned.  At any rate, it's totally delicious in vanilla yogurt!  The kids and I have eaten it up.  I love preserving!

some Thursday tidbits

After all the belly-aching I did a couple of weeks ago about potty training, my girl already has it under control!  I can't possibly tell you how relieved I was once I realized that she got it!  I guess you just never know. :)

Recently I had been harassing my mom because she doesn't have a smart phone.  I realize that there are plenty of people who don't have them and live their lives just fine.  The problem is that she has a terrible habit of not answering her phone or returning text messages until hours or even days have passed.  My husband and my sister both had this same disease until they got smart phones, and then poof, they kept up with their phones!  Mom also has a home phone line, but does not have working phones hooked up to it.  This makes it pretty difficult to get in touch with her!  In this day and age there is no reason for that.  She tells me today that her iPhone is on the way, and I couldn't believe it!  I am fervently hoping that her iPhone is the miracle that helps her be reachable too. :)

Last week I made something that was supposed to be a cinnamon pear jam.  It turned out to be a cinnamon pear "spoon fruit."  Canning is such an interesting thing to me.  Sometimes in preserving the recipe sets up like a full-on jam and then others won't set even in the fridge.  On occasion I have dumped everything back in the pot and cooked it again to get that consistency that I want.  Other times it's just a spoon fruit!  When that's the case it can for sure be used on biscuits or over waffles or something like that.  This time around I went a different route.  I had some vanilla yogurt so I mixed a couple of tablespoons of yogurt with a couple of teaspoons of the cinnamon pear goodness.  I crumbed a graham cracker in it and called it a snack.  The kids loved it (and so did I)!  When Christian was about halfway through his, he says to me, "Mama, this looks like dessert yogurt."  Score.  Great use for my not so jellied fruit! 

a good day to preserve

I'm so thankful that today it actually feels like fall!  It's one of my favorite times of the year, and unfortunately it doesn't usually hang around for long.  Today I have the doors and windows open and the fans going.  It makes it feel homey to me.


I tried my hand at a new recipe.  It's one from Food in Jars for creamsicle jelly.  I knew I wanted to make it the very moment I read about it!  I have waited until now because it was jelly (and normally I make preserves or jam), and I thought I may be more difficult to make and be successful.  Other than a little extra patience and an awful lot of stirring, it was about the same.  It is delicious!  There is no actual cream in it, but I guess maybe the combination of the orange and the vanilla give it that taste.  I can't wait to try it on a biscuit!

Since Chris has been here today and is willing to help me, we also made a double batch of vanilla syrup.  It's super easy to make and looks pretty too.

For my final canning project of the day, I decided to make another batch of the carrot cake jam I tried out last week.  I figured since I was on a roll I should probably keep it going.  I've got this one on the stove right now, and it makes the house smell so festive!
This is not one I was so sure about since it has actual carrots in it.  I do not eat carrots, and in particular not shredded ones.  Although in the last few years I really have gotten better about trying new foods, when I see carrot raisin salad I have to try very hard not to gag.  Yech.
At any rate, this really has a good flavor!  It's even more lovely warmed up a bit.

Tonight I'll be making pumpkin bread and hopefully some kind of cream cheese icing to take to my in-law's house for Thanksgiving tomorrow!  I'm looking forward to all the delicious food the rest of this week will bring!

jamming it up

After my farmer's market bounty from a couple of weeks ago (and then another trip after that), I have been jamming it up.  I have made lots of strawberry, peach, and plum preserves.  Even though I have gotten some good reviews from the preserves and jams from this season so far, I must say I was already a tad bored.   I love it that there's no end to preserving!
I wanted to use all my fruit, but I needed some new recipes.


As a result of the little guy at the farmer's market who sold me an entire flat of blackberries for $3 (if you can even believe that), I had to find something to do with them.  I don't so much dig on the seediness of blackberries, so I was trying to avoid just making blackberry jam.  I did quite a few batches of the strawberry jam that my husband is SO fond of, and since that recipe worked so well I used that as my base.  I tried at great length to find that recipe on the Food Network website, to no avail.  I went back and looked at my June 2011 Food Network magazine and found that this one actually from the Ball website and can be found here.  It calls for lemon juice, and although I've made it with that and with vanilla we like it best with neither of those add-ons.  


For my "black strawberry" concoction, I used that same strawberry recipe, but I cut the amount of the strawberries in half and used half blackberries.

It turned out great!  Or, I think it did anyway. :)


I had used all my strawberries, but still had a few blackberries and tons of plums.  
One of the nice things about making jams and such is that you can generally search the internet and find a recipe to suit whatever fruit you have on hand.  I searched and found a recipe for blackberry plum jam.  It is awesome!  If you don't so much care for super sweet jams, this may be the one for you.  It's really tart and delicious!  I love it when a recipe works out well on the first try!  The only thing I did different than called for was to use 4 ounces of blackberries instead of 8 just because that's what I had.  I made up the other 4 ounces in plums instead.  

My husband told me this week that I need to have some Kelli's Jellies business cards made. 


He tells me my title should be Baller Jammer.


That guy cracks me up...sometimes. :)

learning to preserve

When I was a kid I remember my grandmother, Nennie, used to make pickles.  I thought it was pretty bizarre...and even more so that she gave them to us as Christmas gifts.  As I got a little older I began to appreciate that she made them and that they actually tasted good.  Eventually I asked her for the recipe, and proceeded to do absolutely nothing with it.  Last year at about this time I decided to give it a go.  I figured since now I'm a stay-at-home mom this is a pretty fantastic thing to be able to do.  Epic. Fail.  

Since Nennie has now gone home to be with the Lord, I was not able to ask her why my pickles were so mushy or why the brine turned out so cloudy...

I am someone who doesn't like to do anything that I can't do well.  Not a great quality, I know.  After the squishy pickle situation I decided to try my hand at something else.  This something else was preserves.  Thankfully, I have been much more successful in that area!  My loving husband brought home a pound or two of figs, which I promptly told him would wind up in the trash can unless he could whip up a batch of fig newtons with said figs.  He suggested preserves, and so the delicious adventures began.

After feeling like I could do that with some positive results, I moved on and tried my hand at peach, pear, and plum canning as well.  

Who knew I would enjoy it so much?!

Last year I gave away most of what I made (at least what we didn't eat).  As the season started this year and I decided to pick it back up I have had quite a few people ask me if they could buy them.  Really?  You like them enough to buy them from me?  Awesome!  With my brother-in-law's suggestion I even had a name.  As such, Kelli's Jellies is up and running.  Pretty exciting feeling!  I've been reading tons of canning & preserving blogs and recipes.  I'm learning something new all the time.  Since I was a teacher before I had kids, I am a firm believer that people should be lifelong learners.  I'm having a great time learning and making pretty scrumptious jams and preserves.  My favorite are the plum vanilla! 

I've recently gotten some labels, which was pretty cool.  It's the little things. :)

The recipe I used as a jumping off point is from Food Network and can be found here .  As with many recipes, you have to figure out how to make it work for you.  Totally worth the time and effort it takes to make them...not to mention that people will think you are so crafty!

To go back to the beginning, I have now decided (since I have a little more experience) to have another go at those pickles.  Only time will tell.