For the Love of Food

Last Spring my son was accepted to one of the preschools in historic downtown.  We have a few friends from our garden who also send their children there.  One of theme was a regular at the preschools “workshop” where parents get together and can jellies and make jewelry to be sold at the local Christmas market to raise money for different activities the children do in preschool.

Now, i haven’t had a chance to be part of a club or group that does things for fun (like crafts) since I was in high school.  So, I jumped at the opportunity to join the workshop.  We meet once a month around 8pm, crack open a bottle of wine, bring some snacks, and work on different crafts and talk.  It’s really so much fun and a great way to meet other moms/women – especially when you don’t know many people.

So…when I heard about their need for jellies, I got really excited and ran home in search of a unique recipe.  I came across a recipe on MyRecipes.com for a watermelon jelly, tweaked it, and ended up with something everyone was talking about!

The mom who is in charge of the organization for the jelly/jam/preserves/chutney sales gave my jelly the name “Toskanischer Sommer” (Tuscan Summer – in German).  I went by the market everyday with my camera to get a picture of it with the other jellies, but it was never out.  Then, the only day I show up without a camera, they are selling it..so these are pictures I took with my cell phone.

Much to my delight, all of my jelly was sold out in 2 days!!! Continue Reading »

Way way back in the beginning of the summer, when sour cherries were in season, I canned 2 batches of maraschino cherries. It was actually pretty simple. The “hardest” part was waiting until the sour cherries were in season because it only happens for 3-4 weeks a year!

To pit them, I took a paper clip, stuck it through the top and scooped out the pit. There are plenty of examples on how to do this online.

The 2 batches of cherries I made were different. One was just preserved in maraschino liquor and the other had some fructose added to it for sweetness. They were both canned in a water bath.

After waiting a few weeks, I opened them up and did a taste test. And, they are nothing like their store-bought counter parts, but are a much more gourmet version to impress your friends with. I had a lot of fun with this and hope that you can too next year when sour cherries are back in season.

Ingredients:
pitted sour cherries
enough Maraschino Liquor to cover them in a canning jar
2 teaspoons of Sugar or Fructose per 1/2 cup of cherries to be canned
jars of canning in

Directions:
place cherries, maraschino liquor, and fructose in a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Boil for 3 minutes and pour into canning jar(s). Sea the jars and can in a water bath for 10 minutes. Remove from water carefully, set aside and leave undisturbed for 24 hours. Open after at least 1 week so flavors have time to set.

Enjoy in cakes, over ice cream, or in your favorite cocktails!

Right before our trip to the US we canned a whole bunch of tomatoes from our garden (a post about that will follow eventually). We had a few ingredients left over that we needed to preserve since everyone else we knew was also going on vacation at the same time.

We decided to make a sort of pico de gallo. Now that it has a had a few weeks to set and soak in the flavors, we opened a jar to have with some breakfast tacos.

It was lacking in flavor. The lemon juice flavor was gone and it needs much more salt to taste. Everything also should have been diced instead of chopped. What can I say…after a whole day of canning, we were lazy.

What I did end up making was a great pre-salsa. This would be the great foundations of a salsa. I would pulse this in the food processor a few times. Then, just add some more tomato, cilantro, lime juice, salt, and some seasonings. Continue Reading »

This cranberry sauce is my father-in-law’s recipe. And, this is the only part of our Thanksgiving meal that we didn’t actually make ourselves.

While we can find (expensive) cranberries here in Germany -yes, Ocean Spray to be exact – my father-in-law sent us some of his homemade cranberry sauce as a gift, and it would have been a shame not to use it – since it tastes so good.

I did not grow-up eating cranberry sauce. I’m not sure how old I was the first time I tasted it – maybe I was already in college. So, I am not as “in love” with it as my husband is. Our guests enjoyed the sauce with their turkey, but, my husband, as usual, pulled out a spoon and finished it off after he finished his meal. Continue Reading »

Way back in January I planted all my tomatoes, chilies, and tomatillos indoors so that they would be ready in May for planting.

Not many believed that I would succeed, but after seeing what I have harvested this year…there are no more disbelievers. It’s been a good year as a gardener and harvester of my small garden plot.

I decided to go with a sort-of square-foot gardening technique. I got a lot of questions and raised eyebrows. But, in the end, I was the only one with over 30 successful tomato plants and over 15 chili plants.

All of a sudden one day, everything needed to be harvested – it was all ripe – and we were all going on a trip to the US. We weren’t about to leave 4 lbs of tomatoes, 8 lbs of tomatillos (from 2 plants!!!), and 30 jalapeños to go to waste. Not when we could can them!

So, we got canning.

I had never made tomatillos salsa until this day. But, I found a recipe I was comfortable with (I was trying to find something that seemed like it would taste most like Freebird’s World Burrito’s Tomatillo Sauce) and I did!

Something else I learned from my first tomatillo plants: tomatillos can grown to be as large as a medium-sized tomato and are nice and citrusy, sweet, and tangy. Who would have known that my tomatillos would be so much better and oh so different than those I bought in a grocery store in Texas and harvested the seeds from.

This sauce is oh so very easy to make and tastes great weather you eat it all right away or can it and eat it later. The canning does take away most of the taste of the lime juice – so adding a squeeze of fresh lime juice before serving as a salsa would do it some good.

Also, since we grew our own jalapeños in Germany (which doesn’t have as many intensely hot and sunny days as Texas – heat makes chilies hotter!), when we seeded them for the salsa, we had a completely mild sauce – no spiciness what so ever. So, if your jalapeños come from a more mild climate and you want it a bit spicier, I highly suggest just leaving the seeds in.

without further adieu: Continue Reading »

As some of you may know, I started a second version of Taste&Create called Taste&Create Seasonal Edition. It differs from the regular Taste&Create in that each month there is a new season-appropriate theme.

This month’s theme was Spring, and in sticking with that I chose to make my partner’s Heavenly rhubarb and vanilla jam.

I was pleased to come across a blog that has predominantly vegan dishes. I actually used to be vegetarian, but now-a-days it’s meat-lover’s paradise in my kitchen. You don’t have to be a vegetarian/vegan to enjoy a meat/dairy/animal-free dish every once in a while. So hop on over to Munchkin mail and see what entices you!

I had to tweak the recipe slightly b/c I had slightly more rhubarb than the recipe originally called for, but the proportions are the same.

To be honest, I was surprised that me preserves didn’t taste slightly sour or tangy at all. I thought the rhubarb would give it a slightly tangy flavor, but either there was more than enough fructose to cancel it out or my rhubarb wasn’t ready to be picked yet.

Since i have never cooked/baked with rhubarb, I’m not sure what it exactly tastes like, but the preserves had a nice soft vanilla flavor to them and I thoroughly enjoyed them! Next time I will try by mixing in different fruits…maybe even some strawberries! Continue Reading »

I made saw these interesting Asian Lime Ribs over on Tastespotting the other day, and after reading the post and the promises of the best ribs ever, I figured they were worth a try.

The ribs were very very tasty, but I wouldn’t go as far to call them the best ribs ever…I still think mine are better. But, for Asian Lime ribs, these are awesome.

So, I ran into a slight “snag” when I was buying the ingredients for this recipe. I can’t use store-bought Hoisin Sauce b/c of the sugar content.

Luckily, my best friend (since I was 2 years old!) sent me a huge-ass care package from Miami (where we grew up) with all the yummy Cuban foods that can make the long trip over. It actually brought me to tears when I saw that she even included a Cuban cookbook for me. It was ESP…I had been cooking Cuban all week…and then the package came. Included in the package were 2 cans of black beans (among lots of other things that we ate right away). Yes, I can get black beans here, but not the same kind and I need a few hours to prepare them. This was perfect b/c it let me make the sauce quickly.

Anyways, so instead of rewriting all the very detailed picture instructions that you can find over at the Noble Pig for the Asian Lime Ribs, you can just go there yourself and check it out. I will share with you my Hoisin Sauce recipe. I got the base recipe here at cooking up a storm. Continue Reading »

As happens quite often, I landed at the blog of the Homesick Texan – she has some great stuff, you should check her out. This time it was about pickles.

I love pickles!

I’m not very fond of the pickles I can find in Germany – most of them contain sugar or artificial sweetener. I like my pickles to be sour.

My garden has been producing quite a few cucumbers lately, but not enough to warrant a canning event in my kitchen. So, I decided I’d try Homesick Texan’s Refrigerator Dill Pickles. As usual, I like to change it up a bit. Continue Reading »