Grape Vines, Memories and my Weekly CSA Box

For the past two weeks in my CSA box I have received some concord grapes. There are many foods that just taste like summer to me. Ice cold watermelon takes me back to my grandparents front yard under the big tree, a perfectly ripe peach or nectarine reminds me of my Dad, pulling out his pocket knife cutting off pieces to share with me. I could go on and on describing the taste of summer and the memories that are tied to those foods.

 Nothing however takes me back to my childhood summers quicker than a perfectly ripe, perfectly purple, concord grape. 

My Great-Grandmother had a grape vine and grew these at her house. My Uncle parked his boat beside that vine and my sister and I spend hours playing in that boat every summer reaching over the side of the boat and eating grapes. The vine grew up and over a post for easier picking and my sister and I spent a lot of time playing under there too, eating grapes and enjoying the shade provided by the vine.

Even though the vine was at my Great Grandmother's house and I shared grapes with many family members, and watched my Mom make grape jelly with those grapes, that taste reminds me of my sister more than anyone else.

A couple of years ago, my sister had gotten a cutting off of the vine and planted it at her house. Last year she had a great crop and I was in town when they were ready to be picked. It was fun picking grapes with her and her son, picking grapes off a vine that dates back to our childhood and probably even before our lives even had even begun. I don't know when the vine was originally planted.

Do you have any food memories that say summer to you?

On to the CSA box! This week we received corn, tomatoes, mini peppers, squash, cucumbers, potatoes, some cilantro, an onion and more of those delicious grapes. We also got a watermelon that I forgot to include in the picture.

I have said it before, but I am so glad with my choice of CSA providers. I love the variety of foods and everything has been so tasty. One thing that I have especially enjoyed is that occasionally we get a bag with some things grouped together to make something specific. This week it was a "salsa" kit and we have everything in there to make a batch of salsa. I am a huge fan of cilantro and like lots of it in my salsa.

Have a great weekend!

Wing Sauce

Last week I found myself with quite a few tomatoes that needed to be used soon. I didn't have enough to make a batch of spaghetti sauce, so I thumbed through my Ball book looking for a recipe that called for a smaller amount of tomatoes. I found the recipe for  Chicken Wing Sauce, and it was perfect since I had all the ingredients, I had enough of the right size jars and I love chicken wings!

After simmering all the ingredients for a while, I transferred it to the blender to puree the mixture.

I always forget how hot something like this is when it goes in the blender and it splashes up and burns the palm of my hand! I was quickly reminded of why I almost always use the immersion blender and blend it in the pot. I  don't burn myself with it and there are fewer dishes to wash, and I am all about not washing  dishes.

After pureeing, it still had to cook down for another hour or so before I could can it.

The instructions in the recipe stated you could add more hot sauce if you wanted more heat. I left this one a little on the mild size since I can always add more hot sauce when I open the jars, leaving it a little milder makes it a little more versatile. 

Kip wanted to know if I was planning to make a lot of wings in the near future. Everyone else that knows how much I can always asks the same thing too--how do I use all of my canned goods? I try and can a lot of basics that I can use in different ways. There will be chicken wings in the future, but this also makes a great marinade for almost any meat. A tablespoon or so added into a salad dressing is a nice touch and it also makes a great Buffalo Chicken Dip.

For a quick dinner last night, I cooked some chicken breasts, added the wing sauce after the chicken was fully cooked and let it simmer in the sauce for a couple of minutes. I removed the sauce from the heat and sliced it pretty thin and laid it on a bed of lettuce with some blue cheese crumbles and served with bleu cheese dressing. 

Garden Update

I thought I would give you a little update of my gardening attempts. We have been lucky enough to get a lot of  rain this summer so everything is  growing pretty lush.  The flip side of that though is that not a lot of my stuff has had enough sun to ripen very much. The pictures above and below show the raised bed that Kip built me for  my birthday and the fencing that my Dad added to act as a trellis for the beans and cucumbers. 

I have tomatoes in the front of the box and they are growing very well. Actually, I don't think I have ever had such big plants. I have had to re-stake these because the stakes that I had used for the past couple of years couldn't support the plants. They were just falling over almost as soon as I would stake them.  The new ones are much longer and I used some ties to anchor them better. 

These are a small cherry tomato and the first ones are just starting to ripen.

 My cucumber plants  are still blooming.  I love the little yellow  blossoms. 

A new cucumber, just starting to grow. It is a little less than an inch long here.

I love having my morning coffee sitting outside on the back patio looking out over my garden and yard. Even though we live in a neighborhood off of a main street, the backyard is still pretty peaceful. I love watching all the birds that visit, the bees and the butterflies too.  I can't name all the birds that come by, but I do recognize that I have several different kinds. After visiting with my grandparents a couple of weeks ago, and sitting on their porch watching all the birds that come to their bird feeders, I decided to set up an area in my yard too.  

CSA Basket

Good Morning! In my CSA share this week, I received some grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, a couple of jalapeno peppers, potatoes, purple hull peas, a long yellow pepper, squash and some beautiful  corn. I am still very happy with the decision I made in changing CSAs. Everything has been so good and I love the variety of foods that I am getting. I am not overrun with any one particular vegetable and it is  easier to incorporate all the veggies into my meal plan without feeling like we are eating the same thing every day.

I have had a pretty busy summer! I thought once my job ended that I would be sitting home bored all day but that hasn't been the case at all. The timing really worked out for me and has  allowed me to get to all of the canning projects I have wanted to do. My shelves are getting stocked for the winter and that makes me really happy. 

Have a great weekend!

Chicken Sausages

About a year ago, my friend Judy mentioned wanting to make sausage like her Dad used to make. I told her that I had the grinding and sausage stuffing attachments for my Kitchen Aid mixer and that we could do it at my house. I had these attachments, I received them as a wedding gift and they had been unused for about seven years! We had such a great time, and it was fun listening to Judy tell her daughters about making sausage with her dad while she was growing up. We have done it a couple of times now, and I am pretty confident in my Italian sausage making skills. 

I have seen a lot of recipes online for different chicken sausages and decided to try and make that on my own. I started with boneless chicken breasts and ground the meat before adding the rest of the ingredients. Once everything was mixed together, I started stuffing the mixture into the casing.

And here is my final product:

You can find the recipe that I used here. They were very good and I would make them again, but next time, I think I would increase the seasonings buy just a little bit, only because we like a little more kick. 

To serve these, I cut them into individual size pieces, sauteed some onions and peppers and served on sub rolls. Yummy!

More Peaches!

This is my second round of peached for this year. Last month I got a box of peaches and made all my jams, preserves and other things. The go-round, I bought two boxes of peaches to can as just slices and halves. Most of them are slices, but probably about a quarter of them are halves. The quart jars will probably be made into cobblers and pies with the pints will probably be eaten pretty much straight from the jar. I eat fruit with breakfast almost every day and some of these peaches on some oatmeal and a bit of brown sugar make a great breakfast. 

I got a phone call a couple of weekends ago from a couple of friends that were out looking for yard sales. One of my neighbors was having an estate sale and they were letting me know that they were parked in my driveway. I was kind of still in bed and asked her if she found canning supplies to let me know and I would run over there. After they were done shopping they let me know there were no canning jars and we visited for a while. My friend Linda asked what can of canning supplies I was looking for and I let her know that I was always on the lookout for jars. Linda loves going treasure hunting! A few days later I get another phone call from Linda letting me know that she was sitting in my driveway with a surprise. She had three reusable shopping bags stuffed with canning jars! She said that she hoped the wide mouth ones were okay because all the big jars were wide mouths. Perfect timing for my peaches! I love the wide mouths, but a lot of the stores around here haven't carried anything but wide mouth pints until this year and the wide mouth ones almost never go on sale. I was very happy to get those jars and the timing was perfect for me to can my peaches.

Making Cream Cheese

I love cheese. Almost any kind of cheese too. I think cheese makes the world a batter place! I have been wanting to learn how to make cheese for a while now. I was in a store a while back and bought a small cheese making kit. I made mozzarella the first time with no success. I read up a little more of different types of milk and tried again, and this time I had some yummy cheese to show off at the end. 

While I was reading up on home cheese making, I found lots of references to cream cheese and it being a fairly easy project to start with for a beginner. When Samantha and I went to the cheese making class last month, our handouts also included a recipe for cream cheese (similar to this one)

I knew I would have some time this weekend so I bought the ingredients and started my cream cheese by combining my ingredients and bring them up to temperature. After that, the mixture sat in a covered pot for about 24 hours to ripen it.

After the 24 hours was completed, my milk mixture looked like yogurt and pulled away from the pan like this:

The next step was to line a colander with butter cloth and let it drain for about an hour.

When the hour was up, I gathered the cloth, tied loose knots using the corners of the cloth and then inserted 2 bamboo skewers between the knots. I use the knobs on my kitchen cabinets to hang things on when I need it.

I left the cheese hanging for about 10 hours and this is what the ball of cream cheese looked like after draining it.

The only thing left to do was put the cream cheese in a bowl and stir in a small amount of cheese salt.

It was getting kind of late at this point so I just smeared some on some crackers so I could taste it. 

I will be making this again. It did take almost two days to make, but the actual hands on time was minimal. The taste was incredible and I wished I had a bagel to go with it. I try and keep bagels made and in the freezer but I was out of them. I know what I will be making in the next couple of days!

The day I bought my cheese making kit, I also picked up this book. The photos are great, the instructions are detailed, and the book is arranged in sections for the beginner, intermediate and advanced cheese maker. 

CSA Basket

This week's CSA basket included potatoes, squash, a couple of different kinds of zucchini, cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, two different bell peppers, and CORN! I like all of these things, but the corn was especially exciting for me. Kip and I both really like it cooked on the grill. I shuck and clean it, rub on some butter and some chili lime seasoning***, wrap it in foil and throw on the grill and it is delicious.

I think I have said it almost every week, but I am so happy with this new CSA. I love the variety of foods that we get each week and everything has been so tasty. Everything tastes as good as it looks too.

I have a few extra zucchini. so I think I am going to make some Zucchini bead today. I will probably go ahead and shred some of what I have and freeze it in two cup portions so that it is ready to go when I am ready to make it again.

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July celebration. It was wet here, so we cooked indoors and went to my SIL's house and had a great time over there. Everyone kind of pitches in and brings a couple of different dishes and we are usually over there for a while, eating, visiting, playing cards or other games, watching movies, and eating again!

***the chili lime seasoning I like the best is a Chili-Lime Rub that I order from Pampered Chef. I don't know what made me sprinkle over my corn one day, but I did and we both love it.

Rosemary Bread

Rosemary Bread is one of my favorite herbed breads to make at home. Bread is one of my favorite foods and nothing makes my house smell as good as bread baking in the oven. With the addition of the rosemary and the other herbs, this one is exceptionally fragrant. This is my basic bread recipe that I use for any herbed bread. Rosemary is what I make the most often, but I have substituted the rosemary for other herbs such as dill or a combo of oregano, parsley and basil. Any combo of herbs that you would pair together will work. 

Here I have added my dry ingredients (minus 1 cup of flour) , including the yeast.

After adding the water and softened butter, mix for just a minute or two.

Add remaining cup of flour. At this time I switched to the dough hook on my mixer.

Bread is now ready to rise. I really like using my Kitchen Aid mixer for this, because the bowl that goes with it happens to be one of my largest mixing bowls. This way, I don't have to get another bowl dirty to allow the dough room to rise.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and then cover with a dish towel and allow to rise for about an hour in a warm, not hot, place.

At the end of the hour, punch down the dough and knead for a few minutes.

Grease a loaf pan. Press dough into the pan, make sure to get it in the corners. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for about 45 minutes. 

After this rise, the bread will fill your loaf pan.

In about 40 - 45 minutes of baking you will end up with a golden brown beauty like this:

Herbed Bread Recipe

3 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1 packet active dry yeast

1 1/4 cup warm water

2 tablespoons of melted butter

2 teaspoons parsley

1 tablespoon dried rosemary

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

Combine 2 cups of the flour and the rest of the dry ingredients in mixing bowl. Stir, then add the water and the softened butter. Mix on low for 1 minute, scraping the sides of the bowl. Turn mixer to medium and beat for 1 more minute. Stir in last cup of flour. (Switch to dough hook if you have one) and mix until smooth and the batter pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for about an hour. 

Grease a loaf pan. Punch down dough and knead for about 5 minutes. Place dough in the greased loaf pan and pat down. Cover pan with plastic wrap and let rise for 30 - 45 minutes until dough has about doubled. 

Preheat oven to 375* and bake in oven until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on top, about 40 - 45 minutes. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.

It really is best to wait an hour before slicing, but I have only been able to do that once or twice, nothing beats bread straight out of the oven!

Steak Seasoning

Are you grilling this week? I am sure we will be at some point. I thought I would share one of my favorite seasoning mixes that I almost always have on hand here at the house. I usually use it on steak but it is actually pretty good on burgers too.

Steak Seasoning Mix

2 Tbs brown sugar

1 Tbs. onion powder

1 tsp cracked brown mustard seeds

1 1/2 tsp smoked paprika

1 1/2 Tbs garlic powder

2 tsp hickory smoke seasoning

1 tsp hickory sea salt

1 tsp black pepper

Measure out all ingredients in a bowl and whisk together.

An even quicker way is to measure your ingredients into a small mason jar, put the lid on and give it a couple of shakes!

Store in an airtight container.

Most of these spiced are easily found wherever you do your grocery shopping, but the brown mustard seeds, the hickory smoke seasoning and the hickory sea salt aren't as common or easy to find. I buy a lot of my spices online from My Spice Sage. I have ordered from them many times and have always been happy with their service and the prices. I also order the Clear Jel I need to canning pie fillings from here. Orders over $20 ship free and they also let you choose a free sample when you check out. Lots of the time they also have a free gift with a minimum purchase. They have lots of great recipes on their site too!