Tag Archives: food

Lemons Into Lemonade

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I’m not a super duper zero waste person, but I do like to find ways to reduce our footprint around our house. We recycle and use reusable goods where possible. But my kids drive me nuts with how much food we waste. And the leftovers that go bad in the fridge because I’m the only one that eats them and I can’t keep up. So I pooled my Grandma Christmas money with some savings and I got a countertop composter!

I did ZERO research. I just used a basic google search and found a machine I could afford with at least 4 stars on Amazon. And so far it works great! When we are home and cooking I can fill it once a day.

Depending on what goes in, the color is WILD. This was tomatoes, moldy cheesy pasta and coffee grounds. I just empty the bin into our backyard garden bin and start refilling this. It’s quiet and surprising smells good while its “cooking”. It does require filters and maintenance so I don’t know how long it will hold out. But it’s a nice new experiment for us and reducing our trash.

Finally, The Garden

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My garden finally woke up and we have started harvesting tomatoes!

The small ones are little Roma tomatoes that I am washing and freezing for sauce and recipes later this winter. The big slicer is destined for BLTs this week! We may get precious little before fall freeze so I am going to watch carefully!

Happy Monday!

Cherry Harvest!

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My family’s cherry tree did SUPER well this year. The cousins had their fill of eating off the tree, my dad got two full pies and I ended up with a gallon of fresh ripe fruit. They are just soooo pretty!

I don’t really have the time to make pie or jam right this minute so I decided to wash, pit and measure out the fruit so that I can deposit all this into the freezer for another day.

Each bag contains 4 cups (and a little) of pitted fruit. I may make one pie and one batch of jam? For now these can cool their heels in the freezer until I have the time and brain space to deal with this.

Happy Summer!!

Let’s Get Saucy

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The summer garden season is upon us and I needed to clean out my freezer from last year’s tomatoes. I had four bags that were a mix of roma and summer slicers. I got the skins off and thawed out into pots. By 10 am, I had one pot of bubbling tomato water.

By the end of the day, I had half a pot of luscious tomato sauce. I used my immersion blender to smooth out the sauce. I didn’t screen out the seed so there are still some spots. But I mixed in some garlic, onion, salt and pepper to season my red sauce.

The family enjoyed half of this made into tomato soup for grilled cheese sandwiches and the second half is slated for spaghetti sauce. I CAN’T wait!

Happy Summer!!

Bonus Tomatoes and Happy Habaneros

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The hubs and I have been completely ignoring the garden assuming it was done for the summer. And we happened to poke around the foliage and found some surprise tomatoes!

We did know our pepper plants were doing well. We are still harvesting occasional poblanos, lots of jalapenos and some super hot habaneros.

I really really love all the different shades of color we are getting. I think I’m going to let these babies go until first frost, fingers crossed!

Last Throws Of Gardening

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My garden is on its last legs but we are still getting some decent veggies. Last night’s picking included some tomatoes, poblanos and jalapenos.

My tomatoes are HUGE and none are smaller than my fist, lol.

Right now we are just cooking what we need for recipes and freezing the rest. I think Jellybean wants to try to make ketchup at some point. But that can be a good mid-winter boredom project.

Happy Gardening!!

Continued Apple Adventures

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The apple harvest continues! This time Jellybean and the husband talked me into apple pie. I must really love them because I spent SO MUCH time cutting and pealing apples.

I haven’t made a fruit pie since I was in high school so I was a little rusty. But what it lacked in beauty it made up for in flavor. At least according to my family. I don’t like fruit pies myself.

Next up Jellybean has requested we make apple butter. So the apple adventures look to be continuing, lol.

Happy Baking!!

Pickling Jalapeño

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We have had some decently cold snaps here paired with 80 degree days. Kansas can’t seem to make up it’s mind and even our daylight hours have been affected by west coast fire smoke. I gave up the ghost and pulled out my garden. I was left with a glut of jalapenos and decided to try refrigerator pickled jalapenos.

I picked a decently rated recipe off of the internet that I had l the ingredients for and into the pot they went! This recipe was sugar, salt, garlic, vinegar, jalapenos, and onion.

Other than my family complaining about the warm vinegar smell, it was pretty easy peasy! I ended up with one quart jar of refrigerated jalapeno and onion pickles. My plan is to let them sit for a couple of weeks and then add to the top of nachos or pickles.

I’ll let you guys know how they turn out! Happy fall everyone!!

Green Chef Last Hurrah

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This last week was our last hurrah with Green Chef. We liked their environmentally friendly business models and it was super easy to make all the recipes. But they just didn’t knock our socks off on a regular basis flavor wise. And for what they ended up costing it just turned out to not bet a good fit for our family. The kids basically hated all of the dishes except for the burgers.

We gave it one last hurrah with the Japanese Fritters with veggies and rice. Basically rice with edamame and ginger, seasoned broccoli and cabbage fritters with siracha aoili.

I will have to say, this was a definite hit. It was savory and spicy but still fresh tasting. Both the hubby and I said we would most definitely do this again. For a meatless dinner it was very filling. And it looked very good plated up.

Next up in our food adventures is Home Chef. The recipes appear to be more kid friendly and more affordable. Our first week includes Spicy Crispy Boom Boom Shrimp….my mouth is watering!!