Miscellaneous Summer Food Projects

I've actually been getting better at blogging the meals we've been eating, but here's a little taste (sorry) of some of the other food projects I've been working on:

Sourdough Starter

I've been feeding a sourdough culture for a couple months now. I've used it to make delicious sourdough pancakes, amazing sourdough English muffins, and two giant bricks that were supposed to be bread.

Canning

Pickled jalapenos and pickles.

The DDH and I (well, mostly the DDH, honestly, while I ran baby-control) pickled a couple pounds of jalapenos and some cucumbers. He loves the results; I don't. I think it's the pickling spice he used.

Other Preservation

Blanched basil drying before being frozen.

I've turned tomatoes into sauce and tossed it in the freezer. I've been chopping and freezing jalapenos and strawberries, roasting, skinning, and freezing green chile, and blanching and freezing basil. This bit of work now will make the winter so much tastier!

CSA

Fried okra.

Delicious CSA watermelon.

We've been loving our CSA share from my friend Don at Bootstrap Farm. Most of the jalapenos and some of the green chiles have come from the CSA, as have all the cucumbers, basil, and most of the other produce I've mentioned (the strawberries, though, were just on sale at Aldi). It's great to pick up a giant bag of tasty, local, organic produce every week that I've already paid for. :-) It's forced me to get creative in the kitchen and try out some new recipes, from fried okra to eggplant parmesan and more.

Bone Broth

I made my monthly-ish chicken and bone broth batch this past week. This is seriously one of the best things I can advise anyone to do in the kitchen. Roast a chicken (I use the crockpot because it's easy, but I make the World's Best Roasted Chicken in the oven). The meat gets used for meals immediately and/or shredded and frozen for quick meals later. All the bones, organ meats, skin, etc. get dumped back in the crockpot and turned into delicious bone broth, which I also freeze. Whenever you see a recipe on here that calls for chicken broth or stock, this is what I use. It's practically free, delicious, and super good for you--stock from the store (or bouillon) is none of those things.

So that's what I've been up to in the kitchen this summer--how about you?

White Bean Tacos

So, I have a confession to make.

About a month ago, a storm knocked out power to our house for almost forty-eight hours. When it became clear that the power wasn't coming back any time soon, I packed the meat into coolers with ice and took them to my in-laws' house, where at least they would be in the air conditioning (she only has the one side-by-side freezer and it's so packed I can barely fit a bottle of milk in there for when she watches T-Rex, so our food clearly wasn't going to fit in the actual freezer).

Luckily everything still seemed pretty frozen by the time our power came back and we could get it back to our freezer, but for various logistical reasons, the DDH took the meat back on his way to work. And since he was in a rush, he just piled everything, still wet from the ice in the cooler, into the freezer in no particular order.

This was about a month ago, and I still haven't managed to go out and reorganize the thing. Every time I need some meat or chicken broth or whatever, I have to pry it apart since everything is frozen together in big chunks. Sometimes the plastic rips and then I have to use up two things of meat. The freezer itself has big weird chunks of ice in it, because it's old and not frost free and all the frost melted and then refroze, sometimes around the meat that was put back in.

It's a mess. And so, honestly, I've kind of been avoiding cooking meals with meat in them, because it's such a project to find what I want and pry it out.

Hence these white bean tacos. They are actually quite delicious and DDH approved, but I'll be doubling the recipe next time since this only made enough for five or six tacos and we needed at least eight to cover dinner and lunch the next day.

You can also include some wilted spinach with the beans if you have those lying around.

A Note on Salt: I used dried beans that I had previously cooked and frozen, which are not salted. I wrote 1 teaspoon in the recipe but I think I might have used closer to two. If you are using canned beans, you may wish to start with less salt and add more to taste, since even rinsed, canned beans are more salty than dried.

White Bean Tacos

Gluten free (with corn tortillas)
Dairy free
Vegetarian (depending on tortillas) 
Vegan (depending on tortillas)

Heat 1 Tablespoon oil over medium-high heat. Swirl to coat.


Add 1 onion, vertically sliced, and saute five minutes or until soft and lightly browned. Add 4 cloves garlic, minced and saute thirty seconds.

Add 2 cups white beans (1 15-ounce can, drained and rinsed) (cannellini are perfect), 1 teaspoon cumin, and 1 teaspoon salt. Stir. Cook two minutes or until beans are thoroughly heated. Feel free to let it simmer longer while you prepare the salsa, especially if there's still some liquid from the beans. Just be sure to turn the heat to low and stir occasionally so the beans don't burn.

In a small bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups chopped tomato, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 jalapeno, sliced, and 1 Tablespoon lime juice. You can add either fresh cilantro here or two teaspoons dried cilantro to the beans.

Warm flour or corn tortillas. You can do this by covering them with a damp paper towel and microwaving for about thirty seconds, or, if you prefer them crispy and delicious (my preferred method), heat in a dry skillet for two minutes or so on each side (you'll have to check to make sure they brown and don't burn). This is how I prep tortillas for just about everything I make and I much prefer it to the microwave method, but since you have to do it one at a time it does take longer if you're cooking for a crowd.

Fill each taco with bean mixture. Grate cheese (we usually use Colby-Jack) onto each serving, then top with a spoonful or two of salsa.

Enjoy!

Taco Salad

I wanted M&M's for dinner. All the M&M's in the world.

"I'm going to the store," I told the DDH. "I'll be back with however many M&M's $105 will buy me."

I didn't buy a single M, as it turns out. I bought sour cream and kidney beans and other things the pantry needed and made taco salad for dinner instead.

Taco Salad.

Taco Salad
Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book Special Edition..

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Theoretically, you can make tortilla-shell bowls for your taco salad, just like you get in a Mexican restaurant. All you need to do is take your oiled tortillas and fold them into little individual baking dishes and bake them.

But honestly I don't like getting taco salads in those bowls at the restuarant. The tortilla bowl gets soggy and weird tasting and you never really end up eating it anyway. So I left my tortillas flat.

Either way, you'll need six tortillas. Lay them out on a cookie sheet

and brush one side with water, butter, or oil. You need to get them a bit wet so they don't set on fire or burn, basically, and just water will do the trick. Butter or oil (I used coconut) will add flavor and give them a pretty browning.

Just enough to give them a nice sheen.

Bake your tortillas for 10-20 minutes or until browned on top and a bit crispy. Remove from oven and set aside.

Meanwhile, in a large pan, brown 1 pound ground beef and approximately 3 cloves garlic, minced.

Cook until the beef is done; drain off the fat if desired. One benefit of grass-fed beef is that there's rarely enough fat to be worth draining off, only enough to be flavorful. Saves on paper towels and dishes!

Add 2 cans kidney beans (Two cans of beans equals about three cups cooked and drained beans. One cup of dried beans makes about 2 1/2 cups cooked beans. So if you were starting with dried beans the night before, you would prepare about a heaping cup of dried beans, soak, cook, and then add to the recipe here. Or, if you cook bulk batches of dried beans and freeze them, you'll want to grab about three cups and take them out to thaw when you first start the tortillas. Got all that?),

When using canned beans, drain and rinse to help remove

excess sodium.You can reserve the drained liquid of canned and especially home-cooked beans and add it to the salsa for additional flavor and nutrients.

1 1/2 cups salsa, 

Roughly. You can always add water or bean juice to

stretch a smaller salsa supply.

1 1/2 cups corn

You can definitely get away with less or omit entirely.

I found the sweet corn notes to be disconcerting, but to other people that's the best part.

 to cooked beef.

Beans and corn.

With salsa.

Bring to a boil.

There should be enough liquid for it to boil. If not, add 

some water.

Turn heat to low and simmer, covered, for ten minutes.

Serve on lettuce with a tortilla. Delicious garnish ideas: cheddar cheese, sour cream, tomatoes, avocado, and green onions.

With cheese and sour cream.

Verdict? Delicious. The salsa you use will greatly affect the final flavor, making it spicier or sweeter. You could use all beans for a vegetarian version or change the meat : beans ratio to reflect your preferences or the supplies you have on hand. Black or pinto beans would be a good substitute for kidney beans.

The DDH and our dinner guest both loved it, even getting seconds. It made excellent leftovers, as well, though the DDH opted to skip the lettuce and make a burrito instead. The meat mixture makes an easy, tasty, and filling Mexican meat for a variety of uses: tacos, burritos, and nachos as well as salads.

Sweet Potato Enchiladas

I try to eat relatively seasonally, which is easy (and awesome) in the spring and summer when my garden and the farmer's market are going gangbusters but more difficult in the winter, when there's not much around but potatoes, sweet potatoes, and winter squashes.

So far I have yet to find a squash dish that the DDH enjoys; he even picks the chunks of butternut squash out of soups and stews. He likes sweet potatoes better, but even if the Mrs. Hauser's Sweet Potatoes his mom makes for holidays is one of his favorite dishes ever, there are only so many times in a year that you can only justify brown sugar as a main dinner ingredient.

I have a collection of "eating the harvest" type cookbooks that I consult when I have on hand either a vegetable that I don't necessarily use very often or a plethora of a vegetable that needs some creativity to use up before they all go bad (zucchini, anyone?). This recipe is adapted from Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables, which my lovely brother sent me for Christmas last year.

A lot of the meals in these cookbooks tend to be vegetarian (I think all the ones in Farmer John's are, though he'll suggest meat you can add; he suggests adding chorizo to these enchiladas). I don't particularly care, but the DDH tends to feel that meals without meat aren't filling enough. He didn't eat these last night (I was supposed to be at church and thus not cooking dinner, so he picked up Arby's (blech), but choir was canceled and so I decided to stay home and cook), but I thought they were very filling. We'll see what his verdict is once he has them for lunch today.

Anyway, on with the recipe!

First, you will either need four cups of enchilada sauce. You can buy that, I guess, or make it like thus:

Heat 1 TBS vegetable oil in a large skillet or saucepan. Add 1 medium onion, minced, 1 TBS chili powder, 2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp dried oregano (or 2 tsp fresh). Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes.

Stir in 8 cloves garlic, pressed and continue to saute until the onion is soft, 2-3 more minutes.

Add 4 cups tomato puree (I used two little cans of tomato paste stirred into water to make four cups; you could buy tomato puree or puree a bunch of tomatoes if you have them on hand) and salt to taste. Let simmer for 30-45 minutes or until the flavors are combined.

Anyway. You will also need some mashed sweet potatoes. I baked 3 medium sweet potatoes in the oven at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes on Sunday, then peeled and mashed them Tuesday, then cooked them in this on Wednesday. Or you could do it all at once. Or you could buy canned sweet potatoes and mash them, or something. Fresh ones would taste better, though.

So as for the actual enchiladas:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Melt 1 TBS butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add 1 large onion, diced and saute until translucent, about 7 minutes. Stir in 3 cloves garlic, pressed and cook for 1 minute.

Stir in 2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp oregano, 1 tsp coriander, and 1 tsp salt. Cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Add your mashed sweet potatoes and cook for 2 minutes longer. Remove from heat.

Warm some tortillas. The recipe called for 12 corn tortillas; I think I used 8 or 10 small flour ones. Obviously there will be a texture and flavor difference, but I had flour tortillas on hand because neither of us are big corn tortilla people. I warm the tortillas wrapped in barely damp paper towels in the microwave for 30 seconds.

Scoop some sweet potato mixture into each tortilla and roll it up. Place in a greased 9x13 baking dish.

Pour your enchilada sauce over the rolled up tortillas. Sprinkle with cheddar cheese. Bake until the sauce is bubbling and the cheese is melted, 20-25 minutes.

I liked them a lot. New Mexicans be warned that they aren't at all spicy; up your chili powder if you want some bite, or add some chopped jalepenos or chiles to the onions when you cook those. They also don't really taste much like sweet potatoes, but more like tomatoey cuminy goodness.

Anyway. Filling and delicious; not too terribly complicated but a bit time consuming. I have to find out if the DDH likes them before I'll know if I can make them again, though, since that's a big pan of food for one person. ^_^

Sausage Spaghetti

This is dinner tonight--a super fast, delicious, cheap meal, especially good in the winter (we're supposed to get the county's first freeze of the season tonight!). I predict the DDH will like it, though he's in class right now and hasn't eaten it yet. He likes a good tomato-and-meat pasta sauce, though, and this is delicious!

I defrosted a big kielbasa in the microwave, sliced it up, and browned it to bring out the flavor:

In retrospect, doing this with garlic would probably be even better.

Boiled up some pasta water and cooked the pasta until al dente:

Dumped a can of diced tomatoes (in retrospect should have drained this first), a can of tomato sauce, the three or four remaining little fresh tomatoes from the garden (chopped), one of the last little jalepenos (chopped), some frozen shredded zucchini (don't tell the DDH), basil, oregano, and a bit of salt into a sauce pan and heated it all up:

Mixed it all together, and ta-da! dinner in less than 30 minutes, including defrosting the sausage:

I think I'm going to go get seconds now. ^_^

Homegrown Food

Here is some excitement I must share quickly! The garden is winding down for the year, as production slows and plants begin to die off:

The basil is still really happy, though:

The jalepeno plant has a few good weeks left in it:

The tomatoes are producing a bumper final crop, and the zucchini apparently has been growing a specimen for awhile that I missed:

It's not the largest I've seen or helped grow (that's a story in itself), but it's as long as a three-ring binder and pretty fat:

And the pumpkin produced one cute darling little pumpkin, that was eaten from within by some pest before I could use it. But it looked cute!

BUT! These are not the excitement, pleasing as they are. HERE is the true success of this garden experiment:

Sweet potatoes! I had three vines, and they've all produced something:

I dug up the largest-looking one today, and got these gems:

Look how funny looking the main root is:

And this one was growing straight down a good long way (it's deeper than it looks because I've dug a wide hole all around it):

Huzzah, huzzah! I think I'll wait to dig up the others; maybe they'll get a little bigger, or maybe the Darling Devoted Husband would like to share the excitement.

Now we just have to see how they taste. ^_^