Apricots Again

This past weekend we were back out in the orchards with Village Harvest. I wrote about the apricot harvest we did with them last year here. This year Sean and I went to a different apricot orchard than the one we went to last year; this one was actually inside an old cemetery! It was beautiful, and the trees were really bountiful. I didn't catch the exact amount of apricots that we sent to the local food bank, but I think we were well over 1000!

And, as usual, Sean and I came home with about 30 pounds of apricots ourselves. Unlike most harvests, where we come home with imperfect fruit that is either bird-pecked, over ripe or under ripe, this time we came home with a lot of absolutely perfect fruit. The trees had dropped a lot over the last week, and due to various levels of liability, "ground fruit" cannot be donated. But as long as you give it a good washing, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I didn't take as many pictures of what we did with our apricots this year, because a picture of apricot jam is a picture of apricot jam. But here's a list of what we made this year:

• apricot turnovers
• apricot jam (12 half-pint jars)
• apricots in spiced syrup (6 pint-and-a-half jars & 4 pint jars)
• dried apricots

these were some of our apricot creations last year

We still have a mixing bowl of apricots in the fridge too, waiting for me to come up with a use for them. I could run them through the dehydrator after the current batch of dried apricots is finished, I could make more jam, I could freeze them, add them to smoothies...

What are your favorite ways to use apricots? Share them in the comments!

Jumping on the Green Smoothie Bandwagon

Have you tried green smoothies?

I hadn't yet until this morning. We have a lot of kiwis right now, and I decided to toss some into the blender. I also threw in an old-ish pear, a few spinach leaves (I've read about them in green smoothies and wanted to try, but only tossed in a couple in case the texture was off putting) and a dash of cranberry juice. Not following any particular recipe, just tossing in what I had and thought might taste good together.

And guess what? It was actually pretty good! The spinach texture was certainly different from the Jamba Juice style smoothies I was used to, but not at all off putting. And I couldn't even taste it over the kiwi and pear.

I unfortunately didn't take a picture, but as I experiment a bit more with fruit smoothies maybe I'll share some more recipe combinations.

If you want to replicate what I threw together, I used:
-2 kiwis
-1 pear
-about 4 large spinach leaves
-cranberry juice (I didn't measure, but I would guess it was roughly 1/4 cup)

Just blend it together, and enjoy!

If you have any favorite smoothie combinations, I would love to hear them. I'm always looking for healthy and easy snacks.

Dried Persimmons

Dehydrating fruit is a great, easy way to preserve a bounty without canning. As I mentioned in my previous post about persimmons, they are not acidic enough to be safely canned in a boiling water bath. Because we had already filled our own freezer and my parents' with jars of persimmon butter as well as chopped persimmons, drying was necessary!

The method is so simple it hardly qualifies as a true "recipe." All I did was slice them  into fairly even chips, about 1/4" thick. I placed them on the dehydrator racks, making sure not to overlap. I then ran the dehydrator for about 8 hours. My dehydrator only has an on/off switch, no temperature control, so I can't say what temp to set a more complex machine to.

In step-by-step directions:
1. Slice persimmons into 1/4" thick rounds
2. Place on dehydrator racks, with no overlap
3. Run dehydrator for 8 hours, or until done
4. Store in sealed container

Dried persimmons make a great snack! Dried fruit also lasts fairly long in a sealed bag in the pantry, so I'm sure we will be enjoying these dried persimmons for much of the winter.

Do you dehydrate fruit? What are some of your favorites? I'm new to dehydrating, but since it's so simple I'd love to do more of it and I always love new ideas!

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Knee Deep in Persimmons

Last Saturday we went out with Village Harvest again, this time to pick persimmons. I don't have any pictures of the actual harvest to share with you, but I do have pictures of all the persimmons we came home with!

Over 1000lbs of persimmons were donated to local food banks, and about 200lbs of damaged or over ripe fruit were available for volunteers to take home. Sean and I ended up with 3 bags, which weigh about 47lbs. Man, that's a lot of persimmons.

Unfortunately for us, these persimmons are not the sweet Fuyu variety, but the highly astringent Hachiya variety. This means they can't be eaten raw unless they are super ripe, something unlikely to happen before they go moldy since so many are damaged. So, like I have after other harvests, I turned to Pinterest to find recipes!

We started with persimmon butter. Similar in texture to apple butter, it can be spread on toast. I used this recipe from Green Basket. The author does call for Fuyus, but after doing some research I figured out that Hachiyas would work fine if I increased the sugar a bit. Unfortunately, while the author says she canned her persimmon butter, the National Center for Home Food Preservation does not recommend using a boiling water bath for canning persimmons as they are a low-acid fruit. (A term Sean would like to go on record as taking issue with, as neutral or base would be more correct, depending on where the fruit actually falls on the PH scale. I love when he's a science geek in the kitchen!) Instead of canning, we decided to freeze the persimmon butter. Luckily, my parents had recently made some room in their large freezer, so in went some jars of persimmon butter!

We also made a batch of persimmon chutney using this recipe. The chutney was very easy, and made a small enough batch that, while the vinegar should make it safe to can in a boiling water bath, we decided to just refrigerate and freeze.

One of the best ways to use up all these persimmons, without needing to freeze a ton of jars, is to dry them. My mom recently picked up a cheap food dehydrator at a thrift store, and this thing has been working overtime since she brought it home! I'm so glad she let us borrow it. Here it is full of persimmons:

We also just tossed a bunch of whole persimmons in both our own freezer and my parents'. I just chopped off the tops, trimmed any bad spots, and filled gallon sized freezer bags. This gives us more time to spread out the cooking, drying, baking...whatever we want to do with them.

Last but not least, I made a batch of Chocolate Persimmon Muffins. This recipe was amazing! I had to change it a little since neither of us wanted to run to the store again, so I used white chocolate powder rather than regular; I also used whole wheat flour rather than buckwheat. I can't wait to make these again using some of the persimmons we tossed in the freezer!

Persimmons also make for good fall decor, as long as they are intact enough to last a few days:

If you have any favorite recipes for Hachiya persimmons, please share in the comments! You can see from the picture just how many we still need to deal with...and then there are the 4 gallon bags in the freezers!

Slow Cooker Meals: Recipe Review

Whew! I've made it through another round of tech rehearsals and opening night! I love working in theater, but it sure can be exhausting.

Because of all the late nights that come from opening a show, I made up a few slow cooker meals for the freezer back in September. Since I'm fairly new to using the slow cooker in general, and especially new to freezing and then cooking, I wanted to pop back in and share what we thought of each recipe.

To recap, I made the following three meals:
Apricot Chicken from A Year of Slow Cooking
Thai Peanut Chicken from Practical Stewardship
Chicken with Kumquat Chutney (based on the Barbeque Chicken at Practical Stewardship)

The Chicken with Kumquat Chutney was the first meal we tried. It was simple and tasty, though I would use more chicken or less sauce next time. The only drawback to this was that it only covers the main dish; Sean whipped up some salad to go with it, which worked well. But it does mean that, when planning to pull this meal out of the freezer, a veggie side dish also needs to be planned.

The Thai Peanut Chicken was the next meal that got pulled from the freezer. This is a great meal for a busy day since you can do chicken and veggies at once. It's also an awesome recipe for using up those random veggie scraps I sometimes toss in the freezer. I will say, as someone who grew up in the SF Bay Area with all the culinary diversity around, this was blander than any Thai food I've had at a restaurant. I may tinker with the sauce a bit to give it more spice or depth, but overall I think this is a pretty successful recipe.

The Apricot Chicken was actually my least favorite recipe. It was just far too sweet for me. Growing up, my mom made some Apricot Ginger Chicken Wings...maybe tinker with the recipe and add in some ginger to cut the sweetness? Reduce the amount of jam? It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't make it following the original recipe again.

Even though I want to tinker with these recipes, I'd still say my experiment was a success! Despite long tech days, we got to eat some real meals without all the additives of store-bought freezer food. I think I'll keep experimenting with slow cooker freezer meals...maybe try to do one a week? We'll see, but I know I'm definitely happy to have the time to get back into my blogging groove!

Experimenting with Slow Cooker Freezer Meals

It's sometimes truly amazing how productive I can be around the house when I'm procrastinating on school work!

This weekend I made my first foray into the world of slow cooker freezer meals. I've been pinning recipes for a while, but hadn't yet gotten the hang of all the pre-preparation. But, with busy tech weeks coming up for my play at school, I decided now was the time to tackle it. It can be hard to keep to a healthy, real food diet when I'm gone from the house for 12+ hours a day for multiple weeks, so planning ahead is absolutely necessary! I'm hoping that with these three meals, each of which uses about 1 lb of chicken, we will be able to eat healthily despite the late nights.

The recipes I chose to try are Apricot Chicken from A Year of Slow Cooking, Thai Peanut Chicken from Practical Stewardship, and Chicken with Kumquat Chutney based on the Barbeque Chicken at Practical Stewardship.

We haven't tried these meals yet, so I'll be back with updates to let you know how we liked each meal!

What are some of your favorite recipes for the slow cooker? Or for busy nights? I'm always interested in new meal ideas!

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And Then We Made Applesauce...

We had another great harvest with Village Harvest last weekend. If you remember from my post about apricots, Village Harvest is a nonprofit that harvests food that would otherwise go to waste, and donates it to community food banks and shelters.

Sunday morning, a group of about a dozen volunteers picked Gravenstein apples at the Phleger Estate (part of the Golden Gate Parks system). According to our great liaison with the park system, these Gravenstein apple trees were planted in the 1930's. There were only six Gravenstein trees, but old trees are huge and produce lots of fruit. Five of us worked on the biggest tree for nearly the entire 3 hour picking time. And all told, 975 pounds of Gravenstein apples were donated to a local food bank. Wow!

 these buckets just hold the "volunteer fruit" rejects - we were so busy loading the good fruit into the van that we missed the chance to take a picture of what 975lbs looks like

The rest of the orchard is full of other apple varieties, most of which will ripen in the fall. I can't wait to go back to this beautiful park later this year.

Gravenstein apples are one of those varieties you never really see in stores. They bruise incredibly easily, so make shipping difficult. They also mature mid to late summer, rather than during the fall harvest. They are a good apple for baking and making applesauce.

Because of how easily the Gravensteins bruise, there were a lot of "volunteer fruit." That means anything that might still be useful, but is unsuitable to send to the food bank. We were sent home with 32 pounds of apples -- and just like those apricots from last month, they all had to be processed immediately. What better way to preserve imperfect apples than by making applesauce?

 32 pounds of apples

First we had to wash all these apples, many of which had fallen on the ground at the orchard (which is open to redwoods and home to deer and other wildlife). Best way to wash pound after pound of apple? Fill the sink with water and a little white vinegar, dump them in and start scrubbing!

It took the rest of the day for Sean and me to peel, chop, and process all of the apples into applesauce and spiced apple preserves. We ended up with 11 pints of applesauce, 12 half-pints of spiced apple preserves, and a few tiny cans of applesauce that are perfect for lunches. Not pictured below are some more tupperware containers full of applesauce that went straight into the fridge -- we actually ran out of empty canning jars on this one!

In addition to applesauce and preserves, Sean decided to make an apple pie. He used Martha Stewart's recipe, and it was delicious! He sure does spoil me with his new found baking obsession!

We were so eager to eat the pie that we forgot to take a picture of it after baking. Trust me, it was delicious!

What are your favorite ways to cook with apples? Please share any great ideas, as we head into the fall apple season!

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Easy Homemade Granola Bars

Homemade granola bars have become one of my favorite go-to real food snacks for on the go. (Huh, say that sentence five times fast) Made with all natural ingredients that I have accessible all the time, and endlessly adaptable, these bars taste great, are filling, and have both protein and fruit!

These bars are also incredibly easy to make, which makes them a perfect way to get kids involved in the kitchen. Let small kids stir the dry ingredients while you measure, and let bigger kids take more control over everything from measuring to altering the recipe to include their favorite dried fruit.

I found the original recipe in the January 2013 edition of Martha Stewart's Whole Living. Her recipe is here. But, in order to show you how endlessly adaptable this recipe is, here is how I made it this week:

Homemade Granola Bars

Ingredients:

1 cup crushed shredded wheat (you know, the dregs at the bottom of the cereal bag that no one wants to eat - this is how to use them up)
2 cups oatmeal
1/2 cup dates
1/2 cup mixed raisins and Craisins
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp Kosher salt
1/2 cup peanut butter (use your favorite nut butter)
1/4 cup honey (yes, less than the original)
1/2 cup apricot puree (any fruit puree will work)
3 Tbsp orange juice
4 Tbsp ground flaxseed meal
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Oil an 8x8 pan.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine cereal, oats, dates, dried fruit, cinnamon and salt. Mix to combine.
3. In another bowl, combine flaxseed meal and all wet ingredients. Mix well so that no large clumps of peanut butter remain.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry, and mix well. Add more fruit puree if needed to get a nice batter-like consistency throughout.
5. Press mixture into 8x8 pan and smooth out the top. Be sure to press it into the pan evenly so that the bars won't crumble after baking.
6. Bake for 30 minutes until golden brown.
7. Let cool completely, then cut into squares. I do 9, if you have young kids you may like to cut them smaller. Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Have fun making Martha's version or mine, and then experiment with your own combinations! Let me know if you come up with some delicious new version, I love trying new combinations since I make a batch every couple weeks.

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Chocolate Banana Cream Pie

Recently I had both a craving for chocolate banana cream pie, and some extra time at home. Wow, rarely do my food cravings actually match up with the time I have available to cook! I made the crust based on the recipe I found at  This Rawsome Vegan Life, but I made the filling using some banana pudding I had in the pantry. (Yes, I've written about getting rid of processed foods in our diet, but it was there and the husband hates coconut so I would have had to adapt the vegan recipe and I didn't have that much extra time for the kitchen. That's my story anyway.)

The recipe for the crust is at the link above, so I won't repeat it here. I did take some decent process photos though, so here we go...

The crust is made of nuts, dates and dried cranberries pulsed in the food processor, then smooshed into place in the pie pan.

 pretty mise en place

 in the food processor, about to be chopped up

For the filling, I used a packet of Jello banana pudding, and added in some chocolate chips. Here it is all melty and gooey:

The pudding gets poured into the crust on top of some sliced banana:

And then whipped cream on top!

I really liked the vegan crust, so I may try her full recipe sometime when I have people other than my coconut-hating husband to feed this to. But I'm also perfectly happy pairing this nut crust with other pies...maybe crushed pecans with an apple pie? Endless possibilities here!

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Recipe: Currywurst Sauce

Today I want to share with you a recipe for currywurst sauce. Currywurst is a dish the husband and I were first introduced to while traveling in Germany. He had come to visit during my year abroad in Italy. We tried currywurst at a street faire, and loved it! When we moved in together after graduation, we searched for a recipe to recreate this awesome dish. I no longer have the original source, but I have adapted it a bit anyway. 

(Full recipe for easy printing after the photos)

You will need oil, an onion, curry powder, paprika, 1 can of tomatoes (whole, halved or diced) with their juices, sugar, red wine vinegar, and some salt.

First, heat the oil in a pan, then add your diced onion and cook for 8-10 minutes, until the onion is soft.

Add the curry powder and paprika and cook another minute.

Add the tomatoes and crush them and their juices into the spices.

Add the sugar, vinegar and salt, stir thoroughly.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until thick, about 25 minutes.

Puree using a stick blender

Serve over bratwurst, with any side dish you choose.

 Getting fancy with serving - currywurst sauce in the creamer!

Yum!

Dinner from the Garden

Lately we have been eating a lot of meals fresh from our balcony garden. This is my favorite way to eat in the summer, full of fresh seasonal flavors with little effort (or heat) in the kitchen. Add to that the fact that we've grown much of this ourselves, and it's pretty much the perfect meal.

Here's one of our simple homegrown meals:

Salad with mixed greens from the balcony (mixed lettuce, nasturtium leaves and parsley), tomatoes from the farmer's market, shredded chicken, topped with edible nasturtium flowers. And on the side, a slice of our homemade sourdough bread.
 

Here you can also see the ever evolving centerpiece of fresh fruit that I talked about here.

What are some of your favorite summer meals?

Passover Spinach-Cheese Balls

Well, this post on Passover cooking is rather delayed, but I guess it's better late than never!

While there are many foods that my family traditionally makes during Passover, the one recipe I look forward to year-round is spinach cheese balls! (The original recipe calls them Gnocchi di Spinaci, but that's not we called them as kids, and the Americanized kid name stuck in our family.) Sure, I could make them other times of the year, but it's nice to have unique dishes for Passover that we look forward to.

The recipe is adapted from an old cookbook, but I'm sharing it as rewritten by my mom.

Ingredients:

1 package frozen or about 2 bunches fresh spinach

1 cup ricotta cheese

3/4 cup grated Parmesan

1 egg

3 tablespoons potato starch

nutmeg

salt

Parmesan cheese for sprinkling

Defrost frozen chopped spinach. If fresh, wash, steam lightly, then chop fine. Both kinds, squeeze out the juice.

Combine the spinach, ricotta, Parmesan, egg, potato starch, dash nutmeg, dash salt.

Wet your hands and form mixture into balls about the size of a walnut. There should be about 24 balls when you're done.

Place into an oiled or greased baking dish (about 9 x 9) and sprinkle with more Parmesan cheese.

 (What you see here is a doubling of the recipe, so I used a 9x13 dish)

Bake in a preheated 350 F oven for about 30 minutes.

Makes about 4-5 servings in our house, although the original recipe says 6-8. They're that good!

 

Here's the recipe all together, for easier printing:

Ingredients

1 package frozen or about 2 bunches fresh spinach

1 cup ricotta cheese

3/4 cup grated Parmesan

1 egg

3 tablespoons potato starch

nutmeg

salt

Parmesan cheese for sprinkling

1) Defrost frozen chopped spinach. If fresh, wash, steam lightly, then chop fine. Both kinds, squeeze out the juice.

2) Combine the spinach, ricotta, Parmesan, egg, potato starch, dash nutmeg, dash salt.

3) Wet your hands and form mixture into balls about the size of a walnut. There should be about 24 balls when you're done.

4) Place into an oiled or greased baking dish (about 9 x 9) and sprinkle with more Parmesan cheese.

5) Bake in a preheated 350 F oven for about 30 minutes.

Enjoy! More Passover recipes and meal ideas to come next year!