August Kitchen

We have been putting our kitchen skills to use this summer. Things we have never made before are turning out so amazing we eat them up before a picture can be snapped (fried green tomatoes).  And some old things we are finally learning how to make taste good. (johnnycakes)

Our canning has been limited to raspberries, blueberries and cherries. We didn't get a single of our own raspberry or blueberry this year so all of our fruit came from nearby farms. (Damn birds) We have stocked up a portion of the freezer with salsa, green beans, peaches and basil pesto. I am still waiting to get enough tomatoes at once to can whole tomatoes and hopefully a few jars of ketchup.

I see us forming new habits in our cooking, eating, buying, and obsessing. For starters, we are fat hoarders now. You heard me. We save all the fat from everything we cook that leaves fat in the pan. We use it over and over. I know that sounds gross, it isn't. It's amazing.

We eat what we pull in from the garden and if we run out then we will hit up the farm down the road.  But, mostly what I'm seeing is when we've eaten up the beans for the week we just stop eating beans and move onto whatever else is in the basket we haul up from the backyard.

We are buying way less. I mean way less. Our freezer is pretty well stocked with cows and pigs that used to live down the road. I am so conscience of how much meat we consume that I am always 'forgetting' to thaw something out, so we have to eat beans again. We are eating either beef or pork about 5 times a week now, that includes all meals... not just dinner.  I still haven't found a meat chicken supply that is local and in our budget, so we eat a lot of (free) eggs!

I am trying not to obsessively say in my head 'I can make that - don't buy it' because really the list of what I can make is growing (yay!) but my allotted time to make those things isn't (boo!).  Honestly, though when I reach the point in my life where I have all the time to make all of the things, I won't have all the people to feed on a daily basis and that is just too sad to think about.
  

fried eggs

rosemary pork with peach chutney and sweet corn

pesto, parmesan and roma grilled pizza

peach pie

Basil & Blueberries

This past weekend we drove out to our favorite blueberry farm, Wintergreen Tree Farm,  and three generations of our family picked somewhere close to 12 pounds of blueberries in about an hour and half. That's how long it took for the sun to melt our little ones into whiny exhausted tyrants.  It was worth it. We brought 7.5 pounds of freshly picked blueberries into our kitchen and began rinsing, de-stemming and drying. Now we have two huge bags of blueberries lined up in the freezer that will make January not seem so dull. One bag we'll use for canning blueberry syrup and preserves the other will be nibbled on with oatmeal, cereal, and pancakes throughout the winter.

Basil is in and it is in abundance! While our little herb garden supplies us with enough to pick leaves here and there for meals, it certainly didn't provide enough to make anything wonderful like, pesto. However, my mother-in-law's herb garden is overflowing with giant basil... and she is a good sharer.

Here is my recipe for pesto:

• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 5 to 6 cloves of garlic
• 3 to 4 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• about 1 1/2 cups olive oil
• 1 cup fresh grated Parmesan
• 1/3 cup fresh chives