Random Bits of Knowledge

I am guessing if you are reading this blog then you know me/a little bit about my family. You probably know that my mom is real little, but she is also enormously fierce! She has a giant, super-productive garden, she is a bee-keeper, has an awesome green-thumb, is a fabulously talented artist and can use a ton of different media, and is the best mommy ever:) While fierce in my own way, I don't know that I inherited any of these awesome skills (I am always killing her plants when she goes away for more than 2 days...). This past week I had 4 days off, which was a great opportunity to learn about some of the cool stuff my mom does, in particular how to harvest/spin out honey from the comb, and how to can tomatoes! I learned all of these things in 1 day, which was awesome! She makes fun of me cause at the end of this epically long day I commented that I am now full of random bits of information. This did not sit well with Lorraine. 'RANDOM BITS OF INFORMATION?! You can now survive the winter/anything cause you can can vegetables and honey never goes bad!'

Sorry Lorraine. I in no way was trying to bash canning/honey spinning. I think it's awesome that I know how to do these things now! I am becoming almost as fierce as you!

Now, being this fierce does not come without a TON of work. Let's start with spinning honey shall we?

First, you have to be a bee-keeper. Not easy, you have to have a hive, bees, frames to put into the hive to the bees can build honey comb and then fill it with honey, bee food (aka a garden/flowers), open land in front of the hive (the bees like to have some space!), hive tools to pry the hive open after the bees have waxed it shut so you can get the honey out, a bee smoker (putting smoke in the hive makes the bees sleepy, and thus less likely to attack you), a bee suit (which is totally BA haha), and (if you are me) The Dummy's Guide to Bee-Keeping. That's just to keep the bees. Once you get the honey-filled honey comb out you have to have what I call the honey centrifuge. It is a huge metal basin with a frame inside that has 2 slots on either side for the honey frames to fit into. The frame is attached to a crank that sits on the top of the basin. My mom borrowed this centrifuge, which bee keepers call a 'spinner,' from a local historic building that has really nice gardens and a few bee hives. You literally put the frames into the slots in the spinner, then using the old school crank (that's right, the old elbow grease!) you spin the frames and the honey flies out into the large basin. The basin has a tap at the bottom so the honey can flow out into a bowl/whatever. Then you have to strain the honey through cheese cloth. We set the cheese cloth over a (clean) trash can. This actually works surprisingly well! So far my mom has gotten about 30lbs of honey from her hive

My learning experience was a little different. Some of the honey comb had fallen off the frames, so McGyver-style we constructed a frame enclosed in mesh on either side and put the honey inside, and stuck that into the spinner. Worked ok... super messy (I was covered in honey by the end of it!) and Jon (my lil brother) had a fun/an arm workout turning the crank. I had fun eating honey:)

The next endeavor was to can tomatoes. To do this you need a few things

-Tomatoes (duh)

-A pressure-cooker-canner. Basically a HUGE pressure cooker that can get up to high pressures to seal the jars

-Canning jars and lids (you can get them at True Value/Home improvement stores)

-Water

That's pretty much it.

-To sterilize(ish) the jars put them in boiling water for 10 minutes. (you don't want any bacteria in the jars!)

-Then you have to blanch (blanching again!) the tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds (or else they explode.... gross)

-Then comes the hard part. After the tomatoes have cooled you have to skin them and get all the seeds out. This took FOR-E-VER! But was kinda fun to do.

-Fill the jars with the tomatoes. Squish all the air out, and be sure to leave about 1in empty cause the liquid expands.

-Make sure that the jars don't have any cracks/chip/debris on the lip of the jar (this can let bacteria in and then you could end up with botulism... and no one likes projectile vomiting)

-Pop them in the not-boiling pressure-cooker-canner. Put the lid on with the appropriate amount of pressure for the size pressure-cooker-canner you are using (we used 10lbs of pressure). Once the pressure-cooker-canner is up to pressure (there is a little nob that pops up on the lid when the pressure is high enough) cook for 25 minutes.

-Remove the jars from the water using a jar grabber, and preferably not your bare hands

-Done!

Not too bad! I hope you enjoy the pics! And many many thanks to my mom for imparting to me so many random bits of knowledge in one day:)

Classic Italian Seasonings

For the chili, I bought green peppers from Produce Junction. I love Produce Junction, however they tend to overkill on the portions. So while I only need 1 or 2 green peppers for the chili, I got 7. What the heck am I supposed to do with 6 left over peppers? Make stuffed peppers, obviously:) My mom's advice for this endeavor was to use the classic Italian seasonings that make pretty much anything tase ah-ma-zing! They are: salt, pepper, parsley, onion, garlic, parmesan cheese! Yummy! I looked at the food network, then cooking light, and combined all 3 recipes and here you have my Quasi-Involved Stuffed Peppers (they are quasi-involved cause they aren't super complicated to make, but they do take a minute to do).

Das Ingredients:

-6 medium sized green peppers (regular green ones are fine, Italian green peppers are milder aka gentler on the old stomach, but really you can use any kind of pepper, red, yellow... whatever!)

- 4 cloves garlic (with garlic I usually just put in however much I feel like tasting, which is usually a LOT!)

-1 medium onion chopped (a whole onion if you like it oniony; 3/4c if you want to be exact/less oniony)

-1 & 1/2 c chopped mushrooms (baby portobellos were on sale so that's what I used)

-14 oz chopped tomatoes (1 & 3/4c). You can use canned, or fresh. I used my mom's fresh garden tomatoes (gotta give props to the momma!)

-6 Green olives chopped, I used stuffed Manzanilla olives (you know, the ones in the jar with the little red thing in the middle) and I used 6, one for each pepper!

-2 & 1/2 c cooked rice (I used brown, and made it in our fabulous rice cooker which was given to us my Mary Ellen!)

-1 or 2 eggs

-1 c chopped parsley

- 1/4 c parmesan cheese (I totally used 1/2 c hehe)

-Salt

-Pepper

-1 to 2 tbsp olive oil

How To:

-Preheat the oven to 350

-Put a pot of water on to boil (I am not good at amounts, but enough water to submerge 6 peppers:)

-Heat olive oil in a pan. Saute the onion for 3-5 min, then add the minced garlic and chopped mushrooms, cook for another 3-5, then add the parsley for about 2 min. Remove from heat and put in a large mixing bowl. Add the tomatoes, rice, egg (I just used 1), salt, pepper, parmesan cheese, green olives.

-Remove the tops from the green peppers (save the good parts for snacking!) and the insides/seeds.

-Blanch (yeah that's right, a legit cooking term! Which I learned means to boil for a hot sec so that the veggie gets a little soft) the peppers in you now boiling pot o water for 5 minutes. Seriously, no longer than 5 min, you don't want them to get too soft. Drain and place the peppers in a 13x9 in baking dish (I only have a huge backing dish, which you can see in my pictures hehe).

-Stuff the peppers with the rice mixture. Don't over stuff cause the egg will expand a little and then you will have sploded green peppers, as opposed to the desired stuffed peppers.

-Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top (or if you want to make them real good use a lil mozzarella cheese!)

-Bake for 15-20 minutes

-Mangia!

Comments:

These proportions made a TON of stuffing for the size peppers I had. So I put the rest in a smaller baking dish, topped with some zucchini and sprinkled a lil more parmesan cheese on top and baked. Yummy:)

Blanching for 5 minutes might be a little long, my peppers got a little soft, not terrible, but pretty soft, so I would go with 3 minutes next time.

And I love me some mushrooms, so next time I might add a little more of those and a little less rice.

Over all this turned out really good!

Chili!

It's real hot out, so why not make chili! Recently I have been hankerin to try out our new crock pot and for some delicious chili, so today was the day... maybe not the best idea on a 94 degree August day, but I want chili, so why wait! Ok, so my mom makes some bangin vegetarian chili so I incorporated some ingredients from her recipe (carrots & peppers) and then just looked around on line to see what other ingredients looked good, and in what proportions. That's basically how I cook: what do I have? What do I want to put in it? Then check out legit websites to find out the proper proportions........ hope it works out! Here's the sumptuous ingredients used:

Christina's I-Make-It-The-Way-I-Want Chili

-1 to 1 1/2 lb ground beef (94% lean of course!)

-2 green peppers (cause that's what produce junction had)- chopped into 1 in pieces (what I like to call chunky chopped)

-3 ears of corn (If you don't already know this about me, I.love.corn.period.)- cut off the cob

-1 large onion- chunky chopped

-3 cloves garlic (small)- minced

-1 cup carrots (I used the little baby snack carrots cause that's what we had and cut them into 1/2-3/4 in pieces)

-1- 28oz can of diced tomato

-1- 15oz can black beans drained (not ambitious enough to soak dried beans)

-1/2 tbsp chili powder

-1/2 tbsp chipotle chili powder (cause we had it and I was like heck yes!)

-1tsp cinnamon (ssshhhh this is the secret ingredient!)

-1tsp cumin

-1/2 wine (I used an open bottle of shiraz)

-1 cup vegetable broth

-2 tbsp chili garlic sauce (you know the bright red stuff that comes in the plastic bottle with a green top and a rooster on the top)

-salt

For the toppings:

avocado

cheddar cheese

Greek yogurt

I cooked the ground beef on the stove until just cooked. I left the juice from the beef in the pan and cooked the onions, peppers for about 3-5 minutes, then added the garlic for the last minute. I put the beef on the bottom of the crock pot, then the cooked/uncooked veggies, and then all the liquids, then the spices on top. Gave it a kiss for luck and turned the crock pot on low and left it for 6 hours. When I came back I noticed that it was still really liquidy (I like mine thicker) so I turned it up to high for 2 more hours. Still a little liquidy, so I added 2-ish teaspoons of flour to thicken it up.

Comments:

-Use less liquid next time, probably less chicken broth as opposed to draining the diced tomatoes cause that tomatoey flavor is so good!

-No flour, I think it dulls the taste.

After the crock pot was rockin, I made some corn bread. I found this recipe on the New York Times website. Here's the link! http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/recipe-of-the-day-cornbread/ So I decided to give it a shot. I'll list the ingredients I used for reference

-4 tbsp butter (mmmmm butter)

-1 1/2 cups ground corn meal

-1/2 cup all purpose flour

-1 1/2 tsp baking powder

-1 tsp salt

-1/4 (plus another generous pinch!) sugar

-2 eggs

-1 1/4 cup milk

The recipe is real simple. Preheat oven to 375, put the butter in an 8 in square baking dish and put in oven until melted (don't burn it!). Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl combine eggs and milk. Combine dry ingredients with egg-milk mixture, whisk (which I just purchased for this endeavor haha) until smooth, pour into baking dish, bake for 30 minutes. Boom. Delicious corn bread!

Comments: So I think 30 minutes was a smidge too long, 20-25 is probably sufficient.

Now it is done and I have to run 8 miles before I can dig in. Wish me luck! I'll let you know how it is when I get back! ....................................

Dear 8 miles. WOOF! Dear chili, yumm:) So it's the kind of spicy that isn't killer, but it hits you after you started eating. Goes great with avocado (as does pretty much anything) and the Greek yogurt was a nice balance to the spiciness. Ok, I'm beat. Mission chili, accomplished!