FauxPas

Fermented hot sauces coming along. The cayenne-based one in the measuring cup is WAY hot, might add some mango or something to it. I strained these sauces and am dehydrating the mash to make a chile pepper powder. I'm a newbie to this but it's fun trying things. 🙂

Do the frozen peppers ferment just as well as fresh? Do you do anything differently when you start with frozen ones? The blueberry/blackberry addition sounds lovely. Do you ferment the fruit as well or add it later? Your green tomatoes look so pretty in the jar! 🙂

A friend gave me some of her late season raspberries recently and I made some quick jam with 4 cups fruit, 1 cup sugar, lemon juice + zest, splash of Grand Marnier. End result was a couple of these little containers, just nice to store in fridge and use over next 4 weeks or so. With low sugar, not sure they will keep too much longer than that. Making some fermented hot sauce with mixed peppers. And another batch with cayenne peppers, onion and garlic.

Once fermented, do you eat them as is? Or do you use them as an ingredient in something else or ???

I like the way you think! 😄 My husband used to love Manhattans but disliked maraschino cherries. I used to think about making a better cherry for garnish, like this Brandied Cocktail Cherry. But then he discovered those Trader Joe's Morello cherries, which he really did like. I think they have been discontinued now. Do you have a perfect garnish for your Manhattans? I think I'd go with orange peel these days if I made one.

Back to this question. I thought I would share what I did with my pepper seeds this year. I germinated them in a Sunblaster countertop greenhouse with LED light, using those little jiffy peat pots. Guessing about actual heights here but once they were an inch or two tall and had some true leaves on them, I transplanted them to garden store black pots, 10 to 14" or so. All of them were doubled or tripled up. I left them to grow in those for a bit too long, probably. They were at least 6 to 8" tall when I separated some of them and put them in their own pots. They did have roots intermingling somewhat and I was as careful as I could be at that point but not obsessive. I left a couple of pots with two plants sharing. Almost all my plants did well, though I probably could have got a better harvest if I had given them more space. But for an example, here is one that is still thriving despite my less than delicate handling and it was definitely separated from one or two other plants. I still have several other ones but they are slowing down due to cool weather. I guess I would say they can still do well but maybe best to give them a chance to develop some decent roots and grow some true leaves.

What will you do with them? Any special preparations?

I'm not the best resource on this. I would be agonizing over the decision! My tendency would definitely be to let them grow larger without splitting them. At some point, it might make sense to split and pot them separately but they should be fine for awhile yet, right? I'd be so afraid of losing both if I tried to transplant them separately at this phase. Good luck with them and keep us posted!

Here's a good NT Times article on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/dining/bending-the-rules-on-bacteria-and-food-safety.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ME4.IGb8.fLq2UZcE6q4B&smid=url-share Edited to add: I chose to throw out poultry stock after forgetting it overnight! Maybe I was being overcautious and maybe boiling for at least 10 minutes would have been sufficient, but I tend to worry about food safety. I usually put the pot in the sink with ice water to help cool it faster or put into smaller containers, etc.

No replies yet, so I thought I would get something started, though it has been quite a few years since I did any serious canning. Someone like @Shelbymay have better answers but I'll give it a go. I do think the state matters. As far as I can remember (and from what I see from a quick search) whole tomatoes will need more processing time than crushed tomatoes, for example. Looking at the National Center for Home Food Preservation, there are some differences. See here for a recommended boiling water bath time of 35 to 45 minutes for crushed tomatoes while whole or halved tomatoes may have a recommended time of 85 minutes. The recommended processing times vary depending on whether the tomatoes are packed with hot water or tomato juice or tomatoes alone. I think the reasons behind this variation have to do with the density of the contents - i.e. whole tomatoes take longer to heat through than crushed tomatoes? Your second question: You can definitely can tomatoes with other ingredients. Think about canning salsas, for example. Your processing times will vary somewhat, depending on ingredients and acidity. The concern about canning tomatoes on their own is usually making sure they have the right acidity and that's why citric acid or lemon juice is added. And some salsa or tomato sauce recipes will advise against changing the proportion of ingredients because it may affect the overall acidity. And I think the general rule is that properly canned jars will last about a year.

Oh I hope they grow and thrive! Keep us posted, please. I love pepper plants though I am not very adventurous! 🙂

A fairly fast pasta/noodle dish I've been meaning to make for some time, saw the NY Times recipe in @blue_dolphin's posts, I believe. Pretty simple list of ingredients. Here are the main ones, along with our salad bowls (tomatoes still from our garden, yay). Gochujang Buttered Noodles. Very tasty and very quick, will definitely make again.

I have used these lids just a couple of times for sauerkraut but I know folks who use them a lot and swear by them. I think they're pretty cool and plan to use them again with some more fermentation soon (I hope). As @Smithysays, a bit of liquid can emerge at times, so heed her advice about placing jars inside something. The only thing I would say is that you will most likely still need some kind of weight or screen to hold your produce under the brine while fermenting. Masontops also has Pickle Pebbles for this purpose (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), or you can buy a kit with lids, weights and a tamper or another kit with lids and weights only. (If you search under Masontops, you'll see the various options.)

Greek salad with homemade tzatziki and Greek-ish meatballs (hey, they had a lot of garlic and oregano 😄) and some store-bought pitas.

This started out as a fairly simple chana masala but I added a bit too much hot chili pepper so threw in a diced potato to help absorb some of the extra heat. So it became a chana aloo curry, I guess? 🙂 it was tasty with some cucumber and tomatoes on the side.

NY striploin (which needed trimming, but was quite thick and med-rare centre) along with steamed farm corn and sauteed mushrooms and a few tomatoes from our garden.

We eat quite a bit of salmon. We don't fish but we have friends and neighbours who do and they are very generous. Not the best photo because I took a piece that was a bit broken up. Green beans from my little garden. Yesterday I made my husband enchiladas but then I decided that I wanted something lighter so I had more green beans and tomatoes from the garden with some feta cheese and a simple balsamic vinegar dressing. This turned out to be a LOT more photogenic than enchiladas. 🙂

Picked hot peppers today. I grew these plants from seed so I am an especially proud mama. 🙂

Also here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Star_(TV_series) Filmed in High River, Alberta though it seems to be a British production. It's available on Amazon Prime in Canada (not sure about US).

In Tucson I believe they were called bolillos when shaped as an elongated bun but were called teleras when they were shaped in a round (with grooves) for tortas, but I think the dough was basically the same most of the time. https://mysliceofmexico.ca/2020/04/02/homemade-buns-bolillos-and-teleras/ Rick Bayless adds a bit of sugar to his teleras recipe, none to his bolillas so some people will argue the dough is not necessarily the same. https://www.rickbayless.com/recipe/teleras/ https://www.rickbayless.com/recipe/bolillos/

I think this should read "I'm efficient like that lol." 😄😄😄

The sauce can be made in advance, that's what I did. I didn't process it, I just pressed it through a strainer and refrigerated it. (It could possibly be frozen.) Then I reheated it later while I was cooking the salmon and only added the butter at that point. We had amazing wild blackberries this year, the right combo of Spring rain followed by summer warmth.This sauce was so luscious, capturing all that sweet/tart/richness. But it's really a quick sauce to make. I was just lucky when the recipe showed up. I happened to have a fresh lemon, some frozen ginger, an open bottle of red wine and those amazing berries.

I'm completely out of the habit of taking photos but every now and then I think I should. Last night's dinner was one, not because it was complex but because it was simple but SO good. My stepdaughter and her boyfriend were burned out in the wildfire a month ago in Jasper Alberta and have been staying with us here. They are going to stay here long term now and have just arranged for an apartment to rent. While here, they have been picking blackberries because we all love them. Now I have lots in the freezer but also still had some fresh ones to finish off and some wild sockeye salmon filets. So this recipe for Salmon with Blackberry-Wine Sauce jumped out at me. Loved this sauce although I should have reduced it a bit more, it wasn't quite thick enough. But the blackberry and ginger and lemon and wine was all so good together in that sauce. Definitely doing this one again, can use some of those frozen berries. My little garden's bush beans are done but I still have some pole beans so steamed some of those and added a wild rice blend as well. This is the Saveur photo that accompanied the recipe. This is the rice blend I used. It's new to me, but we all liked it.

The largest of our local farmstands is operated by the Sieffert family. They grow several varieties of corn each year to extend the harvest times. I think Bolt was one of the earliest and not sure what they have today but here is one of their mid-season ones: 🙂

I did a search and found this recipe, but does it look like the right thing? https://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/2011/02/chan-pei-mui-chinese-fruit-candy.html