strawberry banana rum smoothies

A couple bananas, strawberries, yogurt, ice, a few shots of rum, and a blender. Add in a crazy straw and it's officially summer. even if it's only 60 degrees outside.

Strawberry Rhubarb

Made my first jam of this growing season. We got both in our CSA (community supported agriculture) box last wednesday, and it looked like more strawberries than we would eat.

So, we canned 'em. Haven't gone out to buy pectin for this year yet, so i just made preserves.

To do so:

I mixed about five cups of chopped up strawberries, and four stalks worth of chopped up rhubarb with about 4 or 5 cups of sugar. I let that sit for a few minutes till it started getting nice and juicy, and then put it over heat. After about ten minutes of boiling this sugary strawberry rhubarb mixture the smell begins to loft through the air, penetrating the entire house. Your housemates or perhaps neighbors will start wandering in, wondering what sweet confectioneries are being confected.

I think i boiled it for about 45 minutes. Then to can it, i just used a trick my mom showed me long ago, i ladled the hot jam into jars, put the lid and ring on them and then turned them upside down (so the hot jam is against the lid and helps seal it). No pressure cooker or water bath necessary (there's so much sugar in this stuff, it's pretty well preserved, hence the name, preserves).

This amount made what you see next to this text, a little over four and a half pints.

broccoli burger

The other day we had some broccoli on the verge of going limp, so i was trying to think of something good to do with it. Well, somehow i got in my head that a broccoli burger might be a good idea.

So here it is, crazy, and not really burger-like, but actually tasty. It's really sort of like a korean vegetable pancake, just, you know, on a bun. Here's the break-down:

I steamed my broccoli for eight minutes-ish. then cut it into tiny little bits. This broccoli i mixed with one egg and enough flour to make the egg not runny, but battery (batter-like, that is, not a duracell). I added some salt and pepper to the batter too.

Then i just heated up some oil in my frying pan and put in a couple burgers worth of broccoli stuff. Then end product was tasty, and very filling. Lots of nutrition from the broccoli, and some protein from the egg. I made a spicy mayo (mayo, sour cream, chili powder, sriracha, salt) to put on my toasted bun, and through some dark green leaf on there (i don't really know what it was, not spinach, maybe some sort of lettuce). I wish we had tomatoes.

You know what the problem with the world is? Tomatoes and lettuce don't come at the same time. I've got all these greens right now, but by the time the tomatoes are ripe, it'll be too hot for my greens to grow. Someday i'll find a magical variety of tomatoes that will grow when it's colder.

potato soup

This is just a basic creamy potato soup i put together.

Cut up your potatoes into small chunks, and cut up your carrots and celery into even smaller chunks. Then boil those in some veggie broth until tender. I usually like to add in some extra flavors here, maybe some basil or oregano. Thyme, sage, whatever is sounding good.

Meanwhile brown some onions and garlic in butter or olive oil.

Mix the onions and garlic in with your the boiling soup, add seasonings and some milk/soy milk. If you want it thicker, mix some flour or cornstarch in a quarter cup of hot water, then mix that into the boiling soup, it'll thicken on up. While you're at it, throw in some more seasonings, for good measure, no one likes bland potatoes.

I topped mine with some shredded cheddar cheese and a little parsley, just to make it look fancy schmancy.

chocolate pocket pies

I got the idea for these from an alton brown show, and thought i'd try it out.

Basically, it's a slightly sweet biscuit dough, rolled out then in little 10" diameter circles. Then i put a a bit of chocolate filling (see below) on one side, folded it in half to form the pocket, and that's basically it. I crimped the sides with a fork, and poked a few slots for steam to get out in the top, then baked. Oh, i suppose i also sprinkled some sugar over it.

The filling could be any pie type filling. I creamed some butter with sugar and cocoa powder.

Pretty easy, and fun. Eat 'em hot.

Broccoli and Bean Curd in Ginger Garlic Sauce

I love calling tofu bean curd,  it makes everyone cringe.  That's what the Chinese word tofu (or doufu, in Chinese pinyin) literally translates into:  "Bean Curd".  Sounds appetizing, eh?

The inspiration for this dish came from northern china, where Russian, Mongolian and Chinese cultures all intermingle a little bit.  

I started by wok-frying some tofu,  i actually just took the bricks, and cut them into three slices, for easy cooking.  I brushed them with soy sauce, sriracha and some salt and spices, on each side, and let them cook in some oil till they got a little crispy.  Then I cut them into the size strip which you see in the picture.  

For the broccoli i just cut it into the little florets and steamed it.  

I also sauteed some onions and red peppers.  The bright red of the peppers really helped make the dish look good, I think.  

For the sauce i melted butter, and some sesame oil, and mixed that with a little veggie broth.  I added minced ginger and minced garlic, and let that sit on the stove for a while.   Then right before time to serve, i got my pan good and hot, and tossed everything in there together.  

Since I'm claiming this is a northern china dish, i should have made steamed buns or something like that to go with it,  but i got lazy, and just made some rice.   Regardless, it was a nice comfort dish.  

Butternut Squash Soup

For sunday dinner (lunch), I opted for a smooth, creamy butternut squash soup, with fresh baked garlic cheddar biscuits.

And Anali, (one of my housemates) made this little garlic friend from a garlic which had sprouted in our cupboard.

For the butternut squash soup, i actually started way too late to make it properly, so i was scrambling to get things done. Here's how i made butternut squash soup and garlic cheddar biscuits in just a little over an hour.

I started by preparing three butternut squash (squashes? squashi?). Cut them in half longways, and remove the seeds. Then i microwaved them (one squash at a time) for about seven minutes each. This got the squash mostly cooked, and made it pretty easy to remove the skins. I cut them into about 1" cubes, and put them in a large pot with boiling veggie broth, to finish them cooking.

While the butternut boiled, I chopped up a large yellow onion, and cooked it in some olive oil until it began to caramelize. By this time the kitchen was filled with the sweet, rich scents of the butternut squash, and that wonderful smell of caramelizing onions. And like clockwork, all of the sudden people begin to show up in the kitchen.

With both of those items cooking on the stove, I started on a basic biscuit recipe. After turning the oven on to about 435 degrees to warm up, I mixed the shortening with the dry ingredients. Here i added two cloves of minced garlic, as well as some oregano and some basil. I mixed in some milk and mixed it all up.

Back to the soup, I added the onions into the pot, and seasoned everything with salt, thyme, and a little chili powder. Then I began to mix everything together, using a potato masher to break up the chunks of squash.

Here's where it came in handy to have extra people loitering in the kitchen. Anali had found a clove of garlic which i had set aside because it had sprouted, and made him into the fun little guy you see up in the top corner there. When she finished, i put her to work blending the soup. Just poured it into a blender, about two or three cups at a time, to get it to a nice smooth consistency.

This freed me up to finish up the biscuits. I took some shredded cheddar and just sort of kneaded it into the biscuit dough, then separated the dough into biscuit sized portions, placed it on a baking sheet fairly close together, and tossed it in the hot oven.

Now Anali had finished with the blending of the soup, so I poured it all back into my pot on the stove, and added the final few touches. To make the soup creamier, i added one can of coconut milk (regular milk, or cream would have been fine, but I just can't get enough coconut milk).

Follow that up with some red wine vinegar and just a touch of sriracha to take a little of the sweet edge off of it. Then salt and pepper to taste. I even had some time to relax as the biscuits finished up, before 12:30 rolled around and we all sat down to lunch.

It's a nice warming soup for cold snowy chicago days. And a good use of seasonal vegetables.