Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

Our garden stores are running low, but we still have several butternut squashes and a few sweet potatoes. Belle found the perfect recipe, Roasted Butternut and Sweet Potato Lasagna. It was rich and delicious, a healthy and great way to use butternut squash! Do you have recommendation on how to use up the rest of our butternuts?

 You can find this great recipe and many others too at How Sweet it is.


Be sure to stop by The Gardener of Eden for Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard, to see how other gardeners are canning, cooking and serving their garden bounties!

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard 2/23/12

This week is the perfect week for us to do Thursday's Kitchen cupboard for Robin. We wanted to do something special with our last spaghetti squash, so we used one of her favorite spaghetti squash recipes! It was delicious.

Robin's  Shrimp and Sausage over Spaghetti Squash was the perfect choice! We substituted a couple things to make it work for us. We couldn't resist doubling the shrimp. We're always indulgent when we make seafood dishes! I know Robin stuffs her own sausage; we substituted an organic brand from Wegmans, and we added frozen pesto and Italian seasonings as a substitute for the garden fresh seasoning Robin had in her stores. As with so many other dishes, Belle sneaked in a vegetable for the boys. This time it was spinach. Sorry the pics aren't very good. We own a crummy camera.

Belle also made a quinoa dish that was a hit with the family. She used garden fresh kale and tomatoes.

Kale and Spinach Quinoa by Belle

1 shallot minced
3 cups cooked quinoa (or other grain)
1 cup corn fresh or frozen
1 1/2 cups kale
1 1/2 cups spinach
1/3 cup pesto
1/4 cup roasted cherry tomatoes or chopped sundried tomatoes
1/2 cup kalamata olives sliced
3/4 cup chopped feta cheese

In skillet over heat cook shallot in olive oil for a min or two stir in cooked quinoa and fry until sizzling. Remove skillet from the heat, add pesto and mix well. Add tomatoes, feta and kalamata olives. Mix well.

Serve warm. Can also be served warm over a bed of crisp lettuce. It can be prepared with any meat of your choice. It taste's great meatless too.

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard 1/12/12

Belle continues to be busy in the kitchen preparing meals with garden ingredients. Our meals are certainly not 100% homegrown. Maybe once in a while we're able to do that, but it seems like every meal includes something from the garden. We've saved a ton of money on our grocery bill. We're still hoping for the day when we can produce our own dairy products. So many of you out there have goats for milk and cheese and all things dairy. We'd sure love to have that opportunity to have goats.

Here's a couple  things Belle has prepared with garden ingredients since our last post with Robin at The Gardener of Eden.

Asian cabbage salad

With our humble winter cabbage harvest Belle made Asian cabbage salad. Its a cold salad dish made with dry noodles, sweet sauce and sliced cabbage.

Dressing
1/2 cup olive oil
3 tbs rice vinegar
2 tbs sugar
1 pkg of ramen noodle seasoning (I know, I know...)

Meat of your choice (optional)
1/2 head of cabbage (in our world that meant many, many tiny winter heads)
1 pkg ramen noodles crumbled/uncooked
2 tbs toasted sesame seeds

Grilled "Hen of the Woods" mushrooms.

We included these wild mushrooms (above) in a fondue dish that was part of our New Years Party spread of food.

Mashed potatoes with cauliflower and radish

Belle blended some of our cauliflower harvest from last spring with the radishes we harvested last week in mashed potatoes. It's our secret way of getting the boys to eat vegetables.

Shhhh, be very quiet, we're fooling our children!

To our surprise, even though the radish flavor was very strong, the boys ate it. I guess our pediatrician is right about children and their eating habits. The boys get to say whether they'll eat and how much, but we get to say what they'll eat and when!

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard 12/29/11

We're linking up with Robin at The Gardener of Eden where you can see what others are doing with their garden harvests this time of year, and you can share your own kitchen cooking ideas and recipes.

Our family has a Christmas seafood dinner tradition that we absolutely love. I don't know where we picked it up, it's probably the result of Belle's and Calvin's seafood obsession. This year Belle made seafood soup with homemade bread. It was wonderful. There's a small pot of cilantro outside that keeps holding on despite the freezing weather. We used it to garnish the dish. Belle also used garden fresh carrots and whole frozen tomatoes in the recipe.

Seafood Soup by Belle
1/2 white onion,1 carrot, 1celery stick (diced)
5 garlic cloves (minced)
28 oz diced tomatoes
2 lbs tilapia
4 ounces squid sliced
8 ounces octopus
6 ounces mussels (not shelled)
6 crab legs (shelled)
1 lb large shrimp (not shelled)
8 cups fish stock
1/2 cup dry sherry
1 tbsp lime juice

Saute diced vegetables in olive oil for about 6 minutes. Add minced garlic and saute for another 3 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon of lime juice, 8 cups of fish stock, half a cup of dry sherry and 28 ounces of diced tomatoes. When broth is simmering add the tilapia, wait 6 minutes and add the rest of the seafood and cook for about another 6 minutes. It's done. Garnish with cilantro

Everything can be shelled ahead of time, if you like. We're used to this Mexican style soup, it adds color and depth to the soup. Plus the kids love the challenge! 

Do you have a canning recipe or meal idea that you'd like to share?

Thursday's Christmas Kitchen Cupboard

It's that wonderful time of year for Christmas holiday cheer! Are you ready? There's only 3 days left! I'll be taking the boys out this afternoon to get something special from them for mama. Then we'll be finished. Finally.

Belle's been busy in the kitchen getting her Christmas cheer on with irresistible goodies. Here's a couple of my personal favorites.

Peanut Butter Blossoms allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1 cup shortening
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup white sugar for decoration
• 2 (9 ounce) bags milk chocolate candy kisses, unwrapped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening, peanut butter, brown sugar, and 1 cup white sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, and stir in the milk and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the peanut butter mixture until well blended. Shape tablespoonfuls of dough into balls, and roll in remaining white sugar. Place cookies 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 10 to12 minutes in the preheated oven. Remove from oven, and immediately press a chocolate kiss into each cookie. Allow to cool completely; the kiss will harden as it cools.

Jam Filled Butter Cookies  allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup fruit preserves, any flavor (Belle used homemade raspberry jam)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, white sugar and egg yolks. Mix in flour a little bit at a time until a soft dough forms. Roll dough into 1 inch balls. If dough is too soft, refrigerate for 15 to 20 minutes. Place balls 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. Use your finger or an instrument of similar size to make a well in the center of each cookie. Fill the hole with 1/2 teaspoon of preserves.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown on the bottom. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

Be sure to stop by The Gardener of Eden where for this Thursday only Robin is hosting a special "Thursday's Christmas Kitchen Cupboard" and see what other gardeners are doing with their harvests this winter.

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

Lately Belle has been using freezer and pantry items for most of the ingredients in our meals.  We've had lots of soup, crock pot dishes, casseroles and more. Here's a small sampling of what we're eating around here this winter.

100% grass fed beef on a wheat roll (not homemade) with canned pickles, fresh lettuce from the cold frame and sweet potato fries from the pantry.

Belle made homemade whole wheat pumpkin bread with the volunteer pumpkins that grew near the compost bin last season. The recipe can be found at Cookie and Kate. We especially like the addition of millet to the recipe for a crunchy textured experience.

Thanks Dave for recommending this great little miller!

We've also enjoyed plain cantaloupe pieces from the freezer. They lose their firmness when thawed but not their flavor!

Homemade ice cream made with strawberries from the garden is always a big hit with the boys too.

 

Stop by The Gardener of Eden to see what other gardeners are canning, cooking and bringing to the table from their gardens.

A Blogger's Reward!

Jane, thank you so much for posting about Hen of the Woods wild mushrooms! If it weren't for you, we would never have had today's experience. I kid you not! We were at a picnic with local wine guild. The picnic was all a part of finding that local vineyard and making grape wine. Anyway, we were having a great time taste testing homemade wine and doing what people do at picnics when Belle quietly approached me and whispered, "look at that." I knew what she was suggesting immediately. We had both read Jane's recent post and talked about how great it would be to find wild mushrooms. There at the base of an old tree trunk right by the picnic tables was a giant Hen of the Woods mushroom. So as we were leaving, and saying our goodbyes I quietly harvested about 5 lbs worth of wild mushrooms. Thanks Jane! It's our reward for blogging with great people like you. We would have never known. 

What will we do with them? Any thoughts?
always goes straight to Belle! She's the work horse around here. And boy does she know how to bring it to the table! Sometimes she cans. Sometimes she dries. Sometimes she brings it straight to the table. I look forward to sharing her work with you. If I remember to ask her for the recipe, I'll share that too! From our cupboard to you, this is what Belle's been up to this week.

On Monday we went to the local farm auction and picked up 3 boxes of Gala apples for a really great price. Belle has dried several baggies of them, and yesterday she made apple butter!

Apple Butter Recipe

12 apples
3 cups apple cider
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon clove
1 cinnamon stick
1 generous squeeze of fresh lemon
1/2 lemon rind grated

Core and slice the apples. Mix apples with apple cider and cook on medium heat for about 15 minutes or until mushy. Separate the skins from the apple pulp with that hand held thing-a-ma-jig pictured above. Blend the mixture in a food processor. In a crock pot add the sugar, spices, lemon juice and rind to the apple sauce, and slow cook until the sugar caramelizes. Spoon a bit out and place on a cold plate. If the liquid does not separate from the apple butter, then it's done! Give the pints a 10 minute water bath, then you're done.


This week we also harvested and dried a couple of pounds of wild honey mushrooms. They are larger than white mushrooms, but smaller than portabellas they are similar in texture to portabella, maybe a little softer, and they have a beautiful golden brown color... like honey! They taste wonderful.

Wild honey mushrooms we found in the woods behind our house.

Finally, for dinner one night Belle made chicken corn tortillas with the salsa verde she canned earlier this year. We also had pickled jalapenos and sweet potato fries fresh from the garden. Yummy!

Please stop by The Gardener of Eden and see what other people are preserving for the Cupboard and preparing for the table.


Jane, thank you so much for posting about Hen of the Woods wild mushrooms! If it weren't for you, we would never have had today's experience. I kid you not! We were at a picnic with local wine guild. The picnic was all a part of finding that local vineyard and making grape wine. Anyway, we were having a great time taste testing homemade wine and doing what people do at picnics when Belle quietly approached me and whispered, "look at that." I knew what she was suggesting immediately. We had both read Jane's recent post and talked about how great it would be to find wild mushrooms. There at the base of an old tree trunk right by the picnic tables was a giant Hen of the Woods mushroom. So as we were leaving, and saying our goodbyes I quietly harvested about 5 lbs worth of wild mushrooms. Thanks Jane! It's our reward for blogging with great people like you. We would have never known. 

What will we do with them? Any thoughts?