growing

Putting Food By: Pesto

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“Would you say your pesto is the besto?” ~Friends

Each and every time I watched Friends in college, snuggled up on the couch with my roomies, and heard Phoebe say this line, I roared with laughter.  Well, let’s face it, I pretty much laughed like crazy any time I watched that show.  But looking back, the funniest part is when I was in college, I had no idea what pesto even was!

Now that I have discovered the wonderful world of pesto, I definitely would not say my pesto is the besto, but by golly it is pretty darn tasty.  I love, love, love making pesto in giant batches and freezing it for use in the winter months.  It helps to bring that lovely basil taste that reminds me so much of summer to the table when the heat is on and the snow is falling outside.

The particular batch I made this weekend had toasted walnuts, basil, swiss chard, garlic, Parmesan cheese, olive oil and salt.  But the great thing about pesto is you can use a wide variety of nuts and/or greens and the pesto will turn out great.

When I freeze my pesto, I put it in 8oz, freezer safe, glass jelly jars.  I fill each jar to 1 inch from the top (to allow for expansion in the freezer).  It freezes beautifully this way, defrosts easily and allows for easy preparation when you pop it out of the freezer at a later date.

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Some of our favorite home preservation books are:

Putting Food By by Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg and Beatrice Vaughan

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (There are some great canning recipes scattered throughout the piece.)

The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest by Carol W. Costenbader

Putting Food By: Dilly Beans

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We have a few little friends who have again found an entry point into our garden:  the rabbits.  So before they could reek havoc over too much of the garden space, I picked what I could from our bean patch because that seems to be their vegetable of choice right now.  I was shocked to find, that despite this incessant heat we have been experiencing, I was able to harvest quite a hefty bean crop.  In fact, I was able to gather so much that I needed to find something to do with some of them.  Enter dilly beans.

For those of you that have never had dilly beans, they are just plain yummy.  A little hot from the chilli peppers, a little sour from the vinegar and a little spicy from the garlic…what more could a girl ask for?

This year I found a great recipe in Putting Food By (listed below with a link), which only required a hot water bath canning method.  There were very few ingredients required and the entire process did not take long at all.  Now we have some more great summer veg ready to go for the winter.

What do you do with your surplus of green beans?  Leave a comment and share ideas with others.

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Some of our favorite home preservation books are:

Putting Food By by Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg and Beatrice Vaughan

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (There are some great canning recipes scattered throughout the piece.)

The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest by Carol W. Costenbader

Drought

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Despite the best watering efforts of my sister while we were away last week, we came home to a garden completely ill equipped to deal with a week of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.  These extreme temperatures withered our plants and brought out a volume of insects that I have never before experienced.

These conditions are reminders of just how fragile life is, that without rainfall, nothing can survive.  I try to push these ideas from my mind as I quietly tend to my plants, watering them from the city water that we are blessed to have at our disposal during the worst drought this area has faced since 1988.  But as the days pass, clouds loom overhead, but not a drop of rain falls, and these thoughts become more and more difficult to cast aside.

I pray for an end to this dryness, and for the heavens to open up and give the earth some much needed nourishment.

If you have a suggestion for Japanese beetle removal, I would greatly appreciate it!  Feel free to leave a comment on this post for all to see.  I have the traps set up along the far perimeter of our property, but the sheer number of these insects is staggering.

Putting Food By: Pickled Beets

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Despite the extreme heat we have had the past several days, our beets seem to be absolutely thriving.  In fact, they seem to be the only thing in our garden these days that are not being absolutely devoured by Japanese beetles.  Ug.

But enough of the negative and on to the positive…these beets.  Yum.  We pulled up our first round of beets this week and we were thrilled to find they had filled out nicely beneath the thick layer of soil.  My favorite way to eat beets is to pickle them, so I used a very easy pickling recipe from Putting Food By (listed below with a link), and before I knew it we had jars full of tart and scrumptious pickled beets.

 

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Some of our favorite home preservation books are:

Putting Food By by Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg and Beatrice Vaughan

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (There are some great canning recipes scattered throughout the piece.)

The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest by Carol W. Costenbader

Fresh

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Each morning I make a lovely cup of piping hot coffee and stand at my kitchen window overlooking my garden.  Even in the dead of winter, when the garden is buried beneath layer upon layer of snow, I do this.  It allows me to view one area of the earth, each day, and observe all of the changes that take place and often go unnoticed.

Yesterday, as I was conducting this every day task, I noticed that the mint in my herb garden had reached an all-time-out-of-control-I’m-goiing-to-take-over-everything state.  I now had more mint than any human could ever even dream of consuming.  I twiddled my thumbs for a bit, trying to think of what in the world to do with even a small bit of this mint.  Then it came to me.  On our trip to Champaign this past weekend I indulged in this exquisite homemade, flourless cake that was served with fresh mint ice cream.  Yummy.  So, that was it…fresh mint ice cream!

I used my normal ice cream recipe, but this time I added fresh, finely chopped mint at the stage when I add the vanilla.  I covered the pan with a ceramic plate and allowed the mint to steep in the mixture until completely cool.  This allowed the lovely, fresh flavor of the mint to infuse into the ice cream.

Enjoy!

Family

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When we moved back to Rockford (the hometown of both myself and my husband) four years ago this July, we pledged to make the move “worth it.”  You see, we adored living in Champaign.  We loved living in a city that is home to a major university, and all that comes with it.  We loved our teaching jobs, our students and our co-workers.  We loved our home, our neighbors and our neighborhood.  But the longing we both felt for our families far outweighed all of that.

We told ourselves that if we moved away from this fabulous city in order to be closer to our families, we must make every attempt to see our families, and see them often.  Although all of us have busy schedules, and it can often feel overwhelming to squeeze in time with everyone, we are so, so, so happy to be home.

Our summer “Tuesday Night Dinner” tradition is one we truly love and it makes us so very thankful for how full our lives are.  Full of family.  Full of love.  And always full of laughter 🙂

Recharge

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Sorry for being away for a few days longer than normal this weekend, but my hubby and I took a long weekend to relax, recharge and reconnect.  Despite the fact it didn’t seem like the trip was needed, once we got on the road and the distance between us and our home lengthened, we realized that indeed this trip was necessary.  It is so easy to get caught up (and let’s face it, sometimes bogged down) by the day to day.  It was extremely refreshing to take a break from the normal hum drum of our daily lives and just be at peace for a bit.

Now, when normal people go to exotic places to get away, my hubby and I went back to Champaign, Illinois…the place where we went to school, the place we lived and worked for five years of our adult lives, and the place where we started our family.  There was a lot of walking, dining and just plain hanging out.  It was divine 🙂

Wishing you all a lovely week!

Putting Food By: Black Raspberry Jam

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Is there anything better than homemade bread smothered in freshly made jam?  I really cannot think of a single thing that sounds better than that at this moment.

I have been eating freezer jam from as far back as I can remember.  Each and every time I went to visit my Grandma and Grandpa Dietmeier, I could be assured that there would be a fresh jar of homemade jam in the fridge just waiting for me to dig in.  My all time favorite treat was when my Grandpa Dit would give me a scoop of butter pecan ice cream with homemade jam on top.  Oh my.  My mouth is watering right now at the simple thought of it!

I want to be sure my girls have these same fond memories of delicious home-preserved food as I do, so I have been making freezer jam for the past four years.  I normally make my jam from strawberries I buy at the farmers market, but this year I whipped up a batch with the black raspberries we picked this past weekend.  It seemed to make the entire process so much more invigorating to know that we picked all of the berries with our own hands, and then made the jam as well.  Yummy!

Another first this year is that I switched away from the pectin I was using in years past and moved to Pomona’s Universal Pectin.  And let me tell you, I loved it!  I ended up using 6 cups less sugar than I would have to make the same amount of jam with the other pectin!  The taste was amazing because you could taste the tartness of the berries so much more than you could when all of that sugar is in there to cover up the natural flavor of the fruit.  I would recommend Pomona’s to anyone thinking of making jam this year.

Berry Pickin’

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This past weekend the whole Fagan crew was out in full force, making our way through the wild black raspberry brambles.  There was picking’, snacking’ and laughin’ going on all afternoon.  It was perfect.

The little ones really got into the entire process this year and picked for quite a while before they retired to the cool pool that awaited them just a hop, skip and a jump away.  So while the little ones swam with Grandma, the rest of us slowly made our way up the property line, continuously amazed by what the earth was providing for us.  These brambles were not planted here, but rather sprung up from the earth as a form of nourishment to those animals and people in the vicinity.

The day was of course an absolute blast, but I found myself often pausing to think of all that the earth continues to provide for us.  It is a true miracle that so often times is overlooked because of our fast paced lives and our constant desire for more.  This day gave me a chance to just sit back and marvel, to not be overcome with the craziness of our world, and just enjoy some good ole berry picking’ 🙂