To Juice, Or Not To Juice..

04 Monday Feb 2013

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Juicing.

This had been something I’d thought about every so often, but not something I was really ever interested in. We’ve been watching quite a few documentaries having something to do with food and food production lately. I’m not sure after which documentary it was that we watched, but we were convinced by the end of it that we needed a juicer. Now was the time.

We did a quick bit of research online – not a lot, since we knew what brand we wanted (we already own a bunch of Breville items and figured we’d just stick with them). The following day – two weeks ago now – we went out and bought our Juicer, and have been juicing numerous times a day since!

We absolutely love it.

Health benefits aside – juicing fruits and veggies actually tastes good. Really, good.

We’ve not tried a whole lot yet – mostly sticking to some combination of: Cucumber, Celery, Carrots, Kale, Chard, Spinach, Apples, Oranges and Grapefruits – but, that’s also in part to we just can’t find much else organically right now.. or even just local. Yay for Winter in Alberta? Though, I guess that’s not too shabby a list of goodies either!

We decided to try our own take on, an arguably crazy diet/cleanse, “rebooting” after watching “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead”. An interesting documentary, and all too common a story I think today. I don’t think doing a strict juice-only diet is the answer.. not like how it was used in the documentary, but I do think that a shorter version could be beneficial. By shorter, I mean about a week. So, that’s what we’re trying!

It’s day three today – so far, mostly good. The thing I noticed the most is how many times I just want to go and munch on something.. just because. While reading, watching tv, surfing the net.. whatever. Which, at the very least probably points out how often I eat when I really have no reason or need to. I may have caved and ate a few pretzel sticks yesterday.. but, oh well.

Whatever the outcome of this little.. juice cleanse, I’ll call it.. At the very least, I think I can finally say we’re actually getting our vegetables and fruits for once.. and never have they tasted so good.

I can say with a certainty, that juicing has become, and will remain a part of our daily life going forward – it just tastes too good not to!

Cheers!
Lisa

Can It Up! Orange Grapefruit Marmalade

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Canning, Farmers' Market

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Having spent the holiday’s in Europe (which, was pretty fantastic!) – I really missed going to the Farmers’ Markets here at home. Sure, there were Markets in Europe – and they were all fantastic in their own rights (arguably, one might go so far as to say that they’re better, too.. I’m not convinced, will have to see more!).

I really enjoyed the twice-a-week outdoor market in Saint Jean D’Angely – where we stayed for 10 days and spent both Christmas and New Years with some of Thierry’s family. That said.. it just wasn’t home, and oddly enough – that’s about the only time I felt even a hint of homesickness! Go figure.

Last weekend at the market I picked up some oranges and grapefruit – what better to make marmalade with, I thought – particularly having coming across a recipe from for a ‘Three Citrus Marmalade’ from Food in Jars that didn’t use the white pith – which I’ve always been leery about, and stayed away from marmalade largely because of! Also, because I don’t really care for chunky spreads.

DSC_0217

Having never made jam OR marmalade before.. I was a bit leery of how things would go.. but it turned out to be fairly straight forward. I’m very happy with the finished product, though I think it set a bit TOO well (which I was worried about not setting at all – because I got all of four seeds from the citrus I used).

It took quite awhile to reach 220F (~105C).. and I didn’t think until AFTER the fact, that maybe that temp would need to be adjusted for my altitude (about 3500 feet!) – just like the processing time. I’d never seen it mentioned anywhere, so didn’t give a second thought about it.. until I only had enough product for about 5 and 2/3 – 1/2 pint (~250ml) jars. When I should have had about enough for 4 pint jars, or equivalent.

Sure, the amount of water in the fruit can affect it.. but I didn’t think it would THAT much. So, start the googling.. turns out, I only needed to go to 214F (~101C).. according to Learn to Preserve at least!

I pretty much followed the recipe from Food In Jars’ cookbook (link to a very similar recipe, by the same title on her blog above) – I used 7 oranges, and 3 grapefruits which weighed in a bit under the 4.5lbs of fruit the recipe calls for.

In the beginning..
In the beginning…

Bubble-tastic!
Bubble-tastic!

Ready to jar & process!
Ready to jar and process.. finally!

This also marks my first time entering Can It Up!, hosted by All Four Burners – you can read here about it!

I think this weekend I might try a straight up grapefruit marmalade, using the same recipe and see how that goes! And I’ve a recipe for a red onion marmalade which I’ve been itching to try out as well. It’s good to be home!

Cheers!
Lisa

A New Chapter.

07 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by in Ramblings, Travel

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For a long time now I have wanted to travel. To just pack up my bags, and go somewhere. I don’t just mean to Fargo, ND – which was a great 2 hour trip to visit the States when I lived in Winnipeg. And I don’t mean on a business trip to Houston, or wherever.. though that was a fun experience, and I would love to do it again.

I mean to Travel. To just pack a bag, and go. Somewhere. Anywhere. With any one, or with no one at all.

I’ve met a few people whom have done this, now. The stories they tell.. the way that their eyes light up, ad the big smiles that cross their face as they tell you their tale. Or one of them.

Tomorrow I catch a plane to Germany.

I’m not quite packing my bags, and just going. I’ll be going with my best friend, and love of my life.. and we’re going with a purpose, to visit his family for Christmas. We’re only going for 5 weeks.. and I only say “only”, because that definitive time limit makes this just a vacation. There’s a clear beginning, and an end.. but it is something.

It will be the first time I’ve flown overseas. It will be the first time I have visited a country where English was not the primary language spoken.. if spoken at all. There is going to be a lot of firsts, I think, during the next 5 weeks.

This is, I think, more than just a new chapter.. but a new beginning, too.

Reflections: Learning to eat locally + Hot Pepper Jelly

17 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Canning, Community Supported Agriculture, Our Suburban Garden, Ramblings

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I’ve learned – and read – a lot in the past 2 months since I started canning. I’m also still surprised, and slightly amused, how quickly canning has grown on me. Three months ago I’d have laughed and said no way that’ll happen.

How quickly things change!

Granted, I suppose it was inevitable. This year has been full of eye-openers. It started off with just wanting to have a garden of my own, which quickly progressed into signing up for a share in one of the few Community Supported Agriculture programs nearby.

Then it became all about a quest to grow my own, and eat locally what I couldn’t grow myself (which, this year at least, is pretty much everything – my first veggie garden was quite the epic fail! Which is why I’ve not posted about it).

While we’ve still got a long ways to go to truly be ‘eating locally’ – I’ve learned a lot. I’ve been surprised by just how much I CAN get locally, living here in Alberta. We can grow some fruit, some berries do very well, even! The Okanogan isn’t too far, so the Farmers’ Markets always have a huge selection of fruit and veggies to choose from that are hard/impossible to grow here.. it’s still a little ways a way, but it sure beats buying stuff imported from thousands of miles away.

Another change is reading labels. I’ve been reading labels for a while, but I read them in a whole new light now – I’m more concerned about what is IN my food, then I am about how many calories, grains of fat, etc, might be. Of course, I do still check those values out too.. but I’m more concerned about how processed the foods I eat are, and where they come from.. or more simply, how far they’ve travelled.

I’ve even gone so far, as to consider becoming a vegetarian.. but there’s a few things I’m just not willing to give up. So, instead – I eat less meat, and buy local, ethically raised where I can. Or at least, that’s the goal – I’ve got a ton of stuff in the freezer that doesn’t meet these new ‘standards’, that I’m not about to just go and toss out! It’s a slow ‘conversion’, I guess.

Anyway.. all of this, had led to my wanting a pantry of products that support these new-found.. values? requirements? craziness? Who knows. But, that’s what lead to canning.

One of my favourite snacks has got to be red pepper jelly with cream cheese, and crackers. I came across a recipe, Hot Inferno Pepper Jelly, from “All Four Burners” a few weeks ago, that, as of last night, I’ve now made twice, using some hot peppers I had on hand. I’m about half way through my first little jar from the first batch – and it is fantastic! So, I made a second since I still had a ton of peppers.. and sugar.

Wow does Jelly ever take a lot of sugar – I mean, I’ve always known there was a lot of sugar in it.. but, making my own has shed a whole new light on that. So, little jars it is! Great for gift giving, and limiting the amount sitting open in my fridge calling for me to eat it!

I do wish that all the goodies wouldn’t float up at the top of my jars, but, I just take a spoon out from along the side so I get some from the top – and bottom. It makes a pretty stiff jelly (or at least mine turned out that way).

And with that, it is time I head off to the last CSA pickup of the season – at least, for the Summer CSA we signed up for.

We signed up for a Winter CSA, and a Grain CSA which both start next week! I’ve never been a baker, so hopefully the flours make a nice pasta.. otherwise, I guess I’ll be learning another thing this year – baking!

Yikes.

Fruit Butters – Peach, and Pear.

08 Monday Oct 2012

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What had started off with good intentions to prepare and process 25lbs each of Peaches and Pears.. ended with a few jars of canned Peaches and some fruit puree, and butter.

My first attempt at canning peaches was less than successful. While the second batch worked out significantly better.. I just didn’t like canning peaches.

We lost probably quite a few peaches to rot, simply while waiting for the others to ripen enough. That was probably the biggest mistake with the first batch of peaches – not waiting for them to be fully ripe. After canning the second batch, even though it went a lot smoother.. I just didn’t want to do another.

Cinnamon Peach Butter

We had 13 (large!) peaches left at that point, so I halved them, removed their pits and chopped them up roughly. With 1/2 a cup of filtered water, simmered them for about a half an hour and then blended them – skins and all. The peach puree spent the majority of the next day cooking down in the slow cooker, until it had reduced and thickened quite a bit.

I had added some cinnamon at one point, and the zest from 1/2 a lemon – the butter tasted awesome at this point, however I still went ahead and added the juice from a lemon.. and while Thierry likes the butter better, I don’t much care for it now. Just a bit too lemony, but.. hopefully it will still be nice with yogurt and granola.

Round 2 meant dealing with the pears. After not enjoying canning peaches, I didn’t want to can these either. So, I made another butter! Picked up some vanilla beans from Costco, split one open and tossed it into the slow cooker with 16 medium-large pears that I had made into a puree, same method as with the peaches.

The Pear Vanilla Bean butter is absolutely fantastic.

Pear Vanilla Bean Butter

Unfortunately, that only used up half the pears – so the rest I cooked and pureed to make a second butter.. but I just ended up freezing the puree in 1 cup portions instead.

I’d never tried fruit butter until a few days ago, Thierry had never even heard of it! So, starting off small this year – plus, with only a 6 month shelf life.. there’s only so much we’ll get through. I’ll be giving away most of what we made as is!

Homemade Tomato Paste.. is it worth it?

07 Sunday Oct 2012

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Tomato Paste – the finished product, and 7 x 500ml jars of Diced Tomatoes.

In short, no… but it depends.

Last weekend we processed the first 25lbs of the 75lbs of Roma Tomatoes that we purchased from Broxburn Vegetables near Lethbridge, AB.

I’d been wanting to make tomato paste for awhile, but reading this blog post from Marisa @ Food In Jars, sealed the deal despite the fact that she wasn’t happy with her tomato paste.. I was determined to give it a go.

There’s a few reasons for this, one – I’d not been able to find any Organic tomato paste in the local grocery stores*; two – I had an idea to try something different from what Marisa had done; and three – those little 125ml jars are darn cute.

I can’t for the life of me remember where I read it, but somewhere I read that tomato skins cause bitterness. In the aforementioned blog post, one of the complaints was that the tomato paste turned out quite bitter. The method that was used did not call for removing the tomato skins – but instead, to simmer for a period of time and then run the tomatoes through a food mill to remove skins and seeds.

So, I thought – what if I removed the skins, and then simmered the tomatoes down? Which, is precisely what I ended up doing.

The recipe that had been used is no longer available online, but this one from Bernardin sounded very similar. Aside from blanching and removing the tomato skins first, and simmering the tomatoes for substantially longer – we pretty much followed the recipe exactly as is.

We ended up with 8 x 125ml jars of paste (+ half a jars worth that went to the fridge, instead of the canner).

This turned into a 2-day process, as we simmered the tomatoes down for close to 12 hours when all was said and done.

Having used around $30 worth of tomatoes.. I just can’t see this as being worth it. Maybe if you are lucky enough to live in a warm climate and/or can find tomatoes for dirt cheap – or grow them well enough yourself, but for us? I won’t be doing this again, or at least not any time soon.

I should mention, however – that the end product, is by far the tastiest tomato paste I have ever had.

Tomato Paste – The Beginning

Tomato Paste – After cooking down for 12 hours.
Note the smaller pot! Not much in it.

*This past week Thierry and I finally stopped in at Sunnyside Market, and found that they sell Organic Tomato paste. Score!

CSA Deliveries 12, 13, and 14

05 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by in Community Supported Agriculture

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So, by the title.. I’ve not been very good at updating this blog with our weekly CSA pickup. I’ve got a picture from #’s 12 and 13, but this weeks delivery is missing. We stopped by Thierry’s Mother’s house on the way home and gave her half of our goodies, which didn’t leave much for a picture!

The growing season is definitely near an end. Vendors are disappearing from the Farmers’ Markets, and our CSA pickups are getting smaller.

That, and we had our first snowfall a few days ago. All gone and melted now of course.. but, if there was any doubt.. Summer is definitely over.

#12 – Celery, leek, broccoli, spaghetti squash, tomatoes, onions, red potatoes, golden beets.

#13 – Celery, Carrots, Red & Yellow Onion, Tomatoes, Red Potatoes, Kale, Acorn Squash.

We’ve been debating if we want to sign up for a 1/2 share again next year. We both love the idea of supporting a local farmer, and we got a lot of really nice produce this year.. but we got a number of items that we either a) didn’t like, b) didn’t use or c) like, but just got too much of (Kale, Kale, and more kale!).

There are a few other CSA programs, so we’re considering trying another.. but, a part of me would rather just stick with the one we did this year. Loyalty? I guess.. something like that.. I almost feel guilty thinking of switching to someone else!

Maybe we’ll just have to do two half shares :)

What the heck happened here?!

26 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Canning

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Thierry and I picked up 25lbs each of organic peaches and pears at one of the local Farmers’ Markets yesterday.

The peaches were riper, so we decided to try canning a few of them tonight, following the “Boozy Peaches” recipe from the Food In Jars cookbook by Marisa McClellan. I picked up this book last week, and this is the first recipe I’ve had a chance to try – though I think I’ve just about read, or at least skimmed through, every recipe in the book by now.

This marks our fourth attempt at canning, and the first time something has clearly gone wrong! Yikes. I’m not really sure what happened, but thanks to this blog post – conveniently by the author of the book whose recipe I just followed, it sounds like the peaches should still be okay.. though I’ll probably just toss em in the fridge and eat them sooner rather than store them for later.

Here’s a picture of the questionable jar, about a minute after taking it out of the water bath.

Most likely I didn’t get out all of the air bubbles.. despite that I poked around with my little air bubble remover trying my best to do just that!

The jar in question was floating when the processing time was up – we turned the burner off and let things cool down for a bit over 5 minutes before removing the jars (goal: prevent siphoning due to aforementioned air bubbles).

The jar also sealed WHILE it was bobbing around in the water bath, too. We heard its little “pop” while we were kind of just staring at the jar wondering what the heck went wrong. Newbie canners, we most definitely are.

I think the takeaways from this, is that air bubbles are more easily trapped with peaches. At least, it seems that way since the instructions are to pack them in cut side down.. the pits in our peaches were fairly large, so there’s some pretty big gaps there that could hold air between the layers.

Here’s a picture of that same jar, about half an hour later.. considerably less bubbly having cooled down some. My peaches also seem to have shrunk a fair bit.

Canning… Round three!

17 Monday Sep 2012

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We picked up around 40-45lbs of tomatoes at the Millarville Farmers’ Market this past weekend.

We hadn’t been planning on canning tomatoes.. I’d wanted to see how things turned out with our first two canning attempts.

However.. we couldn’t resist buying them and giving them a try when we found a vendor selling larger quantities of canning tomatoes.
Just getting started..

We simmered the tomatoes on low for about 3 hours, or until they cooked down by about 1/3.

This is the first time all of my Le Creuset dutch ovens have been in use simultaneously!

The finished product.. cooled, and it looks like they’re all sealed. We managed to get 16 pints of diced tomatoes!

I started off following this recipe from Food in Jars, however the times in her post aren’t.. the clearest (85 minutes? 45 minutes? that’s a big difference!). I wasn’t sure if that time really applied to what I ended up doing, since I ended up doing something quite a bit different.. I diced my tomatoes and cooked them down for about 3 hours. So, I used the times given from this Bernardin tomato sauce recipe, adjusted for Calgary’s altitude – 45 minutes (though I think both rounds I pulled the jars out closer to 50 minutes).

Hopefully I didn’t completely botch this.. yikes!

I’m just asking to get in trouble as a novice canner when I start mixing and combining elements from different recipes. Thierry just shakes his head at me and says they’re fine. I’m inclined to agree.. but.. what if? Punishment for not following a specific recipe, or any recipe for that matter, to the letter I suppose. Ah well. C’est la vie!

By the time we finished – around 12:30 am last night.. this morning? – I never wanted to see another tomato.

However, by the time I left work today I was already planning to pick up another 50lbs of tomatoes this weekend if I can. I should mention, I can’t stand the smell or taste of raw tomatoes. Regardless..

I just might be addicted.

CSA: Grain Shares?

17 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in Community Supported Agriculture

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I first found out about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs earlier this year. “Awesome!” I thought, locally grown veggies that I can count on. Or at least, count on to do better than what I was trying to grow in my own garden.

I might post an update on that later.. suffice it to say, my garden didn’t fare so well. Better luck next year, hopefully!

Anyway, it wasn’t long before my reading and endlessly searching for local options lead me to some other interesting choices. I’ve recently (as in, less than an hour ago) signed up for a Grain Share, from Country Thyme Farm.

They grow three different grains – Barley, Rye, and Red Fife wheat. I’ve no experience with Rye or Red Fife wheat, and the only Barley I’ve ever used is either Pot or Pearl barley that I’ve tossed into soups.

We’ve been making a lot of homemade pasta lately.. not sure how any of these grains will do, or if I’ll be learning to bake bread.. finally.

Either way, this should be fun :)

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