Canning Salsa Verde!

Since this is my second garden-related post of the week, you can tell what is on my mind and consuming my time these days! This year my heirloom tomato plants are not doing well. I think they got blight. :( So I likely won't be canning any marinara unless I buy some tomatoes in bulk. Womp womp. But fortunately, my tomatillos are doing great! I guess I must have beginners luck with gardening because my first year of growing heirloom tomatoes went great and now my first year of growing tomatillos has gone great.

Last week I picked all of these tomatillos plus a few more on Saturday.

I had about 4 pounds of them so needed to come up with something to make so they could be put to use! Since chips and salsa is practically a food group for me (seriously, is there a better snack?), I decided to make roasted tomatillo salsa. After googling around, I decided to make this recipe. Spoiler alert: this recipe calls for WAY too many serrano chiles - more on that later in this post.

I started off by roasting the tomatillos, garlic and serrano chiles under the broiler.

The start of awesome salsa verde

It took quite awhile to do this. But I was able to blend batches of roasted veggies while roasting the other veggies, so multi-tasking made feel like it went fairly fast.

Roasted goodness

When I got to the half way point, I tasted what I had blended so far, which was about 2 pounds of tomatillos, 4 serrano chiles, and 1/2 of the cilantro, onion and garlic. Thank God I tasted it before blending the rest of the  serranos because it was HOT HOT HOT. I thought the ratio of 1.5 pounds of tomatillos to 5 serrano chiles seemed a bit off - and I should have trusted that judgment! So I left out the other 6 serranos, added the rest of the tomatillos, onion, garlic, and cilantro and it tasted perfect. It still has a kick but an appropriate amount of kick.

So if you ever decide to make this recipe, unless you want a 5-alarm-burn-your-mouth salsa, halve the amount of serranos the recipe calls for!  I also added the juice of one lime to balance things out. I will also note that when I looked at other recipes, they called for about 1/2 of the amount of chiles that this recipe called for, so it's not just me thinking it was overkill to include 5 serranos.

~11 cups of salsa, ready to be canned!

Next it was time to can! I made 2 1.5 pint jars and 5 1/2 pint jars. A 1/2 pint (1 cup) of this is like a serving size for me (ha!) but I figure we can gift the smaller jars to friends this summer and fall.

I feel such a sense of pride when I can things I've grown. I feel like I am channeling the spirit of my maternal grandma Val. She did LOTS of canning. She passed that knowledge onto her daughter, my mom. And now I'm canning. It's pretty cool to keep a vintage skill like this alive!

There are lots more tomatillos that will be ready to be picked later this month so I am planning to make this recipe again!

Zucchini for Daaaaaays

I changed up what I planted in my garden a bit this year, and one vegetable I added was zucchini. I only planted one hill, but that hill is producing like CRAZY!!  I've lost count of how many zucchini I've picked, but it's a lot. I feel like I could sit by my garden and literally watch it grow! Luckily I was able to off-load some on my siblings and parents when I was at the lake, I gave another bag to a friend, and there is also a donation bin at our community garden that a member takes to a local food shelf (love this!).

While I've given quite a bit away, I've also used quite a bit of it. I thought I'd share some of the recipes I've made in case you or someone you know has a ton of zucchini and needs ideas about how to use it!

First up - sausage stuffed zucchini boats. This is one of my favorite dishes to make with zucchini. It's perfect for garden zucchini because you need a bigger zucchini to make these boats (the dinky ones they sell in the grocery store aren't big enough to stuff). The blog this recipe came from has a bunch of other ideas for stuffed zucchini but I've always stuck to this version because I love it so much!

Last Monday I made zucchini "meatballs" which I served on a bed of GF spaghetti. The recipe calls for bread crumbs but I was able to find some at the grocery store so it was easy to make a GF version of this. Next time I would either make them smaller or bake them for longer as they weren't quite as done in the middle as I would have liked. But they were still good!

I've made Creamy Parmesan Zucchini Rice twice this month when we've either hosted or went to another couple's house for dinner.  It's really yummy and a very easy recipe. I also think it would be kid friendly as the zucchini blends in really well and you mostly just taste the cheesy, creamy rice!

This past weekend I made a batch of Flourless Chocolate Chip Zucchini Banana Muffins. Since they are flourless, they are naturally GF. I didn't have almond flour so used peanut butter instead and they came out great.  If I made these again, I would use my food processor instead of a blender, though, as the batter is quite thick before you add in the banana and zucchini so it was a lot of work to get it out of my blender!

On Saturday night, we hosted my Julia Child aunt and uncle for a recipe testing night as Julia Child is just over a month away (we are having it early this year). This year, Julia Child is going to Southeast Asia. I wanted to make a salad or side that would use up some zucchini so I googled Asian zucchini salad, and found this recipe. We liked it so much that we decided to use it for the salad course for Julia Child Night! It's a really light, bright, delicious salad.

I've also made Gluten-Free Zucchini Coffee Cake and Zucchini Casserole (this uses 4 cups of zucchini so is a great recipe if you have lots of zucchini to use up!), but I don't have pictures of either. I've made the coffee cake recipe many times (it's soooo good!) and will make the casserole dish again.

Do you like zucchini? Do you have any favorite recipes to share?

Eating the Fruits of My Labor

I love summer for many reasons, but towards the top is that I get to do one of my newfound hobbies/talents - gardening!

I put my garden in a couple of weeks before the wedding and this month I've been able to pick some things!

My cherry tomatoes are growing well but taking awhile to turn red. I picked one (which I promptly ate) and 4 more last night. Hopefully more will start to turn soon! Fresh-off-the-vine tomatoes are sooo good! Phil doesn't like raw tomatoes so I get them all to myself!

I'm also growing larger tomatoes but didn't take a picture of them as they are just starting to pop and are very green. I'll probably be able to start to pick them in late July or early August. Hopefully my crop is as good this year as it was last year so I can do lots of canning!

One new thing I am growing this year is tomatillos. It's been interesting to watch these grow. If you've bought tomatillos before, you know that they are sold in their husk. I thought that the fruit and the husk would grow at the same time, but the husk grows first and then the fruit grows to fill it. I'm guessing I won't be able to pick these until August as the fruit inside is cherry tomato size right now. But once I can start to harvest these, there will be lots of green salsa and green enchilada sauce in my future!

This picture is upside down, but you get the idea of what else I was able to pick last night. The zucchini on the far right is HUGE (it weighs about 2.5 pounds!). We've got some zucchini boats in our future!  I'm going to a bbq hosted by a college friend this weekend so will likely bring something zucchini-based. I know beets are popular with everyone, so I'll roast those for salads and sides.

I also picked a bunch of green beans. This is a gallon bag so there are quite a few! We'll be enjoying these tonight along with grilled brats and potatoes.

I love going to Farmer's Markets, and frequent the local one on weekends when we are home, but there's nothing quite like the satisfaction of eating food that you grew! I'm so glad that our neighborhood of Minneapolis has a community garden!

Are you doing any gardening this year? Have you been visiting any local Farmers Markets? My weekends have been so busy since getting back from our honeymoon so I have only gone to the Farmer's Market once! Hopefully I can get there more often going forward!

Adventures in Gardening: Making Refrigerator Pickles

After being gone for the long weekend two weekends ago, I went to my garden on Tuesday night and had quite a bit of picking to do! Besides picking a big bag of green beans, some red peppers and some carrots, I picked lots of cucumbers.

While I use a lot of cucumbers in salads and have been giving some away to friends, I wanted to do something with the 6 smaller cucumbers I picked. Pickles are one of my most favorite foods, so I decided to make refrigerator pickles. My older sister makes them every summer so she sent me her recipe and I gave it a whirl. The nice thing about refrigerator pickles is that they are super easy to make! There are lots of recipes out there, but here is the one I used, which yields about 2 quarts:

 1/4 c. sugar
1/4 c. pickling salt
1 1/2 c. vinegar
1/2 onion, sliced
6 garlic cloves
6 sprigs of dill
6 small cucumbers (or enough to partially fill 2 quart jars)

1. Slice cucumbers and distribute between 2 1-quart jars. Add 1/4 sliced onion, 3 cloves of garlic and 3 sprigs of dill to each jar.
2. Mix together sugar, pickling salt and vinegar. Distribute between the 2 jars (I put it in a measuring cup after mixing it so I knew how to evenly distribute it).
3. Add water to fill to about 1/2" below the top.
4. Let the jars sit on your counter for 48 hours, then refrigerate.
5. ENJOY!!

The finished product! 1 jar is a 1.5 pint jar so a little bit small but I didn't have another quart jar on hand.

The nice thing about refrigerator pickles is that they are a quick and easy thing to make! I tried a couple last night and they are delicious! And even if you don't have a garden, farmer's markets always have the small pickling size of cucumbers or you could use an English cucumbers. My cucumbers were borderline too big (you can tell from the picture that they have seeds) but they still taste great.

Do you like pickles? Have you ever made or eaten refrigerator pickles?

Adventures in Gardening: Canning Tomatoes

Happy Monday, everyone. I hope everyone had a great weekend! In a word, mine was productive as I spent most of Saturday in the kitchen canning about 45 pounds of tomatoes! I appreciated being as busy as I was on Saturday because on Friday night I got the tragic news that my uncle had a heart attack and died. He was only 60 and appeared to be in good health so it was a total shock to our family. My heart just breaks for our family. Make sure you hug your loved ones every chance you get - this weekend was a reminder that life can change in the blink of an eye.

But back to the post topic at hand. My tomato plants have been producing like crazy and a girl can only eat so many tomatoes. So I decided to do some canning so we can enjoy the fruits of my garden in the cold winter months. Going into this canning project, I was pretty intimidated. I had helped my mom can when I was young but it's one thing to be the helper and a whole other thing to do the entire process by yourself! Phil was there for moral support and he helped move the heavy water bath pot on and off the stove but besides that, this was a solo project.

First up, I used 10 pounds of tomatoes to make a double batch of tomato salsa, using this recipe. I opted to broil the tomatoes as the recipe said that would enhance their flavor.

One of several piles of broiled tomatoes, waiting to be peeled.

I was nervous about the hot water bath canning process but it all worked out and all 8 jars sealed! Success!

8 1.5 pint jars of salsa. Yum!

Next up was the biggest project of the day - turning 25 pounds of tomatoes into this spaghetti sauce recipe. 

This is what 25 pounds of heirloom tomatoes looks like!

This was definitely the most time consuming recipe as it tok quite awhile to peel all of those tomatoes! For this recipe, I used the blanching method to peel them. After peeling all those tomatoes, I added all the other ingredients and let it simmer away on the stove for about 5 hours.

Lots and lots of marinara, simmering away.

 While that was simmering, I turned 10 pounds of tomato into roasted tomato marinara sauce using this recipe. This was definitely the easiest thing I made that day as the recipe did not require you to skin the tomatoes. Besides using my tomatoes for this recipe, I also got to use up some of my fresh oregano which has been growing like crazy!

1 of 2 pans of roasted goodness!

I decided to freeze this recipe to save some time. 

8 pints of marinara, ready to be frozen.

The other marinara was still simmering away on the stove at this point so I took a break, read for a bit and then we made this delicious dinner! We grilled the potatoes and halibut and I boiled the green beans. The green beans are from my garden and the halibut was caught by my friend's dad on a fishing trip to Alaska. It was such a healthy, delicious meal!

After dinner, it was time to process the marinara. I had to do it in 2 batches so it was a bit time consuming. But in the end, all 12 quarts sealed so it was another success!

I feel really proud of myself for taking on this project. It helped that I could call and text my mom with any canning questions as she is a canning pro! Canning certainly is a lot of work but it will be so worth to be able to enjoy homemade goods throughout the year.

Have you ever tried canning? Would you be willing to try it?

Adventures in Gardening Part 1

Greetings and happy Monday, everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend. The weather was gorgeous yesterday as it was in the 80s and sunny so it was the perfect day to work in my garden. I'm new to this gardening thing so thought I'd share how it goes and the lessons I have learned along the way. I'm a total novice so am open to any and all advice!

I My friend planted my garden about 2 weeks ago so things are starting to pop out of the ground. I grew everything from seed with the exception of tomatoes and peppers. It's really fun to see things growing! So far my beets, cucumbers, and beans are pushing through the soil. My carrots haven't yet but I think they take a while longer. I ended up planting some green lettuce and radishes towards the end of the garden as I felt like I had enough room for them. We'll see what grows well and what doesn't!

We have a very healthy rabbit population in Minneapolis so I was advised early on that I needed to put up a fence if I wanted to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Otherwise, the rabbits would. I did a lot of googling around and asked friends with gardens and a couple of experienced gardening friends recommended that I get a plastic fence as it's easier to work with and less hard on the hands. So I went to the local Ace Hardware store last week and asked them what all I should buy. They set me up with 2 rolls of plastic fencing and some plastic fence polls.

After Phil finished his round of golf on Saturday afternoon, we headed over to the garden to put up the fence. It did not go so great. We quickly learned that it's impossible to pound the plastic posts into the ground. My fence looked SO AWFUL. Phil kind of shrugged his shoulders but I was perplexed. I did not want to have the ugliest fence in the community garden!

At the I do BBQ on Saturday, I met the bride-to-be's brother-in-law-to-be and the topic of gardening came up. He said the project could be salvaged if I bought 4 metal posts for the corner and buried the fence 6" deep.

Phil had to go to his mom's on Sunday, so I decided to tackle the project by myself. It's probably not ideal to do that ~4 weeks post-op, but I wanted to get it done. 2 hours later, I had a fence I was a bit more satisfied with/less ashamed of. I should have taken a before photo so you could see the drastic improvement!

 
Lesson learned:  you need to use metal poles, not plastic, when putting up a fence. Also, it would have been easier to dig the trench for the fence before putting it up. If I have a community garden plot again next year, the fence process will go much more smoothly!

Now here's hoping it keeps Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and all their friends out!

Do you have any experience gardening?

5 Things Friday

Happy Friday, everyone! For those of us in the U.S., it's a holiday weekend as Monday is Memorial Day. We have a fun weekend ahead of us as we are going to a baseball game tonight to celebrate Phil's mom's birthday and then tomorrow we will head to the lake for the weekend. We'll be celebrating the birthdays of my sister and 2 of my nephews so it should be a fun, celebratory weekend!  Here's 5 things on my mind/going on in my life these days!

1.  Phil's house is in the same neighborhood as a college friend and when she learned I was moving in, she let me know that her husband was in charge of a community garden project and that there were still plots available. I really wanted to have a garden this year but knew we wouldn't have time to build raised beds at Phil's before surgery, so this was the perfect solution. A friend from run club has a plot in the community garden and she graciously offered to plant my garden for me. It was hard to accept that help but there was just no way I could do it on my own. We planted it on Wednesday! I planted tomatoes, red peppers, green beans, cucumbers, beets, and carrots. I also planted some basil and oregano in pots at our house. I can't wait to watch it all grow!

I still need to put some netting around the perimeter to keep the rabbits out!

I love that the labels for the herbs are shaped as the state of Minnesota!

2. I had my post-op doctor appointment on Monday and it went well. He was very pleased with my range of motion. It was nice to hear more about the procedure and what all was done. He said the tear was quite bad and required 3 anchors to repair. This may sound weird but I was actually glad to hear that the tear was bad as I wanted to make sure surgery was necessary. Not that they would have operated if it wasn't necessary but it was still good to hear that surgery was definitely needed to resolve the issues. My next appointment is on August 22nd and I can not run, jump or do anything high impact until then. That seems so far off, but next week I start the progression towards more cardio. I get to add resistance on the stationary bike next week, in week 6 I'll start using the elliptical, and in week 7 I can bike outdoors. I can't wait to be further along in recovery and able to be more active!

3. On the crutch front, I slooooowly transitioned to walking with crutches and should be able to drop down to one crutch for shorter distances by the weekend. Hopefully I am crutch free next week!

4. I'm excited to go up north this weekend but one thing I'm particularly excited about is all the good food we'll get to enjoy. My mom and I froze several meals before my surgery and we are still working our way through those meals. It's been AWESOME to not have to deal with meal prep on crutches but after eating the same 5 meals for the last 3 weeks, I'm ready to change things up!

5. I've had a charcoal grill for several years but haven't used it much as my patio space was so small and we didn't really 'hang out' on the patio all that much. Now that I have a backyard, I'm going to make an effort to use it more. Plus we are going to purchase a gas grill soon. I'm excited to eat more grilled food this summer! I think we'll host a BBQ once we are more settled and have completed a couple of projects!

What's on your mind today?

Giving Gardening a Go

I have never had a green thumb.  No, really, I am not being modest.  Go read this post where I almost killed this plant that I took home from my grandpa's funeral.

Those leaves are not supposed to be dropping like that...  It was like the tree on Charlie Brown Christmas - just sad

 My mom rescued the plant and it's alive and thriving.

You see, she has always been a masterful gardener.  Growing up, I had NO IDEA people actually bought produce in grocery stores.  Most of what we ate came form our garden, from potatoes to carrots to green beans to tomatoes to squash to - well, you name it, we grew it.  Truth be told, I was a whiny little child that did not appreciate the garden as it represented work.  Oh how I would whine and mope when my mom would ask me to go pick some green beans for dinner.  Now I am an adult and am envious of the produce my younger self had access to! 

This year, though, I decided to move outside of my comfort zone and give gardening another go.  My patio is pretty small, but there is certainly room for some plants.  I got a bit of a late start as I didn't get a chance to shop for plants until after the CFA exam, so I bought these little guys in their 'teen' stage of life.

Day 1 at Casa de Lisa.  L to R:  Roma tomatoes, green pepper, romaine lettuce, and a beef steak-type tomato

There was a week there where I really thought they were not going to make it...  My tomato plants started to yellow and they started to droop like the plant I had nearly killed in the past...  But then I exchanged a flurry of tweets with San and Kyria, who are also raising patio gardens, and I figured out I was actually under watering everything. After changing my watering routine from every other day to daily, the plants bounced back.  Phew.

They appear to be thriving now, which makes me so excited!

So imagine my excitement when I went to water them last week and found a bunch of little tomatoes!!

It's the little things in life, I tell you.  I've got about 8 tomatoes growing, which makes me so happy as I eat tomatoes like they are apples. 

I just love the outdoor space of my condo.  This is the first place I've lived where I have actually made great use of my outdoor space.  From the little bistro set where I've entertained family and friends to my new Weber charcoal grill, to my little patio garden, it's the perfect little outdoor space for me.  And of course, the view sure doesn't hurt.  ;)

Luckily, a good friend will be taking care of my plants while I am gone.  Her husband is apparently a watering fanatic so I know they are in good hands.  :) 

Do you have a backyard or patio?  Do you have a green thumb?