Bring out the figgy... jam

This is how I spent last tuesday night. :)

 

Homemade fig jam

 

If it weren't for the fact that I now own a fig tree, I probably would've never thought to can figs. But the fig tree we have in the backyard has been producing lots and lots of fruit and it seemed such a pity to waste it and watch hundreds of figs rot. It's funny - when you own a fig tree, you learn pretty quickly which of your friends love figs! :) Even still, we couldn't give the whole fruit away fast enough so on the suggestion of a friend I decided to look into making fig jam.

 

Having never made or even eaten it before, I experimented with a few different recipes. And by experiment, I mean I took nerdy notes and saved samples to taste test against each other. 8) But since most recipes call to leave the skins on and chop them, they all seemed to result in a very lumpy jam. I wondered if lumpy jam was normal or if I was making it wrong, so I consulted a few friends to see what most people expect to see in a fig jam. In the meantime, I also experimented with making the jam with peeled figs. But cooking it without the skins really effected the taste - made it way sweeter. My favorite of the jam experiments was actually cooked with skins, then manually remove the skins after cooking/before processing. But that was pretty labor intensive, so I was looking for something simpler. And if most people expected lumpy jam anyway, it seemed unnecessary.

 

The results from my poll came back conclusive - most of my friends did expect lumpy jam. So I decided to keep the skins in after all. But also, just because I'm stubborn, I took an immersion blender to it before I processed it. :0) That smoothed it up nicely too.

 

Hope you are all having a great weekend. :)

 

 

 



A couple of Fresh Veggie Recipes ^_^

I have been meaning to get on the blog here and share these recipes with you for a few weeks now. Since I finally got here to post the giveaway, I thought I would share these real quickly as well. Both of them are easy to make and delicious, which makes them a winner in our house! And since we have been trying to eat more yummy veggies, they fit right into our new meal plan.

Although we don't usually ever eat them together in the same meal.

If you aren't already, I encourage you to eat organic veggies: they are so much better for you and taste far better in my opinion, too. Buying local is the best, whenever possible. I am learning to incorporate more local veggies when I can. Among other things, it ensures the freshness and supports your neighbor's businesses. :)
First one: Chicken Salad in a Pita!  Since it's the only pita I really make, it's known simply as "pitas" around here. As in, "It's pita night." I have had this recipe in my box since I was a teenager, but didn't make it until about 5 years ago. It is so refreshing! Nice for lunch or light dinner, especially on these warm days we've been having:

1 cup your favorite salad lettuce

1 cup alfalfa sprouts or pea shoots 

1 cup tomatoes, diced

1/2 cup carrots, finely chopped (or shredded)

1/2 cup green bell peppers, chopped

1/4 cup of mayo (or your favorite salad dressing might work nicely)

pita pockets

1 chicken breast, cooked and chopped

As you can see, the most time consuming part of this recipe is all the chopping. If you have a super-duper chopper thingy, it would probably go pretty quickly. But I do it all the old fashioned way, so I try to save time by cooking the chicken while I am chopping all the veggies.

DIRECTIONS are pretty straightforward: just toss it all in a bowl and stuff the pitas with the salad. I highly recommend warming the pita pockets, it makes it sooo yummy when the cool salad is stuffed in the nice warm, chewy pita bread. I usually wrap 3 pitas in a towel and put them in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Nom nom!

The chicken definitely adds a lot of flavor, but I would say it is optional because I really feel that this could possibly stand alone as a vegetarian dish. Another option: when I made it for a vegetarian guest one night, I just added a little bit of tofu "chikin" and they said it was most acceptable.

Fun to play with this one. You can add whatever you want, basically. Joel likes a little bit of red onion if we have it around. I added some Persian cucumbers the other night and it added some extra Yum to it. :)

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The second recipe is easy-breezy. I make it at least once a week because we like it so much and never seem to get tired of it. :)

 Charity's Greek Salad:

1 tomato, chopped

2 Persian cucumbers, peeled and chopped (I get the organic Persians from TJ's)

~1/4 cup (or 2 oz.) feta cheese, crumbled

Italian dressing

That's it! You can add more or less cheese to your taste. And over time you can fine-tune the tomato/cucumber ratio as well.  

Enjoy!

Potato Leek Soup

I am so glad it finally started raining. There is nothing quite like the smell of the fresh, clean air after the rain. And there is nothing quite as cozy as a nice bowl of soup or cup of hot coffee, watching the raindrops run down your windowpane.
This is a yummy recipe I just tried for the first time today for lunch and it was delicious!
My brands are shown in parentheses, for anyone who might be interested. :)

Potato Leek Soup

6 Tblsp. butter (Kerrigold unsalted)
1 leek, sliced (from farmer's market)
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups chicken broth (Trader Joe's organic free range)
2 tsp cornstarch
2 cups potatoes, peeled and diced (TJs organic)
1 cup 1/2&1/2 (TJs organic)

In a large pot, over medium heat, melt butter. Add leeks, salt and pepper. Cook leeks in butter until tender, about 10 to 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

Stir cornstarch into broth and then pour broth into pot. Add the potatoesand bring to a boil. Pour in 1/2 & 1/2, reduce heat and simmer at least 30 minutes, until potatoes are tender. I like to break up the potatoes a bit into smaller pieces.

Enjoy!

Wee folk in the garden

I know. It's been awhile.

I've been in one of those weird funky transitional thought-provoking places in my life lately. When you find yourself in a place like this, things tend to get discussed into the ground, so I would rather not talk about it, if you don't mind. Let's take a break from that and talk about some slightly more superficial but much funner things.

Like this. I just found this website, They Draw and Cook via The Pioneer Woman.
It's a fun little place where people share their favorite recipes, which they have also illustrated! I love browsing through the little works of art.

This particular example is by Lindsay Schmitt

I haven't wasted nearly as many hours there as I would like to yet. But it holds promise. The recipes don't look too bad either. I suppose no one is interested in spending an hour or two in devoted doodling or watercolor to anything like... chicken nuggets. You would probably have to like the meal quite a bit.

After our Saturday coffee this morning, I decided to do a little window shopping. So the family and I headed to a home decor type place for which I had received a gift card for my birthday... about three months ago. Usually, I am bent toward being frugal, and usually, I would save my gift card until I actually needed or wanted something in particular. But I decided to do it a little differently this time, and have a little shopping spree, with nothing particular in mind. I ended up coming home with a tea strainer, a colander in the color of robin-egg-blue, a bar of dark chocolate, some decaf earl grey from Twinings, and a wind chime. I looked in my grab bag as we left the store and laughed at the... variety of items. Just some treats for me, I guess you'd call it.

Update on Fred. Mainly for your amusement.

He produced one gloriously delicious, deep red, organic tom-mah-to, which accounted for about 1/6 of a greek salad one night for dinner. I was kind of excited to finally eat of his fruits, and kind of apprehensive, since I hadn't seen any other fruits eager to burst forth. Surely I wouldn't have to wait three months between tomatoes - that wasn't gonna work for me.

Within a week or so, this little guy showed up.  Notice anything out of the ordinary?

Well, besides the fact that he is about 1 cm wide, how about the fact that he's already turning red? :) So much for this one. Apparently he doesn't have ambitions much higher than being a small something stuck between my teeth. God forbid I should drop him on the floor, I would loose him completely.

Also disheartening is the fact there are no other little fruits to speak of. Nothing. The branches are otherwise barren and slowly falling off to die.

...So much for patio gardening! I give up. Again!

Although I confess to eyeballing the herb seeds at the store this morning. If you remember, my theory with Fred was that he was already an adolescent, and I hoped he would last longer because of that. Maybe my new approach should be to find a plant with a life cycle already so small, there is no way I could shorten it.

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In a completely unrelated note, I found myself humming Nat King Cole's "Too Young" last night. I was enjoying it so much in my mind, I decided to find it online. All I found was this cheesy video, which I just listened to. A couple times.

Well, how can you only have one song's worth of Nat King Cole? I ended up searching Autumn Leaves and of course, Nature Boy. That song. That song makes me want to cry. It gives me goosepimples. I really love that one.

I've also been kind of enjoying the Indie Singer-Songwriter Channel of pandora.com lately. It's cool to listen to new music mixed in with some familiar tunes. And the Indie stuff is, in general, alot prettier than the tripe that makes it on the radio lately. Although I must note that Joel says grooveshark.com is a better player. I'll have to look into it.

I guess it might be time to invest in some new music. And some seeds.

...maybe Nature Boy can give me gardening advice.

Sweetcream: Organically Delicious Skincare

I've been trying to be more aware of the things I put in my body - trying to eat more veggies, drink more water, exploring organic food and such. So when I found out my friend Lisa was launching her own line of organic skincare products (http://www.sweetcreamorganic.com/ ), I got pretty excited about it. Lisa has a passion for organics, and as I explored her new website and read her vision, she taught me about a little bit about the things I use daily on my skin:

"...We make choices everyday to take care of our internal organs. Our skin is our largest organ, and we often neglect its power and influence over the rest of our body. Think about it…. many medications are applied to the skin, such as hormone creams, nicotine patches, and birth control. These work well because our skin absorbs them quickly and carries the medication to our bloodstream and throughout our entire system.
"Did you know that commercially produced bath and body care products contain ingredients and compounds known to cause organ toxicity, neurotoxicity, hormonal imbalance, immunotoxicity, and even cancer?"

Lisa offers a wonderful alternative in her handmade organic skincare. She has a nice selection of bar soaps and cleansers, scrubs, moisturizers and lip balms, even a section of baby products. And she has exciting plans for even more products in the future!
"Hand made with care, sweetcream uses only the finest pure, organic and natural ingredients for the highest possible quality... sweetcream is hypo-allergenic and free from parabens, pthalates, sulfates (SLS), synthetic fragrances, and toxic chemicals. " I ordered some things for Christmas gifts last month, and then a little for myself. When the package arrived, it smelled divine. I found the Piña colada lip balm and toasted coconut soap particularly yummy. And they were packaged in totally cute black and white damask labels. Tre chic!

You can read more about why to choose organic here

I tried the shea butter spiced cider soap for myself. It smelled so nice (spicy - really just like apple cider!) and lathers up nicely on the loofah. I also treated myself to the citrus scrub. The scent on that one is almost intoxicating and I really felt like it exfoliated well. I used it especially on my forearms where I get alot of dry skin and some breakouts. The oils moisturized quite nicely without any residue. All in all I give Sweetcream Organic a big thumbs up! I think I'm gonna order one of her serums next!

Living more organically is a life-style change for me, but Lisa makes it easy with her delicious and beautifully wrapped products that feel so luxurious and help me feel better about what I put on my skin!

 

Photos from Sweetcream Organic: www.sweetcreamorganic.com