Garden Beans & little treasures

One of my clients gave me an anthropologie gift card as a thank you (whoo hoo!) and I wanted to share one of the treasures that I purchased there last week. They are little handmade measuring spoons. The backs are striped which just adds to the cuteness. I love them and they make me smile. It's the little things.

My husband is growing several veggies in our garden. One of the things he's growing is garden beans and we just picked our first crop. Look how pretty!

They were super delish. Even Autumn was shoveling them in her mouth faster than I could cut them up and hand them to her! Yum. Nothing like organic veggies from your backyard.

Butter

So yesterday was another one of those days. You know, where you don't get a good night's sleep so you wake up cranky, to a cranky kid and it just snowballs from there. My baking/SAHM friend Michelle invited me over to make some butter. Just for fun. Seeing the need to get out of the house and have a little adult conversation, (you know, other than, "Stop that! That's the dog's food! Did you poop? What do you have in your mouth now?") I said an enthusiastic "sure!" and headed over.

I've joked more than once that I should learn how to make my own butter because I use so much of it. Actually I joke that a cow would have paid for itself by now, but you know, I love to bake and baking calls for butter. Michelle looked up how to make it and decided that she should try it out. It's ridiculously easy. So easy in fact, that you're going to laugh.

Here's the directions: Pour heavy whipping cream into a jar. Shake.

Yep. That's it. I mean there's some pointers along the way, but that's pretty much all you do. So here's how the shaking went...


What you need:

You need to leave some room for the cream to work it's magic. We ended up having to remove some of the cream part way through, so leave some more room than this. 

Shake for 20 minutes.

And this is what you get. It's done when the solid part (the butter) starts separating from the liquid (buttermilk). You strain the liquid out and you're left with butter.

Results: it was good and tasted like butter. It's not exactly cost effective though because the heavy cream is over $3 and it only makes about 1 sticks worth (maybe 2) of butter. I'm sure back in the good ole' days they didn't buy ultra-pasteurized heavy cream from the store and make it this way, so there's got to be a more cost effective way to do it. But this is fun as a learning lesson for kids and they can all take part in shaking the jar to make butter. 

Note: I'm reading this very interesting book called, The Feast Nearby by Robin Mather. (Find it on amazon here) It's all about eating locally on a budget and it's also super informative about food. I found out tidbits like ultra-pasteurized means that the milk is brought to a super high temp, causing the vitamins and all the good, natural things in milk to be depleted. They do it in certain products like heavy cream to extend it's shelf life because it doesn't sell as fast as regular milk. Trying to find local heavy cream that's not ultra-pasteurized is pretty difficult. For those of you living in the central florida area, I did find out that most of Publix's milk products are from local dairy farmers. Whoo hoo! All of their milk is rbST free (which means that the cows weren't given a horrible hormone to make them lactate at an unnatural rate) and that most of their dairy products are too. They said that in the hot summer months, when lactation in dairy cows is low, that they have to suppliment some of their milk from other suppliers out of state to make things like yogurt, ice cream and cheese so they can't guarantee that all of their dairy products are rbST free then. So, not 100%, but better than nothing. 

Happy eating!

Paris? Yes please.

I'm entering to win a trip to Paris through the OhHappyDay blog! You can enter too here: http://ohhappyday.com/2011/06/goes-to-paris

If I won, I'd eat my way through each arrondissement, taking photos and blogging as I go. Oh, and I'd probably fall over from giddiness. or sugar. or both. <3

Pickling Cucumbers

Last week my husband really wanted to try making homemade pickles. I was a little skeptical but when we went to a local farmer's market and they had cucumbers 6/$1, I conceded. So this was the recipe we used (I am pretty sure... It's from memory)

Per Quart pickle jar:

2 cucumbers
9oz water
5oz vinegar
1 sprig dill
1 clove of garlic
1/2 onion
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp kosher salt

You combine all but the cucumbers and boil it for a minute or two.

Make sure your jars are sterilized (we boiled them for 10 minutes)

Meanwhile, quarter your cucumbers length-wise

This was our little helper. 

Then you put the cucumbers in jars and pour enough liquid to cover them. Let them rest over night and then store in a cool, dark place (fridge) for at least 10 days. It says that the longer you let them sit the more dill flavor they will have. 

Happy Pickling!

ps. ever wonder why pickled cucumbers are called pickles but everything else is "pickled _____"? Maybe cucumbers were the first thing people ever pickled. who knows...

Fresh Yeast

So I'm trying to find fresh/compressed yeast. I've looked at several places and asked bakeries, and they've all shown me active dry yeast, which is not what I need. I'm looking for the wet, clay-like yeast that comes in a cake form. Anyone have any idea where I can get it? I've even looked online.

Blueberries!

Last week my little family went and picked blueberries. There's a place that does it in Bartow (BMB Farms) that's not too far from our house. We were pretty excited to do this, 1) because we love blueberries, 2) they were only $10/gallon and 3) we thought it would be fun. The people at BMB Farms were very nice and even provided our daughter with a popsicle. They had tons of blueberries left even though they said it was the end of the season. I thought I'd share some photos...

So, what are we going to do with 12 cups of blueberries you ask? Well we've made 8 jars of jam (recipe here), a blueberry crumb bars (recipe here) and a blueberry dutch baby (recipe here). 

We have about 2-3 cups of berries left and amazingly, I'm not sick of blueberries yet. :) I think I'll put the rest in a pie with other assorted berries. Post to come. 

Sponge Layer Cake with Jam

I recently received two fantastic books for mother's day. One is the Baking Bible; From the Oven to the Table and the other, 1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & Other Tempting Treats. Bored and wanting to try something out I picked out a recipe from the Baking Bible for Sponge Layer Cake.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups self rising flour
pinch of salt
3 tbsp raspberry jam
1 tbsp confectioners' sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Grease 2 8" cake pans and line with wax or parchment paper. (I greased and floured them and they did fine)

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl using a wooden spoon or handheld mixer until the batter is pale in color and light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition

Sift the flour and salt together into a separate bowl and carefully add to the batter, folding it in with a spatula.

Divide the batter between the pans and smooth over with a spatula. (the batter is very thick)

Place pans in the center of the oven and back for 25-30 minutes until well risen, golden brown and beginning to shrink from the sides of the pan.

Remove from the oven and let stand 1 minute.

Loosen the cakes from around the edge of the pans using a palette knife. Turn the cakes out onto a clean dish towel, remove paper and invert the cakes onto a wire rack.

When completely cool, sandwich together the cakes with jam and sprinkle with confectioners' sugar.


Well, this turned out good, but it didn't look like the picture. I had 9" cake pans instead of 8" for one so my cakes were bigger but thinner. Also, I didn't use "self-rising" flour. I thought it wasn't really important, but it is. My cakes were so flat! Whoops. Lesson learned. At least it still tasted good. I bet it would be even more delish if I had actually followed the directions.

In other news, I must admit that I have a slight obsession with Chai tea. Now that it's hot out I love it iced but it's so STINKIN expensive. Seriously, $3.60 for a grande? Ouch. So, thrifty as I am I bought a whole box of Tazo Chai tea at target on sale (for under $3, and decaf I might add!) made a small pitcher at home and pour it over ice and milk. I had a delightful cup of iced chai at my house that was just as good as Starbucks for the cost of less than fifty cents. 

Yummo.