Pickles!

Twelve cucumber plants might have been a few too many. We tried our best to eat them or give them away. We made cucumber salsa, cucumber salad and frankly we were getting a little tired of cucumbers.

Next best thing to make with cucumbers? Pickles!

We chose to make refrigerator pickles instead of the traditional canning method. This website describes the different ways to make pickles and all the equipment that is required.

First you will need some mason jars. Be sure to clean them well. We tossed them into the dishwasher without any detergent and ran the hot water cycle. 

We prepared the cucumbers by slicing them into spears and trimming them into lengths that fit the jars (with a bit of room for the brine to cover over top).

For the brine, you can come up with alot of different recipes. A quick Google search will come up with over 90 recipes easily. Some places will even sell you a pre-made mix. You just have to decide what kind of pickles you want.  We made a relatively sweet dill pickle recipe with dill, onions, mustard seeds, sugar, and white vinegar. Simmer the brine before pouring them into the jars.

While the brine simmers, pack the mason jars with cucumber spears.

Pack them fairly tight, but with enough room to let the slivers of onion and dill to slip between them.

Pour the brine just over the tops of the pickles, but be sure there is a small gap between the liquid and the cap. Seal tight and refrigerate for at least one day.

Then, enjoy some yummy crispy pickles! These definitely were a hit with my coworkers. They worked their way through at least five jars!

Butternut Squash Raviolis

Among some of our lush garden produce, we harvested five lovely orange butternut squash.

One went to my mother, one to our neighbor and another to a friend.

That still left two of the succulent squashes to eat at home.

Yum!

When it comes to butternut, the first recipe that comes to mind are raviolis. Silky, buttery butternut squash raviolis in butter and sage. Drool...

I found a recipe through Pinterest (of course), through another blog about eating and making real food that you can look at here. (Please note, we had to make twice as much dough to use up all the filling.)

I have never made raviolis before and as such ran off to the first kitchen store that I could to buy all the proper equipment. I love William's Sonoma and still had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket.

I wanted so bad to justify buying a new attachment to my Kitchen Aid mixer but the sales lady managed to convince me to purchase just a small ravioli cutter. Just like this one pictured here.

Costs under $15.

What a steal!

The blog has both a recipe for the filling and for the pasta. Be prepared to be busy for a few hours.

I started with preparing the butternut squash first, trimming the stem from the top and split in half. Be sure to de-seed the interiors prior to placing into the oven.

Placing the squash cut side down on an oiled pan to bake in the oven (@ 400 degrees) anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the produce.

Next comes the pasta. Just a simple recipe, you can find one in any recipe book. We also got a nifty pastry cutter/scoop that came in handy for working the dough.

Once the dough became smooth and elastic, I cut it into four equal portions and let them rest on the counter under a towel.

While the dough rests, it is time to make the filling. Remove the soft filling of the squash from the skin with a spoon.

Next, mix up all the ingredients until smooth. This recipe has mascarpone, maple syrup, butter, cinnamon and nutmeg. The mascarpone makes the filling nice and smooth. Try playing with the ingredients to come up with your own recipe. Everyone's palate is a little different.

Once the filling is complete, it is time to prep the pasta. If you have a pasta press, this is the time to break it out. Otherwise, a rolling pin works just as well.

Roll out an even number of sheets and place spoonfuls of filling, evenly spaced upon one sheet. Leave enough space for at least a third of an inch all-around each spoonful to be able to seal the ravioli together. Wet the open space of dough between the fillings with water before laying down another sheet of dough on top. Press out all the air with your fingers before cutting up the raviolis.

Now it's time to use that pasta cutter! They may not come out super pretty but as long as you remove all the air from the insides and seal them well, cooking should not be any problem.

You can either boil them right away or you can freeze them for several months. Just place them on a cookie sheet in the freezer until they are frozen hard before bagging them. Be sure that they do not touch. When you bag them, place them in layers with wax or parchment paper in between the layers. Otherwise, you will just have a large blob of frozen raviolis you will have to cook all at once.

Not all of ours came out perfect, but practice makes perfect! We made two gallon-sized bags of raviolis from just one squash! 

Now we just have to figure out what to make with our last squash of the season. Good thing they last!

Bon Appetit!

Beer Bread (That's right you heard me)

After one of our parties, we seemed to have quite a few extra beers laying around. And since my husband is the only beer drinker in the house, I figured that there had to be a better way to get rid of some of the bottles.

Pinterest is of course the first place I looked and like always, it does not disappoint.

I found a beer bread recipe that used a whole bottle of beer.

We have tried beer battering shrimp and vegetables but it always feels like I am wasting most of the beer.

Sacrilege! No more!

The recipe is fairly simple: flour, salt, sugar, baking powder.

But for extra leavening and cohesion, they use the beer. And just about any beer will do, just depends on what you like. No eggs makes this recipe great for those with egg allergies.

Oh, and butter, lots of butter.

It both lubricates the bread pan and when poured over the top, creates a crispy buttery crust. 

Just try and keep from snacking on the crust once it comes out of the oven.

You can find the full recipe by clicking on the picture above. Looks good doesn't it?

Not our picture, but it look scrumptious. We wish we could have stopped ourselves from immediately taking a bite, but the bread is just too good. And there wasn't much to photograph excepts some crumbs. It wasn't pretty.

If you are worried about getting drunk from eating this bread, let me tell you that it is cooked in the oven for an hour and only contains one beer in the whole thing. Even if you eat the whole loaf, there wouldn't be much alcohol left after cooking it. There really isn't any way to get a buzz from this bread but use your own judgement.

The bread is best served warm with a drizzle of honey.

Enjoy responsibly!

Follow this link to my Pinterest cooking board.

Homemade Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes...

Anyone who saw our garden in its first summer can attest to our voracious tomato plants. We were a little over-zealous when we made our first plantings. 

We wanted heirloom tomatoes. Lots of them.

So we planted 4 varieties, 8 plants each.

32 total.

Needless to say, it was too many.

So what to do with all those tomatoes? We tried eating our way through them, giving them away at work, and selling them at my mother-in-law's workplace. We made eighty bucks! 

We even entered one into a homegrown heavyweight contest. It was 2.6 pounds!

But we still had alot of tomatoes, like an extra 15-20 pounds a week.

So we next turned to dehydration. Sun-dried tomatoes are so yummy!

We borrowed our neighbor's Nesco dehydrator and got to it!

First, we washed some of our beautiful tomatoes from our yard and removed all the stems and unwanted bits.

Next, we cut them into even slices. Or as best we could. The slices were just under 1 centimeter thick. 

Before placing the slices on the sheets, you should be sure to remove all of the seeds and insides.

To aid in the speed and for some more flavor, salt the slices of tomatoes before starting the dehydrator. If you are feeling adventurous, try some fresh herbs. The smell in the house was mouth-watering...

The Nesco dehydrator we borrowed has at least 5 settings for different types of food. Anywhere from meat to fruit to fresh herbs. One thing it did not come with was a timer. That can easily be worked out by buying a light timer, like you would use for Christmas lights or lamps. Eight-nine hours worked for us, but some trial and error will be needed depending on the thickness of the food.

Once done, the tomatoes can be eaten straight, cooked in stews, or bagged and placed in the freezer for several months. If you want, you can pack them in oil, maybe some garlic and herbs. This will only last about 6 weeks. They are great as gifts. 

Our neighbors even got a jar when we finally returned their dehydrator at the end of the tomato season.

Win-win for everyone!

And lots of tomatoes all winter long...