viva la rooster!

Homemade sriracha sauce, here we go. It tastes great, although mine is sort of an orange color, not that beautiful red. I used a mix of different kinds of hot peppers, since I wasn’t sure of the heat of the different ones (and I think biting off the ends is generally frowned upon at the Farmer’s market). I did taste as I chopped, though, because I could have subbed in some sweet peppers if it was getting too hot. But by my standards, it’s not. I also did some cranberry orange vinegar, recipe from the Ball Blue Book. I think it will be nice with meats, or in salad dressings. I’m listening to the happy little ping noises from the sealing jars right now.

Zero food waste week: I saved butter wrappers and used them to grease my bread tins, and continued with the veggie scraps for stock. I did find myself having bread scrap problems (ah, wasteful little children)– I need to go back to being proactive about salvaging those before they get gross. I have been keeping a bag of those in the freezer and using them whenever I need crumbs for a topping, and that works really nicely– the freezer dries the bread a bit, and it crumbles very easily. I did have some oatmeal get burnt onto the dish when I heated it, so that was wasted. We continue to do well with leftovers, though, and the mac and cheese and Stealth Winter Squash I made last night was a hit with at least one child (I think Sam would have liked it, too, but he was in A Mood). Rachel reported it was excellent, “kind of sweet.” I just nodded.

ready for winter... sort of.

Great post about food decisions at Apron Stringz today. With winter coming on, I’ve been thinking more about this– doing the fall/winter CSA and local food share has definitely increased the amount of local food we eat, but that will be coming to an end. I’ve put up a good bit, but I know I’ll be needing to hit the grocery store a lot more. Last night at dinner, we played the game where we try to count the number of people who helped put our dinner on the table– brought on by my deviating from our usual grace (the horror!) and saying one that added “Bless this food and the hands that prepared it.” A certain child said, “but that’s just you, mama!” I reminded her that it wasn’t– and we started talking about the many hands that had put our macaroni and cheese on the table (and I omitted Molly, our CSA farmer’s hands, so that the winter squash could remain all stealth and undercover). I didn’t use local cheese, and just going through the cheese had everyone worn out. For contrast we talked about the salad, picked by Molly (nothing stealth about salad) and washed by me. We didn’t even get into the pasta, moving onto our discussion of Halloween costumes and how we really need to finish fixing them up. I have no native talent for sewing and I procrastinate any year when I am not expecting a baby (last year we were ready a month in advance, although that proved unnecessary!)

We tried a new recipe for potato-leek soup– it was delicious. I used celeriac instead of celery and did add some milk at the end. I think I’m going to make it again this weekend and freeze some. The attempt at craisins was partially successful. Some were way dry and others were not. I’ll need to store them in the freezer. Cleaning the dehydrator afterwards? not fun. I’m not sure if I will try again. Maybe.

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