Enjoying last year's harvest...

Here's a reminder to use your canned foods. I had tomato soup in my cabinets from last summer that I'd nearly forgotten about. It's especially helpful when you are famished and don't want to run out to the store, but also don't want to slave away in the kitchen for hours.

I made a quick & delicious late lunch of tomato soup topped with fresh homegrown oregano along with a yummy arugula salad.

Pop open your canned soups and after just a few minutes on the stove you will have a perfect piping hot meal that will taste just as flavorful as the day you made it. The salad is just a mix of local arugula, a splash of olive oil & lemon juice and s&p. Add some parsley if you want a little kick. Then toss lightly.

We're in Pasadena now, so get excited for new restaurant and vendor reviews!

Local Autumn Dinner: Roasted Lemon-Herb Chicken with Sweet Potato Fries

We have a few staple meals in our household and one of them is definitely chicken. Donny's favorite. I found this great roast chicken recipe here from WFM. Use local chicken breast or leg & thighs. Instead of buying lots of herbs at the store I picked a few handfuls of herbs from my garden, i.e. basil & parsley. The recipe is very easy, but it does call for overnight preparation.

Homemade sweet potato fries are a delicious side to any meal, especially roast chicken. The recipe is simple, but make sure you have enough oil and a frying pan deep enough. (See below for saving oil.) Candy thermometer is also a good idea. Shout out to Junio for this recipe!

1-2 large sweet potatoes is enough for 2 people. First peel the sweet potatoes and cut into thin strips. The thinner they are the quicker they will cook.

In a small prep bowl combine 1 tsp. of each: minced fresh garlic or garlic flakes, pepper & salt, chili powder. Also add in 1 tsp. each of a couple dried herbs. Any combination of parsley, basil, oregano or your favorite is tasty. Mix thoroughly and set aside.

Fill your pan half-full with oil (safflower, corn, or canola will all do the trick). Boil oil until it reaches 350 degrees. Gently toss sweet potato strips into pan. Make sure all strips are full covered with oil. Feel free to have your partner test one of the fries. Should cook fully in about 3-5 minutes. Prepare a bowl with a paper towel lining. With tongs or slotted spoon, carefully remove fries from oil and place into lined bowl. Scatter seasoning over fries and toss to your liking.

If you are having a lot of people or only have a small pan, repeat the frying/seasoning process with multiple batches.

Enjoy fries with some homemade ketchup.

**Oil can be reused. Wait until you are finished with dinner to allow the oil to cool. Carefully pour oil into a glass jar with secure lid. Make sure most food bits stay in pan. Keep in refrigerator for multiple uses.**

Homemade Ketchup

Homemade ketchup is a tasty way to savour your tomatoes all year round. This recipe yields about 3 pints of ketchup. Feel free to multiply it for larger quantities. Other recipes use a food mill or food processor, but this blender ketchup recipe seems more accessible for the basic kitchen setup.

Step 1: Grow tomatoes.

Ingredients:

8 lbs. of ripe tomatoes

(1 pound is 3-5 medium sized tomatoes)

1 yellow onion

1 red bell pepper

1 green bell pepper

3 cups cider vinegar

3 cups granulated sugar

1 1/2 tbl. sea salt

cheese cloth spice bag:

1 tsp. dry mustard

2 tsp. cayenne pepper

2 tsp. whole allspice

2 tsp. whole cloves

2 tsp. ground or 1 whole cinnamon stick

2 tsp. whole peppercorn

Step 2: Wash tomatoes and dip in boiling water for 30 seconds or until skins split.

Drop in ice water, slips skins, core, quarter and remove seeds. Remove seeds from peppers and slice into strips. Peel and quarter onions. (Reminder - all skins & seeds can go in your compost pile.) Blend tomatoes, peppers and onions at high speed until liquified. Pour puree into a large pot. Boil gently for 1 hr, stirring frequently. You may need to do multiple trips with the blender.

Step 3: Add vinegar, sugar, salt and spice bag into pot. Continue boiling and stirring until volume is reduced one-half with no separation of liquid and solids. This took me about 2-3 hours. If it does not quite resemble ketchup after a few hours you can put the mixture back in the blender and liquify more. This should bring you the consistency we're used to. Taste it - if too sweet, add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.

Step 4: Remove spice bag and fill jars, leaving 1/8-inch headspace. Process jars for water bath or pressure canner. Process pint jars for 15 minutes at an elevation of sea level to 1,000 ft., 20 minutes from 1,000 to 6,000 feet and 25 minutes above 6,000 feet. So I've read it is recommended to use home canned products within one year.

Local Pan-Fried Onion Dip Recipe

This Barefoot Contessa onion dip recipe has been a favorite of mine for a while now. I love to serve at parties and it will be a great snack for the 4th of July weekend. I am very excited to make this dish with our homegrown onions. For the next harvest we will probably store the onions or use for tomato sauce and salsa.

Ingredients

• 2 large yellow onions
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup good mayonnaise

Directions

Cut the onions in half and then slice them into 1/8-inch thick half-rounds. (You will have about 3 cups of onions.) Heat the butter and oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the onions, cayenne, salt, and pepper and saute for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook, stirring occasionally, for 20 more minutes until the onions are browned and caramelized. Allow the onions to cool.

Place the cream cheese, sour cream and mayonnaise in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat until smooth. Add the onions and mix well. Taste for seasonings. Serve at room temperature. Makes about 2 cups.

Local Q&A: Canning et plus

Q: So my girl and I wanna figure out the best, cheapest setup to can some vegetables over the summer. Mostly tomatoes, if that makes a difference. We don't have too big a garden. 10 tomato plants, 4 pepper plants, some beets and onions. We're not preparing for a zombie apocalypse. Just wanna avoid tossing what we don't eat fresh. Also, how are you?

A: Canning is a lot of fun if you make a day or evening of it. Open a bottle of wine and crank some good tunes...it is time consuming, and has to be done all at once. There are two main methods to canning. One is the "water bath" method. This can be done in a large pot (sometimes I use my biggest soup pot.) This method can be used for jams, pickles and other food items with lots of preservatives (salt, sugar, vinegar) Basically you put the goods in the clean jars, submerge them in water and let them boil. Tomatoes are high in acid and are not usually prepared in those preservatives and therefore need to be prepared with the pressure cooker method. I bought a canning pressure cooker at OSH for 40 or 50 bucks. This method increases the temps. Pressure cookers can be a little nerve wrecking since they can explode at any minute. But todays pressure cookers are pretty safe, as long as you use them wisely. I wouldn't trust the one my grandma used to use. The other really important thing to know is that EVERYTHING must be sterilized. Jars, lids, and canning tools should be clean and sterilized. I use a couple of other pots of boiling water. I also use clean towels so I don't have to touch the jars. There is plenty of info online about cooking times for various items. It really depends on the recipe. I recommend "Preserving the Harvest" by Costenbader and "Pickles and Relishes" (if you are into that sort of thing) by Chesman for good recipes. Both books also have chapters on methods and cooking times. Good luck man. That is awesome that you are growing some food.

I'm not sure when the last time we spoke, but we moved into a new house in Highland Park. We're renting, but the landlord is a friend and let's us do whatever we want to the yard. We've removed most of the grass in the back yard and are working on turning it into a large garden. We also just got 3 chickens. Should be sweet once [they] start laying eggs. Their names are Edith (black) Mildred (brown) and Prudence (blonde). We wanted to name them good Depression Era names. Here are a few pics. (see above) You can see how fast they have grown in only three and a half weeks. Hope all is well with you.

Local Venice Salt

I live about 1/2 mile from the Pacific Ocean. Donny and I enjoy biking beside it, boogie boarding in it and now we make salt from it. Thats right, I had a successful go at making my own salt. And it is so easy. Here is how to make your own salt.

First you have to get over the fact that you are collecting water from the ocean, since Donny was quite shy about that. He really didn't want anyone to see us doing it. It was Labor Day so the beach was pretty crowded in Venice. Oh well! We took 2 empty plastic bottles that could hold about 3 liters of water total. We quickly filled them with water and biked back home.

Then we filtered the water through some cheesecloth and emptied into a stainless pot. Donny folded the cheese cloth a few times to make it harder for the sand to get through. We actually put a rubber band around the cheesecloth to attach it directly to the top of the bottle. We then boiled the water uncovered for over 2 hours.

Once there was little water in the pot I lowered the temperature so it was hot enough for the water to evaporate, but not so hot the water would pop out. All of a sudden you could see the bottom of the water crystalized into the salt. I stirred it around a bit to dry it all out. I just spooned it out and will put it in a little glass jar. Local sea salt. For free. Brilliant.

Make Your Own Granola

I am mostly okay with paying more money for farmer's market food because it often tastes better and lasts longer, not to mention the local aspect, but everywhere we go granola is often very high priced. We eat a lot of granola around our house; I often eat it as a snack and Donny has gotten into eating organic yogurt with granola and fresh berries. I found a couple granola different recipes and sort of made my own. Turns out granola is so easy to make and tastes delicious. And the great thing about granola is that even if you don't have 1 or 2 of the ingredients it can still be just as yummy.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In one large bowl combine: 4 cups of rolled oats, 3/4 cup wheat germ, 3/4 cup oat or wheat bran, 1/2 cup sunflower seeds, 1/2 cup of finely chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts and/or almonds), 1/2 cup flax seed. Mix well.

Over medium heat in a saucepan combine: 3/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 2 tbl. maple syrup, 1/4 cup + 2 tbl. honey, 1/2 cup vegetable or canola oil, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract. Stir well. Heat until boiling.

Add hot liquid mixture to dry mixture. Stir extremely well. Spread out over two 9x13 baking sheets. Bake in oven. After about 10 min. stir mixture on each sheet. Check again after another 5-10 min. If lightly brown, take out of oven to cool. Granola will start to harden and will cook more even after you take out of the oven. Once cool, add about 1-2 cups of dried cranberries and/or blueberries. Enjoy!

Makes more than 64 oz. (fit perfectly in two 32 oz. mason jars + 1 bowl to eat right away)

Hot Sauce Cook-off

It is no secret that we have been growing the hottest pepper on earth, the Caribbean Red Pepper. We recently harvested "mini" carrots and have had them in the refrigerator for about a week now. We'd like to use them before they go bad. Decidely the only appropriate thing to do is to make hot sauce. Unfortunately we could not decide on just one recipe and thus spawned our first cook-off. I used a combination of recipes. See below for my version. You can find the recipe Donny used here.

The first step in most of these hot sauce recipes is to wear gloves. This is the first step we ignored. I mean, how hot could these peppers be? They really didn't smell hot or feel hot on my fingers. I thought "this is totally fine." I'm not sure if it was just from the heat of the food processor spinning or what, but immediately the heat of the peppers started to turn up and you could definitely smell it in the air. It's hard to describe what heat smells like, but maybe it's more of a feeling. It was strong. All of a sudden I hear Donny start yelping in pain. It appears that he's managed to rub some pepper residue in his eye. He franctically throws water in his face and drinks milk. He is fine for about 20 seconds and then repeats. He ran into the bathroom to get a clean hand towel, since most of the kitchen towels were contaminated with pepper. This action of milk and water and yelping went on for about 15-20 minutes. Fortunately he did not have his contact lenses in at the time or it could have been a lot worse. I try comforting him, all the while thinking, "why on earth did he rub his eyes? how did that happen?"

We finish making the 2 different hot sauces, but are a little defeated at this point. Both of us wash our hands with soap multiple times just to get it all off. We start to clean up the mess in the kitchen and prepare to make breakfast: scrambled eggs with organic local tomatoes & fresh basil from the garden, organic potatoes we handmade into hash browns and our favorite apple smoked bacon. We didn't have any bread, which isn't usually a must have in our kitchen, but I agreed to walk to our corner german bakery, 3 square, and pick up a loaf. Before leaving to go on the errand I sat on the couch to take a tiny break. The excitement of the hot sauce kind of wore me out, considering we only just woke up less than an hour prior. I partake in the obligatory eye rubbing to help wake myself up and then all of a sudden it hits me. I can feel the heat on my eyelids immediately and then after a few moments I can't even open them. I start yelling to Donny for support. I explain to him what I've done and how much it hurts. He calls for me to come into the kitchen immediately and so I stand up and start walking. At this point I am in so much pain and fear that I can't even open my eyes, so he helps me walk in. He immediately turns on the water and I splash it in my face repeated times. I start screaming "It hurts so much! It hurts! It hurts!", while still frantically splashing cold water in my face. He gets out the little milk we have left and I start drinking. Donny suggests splashing the milk in my face and blinking my eyes to get it all around. That might've helped, except it just hurt more. The pain was so fierce and intense that my only solace was the ability to voice out just how bad it hurt. At one point Donny even suggested that our neighbors could hear and would think I was hurt and something was wrong. My response to that was "But I am hurt and something is wrong!" He told me later that he thought they would think he was physically hurting me and was tempted to shut the window, but that they might think he was then trying to cover it up. Finally, the pain started to subside and I was able to move into the laughter stage. I'm still not sure how I managed to keep from crying, but the misery finally subsided. This was a true lesson in our hot pepper experiment. I took the calming walk down to the bakery and allowed the cool breeze to flow over my eyes.

Donny was in the midst of busily making breakfast, upon my return. We delighted in our small feast and even more so enjoyed tasting our hot sauce chellenge over our scrambled eggs and yummy olive bread. The sauces, which had more of a thick topping-like texture, tasted good in small doses, carefully placed on the eggs for each bite. We both agreed my hot sauce was better, since it contained more distinct flavors and even had a sweet, tangy taste to it. All in all, it was definitely a fun morning, but no doubt we will use gloves the next time around.

My hot sauce recipe (makes about 6 ounces):

Combine 1 cup of chopped carrots, 1 small chopped white onion, 2 minced cloves of garlic, 2 tsp. of salt and juice from 1 lime in a small saucepan over high heat. Boil for about 10 minutes. Put on gloves. Chop 2 caribbean red or habanero peppers. In the bowl of a food processor add chopped peppers plus a few seeds, 2 tbl. honey, 2 tbl. yellow mustard, 2 tbl. brown sugar, 1/4 cup of distilled white vinegar, 1 tsp. salt, 1 1/2 tsp. paprika, 3/4 tsp. of each black pepper and cumin, 1/8 tsp. of each ginger and allspice. Add in the mixture from your saucepan into the food processor. Chop and grind until completey liquified. I put my sauce in an empty glass Philippe Mustard jar. Enjoy!

Tastes great on eggs, tacos and other food you want to spice up. Use sparingly.

Rooftop Gardening continues

I would like to say that our rooftop garden is flourishing, but that is only partially true. Our neighbor's cat as continued to cross over onto our part of the roof and do his business. Donny even called him an expletive at dinner last night, so you know its getting bad. This cat is a real menace and will do anything it takes to squat on our veggies, even if he gets a little metal fencing up his butt. He has now officially killed a pepper plant and I'm pretty sure he has deterred our 5 garlic cloves from sprouting. I'm hoping that our recent additions of oregano and green onions don't encourage to him to hang out in our area more. Donny is going to great lengths to keep this cat out. I'm not sure if we will ever truly win this fight. It is exciting, however that the asparagus are growing like gangbusters and if anyone is looking for a habanero pepper, we've got a half dozen already. Also, we moved our english mint to the front garden, which goes right into the ground. The mint has been looking quite sickly for a while. We took it out of the pot this weekend and realized that it might have just outgrown the pot because the bulb is huge. Hopefully it will spread out under the ground next to the lemon tree and live a healthier life.

In other news I wanted to let everyone know how easy Naturemill has been to deal with, regarding our broken composter. They are sending us a replacement, giving us a pre-paid UPS sticker to mail back the old one and letting us pay the difference to upgrade to the Pro edition. Although we keep our composter up on the counter, the foot pedal will still be useful for those who don't want to get too close to the mixture. The Pro also comes in a variety of colors, so we ordered the new one in Slate, which is a dark grey. I'll let you know how different the Pro is from the Plus once we've used it for a few weeks. Until then we will continue to use a metal pot for all of our scraps.

Tonite I am going to make some homemade bison lasagna. Lasagna feels like one of those very American home cooked meals. It is definitely not something my mother would have made for me as a child. It doesn't look pretty and its not that hard to make, but it is so delicious. I found this recipe and I will just add the bison to it. My favorit part of this recipe website is that you can control the servings and it will automatically adjust the quanity of ingredients. I think it is a nice tool when you are cooking for a specific number of people.

Homemade Party

So we finally had our housewarming party. After a week of cleaning & organizing, 2 trips to the farmer’s market, 2 stops at the Ralph’s, and 2 passes at the Whole Foods, we were ready. We had a mostly local/organic/homemade menu: 2 pitchers of Bloody Marys made with my own tomato juice, a pitcher of Mojitos, Mimosas, onion dip, a plate of fromage & charcuterie from Joan’s on Third (our favorite gourmet deli in Donny’s old hood – not local food, but a great local vendor), smoked salmon tea sandwiches, pretzel rolls, red velvet ice cream cone cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, brownies and a fruit tart.

I also purchased compostable cups & straws made out of corn, sugarcane plates and silverware made out of vegetables from BiodegradableStore.com, of Eco-Products. Please note**these products are not local. In fact, they are not even made in the US. After many hours of research I have found that almost every single option for biodegradable or compostable tableware come from Asia. Many companies will confuse you by saying they are distributed in the US, but do not be fooled. Those that are honest and upfront about where they manufacture are also forward that they have all fair trade workers. Greenfeet does sell Nat-ur Corn's silverware that is made out of corn from the US, but since I was making a last minute purchase, it was cheaper to buy everything from just one company. Now, there is still a question about where to dispose these products once they are used. Most of them call for commercial composting, but others say you can cut them up into small pieces and throw in your own outdoor composter. One company called, EATware, even boasts that you can eat their products. If you are not in the mood to snack on your plate – they claim to have a composting turnover of only 2 weeks if you leave it in water. Since local is not an option, here is a list of the other websites I compared products/prices: Branch, Treecycle, and Earth-Friendly Home. I can’t comment on any of these companies, but I can say that Biodegradablestore.com was very helpful and easy to order from. They also seem to have the largest selection of options and quantities.

All of our guests responded well to our request to consider the environment when gifting. We excitedly got some potted flowers/cactus, a fish named Milkshake and several bottles of California wine. Katie & Junio even recycled a book to us. Though it did travel 3000 miles from their home in Brooklyn, NY, we were its fifth recipient. And our favorite was a gift certificate to Whole Foods.