Peaches and Plums

Creativity.

Sometimes I look at the hubs and am struck by how creative he is. He is always working on something and loves to create projects. The fact that these projects tend to be clustered in the food domain makes it even better! Our vegetable garden, pickles, salsas... it all turns out pretty well. When the hubs excitedly told me about his next project, I was intrigued. Preserving fruits in liquor? Why not?

We used pisco and brandy for our liquors and small peaches and plums for our fruit. We started with this small batch of four jars, and we'll see how it turns out in a few weeks. The nice thing about a project like this is that it's pretty easy to try out, and if it doesn't turn out well, we can always try again. I'm so excited to taste it when it's ready!!

Has anyone else ever tried preserving fruits in liquor or done any fun kitchen experiments lately? I would love to get some more ideas!

 

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Peachy Keen

I have to admit that when a fellow DC blogger was sharing her peach-picking adventures on Twitter and Instagram, I swooned a little bit over the idea of fresh-picked fruit and all of the tasty treats you could make with them. Unfortunately, without a car or any plans to actually go pick some fruit myself, I decided that I could save the farm adventures for another day and satisfy myself with just baking a pie.

I've made pies before, but they've all been apple pies, and really it's been my mother who's done most of the work (though my job of cinnamon-sprinkler was undoubtedly very important). I wasn't entirely sure if I would be successful baking a peach pie, but hey, it was worth trying, right?

I basically followed this recipe, though I would add that I would probably use a bit more egg glaze than I did this time around, since I think it would make the pie crust a bit... crustier. And I would sprinkle sugar on top because I forgot about my plan to do that until after the pie was done baking. Oops! Regardless, though, it turned out really well. It even looked a bit pretty! Result: I can bake a pretty good peach pie.

Has anyone else tried their hand at pie-baking this summer? What else should I try out?

 

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Vanilla Peach Smoothie

After my sad smoothie semi-fail a couple of months ago, I decided that it was time to return to the world of smoothies. They are too delicious to completely abandon, and I was determined to get things right. Unfortunately, our blender has decided that it no longer wishes to blend things. Rather, it will slice things up for a bit and then just swirl liquid around for a while. But the actual mixing and puréeing that is necessary for a smoothie to be smooth? Not so much.

Then the hubs' parents sent us a gift. It was an immersion blender. And a New York Times article about how immersion blenders can be deadly that quoted people whose fingers can be severely cut up by accidentally touching the blades.

Thanks?

That's the thing about my in-laws. They don't just send gifts with a bow and a sweet card. That's too simple. No, they send gifts, sometimes slightly odd ones, and usually accompanying them are alarming notes, cryptic poems, and, this time, newspaper clippings warning us how the present we have received has the potential to make us lose our fingers.

Thanks!

Feeling a bit frightened but also intrigued, I decided that this was the perfect instrument to test out my next smoothie. I found a recipe for a vanilla peach smoothie in one of our cookbooks, Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything: The Basics." There are a lot of good, simple recipes in this book, and I will definitely use it as a reference for future meals. For the meantime, however, I was focused on the smoothies.

To make this one, I halved the original recipe. Here's what I needed:

*1 cup yogurt (preferably plain-- I used Greek yogurt)
*1/4 cup orange juice
*1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
*1/2 frozen banana (I used 1/2 of a regular banana)
*1 cup unsweetened frozen peaches

I put everything in our blending cup, leaving the peaches and banana for last. Since I used an immersion blender, I'm not sure how important this ended up being, but for a regular blender, you'll want the liquid on the bottom.

If the mixture is getting stuck, you can add more orange juice. I ran into the slight problem of the peaches getting pushed down to the bottom and not getting sliced by the blades, but some nudging helped move them along, and soon enough everything was finely mixed together.

That's it! Without a doubt, this was a smoothie success. The fruit was fully blended, no fingers were lost in the process, and it tasted delicious. The only downside is that by using the accompanying blending cup, we limited our serving size to one glass. This worked fine for me, but for making large batches, I'm not sure how I would use the immersion blender. Maybe in a large pitcher?

Either way, this smoothie recipe worked well for us, and I definitely hope to make it again. The warmer months are a good times for fruity drinks, but I think this would work well at any time of year for a snack or filling beverage. Enjoy!

Smoothie Semi-Fail

As part of my efforts to cook more and kick ass in the kitchen, I decided to try making a kale smoothie since apparently kale is the new wonderfood and will basically keep us alive forever. My sister makes great smoothies, but when I asked her how she puts together her delicious kale smoothies, she just sent a vague e-mail saying, "I use Greek plain yogurt, peanut butter, and bananas." That sounded easy enough, but I still didn't know the proportions to use.

After searching the internet, I figured I could make something that somewhat resembled her smoothies. I couldn't find fresh kale in the grocery store, so I settled on frozen chopped kale. This may have been my first mistake.

This is what I originally based my smoothie recipe on:

*2 cups kale (I just chopped the 10 oz. block of frozen kale in half and figured that was enough)
*1 sliced banana
*1/4 cup milk
*2 tbsp nonfat Greek yogurt
*1 tbsp honey
*1 tbsp peanut butter

I combined all of this in our blender and let it spin around for a while to mix up all of the ingredients. However, this resulted in a very thick, goopy smoothie that had huge flecks of kale in it and was difficult to drink. So to fix it, I poured in some more milk and orange juice to give it more liquid. That definitely helped the consistency, but I still ended up with large pieces of kale in my drink, which I wasn't anticipating and didn't particularly like.

Overall, it still tasted good, but I would have liked a smoother smoothie. Next time I'll go with a different recipe and perhaps use fresh kale to see if I end up with a better result. At least I tried! :) Any smoothie suggestions for next time around?

Scrumdilyumptious

I admit that I can be pretty lazy when it comes to the kitchen. When I get home from a long day at work or school, the last thing I want to do is think about what to make for dinner. As a result, the hubs and I usually end up staring at each other pitifully until one of us asks the question on both of our minds: "Should we just order take-out?"

While this is certainly an easy, effortless option, it is not the most financially responsible one. The hubs and I are both in graduate school, and our very limited budget can't keep up with our love for the spring rolls at the Thai place up the street. So about a month ago, the hubs proposed that we ban ourselves from ordering take-out for dinner until after Thanksgiving. Now, with just a few more days to go until T-Day, I am pleased to report that it looks like we will reach our goal!

If I'm being honest, I have to admit that I wasn't able to refrain form purchasing meals for a few lunches. I try to bring leftovers with me for lunch, but a few times I either forgot to pack a lunch, or we didn't have any leftovers for me to take. So we didn't stay 100% away from buying meals, but we did manage to do so for dinners.

Being forced to think about what to cook for dinner initially seemed stressful, but once I sat down with the collection of cookbooks we have accumulated over the years, I found that the process wasn't too bad. I stuck with recipes that seemed easy to learn or that I had already used in the past. We ended up with a lot of zucchini casseroles and stuffed shells, but I also learned to make chili and fritattas.

Here were some of our recent successes:

Olive sourdough bread with spicy mustard, tomato, and cheese

Vegetable stir-fry

Waffles with cream and fruit

Saving money and becoming more comfortable in the kitchen are two good motivators for me to continue this challenge of cooking dinner. It's fun to learn something new, and it feels great to know that I've made something that looks and tastes delicious.