Category — CSAs & Farmers’ Markets

I mentioned that I had bunches of peaches, Deb at Kids Out and About is dealing with piles of cabbages, and the latest produce overwhelming me is hot peppers.

Okay, so, for a while, I was doing well. We love to make salsa. And Cute W threw some peppers in with his homemade pickles. That meal that the girls wanted to avoid last night? It was this scrumptious Thai Beef with Chiles recipe.

But the peppers just. keep. coming. I don’t really like dried peppers, which would otherwise be a good option.

I decided to try to make pepper jelly. My mom’s friend used to give us a jar of pepper jelly every Christmas. Sounds weird, but it’s pretty scrumptious spread with cream cheese on a cracker.

So I purchased a bunch of supplies because I can’t bear to throw away $5 or $10 worth of peppers. But whatever. I rationalized that if I were successful, I’d have some lovely homemade jellies to give away at Christmas.

Pepper Jelly

Ingredients:

• ¼ cup ground jalapeno peppers (I might even add some more next time; the 1/4 cup version is sweet with just a little hint of spiciness)
• 1½ cup red bell peppers
• 1½ cup apple cider vinegar (or white)
• 6 ½ cup sugar
• 1 ½   boxes of Certo, or 3 pouches (You can’t cut the sugar or it will not set, although you might be able to try a lower-sugar Sure-Jell).

Directions:

• Put jelly jars through Hot Dishwasher Cycle.
• Grind or use a food processor for the red bell and jalapeno pepper (use rubber gloves & keep away from eyes). At this point, you can bag double pepper amounts and freeze it to continue later. (Oh, yeah, baby! Did that!)
• Pour ground peppers, sugar and vinegar in a very large deep soup or lobster pot.  Boil approximately 8 minutes (mixture wants to boil over so don’t take your eyes off it).
• Cool slightly and add Certo.
• Add Jelly to jars. The original recipe says to seal with paraffin wax, but if you have a new lid it’s likely treated so that it will seal. My recipe doesn’t say to do a boiling water bath, but it’s recommended by most people. But since I’m lazy and I like to live dangerously, I skipped this step. I’ll open up a test jar before I start handing it out.

So, it was a bit of a project. I pureed a bunch of red peppers.

That was easy. But the hot peppers–ugh. There were so many, and they were so hot, that I was hacking and coughing just trying to get them seeded. I had latex gloves, but I was wishing that I had an oxygen mask. It was so much trouble, in fact, that I pureed a whole bunch of additional peppers to freeze for later. We won’t need to buy peppers anytime soon.

When I’d read the recipe about how the mixture “wants to boil over,” I thought that it sounded pretty silly. And it seemed even sillier when my ingredients only reached the bottom fifth of the pot. So, cocky, I left the room to help the girls with something, and when I came back, the boiling goo was alarmingly high.

At this point, it was also smelling just like the pepper jelly I knew and loved. Hooray! And it’s pretty, too. The picture below doesn’t do it justice–not at all. It’s glowing translucent with teensy flecks of peppers all through it.

I used plenty of peppers. Ate a pepper dinner, made a batch of pepper jelly, froze enough for a second batch, along with a whole bunch of plain hot pepper puree.

So, I checked the bag full of peppers sitting on my counter, thinking it must be almost empty, right?

Uhhh. . . .

NO.

That would be a no. A big no. Which would almost be okay.

If I didn’t also have this freakin’ bag in my fridge:

Sigh. Any suggestions?

My last post was before M’s big singing performance, and it went very well, thank you. Her singing was lovely and she was happy with it. It appears that this evil bug has passed by the adults of our household.

Meanwhile, I dropped some balls in the course of nursing sick children and fretting about performances. I completely blew off my first CSA pick up on Wednesday. I’d been so looking forward to it, and then M was so miserable that I forgot entirely until Friday morning, when I bolted out of bed and realized that I’d missed it. Boy, was I mad! And then I didn’t even say anything, because my first CSA experience was with a rather authoritarian farm where it was drilled into us that if we missed the pick up, that was it. We just have to mourn the loss (that CSA was nobody local–it was when we were in Brooklyn). But the Lansings were they were kind enough to contact me and let me pick up my share today. I also had a big bunch of rhubarb that Mary had given me earlier in the week. So today there was a bit of a kitchen frenzy as I washed piles of greens (including my favorite, arugula! yum-yum-yum!), brewed up some lemon balm tea (which I thought was fine, but M loved, so at least we’ll have something to do with the rest of the bunch), and brewed some rhubarb iced tea (we all thought that it was pretty boring).

The favorite for Cute W, J, and me was Rhubarb-Oatmeal Bars. These were very tasty, although I have to admit that now I’m suffering from a sugar rush. I altered the recipe a little bit. I did one cup of sugar (half a cup less) for the filling and it was still really sweet. For the crumbly part, I used 1/4 cup butter and 1/2 cup Earth Balance Buttery Spread instead of 1 cup of shortening. I’ll probably cut the sugar even more, and maybe replace more flour with oatmeal, the next time, because these bars were almost too sweet. In fact, they were too sweet for M. Who told me so. Repeatedly. I had to remind her again that after giving her preliminary assessment of a new recipe, I only want to hear more if the reviews are complimentary.

Beyond that, it was a lazy day for us today. Good because we needed to recover. But I’m sorry for all the folks who had planned things for outside-what misery, right? Kind of makes me want to brew more tea. . . .

Please don’t judge me.  I almost didn’t find the courage to share this.  I am about to inflict pesticide-ridden strawberries on a whole group of innocent, cherubic, nursery-school children.

Forbidden Fruit

I am the helper at our co-op nursery school on Wednesday, and J requested strawberries.  Repeatedly.  Today I went grocery shopping, and there weren’t any organic strawberries.  And I sat there, wavering, because I know that strawberries are on the top of the list of foods that you should buy organic.  But it would mean another stop and also, almost-kindergarteners eat a lot.  And organic strawberries in March have got to be expensive, right?  So I just decided to blow it off and buy non-organic.   Part of me fears that my fellow parents will read the blog and go running to the classroom so that they can knock the tainted fruit right out of the hands of their Precious Little Ones, and another part of me knows that all of these parents have elementary school just around the corner, and have you seen the horrifying school lunches that they serve to our children?  Really, you should click that last link–it’s the teacher who’s blogging about eating school lunch every day, in case you haven’t seen it.

Anyway, you might be wondering what super-lame grocery store didn’t have organic strawberries today.   So I will tell you.  (Deep breath, gaining courage for another confession. . . ) Wal-Mart.  I know.  I never used to step into a Wal-Mart for, like, years.   And then the economy went to heck and everything at Hannaford and Price Chopper got so expensive that I started shopping around.  And then we watched Food, Inc. Umm, have you seen that yet?  Yes, it’s freakishly disturbing, and if and when you do go see it, please remember to take a paper lunch bag with you for your first post-Food, Inc. grocery trip.  Because you will begin to hyperventilate.  I know I did, and I ran into a friend who was clutching her cart for dear life because she’d just seen it.   On the other hand, though, it did make me feel slightly better about going to Wal-Mart, because if I go there and buy the most organic/natural choices there, then Wal-Mart will start to force everyone to conform to my consumer demands, like they did with the hormone-free milk. Anyway, this policy of mine just doubled my guilt, because not only am I poisoning my precious child and her friends, but I am behaving as if non-organic strawberries are acceptable, thus voting with my dollars in favor of toxicity.  I’m sorry, people.  Crap, I wonder if I have one of those paper bags around here [gasping] . . . .

On the other hand, do you know what else I’ve done lately?  I joined a CSA!  I meant to join one last year, but time got away from me.  Lucky for me, a friend of mine, the Purple Cook, started a blog about cooking with local CSA produce, which gave me a cyber-kick in the pants.  This is also good because trying to come up with ways to use what produce I get can be stressful.  We used to be part of a CSA pre-kids, and although cherry week was super-fabulous, I distinctly remember once coming up with a cold cucumber and dill soup even though a) I didn’t like cucumber or dill and b) W doesn’t like cold soups.  But I’ve grown since then (I like cucumbers now–yay me), so hopefully it will go well.  I remember that last year I was jealous when I’d run into people making their pick ups from Thursday’s Schenectady Market, so I joined Eight Mile Creek.  Of course, there are plenty of other CSAs that you can find, too.  But hurry!  I was already tardy, myself, because they fill up fast.

Finally, speaking of creative cookery with produce, I made a new recipe for myself yesterday.   A friend made a yummy dish for a potluck, and then someone else posted a similar recipe, so I had to try.  I tried an experiment to see if I liked it better with curry powder or with chili powder & cumin. . . I think the curry won my a nose.  It”s onion sauteed in olive oil with spices, the I threw in diced-up leftover sweet potatoes, black beans, & chopped cilantro all in our favorite corn tortillas, with some pepper jack on top.  I took a picture of it because a) they looked pretty and b) we’ve been suffering from a lack of pictures on the blog, I know.  I don’t have a great deal of skill in the photography department, alas, as evidenced by my blurry strawberries.  Makes me wonder which is worse:  a dull and picture-free block, or pictures that aren’t particularly good?  No, I really wonder–will you comment and tell me?  Anyway, here it is:

It was yummy.  I asked J if she wanted to try, and she said, “Mommy!  You know kids don’t like that stuff.”

Guess what?  I figured out how to find the statistics on the number of people who’ve looked at the blog, and it was more than 9!  Yay!  It gives me the energy to keep plugging away.  I’m going to try to learn how to make my links prettier, for one thing.  And one of my big projects this week while I have free babysitters the in-laws visiting will be to gather up a ginormous  links page for all of us to enjoy.  Of course the best thing about their visit is that I’ll be able to avoid the Chipmunks movie entirely.

One thing my in-laws love to do is go to a farmers’ market, so we’ll probably be hitting the Schenectady Greenmarket on Sunday.  It’s open from 10 am to 2 pm.  If you haven’t gotten around to going, you should try it this weekend.  I mean, seriously, don’t you feel like you need to detox a little bit?  Get yourselves some vegetables, make a soup, and you’ll feel better.  Actually, my kids hate going to the farmers’ market because we inevitably run into people we know there and stop to chitchat every five minutes or so.  I’m always joking that they should run a shuttle bus from my church to the market at the rate people troop over there.  So our visits take forever.

But, hey, your schedule’s probably messed up already, so why not totally succumb to it?  Just plan on having your lunch there, especially if you have relatives visiting who will treat you!  And even if nothing they’re serving appeals to you or the kids (which would be tough), there’s always Thai or burritos or Indian food right there.  Whoops!  Now I’m beginning to sound like the lady who used to come into TCBY back when I was a yogurt slinger and she’d ask for the special diet sundae and then substitute fudge and caramel for the fresh fruit toppings it was supposed to contain.  And then we’d all snicker with the contempt you can only find from high school kids at a minimum wage job who are missing a keg party at that very moment.  So maybe you should set aside the pad thai and samosas and head back over to the market.  There’s always music and extraordinarily pleasant people, and they even take food stamps or credit cards.  So what’s not to like?

If  Sunday’s not good for you, the Troy Farmers Market is on Saturdays from 9 am to 1 pm.

Speaking of eating some vegetables on the post-holiday detox plan, did you know that ice skating burns a ton of calories?  There’s public skating on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons at  Union’s Messa Rink,  Clifton Park Arena, and  Schenectady County Recreational Facility (by the airport).  They’re all at naptime–there seems to be a conspiracy about that.  But, it’s a relatively cheap activity, and places usually have buckets for the littlest kids to push around.  We’ve skated at Union and SCRF, and Union’s been much quieter when we’ve gone.

I promise, I have more things to do this weekend, but I got lost on a tangent, and I’m trying to learn to pace myself.