It's 90 degrees outside. I am tired of watching director's reels while simultaneously trying to find an "A-list photographer" who will work for high school intern wages. I have laundry to fold, chores to do, and fruit literally rotting on my counter in the kitchen. What's a girl to do? Why, fix a cocktail, crank up the air, and bake of course! Drink pairing: San Pellegrino Aranciata Rossa with vodka over ice.
Music pairing: Nathaniel Rateliff. (You can watch a stellar Sideshow Alley rooftop performance here.)
Thermostat: 72 degrees...just until I don't want to melt, then it's back up to an eco-friendly 78.
Blueberry Banana Bread
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
5 mashed bananas
1/2 cup blueberries
Preheat oven to 350 and lightly grease a loaf pan. I prefer Pyrex, as it never overcooks like the darker pans do.
Combine flour, baking soda, salt. Cream butter and brown sugar in a separate bowl. Stir in eggs and mashed banana until well blended. Fold in blueberries. Add to flour mixture until just mixed. Pour into loaf pan. Bake 60-65 minutes.
(For high altitude, I add 2 TB flax seed, turn the oven to 375, and bake for 60 minutes.)
Voila! A very banana-y banana bread with tart little blueberries to cut the sweetness. Okay, back to the grind...At least I'm buzzed and full!
I love jam. Real jam. Freezer jam like my Grandma used to make. So, I decided to ride out today's afternoon thunderstorm with some twangy tunes and canning.
If you'd like to join in, you'll need 4 pints of fresh strawberries (which are CHEAP right now - buy them up!), a lot o' sugar (come on folks, it's jam after all), and pectin. I need MCP brand pectin to make my Grandma's actual recipe and since I couldn't find that at the store, we'll be using two boxes of Sure-Jel pectin and following the recipe on the box. Beggars can't be choosers when ripe strawberries are on the line. They get moldy overnight.
I'll supply the tunes. Crank this up. I love me some Carolina Chocolate Drops.
Wash and cut up your strawberries, removing the stems and hull. This is a good time to run your canning jars through a quick cycle in the dishwasher to sterilize them if you haven't already. I bought these adorable half pint quilted glass freezer-safe jelly jars on sale at the grocery store. I always pick up a random box of canning jars whenever they go on sale...I have high hopes for putting them to good use!
(This music is fucking good, right?! The song at 4:40 is some booty-shaking, strawberry cutting, good time fun.)
Instead of hand mashing my berries in an old-timey fashion, I give them a few good pulses in the food processor. Old-timey people would approve. If I used a potato masher, I feel like they'd look at me, self-righteously working up a blog-worthy sweat, then glance at the shiny time-saving Cuisinart on the counter while clucking their tongues in disapproval and shaking their heads in a "people of the future are idiots!" kind of way.
Friendly advice:
Make sure that you don't accidentally puree the berries, as your jam will not set. And don't mess with the sugar ratio when we get there, as your jam will not set. And don't make more than a double batch or substitute one pectin for another. Why? Your jam won't set.
Q: What did my disposal have for dinner last night?
A: One huge batch of runny, pureed, low-sugar jam. Wa-wah.
Measure exactly 4 cups of pulpy strawberries. Pour into a large bowl and add 8 cups of sugar. Stir well and let sit for 30 minutes. Great time to go for a walk and get a leg up on these delicious calories!
Next bring 2 packets Sure-Jel and 1 1/2 cups of water to a boil. Boil for one minute stirring constantly. Add to your strawberries and stir continuously for 3 minutes or until all of the sugary grit is dissolved. Pour into your jam jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace to allow for expansion in the freezer. Cover and let jam sit for 24 hours. Yield: roughly 10 cups of jam, and a few days of feeling pretty kick ass.
Tomorrow, put all but one jar in the freezer and they will keep for up to a year. Put the remaining jar in the fridge for immediate consumption. It will stay fresh for up to a month, but really, don't expect it to last that long. It's just that good.
I write a guest blog, Hey Neighbor, for Dwell Denver Real Estate once a month. This was June's post.
*****
Hey Neighbor,
What has two thumbs, 12 chickens, and more poop than she knows what to do with? This girl!
Urban farming has been an adenture so far. Harder than I anticipated when reading about it, but more gratifying than I could have imagined when I see our hand-raised chickens scratching for bugs, or the bees coming and going at the hives by the dozen. Lately we've turned our attention to waste, both the noun and the verb.
The chickens are great garbage disposals and save a lot of food scraps from the trash. But once they process said scraps, there is a different kind of waste to deal with. Since I'd love to divorce myself from buying big box garden soil, a compost bin was the logical conclusion. And then I priced them. Yeah...After building a 200-square-foot chicken palace out of cedar, we were a little short on farm funds.
So, I hightailed it to my local feed store. I purchased used wooden pallets for $2 each. I saved myself $94 and saved the wood from the trash heap.
The fastest way to compost, besides having a huge pile of grossness rotting somewhere in the yard, is a three-sided bin with no top, no bottom, and plenty of air and moisture. Our perfect pallet composter was assempled and in use in under 10 minutes.
Think you need 5 acres in the country to be able to compost? Think again. We are lucky and can hide the compost bin in the trees, but we've seen bins stashed at the side of the house, in a corner of the yard, hidden by bushes, painted to match the lawn furniture, and right smack next to the garden in all its rotten glory.
Composting is easy, and virtually smell-free, if a few basic rules are followed:
1. Try to keep a 3:1 browns to greens ratio.
Browns (carbon rich): dead leaves, small animal bedding, cardboard, newspaper, dead flowers and plants, sawdust, straw.
