What's Growing?

My cilantro took off and left me in the dust. It flowered and went to seed before I could use any. I put a mesh bag over one of the seed clusters to see if I could collect any of the seeds for next year. 

I harvested a few turnips and rutabaga along with some garlic and small onions. And as you can see I have plenty of tomatoes coming in.

Found this cool dragonfly as I picked tomatoes.

Unfortunately, our spicy pepper plants are super abundant. Neither G nor I love spicy peppers. I only wanted to plant one spicy pepper plant, thinking that amount would be perfect for making salsa, but G got some for free from the garden center and we planted all of them. I planted a bunch of bell pepper plants too, but they have not been doing much of anything this year. 

As you can see the ratio is way off. The peppers I'm holding in the right of the picture are the only bell peppers we have. Everything in the green tote is spicy!

Our cucumbers are done. The strange mildew has won and the vines are giving up. 

The carrots are growing but not ready to harvest yet. We're still getting a few zucchini and it looks like we might have a couple watermelon coming. Otherwise, it's all tomatoes!

Inaugural Candy Run

G and I are not big candy eaters, but we know candy is popular with many of our family and friends, so we did our first try of freeze drying candy.

I searched up what candy is most popular freeze dried: Skittles, mini Starburst, and carmel stuff. So I bought the first two. G also bought a giant bag of Nerd Clusters to test out.

The Harvest Right app is super handy and gives suggested temps and times for each candy, plus recommendations on which candies dry well together. 

It shows before and after pics too. That made me realize I can't crowd the trays as much as I do for fruits and veggies. We don't want an explosion! Here are our loaded trays about to go in:

I didn't have quite enough Skittles for a full try, so I used up my old Cream Savers on the other half. Their drying instructions aren't similar, so it was an experiment to see what happens. 

Candy doesn't take that long to freeze dry, play a few hours generally speaking. Nerd Clusters took the longest at 9 hours. They also got the puffiest.

The cream savers definitely exploded. They puffed up so high they touched the heating element above the tray. We canceled that load before it was done just in case they would expand even more. That resulted in candy that seemed crunchy but was still squishy in the middle. Kind of fun to eat, but doesn't keep well. After a couple of hours, the cream savers looked like cotton candy that has gotten wet. 

Aside from that, I would say our first run of candy was a success!
 

Freeze Dried Elderberry Juice

I found a bunch of elderberry juice taking up space in the freezer waiting to be turned into elderberry syrup. Let's freeze dry it! 

Putting the filled pans into the freezer was terrifying. Thankfully, I didn't spill! 

Since the past two liquids I freeze dried didn't need the silicone mats, I opted to not use them this time. Mistake! It stuck to the pan pretty bad. I needed to scrape all of it out. On the other hand, it did turn into a powder instantly.

Since the juice will be rehydrated to make syrup, I was careful to weigh each tray beforehand. I weighed it afterwards to find out how much water was taken out, i.e. how much water would need to be added back in. It ended up being about 3c per tray, and conveniently, one tray fit in one pint jar. 

DIY Bouillon

I made beef broth the other day from soup bones in the freezer. I had planned to can the broth, but the canning instructions said to cool it in the fridge to skim the fat and then reheat it to boiling, and I decided freeze drying might be a better option. 

So I skimmed the fat (which G fed to Jip).

Then spread it in the pans. It had the consistency of jello and evened out okay. 

The Harvest Right app recommends freezing all liquids before freeze drying so there aren't any explosions from uneven heating/cooling. 

Putting it in the freezer was the hardest part! I wanted it to be level so I ended up wedging a couple of thin items under the end of the pan to keep the broth from sliding to one side.

It freeze dried perfectly and left the solids behind in an interesting pattern. Like the cream of mushroom soup, it came off the pan perfectly even without the silicone mats. 

Did I weigh each pan to be able to tell how much liquid to add in? Nope. But I figure I can use the powder like bullion and the soup water will rehydrate it for me. 

Moldy Maple

I didn't realize maple syrup needed to be stored in the fridge. I learned that this past spring when my family made syrup for the first time, but I didn't think to relocate the maple syrup in my pantry. 

I pulled out the jar today to use some in a recipe and found a thin layer of whitish-yellowish mold floating on top. My first thought was, "no! I don't want to throw this away!" My second thought was, "maybe I don't have to..." 

A quick Google search later revealed that no, you don't need to throw moldy syrup away. Skim the mold off the top; it grows in one giant clump easy to pull out. Boil the syrup on the stove for one minute, pour into a clean jar, cool and return to fridge. Voilá! 

So, that's what I did. 

Instead of scraping the pan out with a spatula, I'll cook breakfast in it tomorrow. 

Maybe it's this particular jar, but as I reheated it, I caught a delightful bonfire smell coming from the syrup. It reminded me of cool fall nights and crisp autumn air. 😊 We're not too far from those!

Sourdough Pizza

I needed something quick for supper and it was also time to refresh my sourdough. Answer: sourdough pizza crust. I made this once before as a breakfast pizza, and I didn't have quite enough discard to cover the pan. My crust that time was very thin and not very big. To avoid the same thing happening again, I made a supplement of flour and water, 50/50. Total I had about one cup to deal with. 

You start by heating up your oven to 450° with the cast iron pan or pizza stone in the oven to preheat. While the oven is preheating, gently cook your pizza toppings in a separate pan. This is because the pizza dough will cook quite rapidly. 

When your oven is hot enough, take the stone out and simply spread the sourdough discard in a circle. Add layers if you want the crust to be thicker. Pop that in the oven for 10 minutes, then take it out to put toppings on. Cook until the cheese is to your preference. 

I did a faux Margarita Pizza with tomatoes from the garden, fresh basil from the garden, a sprinkle of salt, and whatever cheese was in the fridge.

There was a little dough left over, so I made a tea baby one for Jaron. I left the salt off and put just a tiny bit of cheese on top.

 They turned out pretty good! Jaron definitely enjoyed his. A few things I would change for next time: I forgot to put oil on the pizza stone before spreading my crust, and it was a bit tricky to get off. Also, I thought the sourdough crust was a bit bland and would have been improved by adding salt. Next time I will mix a little bit of salt into the dough before I spread it on the pan. But. It's so easy I will definitely be doing this again!

Fashionista

Jaron received a couple long sleeve outfits as a gift. I didn't feel like taking the sleeve all the way off, so I experimented with folding and tucking to make the sleeve shorter.

Inside-

Outside-

Inside-

Outside- I wanted the cuff to be visible, which required extra stitching. 

The finished product- So cute! I hope it actually fits his flipper.

Elderberry Syrup

We needed freezer space for a quarter of beef, so I cleaned out all the things that didn't need to be in there... Elderberry juice and frozen elderberries made up a decent chunk of space. My plan is to freeze dry the juice and see how it powders. Then I can mix up elderberry syrup from the powder. 

Lots of elderberry equals a double batch: 

I've made syrup many times, but I've never made it with fresh spices, only dried ground spices. Those tend to fall to the bottom of the jar. Since I had whole spices on hand, I went with that. 

The juice had a wonderful spicy aroma and all the whole chunks got filtered out in the end. The old applesauce strainer comes in handy again! 

 I haven't had a chance to freeze dry it yet, so stay tuned!

Chips

I've been on a chip kick recently... Trying to make chips out of vegetables that is. 

A 4Her gave me the idea first. She made tomato chips that were so good! Cut tomatoes 1/2 inch thick, sprinkle with salt/basil/oregano, dehydrate for eight hours at 135 degrees. Mine didn't turn out quite like hers did, the texture is off, but they'll be great for cooking. I'll try again and cut them thinner. 

Next veggie to try was zucchini. Basically, drizzle with oil and add 2T of spices. I went with thyme for one batch and rosemary for the second. 150 for eight hours. Or 135 for longer than eight. Those were great. Nice meaty yet crispy texture. 

The last veggie I tried was... cucumber. I had so many in my fridge! I didn't know what to do with them all! Cucumber chips might be weird, but others on the Internet said they were good, so I tried a recipe. Same as the other chips, but season with ranch seasoning. 

Of course I mixed up my own (no sugar and no buttermilk). 

 Those turned out pretty good too! 

Creative and Crafty

A pastor friend of ours retired and bought his first home. He and his wife asked if I'd paint something to hang in their home. 

They gave me two choices of wood, both options were long and thin. They gave me a piece of paper with the phrase they wanted and said they'd like the colors to match their light blue wall. 

Here's what I came up with: 

 

Muffins... x4

My favorite zucchini muffin recipe, received from a piano teacher I used to work with. 

They turn out great every time, but there's only so much sweet stuff you can handle. 

Are there recipes for savory zucchini muffins? Of course! And me being me, I wanted to try multiple recipes... Savory recipe #1 was a major flop. It uses chickpea flour, which I don't have, so I substituted almond flour. Google says it's a good substitute and you can swap it one to one... Maybe the recipe was wrong. Maybe I measured something incorrectly. Regardless, the batter was soupy and the muffins took forever to cook. They ended up as strangely textured squishy disks that didn't hold together. Smelled great! 

This little guy was a fan! 

G thought the flavor was good. We ended up frying them in a pan like fritters for breakfast. 

Recipe #2 was a little better. This also uses almond flour. The texture inside reminds me of egg bake. They taste okay. 

Recipe #3 was the best of the three, but not one I'm eager to repeat. It's fine, just not amazing. This uses flour and cheddar cheese. 

A friend of mine sent me a fourth recipe (unprompted!) that I will have to try. Maybe that one will be a keeper! 😅

Herbs and Spice

This is my first year growing herbs in the garden. I have basil, oregano, rosemary, dill, and cilantro. The cilantro has gone to seed. Unfortunately I didn't get to use much of it. I'm hoping to save the seeds though. 

All summer I left them to do their thing. I don't often use fresh herbs in cooking, so I kind of forgot about them. But my dry herb stock is getting low. I brought in a bunch of basil and oregano to dry. 

I washed the leaves and patted them dry. 

Not quite enough to fill the tray. 

These turned out so well I picked a second round. This time I had something else going in the dehydrator, so I left them to air dry. I also didn't feel like patting them dry with a towel. Turns out if you don't pat the water off, they turn brown when they dry. 

The finished product got crumpled up and added to my dry spice rack. Mine is a brighter green color than the store bought stuff. I wonder why. 🤔 

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Another recipe I can use goat milk in!  It's simple enough it didn't take too long to put together. 

This is the first time I had something hot to go in the freeze dryer. You need to let it cool to room temperature before going in or it can wreck the machine. 

I experimented with the trays going in: one had no liner, one had a liner and dividers, one was dividers and no liner, and one had dividers only half full. 

They turned out great! Definitely don't need the liners. 

I broke them apart and stuck them in jars. I meant to come up with the amount of water needed to reconstitute the soup, but I forgot to weigh the soup afterwards, so we'll wing it. Add water til it looks good I suppose. 

What did I do with the half empty tray? Filled it with avocados! 

 I reconstituted one right away and you couldn't tell the difference between a fresh one and the freeze dried one. The clear bag they're in used to hold oxygen absorbers. I've found they're quite good at keeping moisture out!