Category Archives: Food & Wine

It’s August! It’s August! We still have a month left of summer vacation, but the start of school is in sight. I’m hoping this will be a great month. It’s full of birthdays and the boys are both excited about that. There are county fairs galore. The boys have swimming lessons scheduled. There are peaches and raspberries to pick and jams and butters to make.  And I finally will have my endo appointment for my thyroid. No, that last one doesn’t sound as fun as everything else, but once I start medication it will be a load off of my mind, so that is a good thing.

The weather this week shouldn’t be as insanely hot and humid as it’s been, but I’m still trying to consolidate cooking as much as possible. Yesterday Drew made a marinara sauce, so we took out two packages of meatballs from the freezer. One we ate last night, the other we’ll have with the leftover sauce later this week in the form of grinders. I’m also going to make a big batch of beans in the Crock Pot to use in both the taco salad and with the BBQ ribs.

Yesterday at the Rhinebeck Farmer’s Market I bought some adorable baby squash. I can’t wait to eat those up tonight! I also bought a mixed basket of hot peppers, so I think some of those will be used with the taco salad, and maybe whatever I make on Saturday.

Sunday: Spaghetti and meatballs
Monday: Chicken cordon bleu, potato salad, sauteed baby squash
Tuesday: No cooking
Wednesday: Meatball Parmesan grinders, salad, oven fries
Thursday: Taco salads
Friday: Ribs, cole slaw, beans, cornbread
Saturday: something on the grill

On our honeymoon in Bordeaux, every morning we were greeting with a wonderfully simple breakfast spread. I enjoyed the best coffee, yogurt, and croissants I’d ever had. And let’s not forget the wonderful cherry preserves! Oh, they were the best. I was in love with these preserves, so when we picked all those sour cherries last week, making some of my own preserves topped my canning list.

The process of making jams and preserves is quite simple, actually. It only requires a few ingredients: fruit, pectin, and sugar. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be shocked at how much sugar you need to use. But then you’ll realize that it’s still got to be a little better than most of the stuff at the grocery store. For these preserves, I used a “no sugar pectin” — it doesn’t require as much sugar to create that thick, sticky consistency you desire in a product you’ll be slathering on toast. I used about five cups of pitted cherries and a scant three cups of sugar.

As you can see, the process takes up a lot of room on your stove:

Just look at those cherries, bubbling away!

Next, it’s time to fill the jars. Be careful because everything is super hot.

When all was said and done I had enough preserves for five half-pint jars (which I processed in the water bath canner) and a little less than half a pint, so I just put that in an extra jar (not shown in this picture) and stuck in it my fridge.

The preserves came out delicious, if I do say so myself. Cutting back on the sugar made a big difference; the taste of the fruit really comes through! Saturday night I finished off the rest of the cherries and I made one jar of pickled cherries, two jars of cocktail cherries (one using brandy and one using a mixture of brandy and amaretto), and one quart and one pint of just regular old preserved cherries for baking. It was a lot of work, but I think that come November, December, or January I’ll be appreciating it!

If you know my family, you know that we enjoy eating out at restaurants. There are a lot of great places around here, from chains to hole-in-the-wall diners. But as I mentioned in my previous post, Laura is entering a rather, um… difficult phase. Last night we ended up at Friendly’s because the pork I’d thawed looked suspicious and quite honestly, Drew and I were restless and felt like doing something. She wasn’t happy with the applesauce I’d brought for her, grew tired of fries after a while and wanted little to do with a roll. I was mortified as she threw things on the floor and immediately I was cleaning up after her. (I can’t understand mothers or fathers who leave messes on the floor for the waitstaff to clean up — at least make an effort!)

So, we’re cutting back on our restaurant visits, which is fine. We’ll save some money and calories in the process I’m sure! I’m thinking about doing another freezer cooking day like I did back in February. It would be helpful to have some dinner kits prepared, some taco meat ready to go, and burger patties made up for quick dinners (and so we’re not left scrambling the next time I take a chance on marked-down meat). Maybe I’ll plan it for the beginning of June when several of the other blogs I read do their freezer cooking. I need to prepare for the big day, LOL!

While we were out we checked out new microwaves. Ours is probably seven or eight years old and it’s pretty tired. We’re considering splurging on an over-the-stove model. Our range hood isn’t the greatest and I’d love the extra counter space we’d gain by moving the microwave up. We checked out several models from name brands like Samsung to generic store brands and have an idea of what we’re going to go with. And then, as if by magic, we got a coupon for Lowe’s in the mail! Don’t you love when things like that happen?

Going back to cooking, I’m changing up tonight’s meal plan as well. I had a craving for chicken marsala, so I’m making that along with linguine, roasted asparagus, and I’m about to bake up some artisan bread to go with it all. I’m hungry just thinking about it! What are you having tonight?

(Oh, and in case you’re wondering about the photo up there? That’s the chicken vindaloo I made the other night. Seriously drool-worthly!)