….and gone to Australia for the month. Sorry…didn’t mean to scare you all! I’ll be joining him late next week and I can’t wait. For the next couple of weeks I’m going to do my best to preserve as much food as I can and eat up all the rest. I dare say there will be quite a bit of experimenting in the kitchen for the next 10 days. Here’s my weekly update for Independence Days:
Plant Something: We have a couple of spares patches of dirt in the garden where lettuce, beets and squash used to be. I had planned to leave any new planting until I got back from Australia in October, but if I do that it means nothing to harvest until about December. That’s too long to wait, so over the weekend I started some onions and beets. I hope they survive with little care while I’m away.
Harvest Something: I continue to collect about 5 pounds of tomatoes every couple of days. Cayenne Peppers are slowing down, but I still collected more than a dozen this week. Jalapenos are turning red and are still plentiful. A few heads of broccoli needed to be harvested. It’s become a bit of a game to see how long we can leave them before they bolt. So far we’ve been lucky given the extremely hot weather. A bucketful of beautiful smelling Basil. About 15 pounds of oranges. The juice has been welcome during this hot spell. A few longneck yellow squash every couple of days.
Preserve something: Making pesto from our Basil. Spaghetti sauce and sun-dried tomatoes. Freezing squash. Freezing Crabapples. Drying Cayenne Peppers and Jalapenos.
Cook Something New: I tried making Homemade pesto for the first time and I’m happy to say it was a huge success. We’ve used it on homemade pizza, but I plan on trying it in new recipes soon. We also made homemade ginger ale which was a big winner and will be made again.
Reduce Waste: We are being more vigilant with collecting the grey water from the laundry and using it on our front lawn. We don’t give the lawn much water (We think it’s a waste, but since we rent it has to stay), so the laundry water is managing to keep some semblance of green out there.
Learn a New Skill: I’m still working on increasing my skills at preserving food. New this week was pesto and sun-dried tomatoes. Both of these are great because we love Italian flavours in our food.
Gasp!! Oh wait…. you had me!
If you want to learn a new skill I can teach you to rap or DJ. Maybe breakdance.
This is my favourite Banana Bread Recipe:
Ingredients
3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
Method
No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4×8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.
Enjoy!