Recipe Review from 10/6/08

It's the best time of year...and the busiest. I knuckled down on Sunday and got some of my apples processed: three pies (froze two, baked one), and 7 pints of applesauce. The applesauce is cooling as I write this and the burnt sugars on the bottom of my stock pot are soaking. I am fretting that it will never come off! Between the pies and the applesauce I estimate I used about 15 lbs of apples, and I still have about 1/4 of a grocery bag left. At least with it being nice and cool I can leave them out in the garage.



And I have to finish canning some salsa yet tonight as well. The Husband is somewhere out in the "back 20" deer hunting so I grabbed a moment from chopping to get this entry ready for Monday.

In the meantime, I made a couple new recipes:

Brat, Beer and Cheese Soup (Penzey's Catalog, Harvest 08) 3.0
I was underwhelmed by this recipe. It sounded good, it looked good in the pot, it smelled good...I just didn't think it was anything worth repeating. Pretty simple recipe actually: Saute onion, carrot, and celery until soft. Add a tablespoon of flour and stir till warm, then add the broth, beer, potato and spices and simmer until potato's are done. Meanwhile, the kielbasa (my sub for brats) is lightly fried and set aside. Cheddar cheese is stirred in and the sausage is added last. We didn't puree some a cup of the broth and veggies to thicken the soup, maybe we should have. I halved this recipe and it still made enough for dinner and lunches for the rest of the week for one of us.

Broccoli Salad (Ckng Lght Annual 2003, pg 157) 4.5
I FOUND IT! I FOUND IT! THIS is THE recipe! A while back I discovered a very tasty broccoli salad in the Cub deli. It was broccoli, golden raisins, and bacon (though one is hard pressed to find said bacon in their salad...) all in a very yummy creamy - but not to thick! - white sauce of some kind. Figuring I could make this simple salad at home if I only knew what the sauce was, I started searching through my cookbooks. I happened to have some left over broccoli and some toasted sunflower seeds - but no raisins, I was out - I quick made up a modified version of this.

Broccoli florets, sunflower seeds are tossed with a mayo, red wine vinegar, and sugar mixture. Let stand in fridge for one hour (I let stand for about 15 minutes - dinner was imminent and this was an afterthought). Serve. I will be making this again!

Applesauce (Ball Blue Book of Preserving) 4.0
Do you realize how many apples are in 10 1/2 lbs? A HECK of a lot! And this is after pre-making 3 apples pies. Still, pretty simple and incredibly tasty - apples are peeled, cored and sliced and put in a pot with some water to gently bake down. I added 1 1/2 cup sugar to sweeten it a tich and pureed it so it would be just a bit chunky. Delicious! Now to get the last 3 cans to seal...



Zesty Salsa (Ball Blue Book of Preserving)
10 cups of tomatoes peeled, seeded, and cored. 5 cups of green peppers. 1 lb of jalapeno peppers. 1 1/2 lb onion. Chop everything. Toss in large stock pot (hoping it all fits) with some apple cider. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Can. I have decided canning anything with tomatoes is a pain in the heiney! I/we got it done - by 8:30pm everything was in the jars and sealed. The Husband felt that it was a little on the bland side, but we can perk that up with some fresh cilantro and hot peppers when we serve it.

Total tally for Sunday "preserving":
3 pies
7 pints applesauce
9 pints salsa

Note to self: in the future, DON'T can so much on one day!!! I am exhausted....