I love food, music & people
In case you didn’t know how easy this was, now you do. Mind blowing stuff, I tell ya.
Then you git yer hands all slimy and push their skins off.
If the skins don’t slide right off, repeat the process. This works for tomatoes, too. Not that there have been ANY tomatoes this year. ::pout::
I have this boyfriend and he has this garden. In Spring I helped him plant a few peppers, much basil, three tomatoes and a variety of misc herbs. And a single cucumber plant that got eaten by birds within 12 hours. He replanted with another cucumber plant and after water and sunlight, here’s what happened:
That’s one plant that overtook most of this part of the world. We’ve gotten lots of basil out of that garden and a few chiles and peppers, but mostly it’s been cucumbers. We had a long, hot (Over 100 for over 2 months) summer and the only production we got was cucumbers. Lots and lots of cucumbers. That vine is producing about 4 Armenian Cucumbers a day and has for 2 months. ::sigh::
He’s mostly been giving them away to local restaurants, friends and unsuspecting strangers. At his part time job one day he set a big sack of them by the cash register with a sign that said, “Free.” It may as well have been a white flag.
Though, occasionally they’re cute.
This weekend I decided that I would can cucmbers into pickles, just as generations of women before me had done. I borrowed a processing pot, bought a 12-pack of quart jars and got to canning.
I mean “canning.”
I intended to document and blog it but was glad things didn’t work out that way. I don’t need record of any more failure in my life. Still, I gave it a whirl…
On the left you have me discovering that the giant pot I borrowed was suited for pints and not quarts. On the right you have me placing the jars up on a shelf where they’ll likely only be able to sit until sundown. Then into the fridge they go because they didn’t process correctly. Again, I’d like to remind you of The Video.
One of my joys in life is cooking breakfast for my family. One time, many moons ago, I was gone from my family for a month as I traveled central and southern Poland. Towards the end of the excursion, when the new had long worn off and all I could ponder was my escape, folks asked me what I’d do when I got home. My answer was always, “Make pancakes for my kids.”
The measuring of the ingredients, assembling, pouring batter, watching for the telltale translucent bubbles that let me know when to flip, all of those things are zen-like for me. When I plop the warm cakes onto a plate with syrup and a fork I feel like a “real mom” and not that pretend mom I can sometimes be. (The pretend mom checks email on her iPhone while slamming down a peanut butter toast and cup of coffee while her kids grasp for her attention at the weekday breakfast table by arguing over who is allowed to break the Lego creation that the other recently perfected.)
Muffins are a similar sentiment only better. Muffins require recipe research and interesting ingredients. Sometimes they even involve chocolate chips, as they did the Sunday following this recipe:
Brown Sugar Oatmeal Muffins
1 cup oatmeal
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup dark brown sugar (I used regular because my dark brown was dry like gravel)
3/4 cup milk (I used almond milk, that’s why it isn’t bright white)
1/4 cup melted butter or 1/4 cup oil (I used oil because I had no butter and didn’t want to use margarine)
1 teaspoon vanilla (Next time I’m reducing it. I could taste too much vanilla)
Preheat to 400. Mix all the dry together. Then mix the eggs and sugar. Then add the rest of the wet to the wet mixture. Then you stir the wet into the dry, but only until just mixed. I like using paper liners with spray and after baking for 20 minutes, put them out and flip them on their sides. I don’t know why…I just do.
Enjoy! (It makes a perfect dozen)
PS Please remember that I’m in this phase with blogging and photography. Thank you.
This is MyJRNY.
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