Thursday, September 11, 2014

A week in my kitchen: 9/11/14

Joining up with Heather from Beauty That Moves to share photos from my kitchen this week.

A sampling of photos celebrating real foods and all the work, and fun, that happens in the kitchen everyday.


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  • A trip to the farmers market to stock up on peppers. Justin cut them all and we now have seven varieties of peppers pickling on our counter. Note that they're arranged from mildest to hottest in the second photo. 
  • I finished using up a batch of homemade vanilla so I drained two more. This time we made two varieties; bourban and vodka (regular). I've already made a decent dent in the regular vanilla. We go through it really quickly. I plan to start two more batches today. 
  •  We're getting lots of veggies from the farmer along with our milk, eggs, and meat ever week. It's always fun to see what comes! This week it was tomatoes, spaghetti squash, and watermelon.
  •  Justin discovered copycat Chipotle recipes online and, surprisingly, they're real food recipes that aren't full of junk. This week we made burrito bowls and they were delish. 
  • Not exactly from my kitchen but this past week I had the most amazing strawberry milkshake ever. If you find yourself in NW Michigan make sure you hit Country Dairy. It's about 30 miles north of Muskegon and they make all they're own milk, cheeses, and icecream in house. We stopped there twice last week and stocked up on cheeses and milkshakes on our drive home. The milkshakes didn't last long though ;-)


 

4 comments:

  1. I love hot and spicy so I expect I'd love those homemade jars of jalapenos! Maybe not the hottest one though. :)

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    1. You should make some then! They're really quite simple. You make a brine of 2-3 tbs of salt per quart of water. And then you fill an empty jar with pepper slices and pour enough brine in to fill the jar. Then let them sit on your counter for 5-7 days until you like how they taste and stick them in the fridge. I don't really know how long they last in the fridge though. We always eat them pretty quickly.

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  2. Oh, I've never thought about making my own vanilla! I would love to try that sometime. Thanks for the inspiration!

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    1. You're welcome! Vanilla is really easy although it does take a while. In my opinion six months is the minimum steeping time for a strong vanilla extract. I know there are plenty of people who do less time though! And you can certainly start using it before it's officially done. I did some of that too :-)

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