Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies

This recipe presumably comes from the "Murder She Baked" film, produced by Hallmark. They're a great tasting cookie with crispy edges. If you use real butter, eggs, and sugar in the recipe, each cookie comes out to be roughly 135 calories or so. And, simply eating just one with milk is not possible. The butter is likely to be the most expensive ingredient in this batch. Using a 1/4 cup ice cream scoop can get you uniformly shaped cookies. In retrospect, these weren't as crunchy as I had imagined and I probably should have added in the crushed corn flakes at the same time as the chocolate chips.

Makes: 35 cookies

The Foodening Blog: Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies

Ingredients

1 c unsalted butter, melted
2 c corn flakes, crushed
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
2.5 c all purpose flour, unsifted
1 c organic unbleached granulated sugar
1 c light brown sugar
1 tsp sea salt
2 tsp baking soda
1.5 c semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 F

Melt butter and let cool slightly before mixing in with white sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and beaten eggs. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda. Add this into the butter mixture and stir to combine until no flour powder remains. Stir in crushed corn flakes and chocolate chips.

Spoon or use a small ice cream scoop to drop rounded balls of dough onto a baking tray. For a half-sheet pan, I baked these in batches of six per tray.

(I only own one tray, so at 10 minutes per day you can imagine how long this took to bake.)

Bake for 10 minutes and let cool on racks.

Kitchen Notes: Sourdough Starter

Part of the reason to make your own is so that you don't buy the cup of refrigerated starter from some (un)known company at the grocery store for what amounts to a lot of time and an inexpensive amount of flour. I probably should have started this in say.. summer, when the ambient temperature of my kitchen was in the 70s. Alas, I suppose it'll take longer than the week proposed by King Arthur Flour. They have a non-refrigerator/non-freezer method of preserving your starter too. Which, by the looks of it, reads like it is better than the valuable storage space in the refrigerator/freezer...basically you take the finished sourdough starter as if you were going to use it and dry it out at room temp across several days on parchment paper, then store the dried starter in an airtight container.

Anyhow. Back to the starter. I am not reposting KAF's instructions, but I am going to detail what I am doing with this attempt. Previous tries at sourdough breads have resulted in my killing the starter after I used a portion of it to bake a sourdough bread. It feels bad to waste food ingredients; but alas, you can use discarded starter in a number of recipes that call for bread dough: pizza crust, pretzels, etc.

Day 1, Jar 1:
1/2 c dark rye flour + 1/2 c warm water

Day 2, Jar 1:
Half removed, added 1 scant cup AP flour + 1/2 c warm water

Day 2. Jar 2 (essentially, now I have two Jar 1s):
Jar1 Discard + 1 scant cup AP flour + 1/2 c warm water

Day 3, Jar 1 & Jar 2:
Half removed from each jar and placed in Jar 3 (which will be refrigerated for later use)

and so on, so far, I am only on Day 2.

Kitchen Notes: Canning Unsweetened Fruit Juice

I thought about making a mixed berry jam using the berries that have been in the freezer; but my pantry currently suffers from a glut of uneaten jams. To convert this into the base of a drink spritzer, take an equal amount of a basic sugar syrup (1:1 ratio of sugar to water, boiled together and volume reduced by half) and add it to the juice. Then add up to a 1/4 c of the juice mixture to a glass with ice and sparkling water (or sparkling wine).

TheFoodening Blog - Unsweetened Mixed Berry Juice

I just needed to free up some freezer space for my dumplings. Anyhow. Onto the process.

This batch had a lot of seeds! OMG. So many tiny seeds to filter out. I batch strained the solids 2-3 times (the -3rd time was the thick goo leftover in the strainer and I let it drip out overnight in the fridge in a bowl).

1/2 lb boysenberries, from the farmers market - big, ripe and not really sweet
1 lb strawberries - uhh, I froze them whole so the stems were still there
1 qt blueberries - these have been in the freezer for a while, a couple years; picked at Majestic Farm Blueberries a few miles away

I am not sure why I tossed in the remainder of an opened jar of Fonseco port, but a bit more than a cup of port is also in this "juice".

Crock it all together in a slow cooker for a few hours on LOW.

Made: 5 half pints

Plum Jam with Whiskey and Ginger

In this batch, I set aside two 8 oz freezer jars to see what this stuff tastes like on toast and/or pbj sandwiches. The jam didn't set in the water bath and spreads easily enough after being refrigerated. And no, pectin was not used. And no, it didn't set like a normal jam where equal portions of sugar and fruit purée were used. If I made this again, I'd omit the whiskey/bourbon. It tastes good with peanut butter without the whiskey. The ingredient ratio comes from the My Friday Food Swings blog.

TheFoodening Blog: plum ginger jam ready to eat

3 lbs Italian plums (dark purple skin, yellow flesh), pit removed
2 1/2 c organic granulated sugar
2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 c fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 c whiskey or bourbon, any plain variety

Directions

1. Wash and quarter the plums, removing the pits. Place plums in a large bowl and mix with 1/2 c sugar, salt, and lemon juice. Store in refrigerator overnight.

2. Cook plums, its juices, and remaining sugar in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat for 15 minutes. If you're going to strain out the skins, do so at this point, otherwise use an immersion blender and purée it all smooth. Stir frequently or the jam will burn. Add ginger powder and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

As you boil the plums with the sugar, don't be alarmed by the not-red color this produces before using the immersion blender.

At this point, I reserved a cup of jam, letting it cool in a bowl before transferring it to a freezer jar.

3. Add the whiskey, if using, and boil for an additional 3 minutes.

4. Process using hot jam in hot sterilized jars/bands/lids in a hot water bath for 15 minutes.

Made: 2 half-pint freezer jars + 4 half-pint jars

Hatch Chile Salsa, version 2

Can't say I've been making or trying out new things this year in the kitchen. Life, the universe, and everything has been busy. I've stopped making the crockpot apple butter because it simply yields more jars than I can reasonably give away as gifts. Besides all the hassle of making the apple butter, nobody is eating it. Bummer. Anyhow.

Homemade salsa is always a winner. There is more to it than just eating it with chips, tacos, or nachos. Salsa goes into a variety of recipes. In July I did a control batch of salsa; basically the heat base is from a dozen green jalapenos and two red jalapenos. It is surprisingly mild; though, probably has a little more heat than the hatch chile salsa.

This season, I've altered the hatch chile salsa ingredient ratio that I used in the previous year. It currently includes:

4 large green jalapenos, seeded and stemmed, then diced
12 tomatillos, quartered
5# red tomatoes, stemmed, chopped
1 bunch fresh cilantro. finely chopped
2 heads of garlic, peeled and chopped
1.5 lbs prepared hatch chiles (picked this up from Trader Joes)
12 fresh hatch chiles, prepared (roasted, peeled, seeded, chopped) -- this surprisingly only made 1 cup of prepared chiles
1 green bell pepper, stemmed/seeded, then diced
2 tbsp sea salt
1/4 c fresh lime juice

This batch made 7 pints total: 6 pints plus 2 half pint jars

I'm sure that omitting the red tomatoes would have just made it a salsa verde (or green salsa) but I like the sweetness that tomatoes bring to salsa.

Yeah, the processing was different too. Because it took so long to prep all the ingredients, I ended up only boiling the ingredients together (except for the jalapenos, cilantro, green bell pepper, salt. and lime juice) for 1.5 hrs. Then I let it all cool down and stuck the pot into the refrigerator until I could complete the recipe. Fact of it is, I didn't have fresh limes on hand. Ooops.

By the end of the week (today), I managed to get around to preparing and adding the rest of the ingredients. Before adding the remaining ingredients, I tasted the salsa. A little bland, but what did I expect, I hadn't salted it. Also, it lacked the spicy heat of chiles, even though more than two pounds of processed hatch chile peppers went into the batch. I also pureed it to a not-chunky consistency with the immersion blender. 

For texture, I diced the green jalapenos and green bell pepper at this stage.

The salsa pot might have been simmering on the stove for an hour more or so; then I added the jalapenos, bell pepper, cilantro, salt, and lime juice and cooked the batch for a half hour more to help preserve the color of the bell pepper and cilantro.

I did not blend the salsa before putting these into prepared jars and into a 15-minute boiling water bath.

Homemade Pickled Ginger / Gari

Young ginger is a summer season ingredient; so it's best to pick it up fresh at your local Asian grocery store that has it before summer ends. I picked this up from Portland's Fubonn Asian supermarket on the southeast side of the metro. Inexpensive, for what it is. Though, I'm not going to break even on cost with preparing it into pickled ginger compared to what it costs already prepared. At least it won't have any of that nasty pink food coloring.

I made it from this recipe ratio from Just One Cookbook and let's just say that I'm very disappointed in the thinness that a Cook's Illustrated top recommended mandoline has done with these ginger slices. I could have sliced them thinner with a knife. They taste OK, though, more like ginger pickles than the pickled ginger you'd eat with sushi. There was no pink to the young ginger to begin with, so these didn't turn a shade of pink while fermenting. In fact, they are of a light brown color.

TheFoodening Blog: pickled ginger, ready to eat

Homemade Sour Cream

Maybe one day I'll write up a post of the many combinations of sour cream, heavy cream, buttermilk, whole milk, and the ingredients that thickens the sauce and/or cheese. But that day is not today. Here is how to make sour cream from scratch if you happen to have run out of it or just wanted to make a party chip dip. This will be thinner than store-bought sour cream because it lacks thickeners such as carrageenan, a seaweed extract. 

No lemons? Substitute lemon with an equal amount of white vinegar.

Ingredients

1 c (8 oz) heavy cream
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 c (2 oz) whole milk

Directions

Like the crème fraîche, you'll want to use a clean pint size mason jar.

To the jar, add the heavy cream and lemon juice. Give it a stir to mix together. Add milk. Cover with a lid and shake a bit. Remove the lid and cover with cheesecloth, secured with a rubber band around the rim. Let sit on the counter for up to 24 hours, or overnight.

The mixture should have thickened.

Why this process requires the cream to 'breathe' while the crème fraîche does not. I have no idea. Maybe you don't want extra 'flavors' in the crème fraîche.

Remove the cheesecloth and give the mix a stir. Cover with a lid and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.

Homemade Crème Fraîche

I'm not sure why people buy $4+ tubs of this at the grocery store. It is heavier than heavy cream and thinner than sour cream. It'll whisk up like heavy cream but will have a much different taste and texture. This is different than making sour cream from scratch.

1.5 c heavy cream
0.5 c low fat buttermilk

Pour ingredients into a clean pint or quart mason jar. Cover and shake the jar a few times. Let sit on kitchen counter for 8 hours; then refrigerate for up to 24 hours.

To use with fresh berries:

Whisk desired amount until it has thickened to stiff peaks. Add 1 tsp granulated sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. Spoon this over fresh blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries.

Ginger Salad Dressing

This recipe tries to replicate the house-made ginger salad dressing that one can usually find with a Japanese restaurant's entree or bento salad. It comes together fairly easily; though you will have to procure or make-from-scratch a couple of the ingredients.

Yes, there is such a thing as toasted sesame oil and you can buy it in any grocery store that also stocks Asian goods. In the Portland or Seattle areas, Whole Foods and Uwajimaya definitely carries both oils. Read the ingredient label since not all brands carry pure sesame oil--where it is the only ingredient. You could also make it yourself by using toasting white sesame seeds before grinding it into an oil; though that takes special kitchen equipment to extract the oil from the seeds. That is too much trouble. Just buy the stuff.

Making your own sushi ginger is fairly simple, if you can get your hands on fresh young ginger. Sometimes

Ingredients

50 gm pickled sushi ginger
1/4 c toasted sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce

Directions

Purée until smooth using an standard electric blender or immersion blender. Serve over fresh greens or roasted vegetables.

Canning 2018

The part about food blogging that bugs me is that if I don't write something up as I am doing the recipe or series, it doesn't get written up at all. Now I have to look at my old social media posts to see if I did any canning in 2017 other than a case of salsa (12 pints). I will surely update this post as the year progresses.

Bitters is a new experimentation series. Instead of taking the bitters class at OMSI, I thought I would just read up on it and try out the experiments myself instead of spending $130 on the course. Isn't that what the library and the Internet are for?

Here's what's been going on so far:

Extracts
Young ginger, 4 oz

Bitters
Cherry bitters, 4 oz

Liqueurs (vodka base, simple syrup sweetened)
coffee liqueur (Stumptown coffee base), 1 litre

Salsas
Control batch salsa (jalapeno peppers), 5.5 pints, 0.5 pints eaten already
Hatch chile salsa, 6 pints plus 2 half pints

Here's what's scheduled to be made:

strawberry liqueur
chocolate liqueur

Completed Extracts
Lemon extract, 1 pint
Vanilla bean extract, 1 pint
Bing cherry-infused bourbon, 1 pint
Cherry blossom extract, 4 oz

Almond biscotti

Here's a recipe that I've made a few times already this year and didn't write it up until now. Good for snacking, potlucks, gift giving, etc. Not that healthy but better than what you can buy at the store.

The Foodening Blog - almond biscotti ready for eating

Ingredients

4 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
2 c raw almonds (or unsalted roasted almonds)
4 eggs
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 c. organic cane sugar
1 c. unrefined coconut oil
2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp almond extract

Directions

1. Reserve 1/2 c flour. Sift dry ingredients together (flour, baking powder, salt).

2. Whisk eggs, vanilla extract, almond extract, sugar together

3. In skillet, toast raw almonds until the almonds have changed color (darker brown) but not so long that the almonds burn. Skip this step if using pre-roasted almonds.

4. Coarsely chop almonds and combine with 1/2 c. flour. Stir to combine.

5. On a normal day, the coconut oil will be solid. Heat the coconut oil in a small pan over low-medium heat until melted. Let cool to room temperature before adding to the dough.

6. Mix everything together.

Shaping and baking. The dough will spread somewhat during its first bake session, leave at least two inches between bars of dough. This is ok. After the first bake, simply use a sharp edged knife or pastry knife to separate the logs.

The Foodening Blog - biscotti dough after the first bake

Bake at 340 F for 30 minutes.

Remove from oven. Slice loaves diagonally into 3/4" to 1" pieces. Then place cut side up onto the baking tray.

Bake at 330 F for 10-15 minutes, or until the edges are lightly browned.

A note on the coconut oil: Using unrefined coconut oil passes a coconut flavor to the cookies.

Crockpot: Smoked Ham Split Pea Soup

In today's age of healthier cuts of meat, finding smoked pork hocks at the grocery store is hard. Check with the butcher or at the meat counter of your local grocery store. The smoked pork is probably with the other frozen meat. One smoked hock is enough for a 3-qt batch of split pea soup. I picked up a frozen package of three smoked hocks from my local grocery store.

When rinsing the split peas, don't let them sit around and dry out in the colander. They'll stick together as one mass and you'll have to pry them off. Also, traditional pea soup has onions in it. If you can eat onions, add a diced yellow onion to the recipe. The salt in the broth or smoked meat should be enough for the batch of soup.

Ingredients

1.5 quarts chicken/vegetable/pork broth
1 lb or 2 cups of dried split green peas
1 smoked ham bone or smoked hock
3 organic carrots, diced
3 organic celery ribs, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 bay leaf
1 tsp fresh or dried thyme
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Directions

Cook covered for 6 hours on LOW. Remove ham bone from the pot. The meat should come easily off the bone. Add the meat back to the pot. Discard the bone. Remove bay leaf before serving.

Easy Meatballs (for spaghetti)

If you don't like to get your hands dirty, this recipe is not for you. The binders in this recipe are bread crumbs, milk, and egg. If you are gluten-free or vegan, this recipe really isn't for you either. I don't have and am not willing to create a vegan "meat" ball recipe. Get your inner carnivore on because we're going to play with meat in this recipe.

I have seen all sorts of meat ratios for this recipe. Sure, you could probably combine equal amounts of ground pork and ground beef, heck toss in some lamb or veal as well; but by then the cost of the meat will exceed your entire spaghetti recipe and that's not good for anyone's food budget.

Note to future self: use lean ground beef. I used 80% meat/20% fat ground beef for this attempt, and well, the meatballs exuded a lot of oil when cooking. 

Ingredients

1 lb lean ground beef (93% lean should work)
1/2 c milk
1/2 c fine breadcrumbs
1/2 c Parmesan cheese, grated
1/4 c fresh Italian parsley, leaves only, finely chopped
1 large egg
1 tsp salt
1 garlic clove, minced
freshly ground black pepper

Easiest way is to add all the ingredients to a large bowl and mix by hand. Stirring it together with a fork will only get you so far.

Use a tablespoon to scoop out some of the meat and form it into a ball with your hands. Set it on a plate and repeat until the plate is full.

Directions - in sauce

If you have just made a pot of spaghetti sauce, transfer some of the sauce sans meat to a skillet and add the meatballs in a single layer. Cook for about 20 minutes then transfer everything back to the pot that has the spaghetti sauce and simmer for an additional 10 minutes or so.

Directions - oven baked 

Preheat oven to 400F.

On a lipped baking tray, arrange meat balls in a single layer and bake for 25-30 minutes. Check on the meatballs to make sure they don't burn. If they burn, none of them will come off the tray without a spatula scraping them off.

Chuck all the cooked meat balls into the spaghetti sauce. Or set onto paper towels to drain the oil. Can also store these into a quart-size bag and freeze for later.

Yes, I really did two batches of meatballs, one cooked in a sauce and baked the other, then tossed both batches into the already-completed spaghetti sauce.

Coffee Liqueur

The difference between a liquor (e.g., vodka) and a liqueur, is that the latter is back-sweetened with fruit or sugar to bring the sugar content up to a minimum of 2.5% and the former is just a distilled beverage. That's the idea anyways. You should probably use a coffee bean of a coffee you really enjoy. This batch uses Stumptown's house blend whole bean coffee. It's recommended for extracts that 100% proof vodka be used, but I am using Kirkland vodka (80% proof) because that's all I have on hand. You can get 1-liter flip-top bottles from Bed Bath & Beyond or similar stores.

Day 1

Ingredients

2 c vodka
1/2 c ground coffee
1-2 tsp vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean split in half

Grind enough coffee beans for 1/2 c ground coffee. In a large jar, combine coffee, 2 c vodka, and 1-2 tsp vanilla extract (or 1 whole vanilla bean sliced in half). Secure lid on jar and refrigerate for 24 hours, shaking the jar occasionally.

Day 2

Ingredients

2 c brown sugar
4 c filtered water

Make the brown sugar syrup.

In a 2-quart pot, combine 2 c brown sugar and 4 c water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the volume has reduced by half.

As the syrup cools, it'll thicken.

.

Use a coffee filter to strain the infused vodka from the ground coffee. Compost the leftover coffee. Set aside. I used two filters for this step. A gold filter and a paper coffee filter set inside the gold filter.

Into a clean, sterilized bottle, fill with cooled brown sugar syrup and coffee-infused vodka.

Shake to combine.

Store in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Lemongrass Tea

The last time I saw someone get a gift of Adagio lemongrass tea, I thought that $12/8oz  + shipping is a lot to pay for something you can make yourself. Lemongrass tea is just the chopped up, dried form of the plant. It takes about a week (during autumn/winter) to dry at room temperature on trays. The fresh stalks are typically sold fresh in Asian grocery stores or supermarkets that also carry Asian cuisine ingredients. A bundle of 3-4 lemongrass stalks will cost about $1.60-$3.00, depending in where you shop.

The seafood market (ABC Seafood) in Portland is where I last picked up this culinary herb.  It is typically used to make the lemony part of Tom Yun soup (a hot & sour soup originating from Thailand/Laos). 

After processing the lemongrass stalks, it would be better to make the tea while the stalks are fresh rather than when they are dried if you want a more lemony taste to the tea. A hot cup of tea made from the dried, cut stalks tastes a lot like water that has been mixed with a light lemon essence. But, if a non-citrus lemony tea is what you want to relax with, lemongrass tea is also non-caffeinated.

TheFoodening Blog: lemongrass stalks, all chopped up
and ready to be dried for tea

After trimming the stalks of the rough, woody root part and the tops, peel off any of its 'leaves' that have dark spots on them. Use a sharp knife or kitchen shears to cut the stalks into 1/2" to 3/4" pieces. Use a sharp knife to quarter (vertically) each piece. This will help the lemongrass dry faster.

Don't try to chop these later in a food processor after they have dried. It does not work.

Hot and Sour Soup

My mom would make this soup for special occasions, although it's a good soup for cold, damp weather. The heat in the soup comes from black pepper and its sourness from vinegar; though not any vinegar will do. Apple cider vinegar and rice vinegar are cetain sweeter in taste than say, red wine vinegar. And, don't put balsamic vinegar into this soup.

A note from my dad about the wood ear fungus. It may look small, and the original recipe called for 1/4 of it but that is a mistake. He says that the fungus will soak up enough water to turn into 10x its dehydrated size.

Makes: 2 quarts + 1 pint

Ingredients

3 oz pork loin, pork shoulder, or country pork rib
1/2 tsp olive oil
1 scallion, thinly sliced

1/4 c dried lily buds, soaked in warm water, trimmed
1/4 c dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in warm water, thinly sliced
4 pc dried wood ear (mu-erh) fungus, soaked in warm water, thinly sliced
1/2 c winter bamboo shoots, thinly sliced
1/2 pkg organic firm tofu, small diced
2 quarts organic chicken broth, low sodium
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
3 tbsp white vinegar or red wine vinegar
2 tsp tamari soy sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
fresh ground black pepper, to taste
sea salt, to taste

1 organic carrot, sliced into matchsticks

Directions

Slice pork into thin 1/2" strips then fry with scallion and olive oil. When pork has lost its pink color, remove from heat and set aside.

After soaking the lily buds, trim off the hard parts of the stem.

In a large stockpot (or a pot large enough to hold 3 quarts of liquid), combine chicken broth, lily buds, wood ear fungus, mushrooms, tofu, white pepper, soy sauce, and vinegar. Add the soaking liquid of the dried ingredients to the soup.

Bring the soup to a simmer and let all the ingredients come up to temperature. At this point, you can add the cornstarck/water slurry and bring the soup to a boil to thicken the soup.

Next, and add the eggs for an egg-drop-soup look. 

Serve hot.

You may need to add more black pepper (for heat) or vinegar (for sourness).

To thicken the soup:

Combine equal portions cornstarch and cold water. Stir until cornstarch is dissolved in the water. Use 1 tbsp cornstarch plus 1 tbsp water per quart of liquid.

To turn this into an egg drop soup:

Whisk 2 eggs in a small bowl

Before serving the soup and while the soup is boiling, stir soup in a clockwise (or counterclockwise) direction so the liquid is rotating in one direction. Usually, it's 1 egg per person for a regular egg drop soup.

As the soup is rotating, slowly pour in the beaten eggs.

Boiled Shrimp

This recipe is pretty easy to do. It's quick and simple. You just need raw shrimp that is either fresh from the seafood counter or thawed completely. I can usually pick up a pound of headless shrimp from Fubonn in Portland. Sometimes shrimp is on sale for $5-$7/lb. I try to stay in that range. What? No instructions on prepping the shrimp? Why bother. Just unshell and rip off its legs after it's been cooked.

Ingredients

2-3 tbsp fresh ginger, sliced
1-2 lb raw shrimp
1 tbsp Chinese rice wine
4 c filtered water
pinch of sea salt

Directions

Bring water, wine, and ginger to a boil. Process in batches of 10. When the shrimp changes color to light pink, remove from heat and add more raw shrimp. If you need to, remove all the cooked shrimp from the pot and wait for the water to come back up to a boil.

Serve warm.

Creamy Corn Soup (vegan)

Something nice, hot, and not too complicated for a rainy week. This used up the last of the summer season fresh corn. It seems to be missing something. Maybe I need to mix in some tapioca starch and make it thicker. I also used seven ears of fresh corn in this batch and three instead of two cups of vegetable broth.

TheFoodeningBlog - corn soup?

Note: you can make celery salt by grinding equal portions of celery seed and kosher salt together in a coffee or nut grinder. You'd have celery seed on hand if you like making pickles.

Yield: 2 quarts

Ingredients

2 c vegetable broth
1 can coconut milk (Trader Joe's brand)
2 celery ribs, diced
1 large red bell pepper, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
4-7 fresh ears of corn, husked
1 tbsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp celery salt

Directions

1. Husk the corn. Or is that shuck? At any rate. Remove the corn's leaves and corn silk from the corn cob. Take a sharp knife (serrated works best) and cut the fresh kernels from the cob. 

2. Put everything into the pot and cook on a low-medium heat for an hour, or until the vegetables are soft.

3. If you want some texture, remove a cup of whatever is in the pot and set it aside. Turn off the heat when using an immersion blender to puree the soup.

4. Serve hot.

Crockpot Vegetable Stock/Broth

I read somewhere that stock isn't seasoned while broth is. At any rate, I made this in the crockpot because I needed two cups of it for a soup I'm making. Smells lovely. And the best part? No onions.

Heat/Time: 6-8 hours on Low

Ingredients

8 c filtered water
3 organic carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
5 garlic cloves, chopped
2 bay leaves
few sprigs of fresh thyme
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
1 sprig of fresh oregano, leaves only
freshly ground black pepper
pinch of sea salt

Yield: 1 quart plus 3 cups of broth

Strain the broth into a 5-quart bowl, then decant to other containers for storage.

Kitchen Notes: Pantry Budgeting and Food Prices, part 1

I track a few stores for local prices (Costco, Fred Meyer, Trader Joe's, Walmart, and Chuck's Produce). Did you know that there are seasonal price variances for grocery items such as dairy, bacon, eggs, and rice? This gives me a general idea of when to stock up on canned goods and food for the freezer and pantry. I currently keep my pricing notes on the Google Notes app on my phone. I should also say that these prices reflect mostly Washington state, not Oregon and not Seattle where the cost of living is significantly higher than Vancouver, WA.

Have a hankering for fresh avocados? When avocados are in season, the best pricing comes from Costco for US-produced large avocados. For small-medium avocados, best pricing is from Walmart and those are imported from Mexico.

In an average year, cooking for one and seasonal canning/preserving. I'll typically use:

10# all purpose flour
5# sugar
1 gallon white vinegar
0.5# sea salt or kosher salt
1 qt tamari soy sauce (wheat free)
0.5 gallon unseasoned rice vinegar
4# unsalted butter (what can I say, I love butter)
2 liters olive oil

Bulk unbleached/unbromated flour is inexpensive. You can still get 10# of it from Fred Meyer for less than $5.

Currently in the US there is a surplus of dairy. There is so much overproduction of dairy products that a pound of brie cheese (Presidente brand) costs $5 and 2.5 lbs of Colby Jack/Havarti cheese will run you $7/pack at Costco. However, you might not see this savings with brands that are priced to compete at your local supermarket (e.g., private label supermarket brand vs Sargento, Daisy, Tillamook, etc.). If you aren't looking for double or triple cream brie, Costco pricing for brie cheese is the best among all tracked stores.

Also in mid-2017 pork products are noticeably on the rise in pricing, with 4 lbs of Kirkland bacon going for $20/pack or $5/lb. However, this rise has been going on since 2014 since the Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, or PEDv. The disease kills millions of piglets per year. You might have also seen an article about a decline in the frozen pork belly supply at the start of the year. There is significant demand for pork products and pork producers cannot keep up with supply.

There is a worldwide shortage of vanilla beans. This is following a glut of vanilla beans from 2004 which forced pricing down for farmers who then replaced their vanilla crops with more profitable ones such as sugar cane and coffee. The March 2017 cyclone storm that hit the Madagascar region wiped out 30% of vanilla crop production. To put Madagascar into the context of market size, the region grows 3,000 tons of vanilla; compared to Africa's Comoros region which produces 50 tons and Mexico which produces 100 tons. 

It'll be a long while before raw vanilla prices stabilize. This means if you are making a lot of baked goods or mixed beverages that call for vanilla, you may have to just buy vanilla beans in bulk and make your own vanilla extract. Price-wise, you can make a few liters of vanilla extract from lesser quality vanilla beans (grade B) for the same amount of money you'll dish out buying that 16 oz bottle of vanilla extract from Costco ($25, as of March 2017). You could use artificial flavorings, but at that point, you might as well skip the recipe altogether.

2017 retail price per vanilla bean: $6 (Cost Plus, Chuck's Produce, Fred Meyer, etc.). In a surplus year, per bean retail cost is $1.50-$2.00/bean. This is a labor-intensive, hand-produced crop after all.

Also rising in price is bulk sea salt. It used to be $0.30/lb (early 2016) at Fred Meyer and has now risen to $1.50/lb (Aug 2017). Fortunately, for most people, you don't really use that much of salt in a year, unless you're also curing meat and seafood products for jerky or smoked salmon. I have no explanation for the rise in salt prices, except that demand is high because winter storms have been more severe everywhere (municipalities purchasing more rock salt to combat ice/snow) and the US states that have manufacturing and distribution facilities are in regions hit hard by severe weather. Price increase is more likely due to increase in transportation costs than actual impact of weather or cultivation practices.

What affects pricing? Let's take a brief look at Texas. It's a state that produces the most cotton of the top 10 cotton-producing states in the US. In fact, Texas produces so much cotton that you can add up the total cotton production of the other 9 top cotton producing states and it doesn't even come close to what Texas produces. Just do any web search for "drought + Texas cotton" and you'll see which years the drought has heavily impacted cotton production. Look at the 10-year historic chart from NASDAQ for cotton prices. And then there was a market crash in cotton in 2011. What would have been a bumper cotton crop this year for Texas was nullified by the recent deluge of rain from hurricane Harvey. A cotton shortage means that pricing for similar products (synthetic and plant-based fiber--bamboo, modal, tencel, rayon [wood], and polyester [coal/oil/water]) that compete in the same market place--also rise because of demand for cotton substitutes.

Dairy

Cottage cheese isn't a healthy snack. While you can certainly find 'fat free' or 'low fat' versions of cottage cheese, perhaps consumers don't understand how this product is made. Take farmer's cheese which is produced when combining lemon juice or vinegar with heated whole milk (or low fat milk), strain out the curds, then mix those curds with heavy cream. Voila! Cottage cheese. So, anyhow. Here's more about seasonal dairy pricing.

Butter: $2.50/lb $3.50/lb

If you can get unsalted (or salted) butter for $2.00/lb stock up and freeze what you don't need. As long as the butter is rBGH-free, I haven't really seen a noticeable difference in taste and quality compared to organic butter other than my wallet is a lot lighter when I buy organic. 

Kirkland Butter (4 lbs), Oct/Dec/Jan/Jun 2016, $9.99 ($2.50/lb)
Kirkland Butter (4 lbs), May 2016, $10.49

Sour Cream:

Watch the labeling on this item. Some vendors list this by weight and others by volume. It is not the same. Most recipes call for the volume measurement of sour cream. 

The same could be said for fresh blueberries. You're more likely to get better pricing buying blueberries by the pound than by volume (typically sold in 'pint' packaging). A pound of fresh blueberries is roughly one quart by volume. You're better off picking local blueberries at a u-pick farm at $1.60/lb (this year's pricing at Majestic Farm Blueberries in La Center, WA) than buying at any grocery store or bulk retailer. Costco sells fresh, not local blueberries in 18 oz packages for up to $8/package.

Sells by the pound: Costco, Daisy
Sells by volume: Trader Joe's

Cheese:

Kirkland Mild Cheddar (2-lb block), $4 (late June 2016)
Tillamook Kolby/Jack Sliced Cheese (2.5 lb pack), $7.99 (Oct 2016)

Broiled Lemon Chicken

This recipe is for those of us who don't own outdoor grills. This is the second, successful time I've cooked chicken this way. The timing is everything, and maybe also the level of heat and the distance from the flames (if you also have a gas oven). Let's just say that the first time I did this and used the cook times one would use on an outdoor grill, the chicken turned out a bit more charred than I would have liked. I used two packages of chicken drumsticks, or roughly 10 drumsticks. Also, my oven has an adjustable heat setting for the broiler.

Heat: 500 F
Time: 10 minutes one side, 15 minutes other side
Distance: 2nd rack slot from the top

Marinade Ingredients

juice of one large lemon plus its zest
1/4 c olive oil
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1-2 lbs organic chicken parts, with or without skin on

Marinade chicken for 20 minutes or longer. Place chicken in a single layer on a foil-covered baking tray. Reserve marinade. Cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat, Flip the chicken over and brush/spoon marinade on top of chicken. Return to heat and cook for another 10-15 minutes, until a meat thermometer reads 160 F in the thickest part of the chicken.

Kitchen Notes: Preserving the Harvest

I realize now that making a case of salsa (12 pints) for the year was excessive, so I only made five more pints to go with the five pints leftover from last year's canned batch. Although, now that I am eating the stuff that didn't make it into the jar, this recipe ratio is really good. Slightly sweeter than the default batch. What a difference ripe tomatoes and sweet peppers make.

And the best part? No onions.

Makes: 5 pints + 1 cup
Heat: mild

Ingredient Ratio

1 green bell pepper, small dice
1 red bell pepper, small dice
1 orange bell pepper, small dice
12 tomatillos, washed/peeled, quartered
12 green jalapenos, stemmed/seeded
2 red Fresno chiles, stemmed/seeded
2 heads of garlic, cloves peeled and roughly chopped
5 lbs ripe vine tomatoes, quartered
1 bunch cilantro, finely chopped
juice of 2 fresh limes
2 tbsp kosher salt

Add all to a stockpot and bring to a boil. Cook for 1.5 hours.

I ended up having to cook this on a simmer heat for an additional hour to get to a salsa consistency (not watery and thick enough to be held on a tortilla chip). I also used a slotted spoon to fill the jars and I had more than a pint of 'salsa water' leftover, which I haven't used for anything.

The garlic got a rough chop in the food processor.

These items got pureed together: tomatillos, jalapenos, red Anaheim chiles

I also used an immersion blender, but didn't blend the whole batch. Though, the sauce wouldn't be in the chunky category for salsa.

I've been sterilizing washed jars in the oven at 170 F (lowest the oven can go) for 30 minutes.

The lids and bands, get the boiling water treatment. I have yet to get food poisoning using these methods.

Processed in a boiling water bath for 30 minutes. Really, canning time is just under an hour since after you add the jars to the water, it has to come back up to temperature, even though everything is already hot.

Remove from heat and set on racks to cool. Tap on lids after jars have cooled for an hour to check seals. Leave to cool completely for 24 hours. Once you're sure that the jars are sealed properly, you can store the jars with or without the metal band.

Sweet Garlic Grilled Chicken

Yes, two sets of directions on the same recipe means that I've done this recipe twice. Once on an outdoor gas grill and again using a gas oven broiler.

TheFoodeningBlog - sweet grilled garlic chicken

Chicken Marinade

6-8 large garlic cloves, minced
1/4 c brown sugar
2 tbsp raw honey
1/3 c light soy sauce
3 tbsp white vinegar
1/2 c water
2 tbsp olive oil
2 lbs organic chicken parts (I used drumsticks)

Marinade chicken for 30 minutes or overnight. 

The leftover marinade is quite watery. You can reduce it to a 'sauce' by adding 1-2 tsp cornstarch and simmer it until it thickens. Then use this sauce to baste the chicken as it cooks.

Heat: 300 F
Time: 30 total (15 minutes each side)

Above heat/time is for an outdoor gas grill.

To broil in a gas oven:

Heat: 500 F
Time: 10 mins one side, 10-15 mins reverse side
Distance to flame: 2nd rack from the top