today inadvertently became pickling day
So the morning started out well - somewhat gray but not too chilly. I headed out to the Waverly farmer's market, since the roomie's usual farmer's market employment was shut down for the week due to Baltimore Marathoning running right through their location. While sad to have to actually, you know, pay for my delicious fresh produce, it was nice to walk around, pick and choose and general putz my way through the market. Plus I got to see some of the runners making their ways downtown. I also stopped at Carma's Cafe and had some DELICIOUS hot chocolate - apparently (as the woman working told me) they make their own chocolate sauce from Dutch coca, as they didn't like any of the sauces they tried, they all "tasted too much like sugar and not enough like chocolate!" I can atest that Carma's has made a good decision, yum!
Finally made my way home to start an anticipated cooking day. The aforementioned roomie had brought home a pumpkin so we had planned to make curried pumpkin soup and pumpkin cheesecake. While the 'pkin was roasting, I decided to make some quick pickled carrots since I had picked up a 5lb bag of carrots last week. They're easy and tasty and I had bought dill at the market, so there you go. But I went a little overboard with the chopping and ended up with a literal mountain of carrot sticks. I decided to can them, because, well, we have the equipment, so why the hell not? But then I thought, why not pickle some of those green beans I got at the market as well, since the bag is huge and it's silly to pull out the big canning pot for only 2 jars...thus, in addition to the 2 quarts of carrots (plus the large plastic container that went into the fridge for nearly-instant gratification eating tomorrow), I ended up with a quart and a pint of dilled green beans. And since my canner holds 7 jars, it only made sense to think of something to go into the other 3 slots, right? Of course right!
Happily, my grandmother's sweet pickle recipe (the only sweet pickles I really like) was exactly where I thought it was, and a quick trip to the store procured the necessary cucumbers (I actually had all the other ingredients, who'd a thunk!). (There was also a trip to the art supply store for some sculpy for the roomie, where I was highly tempted by tins of beads and origami paper - but managed to restrain myself). While all this is going on the pumpkin is roasting away to delicious smoothness. Making pumplin puree? Really pretty easy! Hurrah for food processors! While the cucumbers were salt curing we toasted the pumpkin seeds and got the curried pumpkin soup going. The soup seemed to turn out well and there are now 3 containers in the freezer. (Did I mention that I declared October "make soup for winter" month? Um, yeah. Tomorrow is Acorn squash-Potato and later this week: Bison Chili. Suggestions welcome for other soups!) Pumpkin cheesecake will have to wait until tomorrow, especially since I need to buy butter. And in cleaning out the freezer to make room for soup I pulled out all my frozen bananas to make a double batch of chocolate chip banana bread tomorrow...hmm, maybe I'll add peanut butter to one of the loaves....
Finally made my way home to start an anticipated cooking day. The aforementioned roomie had brought home a pumpkin so we had planned to make curried pumpkin soup and pumpkin cheesecake. While the 'pkin was roasting, I decided to make some quick pickled carrots since I had picked up a 5lb bag of carrots last week. They're easy and tasty and I had bought dill at the market, so there you go. But I went a little overboard with the chopping and ended up with a literal mountain of carrot sticks. I decided to can them, because, well, we have the equipment, so why the hell not? But then I thought, why not pickle some of those green beans I got at the market as well, since the bag is huge and it's silly to pull out the big canning pot for only 2 jars...thus, in addition to the 2 quarts of carrots (plus the large plastic container that went into the fridge for nearly-instant gratification eating tomorrow), I ended up with a quart and a pint of dilled green beans. And since my canner holds 7 jars, it only made sense to think of something to go into the other 3 slots, right? Of course right!
Happily, my grandmother's sweet pickle recipe (the only sweet pickles I really like) was exactly where I thought it was, and a quick trip to the store procured the necessary cucumbers (I actually had all the other ingredients, who'd a thunk!). (There was also a trip to the art supply store for some sculpy for the roomie, where I was highly tempted by tins of beads and origami paper - but managed to restrain myself). While all this is going on the pumpkin is roasting away to delicious smoothness. Making pumplin puree? Really pretty easy! Hurrah for food processors! While the cucumbers were salt curing we toasted the pumpkin seeds and got the curried pumpkin soup going. The soup seemed to turn out well and there are now 3 containers in the freezer. (Did I mention that I declared October "make soup for winter" month? Um, yeah. Tomorrow is Acorn squash-Potato and later this week: Bison Chili. Suggestions welcome for other soups!) Pumpkin cheesecake will have to wait until tomorrow, especially since I need to buy butter. And in cleaning out the freezer to make room for soup I pulled out all my frozen bananas to make a double batch of chocolate chip banana bread tomorrow...hmm, maybe I'll add peanut butter to one of the loaves....