Homemade Christmas Presents

This year I wanted to share some homemade gifts with people for christmas.  I think homemade gifts are so much more personal.  I also love edible gifts, because lets face it most of us have enough things and many gifts sit in a closet somewhere never to be worn or used.  

The idea came from the plethora of hot peppers I grew this year.  I planted so many hot peppers knowing I wanted to make hot sauce, but I didn't realize just how much hot sauce I'd be able to make with that many peppers.  After making the first batch and seeing how far a handful of peppers went I knew I would have more than I could ever need.  So I decided that I would give nice hot sauce bottles away for presents.  This hot sauce is a sweet habenero hot sauce.  It's not too spicy so its great for coating chicken strips or wings in (yum!).  I also dried many of the cayenne peppers and made my own chill powder and crushed chili flakes.  The crushed chili flakes are in the jar near my finger in the picture (doh!) inside the jar is also a tiny ziplock with the chili powder.  I have been using the chili powder like crazy, adding extra heat to almost everything I make; pasta, chili, chicken, soup, etc.

GMF and I also started brewing our own beer in 2013 so we wanted to share this others.  In the gift package was one of each of our batches - A cream ale (our first beer, and my go to), a raspberry wheat, a apricot wheat, and an extra special bitter (ESB).  I created labels for the beers with just my printer and some avery labels (won't hold up to a cooler full of ice, but does the trick in a pinch).  I also covered the 6 pack box in decoupaged craft paper and a printed label.  I've named our brewery compass Brewing company for now but we are still looking for a permanent name.  What do you think of compass Brewing co?  

Did you give away any homemade gifts this season?  I'd love to hear about them, tell me about them in the comments or write a link to your blog.

I hope everyone is having a great holiday with their family and friends.

Chicken Pot Pie with a Twist

I love dishes like chicken pot pie, because they are so comforting.  They use up whatever veg you have in the garden, or fridge.  The recipes are easily changed and manipulated to suit your own tastes and it is easily froze for future consumption on a cold fall evening.  As you can see in the picture  my twist on this classic recipe is in the crust, instead of one of the two usual suspects (dough crust or dumplings)  I use stove top stuffing.  Trust me this is delicious and sooo easy.  I don't need to mix batter to make this crust, I can just use left over stuffing from a chicken or turkey I have made or just whip up a box from the store.  If you make it from homemade stuffing it is that much better, plus you probably have left over chicken or turkey to use as well.  But I digress, and I had no left overs to use so on with the recipe.  First I gathered together all the veg that I wanted to use.  This included: Sweet potato, potatoes, turnip, carrots, parsnip, bell peppers, onion, and celery.

I chopped up all the root veg first as it takes longer to cook.  I put all this veg is a pot with some water and par-boiled it to give it a head start.  While that was cooking I sliced up the celery, bell peppers and onions and sautéed them.  Then GMF came in a said what about leeks, great idea, so he ran out to the garden and picked a couple small leeks to add.  I also added about 3 cloves of crushed garlic to the sautéing veg.  Note in the future I would do more leeks, celery and onions.  The ratio of root veg to others was a little to high this time.  Then I put everything together in a large pot and sprinkled with a couple tablespoons of flour and mixed in.  For the stock I used chicken stalk - about 2 cups by eye (just enough to almost cover the veg) and a couple shots of vermouth (this gives it a great flavour) it will reduce and thicken with the flour.  The main seasonings I used were salt, pepper and lots of sage.  Oh and just as I did when I was cooking I almost forgot the chicken.  I sliced up a couple chicken breasts and sautéed them with some oil and sage and added this to the mixture of vegetables.

When the mixture was all combined and the sauce thickened I added it to individual sized ramekins, but you can make this in one large casserole pot and serve family style as well.  Then I added the stove stop stuffing to the top and cooked in the oven on broil to crispen the stuffing.  

  

As you can see when it is cooked some of the juices will boil over the top.  Be careful when cracking into this it will be very warm on the inside, but soooo delicious.  Here's a not so great photo of what it looks like when someone has started munching.

I also had plenty to make three freezable individual dishes.  I used the tin pie plates for this because we had them on hand.  I put them in a ziplock bag in the freezer as well.  I need to get some pyrex individual pie plates for this in the future.

   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Harvest Monday - Oct 7th

I can't believe it's October already, probably because the weather here has been summer hot for the last week or so, 25-35 degrees most days.  It's that time again where we get to show off our harvests from the previous week and look at what others are harvesting around the world over at Daphne's Dandelions.

The harvests are definitely slowing, but I still got a good haul this week.  I picked the last of the tomatoes as they were starting to split like crazy on the vines, so they will ripen inside.  I've been making lots of fresh salsa (I love homemade salsa!).  I've continued to pick hot peppers, and theres no end in site for these.  I've got tons in the freezer and I'll dry some more.   I also picked the last of the rainbow carrots.  One of them was a big fatty and delicious as a snack.  Also the fall radishes, only three out of the 6 created good fruit.  They were tasty I think I'll try this variety again in the fall, now to find right packet of seeds to identify which variety they were.  I'm also still harvesting leeks.  This week for my Grow it! Cook it! Eat it! Live it! series I posted a leek and potato soup recipe with crispy potato skin and bacon bit topping.

I've pulled out two of the three tomato plants, the grape one is still going and ripen fruit on its own.  so I'll leave that till the first frost warning.  I am wanting to make room for my fall planting of garlic.  How close to frost do I plant the garlic, this will be my first time and any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Grow it! Cook it! Eat it! Live it!

This weeks recipe is a grilled salsa.  I have been picking more tomatoes that we can eat fresh lately so I decided to make some salsa.   I really enjoy a salsa with a smoky flavour so I grilled all the veg before blending it.  I grilled Tomatoes (2 beefsteak tomatoes, and about 30 grape tomatoes), onion (about 4 large slices), garlic (3 cloves), one habenero, one cherry bomb pepper, and one yellow bell pepper.  I blackened the peppers so that I could remove the skin.  The onions and tomatoes I grilled till soft and the garlic I grilled till soft and removed the skin. Once everything was grilled and skinned I put it all in a blender with about 1/4 of lime juice, 1/2 cup of cilantro chopped, 1 tsp of coriander seeds, 1 tsp of zilitol (a sugar substitute) 1 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of pepper.  I blended it up and then canned it.  (Note this recipe was for a hot salsa because of the habenero you can adjust ingredients to match your spice level).

Thanks to Sharon for linking up last week with her Pumpkin and Silver Beet Lasagna.

Grow it! Cook it! Eat it! Live it!

Last week I started a new blog series to highlight one recipe a week with ingredients that are grown locally.  I would like to thank my two fellow bloggers for linking up with me last week.  Please check out their blogs: Mark's Veg Plot and An Oregon's Cottage.   Last week I highlighted fajitas cooked on the fire while Mark highlighted braised beef in tomato sauce and Jami posted two great salsa recipes.  Please be sure to link up this week with a recipe of your own.  I find these links the best way to find new blogs with similar interests are you and a great way to have new people find you!  I participate in 3 other series:  Monday Harvest over at Daphne's Dandelions, Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon's Cottage and Saturday Spotlight at Suburban Tomato.  

I'm posting this weeks Grow it! Cook it! Eat it! Live it! early because I will be away tomorrow competing in the provincial championships of disc golf.  Disc golf is another one of my hobbies, if you have not heard of the sport it is played similar to golf but with small discs instead of a ball and club.  Check out more info about it on the wiki.

Ok so on with my recipe for this week.  This week I made Thai beef salad.  Its a great dish to make at the end of the week when you haven't shopped in a while and have odds and ends.  GMF pulled out some beef tenderloin that had been frozen in Kobi beef marinade (often I make my own asian marinade with soya sauce, peanut butter, sesame oil, honey and salt and pepper).  I sliced it really really thin with my ceramic knife (if you haven't tried ceramic knives yet you should I LOVE them!).  I then sautéed the beef quickly in a little oil and sat off to the side.  I then cut up whatever veg I have on hand (this time I picked a cherry bomb pepper, cayenne pepper, cajun bell pepper, some broccoli and a carrot from the garden and I had a yellow bell pepper and an onion in the fridge.)  I sautéed these veg with a little soya sauce, sesame oil and salt and pepper.  I also sautéed some been sprouts (GMF thinks its crazy that I like bean sprouts so much, but they are so yummy).  I cooked up some chow mein noodles and then sauteed them with soya sauce, sesame oil, honey and salt and pepper.  I then add the beef and all the veg and toss.  Serve with some spinach leaves chopped, lots of cilantro and sesame seeds for garnish.  Depending on your spice level you can add some chili garlic paste (I added my homemade hot sauce) and here is the finished product!

Hot Sauce!!!

The moment has come.  I have been so excited about making my own hot sauce since I planted my peppers in the spring.  And now that I've made some I realized I could have done it a while ago because it doesn't take anywhere near as many hot peppers as I thought.  So I went out and picked a bunch of red Cayennes, a cherry bomb, a couple habaneros and a banana pepper (Not all for the hot sauce, I also made some more quick pickled peppers).

I decided I wanted a depth of flavour to my hot sauce so I would use some bell pepper, onion and garlic as well.  I chopped up 1 yellow bell pepper, 1 cajun bell, 1/3 of a large spanish onion, 1 habanero (seeds removed), about 12 cayenne peppers and crushed 6 garlic cloves.  I sautéed all of this in the wok until soft. (Important hint - make sure the vent fan is running at full whack or you start to breath in too much hot pepper fumes).

For the liquid I used 1/4 cup of water, 1/4 cup of white vinegar and 1/8 cup of sugar (this liquid was left over after making my quick pickled peppers).  I blended the sautéed mixture and the liquid using the liquifying mode on my blender.  After a quick taste I was blown away at the heat, a little too much for us.  So I added 1 jar of roasted red peppers (I know a cheat but I had it on hand).  Then blended some more.  This made it taste delicious, still very spicy and also flavourful.  I then strained this liquid into a small pan (to remove the cayenne seeds and any skins that didn't get broken up).  The sauce then simmered and reduce to about 1/3-1/4 of its original volume to thicken it.  I poured the sauce into a decorative olive oil jar that I had on hand and put the rest in a mason jar to cool.  I will freeze the amount in the mason jar for later.  I couldn't believe that I only used a dozen cayenne peppers.  I have hundreds on the plants as seen in the picture below of the finished product!

I'm going to make sooo much hot sauce.  I've got to get some woozy jars to put it in though.  Does anyone know a good source to get these in Canada?

Hot Peppers & Cross Pollination.

Today I'm linking up with Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage.  This series has people post on a variety of garden topics including what's growing/blooming, tips, ideas, progress, harvests, recipes, before/afters or how-tos.  I  love connecting with other gardeners and seeing what is happening.  I find it very motivational.  You should check some of the posts in the series this week. (click on the button to the left).

On to the POST:  

Ok so I will be the first to admit that I over planted hot peppers this year.  We are getting tons of hot peppers coming off all the plants though!  Can't wait to make my own hot sauce!  They are definitely too close together.  But I have read that to avoid cross pollination different plants need to be 100's of feet apart.  So I guess I should just get used to this because I don't have that much space and I want to keep planting different kinds of peppers.  This year I planted 6 cayenne plants, 2 habanero plants, 1 cherry bomb, 1 cajun bell and 2 banana pepper plants.  I know that's a lot of plants in a small area (as you can see below).

The first to produce fruit were the cherry bomb then the cajun bell and the banana peppers, then the cayenne peppers and finally the habanero.  We noticed a couple weeks ago that one of the cayenne pepper plants is growing 2 distinctly different shaped peppers.  The normal long skinny sometimes curled cayenne pepper (B), and what looks very much like a jalapeño pepper (A).  We think the cayenne has cross pollinated with the cherry bomb creating a hybrid shape.

Here is a picture of the cherry bomb, as you can see it is short and wide with a darker skin colour than the cayenne.  We think this is the best candidate for what has cross pollinated.  In the background you can see the cajun bell plant.

 We also have a very short and stumpy cajun bell on our hands.  Seen in the centre of the photo below. It started to turn colour fairly quickly and was actually eaten yesterday bright red (this photo was taken about a week ago).  The stumpy pepper tasted like a cajun bell.   We are not sure this one is result of cross pollination or just a runt of the plant?  Any ideas?

The last issue we are having with our peppers is curling leaves on the habaneros.  It's just the top leaves and I'm not sure why this is happening.  There was one week where the weather fluctuated quite a bit from really hot to very mild.  This could be the cause but we are not sure.  The plants are still flowering and fruiting so were not overly worried but just curious.  

Has anyone else had interesting cross pollination in their garden?  

Or

Have you had curling leaves on pepper plants, and what do you think the cause is?

Fast Pickled Banana Peppers

So I've got many banana peppers coming off the two plants I have now and GMF has been begging me to pickle some, so a couple days ago I finally did.  This is my first pickling experience but I think there will be many more to come this summer and fall.  I am really looking forward to pickling beets  (I LOVE pickled beets - even as a kid when I was the pickiest eater ever pickled beets was always a safe bet with me, I know weird eh?).  This pickling technique is just for keeping in the fridge it is not properly canned for storing in a pantry.  Will work on that technique later when I have bigger batches (then I have to find room to store stuff, we don't have a pantry!  thats going to be interesting!)  This jar will last several weeks in the fridge.  Which is fine because we'll eat it in that time.