Category: cooking

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cooking garden spring winter

Signs of spring and renewal

forsythiaSpring! In the form of forsythia forced to bloom indoors.

I’ve been away. I’m sorry for neglecting to tend this blog, my garden, my life.

Winter came and it was cold and damp and the sun didn’t shine for days. Some of you out there understand the condition known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD) which afflicts people during the dark of the year. I could never live in the Pacific northwest because of the weather, the leaden sky, the incessant rain. I know it can be beautiful there and I remember a particularly spectacular July when I visited Seattle for business when the sky was blue and the air was crisp while back home it was humid and 98 degrees at 10 o’clock in the morning.

And there have been changes at our little estate on Lydia Street.  A job I (Dianna) held for almost exactly 12 years abruptly ended. And Christe added a part-time position as the choir director for a Unitarian Universalist church that we both love. And our close friends decided to become foster parents to a new baby two months before they learned they were pregnant meaning that our weekly “family dinners” are plus one and aren’t every week any longer.

Soon I’ll post photos of our new/shared home office and music studio where I’m starting my freelance writing and communications consulting practice. I’ll also get back into the Friday Dog Photo routine and share my (almost perfected) scone recipe.

And if the weather WOULD EVER WARM UP I’ll write about how we’re composting and show you early spring garden clean-up photos and share our garden plans for the upcoming season.

Thanks for your patience.

~ Dianna

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canning cooking garden

Oh-So-Easy Crock Pot Tomato Sauce

Roma tomatoes Oh dear ones, have I shared my oh-so-easy recipe for tomato sauce in a crock pot with you?

I promise that this is the easiest tomato sauce you will ever make.

Crock Pot Tomato Sauce

Fill your crock pot with fresh ripe washed tomatoes. We grew Romas this year, but you can do it with any tomato you have, or an assortment. Remove any stems or leaves or bad places but don’t worry about slicing them or peeling them. Fill the pot. In fact, overfill the pot to the point where you can’t fit the lid on top.

Add the tiniest bit of water, just so the bottom tomatoes don’t scorch.

Turn on high. Walk away.

A few hours later, come back and stir. Some of the tomatoes will be breaking down. You can squish those as you stir. Put the lid on askew — no need to seal it.

Keep on high. Walk away. If you are going to be away from home for several hours or if you are going to sleep, stir the pot and then turn it to low.

If you’re going to be home and awake, turn it back to high. Stir occasionally. At about 30 hours from your beginning time, turn it off completely and let the sauce cool.

Using an immersion blender, whirr everything, peels and all, until you have a beautiful thick, somewhat smooth sauce. This takes 90 seconds or so. It is so hard. This is one of the reasons I own an immersion blender. (The other reason is smoothies (!) but that’s another post.)

Pack into bags or freezer-worthy containers and stick in the freezer.

Ta-Dah!

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cooking food garden

Sweet 100s are our favorite tomato

basket filled with red ripe cherry tomatoes

This is the third year we’ve grown the cherry tomato variety “Sweet 100,” so-named for the quantity of fruit it produces. I think it should be renamed “Sweet 1000” because man-o-man these plants keep delivering.

We pick the amount in the photo above EVERY DAY. Which means we have to eat that many every day. Just the two of us.

“Here, have some tomatoes with your morning coffee, dear. What’s that?! You don’t want tomatoes in your lunch again? Well I’m sorry, but if you don’t eat your fair share we will be eating them for dinner. Again.”

Last year we had six plants. Every day we each took a quart-sized bag to our respective workplaces to give away. And because they are SWEET (like the name, Sweet 100) our friends started eating them like candy, popping them into their mouths. Two, maybe three at a time.

This year, we wisely bought only two plants. Any day now we’ll experiment with drying them. If they don’t bury us first.

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cooking food pie of the month

Pie of the Month Club – Peach

Did we tell you about our family’s “Pie of the Month” club?

A few years ago we opened the best Christmas present ever — a promise of a homemade pie each month from Christe’s mother.

When we drove up to our favorite orchard last Saturday morning we bought enough peaches for us and for this month’s pie.

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canning cooking food

In a pickled state these days

We didn’t grow cucumbers this year but that hasn’t kept us from buying them to make our famous Bread and Butter Pickles.

You ask: “Why are your pickles famous?”

Because we say so!

I think they are so easy because you don’t have to cook anything except for the brine. (We use the Ball Pickling Mix.) So after you pack the jars you simply add the brine.

The last step is to process them in a water bath. Six weeks later you have lovely pickles.

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canning cooking food

Everybody’s favorite jam — Blueberry

blueberry jam in a small jar

We love blueberry jam.

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canning cooking food summer

Blackberry Jam and other controversies

Just LOOK at what we found at the farmer’s market over the weekend! Jam! Well, not yet anyway.

We found these old Mason jars in a junk store a few years ago – five of them for $3 — and I love the way the jam looks in them.

I know that some people strain the seeds from the jam but we don’t. Call us crazy. We don’t care.

One batch of blackberry jam is 5 cups crushed fruit, one package of dry Sure Jell pectin and 7 cups of sugar. You add the pectin to the berries and bring to a boil. Next, add the sugar and bring back to a hard, rolling boil for one minute. Fill clean and hot jars, add lids and rings.

And here’s the controversial next step. Turn the jars upside down for 5 minutes, then flip them back over and let them cool. I know, I know, most recipes will tell you to put the jars into a water bath but you don’t REALLY have to do that.

You’ll start to hear the pop of the lids sealing almost instantly, indicating that the jars are properly sealed and ready for storage or serving or gifting.

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cooking summer

This is what we ate: Shrimp and couscous with spinach


The shrimp was sauteed in olive oil, butter and minced garlic and served over couscous and fresh spinach.

The sauce from the shrimp added the perfect flavor for the couscous.

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cooking garden summer

When it comes to tomatoes, split happens


It happens every year.

You’ll head out to the garden to harvest your beautiful red ripe tomatoes and you will find cracks and splits in the fruit. This condition s caused by a dry period followed by overwatering (or ANY watering).

The tomatoes are perfectly edible, of course, unless bugs have decided to invade the center of the fruit. These tomatoes were picked and eaten immediately, despite their less-than-perfect appearance.

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cooking food garden summer

This is what we ate: Caprese salad, hummus and seitan

We picked 20 or more cherry tomatoes but instead of standing in the garden and eating them right off the vine we acted like grownups (for once) and took them inside the house where they sat on the counter for an hour while we decided what to make for dinner. The fact that it was 105 degrees and we didn’t want to COOK anything factored into our meal planning.

We decided to make caprese salad (with basil, people, we also have basil) and served it with roasted red pepper hummus, fresh cucumber slices and barbequed seitan. What’s seitan you say? Just click here to find out.

Did you ever think you’d stop to take pictures of your plate BEFORE you ate dinner? Me either. But oh my gosh this plate was just too beautiful so we HAD to show you. It’s all the more exciting because it features the first tomato harvest!

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