Category: food

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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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food travel

Deep Fried Girl Scout Cookies were the hit of the Kentucky State Fair

Here in Kentucky we know about good food. After all, we invented Fried Chicken (the brand), Papa John lives here, Ale-8-One was first bottled in 1926, and (oh yeah) there’s the whole bourbon thing. I never said the food we promote here is good for you, but it sure does taste good.

New at the Kentucky State Fair this year was Deep Fried Girl Scout Cookies. They were delicious. You could order Samoas, Thin Mints or Tagalongs that were dipped in batter and deep-fried. Four cookies to an order for $5 or a sampler with two of each type for $7. I had the Samoas and thought they were delicious. I love to order food that I can’t make at home and this certainly met my criteria.

Now, if I’d only had a shot of Maker’s Mark to wash them down with …

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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 food

Low Sugar Peach Jam

yellow orange and red peach slices close up

It’s been a good year for peaches in the Ohio Valley. Despite the dry weather, our favorite orchard had no shortage when we made our pilgrimage upriver to buy fruit last weekend.

Bray Orchard Bedford Kentucky box of peaches

Last year, when we made peach jam, we tried the low-sugar version and had great success. The low sugar version includes one cup of no-sugar-added apple juice. This year we thought we’d reduce the sugar even more because the peaches are so sweet on their own. One box made two batches of jam.

blue bowl of fresh slices of peaches

The first batch we made used only one cup of sugar. The second batch used two cups of sugar.

mason jars of peach jam with handwritten labels

Reducing the sugar also reduces the overall volume of jam, resulting in fewer jars. We marked jars with one star or two stars to help us remember which jars had more sugar.

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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 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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canning cooking food garden photography

How we make zucchini bread here at Lydia Street

This is the time of year that zucchini starts to be plentiful, whether you grow it, buy it at the farmer’s market or have generous friends (like we do).

This recipe isn’t difficult, especially if you have a food processor to help you grate the zucchini.

That, and zesting the lemon is the hardest, most time-consuming part. Our recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of grated lemon peel but we use the zest of an entire lemon (a little more than double that amount.

Sugar, flour, eggs, baking powder, vegetable oil and some salt is everything else you need.

Here’s the entire recipe. We leave out the nuts but I’m sure this bread would be delicious if you added them.

A batch will make 2 large loaves or 5 mini-loaves. On this day we made 2 batches (we did NOT double the recipe, we made each batch separately but baked them together).

After they bake for one hour. Yum! (These mini-loaves are especially good for freezing.)

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canning cooking food garden

Tomatoes: Roma

This year we decided to grow more Roma tomatoes after we noticed them in a garden in the neighborhood last year. The plants are much smaller than our cherry tomatoes (those are Sweet 100s) but they are growing TONS of tomatoes.

Looking forward to making some delicious sauce with these.