Eat From the Larder Challenge 2018 – End of Week Three

Ha.
So, in the name of spring cleaning and getting the kitchen a bit less cluttered, I re-boxed all the empty mason jars and, in the process, I took an inventory of my home-jarred… stuff.
Ye gods.
I have over 20 pints of crushed tomatoes still to go through.
Also over a dozen jars of sweet preserves (fruit butter, jam, fruit curd) and six jars of choke cherry relish.
 
It’s a bit of a shock. I knew I had at least a dozen pints of tomatoes, but I didn’t realize I had so much more. Same with the sweet preserves.
 
So, to the surprise of nobody, Fabulous Friday Dinner involved both crushed tomatoes AND choke cherry relish. On a similar note, an up-coming pot luck dessert is going to feature some rose-chili jelly (which was a gift from a friend, not something I put up) and I’ll probably be adding choke-cherry sweet preserves (either Goblin Fruit jam or choke-cherry curd) to my home-made yoghurt for breakfasts and/or snacks.
 
None-of-which will get me anywhere near finished all of this stuff, but at least I know I’ve got it and can plan accordingly.
Heh. I have to admit that the combination of choke-cherry relish and crushed tomatoes worked out really well. Like: Substantially better than I expected it would. (I expected it to be okay. I did NOT expect it to be delicious, which it totally was! Woohoo!)
 
I took a morning to look after the ferments, earlier this week. The fermented previously-frozen-sunchokes are… weird. They are mushy. Which is probably to be expected, given that they started out as blanched (therefore softened) already. They don’t smell weird. They smell like sunchokes that have been fermented with a little bit of tumeric. But the texture is… more than a bit unappetizing.
My plan for them is to (a) strain them out of their fermentation brine, then soak them in some cold water, before (b) adding them to a long-cooking dish like a braise or a slow-baked chickpea stew (most likely also featuring crushed tomatoes… to the surprise of nobody).
Fingers crossed that it works!
 
Things I’ve made this week include:
 
* Yoghurt – cultured for 10 hours, rather than eight, which worked out really well. It’s thick enough to be the semi-solid yoghurt Of My Youth, but also thin enough that, if I add a liquid sweetener like maple syrup or pomegranate molasses, it basically becomes a lovely, mason-jar-portable protein drink. I’m hoping to use goblin fruit jam in a similar manner, though I’ll need to thin it with water or something for that to work. 🙂
 
* The above-mentioned stew – 1 pint crushed tomatoes, 1C choke-cherry relish, left-over potatoes-carrots-onions-cabbage from last weekend’s pot roast, dregs of a bottle of red wine, 1 pkg stewing beef that needed using up, pot barley, onion, dried garden nettles, dried garden sage, rosemary, frozen winter squash, and the last of the (non-garden) frozen kale.
 
* Three loaves of bread + a batch of chocolate chip cookies. It’s felt really good to be baking regularly again. The bread is turning out well. I feel accomplished when I make it. The cookies are a bonus – though it’s nice to fill the oven so completely when I’m baking. No wasted space/heat! 😀
 
* A lot of pot dishes (fried rice, stew, and pasta) featuring left-over roast pork, garlic, and last summer’s frozen zucchini & frozen (garden) rainbow chard, which has been SO lovely. I knew I had some somewhere and I’m SO glad I was able to find them.
 
We’re heading into Week Four. The garden, in spite of a a two-week very cold snap, is starting to wake up. The chives are up (both garlic and onion), the Vietnamese garlic is sprouting, both varieties of rhubarb are poking their heads above ground (and were not deterred at all by the sub-zero temperatures and inch-thick ice from freezing rain), and the dandelions are starting to leaf as well. Which I don’t expect to be harvesting wild greens or early herbs until Beltane (if not slightly later), it’s still really heartening to even see them coming back.
 
Goals for this week include:
 
* Use up 2 litres of crushed tomatoes. (I’ll still have, like, 8 litres left. BUT it’s a start. And there won’t be any fresh tomatoes for months, so…)
 
* Make some kind of jam thumb-print cookies (mix the jam with a beaten egg… I think that’s how to do it) to bake along-side a covered dinner braise/roast in order to (a) not waste the space/heat, but also (b) use up another cup or two of sweet preserves.
 
* Do a breakfast-for-dinner meal where we eat pancakes made with fruit butter and yoghurt.
 
* Maybe, if I’m feeling Very Adventurous, try sprouting something? (Two different friends have given me seed sprouting mixes, and I want to try them out)
 
* Make an excellent (fingers crossed) batch of vegan brownies for the above-mentioned pot-luck. They may or may not be gluten-free though…
 
Wish me luck!
 
 
– TTFN,
– Meliad the Birch Maiden.