August Food Swap recap

Another fun and successful food swap today, this time in Oak Park. Marisa McClellan of Food in Jars was there, which was really cool. Since Im a huge fan of hers, I had made two of her recipes for the swap.  Vanilla Syrup and   Sweet Pickled Red Grapes. I think putting out the samples of the grapes was a good idea-they are unusual and surprising. I brought 6 jars to trade and only brought home the tasting jar! The grapes have cinnamon and clove and vanilla and peppercorns, plus I tossed in some coriander seeds and a star anise section for a special kick. I love how they turned out.

I also brought some anise licorice syrup that I made using a recipe from Andrew Schloss’ Homemade Soda book. I’m crazy about syrups lately and have been making plenty from this book. I think this one could really do double duty not only as a soda base, but also used how you might use a reduced balsamic vinegar- drizzled on grilled meats, or drizzled on cooked greens.

Last but not least, I made some banana vanilla rum butter. Everyone who tasted it said it was amazing. I found the recipe in the Tart and Sweet cookbook. I like fruit butters because they are very easy-cook the heck out of some fruit, add sugar and spice/flavorings and thats it!  No pectin, no gel test. Just a nice glossy and thick spread that is packed with fruit flavor. I ended up with a few jars of that leftover, ( I brought 12 half pints) but I traded almost every other jar!

Again, the booty I brought home was very impressive. I just love seeing what other people cook and make. The variety of foodstuffs is SO cool.

I got 4 kinds of granola, s’more bars, honey raisin challah bread, chocolate chip sunbutter cookies, banana cookies, chocolate chip cookies, truffles, pickled green tomatoes, pickled cukes, peach salsa, white peach lemon verbena preserves, raspberry fig port jam, strawberry rhubarb sauce, cherry pie filling, homemade butter, peach barbeque sauce, salted caramel sauce, butterscotch sauce, boozy cherries and a bottle of peach bourbon.

The peach bourbon is out of this world and I have to get more of it or figure out how to make it. Wow.

After 3 swaps, I am getting to see some familiar faces each time and I like how the venue changes. This time we were hosted at Green Home Experts in Oak Park, IL. They had tons of great stuff in there, including some stainless steel reusable straws! The way we go thru straws in this house, that would be a smart buy.

For the third time in a row, I convinced a friend to come along too. This time my friend Mandy came with her family recipe for pickled cukes. I think I converted her to the swapping lifestyle and we were totally talking strategies for the next swap all the drive home!

chicago food swap

The very first thing I thought when I first read about Food Swaps, is: I have to make this happen.

The burgeoning movement of swapping homemade foods with local folks for their homemade foods, is growing, my friends, and that is because it is very awesome.

Luckily for me, before I had to do it all myself, I found a food swap that was just starting up! Sadly, I missed the first one due to travel, so I vowed I would not miss the next. I even recruited a friend to come along and trade, too.

In the weeks beforehand, I spent a while trying to figure out what would be fun to make for the swap. Something that would be delicious, that people would want to trade for, that would stand out.

I knew I wanted to bring some of the very delicious Tahitian Vanilla syrup that I had made before for a different canning swap. I feel like the vanilla syrup is such an easy recipe that to make it still be a nice trade, I put it in a lovely bottle from Cost Plus World Market. Its tall and has a pouring spout with a cap.

Next I experimented with two flavors of mustard. I got a great book for Christmas by Karen Solomon that had some recipes for mustard. The first one I tried, I used mustard powder, blueberry jam, and port. You have to mix it up and then let it sit (covered) on the shelf for a few weeks to mellow out. The second one, I got an idea from an Alton Brown recipe I saw online that uses the juice from sweet pickles as its liquid. Now, I had made quite a lot of sweet pickles using golden beets and onions, and there happened to be a jar still in my fridge. So I wondered what would happend if I minced up the beet pickles and added them as well as the juice to the mustard powder. So I mixed up a batch of that as well and set it out to cure.

A couple weeks later, I tried them both and thought I had something pretty interesting on my hands. I kept them in the fridge until the trade. I had two 8oz jars of each, plus some for tasting and at the swap I set out some pretzel sticks so that people could sample the wares. Id like to try the blueberry port mustard in a viniagrette.

The last thing I made was a batch of chocolate banana jam. This recipe was straight from another book I got for Christmas, called   Mes Confitures. The reason I picked this jam to make was because I had a very large bunch of extremely ripe bananas on my counter, and I didnt feel like making banana bread.  I grabbed Mes Confitures and looked thru it to see if she had a banana recipe, and yes, she had several! I also liked the recipe because it could be dairy free, by using bittersweet chocolate without dairy, and it was also pretty simple. The chocolate was expensive, so I jarred it in the 8 oz jars, rather than a pint or jelly jar that was 12 oz. I couldnt help giving a couple jars away to friends before the swap, so I only had 5 to take to trade.

Well, I managed to trade everything that I brought! And there are still things I wished I could have gotten, so next time I may bring more items. There were about 22 people registered for the swap, but I think there were about 15-17 people there, which meant that there was really quite alot to choose from. Many people brought more than one thing, too. And there were plenty of samples, which was great.

I ended up taking home: spicy habanero jelly (to give to a friend who is really into that sort of thing), a bottle of limoncello, a jar of sour cherry syrup, a loaf of sourdough bread, a loaf of cheddar scallion bread, two giant cupcakes, a jar of strawberry-rhubarb-orange jam or was it jelly, a jar of lemon curd, some gluten free chocolate brownie, chocolate nib granola, a plate of “halfway” cookies, truffles and english toffee. A LOT of a lot!

I didnt take my nice camera, so I failed to get much decent pictures, but hopefully people will post them here

The organizers are hoping to do one every other month, and may move the location around, but I hope to be a part of it again! And if you are my friend, I may try to drag you into it also! So start thinking about what you want to make!

braided rag rug

I have been working with a friend of mine to reorganize my living space, and it has been totally inspiring me to be creative again. Its probably no surprise to people for whom tidiness and organization come naturally, but  I am not one of those people, so I was happy to discover that just having room to work on my projects got me all excited to make some pretty things.

This weekend, my friend and I  actually focussed on finishing the kitchen and dining area, but we did find time to face my secret fabric stash. Ok, it wasnt a secret. Its hard to keep three giant storage bins full of fabric a secret. It never would have occurred to me to put all the fabric out on a bookshelf next to the sewing table, however, luckily it did occur to my awesome friend. I now have a really colorful and interesting little sewing area, so it was fun to sit down and do some projects. I havent had my sewing machine out in ages. Now that it has a little corner, its easy to sit down and work on something when I have a little time to spare. So I tackled my little mending pile….ooops. While the mending pile was being neglected, my kids grew out of a few of the things…thats ok. A few pairs of leggings with holes in the seams…gave those over to my daughter to cut up and play with, and she was occupied for hours.

And we had found the bag of curtains that I bought years ago at the thrift store-perfectly great Ikea curtains, just needed hemming. I had been procrastinating because  I didnt trust my skills to perfectly hem four panels to the same exact length. Then I took a good look at what was hanging up already…I must confess that my kids had clearly done some scissor experimentation already, and they were really pretty ratty. So I threw perfection to the wind, and pretty soon, I had new curtains hanging up in  my bedroom.

So, with a couple successes under my belt, I got cocky and started cruising on Pinterest for something fun. And I got this:

http://www.craftpassion.com/2010/03/recycle-tutorial-braided-rag-rug.html

I have always loved the look of the rag rug. And I have a special fondness for upcycling old fabric, sheets, second hand linens, pillowcases, etc. So to combine those, plus, no knitting or hand sewing? I was in. Now, my husband and I have never used the flat top sheet that comes in the set. I happened to have two king size flat sheets, one green and one with some stripes that I thought would make a great pattern in this braided rug.

what do you think?

sewing the braids down onto the backing and padding

notes: My strips were slightly wider than the recommended one inch and that made it harder to braid them. I also didnt pay strict attention to keeping the braids flat and the fabric right side up. As a finished product, the rug edges “bowl” up slightly, which may be because I sewed the braids too tightly. Also. SUPREMELY hard to sew the braids because the presser foot kept getting caught in the fabric. Will have to see how to remedy that. However, Im very pleased with it and now have something cute to stand on in the kitchen. I used a quilting cotton print for the back, but I added two layers of flannel sheet for padding and structure, and it feels perfect.

Best Laid Plans

I had planned a glorious summer full of preserving,(see earlier post) and then I broke my leg on July 3, which ultimately required surgery. Then I spent the rest of the summer  not being able to put any weight on the leg, and so I did not put up anything else (except my leg). I did have the best laid plans- and then I got laid up. Ha Ha. See, I didnt break my sense of humor, just my tibial plateau! I got jammed up! Get it?  I could keep going, but I will give you a break. Don’t you like my lame jokes? Get it, Lame? Because lame means…ok, Im done.

I did actually get a few batches done the days before my accident. I made Strawberry Lemon Jam, Blueberry Jam, Grape Catchup  Sauce, Cherry Salsa, and Sweet Onion Jam. I also did a Rhubarb Syrup and a Rhubarb Vinegar. Oh, and I had got some refrigerator pickles done. I did cucumbers and asparagus, separately, and I did them both two ways-sweet (bread and butter) and sour (savory but no dill). I was testing the recipes before I made a batch to can, when oops, massive injury got in the way.

I had friends come EVERY SINGLE weekday for about 2 months to  help me and my kids have lunch. Friends brought us meals for dinner, friends took my kids to the beach and the park and over to their houses for playdates. I had hours and hours to myself…and all I did was sleep and recover. And start Physical Therapy to learn how to walk again and practice things like bending my toes forward more than a degree or two. So, I took things slowly and cautiously and followed Drs orders to the “T”, and am now pretty recovered. The bone is healed (and full of hardware) and Im using a cane and getting the kids to and fro on my own again. And Im itchin to get back into the kitchen!

Some of the jars I got done in June were gifted to the very generous and helpful group of friends and family who rallied together to help our family cope during the crisis. Which means I have a very small collection of preserves. Im not complaining! I’m happy to have what I do! Truth be told, I had planned to gift a lot of what I made anyway. I was hoping to spend the summer trying new recipes and finding out what we liked and what we needed. I will continue to do that no matter what.

At the very end of the season, I managed to make a very small batch of Tomato Butter in the crockpot with the last of my CSA tomatoes. I just made it and stuck it in the fridge. It tastes heavenly on fancy bakery bread with cheese, and on Kashi crackers. I still have a little left.

Then this week, I happened upon an announcement for a  local canned food swap. I was inspired to join up for it, so I decided to make some Tahitian Vanilla Syrup. I also brought a jar or two of some of my earlier projects. I traded a couple of those, but it was definitely the syrup that was getting the most oohs and ahhs. I traded 5 of the syrups!

I didnt take any pictures at the swap, but you can find them on the facebook page for the event or here.

I came home with garlic chili sauce, red plum butter, cinnamon peach butter, peach sauce, pickled beets, apricot honey butter, and nectarine cardamom preserves. I think I see some pancakes with peach sauce in my near future! And more swapping!

Summer Preserves Projects

List of Preserves To Put Up This Summer

From Food In Jars Blog

  • Tomato Butter
  • Grape Catchup
  • White Peach Sauce
  • White Peach Butter
  • Blueberry Jam

From Putting Up More

  • Cherry Salsa
  • Bread n Butter Pickles
  • Squash Pickles
  • Achar
  • Cran-Orange Relish
  • Sweet Onion Jam
  • Steak Sauce
  • Pickled Beets

From Putting Up

  • Picnic Relish
  • Pickled Asparagus

From Ball Home Preserving

  • Ginger Garlic Mustard
  • Peach BBQ Sauce

Misc

I may add to this, of course, but my this is my initial plan.

I made notes of how much the recipes made so I could make sure I have enough jars, and have notes on what is for my pantry and what is intended as gifts. Most of these recipes will be new to me, and the first time I am making them. This is really only my second summer with a canner, and so I am very new to all of this. I am excited by all the new, modern and fun recipes that are out there now!