Totally Tomatoes

We love sharing our grown or prepared food with family and neighbors- especially when we have an abundance of it! Our next door neighbor, Stan, is a single guy that smiles cheek to cheek when we're at the door. We like to deliver homemade goodies or fresh eggs whenever we can. Someone's gotta look out for those single guys, right? Well, one day that single guy brought over this basket. It was full of beautiful ripe apricots, plums, and apples. As a thank you, we emptied it and sent it back over full of fresh eggs and a variety of garden tomatoes. I mean we couldn't just send over an empty basket!

He's been telling his friends at work about our eggs and wants a business card to pass out (?!). Um, I'll work on that...haha. Anyway, we went crazy this summer with a variety of tomatoes from our garden. Some of them were as big as my face- and I have a big face! These tomatoes are just from one day of picking...

We struggled to keep up with the tomato harvest this year because it fell right during summer break with so much vacationing and swimming to keep us otherwise occupied. Of course we made salsa, but that doesn't stay fresh for very long. You can freeze it or cook and bottle it, but it's just not the same. We ate tomatoes with eggs for breakfast, with sandwiches and salads at lunch, and pasta and pizza at dinner...but we still had so many left!

Tired of our kitchen and fridge covered in tomatoes, my hubby finally just made a huge batch of stewed tomatoes. He cut up the large tomatoes and left the cherry tomatoes whole. Crushed garlic, onion, basil and herbs from our garden, salt and sugar (to taste) all added wonderful flavor and aroma. Our house smelled like Italy (well, I've never been to Italy, so I'm only guessing). These all stewed in the crock pot for the day and then we bottled what we wouldn't be able to eat that week.

We bottled some in large jars as well and used those already to feed my extended family the best pasta dish I've ever had. Hubby made homemade spaghetti noodles (I'll post later) and meatballs and poured the tomatoes over the top. We've also put it in the blender when we've needed a sauce that's not so chunky. Hubby's all time favorite is to put this on a slice of my homemade french bread with mozzarella, basil, and some 18 yr old balsamic we got while on vacation. Yum!

Enjoy your tomato harvest!

The Never Ending Apple Story

A major reason why I haven't posted in a while is that we have been so neck deep in apples over here! (Also, it's been summer vacation and we've been having a great time soaking up the sun and having fun.) Anyway, as part of our Apple Extravaganza, we made apple pie filling.

I don't have a recipe for this, but it's simple enough. I basically follow the same process as the applesauce, but after most of the water is drained, I add butter, salt, lots of brown sugar and cinnamon, and thicken it with corn starch (corn starch and water, whisk together, mix in gradually) until it's the taste and consistency that I want for my pie filling.

Next time I make homemade apple pie, it should be a cinch!

After making all that apple sauce and apple juice and apple pie filling, not to mention Jeepers biting into every apple he could get his hands on, we still had apples. What more could we do? Well I thought about JoJo and how her favorite oatmeal is apple cinnamon with those pieces of dried apple in them. Of course! Dried apples! One of the simplest ways to preserve food and it can be used in so many things- oatmeal, pancakes, muffins...

I just filled a jelly roll pan full of apples (that had been soaking in lemon water) and placed them on super low heat in the oven for a few hours until they were dry enough to store. I feel using the oven is cheating, especially when it's so sunny here, but I just wanted to be done with apples and this way is a lot faster.

Here's a picture of just a portion of our apples filling our bathtub.

And here's my Aunt Julie helping JoJo pick apples off their tree. And here's hubby pretending to be happy with me taking a picture of him picking apples...what a good sport.

and then more juicing...

more juicing...

more juicing...in my lovely pjs... freezing the juice would have been much easier, but we have to have space for our orange juice, lemon juice, bread, rolls, jam- things that have to go in the freezer.

I'm happy to announce we are DONE with apples, for now anyway. Whew- glad to get that off my chest.

Apple Extravaganza

Here in the Arizona heat, we have one type of apple that grows really well- Anna Apples. They're sweet and crisp. We have an Anna apple tree in our yard, but it's young and we only got about 10 apples from it this year...however between my neighbors, family, and friends, we picked more apples than we could even fit in our kitchen! We filled the bathtub with apples to wash them.

The counter was covered in bags and boxes of apples, plus we had 4 garbage bags full on our kitchen floor!
We sorted them- small, medium, large. Large apples were used to make applesauce and apple pie filling. Medium apples kept for eating. Small ones for juicing.
Here are JoJo and I with a corer, peeler, slicer. We borrowed this from my Aunt Julie, after we cleaned her apple tree clean (thanks Julie)! It was so easy to use that JoJo did an entire bowl of apples all by herself.

Once we turned the apples into slinkies, I diced them and let them hang out in lemon water until the were ready to cook.

Applesauce is super easy and I don't really use a recipe. I just let the apples simmer with cinnamon sticks until they were soft enough to mash. I drained most of the water and added salt, lemon, brown sugar, and cinnamon.

After mixing and tasting to our satisfaction, we funneled the warm, yummy sauce into freshly boiled jars. We wiped the rims clean, screwed on the lids, and let them steam in my mom's canner for 20 minutes.

We made some chunky and some smooth, but it is all delicious!

We had many, many apple juice making sessions. The kiddos had fun taking turns with the masticating juicer.

We had to make sure to keep everything hot and clean. The apple juice we heated to 160 degrees and put them directly into hot jars to keep bacteria from entering. Then into the canner for a 30 minute steam bath. I love when you take six jars out of the bath and you hear six perfect "pop"s when they come out! That way you know they sealed.

Our first batch of juice we didn't strain and you can see it's pretty thick. Our third batch of juice we strained twice and it started resembling the consistency of normal apple juice.

The great thing too is all those apple peels, cores, and fibers feed the chickens and keep them happy. Don't you love when nothing goes to waste?

Pizza Night

We were feeling a little cash poor this last weekend (saving up for an upcoming family vacation) and I hadn't been to the grocery store in a while. We love to have pizza as a family, especially on the weekends...so we made pizza! We had enough resources in our pantry and growing in our garden to have quite a feast! We had local grown red onion that we got from the farm we visited this week, we had basil growing in our garden, and plenty of tomatoes to make 100 pizzas.

I've slowly been sneaking more and more wheat flour into my home baked goods and this night was no exception. I made the usual pizza dough, but with half wheat flour. My kids didn't even skip a beat when they were chowing it down.

Pizza Dough

In a bread mixer combine 1 1/4c. water, 3T oil, and 1t. salt.

Add 3 1/2 cups flour. Make a well in the mountain of flour.

Pour 1 T. Instant Yeast into the well and cover with flour. Mix all the ingredients together. It will knead into a ball, let knead for a few minutes. Oil the ball, place in a bowl, and cover it (towel or plastic wrap) letting it rise for at least 1 hour. Pre-heat the oven to 450 (pizza stone should pre-heat inside the oven as well).

This is my pizza making station. I have all my toppings already chopped on the pan in the upper right to make preparation much easier. I also have my pizza sauce from our garden tomatoes, grilled chicken breast, Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (why make your own when there's is truly divine?), my dough mat and rolling pin, and my zero edge pan covered in corn meal.

You can put just about anything you want on a pizza (I've even had pasta and broccoli pizza- yum), but tonight we had garlic tomato, chicken, and cheese pizza, pizza margarita (tomato slices, mozzarella, basil), and BBQ chicken pizza (BBQ sauce, chicken, red onion, cilantro, cheese). Another favorite is BLT pizza- mayo, bacon, cheese, fresh lettuce and tomato (not the healthiest of pizzas, I admit, but very tasty)

After you roll out your dough, transfer it to the corn meal covered pan. Shake the pan to make sure the dough is not sticking. Add your ingredients, shaking the pan after each ingredient is added. As long as your ingredients aren't too heavy or too watery, your pizza should slip nice and easy onto your pizza stone in the oven.

This should make 3 10 inch crusts. So while one is in the oven you can start preparing the next one. After 10 minutes or so, your crust should be crispy and your cheese should have a little brown color on the top. Pizza anyone?

"Field" Trip

Our family visited a local farm last week for a quick little "field" trip. This family lives in a beautiful house on about 15 acres of land. They grow all sorts of fruits and veggies, but what they're known for is their rows and rows of delicious sweet corn.

People used to be able to pick their own corn, but apparently this caused too much damage to their stalks, so the corn is pre-picked and just waiting for you to pick it up. Jeepers was just going crazy over the collection of tractors though.

We brought our corn home and boiled some, grilled some, froze some for later. Did you know that corn has lots of starches (duh, corn starch), but because of this you should eat it or preserve it quickly after picking or it will start molding? Did you also know you can't make popcorn out of regular eating corn? Popcorn has a different shape, moisture content, and more that make it specific to popping. Bummer, that would have been fun.

So, in an effort of learning how to preserve our harvest, we decided to try drying. We boiled the corn for 5 minutes, then dipped in straight into icy cold water. Once it was cool enough to handle, I cute off the corn and it all went in the oven.

After 3-4 hours at 170 degrees, the corn was dry and a little chewy. Four ears of corn only filled half of my quart size jar. We'll have to go to the farm next week to get some more. Next time I make soup or chili with corn, I'm going to use this dried stuff and see how it works. (Of course, I'll let you know!)

Of course, nothing beats fresh picked corn, but it's not always in season. I think next time I'll try a bottling recipe that I just found.

Dehydration

Here in the scorching Arizona summer sun, one thing is most important to avoid- Dehydration. At suburbia farm, however, we are all for the idea! We have been doing some trial and error with dehydrating fruits- strawberries, grapes, bananas, tomatoes, and apples. Here's Jeepers with the Dehydrator layered full of our goodies.

On the left we have strawberries and apples. The apples have been dipped in lemon water to preserve their color. On the right we have bananas dipped in diluted honey and lemon to preserve color and add sweetness. The honey made the bananas oober sticky, but very tasty. These dried beauties are nature's best fruit snacks- it's like a dried fruit salad. They also make a great addition to oatmeal, making a bland breakfast staple full of variety and flavor. I think next time I'll put the bananas in a low temp oven to make them crispy.

Now, the grape/raisins gave us some difficulty. Of course, Jeepers wouldn't stop eating the grapes before I could even get them in the dehydrator. Then, they were taking a long time in the dehydrator, so I put them outside to use up the sun's free energy. The first batch blew away, then the chickens ate the second batch (stinkin' chickens). But we finally got some sun made raisins and let me tell you, they are the most delicious, juicy raisins we've ever had!

We've been growing delicious cherry tomatoes, more than we can eat at once, so I thought we'd try sun dried tomatoes. They also took a long time in the dehydrator and ended up drying outside. I haven't tried them in a recipe yet, but I'm imagining pasta, chicken, and feta with a drizzle of EVOO...?

Yummy fruit snacks!
I tried to dry corn to mimic this amazing salad from Wildflower Bread Company, but it didn't turn out at all. Maybe it would be good in a soup though...I'll keep trying.

Scrumptious Buttermilk (and Cinnamon) Rolls

One sleepy afternoon, both my kiddos decided to take a long summer's nap. I took advantage of this opportunity by making delicious buttermilk rolls. I don't mind making rolls with them, but these rolls were going to be given to people, so I wanted to make sure they were perfect.
This is the recipe my mom taught me growing up, and making it has become second nature. I always make a double batch and store some in the freezer. It makes dinner time easier-we just cook up some fish or chicken with a veggie, fruit, and a homemade roll- easy peasy lemon squeezy.
The recipe is at the end of this post, but this picture is what the dough should look like after it has "glutenized." It should just pull like taffy. I had a video of how to make the perfect roll, but it wouldn't load. sniff. However, I made rolls a few days later with the kids and they just kinda plopped the rolls on the pan...they looked and tasted practically the same!
Here the pretty ladies are, all ready to rise under a dish towel (to keep them from drying out).

As mentioned, a few days later the children wanted to help me make cinnamon rolls. I used the same recipe, but I divided it into three big balls. One of the thirds I made into buttermilk rolls again and the other two balls turned into cinnamon rolls. So, very patiently, I let JoJo and Jeepers take turns rolling out the dough into a large rectangle. Then, JoJo brushed on 1/2 a cube of melted butter (making sure not to get butter on the far right edge). Jeepers sprinkled the white sugar and cinnamon all over the dough (ideally this would be an even layer, but he's learning).

We rolled the dough and pinched the end closed (which why it has to be butter-free).

I was always taught that the simplest way to cut cinnamon rolls was with a string, and I have to say, if my kids can do it, then it's pretty fool proof. Just shimmy the string under the roll- about an inch from the end- then overlap the string at the top, keep pulling, and the string will just cut right through...success!

Here are the rolls, almost risen and ready to bake...

The end result is just so amazingly delicious. You will never find anything at the store- or even a bakery- that compares to these savory little morsels. What's better than this?...

Well, a cinnamon roll version of it, covered in cream cheese frosting, of course!

I wonder why I wasn't hungry this whole day? Oh yeah, because I ate myself silly with cinnamon rolls!

Buttermilk Rolls

• 1 cube butter


• 2 cups buttermilk


• 3/4 c. sugar


• 1/2 c. ice water


• 2 eggs


• 2 T. instant yeast


• 7 cups flour


• 1 T. baking powder


• 1 t. salt


• 1 t. baking soda


• Bring butter, buttermilk, and sugar to boil. Put in mixer, add water, mix. Mix in eggs. Gradually mix in flour (start with 3 cups flour with 2 wells for yeast). Mix in remaining ingredients. Knead for 5 minutes or so until stretchy- do the gluten test. Let rise in mixer for 15 min. Form rolls. Rise on greased pan for 30 min or until ready to bake. Bake for 12 min @375.