Cookistry

So, I was browsing through my most recent acquisition from #AbramsDinnerParty (where I get free cookbooks) and I ran across a recipe for a green sauce that's supposed to be much like That Green Sauce sold by the HEB food stores.

Wait, let me back up a bit.

The cookbook is The Austin Cookbook by Paula Forbes. It's all about recipes "from deep in the heart of Texas," so of course I expected a lot of beef, and some Tex-Mex. But when I saw that sauce recipe ... I kind of swooned.

You see, a while back, someone sent me a jar of That Green Sauce, and I put it on everything until the jar was empty. And then I kind of whimpered because that sauce isn't available here. Waaaah!

So I was pretty excited to see that recipe. And I was stunned to see how easy it is. Apparently this type of sauce is pretty popular around Austin, and the one sold by HEB is just one of many versions of that type of green sauce. But ... the HEB version was the first one of its kind that I tried, so it's the one that I wanted to find a recipe for.

Now that I've made it, I have a feeling I'll be making it again.

With variations. Many variations. Because now that I know how it's made, I can adjust the heat, add spices or herbs, and just generally mess around with the recipe. I might even order some of That Green Sauce so I can do some taste tests and see how close I can get to the original.

And now you can make it, too!

The Green Sauce
Adapted from The Austin Cookbook by Paula Forbes

Store-bought green salsa or Salsa Macha Verde (recipe follows)
Vegetable oil
Yeah, that's it. Just two ingredients.

Puree the salsa in a food processor or blender until it's almost completely smooth, then start slowly drizzling vegetable oil into the salsa while the processor is running.

You'll add about one cup of oil for the Salsa Macha Verde, which made just about a pint of salsa.

Continue adding the oil until you have a creamy but runny sauce - it should not be as thick as mayonnaise. And it will thicken just a little when you refrigerate it. Not a lot, but a little.

And there ya go. The oil makes the sauce creamy, which is why a lot of people think it has avocado in it.

Needless to say, the sauce will taste like your salsa, except creamier and perhaps a little milder.

Salsa Macha Verde
Adapted from The Austin Cookbook by Paula Forbes

6 large jalapenos
2 garlic cloves
Salt
Juice of 1 large lime

Grill, roast, or toast the jalapenos until you have grill marks or they've acquired some black spots (I used a roti grill). Remove the stems and put the jalapenos in a food processor or blender.

Add the garlic, a couple pinches of salt, 1 tablespoon of water, and the lime juice. Process or blend until it's as smooth as you like.

Now just carry on to make THE GREEN SAUCE.

Note: Since I used my Vitamix blender, the jalapeno seeds were blended to smithereens ... and this also helped to make the sauce rather spicy. If you prefer a less spicy version, remove the seeds - some or all - along with the inside ribs. This will help to make the sauce less spicy.
Another recipe that I thought was interesting - and that wasn't at all Tex-Mex - was the mustard and brown sugar crusted steak that was first cooked, then rubbed with a butter and mustard mixture, and then sprinkled with brown sugar, and then broiled to get the sugar caramelized. I've never had a steak quite like it. And then I made another one just like it the next day.

I'll just leave this here for you.

Yes, I know it's not summer.

I got Healthyish by Lindsay Maitland Hunt as part of my participation in the Abrams Dinner Party, where I'm getting a bunch of cookbooks from that publisher.

When I looked through the book, the corn soup sounded really good.  And I love corn any time of the year.

Fortunately, the recipe doesn't require fresh corn (although it would probably be better with fresh summer corn), so I grabbed frozen corn and I was good to go.

This is meant to taste like Mexican street corn, with lime and chilies and cotija cheese, and that's pretty much what it was. Except it was very very smooth. Except of course the corn garnish and the cheese.

Oh, an if you're wondering why it's kind of orange, that's from the chili powder.

So there we go.

This was also super-simple to make, so it gets bonus points for that. The one glitch I had was that I didn't like the texture I got when I blended it with my stick blender, so then I transferred it to my Vitamix blender to get it smoother. Silky smooooooth.

Summer Corn Soup
Adapted from Healthyish by Lindsay Maitland Hunt

1 stick unsalted butter
2 onions, chopped (about 2 cups)
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoons chili powder
8 cups corn kernels from 8 cobs or the same amount frozen
2 russet potatoes (about 2 pounds) peeled and cut into 3/4 inch pieces
8 cups chicken stock
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
4 ounces cotija cheese, crumbled
Fresh cilantro leaves for garnish (I forgot to buy this, so I skipped it. But it would be a good addition)

Heat the butter in a large pot (keep in mind you're going to be adding all that stock) over medium heat. Add the onions, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 teaspoon pepper. Cook, stirring often until the onions are translucent and soft.

Add the garlic, cumin. and chili powder and cook for about 30 seconds, until it's fragrant.

Reserve 1/2 cup of the corn for garnish and add the rest to the pot along with the potatoes and stock. Cover, bring to a boil. then reduce to strong simmer. Cook, stirring as needed, until the potatoes are completely soft.

Puree the soup (I suggest using a blender, but be careful when blending hot soup!) Stir in the lime juice and an additional 1/4 teaspoon salt (or salt to taste at this point, keeping in mind that the cotija cheese is salty.)

Serve the soup garnished with the cheese, cilantro, and corn kernels. Add a grind or two of pepper, too, if desired. Serve hot.

This reheats really well, so it's fine to make extra!

I get free cookbooks and swag for participating in the Abrams Dinner Party, but I am not paid to participate.

One of the benefit of being a blogger in the Denver/Boulder area is that Sprouts Farmer's Markets hosts events with local businesses, mostly food-related.

Recently, I attended an event at Good Day Chocolate. I said yes, because ... well, chocolate. Even though I wasn't familiar with the company or its products.

Turns out, the chocolate has benefits. Not just the flavor of chocolate or the benefits of chocolate in general, but they add stuff to the chocolate to make it even better.

So ... there's chocolate with added caffeine for an energy boost, chocolate that helps you sleep, chocolate that has calming effects, and chocolate with turmeric.

A new addition to the Good Day roundup is a chocolate with probiotics. And, they pointed out that their probiotics are the ones that actually make it through your stomach acids, so they actually do some good in your gut. Plus, eating a chocolate or three is a lot more pleasant than chugging a weird-tasting grainy drink.

At the event, we had a chance to play with chocolates, like filling molds.


They warned us that this could be messy, but there were no major chocolate disasters. When the company first started, they filled molds like this by hand, and had a lot of rejected chocolates in each batch. But now, it's a lot more sophisticated.

And of course we got to do some sampling. Speaking of samples, we got to take some home, too.


Like this cute holiday gift box. Mmmm. Chocolate gift!

The chocolate comes in little tiny boxes, and they're roundish candy-coated treats that should be eaten sparingly. I mean, there's dosage information on the side of the box. Dosages are probably most important for the caffeine - or at least that's the one I'd be most careful of, since I've cut way back on my coffee intake.

While these have health benefits, they're also very tasty chocolate. But ... they shouldn't go into the candy bowl to be eaten by the handful.

This is one of the most interesting concepts I've seen in a long time. I've tried turmeric smoothies and other ways of ingesting it. While I love a good recipe that uses turmeric (mmm, pickled cauliflower), I'm not all that fond of it in my banana smoothie. In chocolate, however? I couldn't even tell it was in there. Sign me up!

Good Day Chocolate is available at Sprouts (obviously), and I've also seen it at other stores that have a lot of natural/healthy foods. You can also find it on Amazon. Keep in mind that the boxes are small and don't have a lot of chocolates in there, so if you want a week's worth of energy doses, buy enough boxes!

Thanks to Sprouts Farmers Market and Good Day Chocolate for the fun event and the goodies to take home. Mmmmm. Chocolate.

I'm participating in the Abrams Dinner Party, where I get cookbooks (and a little swag) from the publisher. Since I'm a bit of a cookbook hoarder, this is great for me.

Once of the books I got was Acid Trip, which is all about vinegar.

I adore tart foods, so a book about vinegar is right up my alley. I mean, I've even made my own vinegar from wine. There's a jar of it in the pantry right now.

When I first got this book, I bookmarked a whole bunch of recipes to try:

• Fried Egg with a Spoonful of Vinegar
• Beurre Noisette Dressing
• Brown Butter Balsamic Mushrooms with Hazeluts and Sage
• Seasonal Tomatoes with Raspberry Vinegar
• Vinegar Pie

Out of that list, I've made a few similar dishes, and wanted to revisit them. In particular, the egg with vinegar was calling to me. I'd made a similar dish, but used red wine vinegar. The flavor was lovely, but the look was ... not great.

The recipe in this book calls for white wine vinegar, which makes a whole lot more sense in terms of presentation. So I just had to do it. Breakfast for dinner just happens to be one of my favorite things ever.

If this sound a little weird, it's really not. The acid helps to cut the richness of the egg yolk, and adds another dimension of flavor. I love eating tomatoes with eggs, but never thought about why - it's that hit of acid. In this case, you can add that acid without needing to have fresh tomatoes on hand.

Yum!

I think the vinegar pie is next on my list. How about you?

Fried Egg with a Spoonful of Vinegar
Adapted from Acid Trip by Michael Harlan Turkell

1 tablespoon butter
1 egg
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
Chopped herbs

Fry an egg they way you like it, with ample butter. (They suggested cooking on medium-high until the edges are a little brown. I opted for a more gently-cooked basted egg, instead.)

Place the egg on a warm plate and season with salt and pepper.

While the pan is still hot, add the white wine vinegar and allow to reduce by half.

Spoon the reduced vinegar over the egg and garnish with chopped herbs. (They suggested parsley or tarragon, but the only fresh herbs I had on hand were cilantro and chives. I opted for chives.)

Serve immediately. I suggest some toast on the side. Yum.

This post is sponsored by ABRAMS Books, as part of the ABRAMS Dinner Party. Look for more posts with the hashtags #AcidTrip and #VinegarCookbook.

The Cookies for Kids' Cancer campaign sponsored by OXO is one of my favorite feel-good things every year. Bloggers who participate get a few free products from OXO, but the money goes to charity. How awesome is that?

Maybe you've heard of Wacky Cake. I have a vague memory of bringing home a copy of the recipe and making it at home, which must have been a huge event since my mom never baked anything.

The major selling point that must have convinced my mom to let me make the cake was that it didn't require eggs, a mixing bowl, or a blender. The recipe was mixed by hand and baked in the same pan.

The problem with that recipe was that it was hard to mix the ingredients evenly in a cake pan, without scraping off the butter or shortening that was greasing the pan.

I've seen a lot of wacky cake recipes since then, but I hadn't given it much thought until I ran into yet another recipe in a community cookbook. And then I thought ... hmmm ... I wonder if this would work as cupcakes.

While I was thinking, I also decided to cut the recipe in half, and I made a few other little adjustments as well. Because, what the heck. Might as well have some fun, right?

Wacky cake is normally left unfrosted - maybe just dusted with powdered sugar. But I decided the cupcakes needed frosting, so I made a simple chocolate ganache and used the cool decorating tool that OXO provided to swirl the ganache on top of the cupcakes.

So pretty! So easy! Not messy!

They also sent me a really nice 12-cup muffin pan - looks pretty with a gold-colored finish, right? And they sent silicone baking cups as well. The muffin cups are pure genius, since they have little "ears" on two sides that makes it really easy to get the cupcakes out of the pan.

Wacky Cupcakes
Adapted from Favorite Recipes from Quilters by Louise Stoltzfus

See the "ears" on the muffin cups? Really handy!

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 ounces vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup cold water

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and place cupcake liners in 12 wells of a muffin pan.

Combine all of the ingredients in a mixing bowl and beat with a hand mixer at high speed until well blended, about two or three minutes.

Divide the batter evenly between the cups - they should be about 3/4 full.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 18-20 minutes, or until the top of the cupcakes spring back when touched and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Remove the pan from the oven and remove transfer the cupcakes to a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting. Here's where those little ears on the cupcake cups really came in handy!

When the cupcakes are fully cooled, frost as desired. Or, if you want to stay true to the original wacky recipe, just dust them with a little powdered sugar.

About the frosting:

For my frosting, I used a basic ganache with 6 ounces of cream, heated to boiling, poured over 6 ounces of semisweet chocolate, broken into chunks.

At this point, you have a ganache that you can pour onto a cake to make a smooth layer of chocolate. But that's not what I wanted.

After the mixture was completely smooth and starting to cool off a bit, I started beating it with my hand mixer until it was thick and fluffy and the color had lightened a bit.

I piped the frosting on the cupcakes. YUM.

NOTE: after seeing someone else post a vegan chocolate dessert recipe, I realized that the cake part of this recipe is vegan. Not that it's trying to be, it just is. It was thought to have been first developed during WWII, when dairy and eggs were rationed. That's why it uses oil. And it works really, really well.

The frosting I made included dairy, so that's not vegan, but that's easy to swap for something else, like a faux-buttercream made with either vegetable oil or a non-dairy butter substitute. Or ganache made using a non-dairy cream (although I've never tried that). Or whatever vegan frosting or icing you like.

OXO sent along some info about the products they sent. Here's what they had to say:

Muffin Pan
The Non-Stick Pro Muffin Pan features a unique micro-textured pattern that ensures even baking and adds structural rigidity. It's made with a ceramic-reinforced, two-layer, commercial-grade coating that provides ultimate non-stick release and is scratch-, stain-, corrosion- and abrasion-resistant.

Baking Cups
https://www.oxo.com/products/cooking-baking/baking-tools/silicone-baking-cups-12-pack
The BPA-free Baking Cups have handy tabs to help remove them from muffin tins without making a thumbprint, and the inside of each Cup is smooth and non-stick to release your treat easily. With a fill line, your cupcakes will be consistent every time.

Baker's Decorating Tool
Our easy-to-use, easy-to-fill Tool is designed to give you complete control while decorating. The unique trigger provides a smooth stream of icing for clean lines, and the comfortable handles ensure a steady grip and protect icing from warm hands.

Where did summer go? One second, it was spring, and now there's a hint of fall in the air.

What's also in the air *sniff sniff* is the scent of peaches. Mostly because the nice folks at Northwest Cherry Growers and Washington State Stone fruit Growers sent me a giant box of peaches and nectarines.

When I was a kid, I loved peaches and nectarines, but I didn't realize they were different fruits that you could buy. I thought that nectarines were peaches that had been cleaned better. So when my mom would hand me a peach, I'd give it back to her and ask her to wash it better. And again. And again.

Yeah, I was a weird kid.

I still love both peaches and nectarines, so I was giddy happy to have a whole box of them to cook with, eat out of hand, add to yogurt, and make some jam. And maybe I'll work them into some other recipes, too. Peach ice cream is pretty darned good.

So anyway, as soon as the box arrive, I picked through it and sorted out fruit that had gotten bumped and bruised in shipping so they wouldn't go bad, and used those to make jam right away. Since I didn't have a jam recipe that I was itching to make, I browsed through the Northwest Cherries site to see what they suggested. I found one credited to Recipezaar (now renamed Food.com) that looked interesting, since it included brown sugar and rum. So I made that one.

Oh, sure, I didn't make it exactly like this recipe. I have a new appliance here that I'm testing (currently code-named "Al") that I used to make the jam. I had to adjust the recipe to fit the appliance, so I tweaked for that. But, since I'm not ready to uncover that appliance yet, I can't really give you the adjusted recipe (and seriously, if you don't have that appliance, you probably don't want the adjusted recipe,)

So, here's the recipe I used. The brown sugar adds some richness that you don't get from white sugar, and the rum adds its own flavor - but it doesn't taste boozy, so this is perfectly fine for your breakfast toast.

It's a little bit chunky, but if you wanted a smooth jam, it would be easy to give it a quick blend with a stick blender before or after cooking.

Here's how it happened:

Chunky Peach Jam with Brown Sugar and Rum
Recipe from Northwest Cherry Growers, courtesy of recipezaar.com
Makes about 3 pints

Memphis salad plate courtesy of Zak! Designs.

6 cups peaches, peeled and coarsely chopped (about 4 lbs)
2 cups light brown sugar, packed
6 tablespoons strained fresh lemon juice
3/4 cup dark Jamaican rum
2 cups granulated sugar

In a large bowl, combine peaches with the brown sugar, lemon juice and about half of the rum, stirring to mix. Cover and let stand at room temperature six hours or overnight.

Wash jars and lids in hot, soapy water. Sterilize jars for 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath, then leave in hot water until ready to fill. Prepare lids according to manufacturer's directions. (Note: if you making this for immediate use, you can skip the canning and refrigerate the jam. If you want to store it at room temperature or save for later use, then follow the canning instructions.)

Pour the fruit mixture into a large saucepan or dutch oven. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Cover the pan, reduce heat, and cook the mixture until the peach chunks begin to look translucent, 15 to 20 minutes; stir occasionally to prevent sticking. If the jam becomes too thick and threatens to scorch before the fruit is done, add 2 to 3 tablespoons of water.

Add the granulated sugar, increase heat to medium-high and cook rapidly, stirring almost constantly, until a spoonful placed on a chilled saucer and refrigerated for a few minutes wrinkles instead of runs when the saucer is tilted. (Take jam off the heat while doing this. If using a candy thermometer, this should happen at about 220 degrees.)

Add remaining rum and stir the jam (it will boil up when you add the rum) for 2 minutes over the heat.

Ladle boiling-hot jam into hot, prepared jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Top with lids and process for 15 minutes in a boiling-water bath. Cool jars completely on a dish towel before labeling and storing.

Thanks to Northwest Cherry Growers and Washington State Stone Fruit Growers for sponsoring this post!

Oh dear. I got a sample of an easy fermenter kit and decided to make the recipe they sent me. It sounded like a great idea, but ...

Oops.

I went to a couple of different stores, and fresh green beans were nowhere to be found. Bummer. But then I realized that I had frozen green beans. Would it work?

The lid made a lot of sense and I loved that I didn't have to do anything except screw the lid on. Nothing else to think about, unlike other fermenting methods I've used. I really liked the glass weights, since they had a grooved top that made them really easy to insert into the jars and take them out.

Okay, let me admit this. You know those cooking competition shows on television, where a bunch of cooks are set loose to cook stuff in an unfamiliar kitchen? You know, like The Next Food Network Star? Or maybe Master Chef?

Those are my guilty pleasure. Except I'm not so guilty about it. I don't watch sports on television, so I think you can cut me some slack for watching people scramble to poach the perfect egg rather than watching them plopping a small ball into a hole in the ground.

So anyway, Sprouts Farmer's Market hosted a blogger event at the home of the Colorado Beef Council. I attended an event there in December that focused how to cook beef roasts. This being grilling season, we learned about steaks and grilling.

The had some great handouts about beef in general and a super-handy chart that listed different beef cuts and how to cook them. And about nutrition, storing, reheating, and more. And there was a pamphlet with some recipes, too.

We also learned that Sprout sells two types of beef. The first is grass fed beef that is 100 percent grass fed - never corn - and is raised with no antibiotics, ever. The second is natural beef, which is grass fed and grain finished. The cows do not receive antibiotics for the last 300 days, but it's possible they might have received them before that.

Someone asked if Sprouts carried organic beef, but it was explained that they used to buy organic beef from a trusted supplier, but there came a point where they sold so much beef that the supplier couldn't keep up with the demand. There just isn't enough organic beef out there.

In the kitchen, we learned about cooking beef and saw a demo of how to get proper grill marks on a steak ...




... and then the fun really started ...

We were told that we could pick from three different types of steak - ribeye, tenderloin, or strip. We could also choose where we wanted to cook - oven, grill, or stove (with different pans available). We could choose from a variety of different seasonings, and we could choose from a bunch of fresh vegetables and herbs, as well as some grains. There were also a few sauces including a red pepper coulis and a horseradish sauce.

Although they didn't say, "Ready, set, GO!" that's sort of what it was like as the teaching portion of the day was complete and we were set loose in a commercial kitchen to create and plate our own vision of what that evening's steak dinner.

And then bloggers scrambled in every direction. Some chose their steak first, while others claimed their work space. Still others went to the "pantry" where the vegetables and spices were waiting. Some chose their utensils, but that's the last thing I did, so I ended up cutting my vegetables with a fillet knife. It was super-sharp, so it didn't really matter that it wasn't a chef's knife.

Unlike the shows on television, however, there was no pushing and shoving. Everyone was polite, and waited their turn at the ingredients. No one yelled "medic!" The staff was awesome, answering questions and pointing toward ingredients and tools we needed. And they got stuck cleaning up the mess we made.

When it came to the vegetables, there was a limited amount of each: a small cauliflower cut in half, a bunch of asparagus, a small bag of baby potatoes, a few summer squash, a few types of mushrooms. No one went hungry, and no one hogged any of the ingredients, but it meant that everyone chose different combinations of sides. Which actually was kind of brilliant.

I would have been happy with the steak slathered with all of the mushrooms, but I took just a few mushrooms. And a zucchini. And some potatoes.

And then the prep and cooking began. Unlike competition cooking shows, we weren't given a time limit for our cooking, although it was suggested that we be finished by a certain time so we could all take photos of our plated food and then get down to the devouring.

I decided to cook my vegetables on a sheet pan in the oven. I seasoned them with salt, pepper, and thyme, then drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and popped them in 450 degree oven that would look really good in my kitchen. I think I was one of the few who used the oven, but I chose that method so I could pay more attention to my steak.

The area near the grill was really hot, but I wanted to give it a try. Ooooh, grill marks! Flames! Wheeeee!


The folks who didn't use the grill worked on one of the stoves. Here's a happy steak sharing space with the sides in a cast iron pan.


We were told that a 3/4 inch steak should take 6-7 minutes to cook, but I cooked mine slightly less because I knew that most of it would be coming home with me as leftovers. I wanted to be able to cook the leftover steak at home without overcooking it.

An area was set aside in the lobby with a nice light for photos, and the photographer who handles the Colorado Beef photos was on hand to document our successes. Because they were all successes. Of course they were, because we all cooked food that we liked!

Each blogger also took photos of their own steaks, and when were were all assembled and eating, we were treated to a slideshow of the photos that the photographer took. It was pretty amazing to see how different all the plates were (check out the collage at the bottom of this post!) We all started with the same meat and we chose from the same array of vegetables, but they all looked very different from each other.

Here's the photographer's version of my plate:


And here's my photos - slightly different angle, but still top-down. I really should have put a garnish on there, but I was pretty hungry and everything looked and smelled so darned good.


Beef. It's what we all had for dinner!

After I plated mine, I realized that I should have cooked something to add another color. While my beef and vegetables were nicely browned and looked darned tasty, the presentation could have been improved if I had chopped some herbs or piled some of the pickled onions on top of the steak. Or maybe a quick salad from the fresh corn on the cob and some red bell pepper.

But ... when I was choosing my pantry ingredients, I was thinking more about what I wanted to eat than what the plating should look like. I was thinking more like a hungry person than like a blogger!

I also should have chosen a larger plate or perhaps a different shape ... but when I went to grab a plate, I didn't realize how many choices there were. So ... basic round white plate for me. Other people were much more creative.

I did use the sauces to decorate my plate, however. And they were delicious.

Unlike competition shows, no one judged us, we didn't have to hold our hands in the air when we were done cooking, and no one else tasted our food. We sat down, chowed down, and then we had dessert, too, all provided by Sprouts. Handy to-go boxes helped us take our leftovers home (YUM!) and pretty soon we were on our way with full bellies and a better understanding of beef.

Collage photos courtesy of Colorado Beef Council

Thanks to Sprouts Farmers Market and Colorado Beef Council for sponsoring and hosting this event!

When I was a kid, the best part of summer was walking with my mom to an empty lot a few blocks from where we lived. A guy would park a truck in the lot and sell fresh fruits and vegetables, weighing them on a hanging scale and putting them in paper sacks.

When cherries were in season, my mom would buy some for me. I'd munch on them all the way home, spitting the seeds out as I went. By the time I got home, there were no more cherries.

I'm surprised a forest of cherry trees didn't sprout along our route.

When the nice folks at Northwest Cherry Growers asked if I wanted to be a #canbassador, I jumped at the chance. Enough cherries to do some canning? Count me it!

I'll admit that I might have eaten several pounds of cherries all on my own. But I didn't spit the seeds all over the living room. That would have been weird.

The rest of the cherries were pitted and divided up for several different recipes. My two favorites were a smooth cherry jam, and some brandied cherries.

I also made a Luxardo cherry recipe that was good, but not perfect. I think it would have been better with tart cherries, or perhaps I need to tweak the sweet/tart ratio.

If you like Luxardo cherries, though, that recipe is a great starting place. Check it out!

The recipes I'm posting here were based loosely on some that I found on the Northwest Cherries site, but I cut back on the quantities so I could try more recipes.

Since I made so little of each recipe, I didn't actually can them for preserving, though. I tossed them into the refrigerator and started using them right away.

The great thing about making recipes for use "now" rather than canning is that you can adjust the sugar and acid to your taste, rather than for preservation. If you're making vast quantities of foods for long-term, non-refrigerated storage, make sure you're using a recipe from a trusted food preservation source. There's no sense spending the time and money to make a dozens of jars of jam, only to find they've molded in the jars when you open them.

Yeah, my mom made moldy jam once. It wasn't pretty.

First, I made some brandied cherries. Like this:

Brandied Cherries

Based on a recipe from Northwest Cherry Growers.

Oooooh, this was so good.

I used these as a topping for ice cream. Adults only, of course. They'd also be nice in cocktails, but for that I'd suggest not chopping the cherries.

If you don't happen to have brandy, it should work just as well with bourbon or whisky. Maybe even rum.

1 pound sweet red cherries, pitted, stemmed, and roughly chopped
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup brandy

Combine the cherries, sugar, and lemon juice and bring to a simmer and let it cook for a minute or two.

Add the brandy, bring to a boil, then turn off the heat.

Transfer the cherries and liquid to jars or other storage containers (this makes about a pint, plus a little extra) and allow it to cool, then refrigerate.

Next, I made a cherry jam, also based on a recipe  from the Northwest Cherry Growers website, but I used sweet red cherries instead of yellow ones. 




2 pounds red cherries, stemmed and pitted*
1 1/2 cups sugar, or to taste
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Put all the ingredients in a blender, and blend until smooth. If you're not sure about the sugar amount, feel free to start with less - let's say about 1/2 cup - and add more sugar later, if you want more sweetness.

Transfer the blended cherries to a saucepan and heat to a boil, then lower to a happy simmer. Continue cooking, stirring often, until the jam reaches your preferred thickness.

Like the napkin? Get them here.

Since it will become thicker as it cools, the best way to check it is to put a small amount of the jam on a spoon and put the spoon in the refrigerator to chill.

Taste your thickness tester and add more sugar to the pot, if desired.

If you prefer more tartness, add more lemon juice. Continue cooking until your optimal thickness is reached. Since I wanted to stir into yogurt or drizzle onto ice cream and for spreading on toast and muffins, I left it a little looser than if I only wanted it as a spread for toast.

Transfer to jars (this will make a bit more than a pint) or other storage container.


*Make sure your cherry pitter is actually ejecting every single pit from the cherries. Sometimes one will get stuck, and since you're blending, it could be a problem.

When I was done with this recipe, I had just a little jam left in the pan. Not enough to fill a jar, but more than I wanted to throw away. I added some pitted chopped cherries and let them cook a while to create a chunkier, not-as-sweet jam, adjusting sweet and tart on a whim. Did I write anything down? No, of course not. But that's the great thing about refrigerator jams - you can wing it, adjust flavors on the fly, and end up with a little half-pint of something fun.

Bhakti Chai is a local company, and I was recently treated to a tour of the facility thanks to Sprouts (a grocery store chain, if you're not familiar).

As soon as I sampled the product at the factory, I thought it would make a great marinade for chicken. Maybe I was just hungry.

Yeah, I know. it's a drink. It's not a marinade. But the ginger-forward flavor just wanted to be used in cooking. So ... we got to take some samples home, and after having a little pick-me-up, I decided to give Chai-Chai-Chai Chicken a try.

But, being me, I didn't actually do a marinade. Nope. I bought some boneless, skinless chicken breasts and I cooked them sous vide.

I know I post a LOT of sous vide recipes ... but that's because they're so easy and hands-off. Most of the time, I finish the recipe with a quick sear on the stove or maybe a broil in the oven, but that's all I have to do. With the chicken breasts, I just sliced and served.

Let me say here that sealing a sous vide bag that has a lot of liquid in it can be a little tricky. I didn't add a LOT of liquid, but if you're skeevy about having any liquid at all to deal with, just freeze some of your marinade mixture - in this case the chai - and put that into the sous vide bag.

If you've got a giant thick hockey puck of frozen stuff in your sous vide bag, you might want to extend the cooking time a little bit, but if you froze a 1/2 cup in a baggie so it's thin and flat, it's going to thaw pretty quickly. And seriously, you don't need a lot of marinade or sauce or whatever in the bag.

You can cook each chicken breast in its own bag (which is great if you're adjusting flavors to people's personal preferences) or cook them all together in one bag. Just make sure the breasts are in one layer in the bag, if you're doing a bunch of them together, so cooking is even.

Bhakti Chai Chicken Breasts

• Boneless, skinless chicken breasts

• Bhaki Chai Concentrate (I used the original version)

Let's assume we're doing just one chicken breast, okay?

If you've got those giant chicken breasts, one breast might be enough for two people, depending on what you're serving with it. If it's really huge, feel free to add another 15 minutes to the cooking time.

So, put the chicken breast in the sous vide bag and add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the Bhakti Chai - depending on how comfy you are with dealing with wet ingredients in your sous vide bag. If you were smart enough to freeze some of the chai ahead of time, you're so much smarter than me.

Add a pinch of salt, if you like.

Vacuum carefully and seal. Use the wet sealing feature, if yours has that option. If you want to be extra sure you have a good seal, wipe the recently-sealed end of the bag to remove any moisture, and seal it again on the end.

All done? Good.

Set up the sous vide for 150 degrees. Chuck that chicken in there and set for 1 hour (or a little longer, if it's one of the huge breasts that they sell these days).

Now go and do something fun.

When the chicken is done, remove it from the bag. Slice and serve.

That's it. No muss, no fuss. I didn't even bother browning the breast afterwards, but you can do that if you like. This was also great cold ... try it on a salad with an Asian-style dressing and some bean sprouts and snow peas - or maybe some of crispy fried wonton skins. Yum!

About Bhakti Chai

Bhakit Chai is a great example of a small business started by one passionate person. The original Chai product still exists, but the company has expanded the product line to include more flavors, a ready-to-drink line, and some fizzy chai drinks as well.

The fizzy drinks might have been my favorite, since I'm a fan of ginger ale and similar fizzy drinks that are less sweet and more refreshing.

But that doesn't mean I didn't like the others. The ready-to-drink iced chai is perfect if you just want to grab one and go. That's them, in the photo on the right. Lots of options, including one coffee-chai drink.

The concentrate is what you need in the fridge for drinking at home. I've been making mine with about 1/3 chai concentrate and 2/3 with either milk or almond milk, but of course you can adjust that to your preference. And you can drink it hot or cold.

If you're me, you can also use the concentrate in recipes. I was thinking that rice with a little chai would be really really nice with a stir-fry dinner. And chai rice pudding is awesome. Simmered down to concentrate the flavor even more, it would be a nice sauce for either sweet or savory.

While you can find some of the Bhakti Chai products on Amazon, you probably want to just go look for them at the grocery store, since they're a perishable product. Like, you know, go to Sprouts and buy them there.

One of the best parts about going to tours of different companies is seeing how things are made. here's a super-short video of the bottling line at Bhakti Chai. It was cool watching it work. Yum, chai!


Thanks to Sprouts for sponsoring and arranging the tour and to Bhakti Chai for being such a great host (and for the samples!).

As a blogger, I get a lot of stuff sent to me. Books, food, gadgets, samples, snacks. Some of it gets reviewed and then it's seldom mentioned again. But other things turn into recipes, and then recipes turn into blog posts.

This is one of those instances. It started with an offer from Butcher Block Box, a company that ships meat to people who subscribe to the service. I said, sure, send me meat. I will review it. I mentioned them recently in a gift guide, because a meat subscription would be a nice gift for a lot of people.

Not the vegans or vegetarians on your list. They wouldn't be thrilled with you at all. But just about anyone else would probably like a box of frozen meat.

My shipment was delayed by a day because of a train derailment. Sheesh. Of course the perishables would get delayed. Even though the package arrived a day later than it was supposed to, the meat was frozen solid. So they get bonus points for good packaging.

This is just part of what arrived:


I chose the beef and pork option, because I had just bought chicken and I've noticed a much greater variation in quality with beef and pork than with chicken. I mean, yeah, some chicken is better than others, but it's never chewy, like a bad steak can be.

I got a nice variety of meats - some steaks, ground beef, thin-cut steak, a pork loin roast, and bacon. Everything was packed in reasonable amounts. Nothing too big to deal with. The pork loin roast was the biggest item.

I tried one of the steaks first, followed by the thin-cut steak. I had no idea what to expect with that, but the slices were really really really thin. Like for sandwiches. Which is what happened after I have that a quick saute on the stove.

I stared at the pork roast for a while. I thought about roasting it, but then decided to cook it sous vide. Yup, me and my sous vide. Again.

I considered cooking it in the same bag it came in, considering it was nicely vacuum-sealed, but decided I wanted to season it first. After it was fully thawed, I tossed it into a sous vide bag, then sprinkled on some Penzeys seasoned salt, then some Penzeys Mural of Flavor. It's an unsalted seasoning mix that's one of my favorites. Good flavor, but kind of universal and non-threatening.


In retrospect, I should have sprinkled the spices onto the meat before putting it in the bag for more even distribution, but it wasn't a big deal. As soon as the meat had released some juices and the bag was looser, I massaged the spices around to get the meat more evenly coated. It was just fine.

The finished meat was decidedly pink rather than white. If that bothers you with pork, you'll need to raise the temperature. But despite what your grandmother told you, pink pork is perfectly pleasant.

Sous Vide Pork Roast

• 1 smallish boneless pork loin roast - I'm guessing it was about 2-3 pounds - I didn't check the label before I tossed the packaging.
• Seasoned salt - I'm guessing I used about 1/2 teaspoon, or perhaps a little more.
• Penzeys Mural of Flavor (or other seasoning you like) a generous teaspoon or more.
• Olive oil - about 2 tablespoons, or enough to coat the bottom of the pan.

Sprinkle the seasonings on the meat and place the meat in a vacuum-sealer bag. Vacuum seal the bag. Obvious, right?

Set up your sous vide. I have an Anova sous vide with wireless and I use a large stockpot for cooking. Set the heat for 140 degrees and the time for 1 hour and 20 minutes.

When the time is up, remove the meat from the water bath. Open the bag and remove the meat.

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the meat, fat-side down. Let the meat brown on that side, then turn it so that all sides get browned.

Remove the meat from the pan. Slice and serve.

This is also really good cold, for roast pork sandwiches. Yum.

I received meat from Butcher Block Box at no cost to me. I received the Anova sous vide at no cost to me quite a while ago. I have no obligation to continue posting about it, but I use it a lot. I have no relationship with Penzeys except that I like a lot of their products.