I knew nothing of the hobby until a friend and co-worker of mine introduced the idea. Of all places, I think the inspiration came from an episode of The Simpsons. Have you ever seen the one where Homer tries to make bathtub beer? Needless to say I wasn’t immediately sold on the idea but decided to give it a shot. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

At first it almost felt like we were wading into illegal territory. A run to a local brew shop just blocks from the Arizona State University campus made it seem even more lascivious. I undeniably enjoyed drinking alcohol so the prospect of creating it with my own two hands seemed pretty damn amazing. An hour or so later, the friendly brewer had helped us assemble a kit complete with everything we needed to brew our first batch of beer.

The process proved to be nothing short of great mystery and intrigue. Were we following the instructions right? Did we put the hops in at the right time? Did we aerate the wort enough? Was it the right temperature before we pitched the yeast? Was everything sanitized properly? We’d have to wait a long four weeks before getting it into bottles and then another couple weeks beyond that before we could relish our first taste of that liquid bread we’d toiled over what seemed like ages ago.

As it turns out, our first batch was a hit and then I guess you could say we had both been officially bitten by the brew bug. Like a religious ritual, every four to six weeks we gathered around a stainless steel brew pot and assembled the next beer of the month while sipping down a few cold ones from the previous batch. This tradition carried on for a handful of years until life took my brew buddy and me in two different directions. Since it was a 50/50 investment, we opted to split the brew setup down the middle. Half going with me and half going with my brew buddy made the split seem like an awkward breakup, deflating the sails of this once jovial pastime.

I packed my apartment with Homestead Hottie and made the long trek up the mountain to Flagstaff, Arizona where we planned to launch a new chapter of our lives together. Talina must have sensed my depression creeping in over the loss of my hobby because that Christmas she bought me everything I needed to complete the one half of the brew rig I painfully hauled up to the high country.

Flagstaff had a pretty exciting craft brew scene cooking along with a well-stocked homebrew shop, something I have now come to realize was pretty remarkable for a town of just 50,000 people (most of them crunchy in some sort of way). I brewed off and on and even found a new friend and co-worker that was also into homebrewing. Sometimes, having a brew buddy is just the perfect motivation to punching out some extra energy and getting a batch made. It also helps when several of your friends and coworkers really seem to enjoy chugging down the fruits of your labor. I was in a brewing groove for our 5 years in Flagstaff but when it came time to pack the brew rig up again, I was feeling defeated again.

Our nomadic lifestyle took Homestead Hottie and I to where we still are today: southwestern Indiana. The last three years has proved busy without a doubt and felt like we’ve been moving at warp speed ever since our vintage RV limped us on into town. A new job, the birth of our first child, a layoff, another new job and then the birth of our second child last August seemed to all happen in a flash. The powder keg of life just happens and then you get over it.

Needless to say I haven’t had much time to brew, let alone the toddler-free space to tuck a 5-gallon glass jug full of fermenting beer away for a few weeks. Thanks to the gift of another batch of brew ingredients from Talina, I’m finally jumping back on the brew horse again. I’m breaking myself in with an Irish Red Ale kit and am once again sweating the small stuff while I wait. Was my yeast alive when it pitched? Was the fermentation enough even though it seemed dead? Was the wort exposed to too much oxygen?

I just finished racking my Irish Red Ale over to the secondary fermenter and will bottle in another two weeks. Only then will I know for sure if I’m going to be able to fully get my brew mojo back and ferment some wicked ales. Time to sip a cold one and wait.

The neighborhood I grew up in used to be a grapefruit grove. So consequently at the high point of my childhood home we had 12 grapefruit trees surrounding us. It was a daunting task trying to figure out what to do with so much fruit. As a kid I used to sell brown paper bags full of grapefruit for $5.00 and the best days to sell were days when you knew there were a lot of tourists in town (Fiesta Bowl, Super Bowl, Parada del Sol, etc.)

We definitely couldn’t eat the fruit of 12 trees and there wasn’t much inspiration surrounding grapefruit either. Sure we would end up eating a few as a “breakfast treat” or at least that’s what my dad would try and convince us of the supremely sour fruit. I do miss the intoxicating scent of all the citrus blossoms in the spring though and the sight of hundreds of bright fruits adorning trees in your own yard. Now that I’m older, I do have to say that I’m a fan of citrus and miss the plethora of the harvest sometimes. And, since I’m on my quest for sustainability I’ve also discovered a lot of different uses for the warm weather fruit.

The December issue of Sunset magazine had a great recipe for homemade Rosemary Limoncello. Limoncello is an intensely flavored liqueur typically served as an after dinner drink on Italy’s Amalfi Coast and adjoining Sorrento Peninsula. This is the perfect time of the year to make this homemade liqueur in the desert southwest because of the availability of lemons. If you don’t happen to have good access to lemons in your neck of the woods, you can order direct from some citrus orchards out here. The recipe recommends using Meyer lemons because of their fragrance. But you can also achieve excellent results using Eureka lemons. A local Arizona citrus orchard is McClendon’s Select. The Limoneira Orchard in Southern California offers Meyer lemons through their mail order business. Ojai Citrus also does mail order with mixed boxes containing a variety of citrus choices. You could also get a nice variety of swing-top glass bottles to put your limoncello in for giving out to friends and family once it’s matured. To me, it sounds like a great and different way to enjoy this year’s citrus harvest. If you have a favorite recipe using the refreshing flavors of citrus, let us know about it!

Rosemary Limoncello

Courtesy: Sunset Magazine, December 2007 edition

You will need:

18 lemons (washed and dried)

one 4-inch rosemary sprig (washed and dried)

2 bottles of 100 proof vodka (750ml bottles of Stoli or Smirnoff)

4 1/2 cups sugar

1) Peel lemons with a sharp vegetable peeler, taking only the zest (top layer) and avoiding any white pith. Put rosemary in a 1 gallon glass or ceramic container with a tight seal. Add zest to jar.

2) Pour 750ml. vodka over rosemary and zest; seal container. Let sit undisturbed in a cool dark place for about 40-days.

3) On 40th day, in a saucepan, bring 5 cups of water to a boil and add sugar. Cook, stirring, until sugar has dissolved. Let sugar syrup cool to room temperature, about 1 hour.

4) Pour syrup and remaining 750ml. vodka over lemon-vodka mixture, stir and seal container. Let sit in a cool, dark place for another 40 days.

5) Pour limoncello through cheesecloth into a large spouted pitcher and divide among gift bottles. Limoncello will keep indefinitely in the freezer. Recipe makes 10 2/3 cups and will fill ten 8.5 oz. bottles.

We recently started buying whole fryer chickens at Sam’s Club to cook up for dinner. My girlfriend stumbled upon an amazing recipe called Salt Crust Roasted Chicken. It’s awesome and we’ve probably enjoyed the meal three times in the last few weeks. If you’re interested in the recipe head to her blog, Harvest of Daily Life. Once you pick the roasted chicken of the drumsticks, thighs and breasts many people would just consider throwing the rest out. But that chicken carcass still has at least two cups of perfectly good meat left on the bones! Think about all the possibilities for that meat: chicken soup, chicken stock, chicken quesadillas, enchiladas or chicken salad. Anything that would use shredded chicken is perfect.

Here’s the process:

1) Take your chicken carcass and place in a stock pot. Fill the pot with water so most of your chicken carcass is covered and start boiling away. Throughout the process add a couple cut carrots, stalks of celery, onion and some garlic. Just let the mixture boil away on your stove while you do other things. The longer you let it boil, the more rich and intense your chicken stock is going to get. Once it’s boiled for a couple hours, you’re done with the first step.

2) Next, pour your stock out of the pot and into a bowl fitted with a strainer. It will catch all the loose meat and bones. Put your strained stock off to the side. Now take a couple minutes to work your way through the bones, picking off the bits of meat. Discard all the bones, skin and pieces of gristly fat leaving you with a nice helping of chicken meat. At this point, you could recombine your fresh stock and chicken meat to make soup (chicken & rice or chicken noodle) or chicken & dumplings. You can also freeze the chicken stock in small containers for use in other recipes and freeze the chicken meat in small Ziplock baggies for use later too.

Last night, we boiled down the leftover chicken carcass and turned it into fresh chicken noodle soup. It made a huge pot of soup though, more than the two of us could eat in a couple nights! But, that’s ok. Yesterday we spent the day canning our leftover soup so it can be stored in the cupboard just fine. If you don’t want to go through the process of canning, you could also freeze the soup in containers and reheat them in the microwave. While we were at it, we also processed some butternut squash soup that we had stored in the freezer. In the end we came out with 4 quart jars of chicken noodle soup and 2 quarts of butternut squash soup! That will make a lot of meals and save us a lot of money. Plus, the feeling I have from keeping that food from going to waste is so good.

If you’re looking for a great recipe book with complete instructions on home preserving, I recommend the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. I’ve been using this book for more than a year now and I have discovered several recipes to use up extra fruit or other food items before they spoil. One of my favorites is the strawberry lemonade concentrate mix that you make from frozen or fresh berries and bottled lemon juice. Simple and refreshing. I’ll post the recipe below.  I had to buy mine piece by piece at the local hardware store. That kit would have saved me a lot of time!

Do you have a favorite way to make the most out of the food you buy and cook? Tell us about it and share your recipes!

Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate

Courtesy: Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

You will need 6 cups hulled strawberries (I use the cheap bags of frozen berries), 4 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice and 6 cups of granulated sugar.

1. Prepare canner, jars and lids for water bath canning.

2. In a blender or food processsor fitted with a metal blade, working in batches, puree strawberries until smooth. Transfer to a large stainless steel saucepan as completed. Add lemon juice and sugar and stir to combine. Heat to 190 degrees F (88 C) over medium high heat, stirring occasionally. Do not boil. Remove from heat and skim off foam.

3. Ladle hot concentrate into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch (0.5 cm) headspace. Wipe rim. Center lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.

4. Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil and process for 15 minutes. Remove canner lid. Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store.

5. To reconstitute, mix one part concentrate with one part water, tonic water or ginger ale. Adjust concentrate to taste.

A couple of days ago Talina got an insane craving for P.F. Changs Chicken Lettuce Wraps.  With her nausea she’s been leaning toward light fare to fill her stomach as anything heavy leaves her feeling like “death” as she says.  Then came the Changs craving and of course, we don’t have one of our favorite restaurants within a quickly drivable radius.  That doesn’t mean I can’t attempt a clone recipe in our own well-equipped kitchen though!

This need for lettuce wraps also spurned a craving for Panda Express Orange Chicken, another one of our family favorites when we “splurge” on eating out.  Loving and cooking Asian food pretty frequently in our household, I’ve been anxiously watching work going on at the new Aihua International Market and so we made a family trip to see if they were open and to round up the necessary supplies for both clone meals and some future Thai cooking.

Aihua International Market just opened on Green River Road just north of the intersection at Lynch. It made for a perfect Sunday afternoon cultural adventure.

Much to our surprise, the parking lot was packed and the store was bristling with customers of several different nationalities all speaking several different languages.  You feel as if you’ve stepped into a completely different country right in little ‘ol Evansville, Indiana.  Walking through the automatic doors, you find yourself staring straight down the cooler case at all sorts of exotic fruits, veggies, herbs and roots neatly stocked and ready for your hot wok.  It’s a lot to look at and easy to get lost in, at least for a foodie like me.

Distracted already but I have to get back to the list: water chestnuts, crushed red chilies, arrowroot, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, Kaffir lime leaves, galangal root and fresh lemongrass.  When it comes to organization, things are a little hard to find at Aihua.  If items are labeled, deciphering the labels is difficult and takes extra time.  Chinese characters stand out above the secondary English printed on many of the packages and it’s nowhere near as simple as grab and dash.  It’s more like hunt and peck, turning over every rock and leaf until you find what you’re looking for.  The rice wine vinegar and red chilies were located without much effort.  The rest required a tour guide and the staff was eager to please.

The first woman I found stocking the shelves couldn’t speak English and apologized profusely that she couldn’t help me.  It was cute and I could tell she felt really bad so that didn’t stop her from flagging down the woman who seemed to be running the ship.  As she determinedly breezed past, dark chin length hair perfectly quaffed and not moving an inch as she headed toward the store room, she quickly whipped her hand to the shelf without even looking and grabbed the only tiny, elusive bottles of sesame oil they had to offer.  That’s anther check off the list.

Now to find those water chestnuts, I flagged down a tall Asian man wandering about the aisles.  He intently tried to understand what a water chestnut was, trying to correlate in his mind the proper translation so he could lead me to the right spot on the shelf.  After a couple minutes he enlisted the help of a pre-teen Asian girl, her white fuzzy ski cap bouncing between aisles crammed with shoppers as she scurried about.  She had the matriarch of the store, now back and standing strong at the register, translate and tell the man where to take me for water chestnuts.  Check!

Realizing the young girl was my lifeline to finding the other unusual ingredients I needed, I quickly tracked her back down and spewed out my laundry list of ingredients.  She led me from one corner to the next, quietly reading my list back out-loud as she pointed and plucked the items from the shelves.  Kaffir lime leaves were tucked away in an unlabeled bag, hidden in the cooler like a treasure only available to those who seek it out.  I felt like I belonged in an underground club as she measured two handfuls of the aromatic glossy green lime leaves into a smaller sandwich bag for me.  Then she grabbed a stalk of fresh lemongrass and finally showed me the galangal roots and let me pick which one I wanted for our soup pot.  Check, check and check.

Now I know to look for my fresh ingredients by sight next time and not by hand-written sign. From top to bottom: glangal root, lemongrass and Kaffir lime leaves

Standing in line at the checkout, a tiny, older Asian woman was purchasing a cardboard box filled with all sorts of noodles and vegetables.  When it came time to pay, out came a credit card.  “You pay with card?  Where you’re cash?” the matriarch demanded.  The customer said something unintelligible to which the owner replied “You know better!  Cash better!  Next time!” as she pulled out a credit card triplicate form and began rubbing an imprint on the counter.  The dread hit me as I only had a dollar bill in my pocket but that was before I spotted a small, hand-written sign that said cash only under $10.  Knowing Homestead Hotties love for Tiger Balm, we quickly grabbed a tube to bring our total above the $10 mark.

Our visit to the international food store gave new meaning to the term "watching carbs", something Everly adored.

Darling Daughter Everly had a blast taking in all the different languages and foreign items displayed throughout the store.  The biggest kick came from a tub of live blue carbs (really crab but that’s how it was spelled) crawling over each other and looking for a way out.  The Asian women adored little miss Everly and her bright red hair and even gifted her with a special magic wand-like lollipop at the check-stand.  Her grin was priceless and so was the fun in finding some real culture here in Evansville.  Oh yeah, the dinner of Chicken Lettuce Wraps and Orange Chicken turned out pretty damn good too, except for the fact that nausea kept my Homestead Hottie from really enjoying it too.  There’s always leftovers!

I would encourage any international foodie to stop by Aihua sometime and don’t forget to bring cash.

Nothing like a magic-wand lollipop to make a girl's day!

As Homestead Hottie and I looked for more and more ways to make our life more green and self-sustaining, food preservation seemed to be a logical next step following our entry into growing some of our own food.  Home food preservation does take time but the end results are so worth it and will save you a ton of money in the long run.  You won’t have to rely on a run to the grocery store for a canned good but simply walk into your kitchen pantry.  Check out this video as I show you how we turned a bumper crop of green tomatoes into a half-dozen quart jars of our own, homemade pasta sauce.

If you didn’t catch my post on how to ripen or use all those end of season green tomatoes,  click here.

Summer has definitely come to a close for 2010 and many gardeners are left wondering what to do with all those leftover green tomatoes. We had many ourselves and then also acquired three more boxes from a gardener who had quite the bumper crop of green tomatoes that they didn’t want to mess with.

Green tomatoes can be left to ripen. The process is slow but if you have the space, you can enjoy red ripe tomatoes in the dead of winter.  In the book Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables, it is recommended that you store green tomatoes in a single layer, out of direct sunlight in a 60 to 70 degree room.  Green tomatoes can hold for several weeks in the 50 to 60 degree range, delaying ripening even more.  We’ve had good luck ripening green tomatoes with the stem end facing down on a bed of crinkled newspaper.  Homestead Hottie has beat into my head that the tomatoes need to be checked ever few days and turned to prevent them from getting too soft on one side and molding.  If let go, it will spoil your whole box of summer stretched into the winter.  A couple I’ve let go have gone airborne across the kitchen at me and believe me, you don’t want to get hit in the face with a rotten tomato!

If you’re impatient and would prefer trying another treat with green tomatoes, you might want to consider pickled green tomatoes.  The odd pickles can be used as an accompaniment to hamburgers, roasted chicken and charcuterie.  Tied with a red ribbon, they’re pretty enough to give as a hostess gift or to bring to a holiday party so you can share a taste of your summer garden after it’s long gone.  Here is a recipe that was printed in the 2009-2010 winter edition of Organic Gardening Magzine:

Pickled Green Tomatoes

1.5 quarts white wine vinegar
1.5 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
4 cloves of garlic, sliced thin
2 pounds green tomatoes sliced into wedges 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick
1/2 cup fresh tarragon leaves, stems removed

Combine vinegar, sugar, salt and garlic in a stainless steel saucepan and bring to a boil. Once sugar is completely dissolved add in tomatoes. Simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes until the tomatoes are tender. Don’t let them get mushy!

Strain the tomatoes but reserve the pickling liquid. Add tarragon to the reserved pickling liquid. Refrigerate both the drained tomatoes and the pickling liquid in separate containers until cool and then combine. Spoon into lidded glass jars and refrigerate for up to 3 months.

A month into the pickling process, I’ve already dipped into one of my two jars.  I’ve found the pickled green tomatoes to be sweetly sour, a combination of the vinegar and sugar.  I think I might try a jar or two without the sugar to see what the end result is because I’m not a fan of sweetly pickled products with the exception of cinnamon pickles, a completely different jarred treat to discuss in another post.

Do you have a favorite recipe or way to use up green tomatoes?  Share your ideas and inspirations so others don’t let those green tomatoes go to waste!

Since we never know what we’re going to get from month to month, we’ve had fun receiving cuts of meat we necessarily wouldn’t buy at the grocery store.  While the meat is not only good for us because it’s grass-fed and all natural, it’s also pushing us outside of our culinary comfort zone.  T & I tend to cook the same 10-15 staples and don’t change up the menu much but that has quickly changed.

Last month’s share included a package of beef kebab, something I normally wouldn’t grill.  I used the below recipe and it turned out amazing.  The beef was so tender, moist and flavorful.  I also cut up chunks of fresh bell pepper from our garden and quartered an onion too and added those to the skewers in between the pineapple and meat.

Teriyaki Beef Kebabs

Ingredients:

-  1 small top round beef steak, about 2lbs., 1-inch thick

-  1/4 packed light brown sugar

-  1/4 cup soy sauce

-  2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

-  1 tablespoon canola oil

-  1/4 teaspoon ginger powder

-  1 tablespoon minced garlic

-  vegetable oil, for the rack and skewers

-  2 & 1/2 cups canned or fresh pineapple chunks

1)  Using a sharp knife, trim all the fat from the meat and cut meat into 1-inch cubes

2)  In a bowl, stir together the sugar, soy sauce, lime juice, canola oil, ginger powder and minced garlic until the sugar is dissolved.  Add the meat, cover tightly and refrigerate for about 8 hours, flipping occasionally.

3)  When ready, arrange the briquettes in the barbecue, clean and lightly oil the grill rack and preheat to high

4)  Thread the meat and pineapple, alternately, onto lightly oiled metal skewers.  Immediately place on the barbecue and cook, turning and basting with marinade for about 5 to 7 minutes, until the meat is cooked as desired.  Remove from heat and serve.

That was fun, now we’ve got to figure out what to do with beef neck bones.  It was a little bonus item thrown in with our normal take of meats this last month.  I’ll let you know what comes out of it!  Are you a member of a CSA program?  If not, why haven’t you joined one yet?