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.

I'd like to think Julia would be proud of my forays into French culture...poor accent included. Image via Wikipedia

Monday kicked off a new week here at the Half-Acre Homestead with little to no bang.  Our week-long spell of sunshine and 60 degree temps came to an end today as heavy rain lashed at the side of the house for most of the day.  Tonight we’re supposed to plunge into the 30’s.  It was one of those stare out the window type of days with the exception of buttoning the hot boxes back up after they caught some afternoon showers.

Tonight was “Poulet de Troi Repas” though…that’s “chicken of three meals” en Francais if you don’t speak my language of love.  Yes, I studied French.  Four years of that daunting language stretched across both high school and college and what have I done with it other than gain an inside track into Julia Child’s mind.  It was a strategic move at the time living in the desert southwest.  Shun the language that made sense to learn and be the only guy in a classroom full of French speaking girls.  I was Jean Nate and if the name sounds familiar it is that famous shampoo in a bright yellow bottle.  How could I not have a fun and fancy free nickname for all those practice sessions in class…voulez vous…ok for this nerd that was wishful thinking.

Back to our chicken of three meals, this is an excellent way to use your resources to their fullest.  We’ve always been thrifty with our leftovers but since we became members of the Stonewall Farm CSA Program (community supported agriculture) we’ve made our yummy organic meat go as far as possible.  If you haven’t tried their meat or eggs yet, you’re missing out.  Let them know Nathan Ryder referred you and they will take good care of you. One whole chicken can usually be made to stretch over the course of one week creating three or even more dinners.  We usually start our chicken of three meals out the first night by roasting the bird.  Our favorite method to roasting isn’t the ordinary stick it in the oven and watch it brown.  No, we encrust our poulet in salt before shoving it into cook.  Homestead Hottie discovered this roasting method several years ago and we’ve never turned back.

You might think this will cause the chicken to turn out unbearably salty but surprisingly it doesn’t.  The salt hardens and forms a thick crust during the roasting process, locking in your chicken’s juice and preventing it from squeezing out into the bottom of your roasting pan.  The resulting skin underneath that roasted salt crust is the most amazing golden brown, crispy and downright delectable as it melts onto your tongue.  Tonight’s chicken had a French theme thanks to one additional ingredient:  Herbs de Provence.  This herbal blend contains lavender, the aromatic which on first whiff whisks you away to a sunny Mediterranean destination.  If this isn’t already a staple in your herb cabinet I highly recommend you buy some or make it yourself.

Ingredients:

- 1 organic, whole chicken (Evansville locals can get one from Stonewall Farms, tell em we sent ya!)

- 1 or 2 cups kosher salt depending on size of bird

- Herbs de Provence seasoning blend

- 1 large lemon cut into wedges

- 2 to 3 cloves of garlic

- Several sprigs of rosemary

Directions:

1)  Stuff cavity of chicken with lemon wedges, garlic cloves and several sprigs of rosemary

2)  Place chicken breast-side down in roasting pan and dust skin with Herbs de Provence.  Spear more rosemary sprigs through skin in several different spots.

3)  Pour kosher salt over the top of your chicken, patting in place to prevent salt from falling off into pan.  A light spritz of water can help the salt stick if your bird’s skin is dry.

4)  Place into oven and roast at around 400 degrees until internal temperature of the chicken reaches 180 degrees.

5)  Remove chicken from oven and use the back of a carving knife or wooden spoon to shatter the salty crust, scraping salt off the skin and into pan.  Voila!

Make sure to refrigerate leftovers and carcass for meal number two to be discussed in a future blog post. Bon Appetit!

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!

We never anticipated we’d have this many lemon cucumber plants.  Last year’s lone vine didn’t fair too well, setting a couple small cucumbers before withering to unrecognizable remnants.  With only a scant amount of seeds left in our seed box, I ended up planting them in seed trays but forgot what they were.  We’ve had a lot of unknown plants this year and another round of John Does didn’t concern us at all.  My wife set them about knowing we’d soon figure out what they were.

Two months later we’ve picked several baskets of delightful lemon cucumber.  My Homestead Hottie wife has loved the lemon cucumber ever since we were first introduced to them at the Farmer’s Market in our old hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona.  We slice them and eat them raw or mix them in with salad when we need a nourishing cool-down from Summer’s oppressive heat.  But with the amount we’ve harvested, there was simply no way we’d be able to eat them all before they went bad.

I wasn’t convinced they were able to be pickled but Homestead Hottie quickly found a canning recipe online that proved they were in fact a candidate for pickling.  Jill over at Jillicious Discoveries has a great recipe that we put to use this last week.  Our four quart jars of lemon cucumber pickles are now resting quietly beside their cousins, four jars of freshly preserved tomatoes, on the shelves in the garage.  I can’t wait to try them out.  Winnie Abramson over at the Healthy Green Kitchen also has a recipe for lacto-fermented lemon cucumber pickles that I’d be interested in trying as well.

Do you have a favorite recipe for lemon cucumbers or a favorite pickling recipe to use them in?  Let me know, I’d love to try more!

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?

Here’s a little recipe that will keep your four-hoofed friend happy but won’t break the bank.  Don’t forget to get creative based on your horse’s specific likes.  Add those ingredients into the recipe listed below and if you have a recipe you’d like to share, for any homemade animal treat, don’t hesitate to post it!

Ingredients:

- 2 to 4 cups commercial horse feed

- 2 eggs

- 3 Tbsp. molasses

- 1 to 1.5 cups hot water

Directions:

1)  Place the feed in a large bowl.

2)  In a separate bowl, beat eggs well, add them to the feed and mix well.

3)  Dissolve the molasses in hot water and add a little at a time to the feed mixture until it’s sticky and firm.

4)  Pour it in gradually as you may not need it all.  You should be able to mold and shape the mix to dry or to leave as a “pudding” for your horse to slurp out of a bowl.  Add more liquid or more feed to reach the desired consistency.

You can make some creative additions to this basic mix based on your horse’s likes.  Grain, carrots and peppermints are popular additives horses seem to love.