Family Brunch

Every once in a while we have a confluence of family in the area. A few weeks ago this happened, and we decided to host everyone for Sunday Brunch. With nine adults for brunch, I knew we'd need a spread. Being my usual self, I decided to have fun with this!

Menu:

+ Fruit Salad

+ Monkey Bread

+ Biscuits with Homemade Peach Preserves, Homemade Plum Preserves and Honey Maple Butter

+ Sausage, Egg and Cheese Casserole

+ Smoked Salmon Pinwheels

+ Shrimp Cocktail

+ Mimosas (of course!)

Obviously some of these items were store-bought and required little effort on my part, but it was fun to put together the whole spread, and boy was it yummy! I bought the shrimp and the salmon pinwheels, and in the interest of time baked biscuits from a can. One fun feature was that my homemade jams were made with fruits from my CSA last summer, and I had the last few frozen peaches to put in the fruit salad!

It was such a yummy and relaxing way to end the weekend, and I loved everything!

Fruit Salad with Mint and Honey

Peach Preserves, Plum Preserves, Butter and the Little Lady (hiding my Honey Maple Butter!)

Shrimp Cocktail and Salmon Pinwheels

Monkey Bread and Egg Casserole

The Sausage, Egg and Cheese Casserole was easy - I put it together the day before and just popped it into the oven on Sunday morning. Here's how I did it - it's based on a Cooking Light recipe for a Sausage and Cheese Breakfast Casserole, but I made a few adjustment of my own!

12 ounces sweet Italian turkey sausage

2 cups skim milk

2 cups egg substitute (like Egg Beaters)

1 tablespoon dry mustard powder (like Colman's)

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon ground pepper

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3 eggs

16 slices of bread, crusts removed

1 cup shredded low-fat cheddar cheese

1/2 teaspoon paprika

Brown the sausage, stirring to crumble it. Remove from heat and drain any excess fat. Allow to cool.

Stir together the milk, egg substitute, mustard powder, salt, peppers and eggs in a large bowl, whisking gently.

Cube bread slices. Add bread, cheese and cooled sausage to egg mixture.

Spray a baking dish (I used a lasagna dish, which is a little deeper, and is about 8x12) with cooking spray, and pour in the mixture. Cover and refrigerate for 8 hours, up to one day.

When ready to bake, pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Remove casserole from fridge and let stand at room temperature for 20-30 minutes.

Sprinkle top of casserole with paprika. Bake for 40-50 minutes, until top is lightly browned and eggs are set. Let stand for at least 10 minutes, and serve. It's also great at room temperature!

Preserving Summer

This summer I enjoyed some of the best peaches EVER.  However, toward the end of the summer, I started to get a little sad about the fact that they would soon be no more.  I pondered how to save them in such a manner that I could enjoy them later in the year - especially when it's cold and dark and there is no fresh, local fruit available!

Some peaches simply got peeled, cut into chunks and frozen.  These will be yummy either in smoothies or just thawed and eaten as-is.  However, I still had a lot of peaches.  Having never experimented with making jams, I figured I might as well!

The experiment began with some exploration of recipes and methods.  I found the University of Georgia's National Center for Home Food Preservation to be very helpful; it had instructions on how to do the actual canning, complete with times for sterilizing jars, processing the jars and how long it should take to cook the jams, even.  For recipes, I trolled the internet and looked through a few cookbooks, too.

Ready to begin, I started by peeling and cutting up my fruit.  I dumped it, along with the sugar and lemon juice, into a dutch oven over medium heat, and stirred as it slowly degraded the fruit.  I used about two parts fruit to one part sugar, with the juice from half of a large lemon (it was a juicy lemon).  This cooked down and cooked down, filling the house with the smell of fresh peaches.

In the meantime, I had the jars boiling to sterilize them.  When the jam seemed ready, based on my using a spoon and seeing how gelatinous the mixture was, I pulled the jars out of the boiling water.  I then used a funnel to dump the jam into the jars, capped them, and quickly put them back in the boiling water to process.

After processing, I removed them and let them sit on the kitchen counter.  A bit later, I was rewarded with a reassuring POP as they sealed.  They are now in the cabinet, awaiting slightly cooler days that call for warm corn muffins, maple butter and fresh peach jam...I can't wait!

Winning Produce

My most recent haul from the CSA brought in lots of  the usual goodies - tomatoes, Thai and Italian basils, zucchini, squash, eggplant, potatoes, garlic and peppers.  

This garlic really is phenomenal - I'm planning to roast a head of it to make some garlic butter - perhaps I'll freeze that to bring me the flavors in the winter.

This week also brought, of course, more peaches!  Every week I keep looking at them, thinking "I'll try a new recipe with the peaches this week."  And every week, I simply cut them up and eat them just as they are.  They've been wonderful with no additions at all.

This week I also got a few more tomatoes, and combined them with a couple more for a slow roast.  I simply cut them in half, sprinkled them with olive oil, salt, a little thyme and a smidgen of sugar and put them in a hot roasting oven.  Nigella Lawson's Nigella Express includes a recipe for what she calls "Moonblush Tomatoes" that she puts in a very hot oven right before bed, and then turns off the oven and leaves the tomatoes in the oven overnight as it cools.  I'm a fan of her methods, and while I toy with the ratios in her recipe, it offers a nice flavor profile.

These tomatoes are slightly roasted, and get just a bit wrinkly as the flavors are concentrated.  I love eating them on their own, but they also make great additions to salads, and are wonderful sauteed a bit and put over pasta.  This is just a generally fantastic way to enjoy some tomatoes!

This Week in the Bull Run Mountain CSA

This week was more fun, not only because I got more yummy, gorgeous produce, but also because I got several things I've never cooked with before - including one I've never even tried!

As with past weeks, the haul included more cucumbers, eggplant, squash and zucchini, all of which I am enjoying immensely. I also got more Thai and Italian basil. I've started freezing the basil, because I'm just getting too much of it, but I know I'll use it! Also included were more potatoes, and some teeny, tiny onions - the size of pearl onions. He pulled them early because the heat has done a number on their growth, but I can't wait to use them. There was also more garlic. This garlic is to die for...it's just so fantastic. I'm hoping to roast some this weekend (it should not be as hot, so having the oven on for an extended time is a more bearable concept) and making a garlicky compound butter.

Let's not forget the half dozen eggs...which are proliferating a bit. I need to do more baking, or more frittatas. Of course this week's fruit share was more peaches - if possible, these are even more gorgeous. I've been so lucky to be eating these peaches...I really am loving it!

New this week, and new in my kitchen (though not to my tastebuds) were mustard greens and tomatillos. I'm particularly interested to fiddle with the tomatillos!

And brand new in Amandaland this week - ground cherries! These are amazing little bits of goodness, wrapped in tissue-thin, papery skins that peel away to reveal golden fruits. The flavor is quite unique...a little pineapple, a little raisin, a little vanilla...almost intoxicating. I look forward to experimenting with them!

Some Like It Hot...Very Hot...

It's a record-breaking day for heat here in the mid-Atlantic, so I have not turned on the oven or stove at all.

What am I eating? Well, I'm lucky enough to be pulling in some gorgeous produce from my CSA that requires virtually no treatment at all to be delicious!

I'm eating some gorgeous peaches, fresh from the trees earlier in the week. These peaches are so succulent and sweet that they need NOTHING added to them. I shared some of last week's peaches with my sister-in-law and she asked what I'd put on them...the answer was nothing. If possible, this week's are even better. Perhaps it's the heat making them so delicious to me, but they're fabulous.

I've also been eating cucumbers. I had two - this week's and last week's - and sliced them into half-moons and prepared them a la David Tanis. His Vietnamese cucumbers (here's a newspaper's publication of a version of the recipe - I don't want to come afoul of copyright law) are right up my alley, and the heat of the chiles combined with the cool cucumbers seems all too perfect on a hot day like today.

I may cut into a block of cheese later, but maybe not. At this rate, I'll end the day having only eaten cucumbers and peaches, and that's perfectly fine with me.

CSA Summer

This week, my camera battery died, and it was such a busy week I've just gotten a new one. So while I do not have pics of all the wonderful produce from this week, I have wonderful produce all the same.

This week we got more garlic, a beautiful and vibrant yellow zucchini, some lovely broccoli (if all broccoli were like this, I think I'd love broccoli!), more tomatoes and cucumbers, potatoes, arugula, a new green called Tokyo Bekana, and more Thai and Italian basil.

I also got my weekly egg share, and this week for fruit I got about a dozen beautiful and fragrant peaches. Again, they were so soft and tender they filled the car with the smell of nectar on the drive. Mmm....

Moving to the Country, I'm Gonna Eat a Lot of Peaches

Those peaches I got...oh my. They're just swell. As cling peaches, I couldn't get quite all the fruit cut off, but I got plenty of juicy, peachy goodness. They're so sweet and succulent. I'll be eating them all weekend...and eagerly anticipating getting more next week!