Yum....pierogies

I grew up in a household with a mother of Polish descent, and so she made pierogies all of the time. She would spend all day making them and leave them on a big plate on the kitchen table until she was ready to sautee them for dinner. My brother and I would sneak in and grab a few here and there.

Over the weekened a local church had a pierogi sale. Since my mother has some health problems and
can't make them now, we headed out to buy some They had cheese, sauerkraut, mushroom and sauerkraut, potato, meat and blueberry. My mother mostly made cheese but I got some of the sauerkraut it try for myself.

I have my mother's pierogi recipe, which is vegetarian so I make it once  in awhile. They freeze well and they are a good meal or snack on a winter evening.

This article "An Introduction to Polish Pierogi" will tell you just about everything you need to know and  the second part of the article will tell you how to make pierogi.

Granola Bars

Every once in awhile I go through my cupboards and refrigerator looking for odds and ends that I want to use up and get rid of. Sometimes this challenges my creativity as I come across things that I would never put together, only to find an online recipe for that very combination. Other times I find that I'm sick of an ingredient and want to get rid of it, only to find a great recipe that makes me keep buying it. Rarely, I find exactly everything that I want to make a recipe of my choice. This weekend I realized that I bought most of the ingredients for Healthy 5-Ingrediant Granola bars by the Minimalist Baker.

I didn't have almonds for this recipe but I had pumpkin seeds, which worked great. My little food processor is on the blink so I chopped the dates finely instead of processing them into a paste. I also forgot to heat the honey and peanut butter but it just made for a little more effort mixing things together. These were quick to make and turned out to be quite tasty. They were a little loose to hold together but I guess it is because the dates were only chopped. I would make these again.

Psychadelic Cook-In

I got a kick out of this cover for the cookook called Cook-In by Kathleen Dunning Fisher, published in 1969. These Peter Max inspired twins look like they should be mixing up those "special" brownies. Though, even with all the cool art this book is simply a basic how to cook book that seems aimed at teenagers.

Pickled Banana Peppers

I love pickled banana peppers, but I don't actually use that many, for some reason. I throw them all over salads and stick them on an occasional sandwich during the summer, but otherwise I forget about them. Things that I don't use often (like ketchup, for instance) seem to be good things to can because I can then make a year's supply of it and then forget about it.

I had it in the back of my mind to get some banana peppers and try this, but I didn't see any when I was looking for them. But, when I was picking up some more tasty discount tomatoes from my favorite farm stand, I picked up a small box of banana peppers. I thought about using them in salsa, but then I realized when I got home that duh, I should pickle them on their own instead.

I searched about for a small batch recipe and found this banana pepper ring recipe from The Virtuous Housewife. I had about a dozen large banana peppers, not quite the 15-20 the recipe called for, but I used her amounts anyway. I guess my peppers were quite large because I used most of the liquid and ended up with four 8oz jars.

In the comments to The Housewife's post, several people mentioned the peppers got soft after canning and to try to "hot pack" it. Well, this means keep the jars and liquid hot. I did that for 3 of my jars but life intervened and I did not do that for the 4th. Coincidentally that jar did not seal so I stuck it in the fridge. Those, indeed, were soft after about a week in the fridge but I haven't opened any of the others yet so I can't tell if this jar is an anomaly.

The recipe also said to add turmeric. I wondered why, and wasn't looking forward to it because when I made corn relish the turmeric turned my plastic kitchen tools yellow. I later realized that this is to keep the canned goods looking pretty. In this photo the bottom left jar doesn't have liquid in it yet and it just isn't as pretty as the other ones.

How to freeze herbs

After all of that salsa canning a couple of weeks ago I had some fresh cilantro left over. Well, I hate to waste it and I knew that there was some way to freeze fresh herbs using ice cube trays. I googled it and it is surprisingly simple. All I had ti do was chop up the herbs, pack about a tablespoon of them into ice cube trays and then pour water over each cube until the cilantro was lightly covered. This worked well. I ended up using the frozen cilantro about a week later and it still tasted pretty good. Of course, it wasn't in the freezer long to begin with.

Busy Canning Day

Over the past 24 hours I've canned 30 things. Pictured here is today's efforts: salsa, chutney, hot sauce, and pickles. More about all of this once I get a rest.

Chopping, chopping, chopping

This morning I went to the Asian supermarket so I could get supplies for making salsa. Produce is always best and cheapest there. I still have many tomatoes and I'm making colorful salsa from yellow and orange bell peppers and green hot peppers so it is all pretty. I intend to use this as Christmas gifts.

Meanwhile, my fingers hurt and they are even wrinkled from chopping all of the fresh vegetables. I also got some apricots with the intent of making jam, but I'm, not happy with them so I'm going to see how they do in chutney.

I also got a ton of pickling cucumbers for 99 cents a pound. My favorite farm stand hasn't been having them and so I was afraid of not having enough pickles all winter.