I tried making pickles for the first time lately, among else using asparagus as a vegetable. Since I didn’t want to throw away the trimmings I made cream of asparagus soup. Not complicated, not time consuming and tasty.
Basic Vegetable Pickling Recipe
I wanted to try pickling, so I decided to give it a try on the weekend, but starting with only small batches. My beloved aunt Inge would vividly oppose to the term “pickling” (she’s an institution on home grown greens as well as food-preservation and she’s some kind of an old-style, longtime proficient german homesteader, not the american style 🙂 ). But I’ll try anyway.
Roasted Garlic Recipe
There’s a sh*tload of videos online from people making oven roasted garlic and using it for garlic bread, etc. I wanted to try that too eventually – and boy, is that amazing! The whole house smelled of garlic and I don’t want to know how *I* smelled afterwards 🙂 This is luscious, delicious and by the way absolutely easy to make. Do try this if you haven’t already.
Wind Egg or “Cock’s Egg” Explained
Priscilla laid a so-called wind egg the last days, the first one I ever even saw in real life. It’s a complete egg, but with only a membrane, thus just missing a calcium shell. They were called cock’s eggs traditionally since it was believed they were laid by cocks in former times.
Here’s wikipedia’s information on this (german language, since unfortunately the english version isn’t worth a dime).
Oven Baked Chicken with Marsala Sauce Recipe
I found a bottle of Marsala wine in the basement, long forgotten and once used for cooking that I just had to make use of. Marsala is an italian special origin type of sweet wine that I mostly know for it’s use in cooking – and it makes for a very pleasant and delicious flavour.
Since I was finally (st)able enough again – *sigh* – to be somewhat productive and contribute something for the family, here’s yesterday’s dinner. The ingredients list makes it look far more complicated than it actually is.
From Potato- to Cheese Press
Here is another recovery/upcycling project which I finished yesterday. I found an old and dirty potato press on eBay that I was able to restore sufficiently to fulfill my needs. Now it won’t crush any potatoes anymore, but serve as a larger vessel for pressing homemade cheese instead 🙂
First Burn of the Backyard Rocket
Unexpectedly, we had two days of good weather here and I took the chance to try the backyard rocket for real for the first time. It’s a real litlle devil, burning hot and vigorously (I assume because of the chimney effect) and radiating a lot of heat. When it’s hot enough and the lid is on it even burns almost smokeless!
1950’s Bread Cutter Restored
Since we’re baking lot of bread ourselves I was glad to stumble upon an interesting recycling project. It’s a hand cranked bread cutter from some time in the 1950s (as far as I could determine) that required just a little love and effort. It’s doing service again in my kitchen now.