Today we’re coming at you with a suggestion to spice up your holiday cheese plate.
If you don’t know it already, putting out a good cheese plate, or taking one to your next party is a sure-fire way to gain admirers. Our trick is to pair your cheeses with the right condiment.
*We first published this post almost two years ago, but these cookies are delicious and ginger is our ingredient of the season, so we’re republishing them today so that you don’t let a good thing pass you by.*
Ahhh, I meant to share this post before Christmas so that you could add yet another cookie to your baking list, but time got away from me, so here we are with a delicious ginger cookie that tastes just as good on a cold day in January as it would during the hustle and bustle of Christmas.
And I’m still smiling about how this came to be my favorite ginger cookie recipe. Calder’s sister made them a few years ago at Thanksgiving. That first batch was delicious and reminded me of the ginger chews that I used to buy in Trader Joe’s. I was so smitten that I asked for the recipe. She sent it along, and from her notes, I could see that it came from the grandma of a good friend. As I was baking these with Alex, I looked more closely at the bottle (more on that below) and realized that the recipe on the Grandma’s Molasses bottle matched the recipe I was making! Ingredient for ingredient and word for word. So, maybe you already know this recipe?
Chive fritters, because it’s fair season, and just like pickles, cheese, and ice cream, even flowers can be fried. Classy? No. Maybe. Delicious? Definitely.
Our house came with large patches of chives that produce an overabundance of beautiful edible blossoms every spring. I love the chives, but they also drive me slightly crazy because I feel bad when I’m not making use of the bunch. One of the easiest things to do is sending Alex out to pick chive and dandelion blossoms for our salads. He loves the independence that comes with being sent to do a job like this. I’ve also experimented with chive-infused vinegar. Remember the dressing in our pollinator salad? These fritters are yet another good use for the blossoms. 
But as it often happens happens, when I’m outside picking the blossoms, the bees are buzzing. They’re gently collecting pollen as they move from one flower to the next, and it’s then that I’m reminded that it’s perfectly fine to take a handful or two and just let the rest be. {Look at that bee bum!}
This was such a packed month of cooking that I broke the post up into two parts. This is part two and covers the desserts, canned goods, and fermented projects for the month. If you are interested in what came in our share this month and the main-course dishes we made, check out this post.
Picking up where we lift off in the last post, here are the sweet and unique ways that I used the fruits and vegetables in our farm share.
If you want to eat dessert for breakfast, you’ve come to the right place. I’m nothing but an enabler on this front, BUT only if the dessert is fruit-based. No, wait, I also eat cake with my coffee.
This was a good month for feeding my dessert-for-breakfast habit. With weekly peach deliveries, and a few weeks with plums, there was plenty of fruit for the baking.
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Stone fruit tea cake (from Rustic Fruit Desserts) : peaches and plums
We made this cake twice during the month, the first time with just peaches, the second time with peaches and plums. Even though it’s called a cake, Calder and I both thought that it was the best cobbler we’ve ever tasted. It’s delicious straight from the oven with vanilla ice cream.
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Peach crisp (a simplification of the apple crisp recipe in the King Arthur Flour Cookbook) : peaches
I have to confess that I made this for our camping trip with the full intention to only eat it for breakfast. I packed a few small cups of Greek yogurt, and the combination was perfect.
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NYTimes {famous} Plum Torte : plums, eggs
I came across this recipe after reading the NYTimes article about it being the paper’s most requested recipe.
I don’t know why my plums sunk. Is it the altitude? No matter, the torte was still amazingly delicious. I think the boys and I ate half of it for our afternoon snack before Calder even got home from work! We have a few plums left, and I’m thinking of making this one more time for the season.
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I have to admit that for all of my interest in learning new things and experimenting, I’ve shied away from home fermentation projects. I always thought of it as such a risky venture with the chance for contamination, but after being gifted a few fermentation-related tools (this mason jar fermenting set and a couple of ceramic fermenting weights), I thought it was time to give it a try.
I’m working on both a jar of giardiniera and another of sauerkraut. Neither batch is done yet, but this is the week I get to test both, and when they’re done, whether good or bad, I’m excited to do a follow-up post to share my results along with a deeper discussion about why fermented foods are good for your gut.
*This isn’t my first foray into fermenting. It all started with kombucha! This is just my first time throwing vegetables into the mix.
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Giardiniera : basil, onion, carrots, broccoli, green bell pepper
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Sauerkraut (from Preserving by the Pint) : cabbage
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I’m hoping to do some more canning this fall, but keeping my expectations in check, I’m focusing on small-batch canning. A couple of great resources that I heavily rely on for small-scale canning are the books Food in Jars and Preserving by the Pint. Both are written by Marissa McClellan, who writes a canning-focused blog called Food in Jars (another great resource for canning recipes, tips, and tricks).
If you’re nervous about canning, then doing a small batch is a great way to start. You can do it with the pots already in your kitchen, so you aren’t investing in new equipment. You can also do it with a smaller quantity of produce, so the prep-time is less, as is the clean-up, and it’s not a big loss if the batch fails (it won’t).
This month, I focused my canning efforts on that big box of peaches we received, making both a peach salsa and a peach bbq sauce.
Peach BBQ Sauce (from Preserving by the Pint) : peaches, onion
The BBQ sauce recipe makes about two half-pint jars. We’ve been using it on grilled skinless and boneless chicken thighs this month, and it’s so good that I ended up making three batches of the sauce so that I’d have enough to pass around to my family!
Peach Salsa (from Food in Jars) : peaches, onion, bell pepper, jalapeno
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Needless to say it was an exciting month in the kitchen. We tried so many new-to-us dishes, and all were delicious! I can’t wait to see what the month ahead brings, and I’m really excited to push myself to try even more canning and fermentation recipes.
It’s the middle of summer, food is at its freshest, and the livin’ is easy, or at least it should be.
There’s nothing we love more at this time of year than the intense flavors and colors of fresh fruits, and there’s no easier way to enjoy them than to just throw them in whatever you’re making. Need some ideas? That’s why we’re here.
Last week I put some fresh raspberries and cherries in my mojito – smashing them up just a bit in the bottom of the glass before adding the rest of the ingredients.
Serve cubed watermelon with mint for a refreshing treat on a hot day. If you like that combo, you’ll love our watermelon mojitos!
And if your garden’s still overflowing with mint, make some aqua frescas.
Add fresh figs and blueberries to your mocktails (or cocktails!).
Throw watermelon and blueberries in your smoothies with a tea-based twist.
What about watermelon in your gazpacho?!
Any ripe berry would go well in these yogurt-based popsicles. These lemon pops are another refreshing option.
Yesterday Alex asked to bake a cake (nothing makes my heart melt faster than his request to do something in the kitchen!). He wanted a cake with “a blue middle and red paint on the frosting”. I let him add some food coloring to our batter, but then transformed his idea for red paint into a splattering of berries and their juices across the top. This is a basic yellow cake with our favorite coconut milk buttercream (scroll down).
Summer, and particularly July, is such a special time of year for us, and nothing tastes more like summer than perfectly ripe fruit; it’s pure midsummer magic. If you can get your hands on some, especially if you have the chance to get out there and pick berries, do two things : 1. eat as much as you can while picking, and 2. do something creative and special with the leftovers. You won’t regret it! xo
Holy heck do I get hangry. If the man and I are ever having an argument he usually pauses the fight to get me a snack. Seriously. It usually works too. Being hungry can hijack your brain and cause you to do and say crazy stuff. It’s all about survival though so before we blame our monkey brains, let’s just make a snack instead. Here are my favorite quick and easy snacks.
You don’t have to have a kid to make this Lemon Bread, but it’s more fun messy if you do! As you’ll see, the simplicity of this recipe is what makes it the perfect choice for cooking with an assistant, but it’s also what makes it an easy go-to treat. You can bake a loaf in no time at all for a last minute brunch, but it also stores well, so it’s the perfect tangy treat to make on a Monday and eat it all week long with your afternoon tea break (speaking from experience). Now on with the cuteness ~
We’ve reached a new milestone in our house : weekly cooking sessions with Alex. It’s no surprise that Calder and I love to cook, and we’ve kept the kitchen open to Little A from the start. We recently turned a corner when it comes to sharing the kitchen with a little guy; at first we were just trying to keep him busy and safe, but now he’s actually helping with the cooking and he understands what’s going on!
This past weekend we pulled together a last minute brunch at our place, and one of the things we served was this blueberry lemon buckle. Now that we’re fully settled in the new house, we want to do a lot of entertaining, especially during the summer months when we can have everyone out on the deck and the kids playing in the kiddie pool. To make entertaining actually happen, and to keep it stress-free, it’s nice to have a few reliable recipes, like this buckle, that you can make ahead. Don’t know what a buckle is? Read on to find out!
In my vocabulary, buckles are fruit-filled coffee cakes. You’ll commonly see buckles that call for blueberries as the fruit, but I was introduced to the buckle in Rustic Fruit Desserts, where my mind was blown by the variety of buckle options (rhubarb, apple, blueberry, and cranberry!). You really can have a buckle for each season. So far I’ve made the apple, cranberry, and blueberry varieties, but we recently discovered a rhubarb plant growing in our yard (no joke), so that will be next!
Yesterday was the cake, and today we’re going to share a recipe for the cashew cream that we served at the party. If you’ve been paying attention, then you’ve noticed that we published a cashew crema recipe last week. Today’s cashew cream recipe is very similar, but rather than a savory condiment, this is a lightly sweet dip that’s perfect when paired with fruit.
First an aside : two weeks ago while Sarah was visiting, there were many moments when our response to someone or our contribution to the conversation was exactly the same (wether we were responding with a grunt, a laugh, an “ooh”, or with actual words like “no way”). It was equally hilarious and spooky. And our cashew cream recipes are yet another example of us wanting to do the exact same thing at the same moment, let’s ignore the fact that it involved nuts and our mom would suggest that we’re both a bit nuts.
We end up eating a lot of snack bars in our house, most often packing them for hikes and days out, but also as a little treat at the moment when you realize that there’s too many hours between now and the next meal. I’ve never made a homemade snack or granola bar before, but have wanted to try for a long time because of the opportunity to personalize the ingredients. When I saw today’s recipe on Food52, I was excited to try it, partially because it’s simple enough, that it’s the perfect base for experimentation. Lo and behold, just six short months later I’ve finally put a batch together! We’ve been snacking on these all week, and I’ve quickly decided that this recipe is a keeper. Even little Alex, with his mouth full of teeth has no trouble eating these and always requests another.
This couldn’t be a better first recipe for our nuts category, since it’s packed with walnuts, almonds, nut butters, coconut, and pumpkin & sunflower seeds (we’re being liberal with our nut category!). Consider this nut & fruit selection below a suggestion and feel free to swap in your favorites and/or change the ratios to your liking. Of the few changes I made to the original recipe, I was most excited about my decision to add a touch of spice with the Baharat spice mix, which adds a bit of complexity and depth to the nutty flavors. I’ve included a link to our previous post with the Baharat blend if you want to try it, but using it is not necessary. You can completely leave out the spices or modify them to your liking ~ adding a pinch of whatever spice you like!
Ingredients
Instructions
The original recipe recommended keeping the finished bars in the fridge, but we first sampled them straight from the freezer (when I was cutting them), and we really liked how firm they were then as opposed to their softer texture after we moved them to the fridge; in the end we decided to keep them frozen. And really, that would be my one complaint with a recipe like this ~ that the bars have a tendency to crumble and fall apart if they get too warm. As a result, I’m still on the hunt for a homemade bar that’s just like this one except with a sturdier disposition for taking on hikes. If you have any recommendations, send them our way!
