End of the Season: Cherries!

Its time to say goodbye again... to cherries that is.

We got the last crop in at the store about two weeks ago, and honestly, they were definitely end of the season cherries... when they got to us, the were already brownish and slightly bruised. They tasted good enough, but man, they were ugly. So ugly in fact that they didn't sell - like at all. Even after lowering the price and offering samples to anyone walking in our direction.... Oh darn...

Tip: Don't judge a fruit by its cover! Seriously, the most delicious fruits come in all looks and sizes! And just to be sure, ask the store to give you a sample. No, really. Just about anywhere that sells fruits and vegetables will give you a sample - including grocery stores. I've done it. Just make sure to find an actual produce person to help you out.

So, 5 pounds of ugly, tasty cherries that no one wanted to buy - ended up in my house. The thing is, they were Rainier Cherries - not notoriously good cooking cherries. I love myself a cherry pie, but I wasn't such a fan of the last one I made with Rainiers... so I had to put my thinking cap on - my husband and I were NOT gonna be able to eat 5 pounds of cherries before they went bad.

Sauce? Naw... again they're Rainiers...  Cobbler? Naw... similar taste to pie.... Dried?! That just might work.

Its super simple:

Dried Cherries - Even Rainiers!
Ingredients

• Any amount of pitted cherries, cut in half

Directions

1. Bring out, clean and set your dehydrator on the lowest temperature.
2. Set cherries onto trays, cut side up (rounded, skin side on the tray). This will allow them to retain all their flavor and plumpness.
3. Dry for many hours - between 8-12 - depending on the heat. I let mine go overnight, and woke up to some well dried cherries, with only a few crispy ones. The dryer they are the longer they will store. Mine were DRY. Next time I'm gonna turn them off little sooner, letting them be a little squishy.
4. Collect the cherries, and put into a jar - without the lid. Wait till they cool to room temperature then tighten on the lid.
5. Substitutions: Use any kind of cherry for this, even sour or tart ones, which would be great re-hydrated in a chutney!

They didn't get any prettier during the drying process.... but they did get darn tasty! So tasty that I soon used them in Ina Garten's Granola Bar Recipe! I just cut the cherries up using scissors and used them in place of the apricots. Delicious!

Onions Shouldn't Make You Cry

Onions! Onions! Everywhere!!

The other day, my boss hefted a 50-pound bag of brown onions into the shop. My job was to put them on the shelf, the easy part, and replace the older ones. Which, of course, I couldn't just throw away.

Now, what to do with 10 onions? I love myself some onions, but since they were already a little bit older, I knew I wouldn't be able to store them for long enough to cook them all. At least… not in their current state!

Enter the dehydrator, stage left.

It’s not QUITE as easy to dehydrate onions as I thought it would be. They are a little touchy… and apparently my dehydrator doesn't heat evenly… and you need a piece of special equipment… and you really should do it outside… onions are smelly! But, OTHER than all that, it’s really easy. Here’s how:

Dehydrating Onions
Ingredients:

• Onions, peeled and diced or sliced 

Directions:

1. Once all your onions are cut up, my pieces were about ¼ inch, get your dehydrator ready. 
2. Insert Clean-A-Screens (non-stick screens for your trays, available here), into each of your dehydrator trays. Set the temperature to a lower setting, if you have that option (I don’t, and I think mine runs a little warm). About ½ an onion will fit on each tray. 
3. Spread an even layer of onions onto each tray. Don’t let the pieces stack on each other or be too close together, because they all just get stuck together, and it is hard to separate them. Turn on the dehydrator (I used my patio plug outside). 
4. Every couple hours, rotate the trays. Maybe mix them around a bit if you notice some getting browner than others. The outer edges of my trays cooked WAY faster than the inside. The process takes about 8 hours… give or take 2 hours, depending on the size and sweetness of your onions. Sweeter onions brown faster, so keep a close eye on those. And DON’T let them get brown-brown! They get bitter, and burnt tasting… trust me… I know. 

Once cooked, put them into a glass jar. Keep the lid off till they cool completely, then seal them up!
Add them to anything. Soup. Dip. Re-hydrate them in a bit of water to sauté with. Eat them right out of the jar… yeah… seriously… they’re tasty. Mine had a nice sweet, caramelized flavor, I think due to the higher dehydrating temperature.

And that’s it! My jar is full of about a cup and a third of onions – and it took 5 raw ones to make that much. I actually cut my onions up the night before, kept them in the fridge, and then dehydrated them the next morning. It doesn't seem so labor intensive when you break the work load up.

Have fun! And, I hope you enjoy!

More Brown Bananas

As promised I’m back with more things to do with brown bananas. This time I had a whole heap of them from work! I sold about 1/3 of our over ripe ones as “Banana Bread Bananas” for ridiculously cheap – I’d seen it done before, so keep your eye out – but the rest I had to take home, oh, poor me.

What the heck was I gonna do with 10 brown bananas!? Well, luckily I have a list. As, I've said before, I ALWAYS end up with brown bananas, so I just started going down my list, and made the first four things, after banana bread of course:

• Banana bread – made last week – so not this time
• Frozen bananas – to use at a later date
• Banana pancakes – and make some extra for easy breakfasts
• Fruit roll ups – Awesome!
• Smoothie

Easy peasy.  First, I froze the bananas two ways. I put some whole, sealed in labeled ziplock bags. These are great for making banana bread or banana pancakes in a pinch. Admit it, sometimes you just have a craving for some :) Then, I sliced a few more and put them on parchment paper, on a pan, not touching, then in the freezer. Once frozen, just move them into a container, and keep frozen. Use them in smoothies instead of adding ice or dip them in chocolate or peanut butter for a quick mid-summer snack.

To make banana pancakes (base recipe found here):

Banana Pancakes

Makes seven 5-inch pancakes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tbls oil
• 2 small ripe bananas (or one large one), mashed
• ½ tsp vanila

Directions:

1. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together egg, milk, vegetable oil, vanilla and bananas.
2. Stir flour mixture into banana mixture; batter will be slightly lumpy.
3. Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium low heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the pan and flatten the batter out a bit. Cook until pancakes are golden brown on both sides; serve hot.
4. Substitutions: use some or all whole wheat flour. I didn’t have quite enough milk, so I used half sour cream. Could also use, butter milk or soy milk (use just a little less than a cup for soy). Could use melted butter or coconut oil instead of the vegetable oil.

The batter is thick and these pancakes take a while to cook – they need to cook slowly, and are a soft fluffy texture when they’re done. The insides will seem not cooked enough when you flip them, but just be patient, their delicious.

I always make a few extra, and as I froze the sliced bananas, just put the cooled extras on a parchment paper lined sheet pan, freeze solid, then transfer to a ziplock. To reheat, just throw the frozen pancakes in the toaster oven and toast at the medium dark brown setting. They come out perfect.

Lastly, fruit roll ups. To make them, you need to dust off your dehydrator and get some special rollup trays (found here). I decided to make strawberry banana ones today:

Strawberry Banana Fruit Rolls
Ingredients:

• Big handful of strawberries, washed and husked
• 2 super ripe bananas

Directions:

1. Blend strawberries and bananas together, till really smooth.
2. Pour the mixture onto the special trays. Smooth out till it’s in an even ¼-3/8 inch layer.
3. Turn on dehydrator, and rotate trays occasionally, for about 3-4 hours, or until the fruit is dried, but slightly tacky to the touch.
4. Remove them while still warm, and roll up in parchment paper.
5. Substitutions: use any berry instead of strawberries, like blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, etc.

At this point I only had one banana left, so I just made myself a quick smoothie for breakfast, with all the other frozen fruit I had in my collection.

And that was that, 10 more bananas saved from the doom of the garbage can – and me stocked up on quick easy breakfasts and snacks for a while! Also, I know it seems that this would take up a bunch of freezer space, but it really doesn't. Especially, if you bake or make smoothies often.

Those 4 bananas that I cut up and froze, will really only make me maybe a weeks worth of smoothies... Then I'll be on the hunt for more!

More brown banana recipes to come later!

Grapefruit Surprise

I love my SodaStream soda maker and I love Squirt soda… but the grapefruit Soda Stream gunk is not Squirt….. hmmmmm.

I was at a winery in Valley Center a little while back – Triple B Ranch – and while growing grapes for some decent wine, they were growing some awesome citrus. I picked up three of the most perfect, and huge, ruby grapefruits I’d ever seen, for only a dollar.

Come to find out, if you make a potent grapefruit/lime syrup and mix it with your bubbly water – all natural Squirt-ish soda you have!

To make the syrup potent, I always add a bunch of grapefruit zest, and every time I’m always super annoyed that there are little pieces of junk in my soda – but worse, they would get stuck to the glass and be impossible to clean out! I had tried straining it out, but it was virtually impossible. But then – the lightbulb flashed on – instead of zesting, I cut the rind off in long thick strips, and cooked it as usual. Now the surprise: when I took out the big pieces of zest after cooking the syrup , I ended up with some AMAZYING candied grapefruit!!

Here’s how to do it:

2-for-1 Grapefruit Goodness
Ingredients:

• 1 ruby grapefruit
• zest from the grapefruit, cut into long wide strips
• Juice from half a lime
• 1-1/4 cup of sugar, divided
• Splash of water

Directions:

1. In a small pot, over medium heat, add the zest, lime juice and one cup of sugar.
2. Measure out the juice from the grapefruit to measure around ½ a cup. If you have a little more, that’s ok, if there’s a little less, use the water to make up to at least ½ cup.
3. Slowly bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Let boil for around 30 seconds. Take off the heat, cool to room temperature, and strain and reserve the stuff in the strainer.
4. Put the remaining ¼ cup of sugar in a shallow bowl. One by one, coat the strained grapefruit zest in the sugar. Set the pieces on a silicone mat or parchment paper and let dry for a couple hours.
5. Keep the syrup in the fridge for up to a month and the candies in an airtight container in the cupboard. To make a soda, add around a shot glass worth to a pint glass of bubbly water. To use the rind – just put in mouth and enjoy.
6. Substitutes: This recipe is pretty great for lemon lime syrup, just use half lemon half lime juice and zest, and orange syrup with same measurements, just orange.

I love bubbly water. I love grapefruit. But most of all, I love not having to throw away a piece of food – even if it’s a little piece. Enjoy!

Surplus: Loquats

Another goal of this blog is to help deal with surpluses. One of the great things about having a garden, or working in a farmstand, or finding produce on sale, is that you have access to great food! The problem, there is only a very short window of time to get that food and often you have A TON of one specific kind.

This happened to me the other day when a lady, one of my customers at the stand, brought me an entire box of loquats! We had been talking about them one day, and she brought me the box the next day. I seriously almost cried with joy when I saw it. For some reason, the fact that she had labeled the box for me made it just that much better.

 

 I must’ve eaten 20 the first day. Then when I brought them home, my husband had another 10. The next day, I was still staring at an entire box of loquats.

 

Loquats are a little weird, they don’t have that much flavor other than a delicious light sweetness. They have a very high water content. Not much fruit, and huge seeds. What to do… what to do…

Then, my husband suggested we make jam. I can’t tell you how much I love this man.

 

 A little bit of googling and four recipes later, I had a plan. The base recipe I used can be found here, but it wasn’t to my standard (or my mom’s) for food safety, so I modified it a bit.

 

Loquat Jellam

Ingredients:

• 6 cups loquats, pitted and skinned
• 7 cups sugar
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon butter
• 1 package Sure Jell (the yellow box)

Directions:

1. Sterilize your jars and lids. Get a big pot of water boiling, for the canning process.
2. Add the lemon juice to a bowl of 1-2 quarts of water. Wash the loquats well, peel the skin off with your fingers, then cut the fruit off in long skinny chunks. In a way much like taking long strips of zest off a lime. Discard the skin and cores/seeds. Place the fruit into the bowl of water as you get it, keeps it from turning brown.
3. When done, drain the water, and use a stick blender (or a normal blender) to blend up the fruit. Don’t puree, but get pretty close. You’ll need exactly six cups of loquat. At this point, pour boiling water over your lids (the part with the pop top and seal), and let sit until you need them.
4. Then follow the directions on the sure jell package for cooked jam. Basically, in a large pot, mix the loquat and pectin. Bring to a boil, stirring often. Just at a boil, mix in the butter and all the sugar at once. Bring back to a boil, stirring frequently, and boil for exactly one minute.
5. Pour the mixture into your jars – will make 9 cups of jellam or so. With lids on hand tight, process the jars in the boiling water for 10 minutes.
6. Substitutions: This fruit/sugar recipe is specifically for loquats – but jam can be made of just about anything!

My jellam came out a little runny – half way between jam and syrup, so good for both purposes. It’s very similar in flavor and color to apricot jam. I love it. Plus, the best part, this recipe used up the whole box of loquats.

 

 

So far I have put this stuff to many uses. We got some orange chicken the other day from an Asian restaurant and it was WAY TOO SPICY (and I love myself some spicy), so when I reheated the leftovers I poured a couple tablespoons of this jellam over it and sautéed till warmed through - delicious! We've also used it over pancakes, instead of maple syrup and on toasted English muffins over cream cheese. Versatile and delicious!! 

 

 

Cull Oranges Anyone?

The answer should be “HECK YES!” from all of you!

What is a cull orange, you may be asking? Well, a cull orange is the not perfect orange. They are the oranges with wrinkles, thin skin, bruises, over-ripe or any other defect that will cause them to not sell for top dollar. They are the oranges that have been “culled out” of the orange bin you see at the market.

Its odd, cause I’ve been working in the grocery industry for a few years now, and I’d never heard this term until just this week. I first read it this past Sunday, while my husband and I were visiting a hometown farmstand that I read about in Edible San Diego (which you should TOTALLY check out, here, they have them for most of the major cities). Farm Stand West, is one of only two outlets of a local farm that grow everything from citrus to strawberries to garlic (check them out here). Citrus seemed to be their specialty. While walking around the little farmstand, I saw this big wheelbarrow looking thing filled with oranges that were only 50 cents a pound! Getting closer, the sign said “Cull Oranges, 50 cents, Great for Juicing!”

 

Now fast forward three days. I was working at the farmstand that I work at. I had been going through the Valencia oranges we were selling and noticed that some where getting just a little less than perfect. My boss walked over and started pulling out these oranges, realized that she was doing what I was just doing, and told me “eh, just cull these ones out.” WHAT?! SWEET!

 

So… I had a heavy walk home from work that day. See, we don’t have a cull bin at my stand. The best part was that I also had to “cull” the tangelos and tangerines.

 

Then next morning, I made juice. Lots and lots of juice. Delicious juice. Make sure to go through your oranges, as your cutting them in half, if you notice anything weird about the inside, just toss that one. Out of the 4 pounds I had, I had one that was a little weird on the inside. I knowwwww you don’t need a recipe, but here’s one anyway!

 

Super Delicious 'Orange' Juice

Ingredients:

• 4-5 pounds of orange citrus (makes about 2 quarts)

Directions:

1. Wash citrus, cut each in half, squeeze or juice with one of those cone-y things. Strain out the seeds and drink. Store any leftovers in the fridge and shake before drinking again.
2. Substitutes: Use all or any orange citrus you can find! Navel oranges, Valencia oranges, blood oranges, tangerines, tangelos and mandarins. Also, if you have just 4 oranges, make a cup of juice instead of a jug!

 

Seriously, the best, sweetest, most nutritious and cheapest orange juice you could ever have.

Roasted Wrinkly Pepper Hummus

Here’s what I ended up making with the roasted wrinkly peppers.

Roasted Wrinkly Pepper Hummus
Ingredients:

• ½ cup roasted red peppers (from about 4 peppers)
• 1 can garbanzo beans (chickpeas) – rinsed and drained
• 1/2ish cup olive oil
• 1/4ish cup lemon juice
• 5 fresh basil leaves, torn
• 2 tbls almond butter
• 2 cloves roasted garlic
• ½ tsp onion powder
• Salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Put everything – except salt and pepper) into a blender, food processor or magic bullet cup. Blend till hummus like – smooth, but not liquidy or chunky, somewhere in between. Add more liquid – olive oil and/or lemon juice - if needed to taste. Season with salt and pepper. This is not an exact science; add more or less of whatever you want to your liking.
2. Substitutions: if you don’t have red peppers, use roasted garlic or jalapenos or whatever else your favorite flavor is. Use grapeseed oil instead of olive oil. Use tahini (sesame paste) or cashew butter instead of almond butter. Use garlic powder or real onions.

It was really good with carrots and pretzel chips. This hummus had WAY more flavor than any store bought hummus I’ve ever used, and I attribute that to the wrinkly ripe peppers we used!