Summer Broccoli Salad
On Sunday my harvest basket was flush with broccoli. Since we have loads of bacon in the freezer to eat up, I settled on making broccoli salad for quick lunches this week. I pulled dried cranberries from a local farm from the pantry, along with pecans sent to me by a generous blog reader. I grabbed a large egg from the chicken coop and olive oil purchased from Chaffin Family Orchard from the pantry and whipped up a batch of mayonnaise for the dressing.
For the dressing I mixed homemade mayo, local honey, and homemade yogurt. Then I added the broccoli, crumbled bacon, diced red onions from the garden along with pecans and cranberries. After seasoning with salt & pepper our lunches were ready for the week. Quick, healthy and delicious, a cold salad like this on a hot day is perfect.
What’s your favorite hot day meal?
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Quote of the Day: Nigel Slater
You can’t smell a hug. You can’t hear a cuddle. But if you could, I reckon it would smell and sound of warm bread-and-butter pudding.
Nigel Slater in Toast
I’m a big fan of bread pudding, the sweet form for the savory version you have at Thanksgiving or for breakfast. It truly is a comforting dish! It’s been a long time since I’ve made a batch, seems like it should be on the menu soon.
What’s your favorite comfort food?
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Colombian Limonada
Growing up in South America, limonada always meant limeade and not lemonade. It’s usually made with key limes, but regular limes will do. It’s also different than American drinks in that the entire lime is blended with water, this gives the limeade a really complex sweet/sour/bitter taste because the lime peel and pith are used. The result is a fantastically thirst quenching drink perfect on a hot day. The added pith/peel make the lemonade much healthier since those parts of citrus are super healthy.
Yesterday I whipped up a batch and it was fantastic, I really should make it more often. Here’s how I make it:
quarter 2 small limes (Bearss Limes are best) and put in blender, add four cups of water, add 5-6 ice cubes, add 1-2 Tablespoons of sugar (you can add more later if needed), add a dash of salt, blend for a minute or two and put through a sieve. The results is a slightly frothy liquid that’s pure deliciousness on a hot afternoon!
What’s your favorite beverage on a hot day?
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MMMMMM – Guacamole
Last Saturday I talked about the box of avocados we purchased from a small farm in California. Since we have 18 avocados to eat we’ll be eating them for every meal. The first one was ripe yesterday, perfect for Cinco de Mayo! I made guacamole and we had it in our omelets.
My guacamole recipe is simple: 1 mashed avocado, 1 diced jalapeño (right now I’m using fire roasted pickled jalapeños I made this summer, here’s my recipe for those), 1 Tablespoon of Greek yogurt (this adds probiotics and helps keep the guac from turning brown), juice of one half lime, salt and pepper to taste. I also often add a few teaspoons of olive oil to help the guac maintain it’s green color and stop oxidation, it also adds to the smooth texture.
Mr Chiots used to dislike avocados very much, he wouldn’t eat them at all. Whenever we’d eat at Chipotle I’d order guacamole. He’d try a little each time and soon enough he was ordering his own little tub of it for his burrito. Now he’ll polish off a half an avocado for breakfast.
Last night for dinner we had fajitas with guacamole. This morning we’ll probably have sliced guacamole with our eggs. I’m trying to freeze some guacamole to see how it thaws. If that works I’ll have another box of avocados on the way to stock the freezer.
What’s your favorite way to eat avocados – or do you not like them?
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Celebrating Our Pigs
Yesterday we celebrated Easter with our neighbors and their family. Both of our families are a long ways away in Ohio, so we are thankful to be included in their celebration. This year, we provided the ham, which came from one of our pigs.
Since we slaughtered them ourselves here on the farm, I was in charge of curing the hams myself, which was a little scary to say the last. I used the Cider Cured Ham recipe from the The River Cottage Meat Book. Our hams all weighed in at 25lbs or higher (our scale only went to 25 lbs and some topped it off).
It’s been hanging on our back porch since I took it out of the brine back in January (one went into the freezer for later). We took it out and boiled it on Saturday night for a few hours to reduce the saltiness, then we coated it with brown sugar and cider reduction and hot smoked it for 4 hours with apple and cherry wood. Needless to say, it was AMAZING. If you’re lucky enough to raise and slaughter your own pigs, I highly recommend this recipe, it’s not cheap, but it’s FANTASTIC and so easy.
We were super nervous as we took the ham to it’s final destination. I had never cured a ham before, we had never smoked a ham before, we had no idea what it would taste like. The yearly Easter meal isn’t really one you want to mess up with a bad ham. We had faith in the recipe, but were still nervous. That was until Mr Chiots tried the first bite when they were carving it. Needless to say, it was a hit and I’ll definitely be using this recipe for future hams. We’re scheduled to pick up piglets in about a month.
Do you celebrate Easter? What foods do you use to celebrate?
