Stocking the Kitchen

Mister and I both like to entertain and feed our friends. I also like to make fun, interesting things that use up what ingredients we have. To that extent, we have three syrups in our fridge, not counting maple. We have Apple Cider Syrup, which we had accidentally left a pot of mulled cider on the stove when we went out, and Mister decided to experiment with syrup. The experiment was a success, and it is a favorite in hot toddies.

Last summer, I had attempted to make a large amount of iced tea to drink, and so had several large jars of sweetened tea-water in my fridge, taking up space and using jars. I reduced it down, steeped more strong black tea (using up some old tea bags that are of dubious nature), added that, spiced it, sweetened as needed, etc, and now have Spiced Tea Syrup.

We now have another syrup as of tonight: Cinnamon-Ginger Simple Syrup. I received a lemon in my stocking at Christmas, and as Mister was feeling unwell this evening, I finally got around to juicing said lemon. I mixed the juice with honey, ginger and hot water and he lounged around trying to feel better. I then removed the outer part of the lemon peel, and boiled it in simple syrup and cinnamon to candy it. It is drying as I type this. But then I had all of this excess syrup! So I added some ginger, and rewarmed it to infuse, strained and bottled.

As mentioned previously, these syrups are quite good in hot toddies (hot water, syrup, whiskey, lemon juice optional). They're also good mixed in hot water for a quick warm drink and you can use them any place where you'd normally use honey (drizzled on scones anyone?), but on the whole I use these for "Feel Better" drinks. There's nothing like a warm mug of something delicious and made with love. If it comes with cookies, it'd probably be better, but we can't have everything!

In an endeavor to use up what we've got, I finally got around to finishing a cordial I started 6/10/11. I steeped lemon balm in 63% rum, strained it in probably September, and mixed it 50/50 with simple syrup tonight. I had a bit of that with ginger ale for a candy-sweet but simple beverage.

As I've mentioned probably many times by now, we have a lot of peeled garlic cloves in our freezer that we got for free when a friend was moving and had to get rid of his food. I decided that tonight was a good night to make garlic soup. With a little help from Mister (who discovered some cheese that had gotten unwrapped), and a few softening potatoes, this became Cheese-y Garlic and Potato Soup. Simple really. Fry a chopped onion in bacon fat. Add a bit of flour and stir to combine. Let this cook a few minutes, stirring, until a slight golden color. Add in one carton of veg. stock (or chicken). Throw in one and a half handfuls of garlic cloves, or approximately one head of garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let this cook until nice and soft. If you're energetic, mash the garlic cloves and reincorporate. Chop a few potatoes and add to the soup. Add a teaspoon of Worcestershire Sauce. When the potatoes are about done, slice cheese and add, stirring with each addition so the cheese doesn't clump. Adjust seasonings as needed and serve! This one meal used up: hardening cheese, soft potatoes, a lot of frozen garlic cloves, last carton of veg. stock, an ugly looking onion. And since I pulled two rolls out of the freezer and heated them, I also cleared out a bit more freezer space!

On the schedule for tomorrow: making veg stock with the massive amount of odds n ends in the freezer, clean house. Also go to Wegmans (a.k.a. the best grocery store in the world). Now if only I could learn to incorporate my pantry goods as well as my freezer goods...

Pasta Sauce

Mister and I made the most delicious pasta sauce last night. Well, I suppose we just edited an already good one, as we did start with a jar of sauce to begin with. I just took some pictures of the ingredients as I'm one of the cool kids now.

We started with one unopened, and one mostly gone jar of sauce.



(Note, as I took the photo today, that is actually filled with our new sauce.)

Mister got the sauce warming up while I chopped a cute, little red onion that I bought at the Farmer's Market yesterday,



And threw it in a pan with some olive oil (the bottle on the left in the picture).



I let it cook down until soft and translucent, then threw in some 80/20, grass-fed, ground beef. (No pic -- it was not a pretty color anyways.)

While this was going on, Mister was carefully tending his tomato sauce and added some bay leaf, and ground all-spice. (There is also our pepper grinder in the photo -- it was used later.)



When the ground beef was cook thoroughly, we combined the two.



Now, since I'm a simple cook, I went "meat and sauce = tasty!" and I would have left it there. But oh no, that wasn't enough for Mister. It still needed something. So he tinkered with the spices. Added pepper. Added more All-Spice. Added some of the extra tasty olive oil (the bottle on the right from the pic above). And then he started talking about how if only we had wine. I said 'no'. He continued: "Maybe we could add some of your Grape Mulled Cider." I said, "no". He went on: "I know! We should add bourbon!" When I tried to put my foot down again and tell him to leave tastiness alone, he went and fetched the bottle...



... and proceeded to do a little test with a smidge of bourbon, and a smidge of sauce. He mixed, went OMG and passed the spoon. I agreed it wasn't bad (like I was expecting), but that he certainly wasn't allowed to put that much in. He agreed, and stirred in 1/8 c. bourbon. Finis! We let it simmer for a bit, let it cool for a bit, and then packed it back into its jars (it nearly filled both of them), and put it in the fridge.

... so now I REALLY REALLY want to make pasta and sauce. Especially because Mister's at work and it'd be ALL MINE!

Glass Straws!

As one of my roommates and I both use an excessive amount of drinking straws (you don't want to see me drinking anything without one!), we are going to try Glass Dharma's re-usable, "glass" straws.

http://www.glassdharma.com/

I learned about this company and the concept over at Retro Housewife Goes Green with this post

It's funny, because sustainable straws are something that I've been thinking on a lot. Not necessarily re-usable glass ones, but thinking more on the origin of straws: as a piece of straw from the fields! But as I couldn't see any easy way to obtain this natural straws, I left myself ruminating and drinking out of plastic.

But! Housemate and I are going to try these out, one for her, one for me (two slightly difference sizes to see what we like) and a bamboo carrying case apiece. If we do like them, we'll buy more for the house, but not the carrying cases -- those are specifically for our purses!

If and when we get the ones for the house, we will probably store them in a similar way to how one stores art brushes -- in a roll up bag of, usually cloth.





The image is of bamboo, but that's the only one that they showed that was open!

I'll let it be known what the opinions of the straws are.