A Snowy Pi Day

This year, for Pi Day, I was prepared. I bought some pears before the snowstorm and today, with the help of the elderchild, made a maple pear pie. After slicing the pears, I let them sit with 1/2 cup sugar while we made the crust. Then I drained the pears and boiled the juice with some maple syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg and cornstarch to thicken it. This was mixed back with the pears before filling the pie crust. Here's the finished pie.

Note the vents - the elderchild carved at least 11 digits of π into the crust!

We had some of our neighbors over to enjoy it with us, and it was terrific! Also I made a raspberry tart with the rest of the crust; that was an afternoon snack.

In addition to all that, while the storm was dumping eight inches of snow, and then rain, on us, I made a gallon of yogurt, a batch of cornbread, a batch of chili, and also did a whole bunch of laundry. Oh, yeah, and last night I made bread. All sorts of lovely food!

Relishing the Day

All in all, this wasn't really a great day.  Just a day.  But I did get some canning in and, well, I like puns, so here we are.  With so many things to relish.  Ha ha.

I stopped by the store this afternoon to get extra peppers in case my home grown ones weren't enough for the zucchini relish and I saw they had corn on sale.  $2 for a dozen!  I bought two dozen and some celery and got to work on both relishes when I got home.

First I cut up the zucchini, peppers and onion for the zucchini relish.  It has to be soaked in canning salt and water for 3 hours so I got that going.  All the peppers were from my garden and all the onion came from the farm share.  Then I worked on the corn relish.  I blanched 20 ears of corn and used my corn zipper to cut off the kernels.  I chopped up all my farm share peppers:  sweet, banana, and poblano and added them to the last 3 of my peppers and 2 store bought red peppers.  To this I added 1 bunch of celery and one onion, diced.  After dinner I made the corn relish (used the recipe on the pickyourown.org website) but I added Clearjel instead of flour paste.  I now have 9 pints of corn relish.

Currently the zucchini relish is simmering and is about to be canned.  I ended up with 1.5 times the recipe because I had so much zucchini - and I still have one more monster-mutant to go.  Not sure what I want to do with that one.  But I had given away all 3 jars of the first batch of this relish and wanted to make more because it is really good!

Yet Another Trip to the Farm

Yesterday, in 100 degree weather, I picked up the share.  I was smart, and brought a jug of water to put the flowers in.  This week it was 65 stems of flowers, zucchini, eggplant, cabbage, chard, kohlrabi, garlic, onions, potatoes, carrots, more green and wax beans, cherry tomatoes, basil, and cilantro.  We split everything except Stephanie got the chard, tomatoes and the basil and I got the cabbage, beans and the cilantro.

When I got home, since it was too hot to cook, I made ceviche and a raw corn salad.  I bought tilapia fillets, key lime juice and habanero peppers.  Here's the corn salad:

2 cobs corn, kernels cut off

1/2 onion, chopped

1 cucumber (my garden), chopped

cherry tomatoes, halved

1/4 c. key lime juice

1/4 c. olive oil
chopped fresh cilantro

salt & pepper

This was mixed and chilled while I made the ceviche:

3/4 pound tilapia, chopped in 1/2 inch dice

1.5 onions, sliced thinly

2 habaneros, minced

1/2 c. key lime juice

1/4 c. lemon juice
chopped fresh cilantro

salt

The tilapia was soaked briefly in 3 c. ice water and drained.  The onions were soaked in another 2 c. ice water and drained.  These 2 ingredients were mixed with the habaneros, lemon and lime juices and salt.  After about 15 minutes it was ready to serve.  The ceviche went really well with the corn salad, and I didn't have to turn the stove on at all!

The current tally for my rooftop garden is: 9 cucumbers and 1 bell pepper.  There are about 10 more peppers about to be ready, and maybe 3-4 more cucumbers right now, and a whole lot of tomatoes trying to ripen.  Which should happen quickly as long as it stays so hot.