Rose Hip Smoothie

Yesterday, I got a call from Lisa, with whom I was splitting a spring lamb delivery.  She had picked up the lamb and was swinging by to drop off my share.  After she left, it became necessary to make room in the freezer.  As I was cleaning out the freezer, I found 3 cups of rose hip infusion I had frozen to make smoothies.  Because one of the bags ripped, I decided now was as good a time as any.

This morning I tossed yogurt, the rose hip infusion, some mango chunks, a banana and honey in the blender.  It came out absolutely perfect!

Also in the freezer:  nettles, pumpkin puree, some venison, some coffee, and lots and lots of bones and veggie scraps for stock.  Oh, and a loaf of chocolate zucchini bread, which we ate with dinner last night.  This was just the upstairs freezer.  I need a better way to keep my freezers organized, otherwise I will end up in this situation again, rediscovering things that I forgot I had.

Tropical Flavors

When I bought that case of mangos the other day, the sales clerk said, "What are you going to do with all of those?"  I smiled and said, "Oh, they'll be gone in 3 days."  And they are!  Although, only half of them went to jam.  The rest just got eaten.  Even Mocha, our rabbit, gets to have some - we give him a pit and he vacuums it clean.  He doesn't get all of them; that would be too much fruit for our little bunny!

I finished up the last 4 today by making Mango-Pineapple jam.  Since I didn't have a lot of sugar in the house and I was concerned about all the reports about this particular combination needing extra pectin, I decided to use the low sugar pectin instead.  I think it worked out perfectly.

4 champagne mangos diced

1.5 cups pineapple chunks

1/4 cup lime juice

4.5 cups sugar

1 package powdered low sugar pectin

Blend the mangos and pineapple with an immersion blender but leave a few chunky pieces for texture. Mix with the pectin and lime juice, bring to a boil.  Add the sugar all at once and boil the usual way.  This made 6 cups and a little bit more.

Well, that's it for the mangos.  Maybe we can start in on some violets soon?  They should be blooming in the next week or so.

Something Exciting!

Finally I found time and fruit and energy all at the same time, and have made my first batch of jam in 2014!

The local Whole Foods had crates of champagne mangos on sale - 16 mangos in a case.  Yay!  Not only do we love those mangos, I was looking for something to do over the next few days.  So I picked up a case, 2 boxes of strawberries, and a pineapple.  In 2 hours we've already used 5 mangos.  Today's batch is strawberry-mango jam.

3.5 champagne mangos, crushed

2 cups crushed strawberries

1 box powdered pectin

6 cups sugar

This makes 8 cups of jam.

In other news, the 8 year old became 9 recently and we had a party based upon a favorite video game (Skyrim).  We had a scavenger hunt, a shield-decorating station, foam swords and even magic spells which were confetti-filled colored eggs.  It was quite the success.  Here's the cake (it's the Skyrim logo, a big dragon):

Garden Salad Takes on a New Meaning

A few days ago I mentioned hairy bittercress and that it was growing in my yard.  Since then I've checked back on The 3 Foragers' blog and found that I was not using it to its full potential!  Yesterday we had friends over for dinner so I tossed some into a salad of regular lettuce, cucumber, mango, tomato, and goat cheese.  It was very good, but the peppery taste of the bittercress was lost.  So today, following their example, I made an entire salad of just bittercress, plus a couple of young dandelion leaves, and goat cheese, drizzled with balsamic vinegar.  It was sharp and a little stronger than anticipated.  Perhaps there is a happy medium somewhere?

For last night's dinner we also marinated 2 pounds of shrimp in a cup of the Mango Blackberry BBQ sauce and grilled them.  The shrimp were excellent!

Inspiration!

Remember back in August when I picked all the blackberries I could find in my brother's backyard? And how I froze a quart of them, waiting for the opportunity to make barbecue sauce? Well, I just couldn't seem to find the right recipe for what I had in mind. So I waited. And I bought mangoes. And I waited. And, wait... mangoes?

Hmmm.

In the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving is a recipe for Zesty Peach BBQ Sauce. I've made it before. It was divine. I don't know why I didn't think of this before but, mango-blackberry BBQ sauce it is!

After thawing the blackberries just a little, I ran them through the blender and ended up with almost 3 cups of coarse puree. To this I added enough chopped mango to make a total of 6 cups of fruit. The rest of the recipe is the same (page 263). It's merrily bubbling away on the stove, thickening up until it's the right consistency and then I will process it. Last year's batch made only 5 jars, so I suspect I won't get much more than that this time. Preliminary taste tests indicate a success!

Mango + Quince = Mmmmm!

On my failed attempt to get to the mall the other day, I found myself near a relatively new and much lauded Korean grocery store and in completely stalled traffic. I turned into their parking lot, figuring I'd just check it out and see what all the fuss was about.

Oh.

I've never seen anything like it, even in Korea! At least, for the most part, I could recognize the food, even if I couldn't read the characters on the packages. It is more of an all-Asian grocery superstore. The produce section was huge. With amazing prices. There was an entire wall of kimchi and a whole area to buy meat and sides for Korean BBQ. Oh, and the fish... fresh and frozen and sushi grade and, and, and.... It was all I could do to restrain myself, but I managed to get out of there with only a few things. 2 of those things were a case of mangoes and 3 quinces.

Quinces are hard to come by and, when they are around, they tend to be expensive. Here they were 99 cents each. I had been meaning to make another batch of Mangorine jam, but there were no nectarines, and there were quinces, and I thought, why not?

This morning I made 2 batches of Mango-Quince jam. Here's the recipe for 1 batch:

3 c. mangoes, chopped
2 c. quince, chopped
2 T. lemon juice
6 c. sugar
1 pouch of Certo

cooked up in the standard way. I ended up with 9 half-pints and 10 half-cup jars, and I think my gift stash is complete!

Mango...oops

Last night I brought a jar of pickles, a jar of bean salad, and a jar of the Mangorine jam into work since we planned to have a sort of holiday party. After all, if you have to work the holiday, you might as well enjoy yourselves, right? Well, the Mangorine jam was really yummy, and I was really excited about it, and made sure everyone tried it.

When the doc replacing me came in, I dragged her into the break room, spooned some jam onto a graham cracker (the ubiquitous food fare of every self-respecting ER) and popped in into her mouth, saying, "Guess what's in this?" Well, she got the nectarine part, but couldn't name the other flavor. Very excited, I said, "Mango!"

Her smile faded.

"Oh. Mango. Hmm. I'm allergic to that."

As of this morning, she reported she only itched for an hour or so.

Mango Madness!

So, I was at Whole Foods yesterday, ("Uh, oh!" you say...) and they were selling crates of mangoes. A crate only holds 8, and it was not a huge savings but enough that I could finally put my plan of canning mangoes into action. The reason we were at the Whole Foods was we were looking for something for dinner. We ended up with chicken thighs, marinated and then grilled in the zesty peach BBQ sauce. Yum! A success!

Anyways, I had saved some halves of uneaten bananas in the freezer so I thawed them and used them for this: Exotic Mango Banana Jam Delite. When I added the lemon juice to the bananas, it actually perked up the color, as they were pretty brown after being frozen and thawed. However, since I only had 1 cup of mashed banana, I used a cup of chopped golden kiwis. I also used a whole vanilla bean rather than a half. This made 6 half-pints and a little extra. And it smells wonderful!

After that, I made a variation of mango jam using nectarines. "Mangorine Jam," I'm calling it.
3 c. chopped mango
1 1/2 c. chopped nectarines (skin on)
2 T. lemon juice
1 package powdered pectin
5 1/2 c. sugar

This resulted in 7 half-pints. I'm done for the day, since I have to work overnight tonight. While I was working on these, the kids were entertained by those little peg board bead things. I would like to thank the inventor of those things - they kept the kids busy for hours!