Category: Baking

Saving My Freezer!

Now that Fall weather has set in, there’s one concern that comes up every year. What do we do when the power goes out this year?

You would think that with the frequency that my surrounding area loses power due to snow fall, that there would be changes in the electrical system. Or even something as simple as taking preventative measures to eliminate more outages. But instead the average number of outages remains the same. And the outage time remains the same, 24-72 hours. Some areas have outages for longer.

But none of them have hit the fame as the President Day’s Storm of ’92. Roads were thick sheets of ice. Trees were breaking from an obscene amount of cumulative ice. And the power lines were down just from the weight of the ice on the lines. That’s not even taking into consideration the transformers that were blown.

I remember that my family had no power, with snow and ice, for longer than a week. I wish I could remember how much snow we had that year. And I wish I could remember how long we were really without power. My family did quite well in that storm because we had a wood fireplace, where we could keep one room sufficiently warm, with a flat top that we could cook on.

Even with all the power outage skills that my husband and I have, it only mildly prepared us for the day that an Otter Pop propped our freezer open this past summer.

Fortunately for us, the freezer had only been ajar for a couple hours and we caught it before we had a complete loss of our frozen foods.

And for as much as working in campus dining wasn’t exactly my job of choice, I do value the information that I learned getting my food handler’s permit. In this particular instance, I had the information to easily recall safe temperatures to prevent food borne illnesses.

A couple of my meats were between 38-39°F. Most were further away from the danger zone. And the majority was still frozen solid. My defrosted meat was still safe so I cooked that all up and prepped my pressure cooker for canning hot packed meat. The rest of the compromised meat, that could safely sit in my fridge and defrost the rest of the way, was saved to process the next day.

So with storm season quickly approaching, what plans does your family have for saving food for when the power goes out? Or even your freezer gets accidently propped open? Or your fridge fails you for one of a handful of reasons?

If your fridge or freezer contents can be handled in a timely and food safe manner, there is absolutely no reason why you can have zero food waste when the unforeseen happens.

Pressure Canning

Just about everyone I talk with, who are familiar with food preservation have the skills of water bath canning (the process of canning in glass jars acidic foods). I’m sure you’ve seen people’s canned jams, jellies, tomato sauces, and fruits. Foods that are under the pH value of 4.6 can all be water bath canned, be shelf stable for 18 months, using current lids (when stored properly in a cool dark place, like your pantry or storage closet).

What about the rest of your food that is not acidic; vegetables, milk,
butter, and meat?

That’s where a pressure canner comes in.

Before moving on, I want to acknowledge those who say that they mama, grandma, or auntie still water bath can everything (even the food above a pH 4.6). I’m not going to argue with your mama, grandma, or auntie. Food is one area where I prefer to not take my chances. The risks I make in life, I prefer to make elsewhere. Pressure canners can be purchased for less than an Instant Pot. So I choose to use the pressure canner and encourage everyone else to use a pressure canner as well. It also has the least processing time. Those who claim to water bath meat do so with a processing time of over 3 hours. With the pressure canner, processing time runs from 75-90 minutes (for elevation 1,000 feet above sea level and lower) depending on the size of your jar and type of meat you’re canning. So from the money and time perspectives, the pressure canner is still the best way of processing (all other food risk issues put aside).

Another bonus to investing in a pressure canner is that it’s two canners in one. You can pressure can with it as well as water bath.

Pressure canning weights and processing times vary dependent on the elevation at which you are cooking.

Another subject that can bring some heated conversations is cold pack vs. hot pack pressure canning meats. What you need to know is that cold pack means that you put raw meat into your jar and the processing time cooks your meat. Hot packing means that you cook your meat until a little pink is left and then you pack it in your jar with a stock or water. There are safe ways of processing both ways, when you look at the cuts of meat, how it’s packed, and what proven canning recipes state.

A bit of it comes down to common sense decision making as well. For example, the meat that I took out of our compromised freezer (38-39°F) was safer to hot pack. The reason is that once you come to 40°F bacteria start to grow and cause problems. So I immediately cooked the ground beef, even a little longer than until only slight pink remains, because I didn’t want to start the canning processes with a possibility of the meat being compromised. When canning, the meat nearest the center of the jar doesn’t reach the high temperature to kill off bacteria as quickly as the meat nearest the edge of the jar. So by making sure the meat would all be thoroughly cooked (between pan and canning), I make the chance of food borne illness less. Of course, this meat I’m going to use before the other meat I have canned, but this is all about making the choices that make sense with the science behind food preserving.

Something worth noting, that in the ideal situation where there is no compromise to your meat, how you can it is going to determine how it turns out. In the instance of ground beef, if you hot pack it, you will end up with canned beef that is small crumble in shape and texture. If you cold pack ground beef you will end up with a product that is solid–comparable to a meatloaf or a pressed meat like SPAM. So if you’re canning meat in a non-emergency setting, think about how you would like to use your canned meat. Because that is going to help you decide how you preserve your meat.

Things to Watch Out For

Obviously, the first signs of failed seal are if your lid buckles or the lid never seals to begin with.

When you remove your jars from the canner you can immediately spot the first failure type, a buckled lid. It’s any type of warping that you see on the lid. Even if the seal feels sound, it could be a false seal that will break on your shelf after you let it sit for a week or two.

Think of this issue as soundness of a structure. When you build a house, you don’t use warped wood or a broken foundation because it can cause problems to the soundness of the house in the future. Everything could be fine for a few years, but the time comes where the house gives way to other problems because of unsound structural sources of the house. A buckled lid may have a sound seal, but it’s only a matter of time before it fails.

In this instance, it’s just best to remove the lid and reprocess the jar. Your food is not going be harmed by processing it a second time. But, giving it a new lid with a proper seal is going to give it the sound structure your food needs to be safely preserved on your shelf.

Now the failed lid seal, that problem is the one that sneaks up on you. And it’s the number one reason why for good practices you never store your jars with the rings on.

Once your jars have cooled over night it’s time to remove the rings and test the seal. Pick the jar up by the edge of the lid alone. If sealed properly the jar will suspend off the lid. (I still brace myself for my jar to crash to my counter or floor, even though I haven’t ever had one do that.) If a jar is not properly sealed, you’ll hear the lid pop and it comes right off. No big deal, clean the rim of the jar off with vinegar and apply a brand new lid before processing it again.

Now the reason why we don’t store jars with rings on them is because when you go to check your jars (ideally every week), you can immediately see if a lid’s seal is broken. The couple of times it’s happened to me, I opened my pantry door, barely touch the jar and the lid clatters to the floor. Usually this happens before anything starts growing or smelling off. So, early detection of a failed seals is great.

I’ve seen many pictures and heard stories of people who left their rings on their jars. More times than not, they smell something off in their panty and have to figure out where the smell is coming from. They never say it, but I can guess the process of elimination they have to go through in removing rings. Sometimes they don’t have to touch the rings because they see a science experiment going on in a jar. A regular inspection of lids, with rings off, prevents spoiled jars from going this far.

Siphoning

There are a few reasons why your jar siphons (loses liquid). This is a great article in covering all the possible reasons. I want to point out what it looks like.

This is one of my canning sessions. These two were the only two jars that siphoned, out of the 7 in my canner. Both lost over half their liquid before sealing. Truth be told, I have no idea why these two failed (losing half a can of liquid or more is a failed seal). But with this much liquid missing, there was no way I could put these on my shelves. I could have put these in my fridge to eat the next day. Instead I chose to put in more beef stock and re-can them with a fresh lid. (They didn’t lose any liquid the second time.)

Siphoning is only a problem when you lose a drastic amount of liquid like this. Otherwise, siphoning is a common occurrence in canning and generally not a problem. Any meat (or other canned product) above liquid line will be discolored over time. It’s still good, just not visually appealing.

An interesting story is that I never learned how to pressure can from my mom or grandma, because my grandma tried pressure canning and could not figure out why she kept siphoning like this. After a few fails she just called it quits. Mom was pretty impressed when I had this conversation with her. The bottom line is that technology is pretty amazing in this day and age, where we can teach ourselves new skills and problem solve with a little research.

So please know that if siphoning was a problem with your previous attempts at pressure canning, know that making one or a couple adjustments can solve this problem for you and you can prevent it in the future.

Back to the Meat Save

As I mentioned earlier, I was so glad to have the skills to can the meat from my freezer. At first my husband was freaking out because he thought it was all lost. (And the freak out would have been rightful had I not been able to save our meat.) But his reaction is what most people have. Especially with food prices so high.

I cannot tell you the value of the calm of pulling out the pressure canner and setting up for an unplanned canning session. The best feeling of all was knowing that the whole incident was not a lost moment. My husband learned how to can meat. Up until this moment, it was something that I did and he just popped into the kitchen to find out how I was doing. But now, if we have a moment where we have to marathon can again, we can take shifts and not lose out on sleep or meat.

What are your plans for the coming storm season?

Are you prepared for a moment where your fridge is not working for you?

What cooking sources do you have for a no power situation?

Some ideas I would like open for consideration is pressure canning soups, meats, and vegetables. In a worst case situation, these are safe for you to crack the lid and eat straight out of the mason jar. Or you can warm them in the matter of minutes over your grill.

Another option is freeze dried foods. All you need alternate fuel for is to boil water. The water can then rehydrate full meals for you that are warm.

I know power outages are hard on the whole family. But by thinking in advance, it is possible to turn it into more of an adventure instead of worrying about food loss (by opening and closing the fridge) or getting burnt out by cold food.

If you’re interested in new recipes that require nothing more than a camp stove, this is the first site that I go to search, Trail Cooking. Under her tab, Trail Cooking, Sarah has an amazing list of recipes. Usually I find a handful of interesting recipes on most sites. Here, I have a list that rivals the lists I have for my cookbooks on my shelf at home. So please be sure to check out her menu offerings!

If you’re not yet into canning but still would like to prepare for no power meal options, check out The Good Steward.

Baking Blues

In case anyone ever wants to know, the time I can get my cooking on and experiment is when the rest of the family is in bed asleep. The down side is that baking usually wakes my husband up and he has instant munchies. Did I mention that it doesn’t matter how much noise I make, what wakes him up is the aroma of fresh baked goods?

The funny part is that while I was editing photos (while the last batched finished baking) he comes in and asks me which one is the best one!

It’s moments like this where I color coded my muffins. Originally I did it, to make it easier to differentiate between the different blueberries. But it made it easier to give a midnight “unbiased” taste tester say which one he preferred. He chose the yellow muffins, for the record, and we’ll get to the muffins in just a moment.

Difference Between Preserved Berries

Last week I gave the run down on how the different preparations of the berries turned out in their preserved state. Above is a picture that I didn’t use last week, because I reconstituted the berries for making the muffins. From left to right, you’re looking at fresh blueberries, freeze dried, and dehydrated.

I really can’t tell you how much I’ve been enjoying the berries we picked. There is such a difference in quality of flavor. So if you haven’t picked blueberries for yourself, please do this for you. I know you will not look at store berries the same!

The freeze dried blue berries (before reconstituting) were a trip. They had a near fresh blueberry flavor and they were like a powder bomb in your mouth when you bite into them. There was a moment where I had to remind myself what it was that I just bit, because it confuses the brain when you’re not use to this texture. BUT… when you reconstitute them, let me tell you. The closest I can describe them is that they taste just like the store berries. They’re not as good as the fresh berries I picked, but that could have been because they are different breeds of blueberries. That’s enough to give a little flavor difference. I did drink the juice in the bottom of the bowl and that DID taste just like the blueberry juice that I made in this next section. That closeness alone is what makes me sold on freeze dried blueberries. (Aside from the obvious that they are shelf stable and last a lot longer than fresh berries.)

I reconstituted the dehydrated berries for the same length of time as the freeze dried. If you remember from last week, I described the dehydrated berries as having a bite to them. I’m personally not a fan of eating the dehydrated blueberries as is. BUT once they’re reconstituted, they take on a texture very similar to craisins or raisins that are on the drier side. I would definitely put those on a charcuterie board or several other snacking options. I chose not to drink this reconstitution water, as you can see it looks like colored water. I know I would have been disappointed. It might be a different story if I used hot water instead of room temp and/or I let it sit longer than the 20 minutes that I did (while making my muffin mix).

Now that you’re all caught up on the different berries, lets see all that I made with them. Except for the muffins, all these recipes were new to me over the last month. So I hope you get some inspiration also and try something new!

Blueberry Juice

I needed to make blueberry juice for the kiddo friendly blueberry cordial that I wanted to make for the boys. (They heard that I was making cordial for myself and they wanted some too. So here’s the first stop.)

I’m going to save you the time–DO NOT look up how to make this on YouTube! It’s one of those processes where they all look alike and they all do pretty much the same thing to them. And those who were difference, like one lade added milk, it was just not going to fly for making cordial.

Literally all you need is blueberries and water–that is it!

Here I used 3 cups of berries and 5 cups of water.

It was pretty standard across the board that everyone used about 1.5 cups of water per cup of berries. I could have used less water, but I was happy with the amount of liquid with my immersion blender. Everyone I saw used a stand blender. I’m an immersion blender girl and this all fit perfectly in my glass water pitcher. Clean up was just easier for me. So use whatever blending tool you have. You could even use a hand masher if you wanted to or hand squeeze the berries. The bottom line is that you can drink the pulp if you want that in your blueberry juice. Or you’ll end up straining the pulp out and squeeze everything to get all the liquid out. The water is just a medium to make the process flow.

I am going to include a clink for you here though. One lady I saw used her pressure cooker to make the juice. And then she canned her juice for future use and it’s in its simplest form to meet the need of any recipe you’re looking to use. This was just one project that I didn’t want to undertake on top of everything that I already planned to do for this post. But if you’re a canner, definitely check this video out!

NOTE: In canning groups there is a lot of heat surrounding water bath canning and acidity levels. (“Just because Grandma did it doesn’t mean that it’s safe by today’s cooking standards.”) Cooked blueberries acid levels are below the acid threshold, so it is entirely safe to can cooked blueberry juice without adding acid to the juice before water bath canning.

Blueberry Cordial

For blueberry cordial the pulp does need to be strained out. Just about everyone I’ve seen uses cheese cloth. I happen to have a muslin cloth bag that I use for straining fruits all the time, particularly when I’m making my elderberry syrup. So I opted to skip the cheese cloth and just use my muslin bag. It turns a 2-3 step straining process into just a single step.

After straining, you’re left with a clear blueberry juice.

And if you’re wondering, the juice tastes like the blueberry equivalent of the watered down apple juice I’ve given my boys. It’s not sweet. And is nothing like the fresh blueberries that I used.

But that’s okay, because the Cordial recipe I chose to use is from a British gentleman and his process starts off with reducing the blueberry juice anyway. Here’s his video here.

I followed his directions and reduced it down to half its volume. Taste wise, that watered down flavor is gone. And what remains is an acidic version of the blueberries that I picked.

Here is where I agree with him, the sweetness level of your cordial is very much dependent on your preference levels. My volume of cordial was greater than his, and even after making the proper conversions from metric to imperial I still could not add as much sugar as he did.

With my end volume around twice the amount of his, he added roughly 1 cup of sugar to his cordial. I would have been happy with 1/2 cup of sugar. It was at the level of sweetness as a soda. However, with cordial being syrupy sweet I ended up with a final measurement of 3/4 cup of sugar. And at this level that tasted to me like the really sweet cough syrup. This is definitely a treat that I will add this as a flavoring to unflavored seltzer water for the boys.

And I’m sure that my husband will add this to his seltzer water too.

I’m keeping this in my fridge to keep it preserved for a month or two. But I’m sure it will probably go quick and I’ll need to pull out my freezer berries to make some more.

Spiked Blueberry Cordial

After tasting the blueberry cordial above, I’m now wondering how this one is going to turn out. The recipe for this adult cordial I found here. But I have a few weeks of waiting before I can sample this one and see if any adjustments need to be made. (I will come back into this post and add to my assessment of this recipe once I have this one completed.)

Full disclosure, I do not own a large enough glass container to pull off this full recipe. (That and I didn’t have enough fresh berries that were thawed and ready to go.) So I cut this recipe in half. The proportions were exactly the same, so I know this is going to turn out as it should.

If you want the half batch recipe, this is what I used:

  • 4 cups blueberries
  • 28 oz vodka
  • 1/2 cup sugar

Everything else I followed the directions.

Once this process has run its course, I’ll be back to give my thoughts.

Clafoutis

This recipe, Clafoutis, came my way on Facebook from a friend who was excited to pass this one when he heard that we picked blueberries this year. This is one of his favorite breakfasts and was eager to hear how we liked it.

I admit that I modified this recipe by way of the cooking vessel I used. I opted for my Pyrex because my largest pan is actually my cast iron pan I didn’t know if this recipe was going to expand in the oven or not. So it was my faithful Pyrex with a pan to catch anything that might fall over board during the cooking process.

I’m glad to report that nothing cooked over and it stayed in my Pyrex.

The batter itself reminded me so much of making German Pancakes. (This recipe expands, so now you know why I anticipated some expansion.) In fact, it tasted a whole lot like German Pancakes. The difference, of course, is the addition of blue berries. But also the clafoutis retains more of soufflé like structure. It does puff up and deflates a little after you pull it out and cut it. But on the scale of easy to difficult, this is definitely an easy recipe to make.

It’s super easy to bake and is definitely kid approved. I only made a single batch, but I certainly have to make a double the next time I make this recipe.

I wanted to make a quick note that baking did take longer in the Pyrex and there was the issue of the center being undercooked when time expired. The top was already brown. Because I needed extra cooking time, I did have to add some foil over the top.

If you’ve ever made a quiche, then you understand the jiggle in the center means more cook time is needed. The same is true with the clafoutis. If you see some jiggle, give it more time.

Blueberry Muffins

And now to the blueberry muffins I started off this post with!

Let’s be honest. Everyone and their grandmother have a dozen blueberry muffin recipes they can pull and one or two that they swear by. This is the one that I use, and I don’t even go to my cook books to look there. The problem that I have always had is that they are either too sweet or the moment you add fresh blueberries it turns into a swampy mess. Ina Garten’s recipe I swear was made for fresh blueberries to be added into it. It’s has the perfect amount of water to sponge ratio where your hands don’t get damp and sticky eating it.

So whether you want to use the recipe I use or the one that has been in your family for 70,000 generations here is some information that you can use to improve your blueberry muffin game.

I made one batch of muffin batter. And instead of adding the blueberries into the batter, I put the batter into my silicone cups and then added the blueberries to the color coded cups so I could pull off this ultimate side by side comparison. There was absolutely no way there was any difference in the batter or the sponge. This was entirely based off the berries themselves; fresh, freeze dried, and dehydrated.

In the blue cups I added the fresh blueberries.

The yellow cups have the reconstituted freeze dried berries.

And the red cups have the reconstituted dehydrated berries.

As you can see with this first baked picture, there is an obvious hydration difference between the sponges of the muffins.

The fresh berries, blue cup, are the standard reference point for the recipe that you choose to use. In my preference, the sponge is mildly sweet and firm with enough water content to keep it from being dry.

The reconstituted freeze dried blueberries, yellow cup, added more moisture content to the sponge, but the berries taste and texture wise are the same as the fresh berries. I walked away from this muffin with slightly tacky fingers and some crumb stuck to my fingers.

The reconstituted dehydrated blueberries, red cup, made the crumb dry up a bit. Instead of that perfect balance, it had the feel of what the perfect muffin feels like in a day or two after being baked. The crumb itself is still sweet, the dehydrated berries just took some of the moisture out. That being said, the dehydrated berries were sweeter than the fresh or freeze dried. And they offered a little different texture. You know that cheap box of premade blueberry muffin mix that you can buy at the store? The berry texture is pretty much the same. The berries are bigger than that boxed mix, otherwise there’s a very close comparison there.

If you remember above, my husband said he preferred the yellow cup muffins, freeze dried. I found that all too funny because I still prefer the fresh berry or blue cup muffins. But that just goes to show you just how much it comes down to personal preference.

Decorating with Blueberry Dust

Last but certainly not least, here is the secret baking trick that I alluded to last week!!!!!

The best part about the freeze dried berries is the perfectness about how you can break them down into a decorating powder. Not only is it easy enough to make a decorating powder in seconds. It is also sweet and gives a punch of flavor like you can’t imagine until you try it.

Yes! You can use a spice grinder and turn this into a beautifully fine powder that you can add to your butter cream for a beautiful lavender color with absolutely no food coloring. It also gives an intense blueberry flavor without watering down even your stiff peak frostings or fondants.

In this instance, I just put some crushed freeze dried blueberries into a plastic bag and rolled over it with my rolling pin a few times. Literally anyone can do this!

But my absolute favorite part is just how simplistically beautiful this is. Right here is the blueberry muffin mix from above, cooked in a donut mold. Sprinkled on top is powdered sugar and stripes of the blueberry powder. And finally it’s garnished with edible lavender and whole freeze dried berries.

This is the most beautiful and perfect baked good that I’ve made since having my kids. And it reminds me of the beautiful creativity inside me. It’s not anything spectacular. Because I know there are pastry chefs out there that can make me look like a toddler in my kitchen. But this is a simple wow treat that everyone can make for themselves. And all it takes is finding the products to bring into your basic kitchen and just having some fun.

I hope you try some of these ideas in your kitchen this week!

Products Used Today: This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links, but at no extra cost to you.

Thrive Life Freeze Dried Blueberries

Resusable Silicone Baking Cups

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Rolling In Blueberries!!!

This picture was our family’s first time going out to pick blueberries. I have a second berry picking appointment coming up this weekend and I wanted to share with you our experiences and what you can do with any blue-berries that you picked this year. Or if you’ve yet to visit a blueberry farm, than the berries that you can find in your local produce stand or appointment.

This year blueberries were slow to come into season because of our long cold and wet spring in the Pacific Northwest. (In fact, our whole growing season was completely thrown off, not just the blueberries.

Why did I choose to pick our own berries this year?

My youngest two kiddos LOVE blueberries. If my mother in law or we buy a pint of blueberries from the store, these two will gobble them all up while your back is turned making lunch. LOL I wish that were an exaggeration!

My problems with store berries are that produce prices have jumped through the roof so much where I can only afford to buy one fruit, in moderate weight, each time I go to the store. Yes, we’re a family with a tight food budget. And truth be told, blueberry prices make it so that this fruit really isn’t in our range. I can choose a pint of berries or a few bunches of bananas, or a bag of clementines. So If I want to have fruit to last past one meal, you can guess which direction I usually go. And then there’s the problem that when the blueberries are on sale, sometimes I find berries that already turn, or they’re molding in a day or two at home. Again, not cost effective.

So when I saw a social media add for a local blue berry farm, I jumped on the opportunity!

If you know grocery store storage, you know that the fruit you purchase today is already about 3 weeks off of the plant that it grows on. So picking berries ourselves means that they’re the freshest that you can possible get. And you have the bonus of the fruit being picked while ripe, instead of green. (If you know how quickly the vitamins leave your produce once it’s picked, you understand the value of eating your produce as soon from picking as you can get.

Then there is the educational bonus. By taking the boys out to pick, they see where the blueberries come from (not the store refrigeration case), what the blue berry bush looks like, what a ripe berry looks in comparison to a green berry, and what kind of environment it takes to grow blueberries. (Yes, we picked with boots on our feet!)

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This was definitely a learning experience for the boys because we had been picking an insane number of blackberries this summer. And the one thing that they immediately noticed is that they love picking blueberries over black berries because they don’t have thorns!

The remaining bonus to picking blueberries our selves is that we can speak with the farmer and learn about their farming practice. If it matters to your family if a farmer uses pesticides, natural organic sprays, or no sprays at all, this is how you get that information. There are many local farmers out there who do not have the time or money to purchase the “organic” sticker from the FDA. And often times, these farmers use a lot less product on their crops than the companies who can afford that sticker.

Pearson’s Bees and Berries is one of these farms. I would never have known that they skip even the organic sprays had I not met them and talked with them. But the first thing that I loved about this farm is that their bushes are heirloom. This is where I draw the most value from farmers. With as much as society pushes for scientific advancements, I really do not want those advancements in my food. I’m not the mom who buys everything organic. But I am the mom that buys produce (and grow my own) from heirloom and heritage plants whenever I can.

And I’m also the mom that buys directly from local farmers over grocery stores. People are under the assumption that farmers make a lot of money from their crops. Unfortunately, especially for the small farms, they don’t make very much from their crops unless they sell directly themselves. And I would rather my money go directly to a family to invest in their business than a chain. Plus it frees up the grocery resources for the families who are unaware of their local farmers or (for any numerous reasons) can’t make it out to the farms themselves. And if you’ve ever lived in a community where the power goes out or a snow storm comes in and the onion bins are empty, you know what it means to free up resources when you can. (The onion bin is a true story. Every year!)

This first visit to the blueberry farm, we picked 9 pounds of berries. This weekend we’ll pick another 9 pounds.

What do you do with all those berries???

I’m so glad you asked that question!

With my family, the way that we maximize our small grocery budget is by preserving everything that we can for the year. When berries are in season, we store them in a way befitting to how we will use them throughout the year. Apples we make apple sauce. And last year I learned how to can apple pie filling. So in the fall, I can buy the apples at the cheapest price of the year and take care of our apple needs for the year. Black berries, we pick them (for the price of gas to get to our picking location) and have our jam for a year or two for the insane amount of PBJ that we go through in our house.

This is my first year with blueberries to preserve for the year. So I photo documented everything to share with you here. If you decide to hit the berry farms this year before the season ends, you can have an idea on what you want to do with your berries!

Frozen

The first thing my mother in law recommended to use, when she heard of our first trip of picking blueberries, was that they freeze beautifully. And indeed they do!

I took this cookie sheet, and made a single layer of berries. I put them in the freezer to get them frozen and then put them into zip lock bags. I chose the quart sized bags and measured out the berries into 2 cup increments. Most blue berry recipes that I have (and looking at new ones), this is perfect for making a double batch of just about everything. And yes, I always make double batches of everything. With a family of five, with three of them growing, I just overcook to be on the safe side and err on the side of leftovers. And with blue berry muffins, it’s nice to have one baking session with treats for the week.

If I only need 1 cup, then at least I only have a cup of thawed berries in the fridge for the berry thieves to nab!

Dehydrate

The baker in me made me dehydrate. I’ve had many recipes where the juice of the berries was just too much for the sponge and it made a soggy mess! So by taking the liquid out of the berries, you not only save freezer space with this shelf stable preservation but you also keep the right consistency to cakes and muffins.

The problem was what is the right way to dehydrate blueberries?

Before I set up my dehydrator my mother in law had already found a news article that stated the way that you HAVE to do it–but the berries in half.

Now I froze 3 pounds of my berries. And that left me 6 pounds of berries to dehydrate. There was absolutely no way I was going to cut all those berries in half. I’m a mother of 3 after all!

So I performed an experiment.

I left berries whole, with an assumption going into this that they would take forever because of the sturdy berry skins, for one tray. The second tray I filled with berries that were cut in half.

As seen above: whole berries and smashed berries.

For three trays I lightly smashed the berries onto a plate, using a glass cup that I could look through. By using the glass cup you can make sure that you see which berries you are smashing, which ones you already smashed, and just how much pressure you are adding in connection to breaking the skins open. For the smashing, I applied just enough pressure that the skins split open, allowing the air in to dehydrate, and yet keep the majority of the fruit structure intact.

When you look at the pictures above, the whole berries and the cut berries looked the same. So I just put the whole berry picture up. Both of those sets were placed on the mesh insert. I’m done with the days of putting fruit directly on the trays. By using just the mesh I don’t ever have to scrub my trays. Plus the mesh you can fold and break up any of the thin bits that cling to the surface. So even the mesh don’t have to be scrubbed either! The Right picture is the smashed berries. You can see what I mean when I say just enough to break the skin. Some got a bit more flat than the other (which looks a lot like the whole berries on the left). But these berries are a bit messier. I wanted to save the mess and not lose out on any of the blueberry goodness. So I dehydrated these on the jelly roll sheets.

The final two trays of blueberries were my fully mashed berries. I’m teaching myself how to seed save from different plants. My tomatoes are not yet ripe, so I can’t practice on those yet. So I chose to use the blueberries as my maiden voyage. And I’ll talk more about that below!

As you can see below, with the final dehydrated product, the fully mashed berries were a mess, a beautiful, lovely mess! So those of course were on a jelly roll insert.

As seen above: smashed and fully mashed.

The drying time and final products actually surprised me! The smashed and mashed took the least time to dehydrate, as anyone would expect. They took about the same amount of time, 13 hours. (Of course we had very high humidity days, which didn’t help here.) The mashed berries pulled off the jelly roll just like any fruit leather would. So if you want fruit leather you can use a blender or you can skip that extra clean up and just use a plate and glass. Of course the blender will give you the means of smoothing out everything across the jelly roll and produce a nice solid leather you can cut into perfect strips. Or you can go the quick and dirty route and skip the whole cutting process. Either way works and is a complete judgment call.

The smashed berries surprised me. I didn’t think they would turn out as perfect as they did. There was very little flesh spread and it looks nearly identical to how the whole and cut berries turned out, when they finished. These look exactly the same as the dehydrated blueberries in the packets of oatmeal or premade blue berry muffin packages. My walking away point is that for the least dehydrating time and same end product, a light smash is the way to go for dehydrating berries!

What surprised me the most was that the cut berries and the whole berries took the same 23 hours to dehydrate. Cutting the berries didn’t speed along the process for me. Even when I ate a whole berry and a cut berry, their textures were identical. I’m not sure why the article my mother in law read said that you had to cut the berries for the best result. There wasn’t a difference.

However there was a difference between the whole/cut berries vs. the smashed berries. When dehydrated the smashed berries had a little bit of pop corn roughness to it, but it had a bit more “airiness” to them. You could say they had a snap and not as dense feel to the teeth. It wasn’t a completely night and day difference between the three methods. But it was noticeable.

My Vote: a quick smash of the blueberries and dehydrating them is the way to go!

One side product you might not have thought of

Before I end this portion of dehydration, I wanted to talk about this one last observation. I like finding ways of using as much as I can of the things I preserve. And if you’ve dehydrated long enough, especially with the jelly rolls, you know there is always that bit from the juice and fragments of flesh stuck to your tray. This time, I decided on another experiment. I scraped off this little remnant. As you can see in the right picture below, I didn’t gain a whole lot of extra bits off of 5 jelly rolls, but I want you to stay tuned because I use this bit in a recipe below and I want you to know that this is completely usable!

What caused me to go to this effort?

I had to scrape my jelly rolls anyway, to make it quicker for washing when I was all done–no scrubbing. I took a taste of these scrapings. And let me tell you what! These scrapings have just as much flavor as the blueberries themselves. So yes, all that flavor, I was definitely going to cook with that.

Saving Seeds

I have no idea how successful this attempt of seed saving will be. I’m very new to this skill set. Including this batch of blue berry seed, I have three other plant varieties that are in the process of cold stratification.

If you are also new to seed saving, perennial plants do require cold stratification in order to tell the seed that it’s ready to sprout. I only have a small garden so it’s not space effective for me to plant seeds in the fall and let them over winter (cold stratify naturally) and hope they take off in the spring. So the best option for me is to go through the stratification method using my freezer and start the seeds indoors and plant any successful starts.

With blueberries, the methods I’ve seen people use for capturing seeds all involved using a blender and wasting the flesh. As you can imagine, I have no intention of losing berries to waste, so I tried something different.

If you remember above, when I talked about mashing the blueberries I mentioned seed saving. Here is what I did. The mashing broke apart the berries that you would see happen in a blender. The difference is that the flesh, I was able to put in my dehydrator and use it as a food source.

On the plate that I mashed the berries on, I removed the thick flesh and left the juice on the plate. With a silicone spatula, I scraped the juice from the plate into the bows that you see here.

As you can see, there seeds were quite numerous from the several handfuls of berries that I mashed. Definitely the seeds are numerous enough to get me a few starts to plant this spring. And I might have enough to share with others.

The method that I used to separate out the seeds from the juice and bits of flesh was the sluicing method. If you’ve seen a video on how you sluice a pan of gold, you understand the steps that I took here. I didn’t pour in very much water, maybe 1/4 cup of water at a time. I swirled the water in the bowl and let the water separate the juice and flesh from the seeds.

It is true what you hear; the seeds to stick to the bottom of your blender, or in this case your bowl. There will be a few floating seeds, but those are the ones that you don’t want anyway.

I sluiced, in my soup bowl, four or five times until you I got to this last picture of the seeds in the bowl.

From this point I continued in the stratification method that others already show how to do; place a damp paper towel in a zip lock bag, place the seeds on the paper towel, and place in the freezer to start the stratification process. (These are placed in the freezer for a minimum of 90 days for blueberries.)

I know that I’m not going to have any blueberries for five years, but I want to start this process now. And I might have to plan ahead and grown several bushes because I definitely have blueberry lovers on my hands!

Freeze Dried

While I do not have a freeze drier, I so wanted to mention this method of food preservation. This method maximizes on the flavor and texture of the blueberry while maintaining the maximum level of vitamin retention. No other food preservation method tops this method at this moment in food history.

That alone is reason enough, but there is also the added bonus of berries being shelf stable and fresh for up to 25 years, 1 year after opening. If you’ve water bath or pressure canned any preserves, you can recognize the benefit of not having a jar or seal failing you.

Maybe you’re like me and don’t have a freeze drier. I want you to know that you still have that option available to you.

More information on freeze dried blueberries can be found here.

I’m going to talk more about freeze dried berries next week, because I’m going to use these in recipes. And believe me, if you are a professional cake or cupcake baker, you’re going to want to see what freeze dried berries can do for you and your clients. You’re going to have all the berry flavor without throwing your water ratio off. Plus the added bonus of being able to decorate with the berries that you can’t do with fresh and less of your precious time than dehydrating.

Blue Berry Recipe

I wanted to share the blue berry recipes that I have and how each of these ways of preserving blueberries act in a given recipe, but I’ve given you ALOT of information already. So be sure to tune in next week for the recipes and how the berries work.

BUT in the meantime I don’t want to leave you hanging with the jelly roll scraping. So here we go on this quick analysis.

As seen above: the berry scrapings and blueberry pancakes (above: whole dehydrated berries, bottom: berry scrapings)

I didn’t have very much of the scraping, just enough for two pancakes for the boys. I made two other pancakes with the dehydrated berries. (And of course some plain flapjacks for the kiddo who dares to turn his nose up on blueberries.)

The dehydrated berries had a bit of crunch to them, but did not disappoint in the flavor department. The blueberry scrapings I absolutely loved! There was the full blueberry flavor without the bite of a dry blueberry, or even the wet squish of pancakes with fresh berries in them.

I’m so tempted to make more mashed berries and spread it very very thin to maximize the blueberry scrapings, because it’s the absolute perfect world for blueberry pancakes–full flavor without messing up the texture of a classic pancake!

Products seen today

These products are affiliate links. We can receive a commission from purchases made through these links, but at no extra cost to you. These products I have purchased for myself. Where I have talked about them, my statements are based on my experience on these products.

Nesco FD-1018A Garden Master

This was a replacement dehydrator for my other Nesco that served me well for over a decade. I wanted to make this recommendation because this dehydrator came with a mesh and jelly roll for each tray. I was prepared to purchase these accessories, but was so pleased to find out that I didn’t have to.

Thrive Life Freeze Dried Blueberries

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“Someone ate Pac Man!”

We all have our favorite places to source decoration items for parties. And it becomes a challenge when we need to find things that just can’t be on the shelves anywhere.

Last week I shared some ideas on decoration ideas for retro 8-bit arcade games.

This week I want to share with you, keeping with the same theme, my hacks for ordering a cake and a fresh idea for dressing up a snack can.

How to order a cake from a bakery that doesn’t decorate with licensed characters.

We decided that we were going to get the cake from Costco this time. (I’ve used this same ordering technique with my local grocery store bakery department.)

Before going in person or ordering online, you want to sit down and think of how you want to decorate your cake. Previously one kiddo wanted a train birthday and so I had to come up with a steam train engine cake. This time, how was I going to make a Pac Man cake?

First I made my Pac Man. He was cut out of yellow cardstock and laminated so that I wouldn’t have to worry with paper dye bleeding into the frosting.

The Cardstock Train sits ontop of the cake with a cluster of white balloons behind the smoke stack.

The time that I made my train, I attached wooden dowels. This kept everything directionally proportional with the 3D focal point.

This time I needed to get Pac Man to stand up. So dowels were not going to work for me. This time I hot glued a plastic fork on the back. The fork thongs give the ability to stand Pac Man fully upright or reclined back at a 45 degree angle. I needed this flexibility because I had absolutely no idea how the bakery was going to follow my directions or what their placement was going to look like.

The reverse side of Pac-Man has a clear plastic fork attached in the middle. The bowl of the fork and tines are below the body of Pac-Man.

The one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that bakery staff looks forward to doing something different as long as it’s not making more work for them. So if you leave your note with your best manners and let them know what you’re going to do, they get excited about being part of something different.

For the train I had asked them to cluster the balloons together, with no strings, to make a cloud cluster for a train that I would place on the cake. I kid you not, I went to pick up this cake and heard all the bakery employees complain about this insane request that they got from someone. Instead of quickly decorating a cake, they were going to spend additional time and drag their day out.

Of course I thought they were complaining about my simple request and so I was bracing myself for some attitude. Instead, I got the complete opposite. One of the employees came to the counter to help me, went back for the cake, and all the employees came to the counter grinning ear to ear because they wanted to see the train.

The success to the train was that I didn’t ask for more “balloons” then they would normally give. I didn’t tell them specifically where I wanted them or how to position them. I didn’t demand a certain color. I left it simply with no strings, white cluster. My request saved them maybe a few seconds from what they normally would do. But that was a few seconds in their favor.

As you can see with my Costco order form, I asked for something simple. I don’t remember if these are their standard balloon colors or sizes. But they were great in giving me large balloons, the exact number I needed, and their colors!

I don’t know what this bakery’s response was, because my husband picked the cake up.

But I do have a story for this one, on the day that I placed the order.

My son was so excited to have a Pac Man cake that as we were leaving the bakery section, after filling the order form, he flagged down the nearest employee and blurted in a loud excited voice that he was getting a Pac Man cake. You should have seen the employees face when he had to tell my son that they don’t do licensed characters. My son cut him off and told him, “No! I’m getting a Pac Man cake!” I had to step in here and explain to the employee that I requested that the balloon strings be left off so I could turn them into ghosts and I would add a Pac Man at the party. The employee chatted for a few more minutes and kept repeating himself that this was a brilliant idea.

If a non-bakery employee was excited about my idea, you can just imagine how the bakery employees reacted when they saw the order form. If nothing else, it turned a typical boring day into something to talk about. Again, this wasn’t a request that added to their work time. It may have saved them seconds. But I’m assuming it was something fun that broke up the monotony.

While on the subject of cakes…..

I don’t know about your family, but I kid you not growing up and even with my own kids, we have at least one cake story that will live as a memory for a lifetime!

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What is your cake of a lifetime story???

When we were kids, my mom locked my sister’s birthday cake in the car, at the lake, with the keys in the car.

I tried my hand at making a sculpted cake for my son’s birthday. He wanted a bubble birthday. So I attempted to make a bubble container cake. That cake makes me cry in the fetal position to this day, because the sponge was so dry that the dang cake kept crumbling and falling apart. It didn’t matter how many dowels I added to maintain the structure, that I used fondant for a little holding power, or that the cake was frozen… it was a nightmare!

And that photo I keep buried away in a digital file folder where I can cry as my son laughs as an adult and I have to recount that story. Because even though I hate it, I have to admit that it’s a story that deserves to live on.

So Yes! This Pac Man cake will live on for the ages. Not for the same reason as the Bubble Birthday Cake. But for this reason….

Pac-Man cake has Pac-Man in the upper left corner. Five ghosts are in the center of the cake. The peremeter of the cake is lined with yellow M&Ms like the arcade game's power pellets. All but five of the M&Ms are missing. The M&M eyes of the far right ghost are missing. That ghost's frosting is smudged.

After I finished assembling the cake, I left the party room to go talk with the other moms while the kiddos played. After a time, my birthday boy walks up to me with his hands on his cheeks, devastated face, and trying hard not to cry as he exclaimed, “Someone ate Pac Man!”

I had zero idea what he was talking about, but seeing his reaction was enough that I got up and walked back to the party room to investigate.

Here my son is about to cry. As soon as I saw the cake I busted out laughing almost to the point of cry laughing, because that is absolutely hilarious!!!! This was no typical finger swipe of the frosting. Someone ate as many of the M&Ms as they could reach and took out a ghost in the process. And no, my laughter didn’t help my son. I looked down at him and told him it was going to be okay. I had already taken pictures of the cake. And then I asked him if he wanted to see what his cake looked like before this happened.

We went back to where everyone was at. As I picked up my phone to pull up the pictures I let the moms know that someone had ate the candy decorations off of the cake. They all were mortified, as any mother would be. I showed my son the picture. I fawned over it with him and once he was happy to at least to have seen his finished pre-eaten cake, he went back off to play. Then I showed the moms the picture and filled them in on what happened.

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I don’t think they knew how to respond with how I was responding. As a mom, we’re all use to the finger swipes. But to see the cake pillaged! LOL Honestly, my whole thinking was that it could have been a whole lot worse. Someone could have taken a fist full of cake out of the cake. Being angry or interrogating the kids to find out who did it would not have restored the cake. It would have made the party uncomfortable for everyone.

What surprised me was that because I was okay with not knowing who did it, the moms began one by one asking their kids if they took the candy off the cake. None of the kids did. And it became a great mystery. It wasn’t until I mentioned this story in my newsletter that I realized that I never asked any of my three kids. Obviously birthday boy didn’t. His feelings were genuinely hurt in that moment. I assumed my oldest wouldn’t do it. Even though he’s a first grader, it’s just not his style. Now my youngest! That boy has the sweet tooth that the other two have never had. And he’s also in the food swiping stage. I did ask him the other day and he told me that he didn’t. But I also know that he’s at the stage of not telling the truth to see if he can get away with things.

To this very day, I’m going to error on the side that it was my youngest that plundered the cake, but I have absolutely no proof that he did. So officially the case is closed as a cold case. But secretly I still think it’s him.

A New Take on Snack Wrappers

I know I’ve seen the crafty labels that people put on Hershey bars or bags of chips. The one thing that I haven’t seen is a label for Pringles. And snack chips were one of my party purchases from Costco.

When trying to make a theme happen from scratch I really did one more item to pull it all together and finish it off. And what’s better than something you can put jokes on, for kids at an age who adore any joke you throw at them!

A stack of flat snack can wrappers are splayed on the desk. In the center of each label is a Pac-Man with power pellets on either side of him. On the left portion of the labels are hand written jokes. On the right are chip flavor indicators; cheese bonus, original bonus, sour cream bonus.

My first thought was to create a PDF that I could print off from my printer. However my color ink cartridge was empty and it was just easier to keep material cohesion by using black cardstock and vinyl. Plus I have acrylic pens and have hardly touched my white pen. So I cut from vinyl all that I could. And I wrote out the jokes.

Let me just say that I did not think I would find any Pac Man jokes. I was surprised when I did. There are kid friendly ones and there are adult friendly ones. So you kind of have to pick and choose which jokes you use for your party. But here is the site I used for one reference joke page. I didn’t save the sites and can’t find the second one that I pulled from. But it was a simple Google search and you don’t have to go far before you start seeing repeats. So it is a small joke world for this game. All in all I used 8 jokes that I recycled over the 36 mini tins that I dressed.

Before I show you how I attached these labels I want to point out a troubleshooting tip. I had a lot of weeding and transferring to do. And I’m not ashamed to say that I worked quickly because I had a lot of items to go through. I did lose some letter details, as you can see with this B.

Tip: If you lose details, use a white acrylic pen and draw it back in.

That is the one thing that I love about 8-bit fonts, if you lose a letter detail, all you need to know is how to draw a line or rectangle. I had a few cans that I had to correct. But I didn’t even tell my husband or kids and none of them noticed. And my detail orientated boys are quick to point something out to me that’s missing, wrong, or whatever corrections they want me to make because I didn’t do it just so. ….kids!

The assembly on these is super quick. If you’re using copy paper glue dots are all you need. For cardstock I needed hot glue.

The wrap is slightly longer then the circumference of the can because I didn’t want to have to deal with a hairline crack of color because it wasn’t cut precisely to precise measurement. Because there was overlap, I used two small dots of glue to anchor the edge down to the can. After wrapping the label around, I finished it off with a line of hot glue. There was no puckering or edge lifts. I advise against using glue like Elmer’s where you have to hold and wait dry. Hot glue was perfect because it dried by the time I had aligned and pressed everything into place.

Tip: The tab of the container seal is something that you want to pay attention to, so that no one struggles to open the can. A tried folding the tab up and press it back down after the label was attached. This took too long. So I went with option 2.

Tip 2: Slide the label up under the tab. Apply your anchor glue and then finish off the attachment. Having the tab on top of the label helped to align the label quicker. So it was a time saver guide.

Three fully labeled snack cans are lined up side by side, showing different parts of the label. From left to right; Pac-Man, "Original Bonus", jokes.

An additional option that you can add to these cans is to apply a Pac Man sticker/vinyl on top to cover the Pringles man’s face. I chose not to do this because I wanted to not over complicate all that I had to arrange for the party.

Instead I opted to turn these cans into small coin banks for the boys as an after the party trinket. To make this modification, all you need to do is take a box cutter or exacto knife and slice a single cut through the clear lid. The best way of doing this is to cut with the lid on top of an empty can. The snack was not damaged and you have a proper safe way of making cuts without the lid slipping on you.

Tip: One cut is perfect if you want your coins to remain in the can and still allow a child to shake it and use it as an instrument. If you make a wider slot, you will allow the opportunity for coins to fall out.

I hope these cake stories made you laugh as much as I did. And that you enjoyed all the decorations and new ideas from this week and last. They were fun and well worth making.

If you have any cake stories, please share them in the comments below!

Files used Today:

The file for the Snack Can Label is found in this Archade Label set.

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Fresh From The Garden

(This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links, but at no extra cost to you.)

I am so happy that the recent sun and high heats have hit my garden the last couple of weeks. The spring here has been cold and wet and I second guessed, third guessed, and fourth guessed whether my spring plantings were going to be viable in making produce.

The great news is that my leafy greens are all doing well and have come to maturity for harvesting. My tomatoes are finally putting forth fruit. Truth be told, I keep looking for more blossoms and hunting for more new fruit. I really want to put away more pasta sauce and try my hand at tomato paste. Usually we just go through so much sauce that I really don’t get the opportunity to make anything else. So fingers crossed, I am so hoping to make other tomato products.

My corn is finally starting to outgrow my oldest child. Fortunately I drive past farms that grow fields of corn, so I compare my humble hobby garden to the professionals. And I’m glad that my few rows of corn are keeping pace with the large farms. So there’s hope. And particularly since I grew popping corn last year, for the first time, my boys are hooked with “our” popcorn. And I planted more corn than I’ve ever done before in hopes of making a year’s worth of popping corn. When the ears have matured, I’ll make a post on this so you can know which types of corn to grow to make your own popping corn. Also, you can see just how easy it is to make pop corn. Other than the wait, making pop corn is super easy!

I won’t go into all the details of everything that I’ve grown this year, but I will end here by stating that my fall seeds have already sprouted and are doing so much better than my spring planting. And even today, I’ve come across so many videos on YouTube talking about what crops you can plant in August and still harvest in the remaining time for this growing season. So if you are curious to try your hand at growing something before fall hits, there is definitely still time!

Fresh is what’s for dinner!

Out of the five items I harvested from my garden this morning, I used three of them for dinner tonight; Cabbage, Bok Choy, and Mizuna.

If you’re asking, “what is mizuna?” believe me, so did I. This past fall I bought seeds from Baker Creek. (Not an affiliate link, just a great product.) When I got that delivery I found out that the gift packet of seeds I got from them was mizuna. I had never heard of this green before. So I took a chance and grew it on the blind. And tonight I found out that it is a type of bitter green. Some of the bitter greens are quite bitter and I have to douse restaurant salads that come with them, because they’re so bitter. However the mizuna is not so strong. It has a mild bitter flavor, but is not bad at all if you’re sensitive to the bitter profiles, like I am.

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Knowing that I have so many green to bring in starting tomorrow and for the next week or so, I had to come up with a new idea on how to use them. Other than dehydrating my greens and turning it into a powder to use in countless recipes, I can’t think of a way (other than freeze drying, but I don’t have that machine yet) of preserving them without becoming a wilty mess. Granted Cabbage is good for kraut and ferments–which I will be doing when I get a few more heads ready for harvest. Once my green cabbage comes in I’ll post an amazing Italian ferment that I found. And with the red cabbage I’ll post on making a red kraut. So there are a few things to keep an eye out for.

Back to dinner, I needed to find a use for these three greens to make dinner. Cabbage and Bok Choy can both handle some cooking. But one look at Mizuna and I knew I couldn’t do a stir fry with it. It’s definitely a salad green.

But Asian sounded so good!

And that’s when inspiration hit. Two of the three greens could handle the heat, so I cooked my rice and chicken in a marinade (Mr. Yoshida’s Original Gourmet).

While everything cooked, I prepped the greens.

For a single plate I used (from top to bottom) 4 stalks of Bok Choy, a few leaves of Cabbage (the head was small, so I used about 5 leaves), and 4 stalks of Mizuna.

The Bok Choy and Mizuna I chopped. Because the cabbage is raw, I rolled the leaves together and julienne cut the leaves. Once these are cut, they just mix together easily like this.

I usually dread buying mixed salads at the store because either their mixes don’t taste good to me, are old, don’t keep long in the fridge, or all the various recalls over the last few years. Now that I have these greens ready to pull from my garden (plus spinach once it reaches maturity), I can put together a salad mix that is far superior than what’s found in the stores AND it takes less time than driving to my local store (about 4 minutes away).

The great thing about this mix combo is that I can place hot rice right on top of the salad and it retains its crisp texture. Cabbage isn’t phased by the heat. Bok Choy naturally can be cooked for a couple of minutes and keep firm texture in the stalk with mild wilt in the leaf, but retain full pleasurable taste. Mizuna, I fully expected to not hold up to the heat, just because it did wilt in the time between me rinsing the greens off and making dinner.

All in all Mizuna acted much like Bok Choy. The greens did wilt. BUT the beautiful purple stalks remained crunchy just like the Bok Choy stalk.

Top off the salad greens with rice, and then marinated chicken. And as a side note, left over chicken is just as perfect as having warm chicken. I ate this both ways.

You can see here that the rice I had on hand in my kitchen is basmati rice. I couldn’t have picked a better rice for this dish. White (short or long grain) rice tends to be sticky and would just be globular bunches of rice on this dish. Brown rice could be used. But if given the choice between basmati and brown rice, I would pick basmati for textual reasons. But know that you can choose your favorite rice.

Alternate Ingredients

I don’t have much experience with grain alternates to rice. I wouldn’t recommend quinoa (too nutty for this flavor profile), potato, or riced cauliflower(too gummy of a texture). Couscous could work, especially if you use a different marinade for the chicken.

If you didn’t want to use Mr. Yoshida’s Original Gourmet, Teriyaki would be just as perfect for this rice on salad. Sweet and Sour would be a fun alternate. I’m leaning toward trying the next time I make this, using a honey ginger sauce. And maybe you’re not into a sauce at all, for any dietary reason, but prefer vinaigrettes. You are most certainly not limited in how you dress your chicken or rice.

And once you opt for a different dressing, you can make any of your other alternate grains work in the place of rice.

You’ve also then opened up the window for other additional ingredients. Have garbanzo beans that you’ve been looking for something new to make with it? What about dehydrated fruits or vegetable chips? Pomegranates, fruit slices (fruit or canned)… as you can now see, you can really turn your salad on its head with adding a heated element on top of something traditionally thought of as being a cold entre. You can use dehydrated or preserved ingredients–especially if you need to use up some of your previously shelved preserves to make room for what is coming up in your current garden.

I can’t even begin to share with you just how excited I am about this! With all the recent hot weather and the lack of desire to cook dinners, I am actually looking forward to making this a meal a couple of times a week, different meats, different dressings, different additions. Plus it’s the bonus of eating all the leafy greens that don’t normally keep well, like some of the other produce I grow to preserve. And that’s not even taking into consideration all the edible flowers that abound this time of year (such as culinary lavender and dandelions)!

As you can see here, with how beautifully this all mixed together I’m positive your imagination has already added in additional ingredients to make this meal individually you!!!

Here’s the cut files that were newly released this past week. New files are released every Monday!

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