Painting Bliss

Fruits, Veggies, and Bruchetta, OH MY!

 

 

 

The excitingly warm spring weather here in the north east really coaxes my stomach toward a summer palette. Dreams of market bags filled with farm grown fruits and veggies makes my heart smile with delight. Spring and summer are obviously the best time to eat your heart out on things that grow by root. Until the near future when I will be able to tip toe through the market, tote over my shoulder, I will start to crave things like farm fresh produce and recipes like bruchetta.

A few days ago I carried an abundant armful of tomatoes, basil, garlic, and other ingredients out into the warm sunshine where I chopped, diced, and danced while doing so. Good tunes, good sun, and good company makes the world go round. Feeding what you made to the ones you love is a whole 'nother pleasure entirely!

 

 

 

Thankfully cutting onions outside kept them from stinging my eyes, another plus to cooking outside! I loathe cutting onions. Onions and I have only recently become friends. My whole life I have shunned them from my plate... and still only selectively allow them in dishes that I make or eat. I was a picky eater growing up and still have my moments, but allowing myself to at least try something and not turn my nose up at it has greatly opened up my culinary world. There is so much to taste and enjoy!

 

What are your favorite spring eats?

Sweet and Savory Garlic Jam

 

 

My favorite farmer whom I have spoke of in the past left an exciting surprise on my door stop last week... 20 huge cloves of garlic! I asked him the week before if he had a few extra, then low and behold a huge bag full!! Such a sweetheart he is!!!

So I had to figure out how I wanted to preserve my beautiful cloves. I knew I would jar them and make something savory and decadent, yet every recipe online didn't speak to me. So I opened up my Ball Jar recipe book and took the most appealing recipe online, then kinda took this and that from both - therefore making my own sweet and savory garlic jam recipe.

Licking just a wee bit of it (it was only 7:30 in the morning) I was more than delighted at what I created. I was worried that it wouldn't come together taste wise... after all I was sort of winging it!What came of my dabbling was sweet but not too sweet, savory but not too savory, garlicky but not overwhelmingly so.

I just knew I had to share this recipe with you! Not only to share, but also too put a damn good recipe online for others to find that don't want just pickling their garlic as an option! So here it is! I apologize for only partial picture steps as once you start the jarring process it's a game of time and hands.

I think this recipe would be divine spread on grilled cheese with sharp cheddar and an 12 grain (I call it birdseed bread) bread. It will be a ballet in your mouth! Also I suspect it would be great on a bagel or just toast, spread on a baguette with a nice cheese... the possibilities are endless!

Something I think most people think of when you put a vegetable or something savory in a jam, they think of a fruit jam and automatically think YUCK! Well throw that notion and correlation aside. Just think spreadable savory yum. The sugar in the recipe only helps thicken, not overly sweeten. Walk on the wild side!

 

 

(Bring a large pot to a boil and sanitize your half pint jars. Work while they sanitize. This recipe makes 17 half pints.)

 

 

Step #1 Chop the tops off of your garlic and lay onto a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, then salt and pepper them. Course ground pepper and sea salt are wonderful.

 

Your garlic cloves will go from what they look like above, to what they look like below.

 

Step #2 Bake at 375 until soft. About 35-40 minutes. Then let cool. This will smell intoxicating and delicious!

Step #3 Literally squeeze each clove out of their little skinned home and into a bowl. Enjoy getting sticky, messy, and in addition breathe deep... your whole house now will smell like roasted garlic and you as well.

 

 

Step #4 Place garlic cloves into a large soup pot and add 2 cups of balsamic vinegar. Oh the scents are melding now! Roasted garlic and the ting of balsamic vinegar!

 

 

Step #5 Puree with an immersion blender. If you don't have an immersion  blender, go back a step before the placement in the pot and puree in a blender.

Step  #6 Heat until lightly bubbling.

(while your mixture is heating up place 2 cups of white sugar 2 cups of brown sugar and your 6 tablespoons of pectin into a bowl, toss together with a fork)

 

 

Step #7 Back to your stove, slowly add your sugars and pectin mixture in small increments. Pour a little, stir a little, repeat.

Step #8 Bring to a rolling boil, this recipe SPLATTERS! Use a lid, lift to stir occasionally and then lid it again. When mixture looks thick and is bubbling away, over a minute of hard boil... you are done cooking your jam!

Step #9 Ladel hot jam into a jars leaving head room. Place tops on and tighten firmly.

 

 

Step #10 Boil jars (water bath) for 10 minutes.

Step #11 Remove and let cool for 24 hours

 

 

Now make them look pretty, ad labels and such! You can do it :) Give as gifts, keep some for yourself! Nom Nom Nom!!

Carving Halloween and Baked Seeds

 

 

I love carving pumpkins, never do I hesitate getting my hands into the squishy and often cold middle of the gourd we dub "guts". Early October we all start conversing over what kind of pumpkin we want to carve, tossing ideas across the lunch table.

Pumpkins are usually chosen straight from the patch, but this year they were purchased at one of our favorite and local farm stands called Soon's. We attempted our usual patch, but (insert huge sad face here)... it was swamped by folks from New York City. Over the years it has become more and more taken over by tourists, and this year was more than I could take. Visiting this orchard since I was a little girl, it's pretty disappointing to wait 15 minutes in a line of cars to get into a swamped parking area only to be snooted by some overly dressed snob. Needless to say, when we finally got in we drove directly back out.

So yes, pumpkins didn't come straight off the vine... but at least they were purchased locally and from a place we really adore with super friendly people who always welcome us into their barn like doors.

This year my husband and oldest went for cyclops faces... 

 

My middle son carved a creepy little drooling fellow... he says it's blood and that it's creepy!

 

 

And myself looked at the pumpkin, waited for the shape to show me what it wanted and sketched in red sharpie a maniacal grin.

 

 

I'm a super proud artist mommy that this year my 5 and 7 year carved almost their entire pumpkin faces on their own! With little safe carving saw toothed knives of course, nothing crazy sharp or scary I promise. I think it's a pretty big feat for a little person to carve a pumpkin, especially when they have hard enough time spreading peanut butter on bread... so well done boys, well done!

Pumpkin carving is always followed by the baking of seeds and the crunching of their nutty flavor between our teeth. We like them best like this...

 

1. To each bowl full of cleaned and rinsed seeds add 2 tablespoons melted butter

2. Toss throughout the bowl coating all seeds thoroughly

3. Pour onto a cookie sheet

4. Using a sea salt grinder, generously cover your seeds. The more the better really.

5. Bake until you hear the seeds pop and they become golden brown (350 degrees)

6. Turn seeds over, go for another 5 minutes then remove and put into a bowl. Optional, more salt or season salt to get back onto the seed what was left on the pan.

7. Eat and Enjoy!

 

What kind of pumpkins are you carving? Are you carving? Go for it!

 

 

My Week Through the Eyes of Instagram 9/9-9/16

 

Another week bites the dust and I still can't say I'm sorry to see it go. Another rough week led to a quiet ending which was more than fine with me! Here's hoping your week was filled with love, laughter, and fun!

 

It started with a some Geocaching, hiking, and a view of the Delaware River...

 

Then school day monday walking to the bus stop with pretty nature things to see.

Time in the car for the boys, crochet, and some flowers at the park waiting for school pickup.

Date night, mexican... soothing the stressed out soul with a few pina colodas.

Farm market, Heirloom Tomatoes, and Canning...

From blond to brown, a garlic bread beard, and a false alarm ER trip where I yelled at a nurse.

Crochet in crafting in preparation for my November craft sale.

Farm fields and a wonderful hike that led us to the state line where NY meets NJ.

 

Time and time again I am led to my one of my favorite quotes, and it's so relevant right now as I feel a bit like I'm walking upside down. Thank you for your patience with the blog. I usually blog each evening in preparation for the next day but lately when evening comes I'm exhausted and snuggling on the couch with my family seems like the very best medicine.

 

"Life is what happens when your busy making other plans"

~ John Lennon

 

As always if you love my photography and seeing my Instagram photos you can follow me on Instagram via

@Paintingbliss

Buying Local Buying Handgrown and Handmade

 

Local food is the best, handmade is the best, and living a homemade/handmade local food kind of life is magic! Summer here in upstate New York is one of the most glorious times to be a New Yorker, especially where I live because we are so close to the black dirt region.

 

 

This past weekend I brought a mere $10 and a couple of boys to a farm market we had not yet had the pleasure of visiting located in Pine Island New York. For my $10 I was able to bring home 4 yellow squash, 3 large sunflower blooms, a huge eggplant, a clump of fresh cilantro (roots attached), and a garlic with cloves so big they have to be split in half between recipes.

After the farm market, we did have to go to the grocery store for other non farm market essentials where I couldn't help but chuckle at the tiny eggplants in the produce section that were almost $2 a piece glistening with strangers finger prints. I'm surely going to miss my fresh and organic produce through the winter months, but will continue to live through my farm market visits until they all close for the season.

 

 

I am contemplating figuring out out to can some jam and salsa so that we can have some tastes of summer while the snow piles down and piles up. It will take some research though as I have never attempted canning in any form before.

All of the herbs I have been cutting and purchasing are being hung and dried in the window for use later on. I'm hoping I have enough to give as gifts; packaged as steak rubs.

 

 

Even if you don't buy anything from your local farm market, which I doubt you can walk away without atleast some yummy apples... it's a real feast for the eyes with all it's amazing colors and bright grape skinned hues.

All of the veggies I brought home were cut up and piled high into a homemade vegetable lasagna. It was so good there was all but 3 tiny pieces left. Of course cooking is always better when you cook for friends, so friends helped eat it and we all slopped up our ricotta and sauce with fresh soft bread.

Sweet Corn Nostalgia

 

You wouldn't think sweet corn could be nostalgic, but for me it is. It's not about summer, or the tastes of summer, or the fact that you can get only really good corn in the summer... its about family, and more specifically its about my grandfather.

When I was small I spent many a summer with my grandparents...

Enter Otego New York, go straight down Main Street and take a left at the deli. Keep going until you see a hand painted church sign, and notice that the empty spaces of the "A's" are painted in. When my grandfather had a minor stroke just a few years before he was tragically taken, he lost his ability to read and couldn't remember that the hollow centers of letters were meant to be hollow. He could build anything so when the church needed a sign, he was the man...

Go straight down that road with all it's twists and turns, past barns and houses, and soon you'll be there.

 

Arrive at their house, a yellow one level ranch with beautiful large yard, pond, cow pasture behind and corn field in front and you'll know your in some sort of private heaven. Sitting in the swing that used to be nestled between the large maples my grandfather planted with his own two hands and peer across the street, and there was and still is a large corn field. Behind the corn field is a great opening expanse of grass, and then woods. I used to tell my grandparents that I would build a house on the open expanse so I could always be near to them, and close to the land that made me feel whole and with purpose. That corn field was welcome to our picking. The farmer, being a friend told my grandparents to pick corn whenever they wanted and so they did. Not with excess, as they did nothing in excess... but when wanted, and enjoyed down to the very last kernel.

My Pa Pa would walk across that road and into the tall corn stalks, pick a half dozen and walk back. Somehow I remember the very first time. I remember him going and me waiting, watching... I remember sitting in the yard and teaching me to shuck. Shucking corn was and will always be about my grandfather. He taught me to take the top with two hands, separate the silk between each hand, and pull straight down. Once the husk is pulled all the way down, you snap off the base and remove the final strands of silvery silk.

Boil, butter, salt and pepper if you want and eat until you can't eat anymore.

 

 

My grandfather was a corn eating professional. He did everything slowly and perfectly, from washing the dishes to eating his corn. One cob was meticulously chewed until nothing was left but cob and the one cob probably took a good 20 minutes or so. You see, each kernel is held by a transparent silky pocket... and for most of us we leave this part on the cob... but he didn't. Every part of the corn... kernel, pocket, and all was gnawed away thoroughly. I was never sure how he did it, and I wasn't sure until last night when I tried being careful... and I figured it out.

Bite hard, bite down to the very cob, and show no mercy. Do it, like a cow would do it. When you do it this way, the corn has so much more texture. It seems meatier and fuller in the mouth.

Nowadays when I visit the grocery store and see a big trash can next to the corn table I chuckle to myself, and wonder if anyone knows what it's like to really pick, shuck, and eat corn. In Reality, you don't get to check every cob for imperfections, there's no knowing what you have until you get it home and peel it open for yourself. When you pick corn straight from the field you must beware the corn grubs. You never know if there will be one inside munching the sweet yellow niblets, and I remember always being super cautious as a kid when helping shuck. Of course I would scream and throw the cob if one were to be found! I was a tom boy through and through, but when it came to that... I was all girl.

Now when I go to the store, and if I buy corn (which I only do in the summer), I choose not to look. I push the trash can aside and just pick out what I think looks biggest and fullest while some lady or gentleman next to me opens and checks each and every one they want. This is my way of staying true to my grandfather. It's my way of staying a little bit country. It's my way of staying real.

 

 

Farm Market Splendor

 

Fresh vegetables, fresh herbs, baked goods, and bread... grass fed meat, olives, pickles, and wine. This is the farm market. Last year I really got the farm market bug. Meaning I was brought to one by a wonderful friend where I most instantly fell in love... which means I waited all winter long for this very day to come and yesterday there it was - the first day of the season grand opening that is but the beginning of weeks of fridays, running from summer into fall.

 

The first day means loads of beautiful, colorful, and vibrant healthy treats straight from the farm. Picked by hand, transported by hand, sold by hand - to you... where you will cut by hand, cook by hand, and serve by hand. It's a hand to hand factory line of pure unbridled earth to belly goodness.

 

 

There are honey sticks a natural sugar treat that went down quicker than a boxed snack would. Nature's candy.

 

There are blue skies and sunshine, tank top and flip flops.

 

Friendly People from small businesses, that are eager to succeed and sell handmade foods like these pretzel rolls. They were fantastic and the kids and I basically dove into the bag mouth first! ok, not literally, but wow!

 

The farm market: ensuring fresh and inexpensive vegetables to feed and nourish my family all season long. No need for packaged and trucked across the U.S. produce. No having to test out the goods to see if they are yet ripe or bruised/damaged. It all awaits you there, piled high on tables long and narrow. Everything sold by the bunch or pound.

 

Contribute to your community, purchase fresh from your local farmer! your local farmers need your support :)