The first thing I did after breakfast was check on the jar lids that I had left soaking overnight. (Oh yeah, after I wrote last night's post and before I went to bed, I added a bit of bleach to the soaking water.) I scrubbed each one inside and out with a soapy dish brush, rinsed them, and laid them out to dry on some clean towels. After a few hours, I dried each one with another towel and am storing them in a basket I keep by my sprouting supplies.
I decided to get started on doing something with the fruit Vickie gave me on Friday. I had seven green apples, so I peeled & cored them (saving the skins and cores to make pectin), then sliced them into wedges and now have three jars of apple slices. One is soaking in rum, the other two are soaking in honey mead. All three are now in my fridge. These are not being fermented; they're just soaking in flavored alcohol in the hope they will taste yummy soon!
I have to admit that when packing the jars I had a couple of slices that wouldn't quite fit in the jar, but had already gotten covered in alcohol. They were delicious just like that - I can't wait to see how yummy they are when they've soaked for a while! :-)
I also tackled some of the grapefruit. I used one and half grapefruit to make a vanilla grapefruit curd. I used this super easy recipe from the "Faithfully Gluten Free" blog. I went with the option of using whole eggs rather than just yolks plus my eggs didn't seem "large" so I used four rather than three. Here's the curd covered in plastic wrap, sitting on the counter cooling. (It's now in the fridge to cool more before I spoon it into jars for storage.)
Some of the grapefruit curd recipes I saw online recommended putting in a drop of red food color to simulate the color of pink grapefruit, but I think this curd is a lovely yellow by itself, so I didn't bother to color it at all.
I used another two grapefruit to make a grapefruit sorbet using this recipe from Spoon University. I did make one change to the recipe in that I added one tsp of vanilla extract to the grapefruit juice before blending it together with the syrup. Here's the sorbet in a container waiting to go into the freezer. Once it's firm but not frozen solid, I'll mix it up again and then let it freeze solid.
After the sorbet, I decided to stop with the fruit for the night because I was hungry for dinner! I cut up the beef tri-tip I had in the fridge and braised it in some konbudashi and Worcestershire sauce with some onions and garlic. I added the rest of my garbanzo bean sprouts, as well as two handfuls of my mixed bean sprouts, a couple spoonfuls of the pickled mushrooms & onions, and some sesame seeds. Yum!
I still have four and a half grapefruit left, plus 27 oranges of different sizes. I am hesitant to make marmalade simply because these homegrown fruit don't really have attractive rinds, so I'm still pondering what to do with them.
Another thing I did last night after I posted was to start 1/4 cup of green leafy sprout seeds to soak. This morning, I put them into the tray sprouter. They should be ready in a couple of days.
ADDENDUM: Back on Mar 18, I put some purple cauliflower to soak in the dill pickle brine I still had from that giant jar of pickles. Today, I took a picture of the jar because the brine has turned a lovely shade of purple!
I haven't tasted them yet, but they sure are purty, aren't they? 😊
In other news, I've switched to using the big jar from Chrissy for my tea. This frees up my quart canning jars for other things. I may even switch to the giant jar from the pickles whose juice is now soaking the cauliflower and green beans. Hmmmmm....
Oh, and I'll be getting more jars tomorrow from our neighbor Debra. I need to check with Michael, too, to see when I can get his. The Buy Nothing group is awesome! 👍
ADDENDUM, THE SECOND: At 7pm I checked on the sorbet. It had started freezing around the outside but the middle was still liquid, so I stirred it all up, put it back in the freezer, & set a reminder to check it again at 9pm. At 9pm it was mostly frozen all the way through, so I stirred it up again and put it back in the fridge. Here's a pic from after the 9pm stirring:
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