It’s all about the food

That is how it seems these days in our home!

We have tomatoes coming out of our ears!  This prompted me to attempt salsa last week with tomatoes, onions, and jalapenos all from out garden!  This week I am making more to can since we cannot eat enough to keep up!  Homemade salsa is wonderful!

We also have pumpkins turning orange just about daily, so after cooking 6 of them in the last few days, I am about to make some pumpkin butter.  Unfortunately you are not supposed to can pumpkin butter, something about the USDA thinking it is not safe, so into the freezer my pumpkin butter will go.  So many options though once it is in there!  I am going to follow this recipe – and her suggestions are to use your pumpkin butter like you would pumpkin in bread, smoothies, pie and instead of adding the suggested sugar for each recipe you skip it since the pumpkin butter will already have it.  I am most looking forward to some pumpkin smoothies in the next few weeks.  Yum!!

 

Next up, blueberry jam.  We picked berries last Saturday and we still have tons even though I have been freezing them like crazy.  Today my little princess helped me (stirred a couple times) make some beautiful blue berry jam.  The boys will be thrilled we have more, but not thrilled they could not help.  Oh well.

During the afternoon we took on frozen cookie dough.  I have been out of cookie dough in our freezer for ages and was hoping to restock.  (I always make huge cookie batches, scoop them out like I am going to cook them and flash freeze them.}  So I found a new recipe on allrecipes.com.  I am so thrilled with the ingredients of this recipe!  Here is how it goes:

Outrageous Chocolate Chip Cookies

warning : this yields 72 cookies

Ingredients:

2 cups butter 2 cups white sugar 1-1/3 cups packed brown sugar 2 cups peanut butter 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 4 egg

4 cups all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 2 cups rolled oats 4 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1.	Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2.	In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, white sugar and brown sugar until smooth. Stir in the peanut butter, vanilla and egg until well blended. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the batter just until moistened. Mix in the oats and chocolate chips until evenly distributed. Drop by tablespoonfuls on to lightly greased cookie sheets.
3.	Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until the edges start to brown. Cool on cookie sheets for about 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

I have an admission to make though.  I used 1/2 cup of Nutella in place of some of the peanut butter.  Oh my!!  These are amazing!  I am sure they will be a family favorite!!

Our last foodie moment today was our supper!  We picked up our vegetable co-op veggies today and included was 2 bunches of spinach.  We love spinach but too often our spinach is forgotten and goes bad.  So, tonight I decided it was our supper.  I sautéed a red onion, a little fresh garlic, and then threw in the spinach to wilt.  As we sat down, I diced up several tomatoes, got out the feta and the parmesan cheese.  As we sat down we threw it all together and Anna looked at me and said “Doesn’t this look yummy!?”  With the biggest eyes and widest grin!  It was delightful!!

So today, it was all about the food.  A yummy day for sure.