Bacon and Beans

Garden season is in full swing. Not only are we getting fantastic veggies from our CSA, I harvested my first ripe tomato from my own garden today and everyday brings in more handfuls of beans.  Today it was the purple pole beans.  They are gorgeous!  Now beans are great for munching on straight from the garden, in fact I watched my friend's 5 year old daughter pack away a bunch of the beans I brought over the other day.  That's how you know they are tasty! There are many ways to prepare fresh beans, that s if they make it in from the garden....

A while back I tried a side dish at a restaurant that was called 'firecracker beans'.  It was basically over cooked beans with limp bacon and no spice....not too appealing.

  

Tonight I decided to make my own firecracker beans and boy oh boy were they tasty. There really wasn't too much to it.  My bacon was in the freezer and since I've been doing quite a bit of cooking with it, I unwrapped it and hacked of the end, sliced it up and tossed it in the pan. 

2 slices bacon, sliced

1 big handful of beans

1/2 to 1 tsp hot pepper flakes

Salt and pepper to taste

A large fry pan

 Once the bacon is close to crisp, pop in a good pinch of hot pepper flakes. (If your bacon has left lots of grease, drain enough grease to leave about a tablespoon) Use up to a teaspoon, depending on how spicy you like it.

  Let the flakes heat up a little and add the beans. Sauté the beans for no more than 3 minutes.  You want the beans to still have some snap and not get soggy.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

Eat the beans.

Until next time, stay warm and eat well!

Garden Bounty: Holding onto Summer

After being teased with 2 months off during the summer, I am back into the swing of things (I know feel sorry for me now)...things being getting up at an unGodly hour, making lunches, and enforcing homework.....SIGH....summer can't last forever. As the last days of my summer break drew closer, I continued prepping for the zombie apocalypse winter. The Boy and I even made perogies for the freezer!

I started working on this post a while back but just haven't found the time.

The other day I made tomato sauce with the intent to jar it up and save it for later use. I wound up boiling the sauce down too much and it became quite thick. At first I thought what the hell? Then I tasted it and thought...Oh my!! I had inadvertently made tomato jam instead!! How divine!! I had actually been scouring resources looking for a tomato jam recipe but so many of them had so much sugar in them, which I didn't want. The
sauce recipe I followed was one I found on Pinterest from America's Test kitchen. It is simple, without too many ingredients and cooks down nicely. I have even made this twice, the second time cooking it down further on purpose and it turned out just as tasty!

Beautiful luscious jars of tomato jam!!

The original recipe calls to peel the tomatoes but I didn't do that. I washed the tomatoes, cored them and put them through the food processor. Other than that, I followed the recipe. (oh except for the fact that I didn't process that many tomatoes, I cut the recipe into fourths and did 1/4 of the amount...I just don't have the space for 4 pots of sauce and the water canner on my stove!)

Some of the tomatoes are from my garden and some I bought from the Farmers' market. Many of the farmers had bins labeled 'canning tomatoes'. These are just over ripe and extra juicy tomatoes and are cheaper than the others. Only $1/pound!!

We have used the jam to eat plain with bread, as a base for pizza bread, in sandwiches, as a dip for chicken, paired with ricotta or basil or both....the possibilities are endless.  So far the Boy's favourite sammy has been a waffle and grilled chicken breast with tomato jam...this of course is his own creation!

I fear not having anymore ripe tomatos on the plants but I'm sure cracking open a jar such as this mid winter will remind me of the summer bounty we were so fortunate to have this summer.

Until next time, stay warm and eat well.

Fall Check in

Why is it Friday Sunday already?? Where is the time going? We just celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving last weekend.  Usually we pull out all the stops, roast a turkey with all the fixings and eat ourselves into a coma.  With the Boy still recouperating from his gastritis and my family all being out of town, we decided to lay low.  Saturday we spent the day putting the garden to rest for the winter and raking up some of the many leaves that have fallen.  I was able to harvest a whopping 4 wheel barrows full of fabulous compost to put on my garden!!  Yay for compost!

We also had the Boy BBQ some fabulous steaks for dinner on Saturday.  I have been officially given the boot from BBQing steaks because he does such a wonderful job!

Sunday was the day many Canadians had their dinner with their families.  We popped into my Dad's place to help him with his computer issues and to get him packed for a trip.  When we came home, the Boy had cooked up a tray of bacon in preparation for some of the tastiest BLTs this side of the 49th parallel!  Fresh tomatoes from our now sleeping garden where soooooo tasty!

After that, we headed off to the cheapie theatre to see "Captain America".  Quite the great movie, if I do say so myself!!

Sunday, we jumped in the car and headed over to Hubby's Grandmother's place.  We spent the afternoon with Hubby's 92 year old Grandma and his Mom.  We were going to go to a restaurant but Grandma wasn't up to so we ordered in.  Turkey dinners from the local Smitty's restaurant.  We watched the Detroit/Texas game of the MLB playoffs.  Grandma loves baseball so we always watch a game with her if it is on while we are there. (This totally reminds me, I still have a post to make about celebrating Grandma's 92nd birthday this summer! D'oh!)

Until next time, stay warm and eat well!