Hello again

I seem to have been on an unplanned, unintentional blogging hiatus...
I swear I've still been cooking and eating, though! I've just been really busy. And when I've not been really busy, I've been really lazy. There's no in between for me, folks. It's all red light or green light.

Speaking of red and green, behold my first okra and tomatoes of the season:


The okra is from the farmer's market and the (massive) tomato is from the garden. I like my okra and tomatoes pretty simple- some salt, pepper, and garlic is really all it needs. But this time I threw in about 1/2 cup of some red wine I had left over from a tomato sauce and WOW! It was super good!

I'm a newcomer to the world of cooking with wine, probably because I'm not a wine drinker. They always say to choose a cooking wine of a good enough quality that you would drink it...But so far I haven't found that wine (I'm sure due to my taste buds rather than any fault of the wine). I've "settled" instead for using an organic red wine that was a gift years ago for fulfilling my newfound need for wine in sauces.

Have I mentioned the garden lately? We've got tomatoes galore, the broccoli is producing nice little side shoots now that the main heads have been harvested, and the pasilla peppers are going crazy! Here's what I hauled in yesterday: Those little tabasco peppers are floating in vinegar right now, making an amazing hot vinegar sauce for us to douse on our greens all winter.

I finally got around to canning some more jalapeños. These are actually part of the ridiculous jalapeño harvest of 2007. After making about 20 1/2 pints of escabeche last year, I still had a gallon bag of peppers in the freezer! They kept well, though, and are now becoming more escabeche (pickled jalapeños with carrots and onions).

Amid gardening, canning, and being lazy, I neglected to plan anything for dinner (Ironic, I know). So I succumbed to the lures of Pizza Luce and ordered a sun-dried tomato and green olive pizza while I started my next canning project.

Imagine the delivery guy's reaction as he opened the door to see a vicious black dog snarling and barking and a girl covered in blood-red spatter...
He did a double take and got the heck out of there.

Yeah, I was covered in dark sweet cherry juice after pitting 6 pounds of cherries. So was the kitchen wall. And my clothes.

But it was worth it! I have 2 quarts and 10 half-pints of cherries in a light maple & sugar syrup.
Now I'm enjoying my 1/2 day off work and getting things ready for the kids' first day of school tomorrow. I can't believe they're in 3rd grade!

PS- The state fair classes went really well! There were TONS of people there (of course) and we gave out plenty of fliers for future classes at the co-op. All that worrying for nothing...