Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Post #3071: Tis the season to put down some pickles….
Summer has been full of things thus far, and so has work – leaving me little extra-curricular time for posting on my blog. But I think I’m going to return to writing about food since we are in the season of bounty and the preserving instinct has once again kicked in (not to mention cooking! but more in the next post on that).
We’ve just wrapped up our long weekend open house (with camping in the yard) – which started on Friday and ended around noon yesterday – and as at the end of every party, we were left with a glut of a few things. At every one of our gatherings we supply the main food items for breakfast and dinners (with grazing foods for lunch) – but we usually ask that people bring a few other things to share – particularly those that get expensive. This year those requests were for coffee and limes (for drinks). Our friends are generous when we ask – the result being that whatever we desire we get times ten. Last year was cheese, and we never did eat it all before it went bad.
With coffee — it’s not such a problem — it keeps in the freezer and we drink it every morning so we’ll go through it happily. Limes – on the other hand — need to get used.
And so as exhausted as I was yesterday, I managed to rouse myself from the couch to deal with some of the leftover foods. The pictures in this post represent some serious good eating in our future as I am in the process of:
- Lime pickle using this recipe
- Lacto-fermented dill-green beans (3 tbsp to 4 cups of water for the brine ratio)
- Salt-preserved eggs from the book Asian Pickles by Karen Solomon – these are salt cured with star anise, in the shell and raw for five weeks – which flavours them for addition to fried rice and other dishes.
As we were preparing for our weekend, I also managed to put my hands on some meyer lemons (first ones I have seen in over a year) and now have three jars of salt-curing lemons in my cupboard as well.
In the kitchen today, Brian is making tomato sauce out of 30 pounds of roma tomatoes that we bought through okanaganfruit.ca – this being the first year in our relationship that we couldn’t make the timing work to be in the interior to buy late-season offerings (I have a trip to Toronto at the end of August when would normally go). I also have 20 pounds of cherries that need pitting before going on the dehydrator – so I expect when my working day is done I’ll be sitting outside on the deck and taking care of that.
As always – I have more plans in the wings as I am expanding my cooking repertoire and new flavours, sauces, and pickles are on the menu. Still need to track down a few ingredients at the asian markets when I am back in Vancouver this fall – but looking forward to some new dishes and techniques to bring to the table.
Red Cedar 
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