Recipes

Candied Hot Peppers

November 3, 2018 By Annette1 4 Comments

Sometimes, in the course of living one’s life with a life partner (aka my darling hubby) you are called upon to do things you REALLY don’t want to do.

Enter in Candied Hot Peppers.

THIS is hubby’s thing. He likes them. Loves the smell of them and doesn’t mind the tang of their taste in his nose and mouth.

I, on the other hand, very much DO NOT.

But (and mind the shock value) he did this to his finger at work.

This means NO doing up hot peppers as putting on nitrile gloves is a bit of a challenge and not one he’s up to when he doesn’t HAVE to do. So it fell to me (his long-suffering wife) to do it for him.

Instructions:

Have I mentioned how much I dislike hot peppers? I barely stand sweet peppers, but hot peppers are just a No.

BUT I found this recipe for cowboy candy. I pretty much made it as is except we had no cayenne pepper (guessing you know why that might be). 🙂

So you take your mess of hot peppers, try to have them be firm and nicely ripe. Wear gloves. Seriously.. wear them. Cut off the icky bit (the hard stem) and toss that into your compost. Then slice the good part into even slices about 1/8- 1/4 inch thick. Cut them about even, but WEAR GLOVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our mess of peppers consisted of 85% jalepeno peppers 10% hot peppers and 5% we’re not sure of what they were peppers. The recipe called for three pounds, I had more than that so just jiggled with the recipe a bit.

Once you have them cut set them aside.

In a big pot I put in

3 cups cider vinegar
9 cups granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon turmeric
3/4 teaspoon celery seed
5 teaspoons granulated garlic

Boil that together until the sugar is nicely melted. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the pepper slices and simmer for exactly 4 minutes. I may have messed up this part a bit as I was washing up the jars while it cooked a bit.

Use a slotted spoon to transfer the peppers, loading into clean, sterile canning jars to within 1/4 inch of the upper rim of the jar.
Turn heat up under the pot with the syrup and bring to a full rolling boil. Boil hard for 6 minutes. (aced this part)
Use a ladle to pour the boiling syrup into the jars over the jalapeno slices. Insert a cooking chopstick to the bottom of the jar two or three times to release any trapped pockets of air. (I didn’t have to do this part as I didn’t pack them very tight) Adjust the level of the syrup if necessary. Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean, damp paper towel and fix on new, two-piece lids to finger-tip tightness.

Then put it through your canner for 10 minutes and let them cool.

The original recipe said to keep the leftover sauce as it’s good over meats and what not. Hubby dear said “just toss it lovey, and thanks for doing them up for me”. (wasn’t that nice of him?)

——-

Was it completely horrible? Well… I survived! Disliked the cutting and cooking and getting the smell in my nose. I didn’t mind the canning steps. AND I loved that my sweetheart then cooked up pizzas for supper. Box pizza, but still a pain to open with a sore hand, but I didn’t have to cook! 🙂

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

October 20, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

So I have all this zucchini that needs to be used up eh? I’ve been making zucchini muffins but wanted to do something different and I’d heard someone talking about how good chocolate zucchini cake is. I thought I would give it a whirl. What can I say… GO MAKE IT. It disappeared literally overnight. Very moist and yummy. The recipe I used came from here. I made some minor modifications.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Ingredients

2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
3.5 cups zucchini grated
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
chocolate syrup
raspberry syrup

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F.
In a medium bowl, stir together the sugar, eggs, vanilla, vegetable oil. Add in flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and baking powder. Mix well.
Fold in zucchini until it is evenly distributed.
Pour mixture into a prepared 9×13 pan
Bake 40-50 minutes
Remove from oven, pierce with a fork, and drizzle about syrups over top. My son did this and varied how he did the syrups. The raspberry syrup added an interesting touch that I’d happily do again.

Our Thoughts:

Our Student: yummy, yummy, is so good, I like chocolate.

Son: I ONLY GOT ONE PIECE! Why did you finish it all on me? DAD!!!!!

Dad: I like this, it was good. You can make this again. Sorry son….

Mom: I have two zucchinis left to use, I’ll use one for this cake.

Fair Chocolate Chip Cookies

September 15, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

You may recall my post this week about the Kirkton Fair and my lad’s success with winning with the cookies he made. We need to keep that recipe because in November he needs to make them again and compete for best cookie in all the fairs. 🙂

The recipe we originally found here and made some minor adjustments.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (113 g) butter
1/2 cup (99 g) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (54 g) brown sugar packed
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 3/4 cups (210 g) all-purpose flour*
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (170 g) semisweet chocolate chips — we found we had 1/4 cup leftover and this was with stuffing all we could into them, 3/4 of a cup would be sufficient.

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 F.
Microwave the butter for about 40 seconds. Butter should be completely melted but shouldn’t be hot.
In a large bowl, mix butter with the sugars until well-combined.
Stir in vanilla and egg until incorporated.
Add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix until just combined. Dough should be soft and a little sticky but not overly sticky.
Stir in chocolate chips.
Scoop out 1.5 tablespoons of dough (medium cookie scoop) and place on baking sheet. Bake for 7-10 minutes, or until cookies are set. They will be puffy and still look a little underbaked in the middle. This is if you want a soft cookie. A wee bit more gives you a harder cookie. You may need to play around with it a little.

Homemade Hot Pockets

September 1, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

I’ve been wanting to find a way to replicate hot pockets… those pizza type pockets you can get?

So anyways, this was my just wing it attempt.

You’ll need:

1 package crescent rolls. Unless you have a recipe for a thin bread coating you can wrap around the filling.

Grated cheese.

The filling

Ground beef … oh.. a pound maybe, probably a light pound.
Brown this in a pan with some diced onion 3/4 medium and one sweet pepper.
Seasoning… I used a taco mix… about 1.5 tbsp.
Good handful bacon bits (the real kind)
Spaghetti sauce leftovers.. enough to make it saucy but not too liquid
Let it all cook together for a bit in your fry pan.

Assembly

Take your crescent rolls out of the package. DO NOT UNROLL THEM.
Divide into 8 sections that you will then roll flat into a squarish circle. Roll them fairly thin but not too thin. (yes, there is a learning curve)
Put some cheese in the middle.. I did a mix of cheddar and mozzarella
Top with meat mix.
Pull up the sides and kinda make them stick together and then put the stuck together sides down on the baking sheet.
Repeat until you have all eight sections done.

Cook in oven like you would for crescent rolls.

Enjoy.

The results:

NOTE:

I liked them day one, son said “something is missing”.

Day two reheated I LOVED them, and son said (after he added a layer of cheese and splash of salt “can we make them again?”. Hubby tried them day two and said “good first attempt” but not quite what he’d want for work. He said “You need to play around with them a bit yet, but overall for a hot meat bun it wasn’t half bad”. Part of my goal is to make something he wouldn’t mind taking along to work with him…. so I’ll keep fiddling.

IF you have suggestions please make them.

Gluten Free Salmon Pasta Salad

August 18, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Ingredients:

One package rice pasta
two cans salmon (drained, bones/skin removed)
apples, diced … I think I did one whole one, use a sweeter apple
Strawberries. diced …. A good bunch… perhaps a cup, maybe more.
2 tbsp relish
lemon pepper seasoning… to taste
smokey bacon mayo, about 1 tsp perhaps a bit more
regular miracle whip, to you desire, I like a drier salad, others like LOTS of dressing.
sweet pepper, diced, I used one whole sweet pepper (not a bell) from my garden

Directions:

Cook rice pasta to just shy of done. Overcooking makes it really gross, so don’t overcook it.
Add the rest of the ingredients.
Enjoy warm if you want, though I like it better chilled.

Homemade Mint Tea

August 11, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Do you know the joy that is a mint tea on a hot summer day? Hot, cold or sitting on the counter warm, Mint tea is a refreshing, cooling drink that is bound to make your whole day better.

This summer I thought I would experiment and tried to make “sun warmed mint tea”. Suggestion.. DON”T. Mint tea works best if you do the following.

One pick your tea. I have a patch in my garden that has chocolate mint, orange mint, apple mint and I think spearmint tea.

Pick fresh leaves out of the garden. Give them a good wash as one doesn’t need little bug bits or dirt in your tea. Some folks like to include the flower in their tea, I don’t. I just pull off the leaves, placing them in my tea strainer. I fill it full up to the top, as I do so I have the kettle heating to 195.

Once your hot water has boiled, pour it over the tea leaves and then walk away. I have a cover for my tea strainer which keeps the fruit flies and what not out. I generally let it sit for four hours.

At the end of the four hours the water will be slightly warm yet. Perfect for the first drink for me, the lad prefers his much cooler.

Add the sweetener of your choice to your glass, and pour in the tea. And voila! Mint tea.

Occasionally the lad will ask me to heat it up again with some honey in it, but mostly we use Splenda. Once you have used up the water, pour more hot water over and repeat. I find the leaves are good for two doses of hot water and then they are done.

Enjoy… homemade mint is one of favourite summer.

Smoothie Pops

August 4, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Not sure what else to call them. So if you have a better name feel free to tell me.

I always always totally wing it with my smoothies, my more mathematically minded lad likes to measure.

Therefore some aspects of this dual project are measured and others are not.

Take your blender, get it all set up.

Add FRUIT

Today we did frozen mango (two good handfuls), fresh blueberries (one full handful) and one very ripe banana. We’ve done strawberries, kiwi, melon, currants, EXTREMELY ripe gooseberries (just the pulp), pineapple etc in the past. We’ve even done jam smoothies but that takes taste testing so you don’t double up on the sugars too much.

Two scoops of protein powder as that helps the smoothie hold you over longer.

Two scoops splenda

Yogurt.. today we used vanilla greek yogurt (yummy yogurt if you haven’t tried it before).

Milk 2 cups.

Let it all blend together for longer than you think necessary. In our blender that will make the smoothie extra thick. Have one glass each for lunch.

Then take four cups (we used styrofoam ones we had leftover from a b-day party).

Fill them full up to the top. If you used the same amount we did, this will fill them so full you’ll have to skim some off the top). Plunk in a Popsicle stick. Put in freezer and let them sit until frozen. By the by… four hours in our freezer was not quite long enough. “it’s like slightly weird ice cream mom!” (as he scooped up the bottom half with a spoon).

BUT it did give us the idea of making ice cream with the leftovers next time, and maybe making them smaller to sell at a yard sale sometimes.

Anyways, when they are frozen solid, you can easily peel the styrofoam cup off.

Recipes