Tomato Jam!

Well, I was quite the busy beaver this weekend! It was just so nice to be home, you know, and not, say, traveling...
I read up on Cranberry Beans and found out more about them!! Aren't they beautiful? It was fun to eat fresh beans cooked up so nicely. I guess they are often used in Italian cooking and the US is a primary exporter of them to Italy!

Friday I knew D. was going to be getting home late and I didn't want to be in the kitchen at the end of the day, so I made Summer Squash and Bean Soup loosely based off of this recipe...

Crockpot Cranberry Bean and Yellow Squash Soup

1 C cranberry beans, fresh
4 C water
3 8" yellow squash, chopped
1 small carrot, sliced into rounds
2 T olive oil
1 T Earth Balance margarine
1 T soy sauce
1/2 Walla walla onion, diced fine
1 clove garlic, minced
1 t Italian seasoning, crushed between fingers
1/2 t yellow prepared mustard
1/2 t onion powder
1/2 t sugar
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t thyme, crushed between fingers
1/4 t parsley, crushed between fingers
1/4 t celery powder
1/8 t rosemary, crushed between fingers
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Place everything in the crockpot in the morning, set it on high and let it go. Add water throughout if neccessary.

Look how the beans turned pink!! This was the best way to make the beans, I think, because they turned out so soft and lovely. I was particularly pleased with this soup because I didn't use prepackaged vegetable broth!

Oooooh, and Saturday morning I made aebleskiver! Vegan aebleskiver, people!! Aghlaghlaghl... (that's the sound of me, drooling). Yo, this was so good. Get your hands on an aebleskiver pan and make these puppies up!! Ah gah-roun-tee you will have a new family tradition on your hands!!

Vegan Aebleskiver

1 1/4 C flour
1 T baking powder
2 T sugar
1/2 t salt

1 C soymilk + 1 t apple cider vinegar
2 T canola oil
1 t vanilla

1 T Earth Balance margarine, softened
4 T jam, divided
1t water
2 T powdered sugar

Pour out your soymilk and add 1 t apple cider vinegar to 'sour' it (vegan equivalent of buttermilk).

Sift your dry ingredients into a large bowl. Add the soymilk mixture, canola oil and vanilla and mix until just moistened. DO NOT OVERMIX. Let sit for 10m or so. Stir it again and let sit.

Heat up your aebleskiver pan real hot. Add tiny bits of butter to each 'hole' and then fill halfway with the dough. Add a bit of jam and push it into the dough. Top with a little dough to cover jam. Check for doneness by sticking a toothpick along the edge between the pan and the dough. If brown, use 2 toothpicks to flip the aebleskiver over. Maybe some dough will ooze out, or even some jam. It's okay. That powdered sugar at the end? Covers a multitude of errors.

Allow the other side to cook and carefully remove to a plate to await it's happy brothers and sisters. Repeat this last step 6 more times and then make a couple more batches.

Sift some powdered sugar over the top and drizzle with some jam mixed with a little water to make a syrup.

Makes roughly 21 aebleskiver.



For Saturday lunch, I made Gallo Pinto. I'd made the black beans from dried last week and then the rice that day. It was arguably the best black beans and rice dish I've had. Usually I find black beans and rice to be bland, but this was not. Perhaps it was all the spices... haha. Oh, and I'm sure I destroyed some food rule by using HP sauce, but, c'mon! it was good! (I promise to use Salsa Lizano next time if you send me some!!).

Gallo Pinto

2 T canola oil
1 med onion, chopped fine
1 clove garlic, minced
3 C cooked rice (1 C uncooked)
2 C black beans/1 can black beans, undrained
1 t cumin
1 t coriander
1/2 ginger
2-3 T HP sauce
1 t salt
pepper to taste
1 bunch fresh cilantro, stemmed and chopped

Saute onion, garlic. Add HP sauce, spices, mix well. Add cilantro and beans, mix well. Add rice, mix well and serve.

Notes;
To cook the rice, you can saute it with the onion, garlic, a sweet pepper and some cilantro and the spices, then add 2 C broth and bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer 20-35m until the rice is done.


Here we have Saturday's supper. Above, Crash Hot Potatoes made with purple potatoes (they turned out dry! wah! maybe I didn't use enough olive oil). And below, cranberry beans with kale. Soooo good!!
Finally, Sunday I got a bee in my bonnet to make Tomato Jam. I doubled the recipe and !still! got 1 pint. Used one of the hot red peppers from our salsa pack from the CSA and got some juice under my fingernails, everytime I gripped something last night, the skin under my nails burned!! So I was kind of worried- would it be Hot Jam instead of Tomato Jam? Oh, no- it was good.


Above you see it on the stove and below you see the final product. So. seriously. good.
Tomato Jam

3 pounds tomatoes
2 C sugar
4 T sumac juice
1 T Trader Joe's ginger paste
2 t ground cumin
1/4 t cardamom
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t cloves
2 t salt
1 small red pepper stemmed, seeded and minced

Put it all in a heavy bottomed big pot, bring to a boil, stir for a while and then reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally until it's jam* (you should be able to see the bottom of the pot when you scrape the spoon along it). Cool and refrigerate.

*this took a long time, folks, like, hours.
Easy Vegan Wheat Bread for the jam, both tomato and sumac-elderberry. This makes huge loaves, btw. Below you see the wonder that is sumac-elderberry jam. Behold. And, lo, it was good.
Read "World Made By Hand"- really fun, great characters, post-apocolyptic... what could be better! It was like Garrison Keillor meets the end of the world!

Started "The Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis, another apocolyptic book. Pretty good, engaging.

No knitting.