Up to my old tricks

Guess what I found–a bag of slight damaged fruit at one of the store in my town. I think I mentioned it before. $2.99 for a bag of 2 grapefruits, 1 mineola, 2 red plums, 1 pluot, and 4 peaches. I wasn’t even looking for it. Just went shopping for ingredients for my dinner I was cooking for my parents.

I made a batch of stone fruit jam. Of course, my tasters had to try all the fruit to see if they were ripe enough–haha. Add the mineola zest to the jam and gave my parents 2/3 of the fruit to taste and 1/3 of fruit chopped up for the jam. Kind of winged it using what I new about making plum and peach jam. Got 4 half pints to add to my mom’s jam collection in her frig. Sorry no pictures.

In the meantime, my stuff arrived and I was able to sort and put away 2/3s of it in my storage unit and 1/3 will stay with me till my place is done.

My kitchen/baking equipment came just in time to finished off last of the bag–the ruby grapefruits and turned them into 2 batches of grapefruit cake. I used a recipe from sally’s baking addiction. It had a great smell of citrus and sweetness from the brown sugar. I didn’t add the glaze because all of us don’t need that extra sugar. It was perfectly sweet, just enough.

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the darker on was from the 1st batch. I was trying to set up my echo.

The one item that I was looking forward to arriving was my pressure cooker. Now that I have 2 other people to cook for using the pressure cooker is so silly. For pressure cooker meal: Corned Beef and veggie. Used this recipe as a base and timing. I didn’t use chicken broth or fresh thyme, I didn’t have it in the house. Use water instead and went without the thyme. The meat and veggies were tender and tasted great. It was served with hapa rice and tsukemono (japanese pickles–top: namasu–pickled cucumbers with daikon, carrots, and seaweed; middle: takuwan–pickled daikon; bottom: Spicy daikon. All homemade by a family friend. They are all so delicious and crunchy. My ranking are top, bottom, middle.

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Write more later with adventures.

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The first meal

The humidity is lower this week and I decided I can work in the kitchen with out being dreanch in sweat. So I decided to do a crock pot meal for Monday’s dinner. The first meal I making is Crock Pot Chili and I’m using Slow Cooker Taco Spice Chili recipe from sally’sbakingaddition.

[hahaha! When I started this post the humidity and heat had lowered and it was bearable to do some cooking in the kitchen. But today as I patiently wait for our meal to be done, the only place I can find to be cool is in front of the front jalousie window laying on the wooden floors like my cats in an afternoon fog of sleepiness because of the heat and humidity]

I picked this recipe because the different ingredients in–sweet potatoes, corn, bell pepper and black beans. [I slipped in some mushroom to just to use it up before it went bad] I wanted to give my parents a little more diversity in their diet. Change it up. I hope they like it.

Made some slight adjustments in the recipe as I found out that Mom’s crockpot is smaller than I thought it was. I just put 1 can of diced tomatoes and I didn’t add quinoa because there was no more room in the pot. We were having “hapa” rice [half brown and white rice] so that filled in for the quinoa.

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Right before I turned it on low for 7 hours.

Very easy and delicous. I can see with the addition of quinoa at the end it would be extremely hearty. Love all the veggies and black beans in it. I would most definitely make it again.

Next up, mango jam. There are mangos waiting in the fruit bin to use them up.

What I want to make : two

Since I got back haven’t had a chance to cook or back. One, lazy and still not in sync with my work schedule and living schedule. Two, it’s too hot and humid for me. I’m just melting. But I need to start and suck up being a sweaty mess.

Meals for Mom and Dad

Looking for meals that I can cook for my folks. A few food restrictions to adjust to–Diabetic and blood thinner. I think they need a bit of more spice in their diet. I’ll try a couple of the meals I made for friends in the past year: Fish Stew and Spicy Lentil soup

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The Fish Stew I made for the Hawaii girls

I want to try out some new recipes but it’s so hot in the afternoon. I decided to use mom’s crock pot while awaiting the arrival of my favorite kitchen appliance–my electric pressure cooker. Thought chili in a crock pot would be easy and plentiful so we can share what we made with a few of mom’s friends. Found this recipe that I’d like to try https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2017/01/11/slow-cooker-taco-spice-chili/. I like this recipe because it has sweet potato, corn, and black beans with an added bonus of quinoa. I’ll think I’ll try it this week.

Jamming

I’d like to try out that mango jam recipe again but I think I missed mango season. I will just have to make what in season or what my parents want to have. First up, Kiwi Apple jam as requested by my mom. It’s her favorite.  I’ve been making this recipe so long that it kind of morph into my own. I’m having my parents do the prep on the kiwi and apple and I’ll do cooking up.

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The spices make this jam-cinnamon, ginger, and clove

I’m also getting some Calamansi limes from a friend so I think I can make up a lime curd soon. Calamansi is a little lime with orange inside. It’s tart and fragrant. I use  Ina Garten recipe that I’ve made 100s of time change out the flavor from lime to lilikoi to grapefruit to raspberry. Just a slight adjustment to the sugar depending on how sweet the fruit is. I think adding the zest of the citrus makes the jam taste so good. This is mom’s favorite. I love the grapefruit and turn into a grapefruit curd tart.

Sweet Breads

My parents like a little snack in the evening. I always had bananas in my freezer so I could whip up a smoothie or a loaf of banana bread on short notice. Here it’s a little different. No bananas in the freezer because they eat almost every day. Also, they eat apple bananas which are firmer and tastier. Not sure how it will influence the texture but flavor will be great. Might need to look for another type of sweet bread. Carrot? Zucchini? Hmm. Need to think about it.

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chocolate marbled banana bread. Delicious

Here’s one that I made this year. Everyone liked it. And it looked great. A smittenkitchen recipe.