Ratatouille

Since summer is in full swing, I thought I would share one of my favorite summertime recipes: ratatouille! Don't be fooled by the fancy French name. It is actually a relatively quick, easy, and inexpensive dish to make. Furthermore, it's a perfect summer dish as all the ingredients are in season and many of them can be harvested from your own garden.

If you are a food hobbyist or enjoy food photography, the original recipe can be found here: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2007/07/rat-a-too-ee-for-you-ee/ but if you prefer the faster, simpler version I've included it below.

Simple Ratatouille

- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed (or 1 tsp. minced garlic--it comes in a jar at the store)
- 1 cup spaghetti sauce
- 1 eggplant
- 2 zucchini
- 2 squash
- 2 bell peppers (yellow, orange, or red)
- olive oil
- parsley flakes
- *you can add salt and pepper if desired, but I've found the spaghetti sauce adds plenty of flavor.

- Pour spaghetti sauce into a large casserole dish, spread evenly, and top with onion and garlic.
- Slice eggplant, zucchinis, squash, and peppers. (I usually quarter the eggplant first if it is large.)
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Arrange eggplant, zucchinis, peppers and squash in neat circles around the edge of the dish, working your way in.
- Drizzle a little olive oil over top and sprinkle with parsley.
- Place casserole dish atop a sheet of parchment paper and use scissors to cut around the bottom. The paper should be the approximate shape of the casserole dish.
- Cover with parchment paper and bake 45-50 minutes.
- Serve hot over rice. Bon appetit!

Snippets of Summer

Riotous roses.

Sun-sweet strawberries from the garden.

Nothing says summer like a refreshing limeade sparkler. I've included the recipe below. 

Limeade Sparklers

- 1 can limeade concentrate

- 1 (2 liter) bottle Sprite or lemon/lime soda

- 1 jar maraschino cherries (optional)

- Ice

- Pour 2 tbsp. maraschino liquid and 2 tbsp. limeade concentrate into bottom of tall glass.

- Cover with ice

- Pour Sprite over top and garnish with cherries or strawberries.

- Stir until concentrate and soda are incorporated.

- Enjoy!

*Tips: If you want a healthier/less sweet version, use plain seltzer water instead of soda. 

A Busy Weekend

This weekend has been delightfully full. The kind of fullness that tires you out just enough to improve your sleeping habits. :)



I've been making one or two cards each day as well as putting the finishing touches on some I've already completed.



More graduation cards.



I finally finished my cheese boxes!!! This project has been going one since the beginning of summer and was put on hold until I could find the right material.



My mother and grandmother helped me can some bread and butter pickles and salsa on Saturday. I hope the pickles turned out okay because I didn't use pickling cucumbers.



In other news, it has been extremely hot and humid lately. This week it's supposed to get in the triple digits! Above my pink cosmos are soaking up the sunshine.



My garden phlox that I planted this spring are doing well. My sweet peas aren't so happy. They are full sun plants, but for some reason they have been turning yellow and brown. Anyone have any tips for creating happy sweet peas?

Blackberrying

This week we've had produce coming out of our ears. Beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, melons, and most of all--blackberries.



After several heavy rains, the blackberries were starting to ferment, so mom and I were pressed to pick them and use them up before they went bad.



Accordingly, we picked four recipes that call for the most blackberries: jam, jelly, syrup and cobbler. Above I crush the berries and strain the juice through a colander.



I tried to capture the blackness of the juice, but it shows up purplish red in this picture. In actuality it was black as ink.



The results of a long, hard day of processing. The jars on the left are blackberry jelly. The large jars on the right are blackberry syrup, the medium jars on the right are blackberry jam, center is a picture of blackberries my little sister colored, and in the foreground is the best blackberry cobbler you will ever eat! My mom took it to a church function and everyone who tried it raved about it. You can find the recipe here.

Living Off The Land

When I was little, I spent hours playing in the woods beside our house. My siblings and I created a little kitchen in a clearing complete with table (a block of wood with a board laid across it) chairs (more blocks of wood), coffee can pots and stick utensils. I loved making "stew" in our old coffee cans using water, acorns, flower blossoms, crushed berries, and different kinds of leaves. (*Note: We did own real toys, we just preferred playing outside.)

Even though I'm no longer a child, I still play around in the kitchen and love living off the land. This past summer, my brothers planted a food plot in a field above our house so it would be a good place to hunt this fall. Among the seeds they planted were different kinds of grasses, clover and the wildlife's particular favorite: wild turnips.



The wonderful thing about turnips is they require hardly any care, and they're a winter plant which means they thrive in cold, wet conditions. So this afternoon I walked up to the food plot to pick some to eat with dinner.



It had rained earlier in the day, so they were easy to pull from the ground and already washed clean for the most part.



When I walked back through the woods, the creeks were full from the recent rains.



The turnips still had some mud on their roots so I twisted their tops off, put them in the sink, and rinsed off the rest of the dirt.



Once clean they looked like shiny purple and white easter eggs. Some of them were long and thin like carrots, others were perfectly round like your typical turnip. I've never made turnips before so this will be a fun experiment. I'm planning on sautéing them in olive oil with some light seasoning and serving them as a side dish. :)

September Skies

The longer I live in in the city, the more I fall in love with the country.



I am home for the first time since I left and the weather is breathtaking! September is one of my favorite months because it has the cool breezes and clear skies of fall, with the warmth and greenery of summer. After the tired gray-greens and hazy gray-blues of July and August, September's vibrance is a refreshing change. I like to call it the "Renaissance of Color."



A humorous still life I stumbled across. :)



Once again my lantanas have astounded me with their rate of growth and profusion of blooms. They are one of my favorite plants because they do well in drought, don't need to be dead-headed, attract tons of butterflies, and have a spicy, minty fragrance.



Contrary to what you might be thinking, these are not weeds. These are my 6 foot high cosmos bipinnatus plants. Apparently, they liked the horse poo I planted them in.



Mom did a spectacular job with her garden this year. I really admire her vision and persistence in making it attractive and maintaining a variety of plants as well.

Although our house doesn't have a Starbucks around the corner, a Wal-Mart across the street, or a Barnes and Noble down the road, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home..." :)

Life

This week I begin my long-awaited spring break! To keep myself from becoming too bored, I've been sifting through my project bag looking for various things to occupy my time. I found an old half-finished cross stitch project this week that I finished and framed. I started this cross stitch about six years ago.



I've also been doing some mending for my summer wardrobe. My grandmother gave me this lovely cotton skirt to wear, but it's a women's size 12. I have very slowly and tentatively started to take in the waist. I am still working on getting the waistband off--I had to use a seam ripper and I'm still only halfway finished.



Since sewing is not my strong point, I try to work slowly and thoughtfully so I don't mess it up or become frustrated. This skirt is very full with a high, fitted waistband, pleats, and decorative blue and silver stitching. It should turn out nicely if I don't ruin it in the process.



On a lighter note, it's definitely spring outside! I've been working some in my garden and my rosebushes are doing well. I planted a new hybrid tea called a "Queen Elizabeth" that has large, light pink blooms. I also dug up and transplanted several runners from my mom's lilac bush and they appear to be very happy. You can't see them in this picture but I planted them just to the left of those two chairs.



In the greenhouse my sweet alyssum are coming up nicely though nowhere near as fast as I'd like. I've decided from now on I'm simply going to buy plants from nurseries instead of raising them from seeds. It saves a lot of time, work, they generally do better, and it's only a few dollars more. Still, it's been a good experience.



I've also been doing a lot of reading in my free time. In the past two weeks I've read My Ántonia, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, The Last of the Mohicans, and I'm working through A Young Woman After God's Own Heart by Elizabeth George. So far it's very good.

Although my spring break is a lot longer than most people's (a week and a half) I know it'll fly by. Each day is precious because it's the last spring I'll be living at home for awhile, so I'm going to savor it while it lasts. Happy Spring!

Spring Fever

Although this snowy winter has been a refreshing change from our usual muddy browns and drab grays, I find myself longing for spring.

I'm ready for sunshine and warmth, lazy spring breezes, reading in my hammock, birdsong and orchard blossoms, but most of all, I'm ready to get out there, dig in the dirt and plant my flower seeds!

The other day at Lowes I was drooling over all the seeds. Larkspur, phlox, snapdragons, sweet peas, violets, sweet alyssum, daisies, daffodils, morning glories, sweet williams, delphiniums and countless colorful blends of wild flowers...

Mom has given me two beds in front of her fenced garden to plant my flower seeds in. One one side I'm going to have cupid's dart, pink cosmos and shasta daisies and on the other lantanas, sweet alyssum and johnny jump ups.

But since the last frost date isn't until early April, I suppose I'll have to content myself with drooling over seed catalogs...



My favorite flower. :)



Johnny Jump Ups.



Larkspur.



A lovely arrangement of sweet peas.