Refrigerator Pickles

I am on a cooking tear since the CSA is giving us cucumbers, zucchini, and beets faster than I can use them up (I accidentally typed "beer" for beets.  How awesome would a local beer CSA be?  Maybe if I wasn't expecting again.).  Anyhow, here's another recipe for you.  I doubled it and made some annotations where I changed things.

Fast Homemade Pickles
From Everyday Food

In a medium saucepan, combine 3 cups white vinegar, 1 and 1/2 cups sugar, 2 tsp coarse salt, 1/2 tsp mustard seed, 1/2 tsp celery seed, 2 to 4 small red chilies [I just substituted some dried red pepper flakes], and 1/8 tsp tumeric.  Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar.  Arrange sliced cucumbers [I also used half an onion] in clean glass jars, along with fresh dill fronds [I just used dried].  Pour hot brine into jar to completely cover cucumbers and seal jar.  Refrigerate until cool, about 2 hours (or up to 1 week).

Peach Clafouti

Hi there.  It's been six months since I've blogged.  I've missed it.  As an apology I'm offering this recipe for fruity, custard-y peach clafouti, which is so good that you should go make it right. now.  Even G, who is now eighteen months old and has proven to be a very picky eater, thinks it is amazing.

Peach Clafouti
From Everyday Food

5 large eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
1 cup sour cream
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. fine salt
1 1/4 pounds peaches, halved, pitted, and cut into 1/2-inch slices (4 1/2 cups)
confectioner's sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 375.  In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs and flour until combined. Add sour cream, milk, granulated sugar, vanilla and salt and whisk to combine.  Pour mixture into 3-quart baking dish.  Scatter peaches in a single layer in the batter.  Bake until custard is browned at the edges and center is set, 30 minutes.  Let cool slightly.  Serve warm, dusted with confectioner's sugar.

Discovered

I found this book buried in the stacks at Goodwill last weekend.  Suddenly, after months of feeling creatively blocked, its kitchy 1970s aesthetic is calling to me.  I feel new ideas percolating for the first time in a long time . . . perhaps, perhaps.

Someday, I think, this photo would look lovely rendered in crewel work.

Happy New Year

Last night was an early night.  We started 2011 at the kitchen table, cups of coffee in our hands, talking about goals and projects and plans for the upcoming year.  I love the sense of a clean slate, of new beginnings, of holding hands with someone who looks forward along with me.

One

Despite all three of us having a stomach bug this week, we pulled off a little family celebration today.  It was everything we had been looking forward to and more.  I can't believe how quickly time has flown, and how much I love being her mother, more and more, day by day.