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Still a little too harried to bake from scratch

Still a little too harried to bake from scratch (Kev comes back today, yay!), but I’ve found a banana bread mix I really like (yes, I know those are pumpkins, but I have multiple pretty pumpkin molds, no banana molds (haven’t found any pretty ones), and a habitual excess of bananas in our freezer), and that makes it easy. Miss Jones mix (link in comments). Zinnias by neighbor Sera Sera.

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I had a lot of leftovers to use up

Impromptu Labor Day brunch with girlfriends. Carollina brought peach cake and Nara Nayar brought some of her amazing dahlias. Going to try to dry them today.

I did omelette bar, mostly because I had a lot of leftovers to use up.

Options:

  • Mexican (grilled corn, chicken, sautéed avocado, cherry tomatoes, spiced pork (al pastor), grilled green mango, Mexican cheese blend, spicy tomatillo sauce)
  • smoked salmon, chive & onion cream cheese, red onion, sliced tomato, capers
  • sautéed mushroms and onions with Swiss

Worked pretty well — I just made them one at a time, and since there were just a few of us, no one had to wait very long.

Also feeling autumnal enough that I made some of the apple-cheddar crescent rolls I usually make in the fall. Those aren’t fancy — just Pillsbury crescent, with an apple sliced in eighths, and a little cheese, bake 15 minutes. I’m entering the season of autumn baking — next week, I’m going to start cooking for the fall Patreon boxes.

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Trying to hang on to that lazy summer vibe

Stopped at Carnivore Oak Park on Sunday because I didn’t know what I wanted for dinner. PIcked up a few pounds of pork shoulder (which they kindly cubed for me) — I’ll make a curry with that later today. But that takes a few hours of simmering — on Sunday, I wanted something fast, so turned to the grill. Two delectable crab cakes & just-picked corn from Carnivore joined some underripe peaches (so good brushed with a bit of oil and grilled!) and purple bell peppers from my garden. The bell peppers sadly turned an unappetizing grey on the grill, so they are not pictured, but they did taste good. 🙂 I might stick to using them raw in the future, though! Crab cakes grilled in a few minutes and then were served on a bed of spinach, graced with remoulade and some peppery young nasturtium leaves and flower from the garden. And then when I got the Hugo award news later in the day, I chopped up another peach and added it to some Ben & Jerry’s caramel ice cream, which was DELICIOUS straight out of the container… Nice to have a little more time right now for summertime cooking. Two weeks ’til the semester starts. Trying to hang on to that lazy summer vibe for as long as I can…
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Sadly, I can’t share the food with you!

I mostly had a grounding-myself day today — spent some time straightening the basement studio (lots more to do, alas), finished some jewelry pieces (I like the new rectangle-in-rectangle style!). Also made a nice pasta salad for dinner, with a white-balsamic, garlic, basil, and thyme dressing, with salami, fresh mozzarella, and grilled peppers and red onion (including one orange pepper from our garden). Plus some roasted potatoes with rosemary and garlic. Sadly, I can’t share the food with you! But the jewelry will be down at Berwyn Sprout by the end of the week, unless someone claims it here first.
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I promised a Serendib tea party sampler cookbook

Did a little writing work today, in between family commitments. This was fulfilling commitments too — way back when, I did the Vegan Serendib kickstarter, and I promised a Serendib tea party sampler cookbook. I’m finally working on that. It’s a blend of Sri Lankan and traditional British afternoon tea, which is what I usually do for my tea parties.

This isn’t final — a few of these are completely theoretical recipes, and I’m going to have to actually make them and make sure they’re delicious before I list them. And I think I want to include a non-tea beverage for each season as well. But it’s going to look something like this. 🙂

We’ll have a pre-order page up soon for the ebook (and of course, if you backed the Kickstarter, you shouldn’t buy another copy!). If you’re interested in being tagged into the pre-order page, comment below. It’ll be $1.99, I think, just like the cocktail party sampler book.

At some point, I’d love to expand this into a proper full cookbook, with about three times as many recipes — the plan would be to do it month by month, rather than season by season. Which should get us close to 120 recipes total, I think.

But one step at a time. We put this together, and then I can set up the Kickstarter for Gluten-Free Serendib, which is the next cookbook I promised to work on. I’m expecting that to go pretty fast, because most of the recipes in Feast and Vegan are already gluten-free — I just need to work on a few of them (and decide whether to use Feast or Vegan as the base — hmm…)

Anyway, nice to be making some progress after too long not writing anything.

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Lilac & lime simple syrup

Lilac & lime simple syrup. Delicate sweet + citrus floral flavor, nice with gin and tonic (got to keep that malaria away), would also be nice with seltzer water. I’ll have 9 little bottles at the art fair Saturday.

I meant to make this earlier — by the time I got around to it, most of my purple lilac petals had fallen, so I ended up with mostly pink petals, which made a sort of brown syrup.

Usually, if you add citrus to lilac syrup, it’ll turn purple, but I think the pink is just not strong enough color for that, so I ended up with a sort of melon-y color? Still pretty, though it doesn’t particularly shout ‘lilac’ when you look at it. 🙂

Some recipes recommend adding a few blueberries to get a purple color — I didn’t have any on hand, but maybe I’ll try that next year. This recipe suggests that, for example: https://www.havocinthekitchen.com/lilac-syrup/

They also suggest uses: “Think of fancy cocktails, refreshing lemonades, or over your ice cream. Enjoy with pancakes, crepes, and French toasts. Besides, it would be great as a part of desserts, soak cake, topping for your oatmeal, and a dressing for your fruit salads.”

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Kavi helped me collect and prep some edible flowers

Kavi helped me collect and prep some edible flowers — I’m going to make some little jars of flower confetti to sell at What’s Blooming on Harrison. So far, we have cornflower, pansies, peonies, dianthus, and even a few early roses. Tomorrow, planning to add fuchsia, dahlia, hibiscus, and maybe nasturtiums — have to check if any of mine are blooming yet. Usually these would just take a few days to air-dry, but I’ll likely pop them in the dehydrator tomorrow to speed up the process. Some of the tasty things you can use dried edible flowers for: herbal teas, cocktail garnish mixes, infused oils, infused vinegar, cake decorating, garnishing your meals, botanical salts, and infused spirits. And then of course there’s arts and crafts, bath bombs, hand scrubs, body balms, etc.