Homemade Vegetable Broth

Layers unfolding inside a leek.

When you slice open a leek and see this (above) you stop thinking "soup" and start thinking "photo op." At least I do. :-)

Usually I rely on "Better Than Bouillon" Organic Vegetable Base to make the stock for my soup, but this weekend I thought I'd try a vegetable stock recipe from scratch.

Recipes from the Root Cellar, by Andrea Chesman, is a cookbook that I've been using a lot this winter. It's a great collection of recipes that use seasonal autumn and winter vegetables. Got celery root, rutabagas, and Jerusalem artichokes in your CSA food share? This book has you covered.

Some of my favorites include Maple-Balsamic Root Vegetables, Potato-Carrot Tart, Mashed Potatoes with Caramelized Winter Vegetables, Barley-Vegetable Soup, Pasta e Fagioli, and the recipe that inspired my broth-making adventure, Winter Minestrone.

Since I was using Chesman's Minestrone recipe it only seemed sensible to use her recipe for Vegetable Broth. It's super easy, and relatively quick. Unless you decide to stop and photograph produce. Then it takes a little longer.

Once you're done photographing the cabbage, garlic, carrots, onion, leeks, fennel bulb, and dried mushrooms, peel, trim, and quarter the appropriate amounts, throw them in a big pot with dried thyme and water, simmer for about 30 minutes, add white wine and black peppercorns and simmer for another 10 minutes. Strain out the solids and you've got about 4 quarts of vegetable broth. It's pretty tasty even without salt. I'd estimate about an hour from start to finish (without photography), and most of that is just simmering time. Easy-peasy!

That Minestrone is going to be delicious!

Cool Beans

These are the Yin Yang beans that I grew in my garden last year. The bean beetles were fierce, but I got just enough from my 4 x 4 foot patch for a pot of soup. Aside from being pretty, they were also very tasty!

Sugar Snap Salad

Here's a very tasty and refreshing salad to make when you have an abundance of Sugar Snap Peas. This recipe comes from Martha Stewart.

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

8 ounces of Sugar Snap Peas, strings removed, finely sliced on the diagonal

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

Combine first three ingredients.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.  

(Note to self: Stagger the seed planting so you don't end up with a ton of Sugar Snaps all at once! I was able to put together a pound and a half of this salad to take to a pot-luck.)

This year I grew the Sugar Snaps on poultry netting wrapped around the old ladder. It worked pretty well, but I think I'll go back to a more conventional growing style next year and save the ladder for the Christmas lights.

 

92 servings of hot chocolatey goodness!

I got some hot chocolate mix at the grocery store the other day in honor of our 1st snow of the season. Of course, I had to read the ingredients on all the mixes in the store.

I ended up with some from the health food section. The mix is by Canterbury Naturals and it has only seven ingredients. The only one that I'm not sure about is the xanthan gum. What's a xanthan?

Anyway, this got me to thinking that I could make my own hot cocoa mix so I headed for Google and found a bunch of recipes that included non-dairy creamer. Oh, ick.

Then I headed over to visit the Diva of Domesticity, Martha Stewart, and I found this recipe. Four ingredients. 92 servings of hot chocolatey goodness. Break out the marshmallows and peppermint sticks. I'm set for the rest of the winter!

Fuel for the creative fires

When I got up this morning I thought I'd just grab a quick bowl of cereal for breakfast. Then I opened the back door to let the dogs out. Crikey! It's cold out there this morning! And windy. Brrrr!

What a great excuse to cook up some of my home-famous Apple Cider Oatmeal. Good food fuels the creative fires. And we all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day! So, here's my recipe for Apple Cider Oatmeal.

• 1/2 cup rolled oats - not the quick cooking kind
• 1/2 cup apple cider
• 1/2 cup water
• cinnamon

Put the first three ingredients in the pot. Cook to your desired consistency. Put in your favorite bowl and sprinkle with cinnamon. This makes a small bowl. If you want more oatmeal, just increase the ingredients keeping the proportion of 1 part oatmeal to 2 parts water.

If you try it, let me know if you like it, or let me know how you like to gussy up your morning bowl of oat-y goodness.