A "wild" weekend

My husband's family was in town this weekend to spend time at the San Diego Zoo and the Birch Aquarium in celebration of our niece's third birthday! Because of work, the Hubs and I didn't get to go to the Zoo on Friday with everyone, but we were able to make it to the Aquarium on Saturday.

Fruit salad with ginger infused simple syrup

Today is certainly not Tuesday, most assuredly it is Friday, and I am just now getting this posted. Part of the reason I am free to just sit and post a blog is the mess in my kitchen.

And such and such

I will unfortunately have few postings over the next couple of weeks here, my camera took a tumble over the weekend and the lens is slightly cock-eyed now. I got it into a repair shop today, and I should have it back in a couple of weeks, good as new, which is good news since it is brand new and was my anniversary present. Sorry honey!
In between times I will make due with my old camera which only acts up occasionally, we shall see!
Before it's unfortunately fall, I was able to get some pictures of a yummy fruit salad I made for a barbecue on the 3rd to celebrate a big event for my sister, her daughter and my sister's boyfriend.

Aren't they cute? And my sister looks pretty blissful here, an uncommon sight from her to be honest, she's the grumpy one normally. (Love you sis!)

And she has good reason to be blissed out:


She got a promotion from girlfriend to fiance last week! And what a promotion, look at that puppy! Good on you future brother in law, good on you.
She isn't a diamond type of woman, so she got a lovely sapphire instead. Our families spent the afternoon last Thursday eating and getting to know each other. It was fun, and I had some wine cooler made by my sister's future mother in law that was yummy and I would like the recipe for, I will get a hold of it and likely post it on here.

So next summer these three will be a family and I am very happy for them, congrats guys!


I will post the fruit salad I made this week, hopefully tomorrow...

First!

We got our first tomato off the vine today!

Frozen yogurt of the raspberry variety.

I love, love, love summer. Not always the heat of summer, but certainly the fruit. I had snagged some awesome raspberries at Henry's last week and come Friday I decided on frozen yogurt to use some of them.
This was our dessert the other night after we had the horseradish marinated beef. I followed the instructions here at Food in my Beard, except for the making of the yogurt. I am ambitious, but only to a point on a Friday that is my lone day off for the week. Sometime soon I would like to try making my own yogurt, it just wasn't this day.

I started by allowing a 32 ounce container of fat free unflavored yogurt to strain in my mesh strainer lined with coffee filters.


I think I easily drained a cup of liquid off this container of yogurt.


For the raspberries, I simmered those with about a 1/4 sugar and a splash of water until they were soft. The raspberries themselves were so sweet, I only used enough sugar to sweeten the yogurt some. I got them into the fridge to cool while the yogurt completely strained.

Once both were cold/drained, I combined them and got them into my ice cream freezer.

The yogurt was really quite thick after draining and the raspberries had such a great flavor that it was delicious without freezing.


I let the Kitchen Aide do its thing for about 20 minutes, then froze the yogurt for another 45 minutes or so before scooping it up and serving.


It was a smooth, creamy, yummy end to our dinner. Next time I will and a splash of some alcohol like vodka to keep it somewhat soft. The leftovers in the freezing now are rock hard, making them hard to enjoy, unfortunately. But it was an effort worth repeating, next up strawberries.

Horseradish is a delicious thing.

Generally, when I want something yummy to go with beef, my mind goes to two options: Gorgonzola cheese or Horseradish.

Horseradish was one of those ingredients that I always shied away from early on in my adult life. Didn't buy it, didn't cook with it, just didn't deal with it.

I don't know at what point I really decided horseradish was something I needed to cook with, but I know my love of sushi, and of course wasabi, helped.

For my birthday back in April, I put together a buffet of appetizers and munchies, including this beef skewer recipe from Nigella I found on Iron Stef's blog. It features horseradish prominently, in both the marinade and the dipping sauce served alongside.


The only change I made in making it the second time around was to add parsley to the marinade since I have so much of it growing in my garden.

We had the beef grilled, not on skewers this time, with salad and a multigrain/seeded bread from Trader Joe's. The parsley was a good addition, added a little flavor without overwhelming the rest of the ingredients in the marinade. And definitely make sure you use port, it lends a bit of sweetness and when grilled caramelizes the meat and melds so well with the spice of the horseradish.



It was so good! This was quite the meal, I also made a raspberry frozen yogurt for dessert that I plan on posting later, tonight if I can manage it after clinic this afternoon. It's been a busy week for me, I won't have a day off until friday, after working 6 days straight between my regular job and working clinical hours for school. But I do have a few posts I want to get up here and hope to before we go to Disneyland for my niece's 5th birthday on Sunday, can't wait!

Dear vegetable garden,

I wanted to thank you. I had started to doubt I had any kind of green thumb after failing to keep so many plants alive while container gardening in one apartment after another. You've proved me so very wrong on that count and I appreciate it.

Now a few words for each of you.


Dear Early Girl tomatoes,
You can stop growing bigger and start kicking out ripe tomatoes anytime now.

See that white thing you just bypassed? That's the fence, it indicates the end of your garden area. I can no longer guarantee your safety from the two wild and crazy dogs that run free in the yard.

Dear cucumbers,

Nice seeing you again. Was hard keeping track of you under all the tomato branches I moved off and onto the other tomato cage this morning. You are also delicious. Keep up the good work.
Also, see that little sprout there?

That's one of my eggplant seedlings, don't kill it, ok? You and the zucchini are pushing far too close for comfort.

Hello Parsley, You are growing well. I just need to start using you more. I promise I will.


And finally, thank you lettuce for proving I can grow things in containers and not have them die. I appreciate it.