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.

Screw you computer!

That's what my husband is yelling at the TV. More specifically the Wii. And even more specifically the EA Active program it is running.

We've started a diet and regular exercise recently, and since we have the Wii fit board (which we at one point swore we would never buy) we are making use of it for the exercise part of things.

The nice thing about the EA Active is it has Bob Greene on board with his 30 Day Challenge. He is Oprah approved so it has to be good, right?
Well, so far we think it is. The first 30 days have a set exercise routine that you can change the intensity on. Good thing for us, I was/am still more of an athlete then my husband, so we can do out different levels of work outs. At the end of a workout we are sweating and tired. Exactly what I expect.

However, despite all the wonderful things T can say for the program, there is one downside:

Perky, animated trainers.

Perky, animated trainers that spout inspirational comments at random.

Perky, animated trainers that also tell you to get going when it thinks you are slacking off towards the end of your sets.

We both have had a few choice words for those trainers and their perky ways. We'll see over the rest of the first 30 days how much their perky ways and exercises whittle our waistlines down to what they should be. Marriage has been great for us, not so much for our weight!

Brined and beered chicken

Wanted: Brine for chicken. Must add delicious flavor to meat with a touch of lemon flavor.

I am trying to master a brine with lemons off my tree. I love lemon with chicken, I think it's a great combo. I adore using a brine with meat. My family has used a brine on turkey for Thanksgiving for years now, and I refuse to acknowledge any other way to make a turkey. There is no other way. Period.

So brine on chicken for the grill? Makes perfect sense. And Beer Can chicken with a brine(d?) chicken just makes sense. So this morning I dropped a chicken into some brine, let it hang out for about 6 hours, then we grilled it up.

Unfortunately, no noticeable lemon flavor. Still a good brine, and the beer, as always, kept that chicken moist.

Along side I grilled up some purple asparagus and made a cucumber tomato salad with the first cuke out of my garden.

















He was a handsome and tasty little fellow, especially when paired with some heirloom tomatoes. (Still not from my garden. Boo! Come on tomatoes!)




Purple asparagus is really good, it has a milder taste then green, and more flavor than white asparagus. It isn't that I don't like white asparagus, I just think it doesn't taste green.





All in all, a delicious dinner. Brine/chicken recipe below!

My Beer Can chicken

For Brine:

1/3 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup salt
1/2 cup fresh herbs of your choice, coarsely chopped (I used parsley and sage)
3 cups water
Juice of six lemons

Combine salt, sugar and herbs with water in small saucepan on stove top. Bring to slight simmer to allow the sugar and salt to dissolve and to incorporate the flavor of the herbs. Remove from heat, add lemon juice and allow to cool completely. If you are in a hurry, you can use half the water to dissolve the salt and sugar and add the remainder in cold at the end to bring the temp down faster. Ice cubes also help, just don't over do it or you will dilute the brine.

Pour over a whole chicken in a ziplock bag and allow to sit for at least 4 hours, more is always better. (I've been known to let Turkey sit in a brine for 3 days).

When ready to cook, preheat grill to about 700 degrees. If using a gas grill, start with all burners on, if using charcol, distribute coals for indirect heat.

Remove chicken from brine and pat dry. Using a can of beer of your choice, open beer and remove about 1/3 to 1/2 of the can and place chicken on top of can.
Grill at top temp for about 15 minutes (or directly over coals) then turn off burners as needed for indirect heat (or shift chicken away from direct heat) and finish cooking for 35-45 minutes, until juices run clear or a meat thermometer reads about 160 degrees in thickest part of the breast. (The temp on my grill read about 400 degrees for the remainder of cooking)

First Harvest.

Monday proved to be a good day in the garden, I was able to harvest my first zucchini! A lovely little thing, it grew so rapidly, I only noticed it was there on Sunday, and I was outright shocked at how big it already was. The rest of its current brethren are only about the size of small limes, so how this one escaped my attention, I don't know.

I am not growing a traditional zucchini variety, this one is called Eight Ball. Same wonderful dark skin in a cute, little round package. It, like the other variety of items growing in my garden is unique in some way, I have white cucumbers, tiny currant tomatoes, small dwarf eggplant, and these rotund zucchini.

In celebration of my harvest, I threw a very quick dinner together that night. I had spent the day doing online classes for work then moved on to cleaning house, so I was exhausted by the end of the day. Thankfully, I had some turkey meatballs from Trader Joe's in the freezer and a new jarred pasta sauce to try out.

My Mom discovered this sauce recently, made with heirloom tomatoes and the only sweetener is organic evaporated cane juice. We gave it a whirl, simmering the meatballs in it until everything was hot and tossing it with whole wheat penne. I added some fresh basil and parsley from my herb garden to finish it off.

As for the zucchini, I tossed it with some olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted it in the oven at 425 degrees.


The results were wonderful. I would have to say the Eight Ball is a little sweeter then your standard zucchini, it could have been my choice to roast it, or it could be inherently sweeter. It was delicious though.



The sauce was also very good. Nice tomato taste and not too sweet. One I think I will look for again for these nights I need a quick dinner.
I am thinking for the next zucchini(s) of thick slices grilled up with some salt and red pepper flakes. The round shape seems like it would lend itself nicely to a sandwich as well, maybe panini.