Join Somer as she harvests fruit and vegatables from her kitchen garden and shares easy “anybody can do it” receipes. The following receipes are demostrated during this episode:
Basic Tomato Sauce* (Shelf Stable):
Tomatoes
Lemon juice
Salt
Dried herbs or garlic (optional)
Step 1 – Wash and sort tomatoes. Remove bruised or discolored product. Quarter 6 tomatoes and place in large saucepan. Bring to boil over medium heat. Using potato masher, crush tomatoes. Continue to add, mash, and mix more tomatoes. When all tomatoes are added, boil stirring occasionally for 10 minutes
Step 2 – Working in batches, puree tomatoes using and electric strainer. Discard seeds and skin
Step 3 – Return mixture to heat and bring to boil stirring frequently. REduce to medium heat. For thin sauce reduce by 1/3. For thicker sauce, reduce by 1/2
Step 4 – Before adding sauce to jar, add lemon juice, salt, and dried herbs as desired
Step 5 – Follow canner directions to can sauce as shelf stable
Blackberry Jam (For the Freezer):
8 cups berries
7 cups sugar
1 packet liquid pectin
Step 1 – Combine berries and sugar in saucepot over medium high heat and combine until boiling
Step 2 – Add pectin and bring to boil again – immediately remove from heat
Step 3 – Ladle jam into 6-8 jars and add lid. Keep jars on counter to cool for 24 hours.
Step 4 – Label and store in freezer until use. Open jars keep in refrigerator.
Pesto – Basil & Kale (Frig Stable):
2-3 cups of basil or kale
1/2 cup grated parmesean cheese
1/3 cup pine nuts (or walnuts)
2/3 cup olive oil
Red Pepper (to taste)
Salt & Pepper (to taste)
1 T lemon juice
Step 1 – Add basil or kale, plus all dry ingredients into blender
Step 2 – Pulse until combined well
Step 3 – Add olive oil slowly and pulse until a smooth like consistency
Step 4 – Taste test. Add additional ingredients to taste
Step 5 – Store in small jars in the refrigerator or freeze in ice bube tray for single serving usage
Infused Olive Oils – Garlic, Tuscan Herbs, & Hot Pepper (Shelf Stable):
1 cup light olive oil
If garlic: 6-8 cloves of garlic
If herbs: 2 cups of fresh herbs (basil, thyme, oraegano, rosemary)
If hot pepper: 3-6 T red pepper (can add fresh chopped hot peppers like tabasco to taste)
Step 1 – Heat olive oil on low heat until a light simmer
Step 2 – Add flavor ingredient
Step 3 – Bring back to light simmer and stir over one hour
Step 4 – Strain oil into bowl to cool – Do not put into any closed container to minimize condensation
Step 5 – Once fully cool, store in shelf stable containers to display, store or use
Bread & Butter Pickles* (Shelf Stable):
10 cups cucumbers – cut 1/4′ thick chips
4 medium onions – thinly sliced
3 cups vinegar
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup salt for pickling
1 T mustard seed
1 tsp celery seed
1 tsp ground turmeric
Step 1 – Combine cucumbers and onions with salt in a large bowl and cover with cold water. Let stand in cold water for 2 hours at room temperature. Transfer to colander, drain and rinse well
Step 2 – Combine vinegar, suger, mustard seeds, celery seeds, and tumeric. Bring to boil then stir in vegatables and return to boil
Step 3 – Pack vegatables into hot canning jars within 1/2″ of top of jar. Ladle hot pickling liquid into jar to cover vegatables and leaving 1/2″ headspace
Step 4 – Wipe rim and center lid on jar. Screw band down and place in canner. Follow canner directions
* These receipes both came from Ball – Complete Book of Home Preserving
This video is a design vlog as part of our create your happiness through design channel series. Subscribe to my channel if you love creating your happiness through design in your home and experiences.
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How many of you have this issue? You put all these great intentions in in putting together a beautiful garden for your summertime harvest, whether it’s for flowers or for vegetables, and you get your garden started, and then life happens. You either go on summer vacation or something happens with the job or you get another project and you get distracted and then next thing you know, you have all this stuff growing in your garden. You say, “Ugh, now what? I had all these good intentions. Well, I want you to know you’re not alone. I feel the same way. I had the luxury of some time over the summer because I lost my job in April. Now I’m working again starting in in August. And even though I had all that leisure time doing things in the garden, I also did other projects. And so by the time I started working again this month, all of a sudden I looked at my garden and went, “Oh my gosh, I forgot to harvest the broccoli before it, you know, flowered and then I can’t eat the broccoli anymore.” Or, “Oh no, look at my tomatoes. I’m totally behind harvesting those or wow, I missed a bunch of flower opportunities.” So this episode is not two things. Number one is to empathize with all of you to say you’re not alone. This happens to me too. But the second thing is to say, “Hey, no worries. That’s the beauty of a garden. Clean it up a little bit. Harvest what you can. See what else can har you can harvest for the next month or so before the weather really turns so you can truly enjoy what your garden’s producing. So stick around with me for the next few. We’re going to start with harvesting some tomatoes. We’re going to make something in the kitchen with it. And then we’re going to look at other things like what to do with herbs, maybe some flower arrangements, and also let’s just talk about what else is going to come up in the garden for the rest of the season. So stick with me everybody. Welcome back. And oh yes, if you haven’t already, please subscribe. I have to thank all of you who are returning. We are on a mission to get a thousand subscribers by Halloween. And in the last two weeks alone, we’ve gotten we doubled our our community. We’re over 600 as of this of as of this recording. So, thank you. Thank you so much. All right, let’s get our gardening on. Woohoo! Summer time, peeps. Let’s go. [Music] Well, good morning, summertime peeps. I have just spent a few minutes harvesting some Roma tomatoes. And under here, some heirloom tomatoes. And this episode is all about what to do with these tomatoes. Let’s see what we can do with these tomatoes. Let’s sort them out and decide which ones are we going to can as whole whole tomatoes with maybe some peppers and some herbs. And then do I have enough to make a sauce that I can also can so I have some extra homemade tomato sauce for my pantry. So, let’s try that out. I am back in my kitchen and now we’re going to do something fun with the produce from my garden. I know I’ve been focused on Halloween for the last few episodes, and trust me, I am antsy to decorate. But in the meantime, just as f as fall and Halloween around the corner, all the work I put into my garden over the spring and summer, I want to make sure I literally take advantage of the fruits of my labor. Now sadly because I have been either distracted by shopping a little bit or I also not sadly happily started a new job my days are a little different and I don’t know if any of you can relate to this but you have all these good intentions to do certain things that you’re growing and then the next thing you know things have passed and you’re like h I should have could have. So, what I wanted to do today with you is to show, you know, if you’re in the same boat as me, what can you still do with the tomatoes that maybe are a little past their prime or what can you do with the tomatoes that you do have, even if you’re not hungry to eat it, you know? So, can we can some? Can we make a sauce and preserve them? Um, the other thing that I know right now, I have a ton of blackberries and I did a few harvests and then I let a couple of days go by. Not all of them are ripe anymore. So, what can I do with that? Uh, I have a ton of herbs in the garden right now. And a lot of times, I don’t know about you guys, I love it just because I’ll smell the herbs every day and put my hand in the thyme, hand on the oregano, smell the basil, but then the next thing I know, the first frost comes and I look at these beautiful plants and think, I’ve done nothing with them. So, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do in this episode, but over the next couple of weeks, I will share with all of you what I’m actually doing with the oregano, the basil, the chives, etc. Yes, I put them in some of my recipes, but is there anything else, any type of special butters or sauces or infused oils that I should be taking advantage of that now so that I can continue to enjoy them going into the winter months? And let me just say, I know a lot of you out there, you’re already doing this. So you’re like, “Ah, Summer, catch up with us.” Which I agree, which is what I’m trying to do. Everything that I do on this channel, candidly, has been self-taught, or I just fell into. So, uh, if any of you have better tips and tricks for what to do with tomatoes, what to do with herbs, what to do with decorating, anything, I love to hear your feedback because you helping me be better at what I do also truly creates my happy. Speaking of that, before I get into my first task here, I just want to remind all of you that’s what my channel is all about. It’s about creating your happy through things that make you have joy in your home. So whether it’s decorating for the holidays, organizing your spaces, gardening, eating, cooking, a lot of times for me it’s having a wonderful afternoon tea. So if they’re f this is your first time to my channel, that’s what I’m all about. I’m a little bit of all of that. So today I’m focusing on the happiness in my garden. The first task I want to do is actually address these tomatoes. And hopefully Oops. I know they all rolled forward, but I bet you I could zoom in. Some of these tomatoes don’t look so great. And it’s because I picked them too late. But what I’m going to do very quickly right now is I’m actually going to cut some of these open, scoop out the seeds, and actually put them in this jar with some water. And I’m going to start the process of saving these seeds. These tomatoes are delicious. These are Roma tomatoes. And I purchased I think it was 10 plants. I may show it on the screen. When I went to my nursery back in May for Mother’s Day, uh the plants grew really well. And so I’m going to see if I’m able to save some of these seeds. So instead of buying them again, which I am more than happy to contribute money to my local nursery, I also like to do seedlings in the spring. So if I can get some decent seeds out of this to create some seedlings for my garden next year, not only will I use it for my own garden, but I may share it with my my neighbors so they too can enjoy this plant because it really these really are delicious Roma tomatoes. They’re heirloom, no, not heirloom. They are organic and um just a great great great texture. They’re also uh Roma tomatoes are excellent for making sauces and that’s what we’re going to be doing as well. So for those friends of mine or neighbors who do like to do that, I want to give them that gift, too. All right, so let’s do step one or task one. I’m going to take my not so fresh looking tomatoes, scoop out the seeds and some of that gel that surrounds it. I’m going to put it in this jar and then I’m going to put water in it twice a day. I’m going to stir the seeds in this water for about 5 days. And the directions that I found on uh from I think it was gardener supply. What you’re looking for is a little bit of a fermenting and then when the seeds fall to the bottom, that’s the key because they’re I I haven’t done this before. So, we’ll see. They’re supposed to be floating in the beginning and then when they’re ready, they fall to the bottom. We’re supposed to take them out. I can’t remember if to rinse them or not. I’ll double check, but I’ll show you. We then take those seeds out and then we just let them air dry and then we put them in a nice uh airtight container and then hold on to them until they’re ready to plant. So, that is going to be task one. Let’s try it out. I’m all done with the bruised tomatoes. And so here’s what I didn’t use. Uh some of them were just fine to use as far as if I just cut around where the initial bruise was. The bruise wasn’t deep enough to do anything to the meat or the or the seeds. So I did uh save some of them as far as the meat. So I’ll use some of that for a sauce in a little bit. In the meantime, the majority of the tomatoes, the bruises didn’t go deep enough to hit the seeds. So, here’s what I have for seeds. So, let’s just add some water. I’m just putting in cold water from the sink. And there’s a lot in here. So, I’m going to do about 2/3. And do you see how the they all for the most part float? So the goal right now is for me to cover it and leave it in here for almost 5 days, but every day stir it twice. So let’s just consider that stir number one. And then tonight maybe I’ll stir it and then tomorrow morning and tomorrow evening and we’ll go from there. But some seeds they look like they’re already on the bottom. Maybe cuz well I don’t know. But I’m going to give it the five days like the the recommendation says and then we’ll see if they all separate from the goop and then I can dry the seeds and we’ll see if they’ll seed in the in the spring or late winter. So, we’ll see. So, that’s going over here for now. Now that we have our seed task taken care of, the next thing I want to do is follow a recipe that I haven’t used yet. So, we’re going to see how this works. Again, fingers crossed I know how to follow directions. Uh Ball, who makes mason jars that many of you might be familiar with, they have this home preserving cookbook that I purchased a few years ago. Maybe used a couple different uh recipes out of here, but this one in particular, which is called the basic tomato sauce, but this is specifically for a pressure cooker cooker, not the boiling stealing method. Uh, I didn’t try this the last time I I canned tomatoes, which was way back in 2020. So, I’m doing this again for the first time. It is walking me through a very simple process. It is pretty much you quarter tomatoes, you put it into a large uh sauce pan, and you heat it up, and you do it in certain increments until you use all your tomatoes. Then, you strain it. So, you strain out all of the uh skins and seeds. Then you go back and you boil it some more. You reduce it. And then you add what you want to depending on your interests or your your likes and wants. Uh so, we’re going to try this. This is basically just saying that I need tomatoes, uh lemon juice, salt, dried herbs, optional. I am going to throw in garlic specifically. And yeah, let’s see how this goes. It doesn’t specify. It does say average of 35 lbs make seven quarts of sauce. I definitely don’t have 35 lbs, but it wouldn’t be nice to make at least a jar’s worth, maybe two. Uh, we’ll see. Um, but yeah, let’s try this out. Let’s do this together. It’s either going to be awesome, not bad, or a total disaster. But you’ll be along for the ride. So, let’s see how it goes. The Bell uh official Bell complete book of home preserving basic tomato sauce. Take one. Let’s go. So, I’m leaving the meat that we saved from the other tomatoes in here since this can also be into the sauce. It doesn’t say anything about adding any type of oil or any type of water. So, it truly is just uh reducing all these tomatoes, cooking them down because there’s so much water in them anyway. So, the first thing it says is to quarter about six tomatoes and start with that overheat. So, that’s what we’re going to do. So, I’m just going to cut all these tomatoes into quarters. And once I’m done with that, I’ll put them on. And then we’ll just keep doing the process until time’s up. So, let’s see how it goes. All right, first round. Let’s go. So, I got lucky and I hopefully will stay lucky and not burn my face. I got lucky because every single tomato is in there that I had on my harvest trays. So, it’s just to the top and I’m still waiting for a few of them to get soft so that I can smash them with the potato masher. So, as this continues to soften and boil down and the juices come out, I’m going to go quickly walk the dogs, take advantage of some of this time, and then after I smash it one more time with the potato smasher, I’m going to start straining the skins and the seeds out. Then I return it back on here to let it continue to boil so it reduces about a third. And then we should have the beginnings of a thin tomato sauce. Yay. Well, I am excited to say that the strained tomato juice is now boiling and simmering on the stove. So, the goal is to watch it go a third of the way down. I have some markers in there that I’m familiar with some of the uh what’s called the bumps in my pan. I know that’s where the starting point is. So, I’m hoping to see in the next half an hour, maybe a little longer because I’ve never done this before. Uh see how fast it boils down and thickens. And then we’ll do the next step, which is putting it into the cans with some of the lemon juice and uh salt. Oh, and I’m also throwing in some garlic shortly as well, just to add some garlic uh essence to the sauce. But I just wanted to show you how, and I’m not going to tip it too much cuz juice will probably come out. But all of this is the excess of the tomato harvest. So, most of this are the tomatoes that were really, really, really bruised that I didn’t put in and cook. But then the remainder of this, which is maybe a third of this bowl, that’s all of the seeds and the uh skin and maybe some of the meat that came out of when I just strained it by hand. It does call for in here. Uh I think it’s an electric strainer, which I don’t have. Maybe I need to look into that. Sounds interesting to me. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an electric strainer, or maybe I have and it’s been called something else in my mind. But that is what this uh recipe calls for. So, I’m sure it’s a faster way and maybe you get more juice out of what I have in front of here of of us here. Uh in the meantime, now it’s a waiting game and I’ll clean up my dishes in the sink. I’ll bring out my uh pressure cooker so I can get this all ready. So, as soon as it’s okay to then put the uh jars in, actually, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to clean my jars, get the pressure cooker ready, and then hopefully we’re almost done with this project. Thanks for sticking with me so far. It’s a few hours later, not because it took a few hours to reduce the tomato sauce, just because we had stuff going on in the house. So, now I’m back, the sun is down, and it is time to take these clean jars that I prepped. I prep them by actually putting them in the high pressure cooker for 10 minutes on high with some water after I already hand wash these. So, it just gives a nice sanitized um inside. And now what I’m going to do is bring over the reduced pot of tomato sauce. Now, I’ve reduced it to half of what it was at the time that we strained it. So, I am not sure. I think it’s nice and thick. I think we’re going to need three jars, but let’s see. So, a couple of things. I have three mason jars we’re going to use. I am going to use uh this is a funnel specifically made so that it makes it easier to put stuff into different wide-mouth jars. This is, I believe, the quart jar. It has three cups. And so, we’re going to fill at least two of these. What I’m also doing is I’m following the directions on here that what’s what it recommends when it comes to putting in the lemon juice, the salt, and if we wanted to do any additional herbs. So the book says that for every quart or every liter that we are going to add a half a teaspoon oh excuse me two tablespoons of lemon juice and then when it comes to salt one teaspoon of salt. So let’s grab my measuring spoons first. Let’s do the lemon juice. Mhm. So, I bought some lemon juice today. If I had fresh lemons, I would have squeezed it, but this is going to be just fine. So, it is saying to do two tablespoons of lemon juice per jar. So, since we’re going to start with this one first, we’ll just do one jar. And we have one, two. Let me grab some porable salt. Okay, so we have some pink Himalayan salt. And this is going to call for one teaspoon. So, we’re going to do two scoops since this is a half a teaspoon. Maybe a little bit more. There we go. And then it says if we want to add herbs, this is when we add herbs. So, I’m just going to grab some oregano and scoop a teaspoon’s worth. Actually, let’s do teaspoon and a half. And then going to grind some pepper. Can’t go wrong. These are pretty good basic basic herbs, right? Salt, pepper, oregano, and remember, I also boiled and reduced it down with about eight cloves of garlic. So, this will be a nice sauce. I did taste it. It’s very fresh. All right. So now what we need to do is to pour or ladle the tomato sauce into the jar. But you leave about an inch from the top uh for the pressure uh in there and so that it doesn’t overflow when the pressure goes in. That’s what I think I understood. So let’s go for it and pour in the sauce. some garlic in there. I’m going to get it to the measure line for the quart. There we go. That’s good. Okay, so that is what it says. Uh, does it say to do anything about mixing? Says remove air bubbles and adjust head space if necessary by adding hot hot sauce. I think it means this hot sauce. Wipe rim center lid. Okay. Well, let’s grab a paper towel. Wiping the lid nice and clean. And these, for those of you who never done a jarring before, you put the rack. You put two pieces on there. From what I what I’ve done in the past, you put this piece, which is ultimately going to vacuum seal onto the mason jar. And then this ring actually holds it in place. And so what happens is after we finish canning, after it’s nice and sealed, we actually remove the ring because if you leave the ring on there, sometimes the ring starts to rust if there was any captured water in there from the the pressurizing because you use steam in there. So you let the shirt tight stick to the top. After it cools completely, you remove the ring. You label the the shirt tight and then you reuse the ring for future. All right, so that was jar number one. Let’s just rinse and repeat the same thing for the rest on here. Hello, Kai. All right, we got the two jars of hot tomato sauce in here. This one we don’t need to use. I’m going to put away the ingredients I don’t need any to use right now and then we’ll start the process of the pressure cooker. Stay tuned. So, I took care of cleaning up the dishes or they’re soaking. So now the time is to use a pressure cooker. This has some water in it when I did these guys, but it has still about 2 in of water on the base, which is what I need uh for this process. So what we’re going to do right now, if you I don’t know if it’s when I zoom in, you can see, but when I use my finger, this top portion of the lid sort of goes up and down. It’s not sealed. Now there is this other. You can actually hear it. So the goal is for there no longer to be that gap. When it goes in here, I’m going to put it in here for 10 to 20 10 to 15 minutes in the pressure cooker on high. And then when it’s done, I just let it cool down completely before I open it up. When I take it out, it should fully be sealed down. Sometimes it’s not. But what happens is cuz it’s still so hot, when it cools in the air on the counter, that’s also when the vacuum seal could happen. So when I take it out, we might get lucky or we have to wait for it to go down. Uh so when what will happen is I’ll put it on the counter overnight and then tomorrow morning it should be uh shelf ready and shelf stable. So let’s put that in this into my pressure cooker. Close her up. Always press down so that the steam does not get released from this. Now I have, let me just push this over. I have an Insta Pot and this is what I learned on during COVID how to how to can but all pressure cookers there’s canning pressure canning cookers out there and then you can also do the boiling method. I just like this because it’s allin-one and then I also use this for other things to cook. So what we’re going to do right now is I’m going to simply turn this on. So let’s make sure it’s plugged in. Yep, it’s plugged in. turn it on. So, I hit pressure cook. I’m going to have it go to 15 minutes and I turn it on. And now truly, it’s a waiting game. So, it has to heat up. Then, it’s going to pressure cook for five 15 minutes. It’s beeping. Yeah, cuz it’s on. Pressure cook for 15 minutes. And then I have to wait for it to cool. So, you may or may not see me later on tonight cuz it’s already a little late. But if it’s able to cool down beforehand, I will come back on the camera. If not, the sun might be right back up. Oh, but before I go, earlier I did the seed exper, not experiment, seed task. And in the beginning, I don’t know if you remember, but when I did it initially, there were some seeds on the bottom, but now they’re actually all floating. Pretty interesting little science project here. But remember, I have to um stir this twice a day for five days. It’s supposed to ferment and then we’ll know that it’s ready to take out and to dry to to use next year when they all fall to the bottom. So, we’ll keep an eye on this over the next five days. All right, pressure away, my friend. Good morning, everybody. It is the next morning and the canning is done, but I will show you what it looks like when we get back in the kitchen. This morning, I just need to go out and put some blackberries in this bowl. I’ve harvested a few over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been freezing them as I’ve been going along or eating them cuz that’s delicious as well. But I think I have one more round of harvesting and then what I’d like to do today with all of you is to actually make some blackberry jam. So, I’m going to go and harvest that. I do have to go to the store and get some sugar because it needs a lot of sugar and I don’t normally use a lot of sugar in the house. So, I do have to go get some. Uh, but then we’ll do that little fun task together on some other treasures that we can make from our garden during the end of summer. So, let’s go and grab some berries. Not bad. I would say maybe four cups. Some of these are a little mushed. The the main thing though is that I got them before uh they turned cuz they were probably well I can’t I’m assuming about two cups worth that just shriveled on the vine because it took so long for me to pick these. So, I’m grateful I got these. I will be able to also have some from the fruit that I froze earlier. I just had to just go through this to make sure there’s no bugs on them because uh I was fighting with the bees. They were enjoying the fruits of the labor as well. So, all right, I’ll take these inside, clean these up, uh put them to the side, go to the grocery store, get some sugar, come back, and then we will um make some jam. Let’s do it. Yummy summertime berries. You got to say this makes you happy. Come on. Okay, I’m back again and the sun has gone down again. This time we’re going to focus on jam. And what I’m going to actually do is follow the recipe on the back of this Certo Sure Gel uh packet. And what it says is that if we’re going to make um eight jars, I know I only have six, but we’re we have enough fruit and enough sugar to make eight jars that are one cup each. And so it says we need two quarts. So this is one quart. I have another whole bag here of uh blackberries. So we’ll do two of those. And seven cups of sugar. I actually have a lot more jam, a lot more berries in the freezer. So, don’t know if I’ll do it tonight, but I can make another batch another day. Uh, but that’s to adding one pouch of this in here. So, I’m going to put it all together into a pot and basically cook it and boil it down. And then we just easily um evenly distribute them into uh eight of these jars. I have to clean them. So, I’ll do the cleaning while these are cooking down and then they go into freezer a freezer storage. So, I’m not going to pressure cook these. But what I did purchase uh you can get these on Amazon. I personally found it uh convenient that they were at my local Target, but instead of getting these lids, which vacuum seal on with the the rings, these are the reusable leak proof lids so that when you use them, they’re reusable. You can put them in the wash dishwasher uh and reuse them down the road. So, that’s what we’re going to use for this particular recipe. All right. All right. So, I’m going to put it all together, boil it up, distribute, and then we’ll have our next harvest slashtask of preserving done from the garden. So, let’s get this going. All right. So now I’ve added the pectin which you have to or you have to add after it starts to boil. This was this is liquid pectin. If this was the dry pectin the powder I would have added it before. But the reason I got to start moving now is because it sets pretty quickly. So I’m going to ladle this in into each jar. And let’s see how we’re doing here. these. Um, after I seal these all up with the new lids, wipe off the edges, I need to let them sit for 24 hours to truly cool. You don’t want to put this into your refrigerator or into your um, definitely not your freezer right away. You don’t want the glass to crack. So, the best is to put it at room temperature and then you can label it. Ouch. After after it cools down and you can give it to friends if you like or just store it in your own freezer until you have tea or breakfast toast or whatever whatever you want. But this is going to be awesome cuz that little little sample I just had was pretty good. All right, guys. Isn’t this color beautiful? It may even be good for our Halloween stuff. It kind of looks like vampire blood. Mwah. All right. So, that’s what I’m doing this evening. We just finished the blackberry jam. We’re going to let this cool overnight, actually, for 24 hours. So, tomorrow evening, uh, I’ll label these and we’ll put them in the freezer. The other uh garden task that I’d like to do uh with the produce that we have in the garden, the next thing up will be pesto. I have a lot of kale and I have a lot of basil. And so the next thing we’ll can we’ve done tomato sauce, we’ve done blackberry jam. We’ve we’re starting uh to do the separation of tomato seeds for next year’s planting. The next thing we’re going to do, which will be tomorrow, will be making the pa uh basil pesto and possibly even kale pesto. So, we’ll see what I have in the pantry, if I can do both. All right. I hope you’re having fun so far. I know we’re not shopping for Halloween, though. I will tell you, I was doing back to school shopping with my with my college son, and I did see a couple cute things that I may have picked up. So, uh at TJ Maxx. So, I can’t wait to share with you some other h uh Halloween hauls, but I might just reveal it as I start to decorate in my office because they’re all witch themes and oh, they’re so cute. All right, I will see you tomorrow. Let’s do some basil pesto tomorrow, but we’ll let our blackberry jam a cool, otherwise known as vampire blood jam. Have a good night. Welcome back. This is now officially Wednesday afternoon. We started this whole video on Saturday. So today, what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to do some pesto and we’re going to do some infused olive oil using some of the goodies from the garden, some herbs and some uh some maybe garlic. And I look forward to doing that with all of you. So, let’s grab some things right now. Cut them, bring them inside, and then we’ll also check in to see how my tomato seeds are doing because technically this is uh sort of the beginning of day five from when we started the the the official task. So, we’ll see how they’re doing, how many actually fall into the bottom. If not, maybe we need to wait one more day for that to be complete. So, let’s cups cut some thyme, oregano, basil, maybe some chives, and we’ll take it from there. Let’s go. One of the things on top of us getting ready for uh the pesto and the infused olive oil is I’m also starting to dry herbs as well. And so for a few reasons. number one, for me to be able to use them as dried product, but number two, for those of you watching me for Halloween decor, keep an eye on these because I have a plan on how these dried herbs and flowers are going to show up in my witches decor in my office later this season. But in the meantime, I wish you could smell this rosemary. It’s divine. Well, I went out, as I said, to get some herbs, which I did. I got some lovely chives, oregano, thyme, rosemary, basil, and then I also wanted to grab some kale for our pesto. And then I saw other treasures. I didn’t even see this guy hiding. I hope he’s not too big, but I got some zucchini. I found four cucumbers. This cauliflower, I think I can still eat, which is looking really healthy. a ton more tomatoes. So, I might make another jar of tomato sauce. And then still a little bit of broccoli left. So, my goodness, my garden overflowth. And I am so grateful for all of this bounty, as they say. So, today, as I mentioned, we’re going to focus on making pesto. So, I grabbed some Parmesan cheese, some pine nuts, and walnuts, and sunflower seeds. Just because you can use any of these. Sometimes I use what I have left over. You know, it’s not about having to be exact exact. And these flavors all taste delicious, but as long as I have minimum pine nuts, some parmesan, and some nice olive oil and some garlic, throwing in this kale and the basil, I can make a pretty good a pretty good um pesto. And then the other thing we’re going to need for infusing our olive oil will be olive oil, a bunch of different herbs. And I’ll walk you through what we’re going to do in a second, garlic, and hot pepper flakes or hot peppers. And I’ve actually dried some hot peppers from my garden that I harvested about four weeks ago. So, we’re going to chop some of those up and throw them in to infuse in the olive oil. So, I just wanted to share how excited I am with all these goodies before we actually divide and conquer. I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to show you pickling. But if I do, I may take the time even to do a little bit of uh pickling some of these cucumbers cuz they’re big. I mean, they’re they’ll make some good uh pickle chips. All right, let’s get going with the pesto and the olive oil. We might start with the infusion of the olive oil first because that takes some time to simmer on the stove. So, let’s go over there. So, to get us started, I’m going to make three flavors, I think, today because I only have three pots to cook simultaneously in this size. I am making enough hopefully for three jars that will at the end be about 6 oz each. So, to each of these pots, I’m adding two cups of olive oil. Now, ideally, we would have used a very light tasting oil. I didn’t have that, but this will still work and suffice. What I’m doing is I have the heat on low, but here’s the deal. You don’t want to boil the oil because you don’t want to burn it. So, what we’re doing is we’re simply warming it so it almost becomes like a a soft simmer. And when you see little bit of bubbles in your in the pots, that’s when you will add whatever ingredients you need. So, let me just quickly prep. We’re going to crush like a whole um Where’s my garlic? I’m going to take this half of garlic and crush the whole thing and throw it into one once it starts to simmer. I’m also going to do a combination of a bunch of herbs. So, it’s sort of like an Italian tuskin infused. And then the last one is going to be a spicy one. And what’s really cool, which I love, is that if you put them in the clear jars, you can even see how the color of each one looks different. The red one, it’ll have a reddish tin for the pepper one, greenish tin for the herb one, and it’ll stay that yellow tone, if not a little brighter for the garlic one. So, let me just prep the ingredients and we’ll put them in as soon as we see a little bit of bubbles. Okay. So, this pot here, when you look inside, it almost looks like there’s a little bit of a wave going on in there. You can put it in. So, I’m going to put the garlic in. And I’m going to leave it uncovered and just turn it up just a little bit. Now, once we put these items in, we’re actually going to leave it in here for at least an hour cuz you want it to get Get hot. Sorry, my husky’s talking. Can you hear that? He likes the garlic. Um, you want the heat to actually burn off any type of botulism that I understand from some of these, you know, just in case. I think it’s botulism. Don’t laugh at me if it’s not, but I think it is. But anything that could create you getting sick, right? So, you want to just burn it all off. So, I just turn the heat up just a little bit for the garlic. If I look into this one, this bigger pot, this has enough room for me to put all of these beautiful herbs. So, I have chives, thyme, oregano, and rosemary that I’m just stuffing on in in here. And then, same thing, turning up the heat just a little bit. And my back one, I’m starting to see waves. And this one I’m putting in a bunch of hot pepper cuz I love me some hot spicy oil. So now it’s just truly a waiting game. It’s turning up the heat just a little bit so we can really heat up the ingredients. Kill off any type of possible harmful items here and just stir over and over over the next hour. So, while this is doing its magic, I’m going to go and prep the pesto. All right. So everything is simmering beautifully over here. I’ve measured out our pesto. So let’s first start with about 2 and 1/2 to three cups of basil leaves. And this is a combination of lemon uh basil leaves and sweet basil, half a cup of Parmesan cheese, and 1/3 of a cup of pine nuts. I’m then going to add some garlic. Now, I used up the rest of my fresh garlic on the infused oil, but I do have some minced garlic from my grocery store. So, I’m going to put two heaping tablespoons of minced garlic in here, which should do the trick. So, let me quickly pulse this together. A little bit of lemon juice, about two tablespoons, teaspoons, tablespoons, and then three I said a half a cup, but really it’s 3/4 of a cup of olive oil. And see how this goes. I feel like I want to add more basil. Looks a little soupy to me. Let’s add a little bit more basil. A little bit more parmesan or pine nuts. Let’s add a little bit more pine nuts first. Can’t forget the salt and pepper. The thing about pesto, it’s very forgiving. I am someone who does not follow a recipe very closely, but I think it’s all about personal preference and your personal taste. And I think I’ve mentioned I’m a self-taught everything. So, even this remembering how this goes together. I’m having a little bit of fun here. I think I’m doing it backwards. Hold on. Ah, there we go. Ready? Here we go. Okay, this looks better. Let’s give it a taste. That’s good. Need a little bit of red pepper now. And a little bit more Parmesan cheese just cuz I added more pine nuts. So, I’m going to just dump a little bit more Parmesan. Oops. More salt. There we go. In the meantime, give it one more pulse and then check on my oil. Just make sure things are burning. Clean my spoon and try this again. That’s good. That’s really good. All right. So, I just put the basil pesto in an ice tray and I’m going to pop it into my freezer and let it freeze possibly overnight just because it’s such a dense um con consistency. In the meantime, I grab the kale and I’m going to do a kale version. Try to use up all the kale. Uh make a bigger batch. And in this situation, I’m going to keep some for me, but also this is where I’m going to gift some to my neighbors and my friends. So, this next round will be with kale, and this time I’ll do some pine nuts with some sunflower seeds and some walnuts just to give it a richer, nuttier flavor. right Kai. Good news, we used up almost all the herbs. So, this will be left over for any cooking I’m doing. Or maybe when I make the next tomato sauce, I throw some of this in there, which would be actually really awesome. Right now, what we’re going to do, let me just grab a couple glass vessels because next thing to do is now strain the olive oil. It’s been simmering now for over an hour. So, hopefully we’ve cooked off anything bad off of the garlic or the herbs or the peppers. And now it’s time to drain all the solids out of it and let it cool to room temperature before we ultimately then put them into their oil containers. So, let me just grab a couple more containers and some strainers. I don’t necessarily have the prettiest straining utensils, but I think this represents what a lot of people have in their kitchen, so this is good. Let’s first start with the herbs. Uh, so I’m going to use this vessel. Put my strainer in. And the heat’s been turned off. Let me just show you. This is what it looks down like now. The herbs cooked down. And we’ll just pour this all in here so that the oil can come off of the greens. Oh, it smells so good. I don’t know if you can see the color. Kind of a greenish olive oil. So, that’s number one. Number two, I’m going to do the garlic. Oh, and I know if you can see, that’s what the garlic looks like. Now, the yummy thing about the garlic is we can save this and use it to put onto bread cuz it’s just garlic cooking in olive oil. Maybe some bread tonight. We use this and put this right in. Delish. And then the last one. I don’t know if you can compare the two in the light. See how one’s more yellow? This is the garlic. And then this is the tuscan herb. And then this last one, I don’t know if you can see that very well, but that has the chili peppers, Tabasco peppers that I grew in the garden. So, let’s see what happens, what color this comes out to be. Oh, it smells so good. I’m going have to strain this again because I don’t have a mesh strainer. My mesh strainer broke, so I have to get another one. But some of the chili peppers came through, which honestly doesn’t bother me. Uh, but from a presentation perspective, some of you might want it just completely clear. I might keep it in there, especially because they’re all cooked. I don’t know if you can see, it’s like a reddish hue. All right. So, these I’m just going to let I’m going to cover with some paper towels so nothing gets in them. And I’m going to let them cool. And then maybe after dinner I will put them into some display bottles or oil gift bottles and we’ll see how they look. Pesto done. Infused oil done. Hello again. Today is Thursday and just to bring you up to speed, I think we’re at the end of this video very shortly. Couple of things I’ve done since I last joined you. I’ve actually made, and this is still hot cuz I just brought it out of the couch pressure cooker. I made some bread and butter pickles out of those cucumbers, but I was so into getting it done during my lunch break that I forgot to film it. So, I apologize, but I did get those done. I’ll put the recipe up on uh in the description below with the other recipes that I’m doing. Uh I will tell you from just testing a little bit of the uh cucumber and onion that is in there, so delicious. But what I’m just also finishing right now, I had some extra bell peppers that are green, red, and yellow. Plus, I harvested a bunch of hot peppers, specifically jalapeno and Sriracha peppers from my garden. And I decided, hey, I actually have still enough sugar and jars. Let’s make hot pepper jelly. So on the screen right now, you’re going to see I just chopped up three bell peppers. One green, one red, one yellow. Chopped it into little tiny pieces. Threw it into the pot. Added one cup of apple cider vinegar. Brought it to a boil. Then I added seven cups of sugar just like I did with the blackberry jam that we did earlier. Once that came to a boil again, I added one packet of the liquid pectin and brought that to a boil, took it off the heat. I put it into three jars. Just put those jars now into my pressure cooker. So, I’m not doing a freezer jam like I did with the blackberry. This particular recipe that I found online actually lets you, not lets you, but does say you can pressure uh cook the ceiling of the cans. So, that’s what I’m doing right now. Once that’s out, you guys, I will reveal my final array of goodies that I did for this episode. So, I’m so happy. I used my tomatoes. I used my peppers. I used oh even onion from the gu the garden and the cucumbers. I’ve used a bunch of herbs. This has been a really productive last few days. So yeah, let’s fast forward a little bit and I’ll see you in a little bit with all the results of what we did. Let’s go. Well, that’s it you guys. I have in front of me a week’s worth of incredibly fun work. I have our frozen our freeze jam. We have our hot pepper jelly that is shelf stable. We have our refrigerated pesto ready to go. One thing I don’t have out here, but I was also able to finalize. I put a bunch of the basil pesto, if you remember, into ice cube trays. So, I actually took them out of the ice cubes and put them in a bigger jar, vacuum sealed that, put it back in the freezer, so I can use those little cubes whenever I want. I have two types of tomato sauce. I have garlic and herb that we made first. Those extra tomatoes, I made a base tomato sauce so I can use this for future recipes in the fall or winter. And then I made some delicious bread and butter uh pickles with onions. And then I have my three different infused olive oils, garlic, uh, tuscin herb, as well as hot pepper. I am over the moon with happiness. And so I will link all of the uh, not link, I will list all of the recipes for you in the description below. So, if you want to try some of these, honestly, they are super simple and I I encourage you if you have not just if you have any of these growing in your garden, but if you even want to go to your grocery store and buy some of these items and just make them at home. We’re in Labor Day this weekend. So hopefully for those of you who are enjoying a Labor Day holiday, maybe not of my friends in Great Britain or in Canada or other places in the world, but here in the US, I’m posting this during Labor Day weekend. What a fun little uh home project that you can do either yourself or with your family, but just something that you can capture the flavors of summertime before it goes away because fall is about to happen since September 1st is right around the corner. Thank you everybody for joining me on this uh garden/kitchen uh episode that I’ve had here on summertime. loved having you here. Next episode, we are starting to decorate for fall and Halloween. So, my uh I one one thing you didn’t see me do is do anything with the flowers from the garden, but the next episode I’m actually going to start showing you putting some fall garlands and bouquets around the house, and I will incorporate some of the flowers from the garden, as well as some artificial. Uh, and then shortly thereafter, I will start building some Halloween things to inspire all of you so that you can start thinking about not just what you want in your house, but what you may need to go and shop for so you can do some of these projects. Until then, everybody, have a fantastic Labor Day weekend, and I hope to see you again. Have a great day, everybody. Bye. [Music]
Dining and Cooking