What's Cooking?

Homemade Egg Rolls

 Do you find yourself spending a lot more time in the kitchen in the fall? I do. First because I am putting up all the bounty from the garden and also because the heat of summer is over and I don't mind having the oven heat up the house a little and also because this fall weather just makes us hungry.

  I just uploaded my pictures from this week and noticed a lot of food photos so I thought I would tell a little bit about what has been going on in our kitchen.

 With plenty of cabbage available (my parent's have huge cabbages and we have a few that have done well too) egg rolls sounded like a fun meal. This isn't something we make often since it is deep fried but it is something that is enjoyed -especially by Mara and I. We make our own wrappers (it is super easy!) and then for the filling I try to use whatever garden produce we have on hand. Into these went cabbage, onion, garlic, ginger, green beans cut small and grated carrot for veggies. Both the beans and carrot were from our garden and the cabbage was from my parents.

   What I actually found the most exciting about these egg rolls is the meat. I had asked for the beef heart too along with the rest of our beef when we got it and then I had no idea what to do with it. A friend suggested that it worked well in stir-fry so I shaved some off one day for that but I still had a lot left so I decided to use it in the egg rolls as well. I cut it up in chunks and then ran in through my food processor so it was ground up. It worked wonderfully in the egg rolls. My family had no idea that it was heart (after eating tongue Ken informed me that he would really rather not know when something weird like heart or tongue is being served). Also this week I used up the last of the heart in another hot dish and again the family enjoyed it.  To complete the using what we have to make these egg rolls - I fried them in tallow which really worked quite well.

 Another kitchen experiment this week was to make dill green bean pickles. I found this recipe. I am looking forward to trying them out but I need to let them sit for 3 weeks or so first. Have you ever had dill green bean pickles? Are they any good? The reason I decided to make them is because my parents have had an abundance of green beans and I already have a years supply of the regular green beans put up so I decided it was time for some variety.

 Today I have had spaghetti sauce simmering in my crockpot. I am trying out this recipe (with my own little adjustments of course!).

 Vinegar making was one of the things that I got down today. Not that the vinegar is done but at least it is started now. I am making apple scrap vinegar and also I am trying to use some strawberry jam that fermented to make vinegar as well. I was excited to find a good use for my lovely pottery pitcher that had lost it's handle.

 And this didn't need any cooking but we sure enjoyed eating it! Lovely, ripe watermelon from our garden! Some years we don't get any melons that ripen and then sometimes we pick them at the wrong time (we already ate one that really wasn't very ripe this summer), but this one was perfect! I tasted so good!

What is cooking in your kitchen?