This Week In My Kitchen :: Blog Hop

Capturing my love of whole foods, combined with the activity of a bustling kitchen.

A weekly collection of photos from the center of my home. 

*     *     *     *     *

Top to bottom:: blueberries (over 20# this week), blueberries in the dehydrator for granola all winter long, blueberry-coconut water sorbet with orange blossom water, smoothies (peaches, blueberries, cherries, banana, spirulina, coconut water), gathering herbs to dry from the garden, spiralized cucumbers for making miso fermented pickles, tomato season has arrived, gluten free/dairy free blueberry upside down cake (a blueberry adapted version of this recipe), and blueberry mostarda. 

Blueberries is my theme for the week. Ha! We try to get things in season in bulk whenever we can, and then preserve enough in many ways to last the winter, of course. This week we froze a lot, dried a lot, made cake, mostarda, and a few other things. I try to freeze and dry enough fruit to last us all winter. We make smoothies all the time, plus dried fruit is amazing in homemade granola/granola bars. As for the mostarda, well, none of us really likes jam or jelly. Too sweet. We don't eat bread. So no need to make it. But, mostarda is amazing. I make tweaked versions of mostarda. Usually it is big whole fruit which is sweet and twangy and savory all at once. I like it more like a compote mustard texture. It has the flavor of the fruit, a lot of mustard seeds, the richness of the vinegar (in this I used raspberry balsamic), and isn't too sweet. I usually make several kinds to last us through winter - blueberry, peach, white currant. 

Tomato season is here finally as well. Time to dry a bunch, roast a lot, make salsa to freeze (I like the freshness of frozen salsa more than canned), and later, sauce. We don't use that much sauce these days, so I prefer drying and salsa the most. Cucumbers are here too. This is another one we use differently. We are not huge fans of pickles. Just regular pickles. We make a few bags of freezer pickles every year, plus a few jars of lacto fermented garlic pickles, but overall I like relishes and unusual flavors better. This week I made miso fermented refrigerator pickles. Almost ready to crack them open for a taste!

Door County Cherries should be in soon, so I will have more fruit after this batch. And we will be up to our noses in tomatoes. 


How about you? What has been happening in your kitchen this week?


Be sure to visit Heather at Beauty that Moves for all of the Blog Hop-ees.