So I just got a text; apparently my father just dropped by the house, handed my husband a large box full of slightly under-ripe peaches, said “For the love of god take these I was picking up windfalls and I have another bushel at home” and left.
The joys of having parents with a fruit orchard.
In a couple days once they ripen, I’m thinking peach pie 🙂
Would you like: A: my recipe for peach habanero bbq sauce B: my recipe for peach raspberry cordial C: my recipe for peach fritter quick bread?
PLEASE
A: Peach Habanero BBQ Sauce
12 habanero peppers remove seeds, or keep them in for an even more extreme heat, chopped
Saute peppers, peaches, onion, and garlic in oil until softened and onions are starting to brown. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Puree with an immersion blender. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and sweetener. I usually have to add a little extra sweetener.
B: Peach Raspberry Cordial
1 gallon Mason jar
1+ pound raspberries
Lots of peaches
Sugar
High proof vodka
Vanilla bean
Take mason jar, pack as tightly and as full of sliced peaches (skin on) and raspberries as you can. Insert 1 split vanilla bean. Top with sugar, fill jar with vodka. Shake well 2x daily for 3 weeks, then let sit for 3-4 months on a dark shelf, shaking every week.
C: Peach Fritter Quick Bread
Brown Sugar/Cinnamon Mixture:
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Bread Loaf
2/3 cup white sugar
½ cup butter softened
2 eggs
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 ¾ teaspoons baking powder
½ cup milk or almond milk
3 peaches, peeled and diced, mixed with 2 tablespoons granulated sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon
Old-Fashioned Creme Glaze
½ cup of powdered sugar
1-3 tablespoons of milk or cream- depending on thickness of glaze wanted
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Use a 9×5-inch loaf pan and spray with non-stick spray or line with foil and spray with non-stick spray to get out easily for slicing.
Mix brown sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl. Set aside.
In another medium-sized bowl, beat white sugar and butter together using an electric mixer until smooth and creamy.
Beat in eggs, 1 at a time, until blended in; add in vanilla extract.
Combine & whisk flour and baking powder together in another bowl and add into creamed butter mixture and stir until blended.
Mix milk into batter until smooth.
Pour half the batter into the prepared loaf pan; add half the chopped peach mixture.
Sprinkle ½ of the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture you set aside earlier, on top of peach layer.
Pour the remaining batter over peach layer and top with remaining chopped peaches, then the remaining brown sugar/cinnamon mixture.
Lightly pat peaches into batter; swirl brown sugar mixture through peaches using knife or spoon.
Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean, approximately 50-60 minutes.
To make glaze, mix powdered sugar and milk or cream together until well mixed.
Let cool for about 15 minutes before drizzling with glaze.
If you make the raspberry cordial NOW, you’ll have it in time for Halloween. What colour is raspberry and peach together? ORANGE. Add frozen blackberries to the bottom of the glass. A little lemon balm as a garnish. BAM! HALLOWEEN DELICIOUSNESS.
FUCKIN’ HEL YOU’RE A GENIUS
It’s Peach Time ™ again, everyone hit @systlin up with your favorite peach recipie!
It’s also time to bring up the annual Georgia Vs Pallisade stype peach debate again: is a Peach supposed to be Firm and Delicately flavored or is it supposed to basically explode with syrupy juice the second you bite into it?
Tonight’s dinner is a cheese and apple sampler with ice water because it’s hotter than Satan’s own asshole out here and the $4 and under cheese basket had good stuff. From the top- Irish cheddar and Pacific rose apple, aged goat cheese and ambrosia apple, young manchego and a granny Smith apple. Paired with ice water for me and Chardonnay for parents.
when I eat a block of cheese for dinner it’s a depression meal
I mean my depression is pretty awful right now too, which is the other reason I didn’t feel like cooking.
But! An Apple is something you don’t have to cook either, and if it’s safe for you to handle knives, you can cut it up and go full Ratatouille on this bitch for not much more effort. Heck, if you’ve got the budget for it, go nuts and dry some balsalmic vinegar or chutney or Hot Sauce (really, fance cheese and hot sauce is a good combo. Fance cheese, An Fruit and Hot Suace id GREAT). If you’re a meat-eating person, cured meats also don’t need to be cooked and go great with this.
Humans have been doing this “I Don’t Feel Like Cooking” kind of meal forever, and if you wanna be real fancy, you can call it a charcuterie board* and serve it at parties and impress your friends and neighbors and maybe even your mother-in-law!
Also, you will have eaten An Fruit, for which you innards will be grateful.
For me, making “Basic Chore Of Shoving Calories Into An Unwilling Vessel” into “An Art Project I Can Show To Friends” helps motivate me to actually fucking eat something really well. If that feels like too many expectations, you can also turn food into “Flavor Science Expiriment” or “Using Up Comdiments Game” or “I Actually Have A Nice Thing, So I’m Going To Eat It While Watching Netflix In My Jammies Becuase Sometimes Ya Gotta Make It A Special Occasion” or whatever the fuck else weird justification/game/context helps you put calories in your foodhole.
Or just eat your block of cheese and fuck the haters because societal expectations are dumb and you’re a good person who is worth keeping alive and you go eat that cheese.
*Some of the europeans might have standards about what actually goes on a
charcuterie board, like actual charcuteries/certain types of cured meats, but this blog already subscribes to Radical Sandwich Anarchy so but whatever you damn want on your Summer Depression Food Board becuase the real important thing here is that you take care of yourself and if you can find a way to make eating fun again, that’s fucking awesome.
Add some cured meat, nuts, bread, butter, and preserves and you have a true plowman’s board. It’s essentially what man ate for thousands of years.
Trust me. That’s not a depression meal. It’s a return to instinctual comfort.
Take the advice of your local cryptid and satisfy your inner omnivore primate and eat a bunch of uncooked goodies and go have an agricultural revolution or sit around admiring the scenery like we were meant to.
why is broccoli seen as this universally hated vegetable. broccoli is delicious
bc suburban families all over the world literally just steam/microwave their vegetables and serve them plain to their kids. No wonder kids hate vegetables. They’re taught that veggies are supposed to taste bad. but imagine: veggies with spices. Veggies in curry. veggies that are broiled, soaked, sautéed. aghhhh veggies are so good
Veggies of color (VOC)
People post good veggie recipes!!! Go!
i’m a vegan/vegetarian chef and yeah people generally don’t… season or… actually think about their vegetables at all? like if you treat your meal like “MEAT + unfortunate side dish i don’t want to eat + dessert” no fucking wonder you’re going to be unhappy with your results?? literally everyone should know how to cook vegetables WELL, because they can be fucking DELICIOUS?
it’s not surprising to me that most people don’t actually… KNOW how to cook vegetables, which is really, really sad. so imma help y’all out.
– grill your fucking vegetables? if you have a grill, or even a little dinky george foreman–grill those bitches. brush them with olive oil–or a mix of olive oil and balsalmic vinegar if you’re fancy, grill, salt, pepper, fresh herbs if you want, BAM. delicious. if you don’t, roasting is your next best option. you can also (if you have a gas stove and are ambitious) “grill” on the stove top. many a time i’ve stuck a sweet pepper on the stove and lit that bitch up!
– braise those bitches??? good for leafy greens and vegetables like turnips and radishes. finely chop some garlic, onion, or scallion (or all three if you’re bold) and sautee them in a little oil. once they’re almost cooked, add your veg. keep it moving, don’t let anything burn, and add a capful of white wine, or cooking wine. DELICIOUS.
– FRESH. HERBS. ARE. YOUR. FRIENDS? if you cannot get fresh (admittedly, i live on a farm, so i’m never short on things like dill, parsley, thyme, scallion, or cilantro) but they’re amazing on fresh veggies. sauteed in them in a pan? add some herbs. roasted them in the oven? add some herbs (and brown sugar if you want a savory sweet vibe)
– roast them in the oven if you don’t have time (or spoons) to stand up next to a hot ass stove for 5-20 minutes! vegetables that are good for roasting are typically ones that take a long time to cook, eggplants, potatoes, carrots, pumpkin, etc. of course, you can roast any veggie you like!
– MARINATE THOSE BITCHES??? literally you can make delicious marinades out of items most of you already have in your homes: honey/brown sugar, salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, etc.
– FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK STOP ADDING EVERYTHING TO THE PAN AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME. time out your veggies when sauteeing them for anything. if you’re doing a bunch of different ones, add the veggies to the pan first that take the longest. Making stir fry? put those motherfucking carrots in first, because they take FOREVER. onions, carrots, potatoes? put those in first. corn, broccoli, sweet pepper, zucchini? closer to the end, my dude, because they cook FAST.
– ginger and scallion go excellently in stir fry btw. if when you make your stir fry it tastes like it’s “missing something”, that’s what you’re missing. add that shit.
– you do NOT FUCKING NEED CHICKEN/BEEF STOCK FOR YOUR GODDAMN SOUP IF IT DOESN’T HAVE MEAT IN IT! sautee your veggies first, and you can use either powdered or canned coconut milk as the body. it makes for deliciously creamy soup. don’t worry about the coconut taste–it’s pretty much gone by the time your soup/stew is done cooking. coconut milk (especially powdered, and soy milk works for this too, no vanilla flavoring obviously) makes an excellent base for sauces for veggies, even if you eat meat!
lastly, give it the ol’ ratatouille. smell your herbs and spices together. if they seem like they go well, odds are, they’ll taste bangin’ once you combine them. experiment. everything you make will not be good, but you’ll get more comfortable cooking. i’ve been a chef for like two years and i burned some bread today, so it’s okay. you’ll make mistakes. that’s how you learn. don’t be afraid to cut or burn yourself–the more afraid you are, the more likely it is to happen.
you’re welcome, signed your local angry vegetarian chef who wants people to eat more vegetables
This is all very good advice for if you want/need to get more vegetables in your diet but haven’t cared for them in the past. A couple extra pointers form my expirience:
-If you’re subbing coconut milk for a meat-based stock you’ll probably want to add more salt than the original recipe calls for. And some garlic
-Actually, everything needs more garlic.
-The Ratatouille Method Works. It works best when you’re feeling indescisive about what to make for dinner, so you go snack on whatever herbs/veg/sauce you have around and think about the flavors.
-Don’t be afraid to do this with fruit too! Even if you’re a meat person like me, fruit goes great with lots of things and can benefit from many of the above cooking methods. The main difference is that fruit tends to cook REALLY SUPER FAST so add it in at the last minute, or even last second.
-Looking Up Traditional Recipies. Not eating enough plants is a very recent problem, and nearly every culture on earth has got some great veg recipies. Look up basic things like “French Carrots and Leeks Recipes” or find multicultural food blogs or heck, Actually Call Your Grandma* and ask what she did for vegetables.
*Caveat: If your grandma is like mine and all her recipies are from Her Grandmother from Industrial Liverpool and she lived through the Great Depression you might get a very detailed example of What Not To Do, which will at least be informative if also slightly terrifying.
So it’s Flu Season again, and this recipe for Tea To Fix What Ails You was given to me by a Christian friend, and I’ve taken to calling it JESUS TEA due to it’s miraculous properties. Even though it, technically, contains no tea. This tea is as caffinie-free as anything processed in a US plant can get, but be sure to check the provenance and all ingredients in case of allergies.
You will Need:
A Bigass Pot, becuase this is something you make in large quantities
working stovetop
those lil cloth sachets you use for wassail/empty teabags/those lil reuseable loose-leaf tea steepers.
Recipe:
about a quart of water
1 cup apple cider
about half a lemon’s worth of juice
a shitwhack of honey- try to get as local as possible and generally the less-processed the better if you want to build a resistance to local allergens. If you have allergy concerns or don’t like the taste of honey, go ahead and use more processed stuff/another sweetener instead.
three tablespoons/three bags chamomile tea
three tablespoons/three bags rooibos tea
teaspoon crushed cloves
1 cinnamon stick (more if you like it spicier)
¼ tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cayenne or white pepper
Bring water to a simmer in the pot. Add the chamomile, rooibos and spices to steep about 4-5 minutes or longer if you like tea-flavored tar which given you have the flu you probably do. Add Cider, Lemon Juice and Honey until dissolved. Drink all of this in the course of an hour to stay hydrated, make more pots as needed or until you pass out.
FOR MAXIMUM EFFECTIVENESS: gargle warm salt water first for as long as you can, it’ll break up the mucus in your throat and soothe the soreness.
This stuff is hecking delicious, and my dad claims it cured his cold. I’ve taken to drinking it just because it tastes good! Thank you for sharing! 😀 I also found that you can freeze this stuff in convenient single serving sizes, ready to be heated in the microwave when you don’t have enough spoons to make it fresh. Granted fresh is usually best for most food and drinks, but it’s still good.
I also calculated a single serving version, which I’m putting here in case anyone wants to make it that way:
1 cup hot water
¼ cup apple cider (or more, I prefer 1/3 cup)
1 tbsp honey (or more, to taste)
a dash of lemon juice
½ tsp spice mixture
1 ½ tbsp tea mixture
Mix the spices together in one container, and mix the two kinds of tea together in another. Measure out of these the above amounts. (Don’t try to store the two things together, the spices will sink to the bottom and you won’t get the right measurements.)
Use a tea infuser/tea bag/cheesecloth/whatever to keep the herb bits from floating off into your drink. Steep for the usual 4-5 minutes, then add the cider, honey, and lemon.
Side note: ground cloves is cheaper for me so I use ½ tsp of
that instead of 1 of whole. I also like cinnamon a lot so I use ¼ tsp
ground cinnamon instead of a stick (also sticks are really expensive here). If you use a stick, break it into
little pieces. The downside of ground cinnamon is that it
kind of congeals if you don’t stir it periodically, so keep a spoon
handy as you drink.
Since people have been asking for this (I guess the flu/common cold is going around agian), have it again, NOW WITH SINGLE SERVING SIZE, THANK YOU @snowfox102 for doing the math for me!
Is it possible to substitute the chamomile for something else?
Pretty much any herbal tea but mint will work? Rose hip’s good, or you can just double the rooibos. You can even put in black or green tea. I don’t becuase those both have caffiene and I want to be awake as little as possible when I’m sick.
What the absolute fuck is a shitwack of honey?
Once tea tarts cooling down* start adding honey. Keep adding honey. Your significant other or parents will notice and ask “Isn’t that enough honey?” “No.” You rasp, throat raw. “I need the magic bug juice too heal me.” “I think we should check your fever again.” they say. “When I’m fucking done.” You rasp, sounding like gollum with a four-packs-a-day habit. Eventually, there will be enough.
that, is a “Shitwhack”
*boiling honey gets rid of 90% of it’s goodness, so let the tea cool down to drinking temp before adding honey.
Just here to remind you to get your flu shot. And tea is not a substitution for antivirals if you do get the flu.
You are completely right! Jesus Tea will only help soothe your suffering, not prevent infection. Also Influenza is hella dangerous and DOES kill people, so get vaccinated for your safety and the safety of your immunocompromised friends!
The menthol in mint tastes REALLY weird with the other ingredients, that’s all. Like drinking OJ after brushing your teeth.
Some other repeat questions:
-If you don’t hvae acess to Cider, regular Apple Juice works just fine, just check the nutritional information to make sure it’s the 100% DV vitamin C stuff, we want you you feel better ASAP. If you like OJ, that can work too.
-Honey is in here specifically for it’s antibacterial and allergy-reliveing properties, and fruit-based honey substitutes will NOT give you the same benefits.
-If you can’t do honey for whatever reason, sub in your favorite non-sugar sweetener because Sugar/fructose/sucrose/agave will mess with the ability fo your throat cells to retain/release water and make your throat feel WAAAAAAY worse. Aspartame, Saccharin and Stevia won’t aggravate you throat much.
-If you can’t have chamomile, pretty much any Herbal Tea or Tisane will work, as will green tea. The exception is anything that contains St. John’s Wort, which interacts dangerously with pseudoephedrine andacetaminophen, whic are in basically every cold medication available without a perscription in the US.
-If you don’t want roobois, any dark and spicy kind of tea will work- rose hip, most black teas, etc.
-I tend to reccomend against anythign that has caffine becuase being concious with the flu is awful and you need to sleep as much as possible.
-If you don’t like any of the spices, feel free to sub them for something else! The point of those is to add a bit of heat/pepperiness to the tea to help unclog sinuses. If you’re a heat fiend like some of my friends, you can put sriracha in there if you want.
-THE SALT RINSE BEFOREHAND IS KEY. gargling with lukewarm saltwater or using a saline rinse will flush out congestion and help the Jesus Tea work it’s magic more effectively.
To Reiterate: Jesus Tea will only make you feel slightly less miserable and it not a substitute for medical care. Get vaccinated early and often, and if you develop a high fever or other medically worrisome symptoms, get to a healthcare professional ASAP.
fucked up how cooking and baking from scratch is viewed as a luxury…..like baking a loaf of bread or whatever is seen as something that only people with money/time can do. I’m not sure why capitalism decided to sell us the idea that we can’t make our own damn food bc it’s a special expensive thing that’s exclusive to wealthy retirees but it’s stupid as hell and it makes me angry
bread takes like max 4 ingredients counting water and sure it takes a couple hours but 80% of that is just waiting around while it does the thing and you can do other things while it’s rising/baking
plus im not gonna say baking cured my depression bc it didn’t but man is it hard to feel down when you’re eating slices of fresh bread you just made yourself. feels like everything’s gonna be a little more ok than you thought. it’s good.
bread is amazing and it’s also been sold to us as something really hard to make? Every time I tell someone I made a loaf of bread I get reactions like “you made it yourself???” and “do you have a bread machine then?” I haven’t touched a bread machine in probably 10 years. You CAN make your own bread, folks, and it’s actually pretty cheap to do so. I believe the most expensive thing I needed for it was the jar of yeast. It was about $6 at the grocery store and lasted me MONTHS (just keep it in the fridge.) The packets are even cheaper. destroy capitalism. bake your own bread.
You can also make your own yeast by making a sourdough starter, so that cuts cost even more.
But you have to feed the starter daily/weekly and that means it grows quickly, but there are tons of recipes online for what to do with your excess starter. Cookies, pretzels, crackers, pancakes, waffles, you name it!!
Make it even easier – “No-Knead Bread”. All YOU do is mix the ingredients together and wait until it’s time to heat the oven. The yeast does all the rest.
Here’s @dduane’s first take on itand the finished product. We’ve made even more photogenic batches since.
Kneading is easy as well; either let your machine do it, or if you don’t want to or don’t have one, get hands-on. It’s like mixing two colours of Plasticine to make a third. Flatten, stretch, fold, half-turn, repeat – it takes about 10 minutes – until the gloopy conglomeration of flour, yeast, salt and water that clings to your hands at the beginning, becomes a compact ball that doesn’t stick to things and feels silky-smooth.
Here’s what before and after look like.
My Mum used to say that if you were feeling out of sorts with someone, it was good to
make bread because you could transfer your annoyance into kneading the
dough REALLY WELL, and both you and the bread would be better for it.
Then you put it into a bowl, cover it with cling-film and let it rise until it doubles in size, turn it out and “knock it back” (more kneading, until it’s getting back to the size it started, this means there won’t be huge “is something living in here?” holes in the bread), put it into your loaf-tin or whatever – we’ve used a regular oblong tin, a rectangular Pullman tin with a lid, a small glass casserole, an earthenware chicken roaster…
You can even use a clean terracotta flowerpot.
Let the dough rise again until it’s high enough to look like an unbaked but otherwise real loaf, then pop it in the preheated oven. On average we give ours 180°C / 355°F for 45-50 minutes. YM (and oven) MV.
Here’s some of our bread…
Here’s our default bread recipe – it takes about 3-4 hours from flour jar to cutting board depending on climate (warmer is faster) most of which is rise time and baking; hands-on mixing, kneading and knocking-back is about 20 minutes, tops, and less if using a mixer.
Here ( or indeed any of the other pics) is the finished product. This one was given an egg-wash to make it look glossy and keep the poppy-seeds in place; mostly we don’t bother with that or the slash down the middle, but all the extras were intentional as a “ready for my close-up” glamour shot.
I think any shop would be happy to have something this good-looking on their shelf.
We’re happy to have it on our table.
Even if your first attempts don’t work out quite as well as you hope, you can always make something like this…
