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Dec. 13th, 2017 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zesty_pintoMy 3 day weekend was busier than I expected. Okay, that may be an understatement.
Cooking
So I spent Friday morning after work with the slicer. Before the last few days of a farmstand, I bought several pounds of red and sweet onions. Friday was the day: I make red onion jam!
So I drag the wastebasket next to me and start the peeling and quartering of many bulbs, as though I was planning on planting these into the ground.
I think I chopped up at least 6 pounds because the relentless blade of the slicer yielded me enough to fill a 3 gallon pot. I ended up halving the batches and started cooking on them slowly.
So first: caramelize the onions and let them wilt. Brown sugar and time and sure enough I watch a salad bar's worth of onions deplete into a third in size. Then it's red wine, balsamic, and then reduce some more until the onions absorb the flavors.
Meanwhile
Michelle wanted to get laundry done, like ALL THE LAUNDRY done including the sheets and everything else that we don't normally wash but we knew were overdue for a wash. I drag a bag that feels like I was hauling a corpse and a hamper that feels like one pair of legs' worth of laundry down, but not before she gets quarters (I joked with her that she's afraid someone will try to steal our dirty clothes after she rejects me leaving the laundry there while she's away).
We lucked out in that no one was using the machines, so she had free reign. Between the reduction of the onions (which was making our hallway start to smell ike a burger shack), I brought back a third of that body from the laundry room back up with me from time to time.
First jarring yields me three and a quarter pints of jam. Okay, I work on the other half thinking that it will get me more only to find my yield is dramatically less: enough to fill one pint and the rest of that other bottle that was a quarter-full.
More Cooking
Bacon jam. Cook out and then cook strips of bacon, render it out enough until it starts to border crispy. Remove the rendered fat (aka save for future lard cooking), and then cook chopped sweet onions with brown sugar. Add coffee and finish with balsamic vinegar. It's amazing, and you can put the stuff on anything and it'll taste amazing.
The rest of the Weekend
We went to Boston to meet a friend of mine and drop off some of the jars of everything we made, which turned out to be so much more than I originally expected. Bacon jam, dilly beans, onion jam, apple butter, plus a few beer-based hot sauces. Boston was a four hour trip down through what would end up being one of the first bad snow storms we had to work through this year. You could tell who was ready for it and not a lot of people were as a fair number of cars were driving slow.
Still, we made it and we met their kiddo, and their two snorty beagles, and the floofy cat. Their son, by the way, seemed to enjoy climbing and using me as some sort of physical interaction device as I either lifted him, or he used me to climb on or hit or whatever else. His mother was embarrassed about it, but I didn't take too much about it.
Michelle wanted to take a trip to the same hotel we ended up in last time on July 4th and I was in the same mood. 300 a night and we stayed in a junior suite that was beautiful to look at although didn't have all the things we were used to, no complimentary robe and the room was a bit smaller and wasn't even the corner. Not a problem though, we laid back and enjoyed the room, at least until it started getting late and we realized how we didn't bring anything to drink.
Did you know Shaws is 24 hours in Boston? I honestly forgot, but appreciated it all the same as we were staying in the Marriott in the Prudential Center. Apparently, we weren't the only ones with a similar idea as there were a few young adults who came in to get something or another for their post-party trips. A guy in front of us lamented how he was going home alone and inadvertently asked the cashier if he wanted to go home with him, which the cashier politely declined. Back in the hotel room, we hydrated and slept and in the morning we got ready to head back home.
I honestly feel like I should be documenting more, but truth be told this draft is already a day old thanks to a nasty cold I seem to be picking up. At least I already took time off, but this is not exactly how I thought I would spend the day away from work.
I'd love to tell you some more about today, but I'm running out of energy. Just wanted to finish this up. Holding back my stomach contents is unfun.
Okay, talk later. Hopefully the rest of you are good.
Cooking
So I spent Friday morning after work with the slicer. Before the last few days of a farmstand, I bought several pounds of red and sweet onions. Friday was the day: I make red onion jam!
So I drag the wastebasket next to me and start the peeling and quartering of many bulbs, as though I was planning on planting these into the ground.
I think I chopped up at least 6 pounds because the relentless blade of the slicer yielded me enough to fill a 3 gallon pot. I ended up halving the batches and started cooking on them slowly.
So first: caramelize the onions and let them wilt. Brown sugar and time and sure enough I watch a salad bar's worth of onions deplete into a third in size. Then it's red wine, balsamic, and then reduce some more until the onions absorb the flavors.
Meanwhile
Michelle wanted to get laundry done, like ALL THE LAUNDRY done including the sheets and everything else that we don't normally wash but we knew were overdue for a wash. I drag a bag that feels like I was hauling a corpse and a hamper that feels like one pair of legs' worth of laundry down, but not before she gets quarters (I joked with her that she's afraid someone will try to steal our dirty clothes after she rejects me leaving the laundry there while she's away).
We lucked out in that no one was using the machines, so she had free reign. Between the reduction of the onions (which was making our hallway start to smell ike a burger shack), I brought back a third of that body from the laundry room back up with me from time to time.
First jarring yields me three and a quarter pints of jam. Okay, I work on the other half thinking that it will get me more only to find my yield is dramatically less: enough to fill one pint and the rest of that other bottle that was a quarter-full.
More Cooking
Bacon jam. Cook out and then cook strips of bacon, render it out enough until it starts to border crispy. Remove the rendered fat (aka save for future lard cooking), and then cook chopped sweet onions with brown sugar. Add coffee and finish with balsamic vinegar. It's amazing, and you can put the stuff on anything and it'll taste amazing.
The rest of the Weekend
We went to Boston to meet a friend of mine and drop off some of the jars of everything we made, which turned out to be so much more than I originally expected. Bacon jam, dilly beans, onion jam, apple butter, plus a few beer-based hot sauces. Boston was a four hour trip down through what would end up being one of the first bad snow storms we had to work through this year. You could tell who was ready for it and not a lot of people were as a fair number of cars were driving slow.
Still, we made it and we met their kiddo, and their two snorty beagles, and the floofy cat. Their son, by the way, seemed to enjoy climbing and using me as some sort of physical interaction device as I either lifted him, or he used me to climb on or hit or whatever else. His mother was embarrassed about it, but I didn't take too much about it.
Michelle wanted to take a trip to the same hotel we ended up in last time on July 4th and I was in the same mood. 300 a night and we stayed in a junior suite that was beautiful to look at although didn't have all the things we were used to, no complimentary robe and the room was a bit smaller and wasn't even the corner. Not a problem though, we laid back and enjoyed the room, at least until it started getting late and we realized how we didn't bring anything to drink.
Did you know Shaws is 24 hours in Boston? I honestly forgot, but appreciated it all the same as we were staying in the Marriott in the Prudential Center. Apparently, we weren't the only ones with a similar idea as there were a few young adults who came in to get something or another for their post-party trips. A guy in front of us lamented how he was going home alone and inadvertently asked the cashier if he wanted to go home with him, which the cashier politely declined. Back in the hotel room, we hydrated and slept and in the morning we got ready to head back home.
I honestly feel like I should be documenting more, but truth be told this draft is already a day old thanks to a nasty cold I seem to be picking up. At least I already took time off, but this is not exactly how I thought I would spend the day away from work.
I'd love to tell you some more about today, but I'm running out of energy. Just wanted to finish this up. Holding back my stomach contents is unfun.
Okay, talk later. Hopefully the rest of you are good.
