Whew
Oh my, this evening I am exhausted. Today I worked from home in the morning and then spent the afternoon doing too many kitchen activities. One thing just seems to lead to another and before I know it I'm attempting bagels, strawberry jam, and butternut squash gnocchi all at once.
Delicious! But somewhat tiring, especially (and strangely) on the feet.
The bagel recipe was from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking and they are absolutely yummy - chewy and light and disappearing ridiculously fast.
The jam was made with fresh berries I picked on Tuesday at the Charlotte Berry Farm. Its a good crop this year; juicy and sweet and without too many unwanted wormy guests. I used this recipe because it was the first one that came up when I googled "Strawberry Jam" and it looked tasty enough. It is. It is also super duper sweet. I didn't have quite 4 cups of strawberries so I used not quite 4 cups of sugar (it was frightening nonetheless, that is a lot of little white granules). I added juice and as much pulp as I could squish out of one lime, in addition to the full amount of lemon juice.
I hesitated to actually can the jam since it was such a small batch. But really, how fast can two people eat that much sugar? So now we have three little jars to stick in the pantry. Too bad we don't have a pantry.
I am not entirely sure what the thinking was behind the gnocchi. I seem to recall a few days ago seeing someone else's batch of gnocchi with pesto... And then there was this butternut squash that has been on the counter for way too long. And maybe the torrential rain coming down outside had something to do with it. Whatever the case, once the squash was in the oven there was no turning back. They look really pretty on the counter, all cut up and orange. Not quite so tasty as I had imagined, but I think that is often my response to gnocchi. Or perhaps it was due to eating all those bagels.
Labels: cooking