Fig Jam
We gathered more ripe figs and decided to make jam after seeing how easy it was. First step is to rinse them, then cut off the stems and slice them up. I quartered these but I’ll be chopping them a little smaller in the future.
Our batch weighed in at 2-1/4 pounds, the recipe we were looking at was for 3 pounds so we adjusted the proportions to suit. We figured 1-1/2 cups of sugar for our jam – we used 3/4 c Splenda and 3/4 c granulated sugar. We went ahead and used the one lemon for the zest and juice.
The figs make their own juice so no need to add any. These have been simmering for a little while. Cover them and simmer for an hour, stirring occasionally. The jam still looked too lumpy even after a go with a potato masher so I buzzed them with a stick blender.
The jam got thicker and darker, we filled 2 half pints and this much of a third jar. I kept it for the fridge. You can see that, even still warm, it’s pretty thick.
Thick and tasty! This is on a hunk of the fig bread we made the other day.
These are just out of a boiling water bath. Recipe says give them 10 minutes at a full boil. The lids sealed with that satisfying snap after a minute or two out.
Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
Pretty good cookies! From this Kraft recipe, Splenda subbed for the white sugar. We had crunchy peanut butter and it worked perfectly. Mrs J had too many to fit on one pan, she opted to test drive the first tray rather than load two. She thought she needed to mash the second batch a little bit flatter and add minutes to the bake.
It’s finally cooled down outside enough to cool the cookies, thanks to a front that brought us some rain early this morning and sun this afternoon. The smeared look to the chips is due to her mashing that first batch while they were still mid-bake.
It added a bit of an interesting look to the batch. Top was mashed during the bake, the bottom cookie is from the second batch. The longer baking time added a little more crunch to the texture, as you would expect. I ate some from both batches and can’t pick the winner.
Critter Cam
That second, bigger, deer hung around for quite a while. We kept trying to count the tines on his right side but with the light as poor as it was we couldn’t say for sure. The left side has 5 for sure, a symmetrical rack would have made him a 10 pointer. He is a big, sturdy, deer. The deer in the first video came by when the big boy had eaten his fill. Nice buck but 2d fiddle to the other.
Fall Menus: This Week
JeffreyW makes a yummy pot roast
I’ve been running to keep up with things and it looks like that is going to continue until the holidays, but I want to try and continue with the weekly menus. Here is the first of our October’s menus. I will do my best to keep this up…
Monday is my favorite Taco Salad and Tuesday is a super easy Creamy Chicken.
Full menus are here: October Menus 1
Wednesday features a Slow-Cooker Pot Roast and a sweet Ice Cream Delight for dessert.
JeffreyW makes Gumbo
Finally, Thursday is an easy Gumbo and Creole Salad and Friday is kid favorite Chili-Mac.
The week’s shopping list can be found here: October Weekly Shopping List 1 Remember it’s color-coordinated so you can eliminate any items from recipes you aren’t using.
In honor of Friday the 13th, this week’s bonus recipe is Bewitched Roasted Squash and Apple Soup, click here.
That’s it for this week.
Tidbits
This poor thing was brought in with two broken legs, the one appears to be less of a problem than the other, going strictly by the casts. I have no other info but he is in good hands at St Francis.
Made some mayo from scratch. The other day I roasted a bunch of garlic cloves in olive oil and used a 1/4 c of that oil in this. The recipe for the basic mayo is easy – put an egg with 1/4 c oil in the bowl of a processor, add a pinch of salt and 1/4 tsp of dry mustard and give it a spin. Start drizzling in more oil until you’ve used about a cup, total, or until it gets to the consistency you are going for. I added canola oil for the drizzle. This turned out very garlicky.
I used it on this sammich – very good! I assembled it after the photo, and went sans lettuce. That’s more of my maple pepper bacon. Yum!
Now here comes Bitsy, slowly, a step at a time. Head on a swivel, looking for threats. She finally made it all of the way in. Yay!
This was Taco Tuesday for us. I’m torn between piling on the goodies or going sparingly with them for a better picture. These white corn tortillas are smeared with refried beans, layered with smoked pork, cheddar, shredded cabbage, and pico de gallo.
This looks like a short loaf of banana bread but it’s actually made with figs. We had a fairly good batch we weren’t quite sure what to do with.
I quartered them and stuck them in the dehydrator overnight – too long, alas. They were barely pliable and too tough. We dropped them into a stout blender and whirled them with water to break them up. The result looked much like bananas that had been pureed so they went into a banana bread recipe.
This is one of those soups that come from what I think of as a “bottomless” soup pot – I keep adding to it as we eat out of it. Those diced potatoes were not in there yesterday and I added more carrots. The beef will get scarce after a few iterations, but right now there’s still plenty.
I’ll wind this up with another shelter kitteh. This one looks like our own Ginger Boy.
Get On My Knees
Lucifer uses the best music:
(And yes, I’m still around, just incredibly busy. I’ll get my groove back soon. Until then…)
