I've decided that this weekend needs to be about rejuvenation and taking it easy...so of course I plan on canning corn and making a puppet and oh...it's just going to be like any other weekend just with an extra day to procrastinate.
My farmer's trip this week was plentiful and I wanted to reflect that in my Sat. food choices so for lunch I whipped this up.
Corn/Tomato Saute
Two ears worth of cut corn
Two big sungold tomatoes
7 leaves of fresh basil, rolled and sliced i.e. chiffonade
One large clove of garlic, pressed or microplaned
2 tsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
Saute until most of the liquid is cooked out. Serve over pasta.
Good additions would be a red pepper or a pablano pepper, pattypan squash, maybe a protein like chunks of chicken or tofu...there's lots you can add to this dish.
I like it just as is, the sweetness of the corn with the sweetness of the sungold tomato, cut by the garlic and pepper really appeals to me.
I am revamping Helmsley. It seems like a huge waste to just toss that finished mouthplate, slightly crooked or no. I ripped all his features and his skin too (how sick does that sound?) and cut down his head and added fur instead of skin.
I changed his eyeballs and attached his shirt. I used a hair tie to mark his iris and a nerf dart to mark his pupils. I may leave it that way or I may paint in some more, I kinda like the crazed look it gives him and once he has eyelids it may be better that way anyway.
Mary Beth, the before seen armless little girl puppet, has arms now and is performing hip hop numbers for her webcam. I still need to fortify her rods but for simple purposes, she's done too.
This afternoon I canned corn. Corn is a low acid food which means it has to be pressure canned to be safe to eat. That means I borrowed my cousin's pressure canner.
I bought twenty five ears of corn from the farmer's market and cut the kernels off using a nifty little tool my mom found at a garage sale.
I filled hot jars with the corn and 1/4 tsp. salt each and packed them down a bit and added boiling water, running a chopstick around the jar to release air bubbles leaving an 3/4ths of an inch headspace and screwed the lids on. Following the pressure canner's instructions I then added two quarts of water to the canner, and added the jars (this canner held 8 pints) and screwed the lid on and let it boil. Once the valve steams, time it for ten minutes then add the gauge (in my case a ten pound gauge) and wait for it to rock and his vigorously. This scared my poor cats senseless. Turn the heat down til it rocks and hisses gently...this has yet to work for me, it still hisses loudly and rocks around intermittently no matter what the heat. Pints are processed for 55 minutes then turn off the heat and let the canner cool on it's own time, don't try and speed the process along, as it could be holding a lot of pent up steam and blow the lid up on ya!
So there you have it, that's corn. It was my favorite canned item last year so I had to make sure I made more this year. the twenty five ears were more than enough for the eight pints so I froze the remainder, I may can another round next week.
To end my Saturday, I decided to dehydrate watermelon! Well, my cousin offered me one they had received and I have been wanting to try it out. I cut the watermelon to 1/4th inch (approximately, I was a little thick on a few) and skipped de-seeding the slices as that would take me all night and leave me with watermelon mush, laid them out on the dehydrator and I'll find out tomorrow how they turned out!
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