Today's adventure in gardening/cooking/homesteading.....canning!

First, tomatillo salsa verde (photo left) - perfect for enchiladas or just eating with chips). Tomatillos are sort of funny little things, they look like mini green tomatoes, are a little sticky on the outside, and are housed in a casing that looks like a lantern. My roommate grew them in his garden this year as an experiment, and they seem like a success to me! They're both a bit sour and sweet when eaten raw, and they make a really refreshing salsa.

Ingredients

1 pound of tomatillos
1 onion
2 Jalapeño peppers and 1 Poblano (totally variable, this is just what I had in the garden)
1/4 c. chopped cilantro
Salt

Directions

Remove the husks and rinse the tomatillos. Put them in a saucepan with water to cover and bring the water to a simmer. Cook for about 10 minutes, until they change color and squish easily.

Combine the tomatillos and all the remaining ingredients in blender.

If you’re freezing or storing in the refrigerator, you’re done. If you want to can it, proceed to Step 3.

Put sauce in a pan and bring to a boil. Meanwhile, prepare your canning equipment. Gently boil your lids and have a big pot of water going for water-bath canning. Be sure to sterilize the jars. Transfer the hot sauce to clean, hot jars and assemble the lids.

Transfer the jars to the water bath. The water should cover the jars. Bring the pot back to a boil. Process pint jars 25 minutes and quart jars 35 minutes.

Then we moved on to roasted tomato salsa....more to come.

PS: A great resource if you're canning, drying, smoking, pickling....or just curious: the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

From Jezebel: A powerful story, great parents: Meet Jackie, A Transgender 10-Year-Old With Full Parental Support

NPR: Mark Bittman on Fresh Air (part of Fresh Air's "All You Can Eat Week")

Left: made my first pie yesterday! Along with fresh, fragrant, blackberries from my roommates garden, I used this recipe for the crust and this one for the pie, and these instructions for the lattice top. Gotta say, it tastes darn good.

Also: dried apples in our homemade (not by my household, sadly) dehydrator (a good intro to dehydrating here), and made my first batch of tomato sauce to eat now and to freeze for later deliciousness (we loosely based it on that recipe, but added peppers and roasted eggplant from the garden, plus sauteed onions).

Uh, confession. After all my planning and bragging, I totally forgot that I was supposed to start my "month of Bikram" yesterday - what can I say, September snuck up on me. But, I'm not using that as an out! After a week of truly lazy vacation, I took a 30 mile bike ride today, and I'm all set to hit up Bikram this afternoon. I'm pretty nervous to return to that hot, sweaty room, and face myself (in the mirror and on the mat), but excited about what 30 days of Bikram will look like...

My love for cranky detectives with deep dark secrets and tumultuous internal lives is well documented, but my most recent discovery (courtesy of the fine folks at Murder By The Book) has been a surprising and welcome change: The Coroner's Lunch is the first in a series about a 72-year-old doctor (now reluctant coroner) named Dr. Siri Paiboun, who lives in Laos. Wonderful writing and storytelling, a refreshingly unique protagonist, and the chance to learn more about a country I know very little about.

Roasted Eggplant Spread

I had some roasted eggplant left over from last night's epic tomato sauce making festivities, so today's domestic undertaking was Roasted Eggplant Spread. I made a few changes to this recipe (from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook), details below:

Ingredients
2 medium eggplants, peeled
1 hot pepper, seeded
1 yellow onion, peeled
3 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons tahini
Handful of dried tomatoes (right out of the dehydrator!)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Cut the eggplant, pepper, and onion into 1-inch cubes. Toss them in a large bowl with the garlic, olive oil, cayenne and salt and pepper. Spread them on a baking sheet. Roast for 45 minutes, until the vegetables are lightly browned and soft, tossing occasionally during cooking. Cool slightly.

Place the vegetables in a food processor fitted with a steel blade, add the lemon juice and tahini, and pulse 3 or 4 times to blend. Taste for salt and pepper. Enjoy!

Image: the insane bounty we harvested yesterday from my roommate's garden.

It's no Dutchess & The Duke (RIP) but I'm enjoying the somewhat reminiscent The Head and the Heart "Rivers and Roads." (also: their Daytrotter session)

From NPR: Alice Waters: 40 Years Of Sustainable Food

Happy Birthday to the amazing Howard Zinn, who died last year. A true hero.

Image: source.

Every outfit Cher Horowitz wears in Clueless in under 60 seconds. Exactly what it sounds like. Magic.

A recent article from the Times, The High Price of Looking Like a Woman, and commentary from Feministe

One thing I love about Fall (which is swiftly on it's way!) is wearing socks. I love socks - cozy socks, handmade socks, striped socks. So I'll take one of each of these please.

The remarkable lives on Newark sanitation truck No. 2646

NYTimes: Addressing the Justice: "The poor need representation in court and thousands of law school graduates need work. This shameful state of affairs is unnecessary."