I enjoy making jam and baking breads and muffins. In this blog I will share the various foods I have made and my thoughts on what I am interested in making in the future.
My wife and I enjoy working in our backyard gardens, growing tomatoes, and peppers, and beans, and pumpkins, and strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries.
While I don’t use most of the vegetables we grow in my jams and breads, I do use the berries. I have a neighbor that has a Mulberry tree so I use those as well. The rest of the veggies are for us just to eat. There is nothing like going out back, picking a fresh tomato and making a BLT (although I call them BST’s as we use spinach instead of lettuce) and enjoying the fresh sandwich. That is the ‘taste of Summer’!
A little background:
I started out making beer bread. This gives me a chance to use different styles of beer: light, stout, flavored (Summer Shandy is great in bread), etc. I experiment with the various flavors and add fruits and nuts and candies to them to see what I come up with.
Sometimes the beer breads seem a little heavy though. They are definitely a ‘hardy’ bread. I enjoy them but they aren’t for everyone.
To that end I started looking around for different recipes and found a recipe that uses yogurt. I was intrigued. I made a loaf and wow! Was it good. A lot lighter than the beer breads and has a texture similar to a pound cake, but lighter, and I can add fruits and flavorings to it to make it taste even better.
Then came the jams!
I mentioned that I use our berries to make jam. Well I really enjoy making the jams and everyone that has tried them enjoys them as well. I have made Strawberry Jam, Blueberry Jam, and Jalapeno Pepper Jelly, so far. I see a mixed berry jam in my future and then I will keep trying other fruits and see how they turn out.
There are links at the top of the page so you can see what I have been up to as well as a link to my gardening blog, and you can always contact me if you have any questions, comment, or suggestions.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.
-Mark