Eight Holiday Greats #2

Eight Holiday Greats From Lucille's Kitchen Garden #2
Our family, at Lucille's Kitchen Garden, shares the second of our eight favorite holiday food traditions.

In This Issue
What to do with all that turkey!
Upcoming Events
Holiday Gift Boxes

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Left-Over Turkey Sandwiches on Corn Bread with Garlic Pepper Jam

Ingredients:
Left over Thanksgiving turkey off the bone
1 jar Lucille's Kitchen Garden Garlic Pepper Jam
1 large loaf cornbread
1 medium diced onion

Preparation:
Place leftover turkey in roasting pan, add any leftover turkey juices and water to create 1/2 inch of liquid in the bottom of the pan.
Add Garlic Pepper Jam to taste and mix in diced onion.
Cover and place in a 250 degree oven for one to two hours, checking to see that there is a minimum of 1/4 inch liquid in the pan.
Slice corn bread in medium thick slices, brush with olive oil and toast in oven until the outside becomes crisp.
Pile turkey on corn bread and serve open faced
**I like to crumble a little fresh Mexican cheese like Queso Blanco over the top and garnish with cilantro.
More recipes available at: www.lucilleskitchengarden.com

Entertaining With Lucille
I am one of those people who can not decide which part of Thanksgiving that I enjoy more:The actual Thanksgiving feast with steaming turkey and heaping piles of mash potatoes or the day after when you have all those great ingredients left in your house to make some really spectacular, quick meals like the one that I have shared with you above. This year, in edition to the traditional holiday fare, I will be smoking a whole salmon, glazed with Garlic Pepper Jam for our vegetarian friends. We have the wonderful tradition of going to see our dear friends the Rundholts and contributing to a table filled with delicacies that represent the myriad of cultures of the people who attend.
We are truly grateful for being able to share our families pepper jams with you and the amazing year that we have had doing so!
We hope that your family enjoys this second Great Eight favorite as much as we do!
Very Sincerely,
Zoie Glass
Owner: Lucille's Kitchen Garden
Passionate About Local Flavor!

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Apple Season is Here

Apple season is starting with some of the early varieties and we spent the weekend with the family in Appleton, MN picking apples with Amy's Mom and Dad and getting peppers from Uncle Lowell. We want to share with you where we get much of our produce and the people who have been so generous in helping us!

June 5th Market Supper

We all love a warm bowl of Risotto in the middle of winter, it nurtures the soul and sooths the ache of walking from our car to the house in sub-zero windchill, but summer pasta can be a delight as well. A light olive oil tossed with the pasta of your choice and whatever fresh produce is in season can make a simple, elegant supper. Top it off and with a fresh salad and some crusty bread and it will be hard not to invite your neighbors to join you. I have four rules for pasta and they are as follows:

~Buy the best pasta you can find. The quality of your pasta makes the difference between tasting homemade and just tasting like take out.

~Salt the pasta water. The best advice that I have heard is "Whenever you think, 'Did I salt the pasta water' . . .salt the pasta water. Pasta takes seasoning very similarly to meat and salt draws out it's flavor.

~Don't waste your good olive oil on pasta water. Have you ever noticed that the oil just sits there on the top of the water? Save your good olive oil for a good piece of homemade bread!

~Don't rinse your pasta after it is cooked and never make it wait. You wash the seasoning off by running it under water. Just strain it and toss it immediately with your sauce.

We hope that you enjoy these recipe's. I especially enjoyed making the Rhubarb Strawberry Basil fool!! It was so quick and it looked beautiful served in martini glasses. See you at the Market!

A Word on Preserves

I think that it is worthwhile to take a bit of this blog to answer a few questions that I am frequently asked, since I would bet that for 20 people who have a question only one or two ask it. Feel free to continue asking questions, I have really enjoyed receiving the emails and will do my best to answer or find out an answer for you. So. . . a word on preserves. .

What is the difference between Jam and Jelly?

Jams and Jellies are both usually made from a combination of fruit, sugar, and pectin. With jelly the fruit chunks are strained out making for a smooth consistency, while jams keep the fruit chunks in, making for a textured consistency. Some people make jam using fruit juice, thus eliminating the messy, sticky, time consuming, step of straining. Lucille's Kitchen Garden makes all of our products from scratch, which means that we start with a pile of fruit and a bag of sugar and move on from there.

What is a preserve and how is it different from jam or jelly?

Preserves, such as our Apple Pepper Preserve, are basically chunks of fruit in a sugar syrup. The fruit chunks can be large, like my mom's, Special for Sick Days peach preserves, where the peaches are whole slices or they can be small like those found in marmalade. Some people would argue. . .really. . . people can get pretty heated over this subject. . .that marmalade is a separate category, however for simplification purposes we will put them in the category of preserves, though, they do use pectin. In our Apple Pepper Preserve we keep the apples a medium, bite size and chop the peppers really fine, because most of our customers use it as a sauce, and would prefer a full bite of apple to a full bite of pepper.

• What makes Lucille's Kitchen Garden jams, jellies, and preserves different from commercially produced products?

Where do I begin? Probably the best way to illustrate the difference is the same way that we compare products at the grocery store and the statement that if your eight year old can't read the ingredient, then it probably isn't something good for you to eat. Here is a label for pepper jelly that is commercially produced and available in most grocery stores:

• Ingredients: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup,Sugar, Water, Grain Vinegar, Jalapeno Peppers, Pectin, Citric Acid, FD & C Red # 4



• Here is our label: Ingredients: Sugar, Peppers, Vinegar, Pectin, Lemon Juice

We use no color additive and we sweeten with sugar. The reason for that is that sugar is . . well . . sugar. The processing is relatively simple dating back to Napoleon's time. We believe that the natural fruit colors are beautiful and need no enhancement. There are two things that make sugar sweet, fructose and glucose. Every cell in the body can absorb glucose, while the liver is required to do all of the absorption for fructose. There have been enough studies to show that fructose is the greater villain of the two. High fructose corn syrup is a much cheaper sweetener developed in the late sixties. The process is very complicated and involves genetic modification. As evidenced by it's name, it relies on much higher levels of fructose to sweeten. High fructose corn syrup also diminishes your feeling of being full which has linked it to the obesity problem in the United States. It is also my opinion that it diminishes, rather then enhances the flavors of fruit in jam. If you would like more information concerning high fructose corn syrup here is a link to an interesting article http://www.westonaprice.org/motherlinda/cornsyrup.html

We also use only locally, sustainably, or organically grown produce in our products, which lowers the food miles and the negative ecological impact that food production can have. This and the fact that our products are made in small batches is reflected in a small way in the price and an enormous way in the flavor.

OK. . off my soap box and on to a great recipe that I tried this weekend. It originated as a Panini dipping sauce and after scavenging the fridge and trying everything in sight, fruit and shrimp to name a few I dub this the Everything Dipping Sauce. Try it the next time you have friends over and let me know how you liked it!

Lucille's Kitchen Garden Everything Dipping Sauce
2 TBS Lucille's Kitchen Garden Green Pepper Jam
1TBS Stone Ground Mustard

Mix it up and serve!

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart. ~Erma Bombeck

If there is one thing that will sustain us through a day when the temperature drops forty degrees, it is dessert. My mother raised me with strict rules about food. The most important of these tenets being that no civilized person would finish a meal without dessert and coffee. For many of my growing years my only motivation to eat at all was the promise of some delectable home made sweet. It is no wonder that my sister is a cake decorator and I make spicy sweet jellies and preserves. If you have been paying attention to the local candy scene you will have had the opportunity to sample Edna's Caramel's, which has a cult like following.

Their caramel's are handmade gourmet caramel's made from the finest natural ingredients. They make a perfect companion to our Real Apple Butter or if you are feeling a bit more adventurous, our Apple Pepper Preserve. While caramel and apples are not a new idea, I think that this dessert treat will offer you something unique for your coffee guests or just a cozy evening at home. You can find Edna's Caramels at //www.ednascaramels.com/



Caramel Apple Explosion





One Sheet Puff Pastry

One jar Lucille's Kitchen Garden Apple Pepper Preserve or Real Apple Butter

Six Edna's Caramels

• Preheat oven according to puff pastry instructions


• Cut puff pastry into six equal squares


• Drop one teaspoon of Apple Pepper Preserve or Real Apple Butter in the center of each square.


• Place one caramel on top of preserve or apple butter


• Pinch edges of puff pastry together making a pocket, be sure to seal the filling in completely


• Bake in oven according to puff pastry instructions


• Take out of oven and allow to cool for a few minuets as the inside goodness will be really hot!


• Serve warm or refridgerate and serve cool at a later time (lock the fridge as they have a tendency to wander off unexpectedly!)

We enjoy ours warm with a cup of Celtic coffee. Since our trip to Costa Rica, home to some of the warmest people one the planet, as well as some of the most talented coffee growers in the world we recommend using a Fair Trade Costa Rican Coffee.

No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever made a good omelet” C.S. Lewis

Since I heard in the news about the decision to not label cloned animals, it made me think even more seriously about the need to buy local meat from small farmers who are accountable for the methods that they use for raising our food. One food that I have been reading about lately is eggs. The FDA has stated that there is no difference between eggs that are factory farm raised and free range, however when you look more closley you realize that this has to do with how they have chosen to define free range.
Braucher's Sunshine Harvest Farm located in Webster, MN offers 100% grass fed beef and lamb and pasture raised chicken and eggs. Yes, farm fresh eggs. It is important to note the difference in the terms free range and pasture raised, as free range only requires that chickens have a certain amount of space and access to the outdoors. They still can eat a diet of processed "Grain products, Protein products, Grain by products" ect. Pasture raised chickens reside primarily outside with access to the indoors and eat. . .well like a chicken. They feed on grass, insects, various green plants and insect larva. Frequently this diet is supplemented with organic grains and in Sunshine Harvest Farm's case, flax. Pasture raised chickens produce eggs that can have up to 50% more folic acid and roughly half the cholesterol of factory farm eggs. With Sunshine Harvest Farm's addition of flax, the ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 fatty acids is three times better then the average USDA factory Farm eggs. Fatty acids can not be produced by your body, they have to be absorbed from food. They are important in decreasing cholesterol, lowering hypertension, helping your blood to clot properly and controlling the chemicals in your body that cause inflamation in your joints. Plus and this is a big one if you love food like I do; eggs that come from pasture raised chickens just taste better.
With that in mind I offer you my favorite breakfast in bed recipe. This recipe looks beutiful and feels luxurious, without taking half the morning to prepare. If you are interested in learning more about pasture raised chickens there is a great article at MotherEarth.com/eggs and you can preorder or buy a farm share from Braucher's Sunshine Harvest farm by calling 952-652-1911. You can also look them up on http://www.eatwild.com/.


Breakfast in Bed

1 organic puff pastry shell
1 pasture raised chicken egg
2 slices local farm raised bacon
1 tbs Lucille's Kitchen Garden Apple Pepper Preserve

• Bake puff pastry shell according to package directions


• Fry or poach egg according to preference (You can buy fancy cook wear to make sure that the egg remains small enough to fit on the pastry shell, but I just use a metal jar lid ring.)


• Fry bacon to preference


• After removing puff pastry from the oven, place bacon slices crosswise on top shell; place egg on top of bacon; finish with a dolop of Apple Pepper preserve and serve. We enjoy a mimosa with crisp fresh squeezed orange juice with our weekend breakfast in bed!