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[BakerAunt]

Green Bean, Cherry Tomato, and Feta Salad 4 generous servings
Marliss Desens adapted this recipe from Edible Michiana (Summer 2018), p. 22, which titled it simply "Green Bean Salad." It is best served slightly warm or at room temperature.

1 lb. green beans, ends removed and snapped in half

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved if small or quartered if large
1 cup pitted black olives, halved lengthwise
1 cup cooked garbanzo beans (may substitute black-eyed peas), drained and rinsed
2 green onions, sliced (or 2 Tbs. diced shallots)

Dressing:
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tsp. Dijon mustard or other brown mustard
1 Tbs. maple syrup
2 Tbs. cider vinegar
1 tsp. Penzey's Sandwich Sprinkle blend (or use 1 Tbs. fresh basil or oregano)
Freshly grated black pepper

Topping:
½ cup slivered almonds, toasted
1 cup crumbled feta cheese (preferably goat cheese)

Make the dressing and set aside, next to a large bowl.

Place 2 inches of water in a large pot and bring to boil. Place prepared green beans in a steaming basket. Place basket over the boiling water, cover with a lid, and steam for 5 minutes or until tender.

Place the green beans into the large bowl. Add the cherry tomatoes. Immediately whisk the dressing again and pour it over the hot beans and tomatoes. Toss with spoonula intermittently over the next five minutes. Add garbanzos or black-eyed peas, then olives, then green onions or shallots. Toss intermittently over the next 5-10 minutes.

To serve: Place in serving bowls and sprinkle almonds and feta over each serving.

What I changed: The original recipe calls for cooking the green beans in boiling, salted water. I prefer to steam them. I added the step of pouring the dressing only over the hot green beans and cherry tomatoes, as that allows the beans to absorb the dressing and the cherry tomatoes to get slightly "cooked." The original recipe calls for garbanzos (chickpeas), but for those who cannot eat them, black-eyed peas are a tasty substitute. I replaced 1 Tbs fresh oregano leaves with 1 tsp. of Penzey's Sandwich Sprinkle blend. I use green onion rather than shallots. I wait to add the topping until serving, as the feta can get mushy in the dressing and the almonds can lose their crunch. That also allows guests with nut or dairy allergies or vegans to still enjoy the salad by not adding those toppings.

[Mike Nolan]

Nothing new planned yet, but the pizza I made using the King Arthur keto wheat baking flour was good enough that it is likely to show up on the menu more frequently. The biggest factor is cost, that stuff costs about $12 a pound and it takes just under half a pound for a 12 inch pizza. (By comparison a half-pound of AP flour is well under $1.)

I suspect packaging is a non-trivial factor in the cost, it has to be more expensive to make 5 1-pound bags than one 5-pound bag.

Still a whole lot less than ordering take-out pizza, which isn't low-carb, though.

I order a 3 pound box of CarbQuick, it is a low-carb replacement for BisQuick. They also have a pizza dough recipe, I'll have to try that one as well.

[BakerAunt]

Rye Blackberry Chia Seed Jam Bars makes 8 x 8 dish
Marliss Desens did a major reworking of King Arthur's "Rye Blueberry Bars" that began with eliminating the filling and substituting a berry chia jam that works with both blueberries or de-seeded blackberries. These bars will have a firm crust the first day but will soften in subsequent days.

For filling: about 12 oz. blackberry chia seed jam (see recipe in jam section), prepared at least two or three days in advance of baking. Set out to warm up while preparing the bars.

For crust and topping:
1 cup King Arthur AP flour
½ cup King Arthur medium rye flour
½ cup old-fashioned oats
½ cup light brown sugar, packed
¼ cup powdered confectioners sugar (sift after measuring if there are clumps)
½ tsp. salt
¼ to ½ tsp. allspice
¼ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. baking soda

1/3 cup avocado oil
2 Tbs. water

Pre-heat oven to 375 F. Grease an 8 x 8-inch glass baking dish, preferably one with straight sides.

In a 4-quart bowl, mix together the dry ingredients for the crust and topping with a pastry fork until well combined. Add oil and water. Toss with pastry fork, switching to a bowl scraper near the end to combine the ingredients thoroughly. Set aside 1 cup of mixture to use as topping. Press the rest into the glass dish, evenly covering the bottom.

Bake the crust for 18-20 minutes until lightly browned. It will not brown as much as a butter crust. Remove the crust from the oven and cool for 10 minutes.

Dollop the Blackberry Chia Seed Jam over the bars and use an offset spatula to spread evenly over the crust, being careful not to get it on the sides of the dish. Sprinkle the remaining crumbs evenly on top.

Return the bars to the oven and bake for about 28 minutes, until the crumbs are browned, and the filling is bubbly around edges. (Again, it will not brown the way crumbs with butter would.)

Cool on rack. These can be cut in the pan, slightly warm or when completely cooled.

What I changed: I replaced 10 Tbs. butter with avocado oil and water. I replaced cardamom with allspice (my husband is not fond of cardamom). I deleted 2 tsp. of vanilla in the crust. As noted, I got rid of the horrible, difficult to make, filling and replaced it with the chia jam.

[BakerAunt]

Blackberry Chia Seed Refrigerator Jam
Marliss Desens adapted a recipe from the site, "the kitchn," in order to use de-seeded blackberries.

2 cups of de-seeded blackberries (will look like 2 cups puree)

1 Tbs. lemon juice
6 Tbs. sugar

3 Tbs. chia seed (may need an additional tsp.)

Place puree in a 1-quart saucepan and set over medium heat for about 10 minutes until slightly thickened.

Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice and sugar. Taste and add any additional lemon juice or sugar that you deem necessary. Stir in the chia seed, beginning with 3 Tbs. Allow to stand for 5 minutes to thicken. Although it will thicken more in the refrigerator, if it seems too thin, stir in an additional teaspoon of chia seed at this time.

Place in container and let cool. Refrigerate or freeze. The jam will thicken over the next couple of days. Use within two weeks.

Note: I have also made blueberry chia seed jam using 2 ¼ cups marginal blueberries. I use the same amount of lemon juice but only about 4 Tbs. sugar, depending on sweetness of berries. I used 2 Tbs. plus 2 tsp. chia seed to thicken it. I have not had occasion to experiment with other fruits.

What I changed: The original recipe uses 2 cups of chopped fresh fruit, which is then cooked for 10 minutes or until it starts to break down and then mashed before proceeding. It used 1-2 Tbs. lemon juice, but I find 1 Tbs. is plenty. The recipe calls for 1-2 Tbs. honey, agave, maple syrup, or sugar. I increased the sugar, as honey and maple syrup are sweeter than sugar. Let the fruit be your guide. I prefer the jam to be not too sweet when it will be used as a bar filling. It called for 2 Tbs. chia seed and more as needed. I found more was needed for a firmer consistency, but it will likely vary with the fruit.

[Mike Nolan]

We had burgers on the grill (I had an Aldi keto bun with mine, Diane did not), the toppings included one of the first full-sized tomatoes from our garden.

I also had a small salad and she had the last of the cantaloupe.

[Mike Nolan]

When I make banana mini-muffins, I wind up freezing most of them and they're great right out of the freezer. Bigger muffins might need a bit of defrosting to avoid being hard to bite into.

The chocolate zucchini bread I was making last summer was pretty good straight out of the freezer, too. (I didn't plant any zucchini this year, in part because we got tired of finding things to make with them last year, and most of those recipes wouldn't be very keto-friendly.)

[Mike Nolan]

I made a pizza tonight using the King Arthur Keto Wheat Baking Flour. A 30 gram 'serving' of that flour is 8 carbs, 4 net carbs. By comparison regular AP flour is 23 carbs in a 30 gram serving.

It was pretty good, not sure I would have known it was keto-friendly. I cut it into 8 slices, each slice was 12 carbs for the crust (8 net) and 4 carbs for the toppings. It came out fairly thin (that's good, we like thin-crust pizza) with a pretty good mouth feel. Next time I might let it rise a bit longer, though.

It didn't want to stretch or roll into a 12 inch circle as the recipe suggested, it came out a bit more rectangular.

Toppings were tomato sauce, sliced tomato, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, Genoa salami, mozzarella cheese, cream cheese and some Parmesan.

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[Mike Nolan]

Most of the sites on growing fruit trees say that peach trees are self-pollinating but will produce more fruit if there is another peach tree nearby. Weather and other factors can lead to non-bearing years, though.

To make things even more confusing, while some fruit trees are self-unfruitful or have sterile pollen, meaning they need another tree to produce any fruit at all, for some self-unfruitful trees it has to be the same variety (genetically speaking) while for others it needs to be a different variety.

[RiversideLen]

During the pandemic when freezers were hard to find, I decided I needed a second one (I have a small freezer in the basement, about 5 cubic feet). I found one online at a large local store so I ordered it even though it was currently out of stock. I think it was 3.5 cubic feet. I kept getting notices from the store that it was still out of stock, they weren't sure when it would be available so do I still want it? I looked at their inventory and found a 5 cubic feet model, so I made the substitution. Now the question was, where to put it. I didn't have room in the basement without moving a lot of stuff around but figured out it would fit in a corner in the dining room, so that's where it went. To make it blend in, I put a table cloth on top, making it practically unnoticeable (that's what I tell myself). Anyway, I'm glad I got it, also glad that I opted for the slightly larger one. What I have learned is that it's hard to have too much freezer space!

I have a peach tree, I got it from my neighbor's father-in-law, he would grow the trees from peach pits. My neighbor got one too. Every year we would both have small peaches (the wildlife got much of mine). The past couple of years, though, the peaches got to normal size. Last year my neighbor's tree feel down. This year my tree didn't make a single blossom, so no peaches. I think it's because my neighbor no longer has a tree, so my tree has no other tree to have relations with.

[Mike Nolan]

We had a refrigerator in the basement fail earlier this year. Nothing of consequence was lost, fortunately.

When I went to Lowes to replace it, I found one that can switch between refrigerator and freezer mode. That made it easy for me to handle defrosting two freezers that were in serious need of being defrosted. Currently it's in refrigerator mode, but not very full.

A year ago my son gave me several Govee temperature/humidity sensors for Christmas. Since then I've added more of them, we now have sensors in the refrigerators and freezers as well as several room around the house. (They will alert me if the temperature goes above or below a defined range for that sensor.) Two weeks ago I added some outdoor sensors on the back patio and front porch. It is interesting to watch the temperature variances around the house throughout the day, inside and out.

[chocomouse]

My latest planting on the deck of green beans looks more like pole beans than bush beans -they are (before the series of thunder storms and downpour we got this afternoon) about 6 feet tall! It doesn't really matter, as long as they produce beans to eat. Our cucumber in the hanging pot are done - my husband forgot to water them when I was in Maine last week. Plenty of green tomatoes on the plants in our in-ground garden, but not sign of red. No broccoli, cabbage, one small cauliflower. No peppers. Plenty of spaghetti squash, a few delicata and butternut. No zucchini, no summer squash. A few peppers, not ripe yet. It's a terrible growing season again this year. Temps 95-96 the first month after planting; no rain, although I did water. The berries are wonderful -- I think I've picked about 10 quarts of blueberries so far, many more to pick; and my husband is picking 3-4 quarts of blackberries every other day now. I was in Maine most of last week/weekend, so no picking, watering, weeding, or trimming then. I may have to buy a 4th freezer just for all the berries.

[chocomouse]

Dinner tonight was grilled (during a thunderstorm) was grilled salmon, corn on the cob grilled in the husks, and a tossed salad.

[BakerAunt]

I made and canned another batch of blackberry jam on Wednesday afternoon. I had intended to do it in the morning, but a rainstorm caused a delay.

For dinner, I used a pound of green beans from our garden to make our favorite summer salad with cherry tomatoes (from the farmers market, as ours are not yet ready), black-eyed peas, green onion, halved black olives, a wonderful dressing, and sprinkled over individual servings, crumbled feta and toasted almonds. This salad will be on our menu for as long as we have green beans. We had it with ham sandwiches.

[Mike Nolan]

My larger tomato varieties aren't doing much yet, though I've got a bunch of Italian Heirloom that are good sized but probably 2 weeks away from starting to ripen, they're a slow variety. Those plants didn't get very big or leafy, so I'm worried about sun scald.

I don't think the seeds that were sold as First Lady II are that variety, not the first time I've had issues with getting those seeds. Time to look for a different variety, maybe Defiant, which is supposed to have a good yield of 6-8 ounce tomatoes for a deteminant variety, and I know they're flavorful. (Diane got 100 pounds of them from a UNL test garden a few years ago, the grad student running that test plot was picking 1000 pounds of them a day for several weeks, but she had two 160 foot rows of them.)

But I did pick 25 ounces of 4th of July and Porter tomatoes today, the Porters are a bit larger than grape tomatoes, usually around .75 ounces each, the 4th of July ones are usually 1.5-1.75 ounces.

Too early to tell if we'll get a bumper crop in late August and September, which is when the peak has been in recent years. It's been really hot and I need some cool mornings for fruit to set. Usually there's a cool spell in mid-August, but the long range forecast doesn't show one yet.

I'm hoping to get enough tomatoes to make several batches of tomato sauce and relish, hopefully with Amish Paste tomatoes, I've still got tomato juice left over from last season, so that's a lower priority this year.

The Italian Heirloom tomatoes make great tomatoes for stuffing them with tuna salad.

[cwcdesign]

Will made tuna salad that we had with lettuce tomatoes and sourdough crackers (not homemade, but a really good brand we sell). It's too hot for much of anything.