Author: Wolsey

I am a boring middle aged man. I am an author and a maker. I do a lot of cooking and gardening.

Air Fryer Grilled Cheese

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I wasn’t sure what to do for lunch today, but I had some garden grown red cabbage and some leftover feta cheese.

I decided to make air fryer grilled cheese sandwiches. I like doing them this way because I can toss two of them in the air fryer at a time, and they have a very crunchy exterior and soft interior that just is melty perfect. Then my wife and I get them both at the same time.

All the fixings for grilled cheese. Tally is the background judging me.

I assemble the grilled cheese right in the fryer basket. For these I did a layer of cheddar on my buttered bread than sliced up little diced cubes of feta to lay on top, before topping it with another layer of bread. This is some sort of sourdough sandwich bread.

Two assembled grilled cheese in an air fryer just waiting to be grilled.

I toss it in for 350F for 5 minutes, flip them over, and 380F for 6 minutes. Then I pull them, slice them and they are done.

The Cole slaw was super easy, too. I just made the slaw dressing as follows:

  • 3/4 Cup mayo – we use low fat.
  • 3 TBSP Apple cider vinegar – I prefer Braggs
  • 2 TBSP sugar
  • Salt and pepper to taste.

I mix that up and keep it in the fridge and just toss it in a bowl with some diced red cabbage from the garden. It’s a favorite in our house. I usually keep a container of this slaw sauce in the fridge at all times. It’s also tasty on carrot sticks.

Two plates with the grilled cheese, slaw, and sugar wafer cookies.

This literally takes me about 15 minutes to make. I keep diced cabbage in the fridge with premade slaw sauce, and that way I can toss it together on a work day, and then go back to tying out financials to source documents with a nice hot meal in front of me.

You can’t have this in an office environment! Well, I mean, you are not supposed to. We do have a forbidden panini press hidden in the closet that my coworkers and I use in the office, but this is much less likely to get me in trouble.

Change of Plans – From Canning to Freezing

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One weeks garden harvest of tomatoes. Ignore the random cucumber, it’s for a sandwich.

First issue, is this is over a week of my tomato harvest. If I wait any longer to do anything with them, I will lose them. It’s just not worth canning up 1 or 2 jars at a time. Second, I have a few dietary restrictions that make things challenging.

Somewhere around my late 40s I just stopped being able to digest garlic and onions. Like full stop, does not work. I did not know what this was until a gal that was on the FODMAP diet talked about it with me. I am not a speciality diet kind of guy so I had always assumed this was another weird fad.

Turns out, it is not. I have an issue with garlic and it has a vendetta against me that is biblical in proportions. Onions, are a close second. I just can’t eat them anymore which sucks because my favorite soup is French onion soup, and I don’t think I cooked with out garlic and onions since I was 16 years old.

Turns out the FODMAP thing has some elements that work for me, so while I do eat out and end up with garlic in my food I use Fodmate and that keeps it to a low rumble, literally. I don’t want to make my own food with garlic or onions at all though.

This is one of the reasons I really prefer to cook at home. It’s just easier to keep garlic and onions out of everything that way.

This complicates things for me when I do canning with approved recipes. A lot of the tomato based recipes are like 50% onions. It’s easy to omit the garlic, but not so much the onions. I am so new to canning I just don’t feel safe water bath canning anything not in my books, either. I just don’t want to adjust recipes.

My garden has a lot of tomatoes, but when I looked up the Ball book recipe it would take 2 and 2/3 pounds of tomatoes for each 16 oz canning jar for the crushed tomato recipe. That’s the only one that doesn’t have an overwhelming mass of onions. Canning for 1 or 2 jars just doesn’t seem worth it.

So this morning I switched gears, and looked up freezing. I have a chest freezer, and turns out you can freeze your canning jars. Everything I have searched for says they will retain flavor for 12 months, but some folks say they have used them from the freezer up to 3 years later.

All this means, is when I finally get an electrician to run power to the shed, I will be buying a much larger freezer for in there.

Processing tomatoes for freezing. Finished tomatoes on the left, a boiling pot of water, cored tomatoes on a towel, and a batch of ice water with recently boiled up tom’s, and finally a cutting board with recently cored tomatoes.

This took me like 20 minutes total to do. I cored them, boiled them for 1 minute, then tossed them in ice water, and peeled them and put them in my 16oz canning jars.

Four 16 oz wide mouth canning jars with tomatoes in there. Also seen is endless bags of breakfast sausage from Costco, and frozen leftover rhubarb for jamming. That will be made into a pie by the wife today, along with Costco corndogs, and some cool whip and ice cream. This is the house freezer, not the chest freezer in the shed.

I was a little worried about headroom. It said to give an inch so I was hoping I left enough? I crammed them all in, and it looked good. I checked this morning, and it froze beautifully. Like now when my wife makes Indian and needs a can of tomatoes, we have them. I think we use them in curries most of all, so this is exciting. I am ecstatic to have my own food that I grew ready to use.

Gardens make breakfast better

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I never thought my strawberries would make it, and about half of them decided to grow like mad, and the other half produced berries. Not enough for jam, but enough for strawberries for my breakfast.

Breakfast of champions. Garden strawberries and yogurt, and hot cocoa. I know it’s like 90F every day, but I still have to start the day with hot cocoa.

The strawberries I got from Scenic Hills Farms on Etsy. They are called Eversweet. They are definitely sweet, and red all the way through. Very worth it.

Garden mini update:

I may have misjudged my ability to preserve and can, and work with so many tomatoes. My Ball book has crushed tomatoes that I can make per jar so I will probably can a jar at a time until the majority come up.

The problem is I am getting more than I can use at once, but not enough I can process into canning jars. I need 2 and 2/3 pounds per jar. I have close to 2 pounds sitting on my counter until tonight or tomorrow morning. I would rather do it today as I have today off, but I may have to can it up tomorrow for just one jar before or after work. Which, with my nature being inherently lazy, seems like a lot in one day.

The cucumbers are kind of doing the same thing. I am getting two or three at a shot, often enough I have to pull them or risk my plant giving up on me and dying, but not enough to can. I might have to make refrigerator pickles out of a bunch of them unless or until a huge batch comes up.

I am working it out, but there are definitely logistic issues about planning to can and preserve these that I never considered. Gardener Scott, on his Youtube channel, has a freeze dryer, and now I can see the appeal. You can do a small bit at a time once you own the machine. That’s not even close to being in my budget though. Nor do I have a powered shed to plug it into.

As for my latest crop I planted, the beets? They are already starting to come up. I just have to keep everything watered during this 90F+ week.

Watering has been a bit of a challenge with the overwhelming record heat. We don’t normally do this kind of hot extended sunshine here in the Pacific Northwest, so I am glad I put in the irrigation drip lines. I would not be happy standing out in it, watering for hours, with the sun on my head. Good job past me!

For a first year garden, these are all great problems to have. It’s already making me consider next year and how I want to handle that. So far, so good though.

Jam and Garden Update

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I managed to make Jam last Friday. I took it easy all week, so I could do it.

This is fifteen jars of strawberry rhubarb jam. I could not have done it without over six pounds of rhubarb my real estate gal brought over to me. I got up super early and hit the business version of Costco at 7am, and grabbed the strawberries. So far, in my area, Costco has better fruit than anywhere, and it’s cheaper in bulk.

I was up and jamming, done by 10:30am, and back to bed for the rest of the day! That’s definitely a success because I got it done. Baby steps!

As for the garden? See for yourself.

My garden is looking good. You’ll notice I am missing broccoli in the upper left bed. I harvested it, and then all it was doing was attracting cabbage moths like crazy. I decided to pulled it. It will compost it down for next years beds. My bush tomatoes are going crazy in the back. Even with careful pruning I am no match for them.

My cucumbers on the lower left are also doing amazing. I hope I have a lot to can as pickles!

This is my old broccoli bed. It was planted with beet seeds that I soaked overnight. I also laid out some of that Rainbird irrigation tubing so I can keep them watered with the rest of the garden.

I was using the dripper ends on the broccoli going to each plant, but honestly, I prefer the drip lines. They provide enough water, and may not go to each plant, but setting up individual drippers takes time, and is hard on me to hunch over and get it sorted out. This takes minutes and works just as well.

This right here? That is the first tomato of the season. Getting the 55 day tomato seeds from botanical interests really allowed me to hedge my bets. I got a version called Glacier from Botanical Interests which is a semi-determinate, whatever that really means is up in the air for me.

I have ordered seeds from a few different places, but I find Botanical Interests has way better packets, and has information on the plants inside the packets too. Plus, I feel I get a higher germination rate on their seeds. One of the guys who runs that business has a Youtube channel called Epic Gardening. He has good videos, and tutorials, and explanations on there, with a generous side of sales. That’s how I learned about Botanical Interests, so I guess it worked out.

I am in zone 8b, and am closer to the coast. I am in a weird little microclimate that is always breezy too. Like you could be blocked on either side, but our little valley is constantly just a little breezy to outright windy. In this heat, that is a bonus.

While I am not a fan of temperatures above 70F, my garden is loving it. I have been in the Pacific Northwest my entire life, and we hit record temps all July, and are looking to do it for August as well. I figure since this is happening, my beets may get a good bit of sun and warmth to grow up.

This is the first time I have ever had this much space, and a lot of the plants I am growing are first time plants. I am shocked and pleased at how well it’s all going.

Disability and Jam Making

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My real estate gal, who sold us the house we are in, is an absolute hero. She got the sale despite multiple bids, by telling the seller our history. We are first time home owners, and we’ve both been homeless as kids. That we’ve fought our entire lives, and now that we can buy a house, we didn’t have enough to win a bid war of any kind.

The owner was older, and he chose our bid because he wanted to give us a chance, and even left us a lawn mower, and extra light bulbs, and fridge filters. The guy was a saint.

She still comes and checks in on us from time to time, and last weekend she brought me some rhubarb. My rhubarb plants are tiny, and won’t be ready for harvest for a year or more and she’s a gardener too, and had enough to spare. I was very touched by her gifts.

6.5 pounds of cleaned and cut rhubarb!

My plan was not to do more jam canning until this coming Friday, but with the lovely gift, I felt I should probably do it Sunday anyways. So I went to bed Saturday night fully intending on getting to the store in the morning.

Unfortunately for me, my body was not cooperative. Standing all day and jam canning on Friday, after a full work week was already as much as I could do. I woke up Sunday, and that was it. I was done. I was already sore upon waking. I would have liked to be able to just go go go, but I have a disability and sometimes I just can’t.

Then, I remember I could process the rhubarb by freezing it, and could do the jam this weekend. That gave me days to rest up in preparation for this.

Processing rhubarb.

I cleaned, and cut up all the rhubarb. I peeled the bigger stalks, but left the smaller ones whole. I laid them out on cookie sheets and froze them in batches.

I then packed them into freezer ziplock. I packed two jam bags with the exact amount I need for the jam I am making, and I still have pounds of it leftover. My wife is thinking of making a pie out of some of it. This is honestly garden gold right here.

Sometimes you can only do what you can do. I do have a physical disability, but it would be the same if my disability wasn’t physical in nature. Sometimes you just have to slow down. I have to remind myself that it’s okay to slow down.

I am trying to give myself the grace I would give someone else. If someone came to me and said I can’t do this today. I am already sore, and it might push me into a painful situation where I will go to work the next day and struggle? I’d totally give them the out.

But I think it’s harder to give ourselves that same grace. It’s easy to tell ourselves we can power through, that everyone else is fine, why not us? It think that is a hidden struggle with disability, especially if you have an invisible one.

When I first started having problems with my joints, I did that all the time. It ended up with me in pain, flat on my back. Now, if I slow down, and just do what I can? It just works out better.

I am still going to get that rhubarb jam made, but it will be on my timeline, when I am able. That’s okay.

Blueberry Jam and Syrup

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Yesterday was blueberry canning day. We got up super early, and went to the business Costco that is open at 7am. We bought 8 flats of 18oz blueberries. We only needed 6.5 flats, but that meant we could have blueberry smoothies, and my wife can make a blueberry cobbler later. We paid under $40 for all of them.

As an aside, I have purchased canning berries all over town. Trader Joes, Fred Meyers, QFC, and some farmers market stands. They don’t hold a candle to the quality and price of Costco where I am at.

I used two recipes:

  • Blueberry Syrup – Ball complete Book of Home Preserving – page 193
  • Blueberry Jam – Ball Back to Basics – page 63

I only use ball or USDA recipes. I follow them religiously, as if my life depended on it. Which it kind of does with canning, because botulism is not how I want to end my time on earth.

The first thing I did was prep the syrup blueberries because they have to drain for like 2+ hours. I used one of those jelly bag rigs that you can buy on amazon, (not an affiliate link) and just set it up on a bowl to drain. It was a rather macabre scene, and I felt like a witch making a potion.

This actually took more like 4 hours and it probably could have been left a few more.

There are recipes like Ball’s 2-in-1 that lets you make blueberry butter with the solids that remain, but honestly, I tasted the solids after I let it drain. They taste flat, and are all the flavor is very reduced. I just composted the solids that were left in the bag, which was quite a bit more than I expected. My compost bin now looks like a murder scene.

Once that was set up, I then started with the blueberry jam. My jam recipe was small, so I had to do it twice to get the yield I wanted. That was fine. I was expecting to take the day for this.

The biggest amount of time was the water bath heating up. I had to toss the water and start over between the second jam load and the syrup because jam got into the water, and crystalized sugar on all the jars.

Syrup on the stove, and jam cooling on the towel.

The syrup took longer than I expected because my recipe called for heating it to 230F. My wife kept assuring me it takes a while because she’s a candy maker and baker, but this took FOREVER. It was also getting into afternoon and my house was already hot. I am not a patient man when I am sweating.

My jam turned out perfect, but the syrup was very thick. I think between how long it took to boil, and the pectin in the fruit, it ended up thickening up. I basically ended up with 8oz jars of blueberry syrup concentrate.

To remedy this, I made up a simple syrup of 1/2 cup water to 1/2 cup sugar, and added that to my 8oz jar of syrup for the fridge. It did not dilute the blueberry flavor at all.

Costco restaurant squeezie bottles for the win!

Just listening to the canning jars POP when they sealed was cool as hell. Every time a jar popped I ran to my wife and told her. She apparently thinks I am cute when I do this. It’s the best part of canning. It’s when you know you did it right.

We tested the syrup out this morning when I made waffles.

WAFFLES!

These were great. Like the raspberry and strawberry jam, the flavors are through the roof. I cannot buy jam that tastes this good. You just can’t. It’s not blueberry flavoring, but real blueberries. It’s tart and sweet, and so fresh tasting.

I don’t know if I can go back to buying jam. It’s just not the same.

Canning Jars Have Arrived

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All my canning jars have arrived. I have some more 8 oz and 4 oz ones, but I have a plan for this next month that will be canning heavy.

My canning list is as follows:

  • Blueberry Jam
  • Blueberry Syrup – for pancakes!
  • Blackberry Jam
  • Raspberry Jam
  • Strawberry Jam
  • Marmalade
  • Pickles – from the garden.
  • Tomato sauce/paste/in general – from the garden. I don’t know what form this will be in, but boy howdy! will there be a lot of tomatoes this year!

The raspberry and strawberry are on the end of the jam list because I still have some from the last time.

We eat a lot of jam, though. We have it on toast, with peanut butter, and on waffles and pancakes. It’s also good with crackers on a cheese plate. Discovering home canned jam was like a doorway into accelerated jam use. From my estimate we have probably doubled how much we eat now. I’m cool with that. It’s easy and fun to make.

My plan is to maybe do some this weekend, and then try for two jams at a time until we are done with the jam and syrup list for the year.

Marmalade is new to me, so I have to figure that out. My wife loves orange marmalade. I have a recipe and will figure it out. I use pretty exclusively Ball recipes because there are some very dangerous canning directions online, and I am not really okay with sources that are not Ball or the US government preservation sites. Botulism is not the end I want, so I am going to stick to safe recipes.

I have never done pickles or tomatoes. I just have them growing in my garden, and wanted to water bath can some for the year.

That’s super ambitious, but I am into it. We will see how far I get on my plan, but I am all set up and ready to go.

ADHD Kitchen Design

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My wife has ADHD. Amongst other issues, if she doesn’t see it, it ceases to exist in her memory. Sometimes this means she re-buys things she has in abundance, or puts things away in a fascinating way.

When we moved into this home, I wanted to make sure she could be as at home there as I was. She loves to bake and do cooking projects. She researches recipes, often historical, and makes them.

I wanted the kitchen to work for her. To this end I put in open shelves for the things we use day to day the most.

She would lose her coffee cups all the time, but now she always knows where they are. She can find everything, and doesn’t have to search.

I made sure the most used pans were visible, and I put a basket for the bread, and all the snacks. She has stopped losing the snacks now that I’ve set it up this way. She can find everything she wants more easily.

I also put a lot of the utensils she uses most on the countertop visibly, and so she can find them easily. She’s said having the utensils there has been so much easier to work with for her.

My latest effort is to make labels for the cupboards. This isn’t the most popping color right now, but I plan to paint the cabinets dark dusky orange. Then they will pop!

I created the labels in Affinity Design, and after the first label was done, I just used it to make the rest as a template. Then my wife printed them out and laminated them all. She’s got a whole side project with 5 x 7 ” cards for the game she is running. She hands them to the players as a mission card, so I figured I’d commandeer her process for kitchen labels.

This will look so much better when the cabinets are painted. They are very 1980s right now.

I can’t label everything in every cupboard, because she would be overloaded by it all. So instead I tried very big summaries, and specifics that she uses the most. We are also old, and wear glasses, so I used a HUGE font that she can see without glasses.

So far, it seems to be working. My wife can see what she needs, and it works with her ADHD.

I am interested to see how this works for her going forward, and I like to keep checking in with her to make sure there isn’t something better I can do to work for her.

The biggest challenge is to make it all look like a design choice? However, I don’t care much as long as it works for her, cute or not. I think we managed to make it cute though.

Herbs & Poverty

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Yeah, yeah, I know. this bed needed quite a bit more dirt, but you work with what you have!

Today I got to use parsley and basil in my garden for the first time. I mixed them in with my tuna salad for dinner today. Just basic tuna salad. I mixed in some green onions for good measure, and that was it.

However, the parsley and basil were fresh with the green onions. The flavors were shocking to me because it’s been so long since I have had ready access to fresh herbs.

This is what happens when you were steeped in poverty when you were young. I was on my own by the time I was 16, and for reference, once I spent $10 for 2 cases of top ramen and damn near gave myself scurvy because it’s all I ate for three months. Not because I wanted to, but because I was a teenager trying to problem solve not starving to death.

I just didn’t have the education to know what to do with food. It’s not that my family, before I was on my own, were poor. They were anything but, yet their food decisions weren’t really big on fresh raw vegetables and home cooked meals. My mother’s cooking nemesis was the box brownie mix. We either chiseled it out of the pan half burnt, or used a spoon.

My first experience with real fresh well cooked food was when I worked at The Black Cat in my home town. It was a four star restaurant, and I learned the basics of cooking that would put me into the kitchen in every place I worked until my mid-twenties.

When I was 16, I wasn’t even sure I would get food the next day, and I certainly could not have imagined owning a home, and having an honest-to-god food garden.

I also feel like a proud father because my mint plant is blooming.

That manky Trader Joes mint is finally taking off. You know what that means? My mint jelly dreams will be coming true next year. Not to mention the cocktails. Don’t worry. It’s contained in its own 2 foot raised bed. It can have that bed, and no more! If it bleeds into the lawn? It’ll just smell good when I mow.

Cutting up that basil made me grateful all over again that I even got this chance to do this. There’s no way I could in an apartment. Sometimes I think about how far I came from that homeless street rat, and it’s hard to believe. I’d have never believed I could come this far back then.