This plate of rooibos-poached pears with a chocolate olive oil sauce was our last recipe together before I head back East tomorrow. It was also our 73rd recipe from Sarah Britton’s My New Roots, which means we’ve completed 69.5% of the book’s recipes. The pears were a light but very satisfying end to the meal.
So, I’ve been home in WI for 40 days, and here are our recipe stats:
Overall, we’ve made 49 recipes. That’s 1.225 recipes per day.
17 recipes from Sarah Britton’s My New Roots for a total of 73 completed recipes.
23 recipes (19.8% of the recipes) from Heidi Swanson’s Near and Far.
6 recipes from Green Kitchen Travels for a total of 11 completed recipes.
1 recipe from The Nourished Kitchen.
And 2 recipes from one of my mom’s Ellie Krieger books, one of which is this pan-fried pork dish with fennel and grapes:
Dish No. 21 from Heidi Swanson’s Near and Far: Squash and Wild Rice Soup
Dish No. 22: Easy little rye bread.
Dish No. 23: Popovers. These so did not work! Ah well. We’ll have to try them again.
Recipe No. 71 from Sarah Britton’s My New Roots: Pan bagnat with sunflower seed “tuna.”
Our 72nd dish: strawberry chamomile no-churn frozen yogurt. The chamomile blended with this frozen dessert was a very nice touch.
This roasted vegetable salad is our 11th dish from Green Kitchen Travels.
And a few more pics of our latest attempts at ginger ale. I’m getting much better at it. 🙂
Dish No. 18 from Heidi Swanson’s Near and Far: Cold noodle salad with radishes and a dressing of coriander seeds, paprika, and toasted sesame. My mom made this one. Delightfully refreshing with just the right amount of zip.
Dish No. 19: Red lentil hummus with lemon juice, garlic, and tahini. Who knew I would make red lentil hummus before making chickpea hummus?
Dish. No. 20: Spicy green soup. I was pretty careless with the presentation here, but this spicy green soup was great with a poached egg, brown rice, and plain Greek yogurt.
And look: meat. We made this pot roast from The Nourished Kitchen when my brothers came for dinner.
We made our first fermented beverage: ginger ale. Exciting times. I’ve wanted to do this for some time, but I’ve put it off until now. To be honest, I’ve been a bit scared. This is probably a very simple version, but it’s definitely a start. We made the above ginger starter, what we fondly call “the mother,” over the course of five days.
On day five, we mixed a bit of the ginger bug with warmish water steeped in ginger plus a little maple syrup and white cane sugar. We let it ferment uncovered for 24 hours.
We let the brew continue fermenting tightly covered for another 48 hours.
And then, we drank it. Not scary at all. Excellent first attempt, I’d say. Next time, I’ll try to make it fizzier. Also, I should probably invest in some flip-top bottles.
Here are some pickled turnips we made for good measure.
These fermented things represent our 68th and 69th recipes from Sarah Britton’s My New Roots. Thanks, Sarah.
flat-leaf parsley 