Cooking Floyd: Boursin-style Herbed Cheese Spread

I have trouble throwing perfectly good food out and that extends to my herbs as well.  To keep the herbs producing leaf and staying bushy they need to be cut back on a regular basis.  That leaves me with lots of cut herbs of all types.  I unload a good bit at the farmers market but even then I bring home herbs.  I'm thinking I should feed them to the chickens we're going to raise for broilers and roasters and have them herbed from the inside out but I know that's just fanciful thinking.  Probably.  I'm always on the lookout for ways to use up fresh herbs.  The other day in the pricey cheese section of the grocery store I was looking at a container of Boursin cheese spread.  Boursin cheese is a soft creamy cheese flavored with a mix of herbs and garlic.  Looking at the ingredients on the package I thought, "How hard can this be?"

Turns out, not very hard at all.

Preserving Floyd: Peaches Part III, Peach Butter

If I have any signature preserves it's probably peach butter and bread and butter pickles.  Those are the most requested preserves by friends and family that I make.  Luckily, the peach butter is another one of those recipes that can be made in any size quantity.

Preserving Floyd: Peaches Part II: Jam 2 ways

I like citrus.  A lot.  And I especially like lemony things, but lime is creeping up there too.  This year I planted lime and lemon basil and I am just enchanted with both flavors.  In fact, lemon basil pesto has supplanted traditional basil pesto in my affections!.  I like basil on fruits as well and this year thought I'd try the lime basil in my peach jam.

Another recent discovery is how much I like sweet spiked with a tiny bit of hot.  Enter peach jam sweetened with maple syrup and warmed with red cherry peppers.

Preserving Floyd: Peaches Part I: Dried and in Tea Syrup

Mmmmm..., Peaches.  If anything comes close to rivaling strawberries, it's peaches.  I put up peaches in multiple ways and we'll start with the easy ones.  Peaches in a medium Earl Grey Tea infused syrup and dried peaches.

I buy my peaches from Wade's Orchard in Woolwine, Va, just down the mountain from Floyd on Rt 8.  They are my source for plums and nectarines as well.

Preserving Floyd: Finishing Up Currants

Back when I posted about currants I showed the 5 lbs of black currants we picked but never got further than that. There's been a lot of (mostly peach) preserving going on but not a lot of posting.  This is the first of the catch-up (as opposed to ketchup - that's later) posts.

Black currants are dark, tart, and musky in flavor, and are very seedy.  For many people, and I'm one of them, they're an acquired taste.  Michael wanted to see what they were all about since black currants are relatively easy to grow and disease and pest resistant.

Cooking Floyd: Summer Eating Has Commenced!

We have been seriously craving that first summer tomato.  Ours are only now beginning to ripen but tomatoes started showing up at the farmers market last weekend.  I resisted buying them there but ended up buying 2 reds and 2 golds when I stopped at Wades Orchard to pick up peaches.  I couldn't wait for ours.

And in that same vein, greedy as Michael and I were for that first taste, I forgot to take pictures of the tomato and fresh mozzarella salad we had with supper.  But it was awesome!  Chunks of red and gold tomato, cubes of mozzarella, sprinkled with kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper, garnished with ribbons of lemon basil and drizzled with first press oil from last fall's harvest of Sevillano olives.  So, so good.

I did remember to take a picture of dessert.  Sliced farm fresh peaches surrounding a scoop of strained yogurt, garnished this time with lime basil and drizzled with honey.

The entire dinner conversation consisted of "mmmmmm...." and "I love summer!"  This is the big reminder of why we eat seasonally and preserve.  Out of season store bought fresh produce just can't compare.  Even in season store bought produce that's been shipped in from god-knows-where has nothing on our local crops.  It doesn't even compare with our own preserved produce in winter.  Summer eating is our reminder, reinforcement, and reward for our efforts of growing, preserving, and eating local.

Husbanding Floyd: Fulfilling Destiny

One evening last week during the brief respite we had from the current heatwave, we had the windows open and were enjoying a breeze when we heard a god-awful cacophony coming from the chicken coop!  Immediately our protective instincts kicked in and we rushed down to chase away whatever predator was after our chickens to find...  nothing.

Assuming they were having a sibling spat and establishing pecking order, we returned to our own coop.