Fall Hike Photos

I took a nice fall hike during my recent 3-day weekend in beautiful Devil's Lake State Park in central Wisconsin. While I didn't get any good photos of the lake due to a haze hovering over it, I did get a few that I really love of the fall foliage.

oven slow-roasted roma tomatoes

These are so easy and a wonderful way to preserve excess tomatoes. They're quite versatile and have tons of flavor.

What you need:
pile of garden fresh roma tomatoes (about 15-20 per baking sheet)
unrefined salt  Real Salt Shaker - 9 oz - Salt
olive oil
baking sheets with sides

Wash and cut the roma tomatoes in half and spread on a single layer on baking sheet(s). Line baking sheets with aluminum foil or parchment paper for easier clean-up. Drizzle them with olive oil and then sprinkle them with natural, unrefined salt (click here to read why I don't use white salt). You can add other herbs of the Italian variety as well if you like, I did not this time around.

Place in a 200 degree oven for many hours.

Leave them in until they are somewhat leathery with no wet spots - kind of a fruit rool-up kind of flexibility.

Length of time depends upon the size of the tomatoes. Normal sized romas can take 8-10 hours. The mammoth-sized Italian Paste tomatoes I purchased took over 15 hours! It sounds like a long time, but once they're in there there's little more you need to do. I put them in around dinner time on a Saturday evening and then checked on them again Sunday morning pulling off the ones that were done then & put the rest back in for a few more hours. Don't try to speed up the process with a higher temperature. You're slow roasting these to shrink them and concentrate the yumminess, not cooking them in the normal sense.

When they're done, I pack them into mason jars and store them in the freezer. Freezer ziplock bags would work as well.

They are delicious right off the pan - be sure to make enough so that some make it to the freezer! You can also add them to pizzas, pesto, chop into pasta, eat on a cracker with some cream cheese, and add to sandwiches, or grilled cheese.

How would you use them?

  

Farmer's Market Snapshots #1

Every Saturday morning the city of Madison hosts the largest farmer's market in the United States on the square around the state capital building. It happens rain or shine year round (however it is inside the capital building during the winter months). The market is unique in that everything being sold must be grown or produced by the person selling it.

I like to visit the market early in the morning before it gets too crowded. It is hard to take photos when it there are a lot of people around, plus if you can catch it just right the morning light is just wonderful to photograph in. Here are a few of my snapshots from a trip in early September.

herb infused oils

habanero peppers

sunflowers

cherry tomatoes

peppers

I bought some red peppers and jalapenos to make red pepper jelly. Look for a post with that recipe in the future! 

why i only buy unrefined salt

Salt can be bad for your health, but real salt is actually a crucial part of good health! 

All salt ultimately came from the sea. Some salt today is harvested directly from the sea, some is collected from ancient sea beds. Ocean water usually contains more than 60 essential trace minerals, but most salt producers today remove these high-profit minerals and sell them to vitamin manufacturers before selling the remaining sodium chloride to you and me to dump on our french fries.

That would be okay, but when you remove the trace minerals that used to accompany sodium chloride, you typically get a bitter flavor that many producers try to mask with chemicals or even sugar. (Go ahead — grab your salt container and read the ingredients. See any dextrose? Yep, that’s sugar!)  Chemical anti-caking agents are usually added in place of the valuable natural minerals that would have minimized caking in the first place. Even worse, when you consume chemically treated or de-mineralized salt, your body’s mineral balance doesn’t always respond gracefully. When people started consuming chemically altered salts 100 years ago, we started seeing high blood pressure and water retention that had never been associated with salt before. Interestingly enough, these problems often go away when natural salt replaces “table salt” in people's diets.

Additionally, real salt just tastes better! Trace minerals in unrefined salt add amazing flavor. Try some, you won't go back to your regular white salt again!

    

brussels sprouts augratin

Brussels sprouts seem to be a vegetable that conger up immediate reactions of yuck frommost people – myself included. However, they’re actually a vegetable that I’ve never even tried until recently. Growing up I was extremely picky on vegetables. In my veggie world there were only 3 I would eat – corn, peas & potatoes. Nothing else, period. Being that I was so picky my mother would never have dreamed to try to make something as foreign as brussels sprouts!

As I’ve grown older and wiser I’ve found that I like most any vegetable, or at least can figure out a way to make them taste good. Take Brussels sprouts, what doesn’t taste good once you add cheese, garlic & onion?

Brussels Sprouts AuGratin

1.5-2 lb Brussels sprouts, ends trimmed and cut in half
2 T oil or fat (butter, olive oil, coconut oil or bacon grease will work)
1 small onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 block cream cheese
1/2 C. sour cream
1/4 C. grated Parmesan cheese
dash pepper

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large skillet cook the onion and garlic in the oil/fat over medium heat until just starting to brown. Meanwhile, halve the Brussels sprouts and place in a single layer in a shallow baking dish, set aside (can also use a deeper casserole dish, but it will take longer to bake). When onions begin to brown, stir in remaining ingredients, heating until warm and smooth. Pour over Brussels sprouts and stir to cover them well. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes stir them up & return to oven uncovered to let the cheeses brown for 20-30 more minutes, or until desired tenderness of the sprouts.

















Shared at Monday Mania at: thehealthyhomeeconomist