Picnic perfect

You ever feel like sometimes you may be spending a little too much time inside hissing at the sun and hiding in the sweet sweet luxury of air conditioning? Aside from the excellent driver's tan I seem to have acquired this year, my complexion indicates I may need to get the hell out of the house soon. 

Eff it, y'all, let's have a picnic. 

I don't care how hot and sweaty and humid and full-of-children it is, picnics are the shit. Almost every Sunday during the summer my family and I would go to a local park and enjoy a free concert while dining on either subs, sanwiches, or things shoved between two slices of bread. With all that fabulous variety, it's no wonder that I've taken picnicking to a whole different level in my adult life. I mean...drink flavored desserts?!?! What is this madness?!?! That kind of stuff would have been completely unheard of to my ten year-old self. 

Here's what you're gonna need to blow your pb&j picnic out of the water. 

2 c. Cookie of your choice, crushed.  (I recommend shortbread, nilla wafers, or graham crackers)

1TBsp gelatin (I'm using "natural desserts" brand vegan gelatin. It was like $2.50 on amazon.com.)

1 lb. strawberries

3 lemons, juiced and zested

2 packages very soft cream cheese (16 oz.) (or tofutti better than cream cheese for vegan-style)

1 pint Heavy cream (or use cool whip or whipped coconut cream to go vegan.)

1 1/2 c. Sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

Couple pinches of salt

10 8oz. Jars/individual portion things (or you can just slap it into one big pan. I won't mind.)

Step one!

Roughly chop up some strawberries and throw them into a pot with a cup of sugar and the lemon juice. Stir it and cook on medium low just long enough to dissolve the sugar. If you're using normal gelatin then you don't have to worry about the heat, but if you're using vegan gelatin you're supposed to put it in cold stuff and also non-acidic stuff. I figure might as well go for one out of two. 

Once the sugar is dissolved, blend it into a fine purée. You can strain it if you'd like to make it super smooth, but I didn't because that seemed entirely too much like more dishes to clean. 

Take your heavy cream and put it in the blender with your 2tsp of vanilla. Gradually raise the speed to whip on high until they make those infamous stiff peaks. 

Put the now-whipped cream into a separate bowl if you're using a stand mixer. Hand mixers, just use a second bowl for this part. 

Put your softened cream cheese (mine was left on the counter for most of the day.), lemon zest, remaining 1/2 cup of sugar, and gentle pinches of salt into the bowl. Mix 'em up good and nice until it also looks nice and fluffy like the cream. 

At this point, I put the vegan gelatin into the strawberry puree since the instructions said to use it as quickly as possible. The whole package was about 1TBsp and did the trick just fine, should you be in the market for some. 

I suspect that this would have been even easier if, at this point, I had taken the strawberry stuff and mixed it into the cream cheese while it was still in the kitchen aid. I recommend doing it that way rather than what I did, which was fold together the two fluffed creamy whatsits and THEN gently stir in the strawberry. 

Then it really just came down to assembly, honestly. Throw some crushed cookies into your jars, and follow it up with some strawberry lemonade fluff. Repeat until out of fluff. 

I let mine set in the fridge overnight and they got a slightly less airy texture (which I was hoping would happen), although it still very much feels like you're eating a strawberry lemonade fluff puff magruff the crime dog. Or something like that. 

If you want it to really FEEL like you're eating something truly sinful, only make half the whipped cream. Otherwise you're going to trick yourself into thinking that this sweet and tart delicacy has no calories at all because it doesn't nearly have the kind of weight to it that a baked cheesecake does. 

Gosh if it ain't good, though. 

Oh but those summer nights. 

<3 Kat. 

We be jammin'.

I've got a lot of philosophies about food, one of which is that literally ANYONE can make it. The most important ingredient in any recipe is a heaping helping of confidence and a daring amount of don't give a fuck. For real. Most of my recipes are "Put some stuff into a pot. Heat it up until it's food." I'm never too careful about measuring things out, even if I start off working with a recipe. I always think of recipes as suggestions of things you can do with random ingredients and finished food as a glimpse into the world of what its creator thinks is delicious. The only thing you need to be able to cook well is to be brave enough to find your own path and follow it.

Jam is a good place to start.

There are a billionty zillionty combinations you could create for jam based on flavor combinations you personally dig, and as far as I can tell... It's pretty darn hard to mess up so... Go to town with it!

You could do something like.... Blueberry lime, or peach basil, or apple cranberry jam (although since apples have such a high pectin content, you might not need any of the powdered stuff.)

Since I made some strawberry deliciousness, though, I'll give you the recipe based on what I did.

Strawberry Jam

2 pints fresh strawberries (If they're close to rotting, even better-they'll be extra sweet!)
Pectin
1 c. Sugar



Put your strawberries in a pot and mash them with a potato masher until they're to the chunkiness you prefer. I like a little extra texture in mine so I left 'em nice and hunky.

If you get packaged pectin like I did, literally every single one tells you how much to use for each particular fruit. I am just waaaaay too lazy to wash measuring spoons if I don't have to, so I abandoned the instructions and just sprinkled some on there. I'll estimate that it was about a teaspoon and a half.

Add the pectin to your pot of smashed berries and stir while cooking over medium/medium high heat.

Once the berries start to boil, let them go to town for a minute or two while, still, stirring like someone will jump out of the closet and steal your pants if you stop.



Add the cup of sugar and.... you guessed it.... stir. Keep stirring. Stir until it's all foamy on the top and it boils despite the stirring.

STOP STIRRING. IT'S JAM!!!

Take it off the heat and wait until it cools before funneling it into jars. I highly recommend dropping a bunch of it on top of some homemade yogurt and delighting in just how unbelievably soft and sweet and flavorful your jam is compared to the questionable stuff you've been buying for years from the store.

By the way, feel free to spice things up a little and throw in some cinnamon and ginger when you're cooking with strawberries. I've got a feeling they'd taste fantastic with this. 

Try not to spend it all in one place. 
<3 Kat.

I do what I want, I do what I want!

As far as I can tell, pickles are a "do whatever the heck you want" kind of food. The basic concept is "Put some stuff into some jars. Then put some stuff into some vinegar. Let the two stuffs do some stuffs together for a while. Stuff them in your stuff-stuffer."

I'm a big fan of foods that don't make me think about them when I make them, which means pickles? Totally down my alley.

Donning my total air of don't give a fuck, I decided to literally just grab the first couple of things I could in the pantry and turn them (and the cucumbers that I admittedly purchased specifically for this purpose) into noms.


Here's what you're gonna need to pickle like a champ:

Some produce (I got 5 pickling cucumbers specifically for this.)
Some vinegar (dealer's choice! I used white because it's cheap and plentiful! And I probably used about 3 cups of it.)
Some vinegar-flavoring stuff! (I used mustard seeds, celery seeds, turmeric, sugar, and chili pepper flakes)
Optional-things it doesn't make sense to boil! (I used dill and garlic.)
Some jars!





Now at this point you may have noticed that this recipe is less like a recipe and more like a note that your crazy aunt may have scrawled on a filthy index card that's been floating around the house for roughly a decade. Well... Welcome to the family, schnookums! These pickles are about doing whatever the crap you want, so grab your lab coat and experiment! Hate sweet pickles? Don't use sugar! Like 'em more than just a touch spicy? Put a chopped up jalapeño in there! Allergic to cucumbers? Do carrots instead! (True story-the Hunky Dreamy is allergic to cucumbers but really digs pickled carrots.)

I believe in you. You can do this.

So once you get your flavors all sorted out, put the 'stuff it doesn't make any sense to boil' like fresh herbs and the produce into your jars. For the love of bob, use something made of glass because... we're about to put some boiling hot vinegar in those suckers. 

  

If you're fancy, you can use a mandolin to make your vegetables all pretty and uniform. If you're ghetto and don't give a butt, do what I do and hack away at them with a lack of regard so well refined that you may even end up having the most ridiculously uneven cut cucumber slices in the universe and totally not be bothered by it. Put those babies in the jars next.

Get yourself a pot that makes sense for the amount of liquid you think it would take to fill the gaps between the stuff you put in the jars just now.

....Pour about as much vinegar as you think you're going to need to fill those gaps into said pot. Then halfway through realize you've judged poorly and add some more like it ain't no thang. You might even decide to add some water because vinegar is super strong and you might be afraid it will melt your tongue off if you look at it the wrong way-don't worry champ, I won't hold you back. Go for it. 

Put whatever flavorful junks you want into that vinegar in whatever proportions you want and boil it all for a minute or two. Then pour it into your jars over all the other stuff. Let it cool on the counter before you put the lids on so it doesn't create condensation and up the risk of going bad. Put the room-temperature jars into the fridge for about a week to let them really get their magic going.

BAM. PICKLES.

And you know what's great about this recipe? You invented it while you were going. AND THERE'S A SECOND PART COMING NEXT WEEK. Just in time for your pickles to be done pickling, methinks.

See you then, you little rapscallions you.
<3 Kat.

P.s. if you decide to use some turmeric, I recommend using close to none-it's super strong and will stain everything you have ever owned simultaneously.