Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

Before: Beautiful berries from Thistledown After: 11 jars and bellies full of strawberries The first thing we accomplished on our Summer Fun to-do list was strawberry picking and making jam. The last time I canned strawberries, I went without the pectin and ended up with strawberry sauce. It was good, but it wasn't as good as jam. So this time we did it the right way. I knew we wouldn't need much sugar, since these strawberries were SO sweet. I searched through many recipes that claimed to be low-sugar but actually contained a lot of sugar, and eventually settled on  this one from Lively Table . Easy and delicious. The only change I made was not running the strawberries through a food mill or blending them. We opted for chunky strawberry jam. The Recipe: 4 c strawberries, stemmed and washed 1 c water 3 tsp lemon juice 4 1/2 b low sugar pectin 1/3 c sugar Mash strawberries with a potato masher. Place mashed berries, water, lemon juice, ...

They look benign, but these have SO much flavor. In our previous CSA, we were allowed to list three items that we never wanted to get, and turnips were at the top of my list. Then we switched CSA's, and our FIRST WEEK with the new one, guess what was in there? Since pickling has worked well for other less-desired CSA items (radishes and beets, I'm looking at you), I searched to see is pickled turnips were a thing. And I found  this Momofuku turnip pickle recipe , which gave me an excuse to use the kombu in our pantry. I followed the recipe exactly, even though it seemed like too much sugar. And yes, they are sweet, but in a good way! They packed great punch on an asian-themed salad, and I plan to put them into our tofu bibimbap bowls this week, especially since we ran out of kimchi. The original recipe says that at Momofuku, they serve these as a snack, but I don't think I'd snack on these without something bland for balance. The Recipe: (from Mo...