Joe's Kitchen

I'm going to start doing articles on my cooking fun.
I have so much fun at it that you might too.
A word of warning... I don't know what I'm doing.
I'm not some kind of professional cook.
I just like food and experimenting with it.

I'm actually doing a lot of different things right now. I did some really great Bread and Butter Pickled Eggs a while back where I used Pineapple Vinegar and they came out really good! That Pineapple bite with the Bread and Butter style flavoring was great. Then I hit a problem. I couldn't find any more Pineapple vinegar anywhere! I tried about 5-6 different stores including The 99¢ Only Store, Safeway, Lucky's, Whole Foods and some Mexican Markets. Finally, I looked it up online to find out where to buy some and found recipes instead. I could make my own!

So I did. It came out OK, (although not strong enough for the egg recipe.) Then I got into making vinegar's for a while and one of them came out awesome! Strawberry vinegar. I just love it, although I haven't figured out anything to do with it so far except eat spoonful's once in a while. It should go great on salad with a light oil and whatever...

I recently got some Ghost Peppers to play with. I got 2 cans of Magic Plants, you just pop the top, add water, and grow. I got one of Ghost Peppers and one of Scorpion Peppers. I also got some smoked Ghost Peppers to play with while I'm waiting for my plants to grow. No, I'm not going to eat one for you! I'm not that stupid. However, I did make some Ham and Beans with Ghost Peppers and it came out really great! It's got a little bite but not all that much. I'll be posting the pictures and recipe soon.

I'm also working on some wines, especially Honey Mead, like King Arthur used to drink. I made up a half gallon of it and it came out OK although a little sourer than I liked. Well, this morning I started making about 4-5 gallons of it. I have pics which I'll post with directions later, but you basically ferment the honey with spices and decent yeast.

Last weekend for St. Patrick's Day I also tried a new recipe. I've never done Corned Beef and Cabbage before so I tried it. I got this great recipe from Octoberfarms with excellent picture directions and did it. I almost didn't make the potato's, (Colcannon Potato's,) because it just seemed really weird to put cabbage into the mashed potato's, but along with the bacon it came out really great. In fact, I've got a new favorite mashed potato recipe now. You can see part of this on my last post, "Ghost Peppers again."

Anyway, that's where I think I'm going with this.
More later.
Jou Baur