Pickled Rhubarb

Here in Minnesota you can't swing a cat without hitting a rhubarb patch. Even people without gardens grow rhubarb. A week or so after the rhubarb comes in people start trying to pawn their harvest off on other people. It's not unusual to walk out your front door in the morning and find a huge pile of rhubarb on your front step and your neighbor's rhubarb plant looking suspiciously smaller. After all, rhubarb is easy to grow and everything but what do you really do with it?

This year I ended up with a huge supply of rhubarb. I made strawberry rhubarb jam, strawberry rhubarb fruit leather, apple rhubarb chutney, a rhubarb based barbecue sauce and these:
Rhubarb pickles.

How do they taste? It's hard to explain. They are sour and tart and delicious. I can't think of a single reason not to make these. And I say that as a person who doesn't really like rhubarb. If you find yourself with some excess rhubarb this year give these yummy, easy as can be pickles.

Ingredients:
2 - 3 cups chopped rhubarb (about 1/2 inch slices)
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
(optional) 2 whole cloves and 2 whole allspice or small slice of fresh ginger or small pinch of red pepper flakes

Cooking:
Combine vinegar, sugar and salt (other spices if you chose to use them) in a small pan. Bring to a boil and stir until salt and sugar are dissolved. Pour boiling liquid over the chopped rhubarb. Cover and leave at room temperature for three hours. Refrigerate. Wait 24 hours before eating pickles to allow flavor to develop. Pickles will keep in the fridge for three months but there's no way you'll have any left for that long.

So far I have just been eating these straight from the fridge but they would be perfect on a spinach salad with some walnuts and feta cheese. I used this same pickling method on cherries with equally delicious results. I encourage you to try it out. I think you'll be pleased with the results.

Pepperwood Grove Sauvignon Blanc - Wine Review

I picked up a bottle of Pepperwood Grove Sauvignon Blac without really knowing anything about it. I figured with a $7.99 price tag I didn't really have much to lose if it was really bad. What a pleasant surprise this wine turned out to be! From the website:

"Aromas of fresh bananas and red apple with hints of basil and white pepper. This blend of Sauvignon Blanc and a touch of Chenin Blanc, to soften the palate, has flavors of mango, melon, and fresh lime juice with soft citrus notes on the finish."

I don't know if I smelled any bananas in this wine but I certainly picked up the basil and apple scents. I didn't think it had a melon flavor (at least not that my untrained palate could pick up) but I picked up the wine and citrus. The website also recommends serving this wine with seafood but I served it with chicken and risotto and it was a great match. In fact, I used it in the risotto and I loved the flavor it gave the dish.

This wine has a nice balance between sweet and dry. It's not so sweet that you can't have it as a dinner wine yet not so dry that you can't enjoy it as a sipping wine all on it's own. I highly recommend Pepperwood Grove Sauvignon Blanc.

Relax Cool Red - Wine review

I know I just got done saying I'm not a big fan of red wine but that was before I tried Relax Cool Red. Unlike most red wine Relax Cool Red is meant to be served cool. It's also exceptionally smooth and easy to drink.

We first tried Relax Cool Red tonight and it was the perfect accompaniment to our steak dinner. A little sip between each bite of steak made the steak taste steakier (yes it's a word!) and the wine taste winier.

From the website: "Relax Cool Red offers wine lovers an approachable wine meant for enjoying rather than debating. This fruity, flavorful Beaujolais-type wine is a pleasant alternative to traditional reds."

Well, I don't know what Beaujolais means but I agree with the rest of it! Relax Cool Red is a nice red wine to try if you're not sure you like red wine. At about $9.99 a bottle it's a nice, affordable addition to a steak dinner or to an evening curled up in front of the fire.

Relax - Wine Review

Problem Girl Eats but she also likes to drink. At a recent wine sale at my local liquor store I stocked up and bought a ton of wine. Maybe that was a foolish choice considering that I will soon be pregnant (fingers crossed) but I can't resist a good wine sale.

One thing that you should know about me is that I like white wine. I know that makes me sort of a wine newbie and that real wine drinkers like red but my love or white wine fits in nicely the rest of my unsophisticated personality.

One wine that I really love is Relax. Relax is my favorite Riesling. From the web site "Slightly drier than traditional Rieslings, RELAX Riesling has a clean, crisp, fruity flavor that makes a great dinner wine, party wine or just a simply unwind after work wine."

I actually think Relax is fairly sweet. I think it's a little too sweet to be called a dinner wine. It's the perfect wine when you're sitting down to relax and you want a nice sipping wine. It's the perfect after dinner wine. It's also the perfect after the kids are in bed wine. For some reason (and maybe it's just with me) I find that this wine packs a little bit of a punch. I suppose that might be because it's so easy to delicious that you don't even notice how quickly you're drinking it!

I've seen Relax retailing for between $9.99 and $11.99 a bottle. At that price it's a pretty guilt-free indulgence. So if you're into sweet white wines consider giving Relax a try.

What I've been up to

I've been a little busy. With apple Jelly....
Red wine jelly......
Pickled green beans....
Lemon ginger green tomato preserves.....
Pickled green tomatoes....
Grapes in syrup....
Dill pickle carrots.....
Brandied apples.....
Brandy apple syrup.....
Strawberry applesauce....
Apple slices in syrup....
Cinnamon pear applesauce...
There's something very satisfying about canning your own food. It takes a little trial and error and not everything is going to turn out perfect (my apple jelly is more like thick apple water) and yes, sometimes it means spending hours working on something that you could buy for $1.49 at the store but I still think it's worth it. Now if you'll excuse me, I just took some bread out of the breadmaker and it's begging me to slather it in butter and red wine jelly. I cannot resist.

Deep Fried Candy Bars

One thing I want to do here at Problem Girl Eats is give you little hints and tips for eating healthier and saving money on food. If that's the sort of thing you're interested in too you may want to go ahead and skip this entry.

For those of you sticking around, let me introduce to you the County Fair $5 Deep Fried Candy Bar.
The Deep Fried Candy Bar is a work of art. A candy bar (you can pick between Snickers, 3 Musketeers and Milky Way) is stuck on a stick and dipped in batter. Then the whole thing is dropped into a deep fryer. When the batter is golden brown it's taken out and put on a little paper plate. As the man who makes them sprinkles powdered sugar all over it he warns you to let it cool a bit before taking a bite because it's really hot. You think him but then wonder if he said that because you look like the sort of person who would shove a piping hot wad of chocolate and fried dough into your mouth three seconds after it came out of boiling hot oil.

It doesn't matter though because now you have your Deep Fried Candy Bar. You'll want to find a place to sit down before biting into it. That first bite is so amazingly, intensely good that if you take it while standing up you're likely to fall over.
If you ever find yourself at a fair or a carnival you're going to want to check and see if you can get one of these. And if you can't you're going to want to get a deep fryer for your own home and make these by the dozen. And if you do can you call me and let me know? These are far too good to be a once a year treat.

Fried Plantians

I've always been a little curious to try plantains but until very recently I was also a little wary of them. A banana that you fry? Sounds a little scary. Thank goodness I got over my fear and tried plantains with this simple, no fail method. Try it once and I promise you that you won't be sorry. In fact you'll probably find yourself making it again and again.

I started with two large, green plantains. Plantains get sweeter as they ripen and for this recipe you'll want them unripe and starchy.

Start by putting some oil in pan. You need just enough to coat the bottom of the pan. I used canola oil but I've heard peanut oil is good too. While the oil is heating to medium high heat cut both ends of the plantains off and then slit the skin all the way from the top to the bottom. Peel off the skin. If you're really talented you can get the skin off in one piece. I am not talented and my peel was in 14 pieces when I was done.

Slice the plantains into slices 1/2 to 1 inch thick. Precision doesn't matter here. Trust me.

Put the plantain slices into the pan and let them sit there frying for a minute or two. Depending on your pan size you may have to do this in several batches. After a couple of minutes check to see how the plantains look. You want a nice golden brown crust. When you have that flip them over.

After you have a golden brown crust on the other side start taking the plantain slices out one by one and putting them on a plate or other flat surface. With the bottom of a glass smash the plantain down so that all the soft stuff inside squishes out. See, that's why it doesn't matter if they're all the same thickness. If you have a really thick one you just smash it a little more. Try not to get your big meaty paws in the picture like I did.

Return the smashed slices back to the oil and let them brown a little bit more.

See that nice brown edge on the bottom? That's what you're aiming for. You won't ever get there though because by this point you'll have tasted one and you'll be so eager to eat more that you won't care if they're only half done. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Once the slices are nice and on the edges take them out of the pan and lay them on paper towels to drain. Or, if you don't have any paper towels use a decorative napkin that your mother-in-law made. Sprinkle the slices with kosher salt.

Cram them all into your mouth as fast as you can so that your husband and children don't get very many. Let them make their own darned plantains.

These were a hit with my entire family. They're like potato chips but thicker and better and with the tiniest hint of sweetness. Um, the plantains, not my family. Although I guess that description applies to my family too. I'm sorry, I can't think straight. There's a green plantain calling my names. Excuse me.