No, I’m not crabby, dinner is!

Teenaged boy missed the bus this morning and needed a ride in to school. I was back in plenty of time to make UFOs for breakfast. You know UFOs, but maybe not by that name. It’s a hole cut in a slice of bread, then the bread is fried with a raw egg in the hole. You might know them as Johnny Jacks, Egg in a Hole, or any number of other names. We call them Unidentified Frying Objects, or UFOs.

When I got back, I noticed the milk I had set out several days ago had turned to curds and whey! YAY! I’ve started to filter it through muslin. So, I’m adding some individual cheesecakes to the menu for later this week, and putting some veggies on the shopping list to begin lacto-fermenting.

I’ve really been looking forward to lacto-fermenting vegetables. I remember when I was very, very young there was always a jar of homemade pickles on the table at dinnertime. It was just put on the table as part of dinner, like salt and pepper, bread and butter and a glass of milk. I don’t know exactly why we got away from it, maybe Mom stopped making them when she had rheumatic fever, or when I had scarlet fever, or when she became disenchanted with homemaking in general. Each batch tasted slightly different depending on the season and the herbs on the windowsill. Perhaps that’s one thing that attracted me to NT to begin with: some distant food memory of fermented foods at the dinner table.

It was a wild afternoon. Many jobs that needed to get done didn’t get done, and many others demanded immediate attention when I thought they could wait. I didn’t get home until 6PM and we were all quite hungry. I had already stirred together and baked a pan of gingerbread for dessert, and I had a couple roasted red bell peppers hiding out in the fridge. I put some carrots on to cook in butter while I made crab cakes out of claw meat, cilantro, onion, egg, bread crumbs, dijon mustard, and just a pinch of cayenne. It was all pretty good, but the highlight was the Red Pepper Sauce. When I tasted it to adjust the seasonings, I thought to myself, “You can have all the other stuff, just give me this red pepper sauce and a spoon!”

Red Pepper Sauce
2 large red bell peppers
1 small clove garlic, peeled and chopped
2 teaspoons coconut oil, melted, but not hot
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 sun-dried tomatoes packed in olive oil

Set the bell peppers right on the oven rack and broil until the skin turns dark. Turn and continue to cook until all sides are seared. Put the peppers in a paper bag and roll down the top. Allow to cool 10-15 minutes. Cut open the peppers and remove the stem, seeds and accumulated juice. The skin should slip off easily. Put peeled peppers in blender with garlic, coconut oil and balsamic vinegar. Blend on low speed until incorporated. Add two sun-dried tomatoes and the oil that clings to them and blend again until smooth. Adjust seasonings. Best served at room temperature. Makes a little more than one pint.

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