Strawberry Balsamic Sauce with Vanilla Ice Cream

When two of the best flavors on the planet come together it's hard not to like them on just about ANYTHING.

My introduction to the strawberry-balsamic duo was not long after returning from Italy where I fell in love with Panna Cotta.  Upon returning I found a wonderful panna cotta recipe that had a strawberry balsamic and black pepper sauce....ahhhhh pure heaven.  Which reminds me, I should make that soon.

I was going through the freezer the other day and found more strawberries from the farm that I had packed in a sugar mix.  And I just happen to have vanilla ice cream very close to them.  A-ha!!!!!

So I picked out some strawberries and blended them with about 1 tsp of balsamic and enjoyed it a lot over the ice cream.

If you don't do anything else this week you should try this, seriously.  And if you want to try it I would be glad to share panna cotta with you.

I wish you enough fresh veggies!

Pepper Jellies and more

What a wonderful day!  Got to hang out with my favorite little peep at the playground this morning and now I am being creative in the kitchen.

We are loaded with peppers right now so I looked up some recipes to make some pepper jellies and hot pepper relish and am tackling that today.

I used pepper jelly for the first time during a cooking class called meet the masters and have been hooked ever since.  In the class we made a very tiny sandwich called an amuse buche with the jelly and if I could I would eat that tiny sandwich every day.

I used recipes for the jellies from this book:

Green pepper jelly, pg 125:

I pureed the peppers and strained the juice

added all the other ingredients and boiled it

then canned it.

The second one I made was a balsamic red pepper jelly, pg 126, and I think I have a new love!
The steps to make it are pretty much the same except the ingredients are a bit different.  It's gorgeous and tasty; it starts out mellow and grows with tangy-ness ending with a sweet tone that will make you smile.

I finished the day off with a few bottles of hot pepper relish, yum!

This was a quick trial of the jellies with a sharp cheddar cheese, but I am imagining smoked salmon on a thin cracker with this jelly, a little cream cheese and black sesame seeds.....  I might just put this jelly on everything!

As always be careful when canning and follow a recipe from a trusted source without changes unless they note that you can make substitutions.  Canning is a wonderful way to keep food for a long time but it has to be done right.  Here is a good site to get you started.

I wish you enough jelly and spice!