Saturday 3pm, three hungry boys (one being the husband), quick what's in the fridge? We had been playing and working outside all day. Lunch and food was forgotten in the beautiful sun and new slip 'n slide. The oldest announces he is hungry and the little one repeats "hungy!". I ran into the kitten chopped up some Kalamata olives (we always have some) mixed it with our goat cheese and sliced a baguette. It took 5 minutes and then you have a wonderful snack or great hors d'oeuvre to take to an event.
Traci's Goat Cheese Spread
8 oz. Chevre
1/3 cup Kalamata olives diced
2 T olive oil
2 clove garlic diced
salt and pepper to taste
mix all ingredients together and serve!
We have a lot of goat cheese because it is the easiest to make (milk goat's in the backyard). A friend came over and showed us this simple spread that her mom makes, we have taken it every where and it always gets great reviews.
I feel as though I am up to my eye balls in jam and in fact I almost am. For the last several days my sister and I have been smashing, stirring and steaming; strawberries, rhubarb, raspberries and cherries into a sweet decoration for our morning toast. I tried my first batch of freezer jams and it turn out great! I followed the SureGel pectin directions and can't wait to try it. Because the fruit and berry season is at hand, many of preserving supplies are on sale, I found the freezer containers for $2 for 5, not bad. The nice thing about freezer jams is you don't have to process the fruit as mush so the flavor and color hold up much better, the down side is I don't have a lot of freezer space, give and take. My sweet cherry recipe didn't turn out as well, it looks more like cherry syrup. It is so sad when your jam doesn't set, but you know it still taste the same. It usually means you didn't use enough pectin/sugar ratio or you didn't let it stay at a roiling biol long enough. I love to give jam away as gifts and detest buying it at the store and now I have made enough to satisfy both.
