Using Chive Blossoms

Some years we're eating quite a lot from our garden by the end of May. Not so much this year. It's been very cool and rainy for the entire month of May. Even the kale and chard have been sluggish. What I do have in abundance right now, though, are chives and chive blossoms. So, I've been brainstorming different ways to use them in meals. Here's what I've been doing with the chive blossoms:

I began with making chive blossom vinegar. Each year I make two or three kinds of flavored vinegar. Chive blossom is always one of them. I also make a green herb vinegar (usually rosemary and/or thyme). And some years I make a fruity vinegar (plum, blackberry, raspberry, or blueberry). Flavoring plain white vinegar is both inexpensive and extremely easy. And having a variety of flavored vinegars on hand throughout the year provides a head-start in making salad dressings from scratch. The above is one week old chive blossom vinegar. I'll leave the blossoms infusing in the vinegar for another three weeks before straining out the blossoms and decanting the liquid into a bottle. BTW, I use repurposed commercial pickle jars for the infusing process. One of the problems many folks have with reusing pickle jars is the vinegar odor is sometimes hard to eliminate from those jars. Well, no problem when making a flavored vinegar, right?

I've also been adding chive blossoms to salads. Monday night I made a lentil, barley, greens, and chive blossom salad. The blossoms have a fresh onion flavor when raw. 

We did burgers for dinner this weekend. I'm down to the last few whole onions, and I don't want to spend too much money on more onions until I can buy a 50-lb sack of the new crop in late summer. In place of sliced onions on our burgers, I made a 1000 Island type dressing for the buns, subbing chive blossoms for the relish I might normally use. The chive blossoms added a mild oniony flavor to the burger toppings.

I've also been cooking the chive blossoms. Cooking the blossoms mellows the oniony flavor. This is a potato and chive blossom soup. I used about 2 cups of fresh chive blossoms, cooked in almost a quart of veggie stock. I added about 1 cup of potato flakes, salt, and pepper to the soup. I simmered for about 15 minutes. At that point I removed the pan from the heat and allowed it to cool for 10 minutes. Then I pureed the soup in a pitcher blender. I estimate this soup cost about 25 cents (for the potato flakes) and made enough for 4 servings. This could also be made with leftover mashed potatoes or 1 potato diced and simmered in the stock. My stock for this soup was also a bargain. Last week, I peeled 7 large carrots to make a bucket of carrot sticks for snacking. I saved all of the peels and used them to make a stock. After simmering and then straining, I had about 1 quart of carrot stock, which I kept in the fridge until I made the soup over the weekend.

So far, these are the ways I've found to use my abundance of chive blossoms. I'll continue to seek out new uses over the coming week or two. Using what we've been given and grateful for it.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for Late May

Friday
homemade pepperoni pizza from the freezer, asparagus soup made from scraps, canned pineapple, scratch fudge (daughter made)

Saturday
peanut butter and garbanzo bean hummus, homemade crackers,  carrot sticks, apple wedges

Sunday Brunch (provided by my daughters)
My daughters made a lovely brunch for all of us, including my son and daughter-in-law. This was our Mother's Day celebration, as we were in the process of driving home from Arizona on actual Mother's Day.
eggs and peppers, sausage, bacon, fresh blueberries, croissants, scratch cinnamon rolls, strawberry pie, pineapple-orange juice
Dinner was every man for himself. 

Monday
Mexi rice bowls -- rice, scratch refried beans (freezer), taco meat (freezer), shredded cheese, home canned salsa (using canned tomatoes), and the last bits from a bag of tortilla chips, plus radish greens (garden) bulked up with frozen broccoli cuts and seasoned with onion and garlic 

Tuesday
chicken breast in pasta sauce (freezer), macaroni, Parmesan, roasted cauliflower, and vanilla rhubarb sauce (using a pinch of baking soda to cut down on the sugar)

Wednesday
split pea and ham soup (ham and stock from Easter, frozen chopped sorrel from last year's garden, instant potatoes, salt and pepper), carrot sticks, apple wedges, scratch biscuits and rosemary-rhubarb preserves

Thursday
rice and spaghetti meat sauce skillet dinner (spaghetti sauce from the freezer), beet salad

Making asparagus soup from scraps

Last week I found asparagus on markdown. I used the main portion of the stems in two dinners during the week, setting aside the tough ends to use later.

On Friday I used those tough ends. 

I roughly peeled the ends (some still had a bit of skin on),

I chopped the peeled ends into small bits, setting them aside while I dealt with scraps from peeling. 

I was left with a pile of skins and tough white portions. I simmered these scraps in water for  about 30 minutes. 

When the peels were simmered, I strained the solids out of the liquid. I used this liquid to simmer the peeled and chopped ends. 

Once those pieces were soft, I pureed the batch in a pitcher blender. I seasoned with onion powder and chicken bouillon, then thickened with a slurry of flour and water. The soup was still a bit on the thin side, so I added some potato flakes and butter. Asparagus soup for the four of us made from the scraps that many folks toss out.

Sunday -- you know my trick for pineapple-orange juice, don't you? I have a reaction to fresh pineapple. So when we want pineapple, it has to be canned. When I open a can of pineapple, I drain the juice and freeze it for later. When making a pitcher of orange juice from frozen concentrate, I add whatever frozen pineapple liquid I have on hand. Dole Pineapple Orange Juice sells for $2.88 for a 58 oz bottle at Walmart. My homemade pineapple-orange juice costs about $1.50 for the can of frozen orange juice concentrate and I consider the pineapple liquid as a freebie. BTW, frozen orange juice concentrate has jumped from $1.33/can to $1.50/can at Walmart in just the last 2 weeks.

Wednesday -- my scratch biscuits are probably a bit untraditional, but they're super easy. First of all, I don't cut in solid shortening, I stir in liquid oil. Second, I don't roll out the dough. I pat it out on the floured surface. And third, I don't cut the dough into circles. After patting the dough into large rounds, I cut it into wedges. The cut edges of each wedge seems to be enough for the biscuits to rise.

The rosemary-rhubarb preserves is a favorite of mine on biscuits. The rosemary has a slight savory flavor that pairs well with a savory meal. As you can imagine, it's also delicious as a glaze on meat. To make rosemary preserves, I wash and pat dry a couple of stems of rosemary and add them to the simmering pot of rhubarb and sugar. Just before jarring the preserves, I remove the stems of rosemary. It's that simple.

My daughters have had a bit of a sweet tooth this past week. Wanting some candy, they made a couple of batches of fudge, using the boiled sugar solution method. They made a cocoa fudge (cocoa powder, sugar, milk, butter) and a peanut butter fudge. 

Our meals are tasty, simple and cheap. What was on your menu this past week? What do you do with the tough ends from asparagus?