Strawberry Goodness!

Yes yes, another food post! 

Lots of stuff has been going on over here, and none of it is very positive and I don't really feel like posting about it. SO, I'll opt for posting about food! 

Eric has the week off, so we've been plugging around and doing lil things here and there...today, we managed to hit up the Turk Turk market over in Zolder since it's been a while for the both of us. I used to haunt it a lot, but I get easily distracted or end up having plans whenever it's scheduled. SO, we finally invaded them and snagged some beautiful produce! In fact, I was able to get three good sized cartons of strawberries for 12 euros (a small carton usually runs 5.50 euro in the local grocery stores) and the strawberries were gorgeous AND huge! YESSSSS!! Plus, we got a hefty half of watermelon, some apples, oranges, preserved lemons (so I can bust out with some Turkish food in my Tagine) and some Turkish feta sammiches. 

Due to the blueberry honey butter coming out so fabulous, I figured I'd give it a shot and see how it'd come out with strawberries. Truth be told, it's UH-mazing! 

Ingredients:
2 cups of pureed strawberries
3 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice, or to taste
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened

Wash the strawberries, then cut the green tops off. Once you're all done with them, toss them into the blender & puree them. 

Once they're pureed, you need to strain the liquid so you get most of the seeds out. It takes some time and patience to sift through the puree & force it through the strainer, but it'll be worth it. 

Here's what the strainer should look like. By straining it, you won't have a gritty texture in the butter spread. 

This is how the puree should look once you're done straining it. Nice and smooth! Kinda smells like fruit roll ups to me, lol

In a small sauce pan, warm up the strawberry puree till it's bubbly (stir once in a while), then add in the honey as well as lemon juice. Let it simmer for about twenty minutes, then take it off the burner and allow it to cool. If you want it a little sweeter, by all means, add more honey as you go along while it's simmering. The butter will mellow out the flavor once it's added in. 

When the mixture has cooled completely, pour it back into the blender in addition to the butter. Puree once again, then pour it into whatever container your little heart desires!

Tah-dah! 

Easy peezy! Enjoy!

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Blueberry Honey Butter

'Tis the season to enjoy some amazing blueberries! Luckily for me, there's an awesome blueberry farm that's not too far from my house, so I went and picked up two containers of 'em so I can make some goodies with them. 

I LOVE fruity stuff, so I've been wanting to attempt making strawberry honey butter, but strawberries over here are rather expensive. Plus, I suppose I got spoiled with the fantastic strawberries I grew up with back in California, so the ones here really pale in comparison. The next best thing to attempt was blueberry honey butter since blueberries are pretty amazing for your skin in addition to tasting fantastic! 

Here's what you'll need:

3 1/2 cups of blueberries

1/2 cup honey

2 Tbsp lemon juice

3/4 cup room temp unsalted butter

Once you wash the blueberries, toss them in a blender and puree till completely liquidized. 

Pour the blueberry puree into a sauce pot with the 1/2 cup of honey..

...bring to a boil, then simmer on a low heat for 20 minutes. You'll have to stir it once in a while to insure it's not burning. It'll thicken up like a thick syrup as you stir:

Once its cooked for 20 minutes, take the mixture off the burner, toss in the lemon juice, stir thoroughly and allow it to cool to room temp. Since I didn't have any lemons on hand, I opted to use "Real Lemon" lemon juice. 

After the mixture has completely cooled, toss it back in the blender in addition to the butter puree it to your little hearts content. 

Ta-dah! All done! Stick it in the fridge and it'll thicken up like a jam. It should keep for a few weeks, but at the rate I'm going, I'll probably be finished with it by Sunday, lol. 

 Love love love! 

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Shiney Syndrome

I've been really lagging on my posts! Sorry!! Between driving around and visiting people, it's been hard for me to actually stop and write stuff out. So, here's my attempted effort in terms of a post :)

When I headed out on Friday to make my way up to Washington, I stopped into Eugene, Oregon to check out VooDoo Doughnuts. If you're a fan of Man vs. Food, then you've seen the episode where Adam goes there to check this place out since it's known for it's variety of crazy doughnut flavors. I ended up getting myself a Butterfinger doughnut (it was WAY too sweet for me!) and a "Miami Vice" which is blue raspberry (it was FANTASTIC!)... although, I felt like I was diabetic after I ate them (took me several hours to eat 'em since I'm not a huge sugar junky). It was just one of those things you wanna try once you've seen 'em on TV...does that make any sense? Anyway, at least I can say I've tried their goodies :)

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