Kofta Meatballs with Tzatziki

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We eat a lot of salad in this house.

Like a lot of salad.

We are talking basically everyday for lunch and a dinner or two each week, sometimes more. Its A LOT.

Why so much salad you ask? Because it’s easy, it’s healthy and you pack a ton of veggies into salads and we love our veggies. But really sometimes we need to spice it up a bit right? Right.

I’ve been dreaming of warm summer days that are coming soon. I’m hoping that by then my deck might look a little more put together and my grill could possible be used for more than a tool rest. I’m picturing the kind of days we had the last time I made Kofta, with pretty blue skies and toasty warm weather. It’s coming man, I can feel it.

I decided to make Kofta Meatballs last week as a way to bring back those summer feelings and really liven up our kind of tired salads. I’m over winter vegetables for a little while man. I just want a really nice sun warm tomato right now so this salad hit the spot for the whole house.

The warm meatballs are bursting with flavor that is perfectly balanced by the cool and creamy tzatziki. You really couldn’t ask for a better summer salad.

Kofta Meatballs with Tzatziki

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 25 mins

Serves: 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

1 lb lean ground lamb, beef or venison
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 ½ teaspoon ground ginger
3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh mint, chopped
2 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and spray a large rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray.
With your hands combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix until well combined. Using your hands shape golf ball sized balls and place them on the prepared tray about 1 inch apart.
Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. The meatballs should be browned and cooked through. Remove from heat and serve.

Tzatziki

1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, shredded, & drained

1 cup of Greek yogurt

1 clove of garlic, crushed

1 tsp lemon zest

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp fresh dill

sprinkle fresh ground pepper

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir until well combined.
Serve chilled.

Recently

By Jessica

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I realize that I am a day late, but seeing as meal plans are some of my most popular posts, I figured they should not be messed with, so this recently post is getting posted a day late.

Anywhoodles…

In the beginning of the month I was able to get outside for a short stint to build a fire pit in our backyard, only for it to be hailed and snowed on shortly there after (we are talking hours people). That polar vortex was no joke. I was outside in sandals in the morning only to be bundled under blankets watching snow come down that afternoon. The next few days were filled with more snow, and storms causing power outages, trees to come down and lots of damage to homes and buildings around us. It was not so fun.

The poor weather did force me to get a bunch of stuff done inside however, including some decorating and even more purging. I really need to have a garage sale soon. There is so much to get rid of.

As month rolled by the days warmed up. I was able to get some of the cooler weather seeds into the ground (think peas, arugula, kale, radish, lettuce etc.) and my early spring flowers have started to bloom in full. I’m loving the early bursts of color!! I’ll be posting more garden stuff soon. So hold tight.

During my super inspiring trip to Philly Chuck and his dad got a solid start on our fancy new deck. I can’t even tell you how excited I am for this to be done. It is going to be a huge addition to our home and really make our lifestyle that much more feesable. Seriously we are outdoor people after all.

In addition to my trip to PA, Chuck and I made it out to NH for family stuff, and a big party for a friends 30th birthday.

It’s been an intense and busy month, but we made it through and I’m looking forward to more spring fun!

Spent on Groceries in April: $250.97

Total for the year: $843.59

Cost of Garden Supplies 2016: $68.28 (we bought and planted blueberry 10 bushes this month)

Sweet Violet Syrup

By Jessica

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Violets are one of the first things to pop out of the ground in spring, along with tulips and daffodils of course, but the great things about violets are that they are edible. Both the flowers and the leaves can be eaten, and are a great addition to salads, cocktails and to decorate cakes, I mean look how pretty they are!

These little babies have been used for centuries for their medicinal properties. Its recorded to have been used as far back as Ancient Greece to prevent headaches and dizziness. I found out that violets actually contain salicylic acid, which the natural “raw” material for aspirin. So it stands up to scientific analysis against these claims.

I had always known that these pretty little flowers were edible but other than salads, and maybe a decorations for sweets, I had no idea what to actually do with them. I mean tossing the leaves and flowers in a salad is easy enough but can get boring pretty fast and honestly I don’t bake all that often. This year however I put in a little effort (thank you internet) and came up with this delightful syrup recipe.

The sweet syrup is a great thing to have around because it can liven up a cup of tea, a simple cupcake recipe or even a cocktail. Because its a simple syrup it can be used to sweeten just about anything (use it like maple syrup or honey), so long as you don’t mind the floral touch or bright purple color it adds.

To test it out I made a pretty pink cocktail mixing rum, lemon juice and the syrup. We don’t follow exact cocktail recipes in this house, but it came out pretty darn good anyway. I also tried it in my chamomile & mint tea when I had a headache last night and it was a really lovely addition.

Using it as a cocktail got me to thinking about turning it into a wine next. I think a pretty purple wine would be awesome, so that might be on next year’s list of projects.

Sweet Violet Syrup

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 10 mins

Total time: 30 mins

Serves: 2 cups

Ingredients

2 cup water
4 cups violets, loosely packed
4 cups granulated sugar, white

Instructions

Place the violets in a sterile jar large enough to fit the blossoms.
Bring the water up to a boil in a small sauce pan.
Pour the hot water over the violets and seal the jar. Let it stand for 24 hours.
Strain the liquid through a fine mesh sieve, gently pressing any additional liquid from the violets.
For every cup of liquid yielded, add 2 cups of sugar. Stir together over medium low heat until the sugar dissolves. DO NOT BOIL as you will lose the color of the infusion.
Note: If the mixture does boil or the color becomes a dark brown or black add a drop or two of lemon juice to turn the infusion a more pink color.
Store the syrup in sealed containers in the refrigerator for up to a year.

How to Start Any Size Garden

By Jessica

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Recently I at The Blog Connect Conference that I attended the topic of gardening came up and I got a lot of questions about where to start, what grows in containers and the like. Though these may seem like simple questions with simple answers to me they are so much more. These questions and their answers are important. I think everyone should garden (ahem remember this 1000+ word post?) so I want to take the time to seriously think about and answer these questions.

Starting a garden doesn’t have to be hard or daunting, sometimes all you need is a place to start. So let’s talk about that.

First off what vegetables do you eat? Knowing what foods you like and are willing to actually eat is important because growing a bunch of kale that are going to eat and is just going to go bad is not worth your time.

Next we have to talk about space and set up. Are you in an apartment? Do you have a yard? Can you rent a community growing space? Seriously think about your options here. If all you have is a window sill, be realistic about that, you can still grow things, but it will be on a smaller scale or plants that like shade.

Let’s assume we are designing a garden plan for the typical apartment dweller that only has a window. I would suggest starting with herbs, leaf lettuce or sprouts. All of these things are fairly easy to grow and take up little space, for herbs and leaf lettuce you can buy whole plants or start from seeds. For growing sprouts I suggest this method.

I always like suggest starting with leaf lettuce for first time vegetable gardeners because it grows fast and produces more than one harvest. Meaning you can cut it back for a salad and a few days later it has already grown back. If you eat salads daily or even weekly this is a great place to start. If you want to start eating more salads this is also a great place to start because you want to cut back the lettuce before it goes to see and eat it before it goes bad, so it can be considered a motivator as well (see what I did there?).

Those with a porch or deck space could try adding a tomato plant, snap peas, or green beans. Pole (green) beans are great because they will climb up banisters and pergolas to provide shade as well as beans.

For anyone who has access to a backyard or community growing space I would definitely take advantage of that but remember to start small. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when your garden starts producing. Honestly I think a 4×4 garden which provides you with 16 square feet of gardening space is more than enough for a first timer. The photo below represents a simple garden plan for a first timer using the square foot method.

Remember that the plants in this garden are simply my suggestion. I fully encourage you to switch up the vegetables listed here. Love pesto? Double or even triple the amount of basil plants. Like spinach in your smoothie? Then grow lots of that. Remember grow things you will actually eat.

As far as actually planting the vegetables, you can follow the instructions on the back of the seed packet, or talk to the gardener where you buy your plants for watering, sunlight needs and container size. You can also always email me (sweetlovginger@gamil.com) I’m happy to help anyone who is interested in starting to grow their own vegetables.

Like anything else in life starting a garden is a learning experience. It takes trial and error, and not everything is going to work for you the first time around. Stick with it, you will figure it out and it will be infinitely rewarding.

Some of my favorite garden resources:

http://www.onehundreddollarsamonth.com/

Motherearthnews.com

http://www.bhg.com/

The Blog Connect Conference 2016 & Major Changes

By Jessica

This post may contain affiliate links. I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Well if you follow me on instagram or twitter you probably noticed that I made a trip to Philly to attend the Blog Connect Conference that was put on by none other than Chrystina of Chrystina Noel. This lady always impresses me, she’s like an energizer bunny just going, going, going, and checking things off her list as she goes. Seriously she balances a full time engineering job, a blog, a greeting card shop, planning PHL Bloggers meetups, and now a conference?! Man I’m lucky if I have clean laundry between work and blogging.

Needless to say I was pretty exhausted when I got home on Sunday afternoon, but it was so worth it. I was super stoked to be there to help her out and learn some stuff, but never expected to meet so many completely awesome and amazing people too. I could gush for the rest of the post about some of the awesome people that I met, but I’ll spare you for now and talk about the conference itself.

We arrived at Saxby’s headquarters at 8 to start setting up, and guests started showing up around 9. I just want to take a moment to mention how freaking awesome the location was. The room looked like something out of a movie scene, so bright, chic and hip. It was way to cool for the likes of me. After registration, and getting headshots done by Mountain Gap Photography (omg I’m so excited about this, but seriously girlfriend needs a tan) we got to enjoy some bagels, coffee and tea while meeting new people and digging through our goodie bags.

I’m not going to go into detail about all the speakers and sessions, but I loved them all and had pages of notes when all was said and done. The only thing is that with multiple sessions going on I had to make some choices, but I really wish I was able to attend them all.

I left the conference with a lot of ideas and new knowledge as well as hopefully some awesome new friends. Now the big task is finding time to implement it all.

All in all I’m super happy that I went to this conference, and would really love to attend more. I cannot explain how exciting it is to talk to people who actually understand what you are talking about when you talk blogging. Seriously just that camaraderie is enough to make me go back for more.

On a slightly different note. . .

Something kind of huge happened at The Blog Connect Conference, and at the time it seemed so small but as the day’s rolled by this one thing that Michael from Click.Go.Review said kept popping into my head. He said something like “If you are passionate about it you should write about it”. It’s a duh statement but it was the context that hit me we were talking about gardening and hunting, and where my family gets much of their food from and the thing that struck me is that he recognized that just by talking to me for 5 minutes I am super passionate about it.

Here’s the thing I know I’m passionate about the homesteader/foraged and hunted lifestyle that we lead but I really never knew how to write about it. Where do I start? Chuck and I are still learning how to do these things ourselves, how do I, as an armature tell you guys how to butcher a goose?

I take my own advice and just start. I heard myself saying that so often to people when they asked me about gardening; just give it a shot, start small, but start. That’s what you have to do. That’s what I have to do. I have to remember that this year for me is about being BRAVE.

Transitioning my blog to be more about the things that I am actually passionate about terrifies me. I mean do you guys really want to know about venison marrow and duck gizzards, and growing mushrooms in my closet? Ahem, yeah these are things we actually talk about like it’s completely normal. I feel like everyone is going to run for the hills as these things start popping up more, but I’m going to do it anyway. Don’t worry there will still be plenty of recipe posts, crafts, and daily life sprinkled in, because really I’m not about conforming anyway. Just stick with me for a little while through all of this and I’m hoping that by this time next year we are both super happy about the place this blog has gone.

Kofta Meatballs with Tzatziki

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