Recipe Reviews and Preserving Progress

I spent most of the day yesterday in the kitchen and I got a lot done.  Pat spent all morning working on projects around the house and finally got our current remodeling project finished!  Woo hoo!  I will share photos once I have a chance to tidy up a bit.  I made 4 new recipes yesterday, Brownie Cream Cheese Bites, Banana Feather Loaf, Double Peanut Butter Paisley Bars and Spicy Corn Chowder .  The peanut butter bars were very good, the recipe is from the back of the Reese's peanut butter chips bag.  I do plan to make these again but I think I should up the chocolate flavor a bit.  I will either sub 1 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips for 1/2 the peanut butter chips or use melted semi-sweet chocolate instead of chocolate syrup.  Perhaps both!

The brownie bites were good, but I think I put too much of the chocolate batter in the minimuffin tins so didn't leave enough room for the cream cheese batter.  Pat liked them but thought they could use more cream cheese filling.  I think his actual comment was "Are these supposed to have cream cheese in them?" 


I have never made (or had) corn chowder before but I think it turned out pretty well.  Pat suggested more celery and green onion and less spice.  I think more of a savory flavor would have been to our liking.  Now that I am over my aversion to soup in the summer time I will hunt up more corn chowder recipes to try.  It might have to wait until next summer though, we don't have too much sweet corn left around here. 

The fourth new recipe was the banana feather loaf from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum.  I plan to attempt this bread again another day so I will save a review for later. 

I also canned my fourth batch of pickles from the garden and froze several bags of sweet corn.  I think it will be my last batch of dill pickles for the year.  If I get more cucumbers I may attempt to make sweet pickles.  In the previous three years of canning I have always meant to make a list of what I preserve so here is my list of what I have put up so far this year:

Pantry:
13 - quarts of dill pickles
3 - 1/2 pints of blackberry syrup
3 - 1/2 pints of strawberry syrup
6 - pints of strawberry lemonade syrup
5 - 1/2 pints of lemony strawberry jam
2 - pints of lemony strawberry jam
1 - quart of blackberry brandy
1 - pint of blackberry brandy (I used one full bottle of Korbel brandy)

Freezer
1 - gallon bag of strawberries
2 - gallon bags of blackberries
10 - 10 oz bags of corn

Remaining from 2011
Pantry
2 - pints of pickled hot peppers
1 - pint spiced strawberry jam
2 -1/2 pints maple apple pear butter
3 - 4 oz jars balsamic red pepper jelly
4 - quart jars of grape juice

Freezer
1/4 - gallon bag sliced green peppers
3/4 - gallon bag sliced hot banana peppers