Overwhelmed with chives!

The garden is growing, so much so, that I am overwhelmed with chive blossoms. Last year most of them went into garnishing salads, but there are way to many this year. We started out making little bouquets for the table.
A while ago I made Alton Brown's Black Pepper Vodka, which was great with a bloody mary. But after reading some more about infusions, bitters, and such, I decided to try something on my own. I thought the chive flowers would work better with a friend, So I included some celery leaves. And Voila!

I drained a cup of vodka from the bottle. After picking all the chive flowers apart from their bunches, I labouriously got them into the bottle. I then minced up an equal volume of celery leaves, which were even harder to get into the bottle. If I do it again I'll definitely need a new plan. I then poured as much of the reserved vodka back in as I could.

If all goes well, I plan on a nice, spring, herbal vodka tonic followed by a nice, spring, herbal bloody mary next weekend.

Cured Meats!

With my obsession over controlled rot and preserved food, a new restaurant has opened in our neighborhood. Cure is all about cured meats. I mean really. Sadly it seems like I need a good payday to make the price point for an exploratory meal. But it makes me happy to know I'm not the only one thinking about this.

Lemon Confit

I made lemon confit. This picture sucks, but is the best one I took. J. and I agree that this is the prettiest thing I have ever made. I like that you can see little bits of garlic in it.I need a better digital camera.

I started by slicing the lemons as thinly as possible. The recipe was for 12, but that is for commercial use, and a bit ridiculous, so I cut it to 3. First I tried using the mandoline, but it wasn't working well, and it was having trouble with the seeds. So I ended up slicing by hand and picking out the seeds as I came across them. The slices then get layered with salt, sugar, and minced garlic, and then let it sit for three days. Then I drained my slices, dropped them in a jar, and covered it with olive oil.