Homemade Blackberry Sauce

Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday of the year and we have a big party we call the BOO BASH every year! Its a great costume party with all our friends. We have all kinds of spooky food and we always have a signature cocktail. The spookier the better. For this years party, we decided to do a take on a Thai Basil Lime aid. We got hooked on these at a local Austin Indian store called Shandis. To make this drink suitable for the Boo Bash - we need to add dry ice, vodka and I loved the idea of a little ribbon of blackberry syrup on top. The mixing of the green and black would be very Frankensteinesk plus the flavor of lime and blackberry just go together! 

I hunted around both Whole Foods and HEB but mostly found blueberry syrups - not black berrys.

With a little research online I found a great recipe to make your own homemade syrup.

 

 

So you will need some basic blackberries - organic if you can. I found these on sale for under $2!

$2 score! 

 

The best thing about this recipe is that its only 3 things and easy to make

 

You will need:

Approximately 4 cups of blackberries

1 cup organic pure cane sugar 

(or you can use everyday sugar)

1/2 cup filtered water 

 

 

 Rinse blackberries and put into medium saucepan along with the sugar and water

Sugar goodness

Over a medium/high heat - bring to a boil and then cook on medium/low uncovered for 30 minutes

As it cooks, the red color comes thru over the black

 Your kitchen will start to smell awesome now!!! 

 

 

After 30 minutes, remove from heat and get your immersion blender out. Blend for 2 minutes. 

 

 

Blendy blendy

 

 

 Since this batch was specicially made for Halloween, I decided to add a few drops of blue food coloring. It make it much more deep purple. This does not effect the flavor - just the color.

Nothing natural about this step

 

 After a few minutes of blending, pour contents thru mesh strainer with bowl underneath. Use spatula to push all contents thru strainer to get everything but the seeds.  

 

 

 

Pour into jar, label, refridgerate and use within 4-5 days. 

 

 I will post updates after Halloween to see how it looked in our spooky cocktails! 

 

Here is a link to the orignal recipe that I tweeked up a bit for my Halloween needs.

 

 http://www.spoonandsaucer.com/blackberry-syrup/

 

 

 

Id love any comments!

 

Thanks for reading and sharing!  

Root Vegetable Soup

We are big fans of local farm, Johnson's Backyard. They are at almost all the cites local farmers market and can usually even be counted to show up at the smaller mid week markets. They have a great selection and have some good deals too. In winter months, they have lots of root based veggies and offer a large bag mixed selection for $4. I have seen it for many weeks and decided to give it a try.

Carrots, Onions, Turnips, Kholrabi,and Beets

I thought the best option to go with was to make a type of root soup. After consulting some friends - it was suggested by many to roast all the veggies with some garlic in the oven before adding it to the soup stock. Another important key is that all the veggies need to be similar in size - that will ensure even cooking and even distribution in the soup veggie ratio. I added some celery from the fridge and bought pre made chicken stock from the store.

Roast with olive oil - 400 degrees - 35 min. Toss once mid way.

The finished Root Soup

Oh how Ive missed you dear sweet blog

How is it possible that its been two year since Ive posted here?! The truth is my job a photographer and an artist took over in the internet world. It was a bit much be promoting my photography, an etsy shop, social media and a blog... so the blog suffered.

But I'm back and ready to spread the word of cleaning living and general happiness!

I can speak to happiness, my wonderful husband (who is a huge source of happiness in my world), got him self a nice jobby job late last year and it allowed me to quit my soul sucking sales job that had made me miserable for many years.

On the eve of my 40th birthday, I quit - no two weeks notice - and then drove myself to the tattoo parlor and got myself inked. I was a whole bag of emotions for awhile but months later, I must say I'm a million times more happy.

And ode to wiener dogs everywhere including my Sushi and Linus

We are about to go thru a pretty major food change in our household starting next week.
Its necessary for health reasons but it looks very daunting and super super strict. I'm hoping that I will succeed. My mind recognized that I need it as much as my husband does. I just hope my body will play fair too.

I am planning on blogging the full 21 days. My goals is to make food within the diet that actually looks good. Im 100% positive I will post saying things like  - "I want to die. I'm dying. No more sweet potatoes!" Rest assured, I will make it . Please don't contact the authorities. :)

I hope sharing our story might help you make clean living healthy choices too, We started small and now have been getting our food from local farms for going on 6 years. Its make huge impacts on our healthy and we really couldn't be happier with making that choice. I encourage any questions you might have! And its your in Austin, let go meet the farmers together! Id love to show you around!

Lets go to the farmers market!