There's a 3-day weekend ahead — are you going to waste the whole thing lazing by the pool and eating burgers? Soothe your conscience with one of these kitchen projects: Making homemade mozzarella, doing a quick and dirty deep-clean of the kitchen, sharpening your knives — and get back to guilt-free laziness, pronto! Here are 10 of our best ideas for ways to spend a little quality weekend time in the kitchen!
EDIBLE PROJECTS
• 1 How to Make Homemade Mozzarella - Fresh mozzarella, for fresh tomato salads on Labor Day!
• 2 How to Make Perfect Pesto Every Time - Make a big batch of pesto and freeze it in ice cube trays (winter is coming, you know — best be prepared).
• 3 How to Make Flavored Salts - Use herbs from the garden or smoky spices to start some jars of flavored salts (they make great hostess gifts).
• 4 How To Make Great Granola Every Time - Make a big batch of granola to fuel your workday and school morning breakfasts for the next month.
• 5 How to Make Kombucha Tea at Home - Curious about kombucha? This is a great time to start your first batch.
KITCHEN PROJECTS
• 6 How To Make a Chalkboard Menu Board - This cute chalkboard menu can be made in any size or shape, and it's a great way to remind yourself of your meal plans each week.
• 7 How To Buy and Season a Wok - Stir-frying is a great technique for quick fall cooking. Get yourself set up properly with a seasoned carbon steel wok.
• 8 How To Sand Your Butcher Block to Look Like New - Does your butcher block (or your cutting board) need some love? Great time to sand and oil it!
• 9 Weekend Project: Sharpen Your Knives! - Get your knives in shape for fall, by honing and sharpening them yourself, or taking them off to the knife sharpener's!
• 10 Weekend Project: Clean Your Kitchen in Five Steps! - 5 quick steps to getting your kitchen in holiday shape!
Do you have big plans for your kitchen this holiday weekend? Any other good ideas for putting a three-day weekend to use (other than relaxation, of course!)?
And more!: 10 Practical Ideas for Better Spice Storage
(Images: See linked posts for full image credits)
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I've got three big projects in mind. 1) Deep cleaning. It hasn't happened in a while. 2) Make eggplant pickles (the lemon-basil recipe from Tart and Sweet, specifically). 3) Slow-cook, shred and freeze a chunk of pork shoulder using plum sauce I put up last year in the braising liquid (thus finally using it up - it turned out to be too intensely sour to use as a condiment).
tariqata - can you post that eggplant pickle recipe? sounds AMAZING.
CDICA002: here's a link to a slightly tweaked version from the book. I definitely recommend the book, if you enjoy canning - I've only tried a couple of recipes so far (pickled green cherry tomatoes and nectarine jam with honey and orange flower water) but both turned out really well!
The only kitchen project I'm doing this weekend is making orange blossom ice cream with white chocolate, one of the variations of a recipe from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home. Yum!
You can skip a step and buy the curds already made up. Di Palo sells them.
I canned 8 pints of salsa and 5 half-pints of pizza sauce today.