Perhaps you noticed, I took a long, unscheduled break from the website. Future posts may be sporadic, I am focusing my time where it is more important, however this vinegar is so good, and chives are blooming (up north anyway) so I thought I would share some chive blossom vinegar today.
Winter did not want to let go this year, spring was very slow to warm up, so we are happy to finally see our garden growing. We were out foraging for asparagus yesterday, today I made asparagus soup, an asparagus egg bake, and we have eaten raw asparagus, after a long winter it seems we just can't get enough fresh greens
Last night we were at the grocery store, we don't have to go very often because most of our food is either grown and preserved at home or meat raised by and purchased from friends and family, but we have been eating from our pantry and freezers all winter/spring and we were running low on some staples, so a stop at the store was necessary. I starting looking at the prices and was shocked by how much basic items had gone up. Chicken stock, which I make and can at home, but was out of and needed for my soup today, was on sale for $2.50 a quart, I was floored, I know I should not have been, but it just hit me how ridiculously expensive that is compared to what it cost me to can a quart. A quart of whole tomatoes, an off brand, was on sale for $1.60 a quart. If this is not incentive to preserve my own at home nothing is, and of course the flavor does not even compare. We are living as inexpensively and simply as we can and sometimes I wonder if the extra work is really saving us that much, I got my answer last night.
I did not look at the price of flavored vinegar, but I am sure it is much higher than I paid for this chive blossom vinegar. Nothing fancy is needed. Just sterilize and reuse a glass jar and lid, place a good amount of washed chive blossoms inside fill with distilled white vinegar, cover, and place on the pantry shelf. After a week or two it will have colored and flavored the vinegar and you can strain the vinegar and place it back in the bottle or put it into a "fancy" vinegar jar as pictured below.
Sense of Home Kitchen / Recipes / Basics
