Tuesday at the Table

Due to Scraptastic Tuesday last week, I held off telling you about our family's outing to Bill's Berry Farm, which ended up being a good thing, as it gave me time to do a little 'research' in the kitchen. Long story short, 15 of us met at the farm as part of a fun family weekend, and among other fall farm activities, we made fresh apple cider. If I had ever done that before, I forget. For one thing, I certainly didn't remember how many steps were involved. It took all of us (even the youngest kiddos) about 45 minutes to make 10 gallons to divvy up and take home.

Of course, in addition to "just" drinking it, I had to use it in a few recipes.

• One was Pan-Seared Pork Chops with Cider Sauce. Yeah, that one's a keeper.

• Next was tweaking my recipe for Honey-Balsamic Vinaigrette:

Honey-Cider Vinaigrette
1 cup fresh cider boiled down to 1/4 cup and cooled a bit
2 Tb. finely chopped or grated red onion (or a shallot would work well)
1 Tb. honey
1/2 - 1 tsp. Dijon mustard, to taste
1 tsp. salt
a few turns of freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Add everything except olive oil into a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Cover and shake well. Whisk in olive oil, cover, and chill until time to serve.

• And lastly, through what feels like divine providence (though in actuality was repeated comments on Instagram), were Apple Cider Caramels from smitten kitchen. Oh my.

Now caramels aren't an every-day make in our kitchen, but though a little time-consuming, these were not finicky one bit. We just followed the steps one by one, and before long, we had chewy bites of caramel to nibble, and the best of all? They honestly tasted of that fresh apple cider. Keeper!