Are you ready to take your cocktail game to the next level? With a DIY cocktail infusion kit, you can create deliciously unique flavors at home, transforming your favorite spirits into personalized concoctions that will wow your friends and add a special touch to any gathering. Making your own infused spirits to add flair to your cocktails is simple and fun!
I love playing in the kitchen—being able to coax out intense or subtle flavors from high quality ingredients lets you taste the herbs and spices in new ways! Infusing spirits feels like magic to me…
And magic is always a good gift to give!
Remember to save a jar or two so you can gift yourself as well. 😉
I’ve gotten rave reviews from friends who’ve sipped the results of these infusions so far. They are simple to put together and fun to give—and better than the store-bought versions in so many ways (especially because you can pronounce all the ingredients!). Plus, they can shine bright in their presentation, or be as homey as you like!
For more holiday gift ideas visit my Gift Guide to give from the heart
Gather Ingredients for Your Cocktail Infusion Kit
Similar to mixing and matching herbs for teas from dried-up leaves, infusing imparts flavors (or healing properties like in calendula oil for making salve) without the heat. Letting herbs and spices impart their flavor at room temperature takes longer—but also brings with it subtler scents and layers of flavor.
I have just started seeing these kits in a few specialty shops and farmers markets and they are not cheap! But luckily, making them at home is quite inexpensive.
If making for yourself, you can use fresh ingredients (fresh orange or apple slices and cherries), but these make really fun gifts when fully dehydrated ingredients are added to the jars. Gifting dehydrated ingredients lets the person who receives the gift choose when they want to make the infusion themselves. You can gift with a bottle of spirits or without.
I love a versatile soup—and this healthy broccoli soup recipe can be tweaked so many ways, from silky smooth puree to a hearty chunky pottage, to cheesy and creamy decadence—but it all starts with some beautiful broccoli!
Start with the Best Broccoli
Broccoli is one of our family’s favorite garden veggies to grow. So much so that my boys will even go patrol for cabbage worms, the little green guys that can ravage this plant if left to their own munching.
I also love that when we eat broccoli, we’re eating the immature flower buds! I used to tell my boys they were eating broccoli bouquets, and I like to think that helped them grow in their love for this powerhouse veggie.
I’ve had good luck growing Bellstar, Emerald Crown, and Green Magic varieties of broccoli in our zone 4 gardens (all from Johnny’s Seeds).
Harvesting Tip** Soak your broccoli florets in salty water (1 Tbsp in a bowl of water) for a few minutes so any creepy crawlies float to the top!
Because it is a family favorite veggie, we grow a lot of broccoli and usually have some frozen to use during the winter months. And while we love many veggies from green beans to corn simply heated and eaten as side dishes straight from the freezer, I find broccoli needs a little extra love once frozen.
Soup is the perfect spin!
In addition to the blanched and frozen broccoli from the garden, I’m also saving broccoli stems all season to use in this broccoli soup. To make the best use of them, peel the ‘skin’ from the tender part of the stems closer to the buds. Toss the woody part (further down the stem) into the compost. These add great bulk and flavor to soups. And by peeling, you’ll get rid of the most gas-inducing part of the broccoli!
My secret ingredient in so many pureed soups is a little cream cheese. It adds such a depth of flavor and pairs well with broccoli.
You can keep it really simple, and even skip the pureeing, if you like it chunky. If leaving this kind of soup chunky, make sure to not overcook the vegetables. You can also add up to half cauliflower if preferred. See, super-flexible soups really are the best!
I’ve added the white beans and/or potatoes as a way to thicken this soup without adding gluten, and I like the flavor better too. Leave out the cream/cheese if you want to keep it dairy free or vegan.
Healthy Broccoli Soup Recipe
Ingredients:
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 celery ribs, chopped
1-2 yellow/white carrots (optional)
1 tsp thyme
1-2 cups shredded zucchini (optional but great thickener)
2-3 Yukon Gold potatoes, chopped
4-5 cups broccoli stems and florets (frozen is fine)
6 cups chicken (or veggie) stock
½ cup white beans (optional)
1 cup milk, or ½ cup of half and half, or ¼ cup of cream cheese
Salt + pepper to taste
Olive oil to sauté
Our family’s favorite garnishes for this healthy broccoli soup recipe are roasted chickpeas, pea shoots, green onion—and of course always served with toasted bread.
Directions:
Chop veggies into desired sizes, considering if you’ll be pureeing.
Sauté onions for a few minutes, then add garlic, thyme, and celery.
A few minutes later add the shredded zucchini, potatoes, and stock. If you have lots of good broccoli stems, add those in now as well. Simmer for 10 minutes.
Then add in broccoli florets and cook for another 5-10. Or if pureeing, add florets at same time, cooking for 10-15 minutes total.
You can puree some stock with the white beans to thicken, or add milk, half and half, or cream cheese while pureeing as well.
Have fun garnishing! We love to sprinkle microgreens on top of our soups. And make sure that bread is extra toasty!
Who doesn’t love a good two for one? I’m here to show you that you can have your squash and eat the seeds too! So many of us skip over roasting pumpkin seeds and squash seeds because we’ve had a bad experience. Maybe you did it once and they were, well, stringy, chewy, like eating straw… and just not very good at all.
Well, that probably comes down to two main problems:
The wrong seed
The wrong preparation
So let’s get you back on track to using all of that pumpkin/squash/gourd! And if you’re into squash like I am, check out my Pumpkin Spice cake recipe, and my Winter Squash Lasagna recipe too!
I never met a zucchini I didn’t like. I’ll grill them, relish them, pickle them and freeze them all season long. But at least once (or twice) a summer I’ll bake up a storm with them too. And over the years I’ve tried and loved many versions of zucchini breads and desserts- but I think I’ve settled on this as my favorite. Adding some fresh whipped cream and sour cherry sauce doesn’t hurt either…
Cucurbit What? All squash and zucchini are in the Cucurbit family (along with cucumbers, melons, gourds etc.) All zucchini are squash, but not all squash are zucchini…
There are few crops as funky, dependable and well loved as garlic. For good reasons too! Garlic, and the other bulbs in the Allium family (like onions and shallots) add the base flavor to meals the world over. They’re easy to grow, easy to store and easy to cook with.
Humans have been cultivating garlic for over 7,000 years! In that time, we’ve selected variations in flavor, size, growth habits to come up with roughly 700 current varieties.
Welcome to summer at its best – Fresh Garden to Table Eating that celebrates so many of our favorite flavors of the season!
This is a great flexible recipe that can be changed to what you have on hand.
We eat this is as a chilled meal during high summer. While some might call it a salad, I see it as more of a base to add other things to; from leftover grilled chicken, some sourdough slathered with pesto… We’ve also added cooked and cooled cannellini beans to this for a protein boost. If you add beans, plan to add more dressing to keep the flavors balanced.
We’ve garnished with balsamic vinegar, pesto, fresh mozzarella, parmesan, olives, or whatever Italian flavors feel right that night. The main idea with this meal is to let the flavors from the garden shine. All the herbs in this recipe are easy to grow.
You can make this with regular pasta or use zucchini noodles (zoodles) or both if you have split family preferences like we do.
Filling your basket with fresh picked herbs is one of those garden routines. It is by far one of the more glamorous parts of gardening (much better than mixing compost or weeding, right!?!) so don’t skip this joyful garden practice.
Whether you are growing herbs for cooking, herbal tea or the medicine chest there are a few tips to harvesting and preserving that I’ve learned along the way…
Favorite Homestead Herbs
Here are a few of my favorite (which also happen to be the easiest) herbs to grow. Watch a recent video of me harvesting herbs growing in my garden HERE on my @forksinthedirt Instagram.
As sunlight hours (if not warmer temps) return to Minnesota, so do the backyard eggs. This gluten free Strata recipe is a beautiful way celebrate the return of spring and fresh eggs. It is also a healthy family favorite, and a great way to sneak in all kinds of veggies.
On Our Suburban Homestead
I love how our chickens help keep us in tune with nature’s cycles. If you’ve been interested in starting a backyard flock of your own, or want to learn where you can buy local farm fresh eggs, I’ve got you covered. This is a family favorite for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Especially when the boys go and collect the eggs then crack them right into the mixing bowl!
One of my all time favorite vegetables is the humble Beet. Sometimes Beet Recipes can get a little predictable, but I’ve got a guest chef helping us keeps beets exciting today…and sharing his Beet Risotto Recipe with us!
I think my deep love for beets may be in part because it was one of those vegetables my mother NEVER cooked. So, I got to discover it all on my own and there’s something simply endearing about that, isn’t there? Their flavor and nutritional powers are pretty good reasons to love them as well…
Variety Matters!
I also love beets because you can use the entire plant, literally roots to shoots. I admit it took me a few years to fully board the ‘beet green’ bandwagon- but I am quite comfy now not giving up my seat now!
The rest of my family grew to love beet greens as a substitute for half the greens in their salads last summer. They even preferred it to spinach as the season wore on… we’ve also been enjoying frozen beet greens this winter.
But the beetroot is still up for debate with most of them.
Symmetry within the circle of our season — that’s the overarching lesson from the garden. But just one of the ways gardening teaches me year after year.
It is perfectly absurd to search for a beginning or an end to this cycle; is it when the seeds start forming, when I harvest my saved seed out of the garden, as I store it over winter, or when I plant it next spring that is “the beginning”? Is it when the food emerges, when its ripe, when I harvest, when I eat it, or when I compost the excess that is “the ending”?
Taking into consideration the piles of compost, continuously added to by our hens, and all the other intertwined inputs and harvests from our little backyard homestead garden- I’m proud to announce that I can I find neither beginning nor end… instead I find a naturally flowing cycle that swallows its own tail year after year. A process without any one formula, rather a myriad of methods and infinite accomplishments along its way.
That being said; we all like to “take stock” every so often. The end of the calendar year, as the garden lays sleeping and frozen under the snow here in Minnesota seems a fitting time as ever. So, I’m taking a look back on this year of growing with you to share what I gleaned from my gardens. Or rather, what lessons my garden unearthed for me. I’ve added links to previous posts at the end of most topics, as it seems the lessons I learned this year are also perennial. But as with gardening- the roots grow deeper and the harvests increase with each passing year. I hope you can take a few of these ideas and let them inspire you to grow and harvest more (veggies, sustainability, peace) from your gardens this upcoming season. Let’s Dig In!
