Passionfruit and Lemon Curd

Sunny, sweet, and tart. Best when the outside of the passionfruit is wrinkly and it feels heavy in the hand.

What do you do when the sun is out, but it’s frigid, with temperatures dropping and snow on the way? And you just need a little tart sweetness in your life?

You make passionfruit and lemon curd.

Floral. Sharp. Delicious.

Put it on a biscuit. Swirl it into yogurt. Eat it from the jar. Your choice.

Passionfruit and Lemon Curd
2 passionfruits
2 lemons (juice and zest)
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
5 tablespoons salted butter

Method
In a medium-sized bowl, combine the guts of the passionfruit, lemon juice and zest, and sugar. Strain your beaten eggs through a mesh strainer to remove any stringy bits and add to the bowl. You could also strain the passion fruit guts if you like to remove the seeds, but the little crunch is nice so I leave them in. Whisk these ingredients together and set the bowl aside.

Melt the butter in a large sauce pan over low heat. Whisking constantly, add the egg and juice mixture to the saucepan.

Now is the fun part. Stand over the stove, whisking vigorously, for approximately 10 minutes until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. If you do not keep the mixture moving, you will end up with lemon-scented scrambled eggs. So put on a podcast, and settle in.

If your mixture does scramble slightly, you can always press it through a strainer after it’s thick. This will remove those passionfruit seeds, but that’s OK.

Refrigerate curd. It will thicken as it cools and become absolutely perfect. Best to eat this within a week, but you can also freeze it in ice cube trays and for use in smoothies or even as a swirl in homemade ice cream.

NOTE:
You can make this curd with any citrus fruit. You may need to adjust the sugar depending on how tart the citrus is, but you’ll need between 3/4 and 1 cup of liquid for this recipe if using another citrus fruit.

Herbal Remedies For The Win: Cough Drop Edition

Happiness is a mouthful of homemade cough drops. Trust me.

Ok, so Covid is a thing that pretty much everyone has these days, present company included. In the early days, fever and achy pains kept me mostly horizontal, and herbal remedies in the form of tinctures were easiest to relieve Covid symptoms. But then I decided to give making my own cough drops a try, both for a little sugar and just to see what happens.

Spoiler alert: they aren’t easy, but I will absolutely make them again. They can be customized with herbal tinctures to treat the symptoms you are experiencing, and the herb blend I used – bee balm, lemon balm, and blue spruce – relieved my Covid symptoms naturally.

Herbal Cough Drops

Ingredients

1 cup sugar (see Recipe Notes)

½ cup honey

½ cup herbal tea (I used peppermint that I grew, brewed strong)

½ to ¾ teaspoon peppermint or lemon extract

1 to 2 droppers of herbal tincture (see Recipe Notes)

You’ll need: powdered sugar (or candy molds) and a candy thermometer

Method

You don’t need candy molds to make these. Place several inches of powder sugar into a 9” x 13” glass pan and use your fingertip to create indentations. These will hold the melted sugar mixture.

Place sugar, honey, and tea in a heavy, high-sided saucepan and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Over medium to medium-high heat, continue to cook until the sugar reaches 300 degrees. This can take 15 to 25 minutes, but keep an eye on it. Overflowed sugar is catastrophically messy, and burnt sugar is terrible.

Once your sugar has reached the temperature, stir in the extract and herbal tinctures of your choice, then transfer the mixture to a Pyrex measuring cup for easy pouring.

Pour sugar into the powdered sugar dents (or candy molds if using) and allow it to cool. Toss cough drops in powdered sugar and store them in an airtight container.

Sift the powdered sugar to remove stray candy bits and feel free to re-use.

Recipe Notes

*Honey can be a difficult flavor, and it burns easily. You can replace some or all of the honey with sugar, or you can use all honey. Just keep an eye on the mixture as it cooks — if it doesn’t reach 300 degrees before scorching, the cough drops will still be great (if a little chewy).

*Good herbal tinctures to use for cold and flu relief are:

  • Lemon balm
  • Bee balm
  • Mullein
  • Blue spruce
  • Yarrow
  • Nettle
  • Mint
  • Elderberry
  • Echinacea

Snow Day: Lemon, Ginger, And Walnut Scones

Two scones sit on a white plate in front of a snowy background
Snowy bokeh for snow day scones.

You wake up to a wintery landscape, snow blowing in delicate flakes, adding to the two inches that has already fallen on the railings of your balcony and weighed down your plant’s new leaves that last week’s 65-degree temperatures coaxed unseasonably into life.

Scones. That’s the thing for today. It’s too blustery for walking, and there is no need to go anywhere, so you pile up books and paper and pens and lists of movies (or whatever you really like when you’re hunkering down), and you throw together scones, ready in 30 minutes (but better after cooling if you can wait that long).

When you realize you don’t have an egg, you don’t panic. You substitute a tablespoon of vegetable oil, a tablespoon of water, and a few splashes of cream. And it all turns out just fine.

Lemon, Ginger, and Walnut Scones

Ingredients

2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour (or regular AP flour, but don’t knead too much)

1/3 cup sugar

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. baking soda

8 T. butter, frozen and grated

½ cup sour cream or yogurt

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup each chopped walnuts and chopped crystallized ginger

Zest of one lemon

Turbinado sugar for topping

Method:

Make sure your butter is frozen before you start.

Preheat oven to 400⁰.

In a medium bowl (big enough to get your hands in) mix together dry ingredients. Grate butter into dry ingredients, and quickly rub flour into butter until the mixture resembles cornmeal (this can also be done in a food processor).  Add chopped walnuts and ginger and stir to combine.

If you are using sour cream, mix egg and sour cream together in a small bowl. Stir this mixture into the dry ingredients, pressing and stirring the sticky dough until it comes together.

On a lightly floured surface, shape the dough into a circle that is approximately 8” across. Cut into eight triangles and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet about one inch apart. If you want smaller scones, you can also cut the triangles in half.

Sprinkle each scone with turbinado sugar.

Bake scones for 15-18 minutes or until they are golden brown. Let cool slightly before serving.

That Beef Stew Thing

A white ceramic bowl holds a stew of beef with white chunks of potato, bright orange carrots, and fresh chopped green chives. It's sitting on a wooden cutting board in front of a brick wall.
A steamy bowl of unconditional love.

So The Child is coming home for the holidays, and she has requested a few things for food. Salad (shocking), spice cake (not as shocking), and That Beef Stew Thing.

“That Beef Stew Thing” is what she has asked for since I casually tossed it together back in 2014, whenever she wants something hot and flavorful and slightly spicy but just generally warming.

It’s probably not the most traditional type of curry recipe, as it calls for a powdered mix, which seems like maybe sacrilegious, except I don’t know from curry, and when I made it was just trying to get my child to eat during a really tough year. I found the recipe on The Kitchn, linked above, and have made precious few adjustments or changes, mostly to the amount of beef, spice, or vegetables (sometimes I’ll only use sweet potatoes). Also, in my original post on this subject, I noted the conspicuous lack of salt. For God’s sake, salt your food.

Choose any curry you like. This also makes killer leftovers.

Finally, this is the posh version of That Beef Stew Thing because there was no stew beef or beef short ribs to be had in these COVID times. So I grabbed a pricey grass-fed steak and cut it into chunks, and ZOWIE. It’s good. If you’ve got the ducats for that, yay, you. Otherwise, this is equally delicious (if not more, honestly) with a lean cut of beef that needs a little time to get tender.

That Beef Stew Thing (originally called Korean Curry Rice)

2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 pound boneless beef short ribs, cut into 1-inch cubes (or any kind of stew beef in cubes)
1 medium onion, diced
Curry powder (honestly, to taste, any kind you like)
2 medium carrots, peeled and cubed
2 small red or yellow potatoes, peeled and cubed
1/2 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed
3 cups stock (veg or chicken)
Salt and pepper (season properly or it won’t taste great)
Steamed rice for serving
Optional: Kimchi for serving


Method
Heat the sesame oil over medium-high heat in a large pot. Add the boneless beef short rib and diced onions, season with salt and pepper, and brown on all sides. Add curry powder and cook, stirring, until the spices begin to open up.


Add the carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and stock and mix well. Bring to a boil and then turn down to a simmer, really a lazy slow one, until the beef is tender and the veg is cooked through (this is a good one for a tagine, perhaps, with enough stock, or a clay bean pot? Not sure but will definitely try the bean pot, as I have one.). If you like a thicker stew or want something more like a curry with sauce, make a slurry with 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 1 tablespoon of the stew liquid. Mix completely, then add into the stew and stir through. This will thicken up nicely without any off flavor.

Serve over steamed rice with some kimchi on the side.

Aukey PowerTitan Portable Power Station: A Review – And A Coupon Code

AUKEY PowerTitan 300 Portable Power Station 288Wh
Aukey PowerTitan 300 Portable Power Station: scroll down for some $$ off!

So this is not the normal post for Charm City Edibles, but this product has been incredible, and I feel like sharing (plus there’s a coupon code – head to the bottom of this post if you’re impatient).

Aukey sent me the PowerTitan 300 Portable Power Station 288Wh – named like a superhero, natch – to test drive, and KWeeks and I took it for a ride on two trips to the middle of the woods. We definitely did some stuff with it that you’re not supposed to (charged cordless power tools, including a 56V lithium-ion battery), plus some stuff it really is more suited for (charging phones and devices). The verdict?

WORTH IT.

Not only did it charge our power tool batteries (three of them) on less than a full charge, but it also continued to charge cellphones without using hardly any remaining power (as in, less than 1% of the remaining power).

We charged it up again for the second trip, and I feel like it could go indefinitely charging devices if we hadn’t drained power with the 56V battery.

The official stats of the Aukey PowerTitan 300 portable power station, for those of you who like that sort of thing:

Capacity: 288Wh (26Ah, 11.1V)
DC Input: 5-25V, 4A
USB-C Input: 5-20V, 3A
AC Outputs (2): 110V/60Hz, 300W (600W peak)
DC Outputs (2): 12V, 8A (DC port); 12V, 10A (car port)
USB Outputs (2): 5V, 3.1A (total)
USB QC 3.0 Output: 18W max
USB-C PD Output: 60W max

For me, the stats don’t matter so much as how it works, and it works great for our purposes. I can see running small appliances on this briefly, but really if you want to spend time off-grid and are worried about charging devices (phones, cameras, laptops), this is a really great portable power station for that.

#vanlife people, this is a good option for you. Aukey says it works with solar, too, but we didn’t get that far.

Charging in a wall outlet is also fast and easy (but see below for the only con of this unit).

PROS: Small, easy to transport, charges phones fast, can handle small cordless power tool batteries

CONS: Takes a long time to re-charge through the car lighter. That’s literally the only con.

AND FRIENDS. I have a coupon code for you to get $40 off, so this Aukey PowerTitan 300 portable power station only costs $209. Just head to the official Aukey site and type AUKEYPLUS when you order. The code expires August 31, so don’t dawdle. Shipping is free and fast: get your power station in about five (business) days.

Just so things are crystal clear, too: I would not write about anything that I did not highly recommend. Aukey was busted and kicked off Amazon for fake reviews, and I am here to say that this is totally on the level. If you buy it, hate it, and live local to Baltimore (within an hour), I will bake you a cake. And that’s on top of Aukey’s 30-day money-back guarantee.

Go get some portable power, and let me know how it goes!

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