Cream of Asparagus Soup 

I’ve carried on before about my love of asparagus but this relationship just gets better all the time. 

Strangely, I’ve never made homemade asparagus soup until this spring. Perhaps I don’t have the patience when I know it can be steamed or blanched in a couple of minutes and ready to eat. 

Even more odd, this recipe came about when I was trying to make a healthy breakfast smoothie. I’d found two similar recipes for a healthy breakfast smoothie that were similar--one from ever-young Martha Stewart, and the other from ever-healthy Dr. Oz. The recipes were very much alike, with names like “Green Drink” or “Green Juice,” and started with two cups of chopped fresh spinach. 

I love spinach almost as much as asparagus, so I thought this green drink would be a much healthier alternative than my usual breakfast--black coffee and a Kellogg’s Pop-Tart (hey, I’m entitled to feel like a 12-year-old at breakfast, at least). 

Unfortunately, both versions of the green drink--even with their sweetening additives like minced fresh ginger or honey--tasted like a glass of wet, freshly-mowed grass. So I thought about converting that recipe to a hot soup. Then, the lure of my lover, asparagus, beckoning, I thought, why use spinach? 

This soup can be served warm or cold, though in my book cold soup is an oxymoron, , like “jumbo shrimp” or “delicious calamari.” This soup also strays from my original idea of a super-lean green liquid food since I added cream for thickness. 

But that’s okay. When you eat asparagus, all is forgiven . Sorry, Dr. Oz, I won’t give up my organic heavy cream.

  

Cream of Asparagus Soup 

4 tablespoons olive oil 
1 medium onion, chopped 
2 stalks celery, chopped 
3 medium carrots, chopped 
2 lbs. asparagus 
1 ½ teaspoon minced garlic 
½ teaspoon salt 
½ teaspoon black pepper 
4 cups chicken broth 
½ cup half-and-half 
½ cup buttermilk 
Garnish 

In a large saucepan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, celery and carrots. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 7 minutes. Meanwhile, snap woody ends off asparagus and chop into half-inch pieces. 

Add garlic, salt, pepper, and asparagus to simmering vegetables. Cook 1 minute, stirring. Add 4 cups chicken broth, stir. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. Turn off heat, let rest 5 minutes. 

Puree soup in blender in 2 or 3 batches. Pour pureed mixture into a saucepan over medium heat. Add half-and-half and buttermilk, and stir. Warm through, covered. Pour into bowls, and garnish. 

Possible garnishes: grated fresh parmesan cheese, crumbled bacon, croutons. 

Last week I learned how to make soup. Now, for you to fully grasp how big of an achievement this is, you have to realize that my father and I creatively assembled this soup in a mild panic on our own, without Mama’s help. I never, and I mean NEVER, attempt cooking something for the first time all on my lonesome, but this was an emergency.

What was the emergency, you ask?

Well, my boyfriend the Cowboy was sick. (Yes, I finally wrangled a Cowboy. More on this some other time.)

We had planned this lunch for quite some time because, you see, he works all over the country and is rarely home. I wanted to remind him how spectacular of a woman I am by cooking him a full meal, renting his favorite movie from the library, and giving him the best back-rub in the history of spectacular-woman-kind. I had it all planned out – fried potato slices, asparagus, bacon-wrapped pork chops, three-bean salad, and Mama’s homemade raspberry lemonade (Click here for recipe!), with Man-Bait pecan pie (Click here for recipe!) for dessert. Sounds amazing, right? The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, after all.

I flew home after my morning class at Last Chance Community College, donned my broomstick skirt and an apron (the skirt was necessary for full domestic effect), and was about to start making a holy mess in the kitchen when my phone began hollering “…Operator won’t you put me on through, I gotta send my love down to Baton Rouge…” Cowboy! Cowboy! I flipped (yes, flipped) open the phone to…hacking.

“Honey, I’m sick. *cough cough*”

“Oh. Are you still coming?”

“Of course I am! Just, could you make something like soup? I don’t want you to go through all the trouble of a big meal ‘cause I don’t think I’ll be able to eat it.”

“That’s fine, sweetie, of course I know how to make soup. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

*click*

This is where the panic set in because, well, I don’t actually know how to make soup. I tried calling Mama, but she was at some sort of agricultural convention in Indiana, partying like a hayseed rock star, and couldn’t be bothered with her domestic flop of a daughter. I consulted each and every one of the sixty-two cookbooks in the kitchen, but all of the soup recipes looked confusing as heck. Bone marrow? Who can be bothered with bone marrow at a time like this? Eye of newt? Leg of frog? What??

I decided to pour me a drink and wallow in self-pity. Cowboy is going to discover that I cannot cook soup. He’s going to leave me. I’m never going to find a good man ever again, because I cannot cook soup. I’m going to die a lonely spinster with fourteen cats. I could literally hear my biological clock ticking.

Luckily, Dad arrived home in the middle of my frenzy. He asked what I was drinking (cherry vodka and cream soda) and why I was drinking at 11 a.m. Dad dragged me off my duff and helped me rifle through the fridge and throw everything we could find into a pot. I covered it with water and let it cook for awhile. I even brought myself to cook a pecan pie, with extra bourbon, for myself.

Cowboy loved it, and my biological clock shut up. For now.

So! Here is the recipe for Tick Tock Soup:

Some potatoes cut into chunks

Some sliced up carrots

Some asparagus

Some sprigs of rosemary ripped off of Mama’s plant in the dining room

Some basil leaves ripped off of Mama’s plant in the living room

A couple of pork chops, chopped into hunks

A couple of venison chops, chopped into hunks

Water

Some milk

Pinch of flour

A lot of salt (if you’re cooking for a cowboy)

Throw it all in a pot and set the heat on medium. Stir. When it has simmered long enough for the potatoes to be mushy, it is done.

Serve with beverage of your choice, unless you are serving a cowboy with a cold, then give him chamomile tea with a spoonful of honey. Make him drink it, because he will complain and try to give it to the dog when you are not looking.

If you’re lucky, he’ll even bring you some jeans and shirts to patch, because you lied and told him you knew how to mend…

When I first heard the lyrics, I thought it was an old folk song, maybe written by Woody Guthrie...

He put gold in the ground; 
He turned the water into wine... 

But no, it was the voice of Mary Kay Place, best known as appearing as Meg in the movie The Big Chill and for her lively role as Loretta Haggers on the old TV show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman  

To our American ancestors, root vegetables surely did seem like "gold from the ground" in winter. When the weather was fiercely cold, animals too scarce to kill for food, and purchasable supplies running low, a family always could rely on their winter store of root vegetables.

  

Rutabagas: ugly now, pretty later

Rutabaga is one of them. I’m surprised at the number of people who have never tasted a rutabaga, think it’s a "large turnip" or think it’s bitter. The yellow flesh has a delicate lightness, reminiscent of artichoke, perhaps a faint hint of turnip. It is a firmer vegetable than many, and requires longer cooking if you want your vegetables spoon-soft. But it can still be fully cooked and have a bit of nice crunch. 

This dish contrasts the texture of rutabaga with the softness of sweet potato, and also has a crisp/sweet contrast. I don’t like to heavily flavor good organic vegetables, since they have a natural harmonious taste that need not compete with seasoning.

 

I recommend you buy peeled and roasted chestnuts. Save your fingertips and a half-day of valuable time.

Here I added chestnuts as an enhancer. I like chestnuts and enjoy serving them because many people have never even eaten them. They mistakenly think they’re hard like other tree nuts; they’re soft. People also think they will have the same nutty taste as peanuts or cashews. They don’t. It’s a subtle nut-like flavor. Everyone knows the lyric "chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." but don’t realize that the American chestnut tree was almost extinct by 1950, with only 50-100 trees left. If you can’t find chestnuts at your local store (check the kosher section if you have one), you can order them online at Allen Creek Farm, a family-owned farm in Washington started by city-escapers like so many of the readers here. I don’t recommend you peel chestnuts yourself, unless you have lots of time and patience. I did it once and that’s it.

Rutabaga-Sweet Potato Hash

2 rutabagas, peeled and chopped (about 3 cups)
3 sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped (about 3 cups)
½ teaspoon salt (with boiling water)
½ cup peeled and roasted chestnuts
¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano (or 1 tablespoon dried)
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fill a large saucepan with approximately 3 quarts of water, add ½ teaspoon salt, and bring to a boil. Add rutabagas and return to a boil. Cook 10 minutes. Add sweet potatoes and cook 5 minutes more. Drain rutabagas and sweet potatoes in a colander, rinse with cold water, and let rest for 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine rutabagas, sweet potatoes, chestnuts, olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper. Stir until all is coated. Spread in one layer on a large baking sheet and place in center rack of oven for 20 minutes. Remove and serve.

  

 by Lisa at Fresh Eggs Daily 

 

We don't eat a lot of chicken at our house. Since we started raising our own flock, eating one of them is out of the question. I don't care if you name an animal or not, you're still interacting with it every day, feeding it,caring for it and much as I would LOVE to be able to raise meat birds and animals, it just isn't in me. I applaud those who do because you know the animals are humanely treated until the very end and you are eating meat that has been raised naturally without antibiotics, hormones or chemicals.  I'm sure it tastes better than anything you could buy, just as our fresh eggs do.  Maybe one day...but for now, chicken isn't on the menu very often.

But this pot pie is just SO darn good that my husband requests one a couple times a year. So I trudge to the grocery store and usually buy one of those pre-cooked rotisserie chickens  to minimize my handling of the whole bird that reminds me of our 'girls'!

The nice thing about this recipe is that you can also omit the chicken all together and make a wonderful Vegetable Pot Pie - just add a few more vegetables to what is called for below.  

One of the other things I really love about this recipe is the herbed crust. I mix some fresh or dried parsley and thyme in to the dough as I'm making it. Not only is it pretty but it adds another layer of flavor to your finished pie.

Here's my recipe. It's easy and really hits the spot on a cold winter evening. It's also a great way to use up leftover vegetables. Feel free to substitute what you have available or vegetables you prefer.

Chicken Pot Pie with Herbed Crust

Crust:2-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
Generous pinch of fresh or dried parsley and thyme
2 sticks cold butter
1/2 cup ice water

Combine flour, salt, herbs and 2 sticks butter in food processor. Slowly add ice water until dough holds together. Flatten into two discs between plastic wrap. Chill for at least an hour.

Pie:1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
1-1/2 cups milk
1-1/2 cups water
Shredded rottiserrie or roasted chicken
2 sliced carrots, cooked until soft
1 medium potato, diced and cooked until soft
1/2 chopped onion, cooked until soft
1/2 cup green beans (fresh, frozen or canned)
1/2 cup peas (fresh, frozen or canned)
1/2 cup corn (fresh, frozen or canned)
Parsley, thyme, salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Melt butter in saucepan then slowly whisk in flour. Add milk and water and simmer until thickened, stirring constantly. Season with salt, pepper, parsley and thyme.

Roll out bottom crust and generously fill with chicken and vegetables. Pour liquid over top and cover with top crust. Vent crust, brush with milk and bake 30-35 minutes until golden brown.

  

 

Join me on Facebook at Fresh Eggs Daily and my BLOG for more tips, tricks and advice to raising naturally healthy chickens, as well as recipes, DIY and craft projects.

  

With all the baking that went on here this holiday season, we rapidly used up our supply of store bought extracts.  While store bought extracts are convenient, the imitations extracts are filled with chemicals and taste just a bit artificial, and the real extracts often cost upward of 10 dollars.  With just a little planning and patience, you can make your own extracts at home with just some basic ingredients.

 
Six reasons you should make your own extract:

1. They're cheaper
2. They taste better
3. They are better for you
4. It's a fun ongoing project going on right in your kitchen
5. They can be used as gifts
6. You can control the intensity

Making Extracts

To make your own extracts you need a jar, a solvent, and some item to use as flavoring.  If you wish you can sterilize the jar before use, but so far I have had success simply using extra clean jars.  For a solvent, you need some kind of alcohol, preferably vodka.  It is important that there is water and alcohol in the solvent to extract more flavor, so stick with vodka since using an alcohol that is too high proof won't get to those water soluble flavors.  You can flavor your extracts with a variety of things.  Choose extracts that you often use in your own baking such as vanilla, lemon, almond, or peppermint. 

Making Vanilla Extract

You can buy vanilla beans over the internet, or at specialty food stores.  Use approximately 2 seeds for every pint of vodka. Cut the vanilla bean lengthwise, or chop it up to increase the flavor.  Put the the seeds in your jar with 70-90 proof vodka and put the jar somewhere you won't forget about it.

Shake the bottle every few days/weeks.  Your extract should be done in 2-3 months.  The longer you allow it to sit, the stronger the flavor.  Once you are happy with it, you can strain it to remove the vanilla beans and store the extract in a dark place.  Don't throw those beans out, most beans can be used twice!

Making Peppermint Extract

Cut up 1/2 cup of tightly packed peppermint leaves.  Place them in a jar and pour in about 1 cup of vodka.  Make sure the leaves are completely covered.  Every several days shake the jar.  Your extract should be done in about 1 month, and you can strain it and store it in a cool, dark place.

Making Lemon Extract

Zest 2 large lemons and add it to a jar with 1 cup vodka and 2 teaspoons of sugar.  You can use a lesser strength vodka for this recipe (40%).  Shake the extract daily for a month, and strain it.  Store in a dark and cool space.

Making Almond Extract

Combine 12 cut up raw almonds with 1 pint of vodka in a jar.  Shake the jar every few days for about 2 months.  When the extract reaches the desired intensity, strain it and store it in a cool dark spot.

Join my in my adventure here.

A heavy frost did-in my pepper patch, so I harvested all the peppers that remained and were not ruined by the frost.  That yielded a full basket of sweet bell, banana and lipstick peppers: more than we could possibly use before they go bad.  I have a shelf full of canned, sliced peppers; bags and bags of frozen peppers, several jars of dried peppers… what can I do with these final sweet peppers for a bit of variety?

Marie turned to the internet and came up with a recipe for sweet pepper relish. This one is tagged with the word Heinz, so I assume that company is somehow the original source, so I’ll mention that, although the recipe was found on www.food.com.

 

Ingredients for Sweet Pepper Relish

• 6 medium green bell peppers
• 6 medium ripe bell peppers (red, yellow, orange, mix & match)
• 3 medium onions
• 2 – 4 hot peppers (optional)
• 1 ½ cups apple cider vinegar
• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon pickling salt
• 1 tablespoon mustard seeds
• 1 tablespoon celery seeds
• 2 cloves garlic

Tools & Supplies

• At least 4 pint canning jars with lids and bands
• Hot water bath canner
• Canning tool set (wide mouth funnel, jar lifter, head space tool, etc)
• 6 – 8 Qt. enamelware or stainless steel sauce pan or stock pot
• Paring knife
• Ladle
• Wood, plastic or stainless stirring spoon
• Measuring cup and spoons
• Rubber gloves (optional)
   

Directions

 

Set up your canner and use it to sanitize 4 to 6 pint jars and lids by boiling them for 10 minutes.  Reduce the heat but keep them hot while you prepare the relish.

Stick your onions in the freezer for a few minutes to reduce the eye irritation that occurs while chopping them.

Wash, core and seed the peppers.  If you are including hot peppers (jalapenos, habaneros, Serrano – I’m using Cajun belles) you may want to wear gloves to prevent spreading the capsasin to delicate parts of your face. Washing your hands, even with soap and water does not remove this element from your skin.

  

Skin and cut the onions to manageable pieces.

Mince the garlic.

In a food processor chop the peppers and onion.

Combine all your ingredients in the saucepan or stock pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally.

 

Boil for 25 – 30 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent sticking. Turn off heat.

Ladle the relish into hot canning jars, leaving ½” of head space. Use a skewer or other non-metallic item to poke the relish to release any trapped air bubbles.

Clean the jar rim and threads and the lid seal with a clean paper towel.  Install the lid and band, tightening the band just to finger tight (careful, they’re HOT: use your jar wrench to hold the jar while you snug the band).

Use your jar lifter to place the filled jars into the canner (still containing hot water) as you fill them.

When all jars are filled, in the canner, and well covered with water, turn up the heat under the canner and bring it back to a boil.  Cover and reduce heat as necessary to maintain a rolling boil, but not so vigorous as to splatter excessively or to knock the jars into one another.  Check it occasionally to be sure the jars remain covered with water.

Process in boiling water for a minimum of 15 minutes, adjust this for your altitude.

When processing is complete, turn off the heat and allow to cool a bit before removing the jars.  Mine took only a few minutes to cool to the point that the lids sealed down and went “plink” even though still in the water.  If you MUST remove them from the canner immediately, handle them gently, do not tilt them and snug up the bands as quickly as you can to insure that the lids are held tightly to the jar rim until they seal.

Let the jars cool completely.

Refrigerate any jars that don’t seal and use those first.

If you choose to leave the bands on the jars, remove them first, wipe out any moisture that remains and put them back on.  Once sealed the bands are not needed but, if you prefer the appearance or feel better about having the bands on them, get the moisture out so the band and lid don’t corrode. 

Uses for Sweet Pepper Relish

You can use this relish in place of sweet pickle relish in most dishes such as deviled eggs or potato salad and as a condiment on hot dogs, hamburgers and sandwiches.  Traditionally (here in the South), vegetable relish or chow-chow is used as a topping for white beans as a low cost main dish.  Pepper relish is also a favored garnish for pork.  It is unique and flavorful enough to be used alone as a side dish if you wish.  Spice up your family’s dining table and try some sweet pepper relish.

Stevia for the Sugar Sensitive

In this batch I substituted ground raw stevia from our garden for the sugar. I harvested the stevia plant just a while ago (it builds the most sweetness in the late fall) bundled the sprigs and hung them to air dry.  Use just the leaves, the stems and flowers don’t  contain the stevioside that make this plant sweet.

 

You may drop a leaf or two into beverages like tea or coffee to sweeten it and retain easy retrieval.  Raw stevia does not dissolve even if ground to a powder and will form “dregs” in the bottom of your cup if used as a beverage sweetener.  However, stevia has a very sugar-like taste that holds up well to most cooking and it has no appreciable effect on your glucose levels, so it makes an excellent sweetener for diabetics or the diet conscious.  It also lacks the nasty side effects of aspartame.

 

Your only limitations on the use of stevia are that it will not caramelize; so making fudge or caramel is not possible and it does not activate yeast; so many baked goods will not rise like you expect.  In most other cooking ground, raw stevia will not make a difference in appearance or taste from sugar.  You can buy a white, powdered stevia extract that will dissolve in liquids; but the other limitations remain.

 

Using stevia is simple: for each cup of sugar called for in the recipe, use 1 tablespoon of raw powdered stevia or 1 teaspoon of the dry processed stevia extract.

I have found that stevia grows well here in Tennessee even though it is a tropical plant.  It will not survive winter, and starting from seed is almost impossible; so I take cuttings in the fall, root them, pot them and keep them indoors until late spring when warm weather returns.  Then I transfer them back to my herb bed in the garden.

I hope you have enjoyed this recipe and will give Sweet Pepper Relish a whirl.

One thing I love about British food is that it’s not scary. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good walk on the culinary wild side (fufu and fish heads in Ghana, roasted grubs in Thailand, bull testicles in Spain, and sheep brain right here in the Lone Star State) but sometimes, there is such a thing as a pleasant non-surprise. Brits have mastered the meat and potato combo, along with gems like fish and chips, mushy peas, all things pickled, puddings (or “desserts” as we Yanks say) and other yummy treats (short bread? yes, please).

As our time in England drew to a close, Hubs and I took a couple of day trips into Wales. If you’ve never been, Wales is a beautiful country with lots of sheep and unusual linguistic choices. Exhibit A:

 

Right. So. On our jaunt to Hay-on-Wye, “the town of books,” we were delighted by a pop-up farmers’ market but I was absolutely blown away by a food entirely novel to me: flap jacks. Now, as a card carrying American, I grew up with flap jacks as pancakes. Pretty run of the mill stuff. But let me tell you about flap jacks on the other side of the pond: they are so much more delicious, because they are even more full of fat, sugar, and carbs. They’re a little oat bar and if you’re lucky, you can find them topped with chocolate fudge. Wanna fly off to flap jack heaven? Here’s how:

   

Flap Jacks 

Ingredients: 

  * 6 tbsp. syrup

* 2 sticks butter

* 12 oz. oats

Directions:  

• Preheat oven to 350
• Butter a 9″x 13″ pan and line the base with baking parchment.
• Place the syrup and butter into a large saucepan and heat gently until the butter has melted into the syrup and stir well.
• Put the oats into a baking bowl, add a pinch of salt then pour over the butter and syrup mixture and stir to coat the oats.
• Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and spread evenly.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven while the flapjack is still slightly soft, they will harden once cool.
• Cut the flapjack into bars and let cool completely before serving.

After stuffing myself full of flap jacks, our second day in Wales was spent getting slightly lost on Sugar Loaf Mountain. Check out the kind of creepy Medieval looking forest we found:

 

But I digress…on our way back from Hay, we made a pit stop in Hereford (England side of the border) at the Oak Church butchery, farm shop, and garden centre (“r” before “e” because that’s how they do it). At the sight of fresh vegetables, every cut of meat you could imagine –and probably didn’t know existed–  and a cheese case that made me weak in the knees, I knew we were in just the right place.Though I stuck with a grilled portobello mushroom, Hubs bought a few gorgeous steaks and I gotta say, it was nice to see the animals right there in the field enjoying the open air and  cloudy, damp sky.

 

It was one of our last nights in the UK and we wanted to make a special, slow dinner for Mum and her beau. We decided to start with local cheeses (Herefordshire goat cheese and a firmer cheese called Little Hereford), crackers and a scrumptious assortment of olives stuffed with garlic, and pickled onions stuffed with blue cheese.

Dinner was steak/portobello, with roasted vegetables, and garlic mashed potatoes. We finished up European style with a green salad and, finally, a homemade rhubarb crumble.

Our meal, starting with wine and nibbles, started around 5 o’clock in the afternoon and eased into the latest hours of the night. There was no rush, no better place to be. For  several creeping hours we ignored our phones and instead enjoyed sharing the kitchen, simple food, real face-to-face conversation, and maybe a few too many bottles of wine.

If this is the best of British eating, I’ll take it.

Today’s featured vegetable: Romanesque

Recently my CSA box included romanesque. Doesn’t the name sound regal? I’ve never seen romanesque in the grocery store.  Have you?

Romanesque tastes somewhere between broccoli and cauliflower…but so much better! Plus, it’s rich in vitamin C, vitamin K, fiber, and flavor.

Something so beautiful must taste delicious. Right? So right. Maybe that’s the real reason that my daughter loves the logarithmic spirals of flavor. Plus, the vibrantly green color is appealing.

Here’s how I prepared romanesque for my family- It’s so simple! And, so fast! Who knew that eating healthy is so very easy?

I cut the head into bit size pieces, added a bit of olive oil to my granny’s cast iron skillet, turned the heat on medium, added the romanesque and a stir-fried the veggies for just a few minutes.

Viola! That’s it! Just a bit of olive oil and chopped romanesque. Nothing else.

We savored every crisp bite. We like romanesque almost as much as cake!

Have you ever tasted romanesque?

Happy summer,

Heather

This past weekend, we canned tomatoes for the very first time. And not only that, they were tomatoes we grew ourselves, and from heirloom seeds!!

  

 

 

Aren't all those fresh veggies gorgeous?!!  (In the second picture, Two Socks is a kitty that recently adopted us.  She's a great garden helper!)

We were going to attempt this on Saturday, but after taking our three ring circus (aka the three canine furry kids) to the vet - the puppy for the first time (oy vey!) - we were too exhausted to start in the afternoon.

  

It's hard to find good help! 

So on Sunday we dove in. First I washed all the tomatoes and weighed them in batches. I’m REALLY glad I thought to do that. Since we've never done this before, I realized that would be a good way to help us track how many jars we will need in future endeavors. It’s tough to gauge that when you’re a newbie. While I had plenty of jars washed and ready to go, I didn’t want to heat more of the dome lids that we would need. Maybe they’d be fine, but I just have this thing in my head that I don’t want to repeatedly heat the lids before they actually get used in the full canning process.

We ended up with 30.5 pounds of tomatoes! And that's not counting all I’ve been eating in the last week or so. They are so gorgeous and I’d forgotten how INCREDIBLE a homegrown tomato tastes. They actually have flavor, unlike those you buy at the grocery store.

Next, we boiled a pot of water on the stove to blanch the tomatoes for about 30 seconds. The skins on these are a little thick, so sometimes it took maybe 15 seconds more. We did this in small batches.

We had a cooler of ice water ready and once the tomatoes came out of the boiling water, they went immediately into the ice bath. We discovered that if we left them in there a few minutes to really cool them down all the way through the skins really slid off very easily.

I sliced them horizontally and scooped out most of the seeds. I then cut them up into chunks.

Once they were all diced, we put about ¼ of them into our big enamel stock pot and mashed them with a potato masher while bringing them to a boil to create some good juice for the whole batch. Once they came to a boil and the juices were released, we added the rest and brought them to a boil.

Now here’s where we hit a snag. It was 103 degrees plus really high humidity outside…in other words, miserable. We thought about setting up our outdoor cooker at the end of the house covered by trees, but that would also mean carting pans, jars, etc., etc., back and forth. So we started the water bath canner on the stove inside. That just didn’t work. After about 45 minutes, the water still wasn’t boiling! We were getting frustrated. The tomatoes were ready to go and so were the jars and lids. I finally put the lid on the tomatoes and turned the heat off. I didn’t want to turn them into sauce! We gave up and quickly set up the outdoor propane cooker. I swear, in addition to the larger burner/flames, I think the 100+ temps fired that sucker right up and in 10 minutes or less the canner was at a full rolling boil (granted the water was at least very hot from its eternity on the indoor stove). We actually got two pots going and were finally in business! 

So lesson learned, you just can’t beat the little portable propane two burner outdoor cooker when it comes to canning. Someday, we plan to have a nice deck that is covered. Ideally, it would be great to have a covered carport with an outdoor kitchen set up – counters, water, etc. But honestly I’ll take any space that’s covered to keep that brutal sun off our heads.

We ended up with 15 pints of diced tomatoes (in their own juice) and two pints of just juice.

  

One of our favorite parts of canning is hearing the lids “ping” after they come out of the canner and cool down. We always joke that “another jar got its wings”.

In addition, we put 11 pounds of home-grown tomatillos into the freezer in bags of one pound each. Making verde sauce or canning those was just too much to tackle in one day and I had read you can just freeze them whole. I think what I’ll do is thaw them out as
needed and make fresh batches of verde sauce when we need it. I can even make a batch on a weekend and use it for a meal during the week.

With the next batch of tomatoes, I’m planning to make rosemary basil “sun dried” tomatoes in our dehydrator. Tomatoes are quartered (or cut into sixths or eighths, depending on the size of the tomato), then marinated in olive oil, smashed garlic, fresh basil and rosemary and salt and then dehydrated. Don’t those sound DIVINE?! Stay tuned…I’ll let you know how those turn out.

Until next time, worms rock.

Like us on Facebook at KC Farms: http://www.facebook.com/KCFarms 

Yes, Fannie Farmer of the candy fame, but she was much more in the world of cooking ... a superstar before "superstar" was even a word. She was a celebrity chef who loved to cook and loved to eat. She was a woman ahead of her time.

First you need to know her history to appreciate who she was and why she should be one of your cooking heroes too.

One of four daughters, Fannie was born in 1857. Against popular thinking of the times, Fannie’s parents wanted their daughters to have as much schooling as possible. The family wasn’t wealthy in the Boston sense of the word; their wealth was knowledge. One day, while a teen, Fannie woke up to discover she couldn’t walk. As far as society was concerned, poor little Fannie’s life was over. Invalids didn’t attend college or hope to work. At best, Fannie might be allowed to bake a few cookies and sell them to help support the family.

And, of course, this is why Fannie is one of my heroes; stay at home, not Fannie Farmer. As her health improved, she jumped right into the evolving cooking melee of her time. Popular theories included:

• Cooking was a domestic science and demanding women embrace this philosophy.
• Cooking should be healthful, a woman should think only about the care of her family.
• Boiled vegetables and a meat was enough variety in a meal.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Cooking was not fun. It was portrayed as serious business. Then Fannie came along and changed that. Here was a cook who enjoyed eating, who enjoyed teaching others how to cook and eat. She wrote in the Companion, “It is impossible to raise cookery above a mere drudgery if one does not put heart and soul into the work.” 

How does one cook to enjoy the food? One cooks correctly with level measurements, that is how. That is Fannie Farmer’s real claim to fame – level measurements. No butter the size of an egg, no pinch of salt. A cup means just that, one cup level, no mounded up over the top, not almost to the top. Perhaps a few modern cooking show cooks could go back and think about that philosophy. In trying to make cooking easy and fun, too many TV cooks pour liberally, declaring “it’s about ½ cup,” or toss in hands full of dry ingredients while declaring they know exact amounts being added to the bowl. It’s in the details, especially with baking, it’s in the measuring details, and Fannie knew that.

Although it’s been overshadowed recently, you can still find a Fannie Famer’s Cookbook for sale. Originally published as the  Boston Cooking School cookbook, Fannie’s popularity eventually caused the name morph. She wrote other cookbooks as well, which you might just find online or at a used book store.

Fannie immersed herself in food. If she tasted an interesting sauce and the chef refused to give her the recipe, she simply put a bit on her business card and took it home to analyze later.

You may wonder if fame was all that Fannie got from her cooking. Wonder no more. By the time she died, she had invested in utilities, railroads, and a chocolate company, and had 19 different bank accounts. She owned her childhood home and land in Harvard, Massachusetts. Her love for food brought her both fame and fortune - a great combination.

As I read her favorite recipes, it’s clear the food is from a distant past. The crowds in the early 1900s may have loved her food, but I doubt it would make anyone’s top 10 list today. Think about eating this one: Potatoes and bananas mashed together, stuffed into banana skins, sprinkled with parmesan and broiled.

She’s still a hero to me, but I’m not convinced that stuffing figs with marshmallows and candied cherries is a great recipe. (The stuffed dates tasted better.) Who's your cooking hero? Add a comment; I would love to know. 

It helps to be fairly organized when you live in the country…especially if you still have a job in the city and commute every day.  Our drive is actually almost the same distance as we have been driving from the suburb where we were renting.  The drive takes just a little longer because we’re no longer traveling 75 mph on the wide open toll roads. 

I will admit, we had let ourselves lapse into a little bit of laziness at our previous house.  We were tired after work, and would sit down to just chill for a “little bit”.  In actuality, that translates into watching tv and playing on the computer/iPad for most of the evening.  But when you don’t own the home that you’re living in, you don’t spend the time, money and energy in putzing around working on little projects inside and out.  And most of our crafts and wood working materials were still packed away. 

Now that we’re living on our homestead fulltime, there are chores to do when we get home.  But the word chore is a misnomer  because we positively love being outside tending to the garden and working on little projects all around the homestead.  We also really enjoyed observing our bees (but that enterprise took a sad, sad turn – more about that in a future blog).

In getting used to our new routines, we are trying to stay organized and get as much done the night before to make our mornings a little less hectic.  Last night, I got everything ready for my lunch except for my sandwich.  I like to make my sandwich fresh in the morning – it’s just not as good to me after it’s been in the refrigerator all night and then in my lunch cooler half the day.  This morning, I grabbed my containers out of the fridge, made my sandwich and was ready to go!

When you live out in the country, it’s a major ordeal to get one or two items for a meal.  While we can make a pit stop at a store on the way home, it’s not preferred since it seems that everyone else is there too!  Something I have done for a long time (and have fallen in and out of the habit over the last few years), is to make a menu for the week.  I can then make a grocery list based on that menu and in one shopping trip will have everything needed to make a week’s worth of meals.  It also helps eliminate the “what should we have for dinner” conversation every single day.  When we have a plan, we just look at the menu and say, “Okay, tonight we’re having ___” and get busy cooking.

I also might add that the meals on our menu need to be relatively quick to prepare.  After working all day, getting home and trying to get something done, the last thing we want to do is spend hours in the kitchen cooking dinner.  But we also want to eat as many whole foods and stay away from as much processed food as possible.  Now that we have the storage space and extra refrigerator and freezer capacity, we are buying in bulk as much as possible.  For one, we believe in being prepared and ready for anything.  Also, by planning ahead, we can reduce the number trips we have to take in to “town” – time that takes us away from our homestead and into crowds of people and traffic…now THAT is a chore!  

Last night I got everything ready for Mexican steak and beans in the crock pot.  I mixed together a can of diced tomatoes, a can of diced green chiles, several spices, and half of a diced onion.  I put this mixture in a quart jar and into the refrigerator. 

 

Then I measured out brown rice and put it in a plastic container and the appropriate amount of water in a cleaned out (and repurposed) orange juice container. The crock pot and rice cooker were set out (oh the JOY of having lots of counter space now!!) and ready for this morning. 

  
This morning, after making my lunch very quickly (thanks to last night’s efforts), I put the meat in the crock pot, dumped in my tomato mixture, put the lid on and turned it on.  Then I poured the pre-measured rice and water into the rice cooker and set the delay timer.  Voilá, with less than two minutes of work this morning (and really only a few minutes more of prep work the night before) dinner will be ready when we get home!  All I have to do is add a can of pinto beans to the crock pot (they just need to get warm) and serve.  We really enjoy this meal.  It’s quick and easy and really good.  I need to get more adept with my crock pot – there’s nothing like having dinner done when you get home from work!   Not to mention that we’re free to work in the garden and around the house for longer because dinner is already cooked.

Not every day will go this smoothly.  But we are really going to work hard to spend a few extra minutes in the evening getting ready for the next day and keep our mornings less hectic in the mad dash to get out the door.  It doesn’t take a lot of time or effort - it’s all about creating a new habit.   

Until next time, worms rock and bees rule.

 Can Food Be a Hobby? 

Hobby:   A pastime, diversion, leisure pursuit, or something you do for relaxation.  Now I don’t know about you but when my family was growing food was not a hobby, it was a necessity.  Breakfast might be cereal or toaster something before the kids ran for the bus.  Eggs, bacon and the rest were more likely to happen on a Saturday or Sunday.  By early evening dinner became a blur of casseroles, pasta dishes and boiled vegetables.  That was not relaxation therefore that was not a hobby.
 

 

Since the children are grown I can now take the time to enjoy food, not just eating food, but trying new recipes and learning the whys and wherefores of why we cook certain ways. I can collect flour sifters, cookie cutters or cookbooks I’ll never use. Now I do have a hobby –Food (and pretty much everything that goes with it.)

 

There’s so much to learn. 

My sinking Angel:
 

Growing up I never gave it a second thought, but recently I became interested in angel food cake.  Why did my mother always cool it upside down, hanging from a Coke bottle?  The internet is wonderful, it didn’t take long for me to discover that angel food cake is really closer to a meringue than a cake and cooling it upside down keeps it from collapsing back onto itself.  That’s the theory, but when I tried to make this light as air cake part of it still collapsed.

 

Why?  I’m guessing I left an air pocket when I filled the pan or my oven does not heat evenly.  Since I’m fairly certain Betty Crocker puts out a good mix it’s most likely something I have done.  I know, a good hobbyist (cook) would start from scratch but any recipe that begins “separate 12 eggs” is NOT my type of recipe.  It’s way to rainy to bake an angel food cake today.  I’ll post an update in a later blog about the success of my next attempt at the perfect angel food cake.

Beware Teenager in the Kitchen: 

Even an experienced teenage cook needs to be monitored in the kitchen.  It seemed so simple.  All the granddaughter wanted was to make a key lime pie.  I have made those since I was probably 8 years old, back in the days when you had to crush the graham crackers and mix the butter and sugar for the pie crust.  Now with the readymade crusts there are only two ingredients for a great key lime pie.  Two, that’s all.  How could she go wrong?  She’s a flighty teenager, that’s how.

 

The Recipe and the Mistake: 

Here’s the recipe:  take 1 can sweetened condensed milk, mix with 1/3 cup key lime juice (or lime or lemon juice), pour into crust and chill.  Apparently what she heard was blah blah blah 3 blah blah.  She’s a girl so she creatively added red food coloring to make a pink pie but that wasn’t the problem, it was the ¾ cup of lime juice that was the problem.   “What’s the diff?”  I suggested she not consider chemistry as a major. Even the dog that will eat anything wouldn’t touch that pie.

What a Great Hobby: 

As hobbies go I think I have found a winner.  I can explore history, spend weekends at yard sales looking for hidden treasures, taste new ingredients, and oh yes perhaps cook a few things too.

 

We should all have a grandma who taught us a bunch of stuff about cooking. In times gone by, that was a given. But today folks have to rely on any elderly cook they can find. There is no substitute for years of experience at the stove.

Thus, here is an array of valuable tidbits that you are not likely to know unless you are already a very experienced cook with a variety of types of food. I’ve modernized a few of them (my grandmother never used a microwave or pastry brush, for instance) but they are still basic, solid, home-cooking tips.

Always make mashed potatoes with a ricer or mashing by hand. Machines, even an electric mixer, can deteriorate the starch in potatoes enough that they won’t come out fluffy.

Rest plain cooked rice in the pan for 15-30 min. after it has finished steaming. Leave the lid ajar. This will help the grains stay intact and help the grains firm up to a good texture.

Salad secret: if making a dressed salad with green leafy vegetables and are using a vinaigrette or other acidic-based dressing (such as lemon or fresh tomato), dress the salad right before serving. Acidic foods make green vegetables look dull and feel limp quickly.

If serving boiled vegetables and you don’t want the wrinkly look or shrinking some boiled vegetables (such as corn, carrots, green beans or asparagus) can have, drain vegetables after boiling and immediately use a pastry brush to coat them with oil or butter. This helps them trap moisture inside.

When juicing citrus fruit (by hand), bring it to room temperature and then roll it on the counter (to get the maximum amount of juice) before you cut it.

Enhance a spice’s flavor by heating it briefly in a dry stovetop pan on medium heat about 1-2 minutes, or until it has a “nutty” or cooked smell. Remove from heat immediately.

To check the freshness of eggs without breaking them, place them in a bowl of water. Fresh eggs will lie flat in the water. Old ones will float and lift an end toward the surface.

You can’t make homemade whipped cream from anything other than whipping cream or light whipping cream because other products (such as milk, light cream, or half-and-half) do not have enough fat. Use a chilled bowl and chilled beaters for the greatest chance of success.

To make a homemade pie crust more flaky, substitute a third of all-purpose flour in the recipe with cake flour.

Of course, a cast-iron skillet should not be washed with soap and water. But how to clean off those cooked-on pieces of grit? Just put coarse salt in the pan. Use a soft dry cloth or paper towels to scrub the grit away.

And the following one is mine, because Grandma would never have used liquor in a recipe:

When frying vegetables in a batter, you can get a crisper, lighter crust by replacing about a third of the flour with corn meal. It’s also helpful to replace up to one-fourth of the batter liquid with vodka. Vodka boils off more quickly and blocks some of the gluten formation. The alcohol should cook out.

Here at Chiot's Run fall means an abundance of local unpasteurized cider. We have a local mill that makes fantastic cider and sells it out of a little cooler out back. We've thought about trying to make our own, but with someone doing it so well, it's not worth trying to top it.

 

Having cider in the house means we'll be enjoying mulled cider every evening. There's something so comforting about a nice cup of hot cider warmed with delicious spices like: ginger, cinnamon, allspice and cardamom. I usually just add a few bits of each spice to a pot each evening then fill it with cider and allow it to steep for a half hour to an hour. Sometimes however I like to mix up a big batch of mulling spices to keep on hand and to fill small decorative jars to have on hand for the perfect fall hostess gift. This mix can be used for cider or wine. This year I decided it would be my gift of choice for friends & holiday parties. This is super quick and simple to make, as long as you have all the spices on hand, which I always do. You can even customize it to the person you're giving it to or to your own tastes. I use the same recipe for these jars as I use for my own cider. I keep all of the organic spices on hand since I buy in bulk from Mountain Rose Herbs. The vanilla beans I get very inexpensively from Saffron.com.

 

These are also fairly inexpensive. I spent more on the jar itself than the spices inside. I could have used regular canning jars, but I really wanted to make look a little different. I also thought these beautiful little jars would be ones that people would save and reuse as well.

CHIOT'S RUN MULLING SPICE MIX  

I don't like the flavor of citrus in my cider, if you do feel free to add orange peel. You can also add dried ginger chunks or nutmeg if you like, use what you've got on hand and what you like in your cider.

4 Tablespoon cinnamon chips (I prefer sweet cinnamon over the regular cinnamon)
4 Tablespoon allspice berries
1 Tablespoon cloves
1 Tablespoon black peppercorns
8 cardamom pods slightly crushed
1 vanilla bean cut into small pieces

Mix spices in small half pint jar, label and give away with directions: Mix 1 Tablespoon of mulling spice for every 2 cups of cider or wine, heat till almost boiling, reduce heat and steep for 30 minutes, enjoy.

 

When it comes to cider are you a mulled cider kind of person or do you like it cold?  

I can also be found at Chiot's Run where I blog daily about gardening, cooking, local eating, beekeeping, and all kinds of stuff. You can also find me at Not Dabbling in Normal, Simple, Green, Frugal, Co-op, and you can follow me on Twitter. 

Originally I was going to use one post to cover all the ways we can preserve tomatoes, but it was getting awfully long. So instead I'll beak it up into smaller chunks that are easier to chew. You're welcome!

Unlike cucumbers, there are many ways to preserve tomatoes so you can enjoy the bounty of your harvest all through the winter and spring until your next crop is ready for harvesting. We planted lots of tomatoes because we use lots of them in cooking, salads and as side dishes. Preserved tomatoes will not have the same look and texture of a fresh from the garden tomato, but if done properly, much of the flavor will be retained. 

Speaking of Flavor…Have you ever wondered why store bought tomatoes lack the exuberant flavor of a fresh-grown one? That’s easy.

Commercial Tomato Field, By Marie Bittinger

Most commercially grown tomatoes are picked while they are green and rock hard so they will travel better and not become over-ripe before they get to their destination. At the foot of our mountain – and scattered all through our county – are commercial tomato fields. As we go from here to there we watch them working in the fields, planting the sets, stringing the maturing plants dousing the crop in pesticides, picking them green, then spraying the field with something that causes the plants to wither to mush overnight. They have to post POISONOUS signs to keep poor people from trying to glean the fields. 

The trucks used to transport the tomatoes from distributors to their final destination are pumped full of ethylene gas to make the fruit turn red and (sort of) ripen. Ethylene is produced by most fruits as part of the ripening process; in miniscule amounts. Exposing them to concentrated amounts of the gas forces them to undergo the ripening process very quickly. When they get where they are going they look nice, but never had the chance to develop the flavor of a properly ripened, sun drenched fruit. 

Actually, a tomato is classified – botanically - as a berry, not a fruit, but I figured that would confuse most people, since most folks consider it to be a vegetable if anything. 

Whether you think of them as vegetables, fruits, or berries, they taste great, are good for you, and are fun to cook with. So, lay up plenty for use throughout the year. 

Freezing Tomatoes

Tomatoes are easy to freeze. They can be frozen in many forms, depending on your intended usage. One thing to remember: their skins will become tough after freezing, so in most cases you will want to remove the skins before using the ‘maters in your cooking. You can do this easily before freezing by popping the tomato into boiling water for just 45 seconds to a minute, depending on size, fish it out and ease it into a bowl of ice water for 5-10 minutes. This will cause the skin to split and it will peel off easily; just peel it with your fingers like peeling a grape. You can then chop it into cubes, dice it, or puree it before freezing. You can freeze them whole if you like, but they take up a lot of room in the freezer this way. If you will be cutting the tomatoes into wedges, you may want to wait to remove the skins; when they thaw out the skins will slip right off. No need to fuss with blanching and icing now. 

I’m going to demonstrate freezing them in wedges because we feel this will give us the most versatility when we thaw them out again, and because it’s warm this evening and I don’t want to heat up the house more with a big pot of boiling water on the stove. 

 

First, gather yourself a mess of tomatoes, a very sharp knife, cutting board and a cookie sheet. The nice thing about freezing is that they can be done in small batches with a minimum of fuss and equipment. 

Wash the tomatoes and remove the stem. I always leave the stem-stump on the tomato until we use it to prevent the stem scar from absorbing impurities from the air and while washing. When washing them, do not dump a load onto a sink full of water, again, the stem scar works like a sponge and will pull some of the dirty water into the tomato while it’s soaking. Don’t use soap. What is recommended to use is a solution of four parts water to one part vinegar. This “vegetable wash” can be used on most of your produce to kill the majority of the bacteria on the skin and greatly extend storage time of the fresh tomato on your counter or in the fridge. We do not refrigerate fresh tomatoes because it changes their flavor. Most store bought tomatoes have no flavor, so it doesn’t matter. 

 

I quarter each tomato by cutting it once along the core line, cutting out the stem scar area, then cutting across the diameter of the tomato instead of lengthwise. This exposes all of the chambers where the seedy-goop is hiding, making it easy to remove.  

 

This stuff does not freeze well and adds little to the nutritional value. The “meat” of the tomato is what you’re after. If you want to be especially frugal, clean the tomatoes over a colander sitting in a bowl. This will strain out the seeds and let the juice through to the bowl. You can put the juice in a jar and refrigerate it for use in cooking or making energy drinks. Dispose of the seeds carefully… if you compost them you’ll have bazillions of baby tomato plants popping up in your compost in no time.  

HINT:If you’re a seed-saver, spread the seeds on paper towels to dry, roll up the paper towels and store them in an air tight canister in a cool place for next year. To plant, just tear the paper towels into chunks with two or three seeds stuck to each and plant them in starter pots – paper and all. When they come up, thin them by removing the weaker seedlings. 

Do not *wash* the seeds out of the chambers, you want the tomato to be as dry as you can get it before freezing so excess ice does not form on its surface. 

Lay the wedges skin down on a cookie sheet and slide it in the freezer for a couple of hours. Once they are frozen firmly, transfer them quickly to a zip-lock freezer bag, remove as much air as possible (one of those vacuum food preservation systems would be nice) and set the bag in your deep freeze for long term storage. 

Done this way, the tomatoes don't freeze into one solid clump; you can open the bag and take out what you need as you need it. You may have to smack it around a little after extended time in the freezer, but the tomato wedges will break apart. If you tossed them into a bag as you cut them, then into the freezer they will freeze together requiring you to thaw the whole bag to use any of it. 

When freezing tomatoes in a “wet” form (chopped or pureed) bag them in sizes appropriate to your typical use. If you will be using a gallon of tomatoes each time you make soup, stew or casseroles, then by all means use the gallon bags. If smaller portions are more appropriate, use quart or pint bags to reduce storage hassles and waste after thawing. 

Alternatives

In addition to freezing tomatoes by themselves, you can prepare them in your favorite sauces, or casserole starter, and freeze that. Then all you have to do is pull out a bag, defrost, add macaroni and hamburger and you have a delicious, homemade casserole. Spaghetti and a bag of your own made from scratch sauce, a quick side salad and viola, a dinner fit for a king (or queen) in no time. 

Coming Up Next

Next time I’ll continue the exploration of preserving your tomato harvest by looking at drying them. I have a batch in the dehydrator right now, and it smells like an Italian bakery in here.   Wonderful!  We’ll also look at what you can do with dried tomatoes and explore several ways to dry them. Please come back again. 

Last night for supper we celebrated the season by firing up the Weber Kettle and grilling some beautiful grassfed beef New York strip steaks. These grassfed beef New York strip steaks are really special because they came from Against The Wind Ranch, which specializes in grassfed Black Angus beef that is raised with such care and dedication that it is Certified Humane. Earning the Certified Humane label is not easy as producers must submit to a level of scrutiny in their animal husbandry that makes many folks uncomfortable. We are glad to support Against The Wind Ranch and their efforts with achieving Certified Humane status for their operation.

 

Many folks think that grassfed beef is difficult to cook - especially folks with a vested interest in feedlot beef. Hogwash! Cooking naturally lean and naturally tender grassfed beef is a cinch so long as you don't try to incinerate it as you might a much fattier cut. My approach for grilling over charcoal or on a cast-iron griddle is to give the steak a quick sear at high heat on both sides (edges too if it is 2-inches thick) and then about 5 minutes at medium heat on one side and 4 minutes on the other. I test for doneness by holding the steak with tongs and gauging its flexibility. A perfectly medium rare is achieved when the steak droops about half as much as it did when it was raw. Experiment a little, I know you will get the hang of it. We also like to lightly rub our steaks with what amounts to a slightly modified version of this Memphis dry rub. I love the taste of plain pure beef, but I really love the mild zing the rub adds.

 

No grilled grassfed steak supper would be complete without some potatoes. We like ours roasted in Lucini's chile-infused olive oil. Essentially we parboil the spuds for 5 minutes, drain and pat dry. Then we toss them in the chile-flavored olive oil, season with gray sea salt and black pepper and bake at 450 degrees for around 25 minutes. Yum.

 

While the potatoes were baking, I lit the charcoal with my trusty chimney starter. These devices come in real handy for getting rid of excess newsprint and leave you with a bed of coals that doesn't taste like a chemical plant. And it only takes about 10 minutes to get the coals going.

 

Have you ever seen meat this beautiful? This is how the Against The Wind Ranch's New York strip steaks look before getting the rub. This is one of life's most wonderful treats -- perfect for that anniversary, birthday or just to celebrate the season.

All photos and potato recipe are courtesy Karen Keb.

It's been a long time since I wrote here because my night-times have been overtaken by a smallish loveable squishy baby man. He's approaching the three month mark and while he is sleeping better through the night, our days have been so fast paced that by the time I get him down (between 7-9 pm), I am creatively and physically spent. There goes my small window for any substantial writing.

I know it's been long, and I have a lot I want to catch up on. So this Friday, while Andy takes the kids on his weekly delivery trip to Viroqua, I have a few hours with just Little Liam and he really is a good enough baby that I can squeeze in a sentence or two on here. (Isn't Liam totally adorable?! I know, I'm in love and biased)

The dishes are a mile high and the laundry buzzer just went off, but I need a little writing therapy here.

One of the reasons the dishes are so piled up is that this week has been one big fat catering event for St. Brigid's Meadows.

I laugh as I think of it now. Tonight is Andy's last night for the gig, but it feels like we've been under cooking siege for the last three weeks. Down on Vince's farm, about two miles down County PI and from our Blue House, there is a full scale movie production set up. Vince and Dawn, through a series of knowing the right people and generously giving up their farm sanctuary for a week, have brought the farm into the limelight. Down the windy, tree-lined County Road PI, there lies a car that has "crashed" into one of the older trees and is the center-piece for this film production. They only film at night, as that is part of the precedent for the scene, which means the crew of 40+ sleeps from about 8am to 4pm. They awaken, return to the farm from Westby and La Crosse, and have breakfast.

That's where Andy and the rest of the farm come into play. He is in charge of catering two meals a night for these folks, in the Hundt farmhouse, from this last Tuesday through tonight (Friday). Breakfast is actually a full scale meal served around 7pm. The crew goes out and shoots for roughly 6 hours and then comes back for lunch. That's around 1:30am, in which Andy has gotten out of bed and set up again in the Hundt kitchen for round two. He's usually back in bed around 3:30am.

In the first part of the week, Vince was gone for an annual business trip. Kristin (who runs the dairy with husband Jason) is always in Madison getting her Masters from Monday through Wednesday. With both key people gone, Andy basically out of commission besides cooking and delivering all week and me with three small kids (housebound), the work of two full farms fell on Jason and Dawn's shoulders. Beef animals needed to be fed and one rounded up for a weekly date with the butcher on Wednesday. Dairy cattle to be milked twice a day, daily chores surrounding all that and care for the hogs and chickens to boot. On top of that, we are still collecting sap for maple syrup and there are trees tapped all over the woods surrounding Poplar Coulee Ridge (the Hundt farm).

It's been crazy in our home as well, with a tiny galley kitchen being used to feed 40 people twice a day for four nights, and no automatic dishwasher. I had the foresight, and God had the timing, to allow for a helper in our home. Since Sunday night, we've been enjoying the company and capable helping hands of our young friend Cortnie. You may recall, her family was integral in our Foxwood Farm days and she's on the old side of 13 now (14 in June!). It's her Spring break this week and her parents were generous enough to let us borrow her all week to help with the kiddoes. She's taken a special fondness to Liam and he to her. We joke that she's got lavender scented arms because she has an uncanny ability to get Liam to fall asleep under her stead.

Here she demonstrates her Liam-taming ability early in the week. We couldn't have managed a peaceful household this week without her help. It's been amazing and we'll be sad to say goodbye as we take her home tomorrow morning.

In family news, Liam is very much smiling and cooing now. He's taking on a more unique look, but still reminds us of Ethan at the same age.

The kids are highly involved in his care and deeply interested in everything Liam is doing. Here you see Ethan and Elly helping with bathtime.

Just in case you were wondering about Ethan's hair and could it possibly get any longer...we have an update. After realizing that even in the dead of winter our son was sweating on his head, we finally gave in and cut his hair. Andy took him in the bathroom, set up a movie on the iPad and hand cut (no buzz-cut here) all those blonde locks right off. The finished product is a happier little boy who somehow looks a year older! See for your self:

We're happy with the cut and will likely keep it short until cooler temps again.

We've been involved making maple syrup for the last two weeks straight (as I mentioned above). It's a process I am completely unfamiliar with, but have been delighted to learn about. Having no prior experience, I was unaware that there are old-fashioned methods to producing syrup and "new-fashioned" was as well. Not surprisingly, Vince is very proud of the fact that he successfully employs the more time-consuming and healthier OLD-FASHIONED method of collecting sap and turning it to syrup.

The process is straightforward. Tap the maples at just the right time in early March (when the trees begin to wake up and the sap begins to "run.") We use stainless steel metal buckets and taps, a stainless steel bulk tank to store the sap and a stainless steel boiling unit.


I say all this because plastic has been proven to leach unknown chemicals into food when they are in contact and most modern maple syrup operations use a host of plastic when making the syrup. Also, most maple syrup these days is made by dehydrating the sap (the process is not something I am familiar with). The sap here at St. Brigid's Meadows is brought up to temp by wood fire and evaporated nice and slowly. At the right time, it is poured off and finished in the house to be sure not to burn it.

Exact temps and times are essential to produce the right consistency. Andy, Vince, Jason and Kristin spent all last weekend boiling sap, taking turns in shifts and going all day and night.

It's a lot of work, but can be fun with the right friends and "warming" beverages at your side. :-)

It takes 40 gallons of maple sap to become 1 gallon of maple syrup. And the unit that we use, with wood and flame, can boil 20 gallons per hour. You can imagine that the cost of this syrup isn't going to compare with Mrs. Butterworth's HFCS laden bottle at Piggly Wiggly. As Vince is fond of saying, "This is the genuine article!" and we're pretty proud of it. It tastes pretty amazing, too, which is more important than any other factor combined.

After tonight's catering I think we're going to go into a family hibernation of sorts and just refuel. I need some cookies and since our kitchen has been under siege, I haven't been able to bake at will. :-)

Oops, gotta go; Liam is up, the roasts I'm braising for tonight's "breakfast" are beeping and my laundry needs to be switched over.

Back at it!

My Partner In Culinary Crime suprised me last night with the most amazing fish and chips for supper -- a real St. Patrick's Day delight. Supper was actually deep fried fish and boiled new potatoes with a delicious tartar sauce she whipped up too. Wow! When I asked her whether she felt like going out for some St. Patrick's Day corned beef and cabbage, she turned and told me this story: "I wanted to make something festive for St. Patty's day without having to run to town for groceries, so I looked around at what we had (that 10 lbs. of cod in the freezer from my recent fish splurge helped), and came up with fish and 'chips' - I substituted boiled new potatoes for fries since we didn't have russets. I was inspired by this girl's blog (Budget Cooking For Two), which included a fried fish recipe that came from the Barefoot Contessa." She said that she tweaked the fish recipe a tiny bit -- I said: "Wow, is that delicious!"

 

It took a little arm twisting to get my PICC to agree to let me post these recipes since she didn't invent everything from scratch, but here you go. And she doesn't know that my not-at-all styled food shot is going in here too -- there will be reprimands, but what can you do with a phone camera, poor light and an aching hunger in your belly? Oh, and in the spirit of using what we had on hand, I rummaged around deep in the fridge and found a can of stout. I poured it into two jars -- one for her and one for me.

Fried Cod 

1 lb cod, fillets or chunks, cut into 3" pieces
1/2 c plus 1 T. all-purpose flour
1/2 T. baking powder
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. freshly grated lemon zest
1/2 cup water
1 large egg
frying oil 

1. Rinse and dry the fish, then sprinkle salt and pepper on both sides.  

2. Mix the flour, baking powder, cayenne, salt, pepper, and lemon zest in a medium bowl. Whisk in the water, then the egg.  

3. Pour 1/2" of frying oil (I used a combination of safflower and peanut) into a large cast iron pot. Heat the oil to 360 degrees, monitoring with a cooking thermometer. You'll need to keep the stove at medium-high heat to maintain the temperature at 360.  

4. Working in batches, dredge the fish in the batter, then carefully place in hot oil. Cook 3 minutes on each side. Place on a paper-towel-lined plate to cool.

 
Tartar Sauce 

I didn't have relish or pickles in the fridge, so I just put together some similar ingredients and came up with a nice homemade tartar sauce.

3/4 cup Hellmann's mayonnaise 

2 T. minced onion 

1 T. white wine vinegar 

1/2 tsp. dried dill  

dash of salt and pepper 

Mix all ingredients together. 

Good Evening, Friends.

It's been two months and I have not posted here. Two whole months of our lives, gone from these pages and yet so busy that I could barely tell you succinctly what was going on.

But two months is nothing compared to the nearly two years that I've been waiting to watch a movie. That's right, a movie. And that movie has everything to do with this blog right here and the priorities in my life.

When Ethan was barely a month old, Andy and I were visited briefly by our missionary friend Alice and her prayer partner. Amidst talking about the farm (Alice was key in our mandate at Foxwood), she asked if we had ever seen Julie and Julia. I had heard of it, but hadn't really taken interest. Our time for movies is rather limited, as you might imagine. But it caught my interest when Alice explained that it was a true story of a woman who began a blog and eventually wrote a book about her experience. Alice is one of our sprititual mentors and when they suggest you watch a movie, well, you do it.

Unfortunately, for the next year and half, we either didn't think about it or the library was out of its copies. (Do you think we have a budget for renting??) Eventually, it became a here and there thought on the back burner and in time, I didn't think of it at all.

On Friday, Elly and I stopped at our tiny local library here in Coon Valley and as we were picking out a Clifford the Big Red Dog video for her, I had the presence of mind to ask the young librarian if they even had a copy of Julie and Julia. I think she was a little thrown off at my exuberant reaction when I was told they not only had TWO copies, but they were both in!

And so tonight, after MUCH ado, Andy and I settled in to watch the movie. I'm not going to give a review. This movie was so much more to us than a Netflix pick. It is a re-centering.

For me, I love blogging. I just love to write about what's going on, for so many reasons. And with our move, the new job, the kids and being tired from my third pregnancy ... I didn't have the energy.

For Andy, he is determining his role here at St. Brigid's; is he just a salesman/marketer or is he the personal chef that he's always dreamed of being? This movie was here for us at the right time, the exact right time.

I will make blogging for you and for me a new priority. I don't care if no one is even reading anymore. This is so important, if not for my sanity, then for my kids to know all about our lives right now. And their kids. And so on.

And I think Andy is going to get Julia Child's famous book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. We are going to tighten our family budget in other areas and loosen it in our grocery list. (Excited much??) And he learned once again, a person does not need a degree to be taken seriously.

The movie is inspiring in and of itself, so I do recommend it (there is one section near the end where the F-bomb is dropped, in case you are thinking of allowing the younger set to watch) but overall it's pretty family friendly and really does have a good message.

But here it is. My big reminder. This blog is more than me. It's about so much more than our little lives. I have to keep writing. I can't be too tired anymore.

And from this point on, it's going to be a lot more real and personal (like the posts about losing Foxwood). So hang on, friends. This is gonna be great.

Since shooting a deer around Thanksgiving, I’ve been eating a lot of venison, and now I can’t wait to try to make my own deer jerky. Be it tenderloin, deer chops or some other cut, the meat has all been incredibly tender and tasty. Being an antler guy, I’d trade it all for a huge rack on the wall, but the quality of the meat from the young buck I took makes me wholeheartedly thankful nonetheless.

When it comes to fish and game, I love to cook it. It’s a great feeling to grill or fry up some game or fish that I’ve harvested myself and share it with the people I love, especially when they like it. I recently asked my fiance to be my wife over masterfully done backstraps, baked potatoes and sweet corn. I only say masterfully done because it worked, so I'll have faith in that meal for some time to come.

From time to time, I hear people talk about how they don’t like venison, or fresh fish, and I can’t help but think, Well, you’ve never had the backstraps from a doe, or, you’ve never had a crappie fillet in the spring. Cooking good fish and game is something I take great pride in – most of all because in my mind it substantiates my belief that I don’t hunt or fish only because I love the actual hunt. I also love the outcome, the practical use and sustenance I get from the animal I’m after. Making it taste good is a big part of the provident feeling.

So when an advertiser brought over some Clem's Seasonings samples, I immediately knew I had some ground venison in my freezer that has Clem’s name on it. I even got a drying rack. The seasoning itself is rather inexpensive; you can season 15 pounds of meat using one seasoning packet that sells for $6. Drying screens are also affordable; around $5 per screen.

Honestly, I’ve been searching for an easy jerky-making process for some years, both for beef jerky and deer jerky, and I hope this is it. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Anybody have a favorite already? Or has anyone tried Clem’s in the past?

Rice is among my favorite starches. I’d rank it well ahead of potatoes, except perhaps waxy new potatoes dug fresh from the garden. Until last weekend when I tried some Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice sourced from Eighth Wonder, Inc. (a purveyor of heirloom rice grown in the Philippines) I thought brown rice was pretty exotic and about as tasty as that grain gets. When given the choice between brown rice and pasta, I probably pick pasta about 65 percent of the time. With this beautifully pigmented and nutty-flavored Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice added to the mix, the pasta vs. rice decision just got a lot tougher for me.

Last weekend after a day of hanging, taping and mudding sheetrock in my slow-but-sure mudroom repair project (hoping for no more frozen pipes) I felt like dinking around in the kitchen with a partner in culinary crime who tolerates my experiments incredibly graciously. And since I had this package of Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice from Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice, and a freezer full of grass-fed lamb sourced from GRIT publisher Bryan Welch’s farm, I had a plan.

I followed the directions on the back of the Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice from Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice package to the letter. The rice cooked up plump, maroon and sticky. I had to sample it as it was – it tasted nutty and had a nice tooth – not mushy at all. As the rice was resting, I heated up my favorite 12-inch, cast-iron skillet with a tablespoon of olive oil in it. When that was good and hot, I added about a pound of ground lamb along with a diced onion and sliced jalapeño – I stripped the seeds and then rubbed my eye and did some other things that made me remember why I like to just leave the jalapeño seeds alone. I browned the works. Actually I just browned the lamb and by then the veggies were just right.

With the flame turned down low, I added a couple of cups of cooked Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice from Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice and tossed it around until the rice grains were more or less unstuck. A little sea salt and Northwoods Fire Seasoning (daughter Alaina gave it to me for Christmas) later, I had a delicious dish on my hands. Supper that night also included some awesome simmered carrots with a dill gravy on them and a heavenly, crunchy-crusted, no-knead rye bread – both compliments of my partner in culinary crime (she had a second helping of my lamb and Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice dish, which I take as a good sign).

Not one to let leftovers go to waste, I ate the rest of the Ifugao Diket Sticky Rice from Eighth Wonder Heirloom Rice for breakfast the next morning – it was delicious reheated with a pat of butter and drizzle of homemade cane syrup. I have a couple of other varieties of heirloom rice from Eighth Wonder yet to try. I can’t wait.

 

This year, I am trying to reclaim Christmas.

The last three Christmases I took a pass – 2006 it was just three weeks after Charles died, and I was pretty much in a fog. One of the last things he did on this earth was put up Christmas lights. I remember watching him teetering on a ladder, tweaking the weather beaten strings in the crabapple tree and wondering if he was ever going to come in for dinner. I’m looking out the same window now and I can see those strings of lights blowing in the wind, nobody in the family having the heart to cut them down. He was obsessed with Christmas lights – we are still finding boxes of vintage bulbs he hid in the attic and bags of brand new strings he forgot in the barn.

In 2007, we were still adjusting and making it good for the kids, but feeling our way, and making a lot of jokes about getting to pick out trees WE liked. An oft quoted Charles anecdote was of Christmas tree hunting in the snow on a bitterly cold day in a local tree farm. Daughter-In-Law and I found ourselves standing in a cold, bleak field with darkness sifting down around us, not knowing where Charles and the kids were. The lights went out in the vendor’s shack, only a few cars left in the parking lot. After about two hours, an ancient school bus lurched into the lot and Charles and the two boys fall out the door, laughing hysterically. They had taken a BUS to a distant field in search of the perfect tree and … didn’t find one. This was funny to them at the time, but not funny to DIL and I for another five years.

The upshot of this is that I have a PINK fake tree covered with girly ornaments. The lights are already on it, and you just plug it in.

However, to keep the Ghosts of Christmas past from casting a pallor on all future Christmases, I am trying to do new things, start new traditions, and feel Christmassy. So I have to act Christmassy. I decided to make Christmas gifts for friends.

(My family does not want homemade gifts. We do enough of the touchy-feely Walton’s Mountain kind of crap every day, they want the hard goods like appliances and bling.)

I didn’t want to bake cookies. It seemed toooo hard. I’ve been making soup like a fiend, but I don’t want to give anyone food poisoning by mistake. It’s just what would happen.

So, I decide on something that LOOKS Christmassy, suits the majority of my friends, and would be fun. This is how I arrive at Homemade Cranberry Liqueur.

It’s a beautiful red – so it’s Christmassy. It’s alcohol so it suits my friends – sort of a liquid one-size-fits-all. And it looks more like “compiling” than cooking, so it would be fun.

I’ve had my eye on these huge Ball jars with bales and rubber gaskets at the local hardware store, so when the liqueur is done, I use them for something else so it also fits the “gift for me” category that I was ashamed to list above.

First step: research. I read about fifty recipes online, all of which seem to be cut and pasted from an original one.

Second step: buy the ingredients and amass the tools. (I even buy a new vegetable peeler because I realize that the one I have is not very sharp, and I bought it in 1978.) I have to go to the liquor store to buy the vodka. In Pennsylvania, you have to buy wine and liquor (except rubbing alsohol) at a special state owned store, with state employees, during restricted hours. If you want beer or malt beverages, that’s another store. But not on Sundays, at all. I think that this is a holdover from our Quaker heritage, not that I know many Quakers who don’t bend an elbow. I googled the subject but got more complaints about the system than information on its history. However, Pennsylvania was also the location of the Whiskey Rebellion – moonshiners fighting government regulation of home stills. However, here I am at the liquor store, buying three huge bottles of vodka. I can read minds, so I know that everyone in the store has noticed what is in my cart and has decided I am an alcoholic. I fight the urge to explain the purchase to the clerk, because A) I know he thinks I am an alcoholic, and B) I know he doesn’t care. I trip going out the door and feel that everyone has confirmed their suspicions. I have been to the liquor store about four times in my life and felt this way each time. More pointless self-loathing.

Third Step: mulching the cranberries and pouring the vodka in the big jars. You also have to make a sugar syrup – which IS cooking, but I didn’t notice at first, but really easily accomplished, until I have to pour the hot syrup in the jars and find that they are too tall for me to reach easily when on the table, too heavy for me to move to the floor or the chair. So I climb on a chair with a pot of boiling sugar syrup and risk my life. Well, it is Christmastime, and I haven’t been to the emergency room yet.

It’s gorgeous! In a couple of days I will decant this into smaller jars and wow my friends with my thoughtfulness and creativity. If you are one of my friends and reading this, feel free to thank me now.

I hope this is good enough to repeat next year. It’s sort of a decoration for the kitchen in addition to a gift, so it’s really a win/win. I hope it gives my friends a warm glow on a cold night, sometime in the next month or so. Because really, that’s the best we can expect in this life.

For the third year in a row, I coordinated the United Way campaign here at Ogden Publications. Each year, I try to think of new and exciting events to raise money for the United Way in our area. This year, my committee and I came up with an apple recipe contest. At a dollar a vote, our employees enthusiastically tasted each entry and voted on which one was the best. It was a hard decision because all the entries were quite pleasing to the palate. They were also pleasing to the eye, but you’ll have to take my word for it. I didn’t think to take pictures until it was too late.

We had 10 entries. They were: Ozark Apple Pudding, Humble Apple Bread, Sweet and Sour Ravioli (yes, it did have an apple product in it), Apple Crisp, Spectacular Apple Bread, Apple Crunch, Easy Apple Cake, Apple Cobbler Cake, Easy Apple Coffee Cake and Caramel Apple Cream Cheese Cookie Bars.

One of our marketing managers won for her Apple Crisp recipe. It had a unique flavor that everyone loved. Several people wanted the recipe for it and others that were in the contest, so I compiled all the recipes and made copies for anyone who wanted them.

These apple dishes were so delicious, I thought I would share some of them with you.

Apple Crisp

This one won the contest.

FILLING:

• 5 granny smith apples, cored, peeled and sliced
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

TOPPING:

• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 1½ cups light brown sugar
• 1½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1¼ cups quick-cooking rolled oats
• 3 tablespoons canola oil
• 1½ teaspoons cinnamon
• Dash or two of allspice
• ¾  teaspoon salt

To make filling: Preheat oven to 375˚F. In a casserole baking dish, toss apples with brown sugar and cinnamon. Add cornstarch, lemon juice and vanilla to the fruit and stir well.

To make topping: Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl. Using a pastry blender or your fingers, mix ingredients together until large crumbs form.

Sprinkle topping evenly over filling and bake for 30 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 325˚F. and continue baking for about 30 minutes longer, until fruit filling is bubbling and topping is nicely browned. Let set for 10 to 20 minutes before serving.

Apple Cobbler Cake

This one was taken from the pages of CAPPER’s.

• 6 cups sliced apples
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 box cake mix, yellow or white, divided
• ½ cup chopped nuts
• 1 stick butter or margarine, melted

In a bowl, combine apples, sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle with ¼ cup dry cake mix and toss until apples are evenly coated. Spoon mixture into a buttered pan and cover with foil, securing edges firmly. Bake at 350°F. for 30 to 35 minutes. Remove from oven.

Combine remaining cake mix with nuts and drizzle with melted butter; mix until large crumbs are formed. Sprinkle over partially cooked apples in pan. Return to oven and bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes, or until topping is puffed and golden. Cool slightly. Serve warm with whipped topping or ice cream.

Apple Crunch

This was mine, taken from our church’s 100^th anniversary cookbook.

• 5 cups flour  
• 4 cups sugar
• 3 to 4 unpeeled apples, sliced                 
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2 cups oatmeal                                     
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon               
• ½ teaspoon nutmeg                              
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 cups butter, melted

In a bowl, combine 1 cup flour with sugar. Arrange apples in buttered 9x12-inch pan and cover with flour mixture. Add a little water. Mix together remaining flour, brown sugar, oatmeal, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt; pour over apples. Drizzle melted butter over flour mixture. Pack down topping. Bake at 350˚F. for 45 minutes or until apples are tender. If desired, melt a bag of caramels over a low heat and drizzle over the top of apple dessert. Serves 20 to 25.  

Sweet and Sour Ravioli

Our most unusual entry.

• 1 box dehydrated mincemeat
• 1 box phyllo pastry
• 1 egg white
• ¾ cup apple cider or juice
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons honey
• ½ cup corn syrup
• Melted butter or nonstick spray

Leave phyllo in refrigerator until ready to use.

Prepare mincemeat as per directions; cool. Prepare one sleeve of phyllo as per directions. Take half the layers and carefully place them one layer at a time on waxed paper. Brush with melted butter between layers. Immediately cover with a damp towel. Repeat steps with the remaining sleeve of phyllo.

Spread mincemeat on top of one layer of phyllo, leaving about a quarter of an inch space at edges. Brush egg white on top sheet of other half of phyllo. Carefully invert brushed layer on top of mincemeat, keeping edges aligned. Using fingers, mash down where cuts are to be made in the phyllo (this also pushes the mincemeat into the middle of each square). Carefully cut into pieces with a ravioli cutter or knife, pinching edges to seal. Using a fork, place each piece onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 375˚F. for about 12 minutes or until lightly browned.

To make glaze: In a saucepan, heat honey and corn syrup over a low heat until thin. Add apple cider and lemon juice, stir until blended. Bring to a boil until mixture thickens (about 30 minutes), stirring constantly. Glaze should be thick enough to pour easily. Once ravioli is removed from oven, drizzle glaze over each piece; cool.

I got a lot of positive comments after the contest (anything that involves food usually goes over well here). I’ll have to think of another food contest for next year’s United Way campaign.

I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as we did! If you’d like the other recipes from the contest, you can email me at bkipp@odgenpubs.com.

 

It took daughter Alaina and me a while to get to the place where we really felt like eating one of the broiler chickens we processed last week. We finally succumbed to the idea of a succulent, moist, broiler – slow cooked in the oven – on Saturday. Alaina had the presence of mind to put the bird out to thaw early in the morning. By the time I had beaten myself to a tired, sore mass from working around the farm all day, I didn’t have the energy to smoke the bird in the Orion smoker, which was our original plan. We’re both glad now that the smoker never got lit.

I’m a firm believer that awesome food can stand on its own; I find that holds true particularly with clean, healthy, home-raised, free-range meat. I don’t put sauce on my steaks and as much as I like smoked chicken, I love heavy broilers roasted simply too.

 

Since I was out of steam and fading fast, I took the thawed bird, gave it a quick rinse and patted it dry with a paper towel. I took one fresh lemon, cut it in half and squeezed the juice onto the breast-side of the bird and rubbed it in a bit. I then stuck the lemon halves into the broiler’s body cavity. Normally, I would chop a few cloves of garlic and some rosemary, mix it with olive oil and put it under the broiler’s skin – but I was just too beat to mess with the garlic and we didn’t have any fresh rosemary around so I just skipped that step. Ah, the life of a bachelor – no recipe police in sight.

Even though I knew there wasn’t any rosemary to be found, I cruised the fridge for something green and found a small bundle of almost done cilantro. Yep, I just stuffed that bundle of flavor into the cavity behind the lemon halves. The last seasoning step was to sprinkle a little Kosher salt over the entire broiler. I don’t know why I do that, but I have always done it. Perhaps it’s my way of rebelling against my physician – he’s always brooding about my blood pressure.

I don’t have a proper roasting pan so I set the works into a 12-inch ceramic pie plate (the tail stuck out and made a bit of an oily mess in the oven) and shoved it into a 350-degree oven. And there the broiler sat until the juices ran clear and the meat thermometer that Alaina stuck in the breast said the meat was safe to eat. I can’t report on the actual temperature because it just says chicken on the thermometer’s dial.

Once we let the broiler rest for a spell – while picking and tasting beautifully golden morsels – we served ourselves some generous helpings of the most delicious meat. Light or dark, the broiler’s gift was one of juicy, pleasing sustenance. We managed to eat about half the bird on Saturday night.  It really went well with the squash soup and spinach salad that Alaina made earlier.

On Sunday we cleaned the carcass of the remaining meat and boiled the bones. The meat went into the crockpot with a mess of dried herbs (poultry seasoning, sage, and some other grey-green stuff), a pinch of salt, one yellow onion diced and half-dozen stalks of celery sliced. Next we dumped a cup of long grain rice into the slow cooker and added sufficient chicken broth (from the boiled bones) to cover the works. We set the crockpot to high for a few hours and then to low. We forgot to time it – but it was on low overnight. The rice was a little on the soft side, but it reminded me of chicken dumplings a bit. In any case, the slow-cooked chicken and rice was positively delicious – no doubt because of the broiler and not my slow-cooking prowess.

As I reflect on the entire raising, processing and eating of that broiler chicken, I can only conclude that it was entirely worth it. Alaina and I both agree that home-raised broilers are positively delicious. With food that good, it’s not a chore to use it up, which makes me feel like that creature’s life was well celebrated and not wasted. I know we’ll smoke one of those broilers soon. Stay tuned.

Photo: iStockphoto: adlifemarketing

Goats are quickly becoming a common sight along roadsides and on small farms all over the United States. Since we raise goats, and raise them for meat, we often are asked why. Beef, chicken, and pork are more widely consumed at the American family dinner table, but goat is actually the world’s most popular meat.

Approximately 75 percent of the world’s population eats goat meat. With America’s rising population of ethnic groups, demand for goat meat has risen sharply. American producers are struggling to keep up with the growing demand for a product that was virtually unheard of 15 years ago. In addition to the ethnic population that regularly consumes goat meat (also known as cabrito or chevon), many Americans are discovering the benefits of eating goat meat.

It has a good flavor and is very healthy. It is low in fat, cholesterol, calories, and saturated fat. In fact, goat meat is over 50% lower in fat than our American beef and is about 40% lower in saturated fat than chicken, even chicken cooked with the skin off!  The following meat comparison (per 3 oz. roasted meat) table is from the USDA Handbook:

            Calories            Fat (g)               Sat. Fat (g)      Protein (g)       Iron (g)

GOAT    122                2.58                     0.79                 23                   3.2          

Beef        245                16.0                      6.8                  23                   2.0

Pork        310                24.0                      8.7                  21                   2.7

Lamb      235                16.0                      7.3                  22                   1.4

Chicken  120                  3.5                       1.1                  21                   1.5

Since goat meat is so low in fat, this makes cooking more of a challenge. Goat meat must be cooked slowly and at low temperatures, or it will dry out and become tough. The best ways to cook goat are roasting (in the oven, in a smoker, or on the grill) or braising (cooking with added liquid such as water, wine, or milk). Marinating will help retain moisture and tenderness as well. Old-fashioned smoking has, in our opinion, produced the best-tasting goat meat of all. What I have had was even better than smoked beef or pork! Of course, most of us do not have the time required to smoke our meats daily, so I am including a few less time-consuming recipes for you to try. Enjoy!

Goat Meat Loaf

2 lb ground goat meat
1 can Cream of Mushroom Soup
1 envelope Dry Onion Soup/Dip Mix
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup water or milk

Directions: Mix 1/2 mushroom soup, goat meat, onion soup mix, bread crumbs and egg. Place in 8 inch x 4 inch loaf pan and shape firmly into loaf. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 15 min or until done. Mix remaining mushroom soup, 1/4 cup water or milk, and 2 tablespoons drippings from loaf in bowl. Heat in microwave 2 min or until heated through. Spoon over slices of meatloaf.

Jamaican Curried Goat

3 lbs goat meat, cut into 1 inch cubes
2 limes
1 large onion, sliced
5 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp thyme
2 Tblsp canola oil
1 tsp sugar
5 green onions, chopped
2 tsp curry powder
2 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes

Directions: Squeeze limes over goat meat and let stand for 10-15 min. Rinse with cold water. Place meat in sealable container. Add onion, garlic, salt, pepper, and thyme. Rub spices into meat. Cover and let marinate in refrigerator for 2 hours.

Next, in large pot over medium heat, heat the oil and sugar. Stir until sugar is brown. Add goat meat with marinade, green onions, and curry. Stir. Cover the pot and reduce the heat to low. Simmer slowly, stirring occasionally until meat is nearly tender, about 40 min. Add potatoes and 1/4 cup water and stir. Cover and simmer for another 15 min until potatoes are cooked but not soft. Crush potatoes to thicken sauce if desired. To make more sauce you may add a little water and cook for 10 minutes more.

I have longed for years to master the art of making bread. Like gardening it has eluded me for quite some time. I have tried numerous times to no avail. It has always seemed to make me so nervous, how to get the yeast to “bloom,” what is luke-warm water anyways, how and for how long to knead the dough, has it really doubled in size??? The questions would send my nerves into a tizzy and that is why I think I just couldn’t do it – or so I thought! I have found a recipe that has given me the courage to try again, and at last SUCCESS!

I followed the direction to a tee, using exact measurements and preciously timing my every move. I watched in amazement as my dough rose perfectly, filling the pans that held it. When the final timer signaled that the bread had completed its baking time, I cautiously opened the oven door and what to my wondering eyes should appear but two loves of perfect bread. Had I really accomplished this feat, had “I” really conquered this thing they call bread making? Indeed I had.

I had to make sure that this was not just a fluke thing, that I could actually do it again. So began the process and timing again, and the end result matched my previous success, and I have to say it was the best bread I have tasted.

I think the reason it was so tasty is because I had finally made bread that both my parents are masters at making. My mother can whip up loaves of bread without a recipe, only by look and feel. She has spent many, many nights trying to teach me. The bread was okay, but nothing like hers. I can vividly remember my father mixing up bread in a huge yellow earthenware bowl that had a blue stripe around it with the biggest wooden spoon I have ever seen. He always made the process look effortless, which it is not, it takes some strength to stir that last cup of flour in and then the kneading process is a whole new set of muscles. The smell would reach us kids all the way out in the fields and it always stopped us in our tracks. We knew what was in store for dinner and we could not wait.

So on this journey I have begun, I can now cross Bread Making off of the list. I am by no means a master, but I can most certainly put a warm loaf of bread on our dinner table. I will share the recipe because it is just too good to keep to myself!

Sixty Minute Bread

2 cups of luke-warm water
4 Tablespoons of sugar
2 Tablespoons yeast
2 Tablespoons oil
2 teaspoons salt
4 1/2 - 51/2 cups flour

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place water, sugar and yeast together in a bowl and let sit for 10 minutes. Stir oil and salt into yeast mixture. Add flour by 1/2 cup full until the dough forms a ball. Turn out on a floured board and knead for 5 minutes. (I actually do this in my stand mixer.) Divide the dough in half and place into greased loaf pans, set aside to rise for 30-40 minutes. Bake for 20-25 minutes, let cool, and then ENJOY!!

I hope everyone who tries this recipe has the same success I have had, because there is nothing like a piece of homemade bread.

I love to cook and bake this time of year. There’s just something about cold winter days that makes the kitchen so inviting. I have cherished memories of my mother cooking special meals for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas as well as everyday meals for the family.

Mom also loved to bake. She baked cookies, brownies and cakes. Usually the cake was for a family member’s birthday, but sometimes it was just for fun. The cookie jar always seemed to be full. Anytime my nieces and nephews came over, one of the first things they did was head for the cookie jar (my brother-in-law did, too). Mom loved sending cookies and brownies to me when I was in college and Alaska. She also sent cookies and brownies to my nieces and nephews when they were in college. Years ago, when I worked at a bookstore, Mom used to bring in goodies for the staff on Fridays (that was the day she got her hair done and the beauty salon was next door to the bookstore).

Mom is elderly now and can no longer stand long enough to cook or bake. In fact, she doesn’t even go into the kitchen anymore. Since I live with her, I prepare the meals and I use some of the same pans, dishes and utensils she used when I was growing up. Each item brings back pleasant memories.

I began doing all the cooking when my Dad was still alive. Even though sometimes the last thing I wanted to do was be on my feet in the kitchen, it brought me pleasure to make a meal for my parents. I came to understand why my mom put so much love into the meals she prepared. She was doing it for her family. I consider it an honor to prepare meals for the woman who made countless meals for me and the rest of the family.

My sister inherited my mother’s talent for cooking and baking. I consider myself a good cook and a mediocre baker, but my sister is great at both. She’s always trying something new and it seems like everything she makes turns out perfect. Mom always said my sister must have inherited her ability to make flaky pie crust from our paternal grandmother because she didn’t get it from her.

My sister and I used to swap recipes, but since we both have access to the Internet, we don’t do that much anymore. A lot of the recipes in my collection are from my sister. I can’t help but think of her when I make a recipe she gave me.

Being a creative person, I like to try new recipes and sometimes modify them to my liking. I have some tried and true recipes that I use frequently and keep handy for easy access.

One of my favorite recipes to make this time of year is Captain’s Soup. It’s easy, nourishing and makes enough for an army (well, at least a large family). My mom got the recipe from a lady we met while we were vacationing in Colorado. She and her husband rode the train from Durango to Silverton with us. We got acquainted and they invited us to stop by for a meal at their home in Buena Vista. We did stop at their house on the way back to Kansas and the lady made this soup for supper.

Captain’s Soup

1 pound ground beef  

1 can (46 oz.) vegetable juice

1 small can cream of mushroom soup

1 small can cream of celery soup

1 package frozen vegetables

In a skillet, brown ground beef; drain and set aside. Combine soups in a crock pot. Simmer on low heat and stir until well-blended. In a medium pan, cook vegetables until tender; drain. Add beef and vegetables to soup mixture. Heat on High for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Serve with crackers or bread.

Do you have a favorite kitchen memory? Do you have a recipe that has an interesting story behind it? Please share it with me.

Venison Chili Trial One went over well last night. It’s hard to say if it was more the quality of the meat or the mixture of ingredients I used, but the combination of the two made some dang-good chili. I do know this: Even though I didn’t shoot a big, old buck this year, last night’s meal – and today’s lunch, actually – made me very thankful for doe meat in the freezer.

I’d planned on using a Southern Venison Chili recipe, but once I got into the grocery store, the amount of green pepper – it calls for one large green bell pepper, cut in strips – and the inclusion of 2 tablespoons of sugar kind of turned me off to it.

So I kind of combined that recipe with another one to arrive at the one below. The only problem is, I estimate and add a little of this, a little of that when I cook – no matter my intention – taste as I go and make adjustments, so this is only my best guess as to what was in that chili.

The Amateur’s Venison Chili

1 ½ pounds ground venison
½ large white onion, diced
½ large green bell pepper, diced
2 tablespoons cumin seed spice
3 tablespoons chili powder
8 ounces tomato sauce (I went with the Kroger brand, inexpensive, and already peeled and in juice – “Chili Ready”)
8 ounces water
½ cup light-red kidney beans
½ cup ketchup

Now bear with me.

First, you obviously brown the meat.

You can sauté the onion and green pepper while you do this, but mine turned out tender and cooked enough in the end without doing so. The reason I didn’t is because I forgot – kind of a shaky start – and was in too big of a hurry to see how much grease the meat would make. It was very lean ground meat … just what I’d hoped for. After I diced the onion and green pepper – I didn’t have a knife for dicing so I was using my skinning knife that I hadn’t used since the GRIT sharpening experience – I added it to the halfway-browned venison.

Sometimes I feel like I get into some intense situations when I’m cooking.

After the meat had completely browned, I added the cumin spice and chili powder. Then I emptied tomato sauce and water in, added the kidney beans and hoped for the best (i.e., hoped the vegetables would cook to tender). On medium heat, I let the mixture simmer for 1 hour, tasted it, added some ketchup and somehow it turned out really good. Gwendolyn Marie did say she snuck in some more of the spices.

The whole thing was rather fun, despite my methods.

I’ve got plenty more meat, so the next venison-cooking experience for me will either be another chili recipe, or Lori’s homemade Summer Sausage recipe. Her recipe can be found at the bottom of this blog post. I’ll let you know how that one goes.

Anybody else this hectic in the kitchen? I feel like I’m in the weeds most times.

Bottom photo by Gwen Salmon.

Mike, from CRM Distributing (1-877-276-3478), recently sent one of their Ohio-made, heavy-duty steel fire pit/grills ($289 direct from manufacturer) to Kansas for us to try. I was immediately impressed by the unit because its box, which seemed impossibly small, weighed over 60 pounds. Obviously CRM’s Backyard Fire Pit was no lightweight.

As it turns out, the box was relatively small because the Backyard Fire Pit ships flat … or nearly so. The innovative design consists of a flat base with legs, 8 pit side pieces (four with vents and four without), swing away grill and grill support post. The pieces were beautifully crafted of heavy-gauge mild steel with stainless steel grill mesh, air controls and fasteners.

Assembling the Backyard Fire Pit took a bit of effort … arranging the pit sides was made easy with their unique bottom-clamp design. I struggled for about a minute to get the last pit side installed … along with the grill support post. The entire project took me about 40 minutes … mind you I set the thing up outside, on the ground, on a very cold, windy day. I probably spent 5 minutes chasing the instructions, all told. Once it was fully assembled, Kate and I moved it to our bare-ground fire pit and fired it up.

The CRM Backyard Fire Pit preformed very well. Its approximately 26-inch diameter fire box was ample for burning some scrap cardboard along with some Osage Orange billets we collected during various post-harvesting excursions. In fact, the Backyard Fire Pit makes our campfires a little safer … and helps me reign in my temptation to build the fire ever larger.

Since we had a couple of wax-impregnated fire starting aids from CobLites (www.bynaturellc.com) and Holy Smokes (www.nermanlockhart.com), we gave them a try too. The wax impregnated corn cobs from CobLites were slightly easier to light in the wind than the wax impregnated sawdust wafers from Holy Smokes. However, both were easy to light and worked well to start the cardboard and other kindling on fire.

Stay tuned for a long term report on the Backyard Fire Pit. We will put it to good use this winter. If you want more information, please give Mike a call ... he doesn't have a website.

 

This year, for the first time in recent memory, I have been tasked with bringing something to Thanksgiving dinner. When I announced this in our staff meeting last week, everyone was quite impressed, until I told them I was making the two JELL-O/Cool Whip–related salads that we always have at a Nemec family holiday dinner.

One year we only had one of the two, and my little brother (not so little anymore) just couldn't handle it. So, these two must be there. The names are what we call them, and I'll have to check with Mom to find out from whence they came. (I'm pretty sure I remember the first time we had the apricot one, but the cherry seems to have always been a staple.)

The first we call "Apricot Salad," which is a bit of a misnomer, because it's not very "salad-y." It's made with only 3 ingredients: apricot JELL-O (1 package), apricot nectar (2 cups – I found this in the juice aisle at a local grocery store), and cream cheese (1 brick, 8 oz., softened).

The nectar takes the place of water in the directions on the JELL-O package. First heat one cup of the nectar and then dissolve the JELL-O in it.  Place the softened cream cheese in a medium-sized bowl, and then with a whisk (or an egg beater), slowly add the nectar mixture to the cream cheese. Then add the additional cup of nectar in a similar manner. (If you find it too sweet, you can switch out some of the nectar for water.)

This salad turns out differently depending on how earnestly you wisk/stir the creamcheese into the JELL-O. If you're a bit lackadaisical, you end up with slightly creamy JELL-O with a cottage-cheese-looking topping. If you are more serious about getting the lumps out, the whole thing turns into creamy goodness – though don't go too far, or you'll end up with foam on top. All of these versions taste great, and I'm pretty sure my brother prefers the cottage-cheese-y version.

The second salad (which my brother's been making lately) is the "Pink Fluff." This one is even easier, because you don't have to heat anything up. In this one you have a can of cherry pie filling (my dad's favorite), a can of crushed pineapple (don't get the "in syrup" kind), a can of sweetened condensed milk, and a container of whipped topping. Drain the pineapple juice (into a glass -- yum), then mix it, the cherry pie filling, and the condensed milk together in a rather big bowl. When those three are good and combined, slowly fold in the whipped topping. (This is where you can get in trouble with this one, when "folding" becomes "beating" you end up with a soupy mess.)

Most of my family eats these as "dessert" rather than with the meal, and a little goes a long way. When the pink fluff and turkey sandwiches are gone, it's time to head home.

When I was in college, I had a nightmare that involved my boyfriend taking me home to his family Thanksgiving and his mother asking me to make the gravy as a test... I woke up screaming.

Since then, I've advanced (much more than I let on). I can make many wonderful meals in my wok, I love quinuoa, and I'm learning more every day. I likely won't be involved in the turkey basting process this year (or maybe ever, one of my brothers has a restaurant management degree and is pretty territorial about the bird), but . . . I made the salads.