great wall of china
June 22, 2010
I feel a little like I built the great wall of China this afternoon. But only a little. Jay and I put up a fence around the pumpkin patch. If it doesn’t keep whatever is attacking the patch at bay I will electrify it. That is all I have to say on the subject. Oh, and we replanted the empty hills, removed the weird wire traps all over the place, and tidied up a little bit…
first place bread…
June 20, 2010
This year started out with bread. Plain and simple. 3 cups flour, 1 1/2 cups water, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 teaspoon yeast. Mix the ingredients together. No kneading necessary. Let the bread rise for a long time (about 18 hours) and then bake in a hot hot hot dutch oven.
If you use the same sized dutch oven that we used, beware of your bread sticking to the top and burning. Like ours did.
My mom went to check on the bread, opened the lid, and couldn’t find the bread. She thought that I had taken it out, but wasn’t sure why. Then Kathy saw it hanging for dear life from the bottom of the lid. It was probably the best part of my day. So funny.
I was ready at this point to throw the bread away. Not particularly disappointed, mostly because I got such a good laugh out of the whole thing. My mom however, set to diligently scraping off every bit of charred black. We entered the bread, and to my complete surprise won first place for it…
Go figure. I guess that it must have tasted a lot better than it looked.
enchilada bake
June 20, 2010
I love recipes that have the word bake in the title. It implies something hearty, and, well, baked. For our main course entry in the dutch oven competition, we made an enchilada bake. I should really say, my mom made and enchilada bake.
For the layers, she included tortillas,
a delicious home made tomato sauce with fresh bell peppers, a mixture of sour cream and ricotta cheese, grated prairie breeze cheese, and black olives.
Simple simple simple. And then on with the coals.
Coals on top, coals on bottom. There is a specific number that you are supposed to put on for the different sizes of dutch ovens, and for different baking temperatures.
And the result was delicious. Hot and bubbly. To top off the dish she made a fresh salsa of tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro from the garden, and a touch of green onion.
Note the extensive use of oil cloth…
a cake to use preserved cherries
June 20, 2010
For the dutch oven cookoff we made a whiskey sour cherry spoon bread. A not too sweet cake, rich with butter, and filled with fruit. Cherries soaked for a few days in whiskey and sugar.
We preheated the dutch oven, melted the butter, and then added the cake batter. Then we carefully spooned in the sour cherries.
Then lidded the dish, making sure not to get any ashes in the cake, and set it aside to cook.
We whipped cream with vanilla and powdered sugar to serve with the spoon bread.
A simple and satisfying dessert.
sun, sugar, sour cherries, and whiskey
June 18, 2010
I have a jar of cherries on my porch. They are solar cooking in a broth of sugar and whiskey. I got sick of pitting all the cherries, and this recipe called for unpitted (and unwashed) cherries, whiskey, and sugar. I had all the ingredients, as well as a quart jar, so I made use of them.
To pick the cherries, which were on a huge tree, my friend Duncan helped me out. We backed his pickup truck under the tree (over the sidewalk) and placed an 8 foot ladder in the bed of the truck. I used a pail with a handle attached to my overalls so that I had both hands free for picking the cherries and balancing.
The cherries “cook” for a month, and are supposed to last up to two years.
I found the recipe (originally made with brandy) in a cookbook on preserving fruits and vegetables according to French tradition, without canning. I am not one hundred percent sure that I trust this method, and might not end up leaving them in the sun the whole time…not sure.
pick, pit, boil, and jar
June 18, 2010
Cherries. My first attempt ended up with 8 jars of what my sister calls “Early Bird” cherry preserves.
I picked cherries in the rain, which was actually delightful. The rain washed the sticky ripe cherry juices off my arms as I picked, and the glistening cherries against the dark leaves were a treat to look at.
I brought the cherries home, set up camp on the porch (it had stopped raining) and pitted each and every cherry with my thumb. I have tried cherry pitters, but for small, ripe, sour pie cherries, the thumb works the best. After pitting the cherries, I put them in my jam cauldron layered with sugar. They sat for an hour (according to recipe) and then I heated the mixture to dissolve the sugar. Then the cherries rested again. Overnight this time. I woke up at 6 in the morning, with a clean kitchen, and heated the cherries and filled and processed the jars.
When I gave a nice little jar to my dad, I noticed, to my mild horror that there was a worm left in the jar…I guess organic means that worms get to enjoy the cherries as much as we do…and maybe I am not the best cherry worm remover.
disaster strikes
June 8, 2010
The pumpkin patch isn’t doing so well. I generally don’t mind deer and turkeys, but last night I was about ready to take a shotgun to them. Seriously! I had a beautiful idyllic little pumpkin patch, and then all of a sudden it was under attack. 
I have seen both turkeys and deer wandering through the patch, and so I am not entirely sure what is going on. Whatever it is likes the llama poop, and has dug multiple holes in each of the hills. It doesn’t care for (or about!) the pumpkins, just something in the llama poop, or something in the hills? I am not sure. Maybe some fungi or insects in the llama poop?
Bottom line is that I need a fence. My mom and I went out and created some makeshift hill guards, but we need a fence. Tall, strong, and preferably carrying an electric current.
We set to covering the hills with salvageable plants, and replanted where there were too many plants gone. I am going to go to the farm supply store today to research fences…
p.s. if you have any ideas or suggestions about what this might be, or how to protect from it, or what kind of fence to get please let me know in the comments section!
strawberries part two (pie)
June 4, 2010
I love the idea of strawberry pie. Fresh fruit, cream, and a buttery crust are all I need to be happy (for a few moments anyways). Oh, and maybe a sprig or two of mint, too.
Last night I got home with more strawberries than I knew what to do with. Well, not really, but there were a lot. Before bed, I mixed up a batch of pie dough. 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 stick butter, and a bit of ice water. I put the dough in the fridge over night, and this morning I rolled it out, pricked it, and popped it into the oven. I left the pie crusts on the counter to cool and ran off to work.
This afternoon, I came home and filled the pie shells with a whipped cream and yogurt mixture. It is one of my new favorites: very simple, fresh, and delicious. I used greek style hung yogurt mixed with sugar, lime zest and lime juice, and vanilla. To this mixture I added the whipped cream.
On top of the pies I added strawberries (whole around the edges, and sliced with sugar in the middle. I threw in a mango as well here. To garnish the pies I picked some mint from the garden.
All 6 assorted mini pies made it safely into town in my pie baskets.
strawberries part one (jam)
June 4, 2010
When there are strawberries, there ARE strawberries. As with most fruits, if you choose to eat them when they are fresh, you have to eat a lot of them, all at once. This is of course how to make up for not eating them the rest of the year. (It is also a good way to get a stomach ache.) Pick them, eat them, can them, eat them, make pies, and eat some more.
My friend Bob has a huge garden, and the strawberries were ripe for picking last night. We went by, and picked tons! I came home with two turkey-roasting trays full (which is actually half full, as the fruits shouldn’t be layered too deep..). Last night I canned a batch of jam (and started crusts for pies).
Strawberry jam is a simple mixture of sugar, fruit, and lemon juice. I didn’t use much pectin, and the resulting jam was thin, which is perfect for things like pancakes and yogurt.
To thicken the jam a little bit, I boiled it for a while. You don’t want to boil the jam too much though, or you will over cook the fruit. hmmm..
rhubarb and rose petals
June 1, 2010
Today my friend Hilary and I made jam. She supplied two bundles of rhubarb, and I added a well packed cup of rose petals. 
The result was a sweet, delicately rose scented rhubarb jam. We ate the better part of a jar with spoons while we processed the jars.
The rhubarb and sugar were mixed first, and left to sit. When the sugar had mostly dissolved, we added lemon juice and rose petals.
We put the mixture onto a burner and let it boil for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, we washed, dried and set up our jars, lids, and canning utensils. We used Weck canning jars (glass jars and lids, made in Germany) which are the cutest things ever!
Below are the filled jars. We ended up with quite a few! The rhubarb jam is quite thin, with a little scent of rose, and I can’t wait to put it onto vanilla ice cream..
living in the woods and making stuff 