40 days and counting
November 7, 2010
I was talking to my friend Emily a few days ago and we started discussing baking, and Christmas break, and I remembered that I needed to start another batch of grapefruit wine. I made (and blogged about) this recipe last year, and it turned out so well that I decided to make it again.
It is a recipe from Saving the Season, and originates in Southern France. It is a simple recipe. Place sugar in the bottom of several very large glass jars. Layer fruit on top, pressing down a bit as you go.
Add a little bit of chamomile and vanilla, and top with vodka and wine. Then let it sit for about 4o days before straining into bottles. The jars are mixed a bit and topped off during the first week.
This recipe makes me want to live near citrus trees so badly!!!
eating the pet (or something maybe a little bit close to it)
November 7, 2010
It is a little bit grim what happens to pumpkins. The seeds are planted, they spend all summer collecting energy from the sun, and nutrients from the soil and water, and then we eat them. Scrub, de-stem, seed, and bake in the oven in a tray of boiling water. Jay took the picture above in the oven with his camera that can capture lovely dark images!
I love my pumpkins. Jay came over today to see the harvest (which was rather small…) and we decided to make a pot of pumpkin soup. With a Long Island Cheese variety.
We cut the pumpkin in half, seeded it and saved the seeds. (I do figure that the purpose of the plant is to continue to create offspring, so my meticulously saving and planting the seeds does count for something after I cut open and eat the squash…)
We baked the pumpkin in a 400 degree oven until it was tender, and the top had browned.
(I is important to wait until the pumpkin is well done. The skin just peels off if you do!)
I mashed the pumpkin flesh with a fork, and added it to a mixture of sauteed onions and garlic, parsley, and a little bit of parmesan cheese rind ready on the stove.
After we mixed everything together the soup was pretty much finished. It was bubbling on the stove for five or ten minutes, and then we served it up. We garnished it with fresh parsley, grated parmesan, and toasted pumpkin seed oil (a real treat!).
We managed to find little spots on the table to eat. I was definitely knocking elbows with pumpkins throughout the meal, but it was fun anyways!
Pumpkin Soup (more like guidelines than a recipe!)
Ingredients:
a smallish long island cheese pumpkin (or any pumpkin or winter squash) cut in half and seeded
a small onion
a few cloves of garlic
olive oil
a few sprigs (or more) of parsley
a bit of parmesan cheese rind
some more parsley, cheese, and pumpkin seed oil for garnish
salt and pepper
Directions:
Bake pumpkin cut side down in an inch or so of water in a 400 degree oven.
Meanwhile, chop and sautee onions, and whole clove or two of garlic in olive oil over medium low heat. Add some salt, and then after a few minutes the chopped parsley and parmesan rind. Stir for about a minute or so, then add a tiny bit water and let simmer for a few minutes and then set aside.
The pumpkin should be about done here, and you can scrape it right from the shell and add directly to the soup. I used the water from baking pumpkin for the soup instead of broth or fresh water.
Stir everything well, and blend or put through a food mill if you like. Let the soup simmer for ten or fifteen minutes before serving.
Garnish with extra chopped parsley, freshly grated parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and toasted pumpkin seed oil (all optional).
roast soup
October 13, 2010
I am finally getting pumpkins from the patch, and since it is fall, I feel like turning my oven on, and roasting things.
The other day, when I finished work, I was in the mood for some pumpkin soup, and had a few fresh chestnuts on the counter, some of the last tomatoes of the season (they were green and ripened on my counter), and home-grown garlic. I picked up some shallots and parsnips from the store, and roasted everything!
I sliced the pumpkin in half, saved the seeds, and cooked it cut side down in a pan of water.
I slit the chestnuts, peeled the shallots, and cut the top off of a head of garlic, and put them in my chestnut roasting pan. I drizzled olive oil over the garlic and shallots, and sprinkled some salt on the top. They roasted with the lid on!
In the third pan I mixed sliced parsnips, more shallots, also sliced, and the tomatoes. More olive oil, and a sprinkling of salt.
Everything roasted in the oven all evening. When I arrived home at the end of the night, I took everything out, scraped the pumpkin out of the shells, peeled the chestnuts, and put everything in a pot.
The vegetables cooked down, and many sugars carmalized!
In the morning, I added water and pureed the mixture with my stick blender.
I served the soup with freshly grated parmesan cheese and fresh parsley. And a drizzle of toasted pumpkin seed oil, a real treat!
pies for francis
October 10, 2010
My sister and I think that Francis Thicke is the perfect candidate for Secretary of Agriculture in Iowa. I guess that is why we are spending Saturday night baking pies. Made with fresh local pumpkin and fresh local milk!
We wanted to do something to raise money for the Thicke Campaign, and decided to bake a whole lot of pumpkin pies to sell at the John Lennon Tribute Concert Reprise: to benefit the Francis Thicke Campaign. It should be a great concert, so stop on by! What a great excuse to support an awesome campaign!
Heli-Claire and I started with fresh pumpkins. We roasted them in the oven, and then scooped out the meat, mixed it with Radiance Dairy whole milk and cream, sour cream, sugar and spices. The recipe is from our grandmother!
We will have slices available for a donation, so if you are in the mood for some good music and a slice of pumpkin pie, stop by tomorrow (Sunday) night at 7:30 pm to Cafe Paradiso! All donations will go directly to the Thicke for Secretary of Agriculture Campaign.
green tomato chutney
October 3, 2010
When a recipe calls for 6 pounds of something, I need to realize that it will be big. Now I have a lot of jars of green tomato chutney. Cooked with apples, peppers, brown sugar, red wine vinegar, cumin, hot pepper, and clove.
I started out by slicing and x in the bottom of each tomato. Then I dropped them into boiling water so that the skins would come off easily. They didn’t. If anyone has any tips for removing the skins of green tomatoes, please let me know. I ended up leaving lots of skins on, especially on the tiny ones…I just didn’t have the patience.
While the tomatoes were draining with salt, I prepared the remaining ingredients. Apples, onions, shallots, and garlic. To this mixture I added the tomatoes, red wine vinegar, and salt.
And cooked, stirring frequently for about 45 minutes. Meanwhile, I ground up the spices:cloves, cumin, dried peppers, and yellow mustard powder. I added the spices, to the bubbling chutney, along with sugar, black currants, and more vinegar.
Then I cooked the mixture down and down. For quite a while longer. Til all the color was cooked out…and then jarred it.
three types of crab
September 25, 2010
When I told my mom the other day that I was going to make crab apple jelly, her response was that I could make crab apple syrup by stirring my finger around in sugar water. Hrmph!
I went out and picked some crab apples anyways (with my friend Ayni!), and we brought them home, peeled them, and processed them for jelly. We were debating quite a bit as to whether we should make jam or jelly, or butter, or sauce. I am not too much fan of jelly, as I like the fruit in the product. Most of the recipes that I saw for crab apples however were for jelly, so I decided at least once I would have to make it.
We picked a lot of apples, and had quite a pot of juice after straining the fruit. I split up the juice and sugar into three pots, and added some thyme to one, some rosemary to the second pot, and left the third one plain. Then I set out to boil the liquid (sugar, herbs, and fruit) until the fruit set. I boiled the plain version way too long, and the resulting jelly was rather clumpy.
The thyme jelly was boiled a little bit less (but still too much) and wast moderately clumpy. The rosemary was boiled just right, resluting in a firm-ish looking jelly, with a bit of jiggle to it.
Also, I squeezed the juice bag as I was extracting the juice (NOT RECOMMENDED for state fair competition jellies) so my jelly is cloudy. But I didn’t have to wait for 8-12 hours for all the juice to slowly drip out…
These jars of jam are intended for use with my dad’s savory herb cheese biscuits. I am imagining a layer of butter, and then a thin spread of herbed crab apple jelly!
new red mittens
September 20, 2010
Today was cold and rainy. I ended up spending most of the day outside in a barn playing fiddle tunes, which suited me perfectly. I also finished a new pair of mittens (in the car on the way to the barn). Funny that it is cold enough to start thinking about keeping hands warm..
Last week we got a shipment of wool and patterns from Classic Elite Yarns. I made a pair of mittens using princess yarn (wool, microfiber, and cashmere) and a pattern by Jared Flood. I did end up modifying the tips of the mittens. When I followed the pattern they ended up a little bit shorter than I wanted, so I added an extra repeat, and changed the tops so that the decreases weren’t so abrupt.
The pattern was fun to knit up, a lot of twisted stitches, and little cables on the cuff created a nice sideways rib. The sideways rib also ended up being functional, and the cuff hugs the wrist quite well. The thumbs were also a little short, and so I just added a few more rows to fit. The nice thing about mittens, is that you can just try them on and adjust the pattern a little so that the fit comes out well. All you have to do is remember what you did on the first mitten so that you can repeat it for the second mitten…
pulled, scrubbed, and vinegared
September 18, 2010
I wait until it rains to pull the carrots in my garden. For some reason the soil is really hard, and it is nearly impossible to pull carrots out of the dry soil.
I was able to pull a bunch of carrots, purple and orange, and I mixed them with some diakon radish, rice vinegar, salt, sugar and minced pepper to make a quick pickle. I loosely adapted the recipe from The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich.
I chopped the vegetables into little strips and set them aside in a bowl.
Meanwhile, I chopped up several red chiles and mixed them with rice vinegar, sugar, and salt. I heated the mixture to melt the sugar, and let it cool before pouring over the veggies. Which I then stuck in a jar in the fridge. They will last up to a week, but are better eaten sooner! I am sure that will be no problem.
a pineapple roll
August 30, 2010
Another tunic. The same pattern as the last one, but made with pineapple fiber!
When we got the new tunic pattern at the store, and when it turned out well in the linen, I decided to make it with the pineapple fiber as well.
The pineapple fiber (imported from Japan by Habu) is originally made in the Philippines. It is made from the fibrous leaves of the pineapple plant (which look like, and initially are, the top of a pineapple). I had started something else with it, and never finished it, so I ripped it and made this tunic instead.
I used three very fine strands of fiber stranded together throughout. The gauge was about the same as for the linen tunic, but the weight was much much lighter!
One of my favorites things about knitting with the pineapple is that it smelled lovely, and a little bit like dried grass the whole time. I quite liked picking up the garment as I was knitting it just to smell it…
an orange sweater
August 30, 2010
I have been on a sweater knitting kick this summer. We just got a new batch of beautiful yarn into the store. It is a Rowan wool and cotton blend, and organic! Very soft, and just a little bit shiny. I had been eying the pattern for this sweater for a while, and when we got the yarn, I decided to use it.
Of course I used the orange yarn…and I sewed on the wooden buttons this morning, so now it is officially finished. Except for a few stray threads.
The pattern is a four stitch, four row repeat. It was simple, but engaging, and kept the knitting a little bit interesting. There is six inches of ribbing at the bottom of the sweater, and no side shaping. I was a little worried that it wouldn’t fit well, but the ribbing seems to do the trick.
The sleeves are one of my favorite parts. They are a little bit puffy, which was created by dramatically decreasing over the last two rows of the sweater.
living in the woods and making stuff 