Spinach Artichoke Dip

Spinach artichoke dip is one of those party dishes that you can kind of feel good about. It's main base is vegetables after all. We won't talk about the other ingredients. They are there to make it all taste good!

Spinach Artichoke Dip

from

Copperfield's Coffee Cafe

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1 bag of frozen chopped spinach, cooked and well drained

2 cans plain artichoke hearts, drained.

1 cup sour cream

1 cup mayonnaise

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 or 2 cups grated Parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Optional: 1/2 teaspoon of Tobasco sauce

Salty tortilla chips for dipping

In a food processor combine all the ingredients except the tortilla chips. Process until smooth. Pour into a buttered casserole dish and back for 35 to 40 minutes or until the dip is hot and started to brown a little. You can transfer it to a chafing dish to keep warm on a buffet table. Serve with salty tortilla chips.

Spinach Casserole

First, I'll report that both Tigger and Pipster are doing fine and have mellowed out completely! No fights, no growls, no hissing. It's wonderful.

You may be planning a New Years Eve get together or a good roast pork and black eyed peas meal for New Years Day, so thought you might like a good spinach casserole recipe to go with. This one is from the 1987 cook book published by the Lebanon United Methodist Women. It's called "Specialities of the House" and it has some pretty good real recipes. This recipe is called Roxie's Spinach Casserole and was contributed by my mother. Roxie was a very dear friend who passed away a couple of years ago. She was always loads of fun, bright and always smiling. We miss her and we love her spinach casserole. Enjoy!

Roxie's Spinach Casserole



4 10oz packages of frozen spinach - or bags of frozen spinach to equal

1 pound button mushrooms, gently washed and sliced or any mild mushroom you like

1 glove garlic

2 tablespoons butter

1/2 pound grated Swiss cheese

5 tablespoons butter

5 tablespoons flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 cups whole milk

a few grates of nutmeg (optional)

Cook the spinach with the garlic. Drain the spinach well pressing down on it with the back of a large spoon to get the water out and discard the garlic. Transfer the spinach to a large mixing bowl.  Cook the sliced mushrooms in two tablespoons of butter. You might add a little oil just to keep the butter from burning. Cook the mushrooms over high heat, disturbing them very little so they brown a bit. Add them to the spinach. 

In a medium saucepan, make a white sauce of the five tablespoons of butter and flour and milk. Melt the butter, whisk the flour into the butter and cook it over medium high heat for a minute whisking the mixture as you go.  Add milk to the butter flour mixture and cook, whisking well until the sauce is thick and smooth. If you heat the milk, just until its hot, it incorporates more easily into the butter and flour. Add the salt, the nutmeg and 3/4th of the cheese to the sauce and cook, stirring until the cheese begins to melt.

Pour the cheese sauce over the spinach and mushrooms and mix together. Pour the mixture into a buttered casserole dish and top with the remaining cheese. Let stand one hour or longer before baking in a 350 degree oven for an hour.  My mother uses a deep, oval casserole dish with a lid. It's about 9 inches long and five inches wide four or five inches tall. It is an oven to table decorative dish. She likes to bring this casserole to parties in that dish because it keeps well and the dish is pretty, so all she has to do is take the lid off and serve.

Note:  I've augmented the original instructions and added the nutmeg - it was not in the original recipe but always goes well with spinach and Swiss cheese. 

This is my version of a deep, covered casserole dish. This one is by Portmerion and is great for serving a variety of casseroles and vegetables. It's oven to table as well.



Almost All Cats Neutered

Yesterday I finally took the 2010 kittens (now grown cats) to be neutered. I had purchased a spay/neuter voucher from the Warren County Humane Association to have the mother cat spay but she died before I could catch her. She was just a feral cat that showed up and left me kittens this spring. The voucher was going to expire in February so it was time to put it to use. Since I am off work this week it seemed a perfect time to use it and I had two tom cats that were fighting each other all the time. Yesterday I gathered up Tigger and Pipster and took them to my small animal vet to be neutered. I picked them up this morning. They are a little miffed with me and still a little quiet. I'll keep them in the house at least through today.

That means I have just one little guy from the spring 2011 litter to have neutered and then everyone is done!  That's eight cats, seven of which are male, all neutered.

Neutering male cats is a pretty simple procedure. I board cattle for a vet and he neutered three of the kittens on my kitchen counter in October. I just couldn't catch the fourth. He gave them each a shot of something to put them out, then it was a quick slice, twist, snip and tie off. The boys woke up later that evening, played just like always and seemed to have no idea anything had changed. I admit Pipster and Tigger are not quite so carefree about their operations, but I am sure they will be fine by this evening. I forgot to ask the vet how long it would take for the testosterone to disappear from their systems. I expect about a month. Here's a picture of the two "tuxedo boys" from this year, Zeke on the left, and Little Joe.

Beet Soup or Borsch

Here is a gorgeous red soup that tastes good, is low fat and low calorie and all that good stuff. I like it's red color for the holidays but it would also work very well  for Valentine's Day.  I had beets in my fall garden and pulled the last of them around Thanksgiving.  I trimmed the tops and the root, washed them and stored them  in my refrigerator's vegetable bin. They keep very well.

I love beets roasted, so I wrapped half a dozen of them in a package of aluminum foil (two sheets) and roasted them in a 400 degree oven for about half an hour or until they were tender. They cooled in the foil and then were easy to peel.

Easy Beet Soup

Most of the beet soup recipes I've read call for beets, carrots, celery, onion, parsnips, tomatoes and cabbage. I decided I could do without the cabbage. Likewise I didn't see the point of tomatoes, though I suppose it was there for the acid.  I think of beets as a fall root crop, the same as carrots, onions and parsnips so I opted for mostly root vegetables in the soup. The exception was celery. I begin most soup recipes with  my trinity of carrots, onions and celery so was pretty sure that would be the best base. Also, I had my own homemade beef broth which is very yummy and nothing like the little salty cubes of beef bullion (yuk!). Good "stock in a box beef broth (the one in the red box)  should work well. So here's my version of the soup and I hope you like it.

6 medium sized beets, roasted, skinned and sliced or diced.

1 medium or two small carrots, peeled and finely chopped

1 rib of celery, finely chopped

1 small yellow onion, finely chopped

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon white pepper

6 cups good beef broth

Serves 4 a generous portion of soup, or six for an appetizer.

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter in the vegetable oil. Saute the onion, carrot and celery in the butter and oil until the onion is softened and the vegetables are beginning to brown just a little. Add the salt and pepper, the beets and the beef broth.  Bring the mixture almost to a boil, then reduce the heat and gently simmer the soup 15 or 20 minutes or until the carrots and celery are tender. Remove from the heat and add the red wine vinegar. Puree the soup with the gadget of your choice - blender, immersion blender, food processor. Reheat to warm before serving if necessary. 

You could garnish this soup with sour cream but its really not necessary. I noticed when a dropped a little sour cream in the soup it just sunk to the bottom of the bowl. If you must garnish consider some warm crusty bread with a compound butter made with dill weed.



Meat For Sale

My steer went to slaughter yesterday.  He was such a big pet it was hard to send him off, but then I remembered how he "bullied" the cows away from the feed racks and was just generally making a nuisance of himself, so it was time.  The carcass will be hanging at the butcher for a good two weeks and then the meat will be cut, wrapped and frozen solid. I''ll pick it up and distribute it to my customers in early January. 

My steer's hanging weight is 818 pounds. That's a little higher than my 750 average, but not the biggest I've ever sold. He is the first grass fed steer I've sold so I am anxious to see if the meat is really lean. It should be very lean.

I was checking out some other beef farm websites to see what they are offering for split sides - what cuts, how many pounds, the price etc.  I'm a little low on price and a lot higher on pounds! These folks must be selling little Jersey dairy steers!  Most said a split side should hang at 150 pounds and yield 100 pounds cut and wrapped meat. My steer hangs at 202 pounds for a split side and will probably yield between 150 and 175 pounds of meat. I'm selling a split side for $3.00 a pound cut and wrapped. I have one split side left. If you are interested let me know. At this time I plan to deliver meat on January 9th. Most others are selling their meat from $5.50 to $7 a pound cut and wrapped. I think my price is fair and what my market will bear.

I found this list of cuts available from a 100 pound slit side. It gives you an idea of how many kinds of beef meals you'd likely get from a split side.  This list just makes my mouth water thinking about all those good beef meals I'll be preparing!  This list doesn't include things like liver, heart, tongue and kidneys. I feed the liver to the cats and have a neighbor who will take the heart and kidneys. Not sure about the tongue. This list doesn't have a brisket or flank steak. I'll make sure I get those cuts. I'll also include some suet for the birds.

1 or 2 @ 3 Lb. Chuck Roast
2 Chuck Steaks
1 or 2 @ 3 Lb. Arm Roasts
2 or 3 Lbs. of Stew Beef
2 Pkgs. Short Ribs at approximately 2.5 Lbs. per Pkg.
2 Neck Soup Bones
2 Shank Soup Bones
About 7 Lbs. of Rib Steaks or Rib Roasts
Approximately ten steaks total divided amongst the Sirloin, T-Bone, & Porterhouse @ 3/4” thick.
5 Lbs. of Top Round that can be cut as Roasts, Steaks, or London Broil
1 or 2 @ 3 Lb Rolled Rump Roasts
1 @ 3 Lb. Sirloin Tip Roast
8 Cube Steaks
Approximately 40 Lbs. of Ground Beef

Sunday on the Farm

Most weekends Sunday is the only day I have totally to myself to work on the farm.  Some Sunday's I'm busier than others and yesterday was one of those.  It started with delivering round bales of hay to the herd and the Angus boarders. That was a fairly easy task as it mostly involves sitting on a tractor and managing the round bale spear on the front end loader.

I sold BTAP Lulu,  one of the bred heifers, and her new owner came to pick her up last Sunday. She did not want to go and broke away from us, breaking down a gate and joining her mother and sister and little brother. Since she's a good six months pregnant, we let her go and I promised to have my hauler deliver her this Sunday.  

Limousin cattle can jump fences like deer. It always amazes me to see them go over a gate with no running start, so I knew I needed to reconfigure the barn so that Lulu wouldn't find a way to escape. It took a good two hours but in the end she walked on to the trailer with no mishaps. She wasn't happy about it when she realized what she'd done but by then it was too late.

I rode with Mr. Burns who hauls for me to deliver Lulu. I like to see where my animals will be living. I can report that Lulu has a beautiful new home near Milford in the care of a good man.  The operation is a cow/calf farm dedicated to producing healthy, all  natual beef.

Raw Milk

Most mornings I watch "Morning Joe" on MSNBC. Lately their dialog has been all about the many Republican candidates and this morning they reported on Ron Paul in New Hampshire. Paul's big political spewing included a promise to make raw milk legal. This was pandering to the dairy farmers in New Hampshire who (in my educated opinion) should be making ice cream and cheese and not trying to get a market for raw milk!

I've written on this before and I'll keep writing because this is so very important. DON'T DRINK RAW MILK, no matter how sweet and happy you think the farmer and the cows may be.  Milk comes from the cow's udder which is directly in front of the cows rear end where the manure comes out. Manure carries
ecoli and all those other bad bacteria.  Let me tell you folks, cows don't have a clue about cleanliness. As they step in their own manure it splashes on to their udders. They lay down in their own manure and drag their udders through the manure. And yes, the farmer "washes"  the udder down before milking, but have you ever got up close and personal washing a cows udder? The udder is tender and you can't scrub at it twice a day without making a very tender and unhappy cow.  If you are out their  using your hand sanitizer all day long you know how drying it can be. Most farmers wash down the teats with a rag dipped in a bucket of some cleaning solution. It's not normally a big scrubbing job. Can you really think a cursory wipe of the udder is really killing bacteria?  You wipe down the shopping cart in the Kroger's because you don't want to get bad bacteria on your hands. How can anyone think the cow's udder is sterile clean. It is not!!!!   I can't begin to tell you how this makes me see RED! Here we go again with ignorance running rampant through the political process, not to mention the general public. 

We have the most clean, safe food supply in the world. Would I like to see us do better - absolutely. But making our food better doesn't include making it less safe. 

Pheasant with Orange and Chestnuts

A friend of mine went pheasant hunting and bagged a few birds so I thought I'd share the AGA cookbook's Pheasant with Orange and Chestnuts recipe. This is the one that warns that if the birds are old or badly shot they will take 3-4 hours to cook. It actually sounds pretty good.

6 oz dried chestnuts soaked overnight in cold water (probably have to get this on line)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 oz butter
a brace of roasting pheasants
2 oz flour
8 oz good red wine
16 oz chicken stock
2 yellow onions, peeled and quartered
juice and rind of one orange - peel this like you do when making candied orange peel (see blog)
2 teaspoons red current jelly
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
Strain the chestnuts and set aside. Heat 1 tablespoonon of the oil in a large pan with the butter and brown the pheasants on all sides. Remove the pheasants to a plate and add the remaining oil to the pan. Add chestnuts to the pan and brown the chestnuts, then remove them to the plate with the pheasants. Add the flour to the pan and whisk it together cooking for a couple of minutes to cook the flour. Whisk in the wine and the stock and bring to the boil, stirring until thickened.  Add the onions to the pan with the orange rind, juice, red currant jelly and seasoning and blend well. Return pheasants and chestnuts to the pan. Cover with a lid and bring to the boil. Reduce to simmer and simmer for about 10 minutes on the stove top. Place the covered pan of pheasants in the oven and cook for 3-4 hours, depending on the age of the birds. Taste to check seasoning and remove the rind before serving.

Shortbread Cookies

I've told you all about my AGA cooker in other posts. Cooking on an AGA is a little different from the usual American electric or gas stove, so AGA gives all its new owners an AGA cookbook. Since the AGA is manufactured in England, the cookbook is for English cooks. I know what you are thinking! England is not known for its cuisine.

But the AGA cookbook is pretty good reading. The recipes are so different from American cookbooks. For example, as I leaf through the book (its a slim volume) I see a recipe called "Beef Oxford".  The recipe is cubes of stew beef browned then simmered in the oven for 4 hours. The ingredients list includes onions, garlic, mushrooms, green peppers, red wine and apricot jam! The tag line says: "Perfect for supper on a cold winter's day."

Another recipe is for "Pheasant with Orange and Chestnuts". The tag line on this one is: "The timing of this recipe is for roasting birds, but you can use old birds very satisfactorily or even ones that are old and badly shot. They may well take 4-5 hours to get really tender." Old pheasant, badly shot. I think I'll pass!

But some of the recipes sound really good. My favorite, and one I make often with my own special twist, is for Butter Shortbread. Here it is. It's a great old fashioned Christmas cookie and gets better with age. I give you the recipe straight from the cookbook as well as my version.  Note:  I have a kitchen scale and weigh the ingredients. Cup measures just don't work.

Butter Shortbread

The AGA Version

12 oz butter

12 oz plain flour

6 oz ground rice, cornflour or semolina

6 oz caster sugar

demerara sugar

In a stand mixer with a dough hook, cut up the butter into small pieces. Put everything together in the mixer bowl and mix with the dough hook until all is combined.  You can also use a food processor or a pastry cutter. Work it like pie pastry.

Lightly grease a large, heavy rimmed baking sheet. (My AGA came with a large 11" by 15" roasting pan which the recipe says to use and I do). Press the mixture into the bottom of the pan. Smooth the dough with a damp off set spatula. Prick all over with a fork and sprinkle with demerara sugar. Bake at 325 degrees for 20 or 25 minutes (maybe longer as ovens vary)  or until the shortbread is a very pale golden color around the edges.

Remove the shortbread from the oven and cut into 40 pieces. Lift out the pieces and cool them on a wire rack. Store in cookie tins.



                                                                  Butter Shortbread

My Version

When I first made this recipe I didn't have ground rice or semolina and I wasn't sure what cornflour was, so I used fine yellow cornmeal.  The cornmeal turned out to be a perfect substitution and I've made this shortbread with corn meal ever since.  I am serious when I say this cookie gets better with age. I don't like to touch it until its at least a week old. I keep the shortbread in cookie tins in a cool place. This is my 88 year old father's favorite cookie. I've also taken it to several cookie swaps and have been told by at least one other gentleman that this shortbread is almost better than sex!  Try it, see what you think.

Old Fashioned Molasses Cookies

So, its Monday and its raining again. I'm trying hard to get in the holiday spirit but this rain and unseasonably warm temperatures are straining credibility.  So I think its time to do a little baking!

Here is a recipe that always says Christmas to me. It was handed down from my Grandmother McGarity. I have no idea where she got the recipe. I got it from my Mom. She has it written down in a little black notebook where she keeps all the recipes her mother gave her when she was married.

These are strong flavored cookies. They are similar to gingerbread cookies but have more flavor.  The full cup of molasses and the brown sugar really comes through. My Mom always makes these at Christmas. They are great with a little powdered sugar on top and a cup of strong black tea. Enjoy!

Old Fashioned Molasses Cookies

Preheat oven to 375 degrees



3 1/2 cups sifted all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter or margarine

2/3 cup brown sugar packed tight

1 cup molasses (unsulfured)

1 cup buttermilk

Sift all the dry ingredients together in a wide bowl or onto a piece of waxed paper.

In an electric mixer, cream the butter until light and fluffy, two minutes. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy three or four more minutes. Add molasses and mix thoroughly. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture alternating with the milk . Continue adding flour mixture and milk, ending with milk. Drop batter by rounded tablespoon fulls on parchment lined cookie sheets. Spread batter slightly with the back of a spoon. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove cookies from oven and transfer cookies to wire racks to cool. When almost cool, dust with a little powered sugar using a fine mesh sieve.

Sunshine Makes Happy Cows

I've love my morning chores when the weather is nice. This morning its not exactly totally sunny, but there is enough clearing of the clouds to give me a beautiful dawn. It's also above freezing, 35 degrees, which also makes it nice.

The cattle are so happy to see me.  The four little heifers run for the barn as soon as I step out the door. They know I'm on my way to the East Barn to give them a bucket of sweet feed ( a mixure of grains, molasses and vitamins) for breakfast.  With all the rain this year, the nutritional value of the hay is low. Mostly it will provide carbohydrates to keep them warm. These heifers need good nutrition to develop into good mama cows, so about half of their feed ration for the day will be this sweet feed until they are back on spring pasture.

Grass fed is a nice idea, but a good herdsman looks out for his animals nutrition. If I was just raising what I call "dirty old feeder calves", that is just keeping cows to have calves that I sell in the fall, I might get by with just hay, no matter how bad the quality. Some years I'd have good calves, some years I wouldn't. I want to raise my animals the best way I can for their overall health and well being and this year that means some kind of nutritional supplement. If I didn't live in horse country, I could get by with alfalpha hay which has a higher protein content then other hays - its a legume, not a grass. Horse people seem to think their hay has to cost a lot to be any good (don't get me started) and so the cost of alfalpha hay around here is twice what it should be. If I can find rejected alfalpha hay (hay that might have a list dust or mold from all the rain)  at a good price, I'll buy it quick enough and won't have to buy grain. Cows don't mind a little mold or dust. So far this year that's not happening.

On the west side of the property the new mama and calf are doing well. Bobby (last spring bull calf) and his mom are in with Cinnamon and her mom along with a two year old heifer who will hopefully calve in the spring. They share a bucket of the sweet feed each morning. The new mama needs plenty of protein and vitamins to make good milk for the calf, and Bobby the bull calf needs good nutrition to develop into a healthy, strong breeding bull. 

The rest of the herd is on hay at present. They are still picking green pasture, so their nutrtion is good enough. When the cold is more pronounced and consistent, they too will get grain as well, about five pounds each a day - which is the equivalent of 10 pounds of hay. When the tempertures drops below freezing and stays that way, they will need as much as 30 pounds of hay or hay equivalent feed a day. I am constantly assessing the cost of hay and the cost of grain and balancing the two costs against the nutrition needs of the herd.  Last year I fed no grain and the herd came through the winter just fine, but the hay was much better quality. 

Nico who pees in my shoes.

Breakfast bale of hay with compost pile in background

Rainy Days and Mondays - its all the same.

Another rainy Monday.  We seem to be stuck on a weather pattern of rain on Mondays. It's so gloomy and dark. The chickens won't lay eggs hardly (just a couple a day) and the cows just want to hunker down and eat.

As I started to the mud room to suit up for my morning's outdoor chores, I found my sweet little timid kitty Nico (see his picture) peeing in my shoes - yes my shoes. He was very carefully squatting over one of them anyway. I yelled "No", grabbed him up and threw him out in the rain. Nico is very timid. He's a stray that was probably dumped as a kitten and maybe didn't get enough oxygen or something when he was born because he's not very bright. He's scared of all the other cats so I imagine he decided not to go to the basement litter box because my big yellow tom cat Tigger sleeps down there.

This past Saturday a friend with a Bobcat spent the afternoon (the only dry day of the weekend) cleaning out my round bale feeding pads. You can see in this picture behind the cows a big pile of dirt. As the cows pull the hay from the round bale they tend to drop some of it on the ground. Also, the outer layer of the bale is not very tasty so they leave that behind as well. This all mixes with manue and before you know it I'm kne deep in a mixture of hay and manure and mud.  Next spring that will be the most wonderful garden compost anyone could want. Actually, I have three piles like that because I have three round bale feeding stations. Be sure and let me know if you need any compost!

If you look closely at the picture of the house you see a ladder laying on the sidewalk and notice a shutter is missing. That shutter has been down for months. The ladder has been there about a month as well. Every time I have time to get out there and put the shutter back on the house, it rains!!! The Farmer's Almanac predicts a wet winter and so far they are spot on!

Catching Up

It's been a busy week and weekend and December will just get even more busy.  Christmas Festival and Horse Drawn Carriage Parade in town on Saturday and the museum is right in the middle of it all.

Thanksgiving was wonderful. The turkey was moist and delicious, thanks to my AGA,  and I felt like  the conductor of an orchestra with all the ovens going at the same time.  As always we enjoyed the camaraderie of family getting together and entertaining each other. We all love to talk.

The little heifer calf has made it through its first week of life with most days being gloom and rain. Mom keeps her in the barn a lot. I've decided to call her Cinnamon.

Ghost hunts at Glendower are over.  Booking January weekends for Harmon Hall. These are overnight stays - kind of like a ghost hunt slumber party for grown ups.  Very limited number of people but very intense hunting.

Today I baked a second fruit cake. I just had to sample one of the first ones - and of course - its gone already. The family was all anxious to get their fruitcakes - but I've kept them behind for a little more Sherry and cure time.  This new one is part store bought fruit, part home candied, so is more in the style of the cakes my Mom and sister and I used to bake Thanksgiving weekend in the old days. It's also baked in an angel food cake pan or tube pan which is also the way the original recipe tells you to bake it. It's much taller than the mini loaf pans so you get a deep, fruit studded slice when you cut into it. I'm going to cut this one into  fourths and give each household a section of it as well.  Should be interesting  taste testing the two different cakes.  I bet we all end up liking the new one just as well as the first one. After all, that's the cake we remember from growing up.

My AGA Cooker

I love English murder mystery novels and back in the early 1980's I was reading one that featured an AGA cooker.  I was intrigued and went on the hunt to find out just what was an AGA cooker. That was before the Internet so I probably went to my public library to look it up, I really don't remember. But regardless, I was able to get enough information about the AGA, which is made in England, to decide I wanted one. Then I found out the price. Thirty years ago they cost $4000! 

Flash forward to the late 1990's when we were living in Zionsville, Indiana and made friends with Johnna, the owner of the Keeping Room kitchen design store and an AGA dealer. Our little house in the country outside of town was not worthy of an AGA but when we decided to move back to the Cincinnati area and build a house, the AGA suddenly became possible. Since it is built on site, the AGA could become part of the mortgage, which was a good thing since by then the price on a full sized, four oven AGA had climbed to $14000.00! 

The AGA was designed by a Nobel prize winning scientist who was forced to retire when he was injured in a lab accident. Once he was home full time he realized that his wife spent most of her day cooking their three meals.  He set about to design a cooker, as they call ranges in England, that would save time. The AGA is the result.

My AGA is the four oven style, though you can purchase a two oven AGA.  It is powered by propane  and is on all the time. That is to say, the propane is always burning, heating each of the four ovens to different temperatures so that the AGA is always ready to cook. This is a great time saver and with four ovens and two big burners plus a warming bad, you can accomplish a lot of cooking all at once. 

The good news is that the AGA also heats the kitchen to about 10 or 12 degrees warmer than the rest of the house. In my case the kitchen is the entire back half of the downstairs - its a kitchen/sitting room combination plus a powder room and mud room. I can shut doors closing the kitchen/sitting room off from the rest of the house and let the extra warmth from the AGA help to heat that back half. That way I can keep the thermostat (which is in the front of the house) set at 55 degrees all day while I am gone from home and the kitchen is still warm and comfy when I come home at night. I like a cool bedroom so I can just set the thermostat at 55 and forget it all winter (I have a down comforter and a heated mattress pad going most nights and a little high efficiency electric heater in the bathroom). It's amazing how much I save on electricity by keeping the furnace at that low temperature, not to mention propane!

When we built the house in 1998 propane was $.72 a gallon.  My furnace, hot water heater and AGA are all powered by propane, which is now $2.09 a gallon but which has been as high as $3.00.  The AGA drinks about a gallon a day, so its become rather expensive to operate, but I absolutely love my AGA and wouldn't give it up for anything. When I come down stairs in the morning the AGA is warm and cozy to stand by while I make my cafe au lait.  I once read about an Irish country house hotel where the male owner of the house sat on the warming pad of their AGA each morning while his wife cooked his breakfast!

The warming pad is great for incubating yogurt and drying gloves and a variety of other uses.  There is a roasting oven (400 to 500 degrees), a baking oven (300 to 375 degrees, a simmering oven ( 200 to 275degrees and a warming oven (140 degrees). I use the warming oven to dry corn, herbs, tomatoes, you name it. It's also great for keeping food warm!  The burners are two big 12 inch steel pads. One is for boiling and the other for simmering. They are the perfect fit for canning kettles, and the boiling pad boils water in about 90 seconds. The simmering pad doubles as a griddle.

The first meal I cooked on my AGA was breakfast. Bacon and pancakes.  On of the main things about an AGA is that you start things on the top of the stove and finish them in the oven, much like you see restaurant chefs cooking on television cooking shows.  So, I put the bacon on a rack in the roasting oven while I cooked the pancakes on the griddle pad up top. In just a few minutes I had breakfast on the table. I was a little taken aback at first. We'd paid a lot of money for that stove and I expected to spend some quality time with it - but true to its designers intent, my cooking time was cut way back.

The ovens are cast iron and radiate the heat around the food on all sides. This gives fast even cooking. I'd never consider frying bacon on top of the AGA, its just too perfect and easy cooked in the oven. It also does a great job of frying onions (again in the oven).  Pot roast and any kind of casserole comes out perfectly cooked each time - as long as I remember that its in the oven!!  Because the AGA is vented to the outside via a stove pipe (remember, its a real cook stove, burning fuel all the time) and the ovens are well sealed, you don't smell the food cooking - unless you are outside. Many times I've walked out to the back yard for some reason, smelled the food in the AGA cooking and hurried back in the house to check on it.

I love my AGA!

Dried Sweet Corn for Thanksgiving

The family is coming to my house for Thanksgiving dinner.  It's count down time to the big day. On Tuesday I'm picking up a fresh turkey my Mom ordered from Krogers.  I'll cook the turkey, provide mashed potatoes and gravy and also dried  sweet corn, a traditional family dish at Thanksgiving.

Most people around here don't seem to know about dried sweet corn, but it was a staple of the early pioneer diet and there was at least one dried corn factory in this area before the Civil War.  It comes to my family through our Dutch side of the family via some Pennsvlvania German ancesters.  If you travel north around Mansfield, Ohio and into the Amish country you can buy it in the grocery stores. You can also buy it on line, but that's expensive, and besides it very easy to dry sweet corn.

When I was a kid the sweet corn we grew was called Golden Cross Bantam. Golden Cross Bantam was a marvel when it was first introduced over 100 years ago.  It's a yellow sweet corn with a good corn flavor, but like all earlier varieties, it's sugars turn to starch fairly quickly after picking. To keep that good sweet corn flavor  you want to have the water boiling before you pick, which means you really need to grown your own. When the the super sweet corns were developed in the 1980's the starchy problem was greatly reduced. Now you can buy sweet corn at any farm stand or even corn shipped in from Tennessee or Florida and be reasonably sure of getting sweet, not starchy, corn.

To make dried sweet corn, cook a dozen good old fashioned ears of sweet corn in a pot of boiling, salted water for at least 10 minutes. Be sure and choose ears that you would be happy to eat fresh from the boiling water. Drain the ears and cool.  With a sharp knife cut the kernals from the cob and lay them out in a single layer on a rimmed cookie sheet that's lined with foil,  parchment paper or waxed paper with the waxed side down.  Put the  tray(s) of corn in a low 140 degree oven with the door cracked overnight or until the corn is completely dried and a golden nutty brown color. Cool and store in an air tight container. My grandmother stored her dried sweet corn in a cloth drawstring bag in her pantry and invariably it attracted little bugs. I store mine in plastic freezer bags and keep it in the freezer.

The probem with today's supersweet sweet corn varieties is that they are just too sweet. I've tried drying them but whatever gene keeps the sugars from forming into starch, also keep the sugars from developing the nutty color and flavor that is the flavor you want from dried sweet corn. One day I was tossing a bit of frozen corn from a bag of Birds Eye Frozen Yellow Sweet Corn - or some such thing - and noticed that the frozen store bought corn was really a good, corny flavored yellow sweet corn. In otherwords, frozen grocery store yellow sweet corn is NOT from super sweet varieties.  I tried drying the rest of the frozen corn and it worked just fine.  I just poured a bag of the still frozen corn on to a lined and rimmed baking sheet and dried it as usual. It took about 24 hours but the end product was very nearly the same as good old fashioned home grown, cooked, and dried sweet corn.

So, when I was too busy this summer to put up the electric fence in the garden and the racoons ate all my Golden Cross Bantam sweet corn, I just purchased a couple of bags of frozen corn and let it dry in to oven. Now I'm ready for Thanksgiving.

Cream Dried Sweet Corn

serves 8

2 cups dried sweet corn

4 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter

1/2 to 1 cup of cream (your choice)

salt and pepper to taste

Early in the day or the day before you plan to serve it, in a 3 1/2 to 4 quart saucepan,  combine the dried corn, the water and the salt. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat and simmer the corn for at least 1/2 an hour up to one hour checking now and then to see if more water is needed.  The corn should be completely tender when its properly cooked and most of the water will be absorbed.  At this point you can finish the dish with the butter and cream or store the cooked corn in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve. To finish the dish the next day, add the butter and cream and reheat the entire dish until the butter is melted and the corn mixture is steamy hot. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.  The end product is a sweet, nutty, corny dish that says Thanksgiving to everyone in our family.

New Baby

All week long we've been on baby watch. One of the heifers has been due to calve and you just never know what's going to happen with first babies. The weather was so great last week and then this week was all cold and storms, not good calving weather.  We've checked her every morning and evening, watching for all the signs.  Yesterday the weather turned warm  and dry again. Finally sometime in the early afternoon, she had her calf, all by herself with no problems. She picked a good spot on a high sunny south facing hill away from the herd so the pasture would be clean and dry.

Fruitcake in Pictures

Chopped blanched almonds

Candied cherries and almonds.

Chopping candied orange peel.

Chopping candied lemon peel.

Golden Raisins

Candied pineapple.

All the fruit and nuts together in a really big bowl.

Pour 1/2 cup flour over the fruit and mix together to keep the fruit separate.

Milk, Sherry and almond extract all together.

Sifting flour into measuring cup.

Cream the butter.

Add the sugar and mix on medium high for five minutes.

Add the eggs on low speed, one at a time.

Pastured eggs, so good, and make the batter really yellow!

Add he flour and milk, alternating wet and dry.

Pour batter over fruit and mix.

Ready for the pan.

Six mini pans (these are paper from King Arthur Flour Company.

Into the AGA to cook 3 hours.

Christmas Fruitcake Recipe

I made my Christmas Fruitcake this morning. They are in the oven as I write this - they take about three hours to bake.  The end product is six 4 inch by 7 inch mini-loaf pans. Here's the recipe:

Christmas White Fruitcake with Homemade Candied Fruit

12 oz blanched almonds chopped

2 cups of candied red cherries

Candied orange peel from four medium navel oranges, chopped

Candied lemon peel from two large lemons, chopped

2 Cups candied pineapple

8 oz golden raisins

1/2 cup flour



Combine all the candied fruits, the almonds and the raisins in a large open bowl along with a 1/2 cup of flour. I chopped the almonds and the candied orange and lemon peel. I left the cherries and the pineapple whole.  Mix all the fruit and nuts together to coat the fruit with the flour. I used my hands. Set aside.

2 1/4 sticks butter

1 1/2 cups of sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 large eggs

1/2 cup whole milk

1/4 cup cream sherry

1 teaspoon almond extract

2 1/2 cups sifted all purpose flour

Sherry or Brandy for baked cakes

Make the white cake batter. In an electric stand mixer cream 2 1/4 sticks of butter. I used salted because I don't like to keep two kinds of butter in the house - too expensive.  Next I added  1 1/2 cups of sugar, a 1/2 cup at a time and beat for five minutes on high, stopping the mixer halfway through and scraping down the sides. 

When the butter and sugar mixture was light and fluffy I added 1/4 teaspoon of salt and then slowly beat in four eggs, one egg at a time. I broke each egg into a bowl and poured the egg into the mixture so I wouldn't have to worry about bits of egg shell getting in the batter. I used my fresh pasture raised eggs which turned the batter a bright yellow color.

Mix a 1/2 cup of milk with 1/4 cup cream sherry and a teaspoon of almond extract.  Sift flour into measuring cups, measuring 2  1/2 cups of sifted flour. This is important. Don't just spoon the flour into cups and think its OK. Flour changes volume when sifted. So, sift the flour directly into the measuring cups. I put the flour in a separate bowl so I could add it a little at a time into the batter.

With the mixer running on low begin adding a fourth of the flour then alternate with one third or the milk mixture, ending with the flour. Beat until all is well combined, a couple of minutes.

Pour the batter over the fruit mixture and using a large wooden spoon, combine the fruit and batter until it is all well mixed.  Distribute the batter among six mini loaf pans and bake in a 275 degree oven for three hours or until a tooth pick inserted in the middle of a cake comes out clean. Check cakes at two hours and turn them in the oven.  Ovens vary and cake pans vary so three hours may be too long.

After cakes cool wrap them in several layers of cheese cloth or an old linen tea towel soaked in sherry or brandy. Put the cakes in air tight containers and store in a cool place (not a refrigerator) for at least four weeks. Once a week pour a little more sherry or brandy over the cakes.  Serve with hot tea for a traditional Christmas treat.

Note:  For years we made this fruit cake with the candied fruit you buy at the grocery and we loved it. So don't think you have to candy your own. It's just that the cake is so incredibly much better with home candied fruit.

Stuffing vs Dressing

This is the time of year when all the woman's interest magazines are full of recipes for Thanksgiving dinner. This year there seems to be more stuffing recipes than usual, and most of them aren't stuffing at all but dressing. That makes me wonder if what we call dressing -that savory bread pudding that's baked in a casserole inside the oven and not the turkey,  is something common only to southern Ohio.  We always call a bread mixture stuffed inside a bird stuffing and the casserole version, dressing.  I'm pretty sure the menu at the Golden Lamb Inn calls it turkey and dressing.

In our house we don't bother with stuffing - never enough room in the bird for enough to feed all of us. We always make dressing on the side; lots of it. We love it Thanksgiving Day and left over for days after. Nothing better.  My mother's recipe is pretty simple. Diced onion, diced celery, dried unseasoned bread cubes, chicken broth made from simmering the neck and gizzard, maybe a little extra chicken broth form "stock in a box" , a little poultry seasoning and lots of salt and pepper. It's baked in a big casserole dish and has a crusty bottom and top and soft, moist center. We like to pour lots of turkey gravy over the dressing.

When I make it I sometimes add a little fresh chopped parsley and some pecans. Cran raisens are also a nice addition. Regardless, dressing is always a favorite on Thanksgiving. 

New Slaughter Date

Well, its official. I have a new butcher and a new slaughter date for my beef steer. The new butcher was recommended to me by three different people who know about such things. The butcher is located in Medway, Ohio and will vacuum seal the meat - which is something I've heard is the very best way to keep freezer beef.

I've decided I am not going to call him by name anymore, its just too difficult.  But I am happy to have found him a good private butcher who will treat him with care and respect. Otherwise, I would have been forced to ship him to the sale barn and you know what happens to those animals - yep - they go to the big packers and who knows what happens to them there. So, my steer will have his last day December 15 and be home in my freezer some time between Christmas and New Years.

I've pre-sold most of the meat so the proceeds from the sale will be used to pay my real estate taxes and buy hay for his mother and sister. It's a good thing.

Fruitcake on the Way!

I finished the candied red tart cherries this past weekend.  Now I have all the candied fruits made and this weekend will be fruit cake baking time! I'll give you the recipe then.

I decided against the maple syrup gingerbread and decided to go with an apple crisp with ice cream for the Monday night family dinner dessert. I went to Irons Fruit Farm and picked up a collection of seven different apples.  I should have paid more attention to the types of apples, not just how they looked. The crisp was good, but some of the apples stayed firm and I really wanted them to cook down and be soft. The flavor was there, but next time I'll go with Golden Delicious and not play with my food so much.

Candied Orange Peel

I made candied orange peel this morning while I waited for the plumber to come and install new kitchen facets.  Homemade candied orange peel is just one of the best things ever. It has no relationship to that candied orange peel you buy in the grocery.  I made it just like I made the lemon peel - which I had to make over because I ate all of the first batch - not in one sitting, but over time. It's such a great little bit to eat at the end of a meal as a palate cleanser - and it tastes so good! It's so easy to make and you get to eat the oranges as well.  With the lemons I squeezed the juice and froze it in ice cube trays. I love oranges so I just wrapped their little naked selves in plastic wrap and enjoyed them over the course of a couple of days. Yum!

Hopefully, tomorrow I get started on candying the sour cherries and then its time to bake the fruit cake! I finished the pineapple last weekend before we neutered the cats.  You can't believe what a huge difference it makes to use home candied fruits to make fruit cake. The only purchased fruit I will use will be golden raisins. You also can't imagine what a huge difference it makes to have the cats neutered. 

I'm also busy digging up a space to plant some red raspberry starts my brother is giving me. I'm trading him several truck loads of good compost. I have some high gravely ground in the garden that has been nothing but weeds for several years, and should be great for the raspberries. My brother and his wife have the most wonderful crops of red raspberries you can imagine and my sister-in-law makes a fantastic red raspberry pie at least once in the season. She says she makes it just like strawberry pie. I think it tastes even better than strawberry pie.

Gingerbread

Gingerbread is one of my favorite things this time of year. It's one of my assistant curator's birthday's today - Happy Birthday Lynley - so I decided to make gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese frosting to take for our lunch celebration.  I checked out a couple of recipes and finally chose one in my good old Fanny Farmer cookbook that gave instructions for baking in a muffin tin.  For the first time ever, Fanny failed me!

It's not that the cupcakes are bad, they just aren't as good as I'd like them to be. For one thing, the spices are too strong and the cake itself is too dense. I'm not even that crazy about the cream cheese frosting. I'll take them in anyway, with apologies. But there you are.

I should have baked my favorite gingerbread recipe, but it calls for 1 cup of maple syrup and I didn't have that much of the real thing left - and I don't keep the fake stuff.  It's my turn to make dessert for the family Monday night dinner, so I've made up my mind to get more maple syrup and bake the following recipe:

Maple Syrup Gingerbread

from

"The Best of Shaker Cooking"

by Amy Bess Miller and Persis Fuller

copyright 1970 by Shaker Community, Inc.

From Hancock Shaker Village



1 cup maple syrup

1 cup sour cream

1 egg, well beaten

2 1/3 cups all purpose flour

1 3/4 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons melted butter

Combine the maple syrup, sour cream and egg. mix well. Sift all the dry ingredients and stir into the liquid, beating well. Add butter and beat thoroughly. Pour into a well-buttered nine inch square baking pan. Bake in a moderate 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or until tooth pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.

Serve with whipped cream.  If you can find it, sprinkle with shaved bits of maple sugar.

This makes a light flavored cake, not at all dark and spicy like some gingerbreads which usually have molasses in place of the maple syrup. Good enough for company.

"Put your hands to work

and your hearts to God,

and benefits will befall thee."

Mother Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers

or

The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing

No Beef Today

I have a steer named Butterscotch who was meant to be an ox. That is to say, I had planned to train him to be an ox that pulled a cart. He has a good nature and I thought that would be fun. Then my husband left me and life feel apart for a while and Butterscotch did not get his ox training.

It costs about $400 a year to keep a beef animal, so it just doesn't make sense to keep Butterscotch in the herd, munching grass and hay and grain and not producing anything (steers are neutered males). So, six months ago I made a date with the butcher for Butterscotch.  Last month I called and confirmed the date with the butcher and took orders for his meat.  My own freezer is basically empty of beef and I've been looking forward to filling it.

He was supposed to go to the butcher today. Monday I received a voice mail saying that the butcher would not be able to slaughter my steer after all and if I had questions to call. I've called everyday this week and left a message on their answering machine, but no one calls me back. I have a bad feeling that something bad has happened to the butcher. I hope not, but you never know. They all seemed fine last month when I called.

There are other good private butchers in the area, but they are all busy with all kinds of slaughters - especially deer. Butterscotch is leading a charmed life for sure. He's back on pasture now and there he will stay until I get another date for his demise - which needs to be soon - he's a big boy and eats lots.

Pumpkin Pie the Easy Way

I love pumpkin pie, especially for breakfast. My all time favorite pie is pecan, but pumpkin is so versatile. It's never too heavy and it has the added advantage of all that beta carotene so its good for you! Honest!

Now that the McDonalds Monopoly game is over (and I didn't win again this year), I have to loose the ten pounds I gained as a result of eating McDonalds nine times during the month of October. I only eat McDonalds during Monopoly game time and I was very disappointed that the menu items that qualified to get game pieces were some of the worst they have!  Big Mac, large fries, 10 piece Chicken McNuggets, Fillet of Fish sandwich and the Egg McMuffin were the choices -  not the salads or the chicken wraps or anything that you could possibly consider healthy. And these were the foods that, along with a diet Coke, trigger my out of control appetite causing me to eat more all through the day and into the night! It was like being addicted to something. Truly. I didn't feel like I had control of my eating the whole month. Enough being a cry baby. Time to get back on track!

So, this is the time I make pumpkin pie with out the crust. It's so easy. Pumpkin pie filling is really just a traditional egg and milk custard. So I mix up my favorite pumpkin pie recipe, pour it into custard cups and bake it in a water bath in the oven. Voila!  I have a half dozen  or more super little desserts or quick breakfasts and avoid all the guilt of the fat laden pie crust.

The key to good pumpkin pie is good pumpkin. When I am feeling very ambitious or just want to hang out in the kitchen I cook my own pumpkin. But mostly I use a can of Libby's 100% pumpkin - not the pumpkin pie mix. The recipe on the back of the can makes a good pumpkin pie but I like to substitute brown sugar for the white sugar and I'm careful of the spices. Here's my favorite recipe.

Pumpkin Pie Custard (filling)

A 15oz can of Libby's pumpkin or 1 1/2 cups of fresh processed pumpkin

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

a little grating of nutmeg (optional)

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs lightly beaten (at room temperature if possible)

1 1/2 cups of 2% milk or a 12oz can of fat free evaporated milk

In a bowl of a stand mixer or with a hand mixer beat the eggs lightly and add the brown sugar. Mix. Add the pumpkin and the milk and mix, then add all the spices and salt and mix well. You can just throw all the ingredients in a mixer bowl and mix the whole thing together at once but I like to make sure the eggs are well blended with the sugar and the pumpkin and the spices are evenly mixed through out. Pour the mixture in to custard cups and bake in a water bath (put cups in a baking dish and take to the oven, then pour boiling water half way up the pan). This makes seven 1/2 cup custard cups for me. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center of one of the cups comes out clean. Cool and refrigerate. Now you have a low fat healthy dessert or breakfast or bed time snack. To dress it up for dessert and totally kill the low cal version, bake some pecan halves on the top. When ready to serve drizzle with carmel sauce then top with real whipped cream. But if you just eat it plain its very good and you can enjoy this treat knowing you are doing your body good!



Pet Cemetery Increases

Living in the country with wild animals my pets and domestic livestock are constantly at risk from wild animal born diseases. A case in point is the death of one of the stray cats that visit my place.  I lost the mama kitty yesterday who had given me a litter of kittens last spring. She was a little wild stray who showed up last winter to eat with my back porch (supposed to be barn) cats. She stayed around to have a litter of kittens last spring and another this fall. Yesterday morning when I went out to feed the steer and the chickens I found her lying in the driveway, alive but unable to move. I picked her up and laid her on the deck of the bush hog (I had the tractor with me), but she was scared and crying pitifully, so I put her on the grass and went to the house for a card box lined with a blanket that one of the other cats used as a bed sometimes.  I gently laid her in the box and brought her into the house. I expected her to die any minute. There was no blood and she was almost a 1/4 of a mile from the road, so I didn't think she'd been hit by a car.  I remembered the night before when she came to the porch for supper how big her belly was - like she was pregnant again and ready to give birth. Poison, I thought, or maybe kicked by a cow and internal damage.

I showered and dressed for work as usual but stopped at Lebanon Animal Hospital on the way into town to have Dr. Mead take a look at her. I was pretty sure she wasn't going to recover and I signed papers to have her put to sleep. I left the information about the swelled belly and asked that Dr. Mead take a look at her before they put her down as I really wanted to know what was wrong with her.

Dr. Mead called later in the morning to tell me the kitty had Feline Infectious Peritonitis, an incurable disease caused by a virus. Her swollen belly was full of fluid and she would not recover. I agreed to have her put to sleep and picked up the body after work, burying her next to Walter, my kitty who died this summer of cancer.

She was a feisty little black kitty with huge green eyes and fang like teeth that showed from an undershot jaw line. She was always thin and wylie - and tiny, and I've spent the summer trying to catch her to get her spay (neutered) so she'd stop having kittens!  I was never successful at luring her into any cage or hanging on to her long enough to put her in a cage.

I looked up FIP as the vet called it on the Internet. The disease is caused by a virus and is passed in saliva and feces.  She probably passed the virus to her kittens but their immune systems seem to have over come it because they are very healthy. Most cats over come the virus by the time they are two or three years old. The disease occurs in a cat with a poor immune system or one that has a serious health issue that compromises its immune system. Mama kitty certainly didn't appear robust. She was always small and skinny and fighting everyone for food. I made sure she and the others had plenty to eat, but I guess it wasn't enough. The last litter of kittens was too much for her and she succumbed to the virus.

I plan to have the four spring kittens neutered this weekend. She didn't bring them to me until they were about six weeks old and three of the four are friendly, one is still wild.  Hopefully they will come through with no problems, and my other cats are old enough that they probably are safe.  For the last week or so I'd suspected that the August litter had not survived. I thought she had them among the round bales of hay stored near the barn, but then I'd see her coming each morning from the woods along the driveway. She did not appear to be nursing kittens. I hunted a little in the woods for them yesterday evening, thinking I might hear little kittens mewing but found nothing. So, except for the four boys on the back porch, that is the end of mama kitty.

Bald Cypress Seeds

I collected some bald cypress "cones" from some of the trees at Glendower Historic Mansion. The trees were supposedly given to J. Milton Williams by Henry Clay back in the late 1840's. There are three very large trees still there and this year they had "fruit" or cones as they are called. They are not cone shaped at all, but round balls.  Anyway, a branch had fallen off one of the trees during a storm in August and I was able to gather three cones. 

I thought it might be nice to try to grow some trees from the cones so I checked on line for instructions and sure enough there were a couple of sites giving out growing information. They all pretty much agreed so I hope it works.  First I cracked open the cones with a nut cracker - it was easy. Inside were some funny little bits that I think were the seed, they were flat sided, not round. They had sticky, pine smelling stuff on them. I planted them in layers of dampened peat moss and stashed the whole thing in a plastic box with a tight fitting lid and put the whole thing in the back of the refrigerator. I put the date on the box and a reminder that in 60 days I need to take them out of the refrigerator and plant them in peat pots. Hope I remember.

Sheet Cake vs Cupcake vs Fancy Cupcake

One of the benefits of working in an office is the camaraderie many of us share. In our office we make a point of celebrating each other's birthdays.  Our office has a small staff of four and a large staff of volunteers, most of which work only one day a week. They accomplish a tremendous amount of work in just one day and the staff is always thrilled to discover a volunteer's birthday so we can bring in a cake and celebrate. If its a particularly special birthday (and we have a lot of age 80 or 90 plus birthdays to celebrate) a large number of volunteers stop by just for the celebration.

The staff shares bringing in the cake. One of the staff brings in a really wonderful cake from a bakery in the greater Dayton area. Everyone loves these cakes.  I usually try to bake a cake my self and my dark chocolate sheet cake is the most popular (see the recipe in my March 31st posting).  One time I baked the sheet cake recipe as cupcakes. They were a big hit with everyone who tried them and the recipe made a huge amount of cupcakes and being cupcakes it was easy to share them around.  I took some to work and distributed the rest among my parents and siblings' household. Everyone loved those cupcakes which were just simple dark chocolate with chocolate icing, nothing fancy.

A staff member was recently celebrating her birthday and I promised to bring cupcakes. As too often happens  I ran out of time and skipped across the street to the cupcake cafe and purchased a dozen of their wonderful fancy,  filled cupcakes. You can buy them in three sizes and I can bake an entire sheet cake for what one of their larger ones costs, but they are so good and so special, I just have to have one now and then. 

The surprising thing was that the cupcakes were not as well received as I'd hoped. The men liked them fine, but men generally like any good baked good. The women on the other hand were more picky. Several didn't like the fact that there was raspberry filling in the cupcakes. Others didn't think the cake part of the cupcake was so good. Somehow they had been expecting  my home made cupcakes and just couldn't get past that thought. No one expressed this outright, but it was implied.  The result was I had left over cupcakes. I didn't want to eat them all myself - though I could have, in one sitting, no problem. So, I did the good daughter thing and took them to my parents.  No problem with them liking the cupcakes!
My 88 year old father is happy to have cake of any kind everyday. My 80 year old mother is happy to have a break from baking. My outrageous cupcake spend was justified.

The Frost is on the Pumpkin, and the tomatoes

It's been a busy week at work and my time at home has been minimal and most of it spent in the dark! I hate that about fall and winter. Leave for work in the dark, come home in the dark and don't see your property or your animals in the daylight from Sunday evening to Saturday morning.  But enough complaining.

Even though its been mild during the day we had enough frost this week to kill the tomatoes. The evening before the frost I picked seven of the nicest, largest green tomatoes and brought them in to ripen. If I am lucky they will ripen without rotting. All the rain we had early in the week is hard on the tomatoes - makes them crack and rot from the inside out. Everyone I know has complained about the poor tomato crop this year. Too much rain all the way around. Strangely though, peppers of all kinds have done very well. I always thought peppers liked hot and dry but apparently not. Then again, all those beautiful peppers we see at the grocery all winter come from greenhouses in Holland. And that gets me thinking again about having my own hydroponic green house to raise lettuce and tomatoes for the restaurant trade. Next year maybe.

I keep the big brush mower, which I call a bush hog (but I think that's a trade name), attached to the back of my tractor. Normally I would have had my brother help me take it off to store for the winter but I've left in on for a couple of reasons.  I've been feeding big 500 plus pound round bales for the last month and the bush hog gives me weight on the back of the tractor to balance the round bales on the front. The other reason is, with all the rain, I've needed to mow weeds - particularly pig weed which everyone is complaining about this year. Pig weed grows like , well, a weed!  I've mowed it four times this season (normally I mow twice) and its one of those weeds that just keeps coming.  It has spiny sharp thorns up and down the stem. It grows about two feet tall, branches out like an umbrella with many flower heads held high above the foliage.  The cows like to eat those flower heads which are full of seeds - and then they pass the seeds all over the property in their manure.  I didn't have pig weed two years ago, but it came in with some hay and now it is epidemic! 

I've picked the last of the French filet green beans and they are in the freezer. Freezing green beans is by far the best way to preserve them, especially these French filet types. Its so easy as well - just blanch them in hot water for a couple of minutes, rinse in cold water, pat dry, spread out on big jelly roll pan and freeze for an hour or two, then bag them in plastic freezer bags and you are done! In the middle of winter they will seem like such a luxuary!

Candied Lemon Peel

I candied lemon peel last evening. It's so easy, and the end product is perfect for my fruit cake recipe. I only had two lemons on hand and my recipe calls for six so I just made 1/3 of the syrup required and it worked great. Here's how I did it:

Wash lemons in hot water to get them clean. You are eating the peel after all.  With a sharp paring knife score the lemon in quarters from top to bottom. That is, score the skin, do not cut through to the flesh.
Working between the score lines pull away the peel. What's left is a lemon with a white membrane holding it together.I had squeezed one of my lemons already and had saved the shells. They were two halves of a lemon, so I just scored the halves once each  and peeled - it worked just fine. I threw away the white membrane.

Cut the strips into long cross wise pieces about 1/4 to 1/8 inch wide. Put the pieces in a sauce pan and generously cover with water. Bring to a boil. Boil for a minute or so then drain the strips, rinse in hot tap water and return the strips to the pan. Repeat this boiling process two more times. Return the strips to the pan and cover with water once more. This only takes a few minutes. Simmer them now for about 20 minutes.

Drain the strips and in the same sauce pan make a syrup of water, sugar and white corn syrup.  My recipe for six lemons called for 1 1/2 cups sugar to 1 1/2 cups water and six tablespoons of corn syrup. Stir the mixture together well and bring to a boil, stir a little more and add the lemon peel. Bring the pan to a strong simmer (bubbly but not a hard boil) and cook until the syrup begins to disappear, about 10 minutes. The longer you cook it the more candied the peel becomes, and harder. It goes fairly quickly so don't leave it unattended. You can stir the mixture from time to time at this point as well.

When the peel was almost boiled down I fished it out of the syrup with a fork and arranged it on a cookie cooling rack with waxed paper under it to catch drips.  The recipe suggests you drop the strips into a bowl of superfine sugar, then lay them out on a rack to dry. That would eliminate the drips. I let mine dry and cool over night and then sugared them. No perticular reason other than I wanted to taste the peel before it was sugared and I needed to let it cool. Just my thing.  I don't think it makes a big difference.

This peel will be great chopped in fruit cake. It's also good just to eat as a candy - provided you like the sweet/bitter combo of lemon peel - which I do. Just like Shaker Lemon Pie!  But that's for another day.

Good Morning Sunshine!

I wish I had one of those fancy digital cameras with big lenses etc. Then I could take some really great pictures to share because the  views from my back porch are just beautiful.  I stepped out on the porch to check on some herbs I'm drying and two flocks of geese flew up from the little lake at the bottom of the hill and flew across the trees against a blue sky with the morning sun on their wings. Just beautiful.

On a food note, I'm enjoying big green salads every day now because the fall lettuce coming from the garden is so wonderful.  I take my salad to lunch and eat with the staff and volunteers - something we all look forward to each day for the good talk and social hour.  One of the volunteers looked at my salad which was full of beets, grapes, apples and chicken and with a big sigh announced, "My husband would be horrified at your salad. He would tell you that fruit cannot ever be on a green salad".  I love fruit on a green salad!  Sometimes I make a strictly vegetable salad, but given a choice, I'll always put fruit and cheese on it some how. I know her husband a little and refrained from pointing out that tomatoes are a fruit and most people see nothing wrong with putting them on salads. He's an older man and as some famous man said once "Young men have more virtue than old men, they have more generous sentiments".  I just smiled and happily muched lettuce with grapes.

The Three Sisters Feed Me Well

Another beautiful morning with a light rain. I spent a good hour feeding and watering chickens and cattle this morning and I loved being out in the soft, light rain. The animals are all content and happy, they love this mild weather.

I'm enjoying eating from the "three sisters" this fall- that is the Native American food stuff trinity of corn, beans and squash.  If you visit the Ft. Ancient Museum in southwest Ohio you will see a demonstration garden growing the "three sisters" in the manner practiced by the Native Americans who lived in and around Ft. Ancient. They grew tall stalks of corn in a little tepee like circle, grew the beans so they climbed up the stalks of the corn and planted the sticky squash vines at the base of the corn to keep the wild critters away. It's very effective.  I am going to try this method in my garden next year. Each year I have to rotate my tomatoes and beans to different locations in the garden to keep disease and critters away and next year I planned to plant a lot more corn. I already have a place designated for corn, so I can just add the squash and beans to the corn and that should work very well! Then I can harvest all the three sisters at once!

Here's one of my favorite soup recipes. I use butternut squash because its a mild squash and makes a good base for other flavors. I save acorn squash for roasting with butter and thyme or butter and brown sugar as it is a more flavorful squash and makes a good side dish.

 Butternut Squash Soup 

1 butternut squash

1/2 cup finely chopped yellow onion

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1 tablespoon butter

1 glove garlic, minced

3 cups chicken stock or broth or more depending on the size of the squash

1/4 teaspoon salt

pinch of ground black or white pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

dusting of nutmeg, freshly ground

Cut the squash in half length wise, scrape out the seeds and place cut side down in a baking dish with a cup or two of water. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour or until the flesh of the squash is tender. Let the squash cool, then scoop out the soft squash flesh.

In the meantime, chop the onion and saute it in the oil and butter in a large saucepan until it is softened and transparent. Add the garlic and saute a minute, then add the three cups of stock, the squash flesh,  the salt, pepper and ginger. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the soup from the stove and with an immersion blender, blend the soup until it is smooth. Taste to correct seasoning. Grate the nutmeg into the soup and serve. I like to serve it with cheddar cheese crackers.

The ginger gives the soup a spicy kick. You can add a little pumpkin pie spice to make it more a sweet spice flavor.  You can also eliminate the ginger and season the soup with thyme and parsley. Either way this makes a thick, creamy soup that is very healthy and tasty at the same time.

More New Tricks

I finally took the time to learn a little bit about a program called Picasa today. Picasa is a Google program to help manage pictures - lots of pictures. I had taken a bunch of pictures before, during and after my niece's wedding and wanted to put them together in a collage and send them to her. Picasa helped me do that.

I had so much fun that I made another collage of one of the tours we do at work. The collage you see on the blog is of our Lantern Light Cemetery Tour. It's a history lesson with re-enactor's playing notable people from our town's past who are buried in the local cemetery. We visit 20 graves, 12 of which have folks dressed in period costume portraying the honored dead. It's a very popular tour and we will be conducting the last one for this year this Saturday evening.

History Lessons in the Cemetery

Lantern Light Cemetery Tour - Next tour Saturday, Oct 15th.

This is the fifth time we've staged a cemetery tour with costumed interpreters portraying the honored dead. This is so much fun, I never get tired of it.  We have 14 different persons of note portrayed by our Glendower Historic Characters.They each spend three or four minutes talking about "themselves".  The very first gravesite we visit is a famous opera singer and we have an opera student who sings an aria as you enter the tour.  There is a Civil War section and my sister who plays the violin,  plays Civil War songs as the folks tour through that area. At the end of the tour is the Shaker grave marker for the people called Shakers or the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing as they were offically known. At that site one of the "Shaker sisters" sings some of the favorite Shaker songs.   Our Historian leads the tour giving extra bits of information as we go along. This tour is in our main cemetery and will be repeated next July.
Our Pioneer Cemetery will have a similar tour on Memorial Day weekend. The Glendower Historic Characters will be on hand to portray our earliest pioneers of note. Check out http://www.wchsmuseum.org/ for more information.