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!
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, October 14, 2011
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.
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.
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