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.