Gleaning Ill Gotten Gains

Confession is good for the soul right?  Right?  It all started so innocently...George said lets go for a ride and I will look for stuff to take pictures of.  I said sure.  The next thing I knew we had stopped at an old cemetery and I was filling my shirt tails with raspberries from the edge of the mowed area. I couldn't help myself, there they were, ripe and plentiful and mine (sort of) for the taking.  I don't think the occupants of the cemetery minded, but it ended with George shaking his head and telling me that he didn't think berry picking was supposed to be a contact sport.  I have one less non-stained shirt to wear on the weekends, several new scratches, and a few jars of blackberry jelly.  And George found an Mulberry tree and pointed it out to me...I know what I will be doing the rest of the evenings this week.


Black Raspberry Jelly

Place 2 pints of ripe raspberries in a saucepan and cover with water.  Boil for 5 minutes and run an immersion blender through the berries to crush. 

Run the berries through a food mill or sieve to strain out the seeds.  I used several sieves of decreasing  pore size to repeatedly strain the pulp so that I retained as much of the pulp as possible while removing the seeds.  I wasn't going for a perfectly clear jelly, but I wanted more of a seedless fruit spread.  If you want a clear jelly you should strain the pulp through a cheesecloth or jelly bag and let it sit undisturbed overnight without squeezing. 

Measure 3 c of the juice/pulp and add 1 package of powdered pectin. Bring to a full rolling boil.  Add 4 2/3 c sugar all at once and return to a boil.  Boil for 1 minute then pour into hot jars and process 5 minutes in a boiling water bath.

When we got home I went searching on my own land and found a couple more pints of raspberries and blackberries.  I combined them with the mulberries I got from the cemetery and made some mixed berry syrup.

Honest Blackberries

I prepared the juice from the mixed berries as described above, then I added an equal amount of sugar and returned to a boil.  I then poured into hot jars and processed 30 minutes.  I will probably use the syrup on pancakes, though it is a bit runny, but I will also make soda by mixing a couple of tablespoons with soda water.  You could also add  it to lemonade or pour it over ice cream.

I don't know what I am going to do with mulberries yet, but they are sweet and delicious.  I may just do syrup and jelly, but I may venture into some other territories.

I guess I feel guilty about gleaning, but not guilty enough to stop.

Hello again.

Wow, it has been a long time.  I have to say that last winter was probably the roughest one I have gone through.  Weather wise, emotionally, and psychologically, it was really tough.  But this  is a new summer, and now it's time to heal and start preparing for next winter.

One of the fun things I did this early spring was to attend the local "Farm to Table Conference"  in Pittsburgh.  I learned a lot about local farmers and things to do with local produce and food products.  I may have mentioned before that I buy all my meat from Schnur's Custom Meats on Bonniebrook road in Butler.  They are a local butcher/packer/farm. They make their own products like seasoned beef and buffalo patties, beef sticks, and my favorite, Larry's Chipped Ham.  They are friendly, open Saturday mornings, and they sell everything vacuum packed and pre frozen, which is perfect for my lifestyle.  I can pop the packages in warm water and they are thawed and ready to cook in no time.

At the Farm to Table event I attended a talk by David Eson of Isodore Foods and decided to give his service a try.  Isodore foods is a CSA sort of organization that delivers pre-ordered produce to a central location once a week for customers to take home  You can learn more here http://www.isidorefoods.com/.  This is great for me as one of their drop-offs is located in my building at work.  It's kind of like a surprise present every Thursday afternoon.

This week kale greens and green onions were among my veggies.  This morning I fixed a few recipes with these and some other stuff I got from Isodore (I will mark the Isodore stuff with an asterisk.)*

Cheddar Bacon Quiche with Kale Greens

On a side note, I really have to start wearing my glasses when I take the pictures.

1)  Line a pie pan with a prepared pie crust and bake 20 min at 350.  If you are a perfectionist you may want to line the crust with parchment paper and fill with beans or rice so that the crust stays in shape while it bakes.  I just poked it a few times with a fork.

2)  Combine 3 eggs and 1/2 cup cream* and wisk together.  Add 1/2 c bacon crumbles and 1/2 c shredded cheddar cheese*, mix and pour into the pre-baked pie crust. 

3) Place the quiche in the oven and bake at 350 until set and browned on top, about 30 minutes or so, I confess, I did not time it.

4) While the quiche was baking, I combined 4 c chopped kale*, 2c chopped spinach*, and 1/2 c green onions* with 2T olive oil and sauteed until tender.

5)  I suppose you could add the greens to the quiche before you cooked it, but my children have a tendency to be green-a-phobic, so I served it on top.

George initially balked at quiche for lunch so I made him a manly hot sausage sandwich.  When he went for seconds though, he came back with a healthy serving of girly food.  2 out of 3 girls loved the quiche.  The odd one out said she didn't like french food and wouldn't even taste it.  She was on her own for lunch.

Pasta with Salmon and Kale

I was rooting around in the freezer today and I found some salmon which was in danger of going bad, so I decided to make some salmon cakes.  When I unwrapped it, though, I was only able to salvage a little, so I decided to do this instead.  It utilizes the leftover stir-fried kale from above. 

1)  Stir fry the Kale (see above).

2)  Boil water for penne pasta.  I double dutied by poaching the salmon in the water that I used to boil the pasta.  I added two frozen salmon fillets to the cold water and when it came to a boil added 2 c uncooked penne.  After 5 minutes I removed the salmon and continued to cook the pasta until done.

3)  Flake the poached salmon and combine with the cooked pasta, 1 c of the stir fried kale, and 1 c halved cherry tomatoes.  Add 1/2 c shredded asiago cheese and 1/4 c olive oil and toss.

This is going in the fridge to be my lunch for the week.  If I am going to pack, I am going to eat well.

Merry Christmas!!!

One last Blog post before Christmas!  The finale of our Holiday cooking is our huge batch of sugar cookies that we make every year on Christmas Eve.  I have backed away from all the different kinds of Christmas cookies that I used to make to concentrate on candy making, but I can't resist these fabulous soft and fun to make and eat goodies once a year.  This makes about 8-10 dozen cookies and takes the four of us about 2 hours to decorate.  By the end, we are all sick of cookies and sticky up to our elbows, but the cookies are so good they are usually gone within a few days.  The recipe is from a former family member, and we decorate with a variety of colored sugars and sprinkles.  This year I also found some intricate little sugar decorations at a cake shop, and we added them for a special little touch.

Soft Sugar Cookies
8.5 c flour
3 c sugar
4 t baking powder
2 t baking soda
2 t salt

Mix these together and rub in 1 lb butter or margarine.

1.5 c milk
1 T vinegar

Mix these and sit 10 minutes for milk to sour, add:

4 t vanilla
2 eggs,

mix these in with the milk, then add to the shortened dry ingredients a little at a time until completely mixed.  Chill overnight, then roll out to 1/4" thick and cut out shapes.  Bake at 325 for 15 minutes.  Cool, frost, and decorate.

Icing
1 stick butter
2 t vanilla
4 c powdered sugar
3 T milk

(actually, we used about 4 times this much icing)

Alternatively, you can decorate with sugar before baking and forget the icing.  My dad likes them this way, but this year my kids over ruled their Grandpa.

In addition to the traditional Christmas shapes we make crabs and lighthouses to symbolize our yearly trip to Chincoteague.  (i.e.  Sandy-Claws, the Christmas Crab) and other stuff to remind us of fun stuff we've done through the year.  This year the dinosaurs symbolize the time Melissa and Julia spent volunteering at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History summer camps, where Rebecca was also a camper.

Merry Christmas!!!!

Christmas Gifts

Ok, now it's time for the big payoff.  You have spent tons of time slaving away on all those goodies and now you finally have an excuse to force people to eat them and tell you how fabulous they are.  Of course I am talking about Christmas.  I have spent a few minutes making some last-minute easy treats like chocolate mint spoons, and fluffernutter bars which are specifically for gift giving. 

The Chocolate Spoons are really super simple, but they make a cute addition to packages or gift baskets.  I used some leftover melting chocolate and dipped some red spoons in it then sprinkled with crushed candy canes.  These can be used to flavor coffee or hot chocolate, depending on the tastes of the recipient.  The Fluffernutter Bars were a last minute invention when I needed to use leftover chocolate from an encore batch of Marshmallow Elf Pops.  I spread some peanut butter and marshmallow fluff on seperate graham crackers, then put them together and dipped them in chocolate, then sprinkled with some festive jimmies. 

When you are forcing someone to eat your candy, you should probably put it in attractive packaging.  Every year I head to the dollar store in early November to stock up on baskets, treat bags, chenille stems (used to be called pipe cleaners) and any other inexpensive little festive boxes they might have.  This year they had tiny Christmas boxes in the shape of chinese food takeout containers.  We also make boxes out of scrabook paper.  It would take too long for me to describe how to do this, but it is really easy, and here's a link: http://www.wikihow.com/Fold-a-Paper-Box. 

One little tip though, cut a little strip off the paper on either side after step five for the bottom of the box so that it fits nicely inside the top nicely.  I buy one of the big stacks of the scrapbook paper and it lasts us about 3 or 4 christmases.  It makes a box about 4" square, and you can fit all kinds of goodies in there.



Arrange your homemade presents nicely in your dollar store basket or a bag and head off to distribute them.  So far this year, we have given baskets to my work-study students, Rebecca's baton teachers, and at church, the Sunday school teacher, choir director, and pastor.

Candied Pecans, Maple Butterscotch, and Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Pops

Each of these is and easy quick entry and each fills a special role in my Christmas preparedness routine. 

Spicy Candied Pecans

1 Pound Pecan Halves
1/2 c brown sugar
1/4c water
3T butter
2T Old Bay Seasoning or similar crab spices

Roast the pecan halves by spreading them out on a cookie sheet and baking for 10 minutes at 350F.

Meanwhile, combine the other ingredients in a saucepan and heat until boiling.  Boil 3 minutes.  Stir in the hot pecans and mix well.   Continue to boil until most of the liquid is gone.

Spread the sugared nuts on a wax paper lined cookie sheet and put back in the oven at 350F to roast for another 10 minutes. 

When the nuts come out of the oven, use a spatula to transfer them to a fresh waxed paper lined cookie sheet. This will separate them so that they don't stick together as they cool. 

Mix 3T sugar and 1t salt then sprinkle that over top of the cooling nuts.  This gives them a nice sweet sparkle along with the shine of the candy coating.

This one appeals to the men in my life.  I made it last year for the first time and my Dad was hooked immediately.  It's really easy and it's a different taste than anything you can buy in the grocery store.

Maple Butterscotch

I'm not going to repeat my recipe for butterscotch, but if you replace the butter rum flavor with maple flavor you will end up with the richness of buttery pancakes in a candy you can pop in at any time.

My basic theory is that anything that makes a good caramel will make a good butterscotch.  My next attempt will be orange.

Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Pops

This one we made for an event called Kids Helping Kids.  At Rebeca's school every year just before Christmas they set aside a day for the kids to have a fair where they sell treats and crafts to one another and the money is donated to local charities like Children's Hospital.  I like to have the kids involved in making the treats, so this year we expanded on Rebecca's chocolate hobby to make these little guys.  I do confess I used a lower grade chocolate for these, but you can be as fancy as you want.

Marshmallows
Lolly pop sticks
Melting chocolates
Sugar Eyes
Coating Wafers
White chocolate melted for glue

1)  We poked a lolly pop stick into each marshmallow, then dipped it into melted chocolate and placed upside down on waxed paper to cool.

2) We melted the white chocolate and used it as glue to attach a wafer hat and eyes.  Then we a attached a white sprinkle for a hat tassel. 

3) We will wrap these in pretty baggies and sell them for 50 cents.

They were originally intended to be Santa-ish but we decided they came out more like french elves.  Another case where my lack of being a perfectionist pays off!

Rebecca's New Hobby

I wanted to find a way to include Rebecca in my Holiday Candy Making Mania.  Julia is now 15 and Queen of all Things Hard Candy, and Rebecca at 10 needed to find her own fun way to be involved.  So I took some of my old hard candy molds which turned out to be a little impractical, either too large to eat or to complicated to pour, and let her use them to make painted chocolates. 

This is something that she can do on her own safely with the microwave, and she turns out beautiful and tasty additions to our holiday assortments.  It is moderately messy, but some scrubbing is a small price to pay for these fancy treats.

I purchased some good quality melting chocolate from Sam's Club in milk and white, and 3 colors of wafers from the grocery store.  The candy wafers are made specifically for this purpose.

Rebecca melts 5 candy wafers at a time in the microwave by stirring every 20 seconds until fully melted.  She then uses a paint brush to paint a design directly onto the mold.  She lets each color set before adding a new color.  After she is done painting the mold, she melts the high quality chocolate and pours it over the melted design.  For lollipops she adds a stick at this time.

After allowing the chocolates to set up , she pops them out of the molds. 

Since everybody loves chocolate, she doesn't want to waste any, so with the leftover melted chocolate she makes other treats like chocolate drizzled pretzels or chocolate dipped candy canes.

Rebecca is having a ball making these, and now the challenge is keeping her sisters from eating them all before Thanksgiving even gets here, let alone Christmas!

Easy Potluck Appetizer: "BBQ Smokies"

When considering a potluck recipe, you should always consider the surroundings.  Take into account the weather, the other guests preferences, and the serving circumstances.  You probably wouldn't want to take hot bean soup to a Forth of July picnic for your 6-year old's baton troop, but it might be just the thing for a chilly tailgate lunch with the guys

One of my go-to recipes is one my grandma discovered during her time living in Florida.  She made it for my parents, who passed it on to me.  I have passed it on many times.

BBQ Smokies

1 lb smoked sausage (usually I use "Lil Smokies" the little smoked sausages, but they are a bit pricey, so sometimes I buy a ring of smoked sausage and cut it up.  Today, though, I used some Alligator Sausage that we brought home from our fall vacation)
1 can jellied cranberry sauce
1 jar chili sauce
1/4 c brown sugar
1 T lemon juice

Combine all ingredients except cooked sausage in a sauce pan and heat to melt. 

Stir in the sausage (make sure you cook it first if you use any kind of fresh sausage).



Pour into a crock pot and hold on warm. 

This is really easy and no one will be able to guess your recipe.  Also it appeals to every age and gender group.  I have taken this to tailgates, Easter dinners, bonfires, office lunches, etc.