September Chalkboard Drawings

So I have records of my chalkboard art, they will begin appearing here.

Geocaching and Andy Comes to Visit

My dear brother came to visit this weekend. He lives in Colorado now and hasn't been out to Oregon in five years or so. We had a great deal of fun. We hiked Mt. Pisgah on Saturday morning and on our way down decided to begin playing with the application on Q's phone that let us find geocaches. We'd never done it before and we are now hooked. If you don't know what it is, go here. (Note: the photos below are dramatic reenactments of real events - the finding of our first cache!)


We found our first one up on Pisgah. We decided that we would need to look for a bunch more on the coast while we were on today's field trip.

View of a pumpkin field from about halfway up Pisgah.
We found our second cache ever at the Darlingtonia nature reserve, a tiny wayside slightly north of Florence, Oregon. A cute path was created that leads into this bit of swamp to protect Darlingtonia Californica, a.k.a. Cobra Lilies, a carniverous plant native to northern California and southern Oregon. We've been meaning to stop here forever but a geocache was finally the incentive we needed. :)
Our final cache out at the coast (we did 7 today out there), was at Otter Rock. We picked up a case of wine at the super yummy Flying Dutchman Winery. I love their Coastal Blackberry. The cache included our first "geocoin". We've logged where we found it at geocaching.com and are going to replace it next weekend, hopefully in Washington. Here's his history so far. Yay! I think we're hooked.


Hopefully Andy will post some of his pictures from this weekend and I'll link to them from here soon.

Making Cornish Pasties

What I actually ended up doing, culled from many internet ideas. I did use this crust recipe but doubled it and converted it to gluten free using ideas from this page. I needed to make 1 1/2 times more of the crust recipe for how much filling I made. I got 12 out of this much crust. I'll probably end up with about 30 from the filling.

Crust
4 c rice flour
1 1/3 c potato starch flour
2/3 c tapioca flour
2 t xanthan gum
1 T baking powder
1 T salt
2 c shortening
1 1/4 c cold water
Combine all dry ingredients, cut in shortening, mix water in until dough forms, store in refrigerator until filling is ready.

Filling
2 lb. ground beef
2 large white onions
2 cloves garlic, minced
8 c diced turnips (mine were frozen)
3/4 lb. diced carrots (about 4 medium, 2 c.?)
1 lb. mushrooms, halved
1/4 c. cornstarch
1 qt. beef stock
1 T salt (I don't put any salt in my stock when I make it, so this might vary with commercial stock)
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 t tarragon
1 t thyme

Saute the meat, onions and garlic until meat is brown and onion is translucent. Drain.
Add the mushrooms and saute a little longer.
Add the carrots and turnips then mix in the cornstarch, coating the vegetables with it.
Add the beef stock and seasonings.
Let simmer for about an hour, until the carrots and turnips are tender.

To assemble, use a ball of dough about the size of a fist and roll it into a circle. I first rolled mine to about the thickness of pie crust but this was a disaster. It didn't hold together, probably a result of the non-wheat dough. A little bit thicker kept it malleable but holding together. Place a scant 1/4 cup of filling on half of the circle using a slotted spoon or spatula. (I ended up with about 2 c of gravy left over when I strained them in this way.) Fold the empty side over and crimp the edges together firmly, pressing with a fork. Prick the top with the fork to allow steam to escape. Transfer to a baking sheet. Place the pasties in the oven, preheat to 350F and bake for 1 hour (including oven preheat time.)

I'm going to let several of mine cool completely, place them in individual ziploc bags, and freeze them. My goal is to have these in the freezer for lunches.

When I get into "Betty Crocker" mode I sometimes scare myself. Right now the dishwasher is going so I can get the last 10 pounds of plums we harvested this morning canned. The latest batch of yogurt is setting up on the stove top and a pan of pasties is in the oven and one is waiting to go in. The fridge lunch for me for the next 3 days (2- mashed turnips with pasty gravy, 1 - Vegetable curry), half a batch of cookie dough (if we bake them all at once, we eat them all at once), and 6 cups of pasty filling. We won't be starving any time soon.

Two other cooking tidbits:

• I made chocolate cookies on Thursday night using vegan egg replacer, a mix of gluten free flours, and then the "normal" ingredients and they turned out very good - excellent texture and flavor. (I just used the egg replacer because we had it, I've had good success with it in baking, and it needs to get used up.)
• Friday night's dinner was a repeat of the curry recipe without the cauliflower and yellow squash. I added more eggplant to make up the volume. It was again quite excellent.

On a non-cooking note, Q felt horrible yesterday afternoon and put himself to bed at about 6p. He slept through to 8a this morning. When he went to bed I was sure he was going to be down for several days, he was so miserable with a raging headache and nausea. When he got up this morning he was right as rain! What a relief.

Canned Plums and Even More Tomatoes

I canned 6 quarts of plums from the batch we picked from our tree earlier this week. I love their magenta color only second to the golden yellow of peaches when canned. Unfortunately, it was dark when they got out of the canner and I couldn't get artificial light to shine through them at the right angle, so no picture.

We picked another 10 1/2 lb. of Romas today and I simmered it down to sauce while I was working on the plums. Since the canner bath was already hot I decided to can this batch rather than freeze it - 4 more quarts of sauce.

I only have 18 empty quarts and 8 empty pints left and I'm trying to decide how to use them. Probably 14 quarts of peaches and the rest as applesauce. We've already drunk half of our apple cider so another couple boxes of apples wouldn't go amiss regardless. It's just so satisfying to share a bottle with dinner.

I was playing with tomato numbers today. We have four plants this year and I think they're going to give us about 40 pounds altogether. (Assuming frost and cool weather don't prevent the rest of my harvest.) My tomato needs are almost met right now. I used 175 pounds that we bought and 25 that we grew or were given, so I need around 200 pounds each year. That's 20 plants? Seems impractical in the space we have...perhaps I'll have to continue to support my favorite local farm. It would just be nice to know that they were all organic from my yard. I also don't know if I'm under or overestimating how many pounds we'll get off the plants. There sure are still a lot of pink tomatoes on those vines, even after today's picking.

Busy Busy Busy

Goodness gracious. I really don't have time to work. At school, I'm currently in the middle of the War of the Roses before the delightful intrigue of Henry VIII. At home I've got 20 pounds of plums I need to find time to can and have completed a sweater order I've been working on since summer and two Pac-Man hats. I've also gotten an owl baby sweater mostly done for boutique in November and have started another sweater order, a delightful super bulky jacket. I'm waiting for the yarn to come in the mail to work on a custom order for these gloves and just got another hat order today. Of course, the list of yard and preserving and knitting tasks that need to be done is too long to even mention. Yikes! I do love being busy though, so I should be grateful. We took the night off and went to see Real Genius at the local movie theater on "Flashback" night last night. I love that movie soooo much.

Mmmmm...Curry

The vegetables of the previous post turned into the curry above on Sunday night and have provided me with scrumptious lunches for the last two days as well. Since it was a recipe of my own invention, I'm putting it here before I forget what I did and I spend the rest of my life kicking myself for losing it. (Yes, it really was that delicious to me.) I'm pretty sure we broke some sort of rule using garam masala and curry powder but it was good anyway. It was lacking something toward the end and somehow the garam masala was just what it needed.

Mixed Vegetable Curry

olive oil
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 t. onion powder
1 1/2 T. curry powder
2 t. garam masala
1 T. salt (or to taste)
1 large eggplant, cubed
1 large yellow crookneck squash, cubed
1 head cauliflower (8 oz.), cut into bite-sized pieces
green beans, handful cut into pieces
3 ears of corn, corn cut from the cob
3 large tomatoes (I had Cherokee Purple), diced

Heat the oil in a large flat pan, add the garlic and saute until fragrant. Add onion powder and half of the curry powder. Saute the eggplant and squash until they start getting tender (5 minutes?). Add the cauliflower and beans. After another couple of minutes add the corn and, finally, the tomatoes. Add the rest of the curry powder and the garam masala now. Cover and let the whole thing simmer, stirring occasionally, for about half an hour. Everything all blends together. If it's too watery (probably depends on the nature of the tomatoes, mine were quite meaty), simmer to desired consistency, uncovered. Serve over jasmine rice.

It's been fun having leftovers from a dinner made from garden produce, broccoli from our garden, and homemade yogurt with frozen local strawberries mixed in for lunches. A whole new delight comes with eating food you grew yourself (and I like food an awful lot to begin with).

Q and I harvested plums tonight. This is just under twenty pounds. There are a few more pounds on the tree that we'll take tomorrow night. It was getting dark. I'm going to can tomorrow night. Thankfully, plums are easy. I think they're going to replace pears in the desired canning list for the season. Q said he'd be just as happy with them in his lunches. A couple more boxes of peaches this weekend, some apples into applesauce in a couple more weeks and canning will be done for the season. The small batch tomato processing continues with 3 lbs. I harvested tonight on the stove simmering into sauce right now. The last batch ended up as 12 oz. of paste in the freezer. There seems to be an almost endless supply gradually ripening out there.

Another huge batch of turnips really should be picked to let light in to the parsnips planted among them. One of the cabbage varieties is basically ready so cabbage burger filling needs to be frozen and sauerkraut needs to be made. The eggplant has about 6 that will be maturing within a couple of weeks. There are 3 orange pumpkins, 2 big still green ones, and at least one smaller green one on the vine. I just measured the banana pink jumbo and it is 16" long!

Crop of Many Colors

All it takes is leaving the garden unattended for a couple of days while I started school and it crept up on me. We're going to have a mixed vegetable curry thing over rice for dinner. Cherry tomatoes are for snacking, carrots are for lunch vegetables, and Romas are simmering down to sauce with the picking from Thursday. Yogurt is working on setting for lunches this week. Laundry is in the washer, in the dryer and on the line. Still need to do some ironing and finish an order (ideally 2). Hopefully, there will be some time this week when I feel like I can breathe a little.