Popcorn and popsicles for supper!

This has been a hot summer punctuated by projects (potty training comes to mind) that take more effort and time than you think they will. So about once a week, I find myself left with very little time before supper and nothing in the works. On these days, I've been resorting to a combo of popcorn (popped in delicious coconut oil) and a cold kefir concoction. On this day, the cold kefir of choice was kefir popsicles: kefir, frozen strawberries and honey. Last week, I made vanilla kefir ice cream to go with our popcorn. It was delicious.

Now, I know popcorn and cold, sweetened kefir isn't the most healthy supper option. But it's stress-free for both Mama and her two-year-old and it just feels so much like summer. I guess I'll have to come up with a different crunch-time go-to meal for the winter!
Grady likes popsicles too.

Strawberries

Yum! The strawberries are becoming a yearly spring tradition. We go to Wegmeyer Farm, out near my grandparents' place (and pretty close to my parents' new place, too). Everyone had a good time at the patch. Notice H's red shirt-- a deliberate clothing choice by Mama after last year's championship berry eating left his blue shirt purple with juice. This year H was more interested in picking and picking and picking than eating, though.

We picked enough for a couple of batches of jam and several gallon bags of frozen berries for smoothies. I'm always battling fruit float with my strawberry jam. Is the secret to let them macerate with the sugar for awhile before you cook the jam? For this batch, I just followed the recipe on the Pomona's box, and it's plenty tasty, although the fruit float is bad despite my turning efforts.

Also, while I appreciate the shorter cooking time (and using less sugar) with the Pomona's, for strawberries, it leaves the finished jam tasting a bit like freezer jam, of which I'm not a huge fan. (It works great for blackberries and blueberries, though, I've found.) I've got another batch of strawberries macerating with a vanilla bean in the fridge right now-- I'm going to try Food in Jars' strawberry-vanilla small batch jam tonight. It's a pectin-free recipe. I hope the extended macerating time will help me skip the fruit float.

Kefir

I bought milk kefir grains from Cultures for Health about a month ago, and have had a pint jar on the windowsill growing ever since the grains arrived. We had been eating a lot of "kefir" from our dairy delivery (love South Mountain Creamery) in smoothies and such, but it was getting too expensive. H loves it so much that I decided to begin making my own.

I wish I could say this was harder, but kefir is so incredibly easy to make. After rehydrating the grains, you really just dump them into milk and leave it, covered, for 24 hours. H's favorite smoothie is kefir with strawberries and a little honey. We have been eating it instead of yogurt. For about a year, I was making yogurt every week, first in a little yogurt maker and then in the crock pot, but this is so much easier I don't know that I'll ever go back to making the yogurt.

Our success with milk kefir is making me curious about water kefir. I am a little wary, though, because although milk kefir is a fermented beverage, it doesn't taste alcoholic in the least. I'm worried that water kefir will be like kombucha, which I can't stand. Has anyone tried making their own water kefir?

Preserving

Inspired by Jennifer's great new site Putting By and by Liz's amazing pantry photos, I've been trying to can more of summer's bounty this year. My mom and I made bread and butter pickles last month and planned to do more, but life has gotten in the way. We use a mandoline to cut the cukes as thin as possible, as my mom's Mimi did. Mom winged the recipe from memory (and of course taste and smell) and they turned out just great. We've already eaten through the refrigerator jar. (The last jar filled, not quite full, which isn't processed and is instead eaten as close to immediately as possible-- the next day if you can wait that long for the flavors to meld. Does everyone do a refrigerator jar?) It was great fun to can with my mom.My Granna makes damson preserves each year that she can get good damsons. This year my grandfather picked up a couple of quarts for me, and Granna told me her recipe. I only tinkered with the ingredients a little (reduced the sugar), and followed her procedure (which involves standing over the pot and fishing all of the pits out one by one) exactly. These preserves are great, too. I love the way the skins taste. I also loved getting a word-of-mouth recipe from my grandmother.

The last thing I made for the larder is those little jars of pizza sauce you see in the middle. We've recently started a Friday night homemade pizza tradition, so those should come in handy. I got the recipe for this sauce from the Ball book.

The stash is building and I love seeing those bright clean jars stack up. I'm itching to pressure can some Brunswick Stew next, but we'll see if I get any time over the next couple of weeks. I think some multi-colored quart jars would look just dandy next to my current jar soldiers, protecting my family from winter hunger. I'd be interested to hear what other folks have canned or preserved recently.

Brunswick

Subtitled: Do you stew?

Today I'm making a big pot of Brunswick stew, willing it to be Fall even though I know we're still in for at least another week of hot sticky summer. With its mix of summer and storage vegetables (corn and tomatoes; potatoes and onions), Brunswick stew has always seemed a good bridge meal. The stew used to be made with whatever meat a person had around, squirrel or rabbit being the easiest to rustle up, but now it's mostly made with chicken (except, apparently in Georgia where it's apparently made with *brace yourself* beef).

In our house when I was growing up, we always called this just plain "Brunswick". It was one of the things that we could heat up all by ourselves for Saturday lunch. My grandmother who lived in Houston but was born in Richmond was delighted when my mother brought her a stock of Mrs. Fearnow's in the bright yellow cans with red writing and those old-fashioned looking pen and ink trees.

This is the stew that is often a side dish on North Carolina barbeque restaurant and church buffets, along with the cooked-to-death collard greens and the boiled potatoes. In Raleigh, I used to make it to go along with oysters done under steaming burlap on the grill. And I still remember the first time I made this in the Little House at the farm. I made the biggest mess of that no-dishwasher kitchen, and ended up giving much of the huge potful away to co-workers and my friend Karen who doesn't like lima beans but can pick around them in this stew.

Late last month, my parents (and my parents-in-law) went to a wedding on the North Carolina coast. My mother told me this story. Our childhood friend, who was getting married, is a native North Carolinian, as are her parents and grandparents. Her husband is from the North. At the rehearsal dinner, Brunswick was served as a side dish, and the Northern contingent couldn't quite figure out what it was. Too thick to be vegetable soup, too tomato-y to be meat stew. "What is this?" asked one of the Northern guests.

"Why, it's Brunswick stew," the Southerners explained.

"What's that?" the Northern guest persevered.

"Well," said a long-time Carolinian, "think of it as vegetable stew that a squirrel tripped and fell into." A clattering of spoons on soup bowls. "Although," she added slowly smiling, "now it's mostly made with chicken." Whoops and cackles from the gathered Southerners.

My stew still needs its corn and hot sauce, but then we'll have a favorite dinner. Hurry Fall!

Up in the tree

Friday the thirteenth is probably not the best day to be climbing a ladder, but it's time to pick the sour cherries so up the ladder I went. The cherries are another beautiful thing about summer on the farm. The sour cherry tree seems tiny when you look at it from the ground, and indeed much of it was cut away last fall because it was rotting. But once you climb up between the limbs, there are cherries upon cherries. Too many to pick, and most of the reddest and juiciest ones too high for anyone but the birds to reach.

In fact, the birds squawked and fought while I picked, eager for me to go inside to the pitting machine so they could continue their feast. This pitcher represents about 25 minutes of picking, enough for two sour cherry pies. My grandmother thinks that this might be one of the last years for this tree, as cherry trees only live so long before they give out. I told her she'd better plant another tree right quick! The pies she makes from these cherries have been a part of my summer equation for almost as long as I can remember. Her recipe is simple (and probably originally came from the back of some long-ago box of tapioca), but oh-so-delicious with fruit you've picked yourself.

Granna's Sour Cherry Pie

• 4 cups sour cherries
• 2 2/3 Tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 2 Tablespoons kirsch
• Double pie crust
• 1 egg white, beaten
• 1 - 2 Tablespoons cold butter

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

• Mix cherries, tapioca, sugar and kirsch together in a large bowl. Let stand 15 minutes.
• Pierce bottom pie crust and brush with beaten egg white. Bake for five minutes to set.
• Pour cherry mixture into pie crust and dot with butter.
• Affix top crust; vent.

Bake 10 minutes at 450 degrees and then turn heat back to 350; bake 40 minutes more. This is a very juicy pie. It bakes best on a jelly roll pan covered in foil. For best results, let stand until almost room temperature before serving with vanilla ice cream. Yum!

The berries are coming, the berries are coming! And finally, hay.

Blueberries. This is the third year that these bushes have been at the farm, and each year they make me so excited, even though the three bushes will probably only yield a couple of pints of berries that will all end up on my grandfather's morning cereal. They're just so stunning, and the few berries that will make it into my mouth will be warm from the sun and so sweet.
And raspberries. These bushes produce even fewer berries over the season, and most of these are eaten without a thought by the barn manager. In fact, I had to call my grandmother this afternoon to remind her to go and pick the ripe ones early in the morning tomorrow before the barn manager arrives. I ate one of these today (shh!), and its flavor was tart and bright.

There are also strawberry plants at the farm, left over from a long-gone strawberry pot (imagine!) that I planted five years ago. They spilled out of the pot and took up permanent residence on the south side of the little house. These have been producing ripe fruit for about a month, but they have to be harvested a little before they're ripe or the bunnies and other rodents take little nibbles out of the sides of each berry and the ants polish the wounded berries off. I did get a good-sized handful of very sweet berries earlier this week. The taste of summer.
And finally, we have hay! So exciting to see those big golden rolls dotting the landscape (and to ride on the green lawn-like fields they leave behind).

One Local Summer: Week 1

Eating local all summer? We're going to try. I've joined One Local Summer this year, after following along with others (mainly Jasmine at Knitting 40 Shades of Green, who lives near me, and Pocket Farmer Liz, who lives in a place where I'd love to live) for a couple of summers. In this challenge, we'll prepare one totally local meal each week.

This first week caught me a little off guard, as our CSA hasn't started up yet this year (next week!), so we headed over to the Arlington Farmer's Market yesterday to rustle up some local grub. The results were delicious, but a little mixed on the strictly local front. Let's just say I've found some holes in my pantry that are going to take a little more digging to fill. All distances below are from my door. Without further ado, we ate:

• Sauteed chard from Wheatland Vegetable Farms (just up the road from my natal home!) in Wheatland, VA (37.95 miles)


• A pesto-ish sauce made of garlic scapes from Wheatland Vegetable Farms (37.95 miles) and basil and parsley from the backyard (0 miles)


• Baby lamb loin chops from EcoFriendly Foods, Inc. (Emerald Family Farms) in Moneta, VA (206 miles)

And for dessert:

• Cherries, strawberries and sugar snap peas from Westmoreland Berry Farm & Orchard in Oak Grove, VA (66.07 miles)
  

Everything was really really yummy, so yummy that I can't pick a favorite element of the meal. But I think I may need to find another source for meat. The 206 miles to Moneta and EcoFriendly Foods is too far for the challenge-- I'm going to try to keep to the 100 mile radius rule if I can. I'll have to see if my cousin Sara has any beef left for by-the-cut orders, and I'll have to go to the Loudoun farmers' markets when I'm out that way to see what they have. That, or eat vegetarian for these meals, as we normally do anyway. This sure was a nice celebration meal to kick off the summer, though.

Local items that I need to pick up:

• Cheese. I should have bought some at the farmers' market; there was much available. It would have made that pesto tastier.
• Flour. Duh. (This is my family's business. Those of you who know me in real life are probably laughing pretty hard at me over this one...)

Items that I need to find a local source for:

• Milk, cream and butter. Anyone have any leads on these? There may have been some at the Arlington market, but if so, I missed it. Earlier this year we found a local buying club for raw milk. I'm sure it's fine and delicious, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go that far yet. I'll stick with pasteurization for the time being.
• Sugar. I don't know enough about this one, either.

I think that with those ingredients I'll be able to make some pretty spectacular things this summer. I'm looking forward to it!

Fresh bread in 5 minutes... or so

So the photo is a bit blurry as we made these during a thunder storm, but I'm a complete convert to Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois' Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I made a couple of basic boule loaves last week, with beautiful results. Crusty, cracking outsides and lovely steamy soft insides. But these caramel rolls were the real test of the versatility of the method. I mixed up a second batch of the basic boule recipe and then rolled it out into these beauties the next day. I know they'd be even better with the brioche dough, and that will definitely be the next recipe I try. You can tell how good these were by the blurry picture; they didn't last long enough for me to remember to get a better image!

Happy Anniversary to George and Karen, five years!

Weekend photo update

Birthday cake: coconut with lemon curd filling, coconut cream cheese frosting. Happy Birthday Brian! The easement: A long hike up. I love the contrast between the black tree trunks and telephone poles and the new spring green leaves and grass. We end up galloping up and down this cleared-out space, back and forth sometimes, when we foxhunt in this territory.

Green week: 3

Green lunch: kale sauteed with chickpeas, onions, garlic and red pepper, with a side of (slightly) gratineed butternut squash with sage. This is a fairly common lunch for me, leftover veggies from last night. We've been largely vegetarian for about a year now and it feels great. But we do eat a lot of greens-- that took some getting used to.

Another snow day

I guess I got my truly snowy day and white roads. It's been snowing since about 9:30 this morning. (NB: I'll never get tired of photos of this road (although some of you might).)

Just in time for my completed Fetching mitts. I knitted these from some Malabrigo in my stash (I don't know the colorway) on number 9 needles, as the pattern suggests.
I worked an extra repeat of the cabling at the wrist and omitted the picot bind-off. I really like these-- they're so soft and were a really quick knit-- but they're way too big for my tiny child hands. So I think I'll make another pair for myself on size 8 needles and give this pair away. Even though I think this colorway doesn't really do the cables justice, I may even be able to eke another pair out of the leftovers from this skein. That would be truly thrifty.Also thrifty and a perfect snow day activity-- homemade bread. This is honey oatmeal bread from the little spiral-bound cookbook that came with my mixer. Yum. More snow photos on Flickr.

Happy New Year! Be sure to eat some money.

So the end of 2007 got away from me, but here we are at the beginning of a whole new year. I wish you all health, happiness and luck in 2008. We're hoping that these collard greens (with cornmeal dumplings, yum), hoppin' john, and black-eyed peas (because apparently hoppin' john is always dry) will help to send good things our way this year.

These are all from recipes in the January 2008 issue of Gourmet, which pays homage to late Southern chef Edna Lewis. I tell you, her essay on "What is Southern?" made my mouth water and renewed my interest in the lives of Southern writers like Carson McCullers, Truman Capote and Thomas Wolfe. January may be the month of Southern food (and authors) at our house.

Our State Fair Is A Great State Fair

This weekend I visited my parents in Raleigh, and got to go to the NC State Fair. It's the only state fair that I've ever visited, but I think it's a pretty good one. I love the colors in the photo above, of the entrance to Kiddieland. Kiddieland itself was a little frightening and led to a discussion of how many fair attendees actually ride the scary-looking rides there, but let's just focus on the pretty colors, and the pretty photos that those scary-looking rides make. And isn't the sky always just perfect in October?

This is the winning cake-decorating design in the non-wedding category. Every decoration on that thing seemed to be made of fondant and/or icing except for the measuring tape around the base-- this includes the embroidery thread and regular thread and all the fabric and notions. Very impressive in person.
I also really liked this cascading cake. What fun-- so free, unlike most of the cakes there! You can't really see the silver dragees on the end of each pendant in this photo, but it was really a magical cake. Too bad fondant tastes so bad. The crafty entries (cakes, garment sewing, quilts, crochet) are some of my favorite parts of the fair, along with the animals and the (terrible but wonderful!) food.

The Mt. Olive Pickle people set up shop in the same group of buildings as the crafts, and we always enjoy a 50 cent kosher dill. After the yummy dill there was a pulled pork barbeque sandwich at one of the church booths and ice cream churned by John Deere motors near the Village of Yesteryear.

That Village is great fun. It's a group of "traditional" crafters supported by the NC Department of Agriculture for over 50 years. The members wear pioneer-type clothing and demonstrate and display their old-timey crafts like woodcarving, soap-making, furniture making, weaving. This guy's realistic decoys went for $7000 apiece-- so beautiful. Plus, he probably makes enough money at the fair to take it easy for awhile. I'm so sorry I missed out on the hand-braided rugs made by Virginia Boone-- they were all sold (well, except for an ugly purple one) when we got there. She had a beautiful gold and tan one with brown tweeds and red that I would have loved to bring home for my craft area. I hope she'll still be alive next year. And the animals. We saw bunnies and some amazing geese and turkeys, ducks and chickens (such plumage!), cows with their sprayed-up mohawks and goats playing king of the mountain on piles of straw. My one regret is that since this was the last weekend of the fair the pigs had all gone home. Too bad-- their beady little eyes always seem to be trying to tell me something important.

Fruits and veggies

Contents of this week's CSA haul: Corn, eggplant, bell pepper, zukes, two kinds of early apples, blue potatoes, peaches, nectarines, basil, beefsteak tomatoes, garlic and half a dozen eggs. Whew! I love summer.

For a while there in the spring, it seemed like all we were getting was potatoes and tomatillos. So on Monday I finally did something with the mountain of tomatillos in the fridge: salsa verde! Although I feel a little cheated-- all that work to can only three half-pints.

But all the seals popped closed, which is a first for me, so I'm happy. Yum. Any ideas for the rest of the bounty? I'm always looking for new veggie ideas. Last week we did summer corn salad, tomatoes and basil, and apple pie. This week maybe zucchini bread?