A Snowy Pi Day

This year, for Pi Day, I was prepared. I bought some pears before the snowstorm and today, with the help of the elderchild, made a maple pear pie. After slicing the pears, I let them sit with 1/2 cup sugar while we made the crust. Then I drained the pears and boiled the juice with some maple syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg and cornstarch to thicken it. This was mixed back with the pears before filling the pie crust. Here's the finished pie.

Note the vents - the elderchild carved at least 11 digits of π into the crust!

We had some of our neighbors over to enjoy it with us, and it was terrific! Also I made a raspberry tart with the rest of the crust; that was an afternoon snack.

In addition to all that, while the storm was dumping eight inches of snow, and then rain, on us, I made a gallon of yogurt, a batch of cornbread, a batch of chili, and also did a whole bunch of laundry. Oh, yeah, and last night I made bread. All sorts of lovely food!

Turkey Chili

Since the younger child will eat all things poultry, even if they contain "flavor," I decided to make chili with ground turkey rather than beef.

3 pounds ground turkey

2 onions, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup green peppers, diced

1 pint tomato sauce

1 quart plum tomatoes, drained and chopped

4 cans kidney beans, drained

1/4 cup chili powder

Simmer for several hours. I decided not to add jalapeños or any extra spice and I am pleased to report that, except for the beans, the younger child did eat it. However, the bread boule was the larger portion of dinner.  We topped the chili with shredded cheese, sour cream, and some chives/field garlic from the yard.

There was enough left over to can 2 quarts of chili and leave some in the fridge for meals this week. The chili was canned in the pressure canner for 90 minutes at 10 pounds.

Skills

Well, I finally did it.  I am a certified Wilderness First Responder, having just taken the Wilderness Upgrade for Medical Professionals, aka WUMP.  I have been wanting to enroll in this course for two years now and, two days ago, I completed it.  (The first time I planned to do it I got jury duty so I held off, good thing, because I broke my hand right before I would have gone so I would have had to cancel anyway...)

Me on a backboard

It was really fun.  REALLY fun.  There were 19 students, some were people taking a month long EMT-B course with the final week in wilderness medicine, but there were 8 physicians and a nurse as well as other EMTs and paramedics who wanted to add to their skill sets.  The classroom sessions were jam packed with information and stories and then we would do scenario after scenario to reinforce the learning process.  We learned how to make traction splints out of sticks.  Cervical collars out of baseball caps.  How to roll people safely and how to warm them up if they get cold.  It's all about thinking outside the box and using whatever resources you have very creatively.  We practiced with a mass casualty incident and a night time rescue.  My friend and I slept in a tent for 5 nights and drove 2 days in each direction to get there and back.  The weather was perfect and the setting simply gorgeous (we were in Cullowhee, NC).  We even had a little time to go fishing but we didn't catch anything; it was relaxing nonetheless.

Foraging was sort of out of the question due to the time constraints and the location but I did find a tiny wild strawberry, some mint, some bittercress, and a few other greens.

We had to prepare all our own meals and my chili, stroganoff and baked beans were just the thing.  People started to ask, "What did you can for dinner today?"  I fielded a lot of questions about canning during the week.  They have a really nice set up there for cooking - a pavilion type area with picnic tables and a concrete slab at waist high for the camp stoves.  It was perfect.  The place was covered with ladybugs which were swarming at the time, and butterflies flitted about when it was warm.  The nights were cold, though, and I was grateful for my thermarest pad and wool blanket which I used under my sleeping bag for added insulation.

Would I do it again?  Absolutely.

Halloween Canning

Nope, not pumpkin.  But I did toast pumpkin seeds today...

The 6 year old was not feeling well so stayed home from school.  Which meant I got to stay home, too!  I set to work on a double batch of baked beans.  I had purchased the ingredients before the weekend, hoping I would have time to cook it all up then, but with all the other stuff I did, I couldn't get to it.  Today was perfect.

Since we weren't using the beans as dinner, I was able to put up the whole double batch:  8 pints in the pressure canner for 80 minutes.  They're about to come out, now.  I don't think it matters which recipe you use; I use the one in my Pillsbury cookbook which I've had for ages.  The cookbook is so old I had to transfer it to a new 3-ring binder when its original cover fell apart.  It has great, basic, simple recipes for great, basic, simple food.  It's one of the best.  And, considering that if I do takeout or even the cafeteria for dinner at work, I spend at least $5-10 each time, I think 8 meals of baked beans is a bargain.  I'm quite sure I didn't spend more than $10 on the ingredients!

Now I'm making a double batch of chili, some spicy and some not.  We will have some for dinner tonight (with grated cheddar or with the homemade mascarpone instead of sour cream) and I will either freeze or can the rest.  Since the pressure canner is out, it wouldn't be too big of an ordeal, just time consuming.

Tonight's chili recipe:

4 small onions, diced

1 tsp. minced garlic

3 pounds ground beef

1 quart tomato sauce

1/2 large bottle of chili powder

1 can tomato paste

salt & pepper to taste

2 packages kidney beans, quick-soaked

1 can (large) whole tomatoes in liquid

2 tbsp. pickled jalapenos (added to the spicy version only, obviously)

2 hours until trick-or-treating!  I LOVE Halloween!

Camping Trip a Success

From the canned goods perspective.

I fed a lot of fish but none of them fed us. That's OK. This was the nicest campground we've ever been to. It was clean. And quiet. And teeming with kids. There are activities every weekends. Yesterday happened to be Smokey the Bear's birthday so the campground staff threw him a birthday party. With a park ranger, forest fire fighters showing off the big truck and the equipment they wear when they fight fires, face painting, crafts, and Smokey himself. And cake!
We ate a quart of the chili with shredded cheddar, some of us made sloppy joes and some just ate the chili in bowls. We had pickles but did not open the bean salad. The first night we ate the peach mint salsa (one of the jars hadn't sealed so I kept it cold and brought it). I ended up giving the small jar of strawberry-rhubarb jam to our camp neighbors across the way. These were people who we knew through our older child (classmate in preschool and pre-K) and hadn't seen in 2 years. And here they are, setting up camp right across from us. Small world.

Every morning a guy from a local farm drove through with a little truck and trailer, selling local produce, meat he aged himself, homemade sausages, honey, some canned goods, maple syrup. Basically everything you might need in a campground but might not have brought. BRILLIANT. The first morning we bought fall strawberries and fudge. This morning we bought raspberries and shitake mushrooms which his neighbor grows.

It was 48 degrees when we woke up this morning. In August. Wow.

Lots of good food, lots of fun - fishing, bikes, swimming (the water was COLD), s'mores and stargazing. And the best weather we've seen in a long time. How awesome is that?

Chili

Tonight I made a double batch of chili with the intention to can the leftovers. I never make chili the same way twice, so this is tonight's recipe:

4+ lbs. ground beef (93% lean)
2 onions, chopped
4 jalapenos, seeded and chopped
2 large cans kitchen ready tomatoes
2 cans tomato paste
2 cans red kidney beans
2 cans dark red kidney beans
5 oz. Wahoo! Chili powder
salt to taste

Brown the meat, onions, and peppers, add the spices and tomatoes, let it simmer for about 2 hours. For dinner, I made cornbread and we put the chili on the cornbread and topped it with shredded cheese. It was not nearly as spicy as one would expect for putting an entire jar of chili powder in it (basically 1 CUP of powder). But it was tasty! After dinner I filled up 4 quart jars and 2 pints and the pressure canner is going. 90 minutes at 10 lbs. of pressure, based upon the cookbook's recommendation.

Why are there only 3 quarts, you ask?