Making Room

Well, it's official. I have signed the contract to build my new cabinets for the kitchen, and am about to sign the contract for the whole reconstruction. After over two years of planning, we're going to tear apart a significant part of the house and hopefully at the end of it I will have the kitchen of my dreams. 

But, until then, I have food to prepare, and things to can, and a kitchen and several bathrooms to pack up. This is the part about which I'm most anxious. What do I pack? What do I leave out? What if I need that thing? 

One thing I do know is that I'll be down to one fridge. I admit, I'm rather spoiled to have two. I use the one in the basement for extra cartons of milk and cream, all my flour, all the meat I keep in the freezer, and extra produce from the farm share that usually can last a long time in the fridge: cabbage, carrots, beets. Well, I started the cabbage fermenting last week, and now it was time to tackle the beets. After all, 10 pounds of beets takes up a lot of space that I could be using for other things. Since it's about to become the primary fridge I need to make room.

So. Now I have five quarts of pickled beets and some prepared golden beets ready to make into cake and for me to eat. No one else in the family eats them, at least, not voluntarily. The kids won't touch them at all, unless they've been made into cake. 

Four Weeks of Beets

For the last four weeks I've picked up the full share of beets from the farm. I tried specifically to get the smallest ones so I could pickle them whole, which I prefer. Today I had a chunk of time so spent the whole morning preparing and then pickling them. It's a good thing I did - the beets almost overflowed my 8 qt. stockpot!

With that many beets, I tripled the recipe for the liquid (The Ball Complete Book of Canning, page 311) and came away with 5 quarts of pickled beets; one quart was divided into two pint jars for the fair. There was another pint and a half that didn't fit into a jar so I poured the rest of the pickling liquid over them and they're in the fridge for salads this week.

I was supposed to help my neighbors pick apples from their tree; the other day I stopped by on their behalf and there were a whole bunch of apples there. Today I went to help them and there were exactly 3 apples. There was no sign that the apples had fallen, the driveway and yard around the base of the tree were as clean as a whistle. Do people go around and steal fruit from people's trees? Is that a thing? Weird.

Golden Beets

In the farm share, we got a lot of beets. Fortunately, they last a long time in the fridge if stored properly. When I get golden beets, I make a plan to make this Golden Beet Orange Cake. Last Friday I had a friend visiting and finally made this cake. It did take several days, as I roasted the beets on Wednesday and made the cake on Thursday. On Friday, I rushed home from work and made the glaze. The previous time I made this cake I used lemons instead; I think I like the oranges better!

Plenty of Beets

The farm share frequently includes beets which, generally, we don't eat as often as maybe other people do. Or at least as often as the farm share organizers think we should. So I end up with a stockpile that then needs to be canned. I did that this evening. I'm not sure why I always think it won't be a lot of work, because it is. It takes a really long time to prepare all the beets before I can even pickle them.

The recipe for pickled beets is the standard one from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, except that I generally double the liquid/sugar proportions. This time, because I had more beets, I tripled the liquid parts.

There were some tiny beets in with the rest, I set these aside into two pint jars and these will go to the fair. I know I said I wasn't going to enter any more pickles but I think these will be OK.

The fridge is looking more manageable again, and we have a few summer squashes and eggplant to work through soon. Then I'll be mostly caught up....

Finally Coming Out From Under it All

We're all finally feeling better and I'm starting to get my energy back to do some baking. I've had this particular cake on my agenda for a while. I've made chocolate zucchini bread, which is essentially cake, and golden beet cake. I knew I had a recipe for chocolate cake with red beets and I've been saving some beets from the farm share just for it. So a few days ago, I made it. The recipe is for "Secret Chocolate Cake" from Simply in Season.

The youngerchild was immediately suspicious. "You never JUST make cake. What vegetable is in this one?" Even after knowing there were beets in it, after a big sigh, the youngerchild ate two pieces. But the next day, a chocolate glaze was requested for the rest of the cake. I made a quick glaze with butter, chocolate, powdered sugar and boiling water. The youngerchild was happier.

Another observation is that the beet flavor becomes less obvious the older the cake is. So on the third day, it was definitely more chocolate than beet. 

I will point out that there is a list of cakes the youngerchild wants me to make: the chocolate mousse raspberry cake from my culinary classes, a Brasilian carrot cake like I did for that fundraiser. There's also baked apples, similar to what we had at a B&B in Vermont. I'll have to get baking.

Another Use for Roasted Beets

After making the beet and goat cheese tart, which was really tasty, by the way, I had a bunch of roasted golden beets left over. I knew there were chocolate cake recipes with red beets in them so I reasoned that there must be a cake recipe out there which uses golden beets. My reasoning was correct and I found this recipe for a Golden Beet Orange Cake.

So I made it. But since I didn't have any oranges, I used lemon juice and lemon extract instead. And it was very good. I brought the cake to work today, as I thought we were having a staff meeting. The meeting had been canceled so we just dove into it. When I first cut it, I took a couple of pieces, less than 1/4 of the cake, to some of my coworkers. I came back 10 minutes later to find only 1/4 of the entire cake was left! Everyone loved it and the beets made it moist. Will definitely have to do this again the next time I have golden beets from the farm.

Beet Tart

Tonight we had friends over for dinner and I made use of all the golden beets I'd gotten from our farm share. First I roasted the beets until soft, slipped off the skins, and sliced them. For this I used a little less than a pound of beets. Two onions were sliced and caramelized. Then I made a pie crust with leaf lard and flour.

To assemble, I rolled out the crust and placed it on parchment. Next came the onions, and then the sliced beets. Lastly, I crumbled honeyed goat cheese over the vegetables and seasoned with pepper and tarragon. Then I folded the crust over to make a rustic tart, brushed the crust with milk, and baked at 375˚F for about 35 minutes until golden brown.

It was delicious!

Another Big Day

Yesterday I picked up the farm share and I didn't have a lot of time to do anything with it. However, I have this entire afternoon to work through a few projects. I have one problem, though. Our computer died after a power failure (probably a power surge fried it) and I'm not sure how I'm going to print labels. So this quick post is just about the salsa that I made (4 cups, or half a recipe) and the canned beets I'm in the process of making (likely 3 quarts, but maybe 4, depending on how many beets fit in each jar). Then I'm going to test out the printer. For the record, this salsa is going to the fair, so here's the recipe:

1 quart tomatoes, cored and seeded

1 bell pepper

1 medium onion

3 jalapeno peppers, seeded

1 T. Kosher salt

2 t. sugar

2 T. vinegar

Broil the vegetables for about 10 minutes, turning once during the cooking time. When soft, add the salt, sugar and vinegar and process with an immersion blender to desired texture. Process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes.

The other thing I did this morning was start up a batch of sauerkraut using three heads of cabbage I have accumulated from the farm. I am considering entering sauerkraut in the fair, too, if it finishes its fermentation in time.

Happy Thanksgiving! Here's Your Pie

Yes, I'm aware I'm a day late. As usual, I worked on Thanksgiving and planned my celebration for today. That doesn't mean we didn't also celebrate yesterday; we went down to Faneuil Hall and had dinner at Durgin Park. Faneuil Hall is all decked out with lights and Christmas trees and was so pretty in the drizzly fog. And it wasn't tremendously cold, either, which was nice.

Over the past few days I've been getting my side dishes and pies ready for today. I used my last three butternut squashes from the farm share, and used two jars of my pickled beets to make the beets and eggs my mother-in-law likes so much. And I've made three pies.

The pumpkin pies were first, because I planned to take one to work yesterday. I made the crust the usual way but it was too dry and crumbly so it gave me some trouble. I also had a little difficulty with the leaf cut outs again, I should have learned my lesson the last time when I burned them, but this time I put them on the pie at the beginning of baking and they didn't brown up the way I wanted, either. But, recognizing some of the crust issues had to do with the moisture content, I made sure for the apple pie I added more water.

Last night after we got back from dinner I sliced the apples and assembled the pie. The apples were laid in the crust by hand, which meant they were all flat against each other and I think that makes for a prettier side view when the pie is sliced.

After playing around with the leaf cut outs again, here's the final product.

Now I'm working on getting the turkey in the oven and all the last minute details. More later!

Pickled Beets, Always More Work Than I Think

The last distribution of the farm share was yesterday and there were no more beets. That meant that I could get all the beets I'd been saving pickled, finally. I have a note next to my recipe to double the liquid, which I did. But, first, I had to make my own pickling spice as I seem to have run out. I couldn't find any in the cupboard.

Pickling spice: bay, cinnamon stick, coriander seeds, cardamom, mustard seeds, dill seeds, whole allspice, cloves, ground ginger, crushed red pepper, and black peppercorns. Some people also add juniper berries which is one of the reasons I don't often buy it pre-made. No sense in making something to which I'm allergic!

So. Using the recipe for pickled beets in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, but doubling the liquid, I made enough pickled beets to fill three quart jars. The beets themselves took a long time to cook and slip the skins off. If I had to guess, I'd say that they longer they were in the fridge, the harder it was to remove the skins.

What do I have left? Six pounds of sweet potatoes. Two large bowls of squash: 3 butternut, 5 delicata, 2 acorn, 3 carnival. 3 cobs of popcorn. About 5 pounds of onions. 6 leeks and 2 bunches of scallions. Some escarole, lettuce, arugula, kale, chard, parsley, bok choy, and broccoli. 1 green pepper and about 6 red meat radishes. Nothing particularly cannable. Unless I want to cube up the squash and can that. Maybe...

Projects in the Queue

There have been a few projects I've been saving up so I could work on them while I waited for the boiler maintenance service today. First of all I made a batch of hot pepper sauce, using about 25 banana peppers, a few jalapeños, habañeros, and Thai peppers. These were ground up with 1 pint of vinegar, then boiled with 1 pint yellow mustard, 3 cups of sugar and 1/2 T. salt. Once the mixture boiled, a small amount of flour and water was added as a thickener. I ended up with 7 jars, all different sizes, or about 8 cups of sauce.

The other project for today was pickled beets. I had some golden beets in addition to the usual red ones and made 3 quarts of pickled beets. In previous years, the random golden beet would look ghostly in the jar. This time, I put all the golden beets into one jar so they wouldn't look as weird.

Other projects for another day: applesauce and something with the Daikon radishes I have from the farm. Then I'll be caught up for a little while, at least!

Culturing, Fermenting, and Pickling

Yesterday was the last farm share installment for the year, which means that I have more potatoes and squashes and rutabagas than I know what to do with.  I also got a head of cabbage, lots of greens, more leeks, onions and garlic, some turnips and popcorn.  We can't have the popcorn until January because it has to cure.

This morning after a telephone meeting I made 2 things simultaneously:  a batch of yogurt (culturing) and a batch of sauerkraut (fermenting).  Last time I made the sauerkraut I forgot to set up the water seal on the crock and it rotted.  So I am trying again.  5 pounds of cabbage was shredded, mixed with 3+ T. of kosher salt, and I put some of the outer cabbage leaves over the top as I weighed it down.  Tomorrow I'll add the white wine and recheck the brine levels; I can add more if I need to, which is something I should have done the last time as well.

After that, since now I know I'm not getting any more beets from the farm, I pickled all the beets I had.  That came to 1 quart jar and 1 pint jar, which is just enough for Thanksgiving and to give more to my mother-in-law.  We don't eat a lot of beets otherwise.  Although maybe we should.... they are really good for you.

What a Mess!

In today's farm share:  3 pounds of beets.  Add that to the beets I already had and I really needed to can some beets.  They take up way too much room in the fridge!

Since I have a bunch of pickled beets, I thought I'd try pressure canning them.  I used the standard recipe from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and had 4 quarts' worth.  But one of the jars cracked in the canner, which was an unpleasant surprise.  It cleaned up surprisingly quickly, and since the jar broke cleanly I was able to salvage the beets and put them in the fridge to eat now.  I think I know what happened, too.  I ran out of boiling water when I was filling the jars and, in the time it took for me to boil more, the bulk of the jar cooled too much.  Then, when I put it in the canner, the water it went into was too hot and so the jar cracked along the base.  The bottom of the jar just split right off!

Beets

Yesterday in the farm share there were lots of little beets.  I always like to make pickled beets; usually I give half a batch to my mother-in-law since I know how much she likes them.  Pickled beets and eggs are now always on the Thanksgiving table, an addition to the sides with which I grew up, thanks to her.  So it's good to get those beets made every year.

Before we went on vacation I'd gotten a few beets; they were large enough that they would have to be cut in half.  But yesterday there was a whole basket of these little ones, about 1-2 inches in diameter, and it was part of the mix and match so I could take a lot.  I got enough that, when added to the ones in the fridge, I was able to make 3 quarts of pickled beets.

If you're using The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, just know that you need to double the liquid in the recipe.  I never have enough!  The other glitch was that I had to leave the house by a certain time, so I had to turn the canner off and run out the door and hope for the best.  It all seems to have worked out fine.

New Things

Happy Thanksgiving!

As usual, Thanksgiving for us is whenever we can have it.  This year, it's Saturday.

I have my list.  I'm checking off things as I make them.  The other day I made the creamed broccoli.  Today I made:

1. A pumpkin pie, with homemade pie crust.  Added bonus: since I didn't have evaporated milk, I used egg nog.  Mmm.

2. Pumpkin bread:  2 loaves.  I was going to make 4 and freeze 2, but I was one egg short.  (I went through 17 eggs today, between the pie, breakfast, pumpkin bread, and:

3. Pickled beets and eggs.  I hard boiled 6 eggs and added them to the liquid of one of my jars of pickled beets.  Since I always have trouble with eggs cracking when I boil them, this time I set the eggs in cold water and waited to see which end floated.  I then poked a hole in that end and boiled them for 14 minutes. None cracked.  They were easy to peel.  I will do that from now on.

4.  Brined the turkey.  This is the New Thing.  I have never brined a turkey.  Fortunately, the turkey fits in my lobster pot so I didn't have to sanitize a cooler and worry about keeping it all cold.  I added 2 gallons of brine, 2 T. peppercorns, some sage, some thyme, and some celery seeds.  Tomorrow I will turn it over in the brine.

Tomorrow I need to make the stuffing, toast almonds for the salad (another New Thing:  a raw brussels sprouts and kale salad from Bon Appetit.  Most of my extended family is a little apprehensive about this one, but I think it'll be awesome), and go to the store for all those last minute ingredients.  Plus we are going to buy a new washer and dryer (my dryer is almost ready to give up the ghost, one can only repair these things so many times...) and there is this thing in the afternoon at the MIT Museum about kinetic/chain reaction sculptures that we must attend.

Saturday, I will do the rest!

The Canning Before The Storm

Perhaps you've heard, there's a hurricane on its way to the northeastern U.S.  And I have to work!  I plan to work this evening and then stay up there through the storm and work my shift and then go home when it's all over.  While I am not psyched about leaving the car outside in the hospital parking lot, I am more not psyched about driving in 60+ mph winds.  


Anyhow, I wanted to finish up the farm share canning projects I had going on so I could feel like I wasn't just cooling my heels tomorrow while I'm stuck at work.  So this morning I made pickled beets.  There were more than a few rogue golden beets in my stockpile of beets - they look ghostly in the jars of dark purple.  There are 4 quarts of pickled beets in this batch and I plan to give at least 2 of those jars to my mother-in-law.  One in the care package I'm preparing, and the rest later when they come to visit again.  She loves them and I'm happy to oblige.


Then I used up all the tomatoes from my garden which were ripe (have to get them all off the vines before the wind does), plus the farm share tomatoes, peppers, jalapenos, and scallions to make this salsa.  It is really, really good.  I had exactly 3 quarts of tomatoes once I chopped them all up.  I used up all the farm share peppers and jalapenos and added 1 store-bought green pepper.  I used my scallions and a single store-bought onion and then rounded out the 3 cups of onion by using 4 cloves of farm share garlic and 2 shallots.  It made 6.5 pints of salsa.


This is what's left of the farm share from Thursday:
1 heads of lettuce

10 leaves of kale

1.5 pounds of potatoes

1 cucumbers

1 heads of garlic

1 large shallots

2 eggplant

3 small pattypan squashes

2 spaghetti squashes


I think I've done pretty well, then, don't you?


And my thoughts are with all of you in the Carolinas & vicinity.  Stay safe!

Red Root Relish

Last year, we were getting beets all summer from the farm share and I was storing them up until they reached appropriate amounts and would pickle them. My mother-in-law really likes them, so I made sure to give her a few quarts. This year, I got beets exactly once. And only on the very last day. So I had 8 beets and a head of red cabbage from a previous week. To this I added some red peppers foraged from an abandoned vegetable garden at my husband's place of employment (the chef left but did not take his plants, and the new chef wasn't interested in gardening, I guess) and made Red Root Relish.

The recipe came from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and was easy. The recipe says it makes 4 pints; I got 3.5. It's very dark red and pretty and it smells great!

We also tried the radish relish on some crackers. I like it. My husband, who likes neither radish nor fennel, declared it, "Not as bad as I anticipated."

Yet Another Soup Entry

A week ago I made a soup which I had expected to can: pork and vegetables. However, we had family visiting and so we put the soup in the fridge, thinking we'd eat it sooner. Of course, that didn't happen, so now I finally have a little time to reheat it and can it.

Here's the original recipe:
Pork (roast and a leftover chop)
8 c. water
bay, thyme, salt & pepper
4 potatoes
6 small carrots
2 turnips
1 celeriac root
2 small onions
kale (about 6 leaves)

Today I added 2 pints of turkey stock to stretch it enough to make 2.5 quarts plus some for lunch. All the veggies came from the farm share. I'm almost done with the farm share foods: I have mashed squash in the freezer waiting for Thanksgiving, and am left with a few carrots, some rutabagas, a red cabbage, one celeriac root, and some red onions and garlic. (Not really a lot to work with...) We ate the beets 2 nights ago using a gingered beets recipe from Sundays at the Moosewood Restaurant and they were AWESOME. I don't think I've ever enjoyed beets that much.

The pressure canner is humming along, and I'm going to go eat.

Going a Little Crazy with Soups

For some reason, I got it in my head that I should make borscht as a way to use up some of the cabbage in my fridge. I've never had borscht. I don't even know what it is supposed to taste like. But, as often happens, once these ideas get in my head, the only thing to do is to follow them through. So I perused 1001 Delicious Soups and Stews and found not 1, but 4 recipes for borscht. I had no idea.

This recipe, for Russian Borscht (as opposed to Ukranian or Eastern European) used up only 1/2 head of cabbage, leaving me with 1 1/2 heads of red cabbage left to consume somehow... It did call for turnip, beets, carrots, and onion, all shredded, which was a joy of a task. However, it was all worth it. At least the grown ups liked it. The 4 year old tried a teeny little taste and then spent 5 minutes licking a cloth to get rid of the taste.

Regardless, the leftovers ended up in 1 quart and 3 pints and were processed in the pressure canner for 90 minutes at 10 lbs of pressure. They lost all that lovely red color. Maybe they are not supposed to be canned this way? Anyone out there know?

Farm Share Canning

Just got back this morning from a visit with my in-laws, a whirlwind trip that was lots of fun. My house is still full of food from last week's farm share because, in my absence, my family ate out a lot. SO, guess what? Bring out the canner and...

...1/2 peck of apples, boiled and run through the food mill, makes not quite 2 quarts. In fact, enough "not quite" that I had to convert to 1 quart and 1 pint and just put the rest in the fridge. This batch was: food mill (and therefore smooth) with brown sugar. Mmm.

The beets I had been hoarding for 3 weeks, until I got enough to can, worked out to 3 quarts, but I had to double the liquid part of the recipe to fill the jars. There were 3 "mystery roots" in with the beets; I thought they might just be funny looking red beets, but it turned out they were golden beets. Those got eaten by me for lunch. They were not as yummy, not sure why.

Everything was processed together for 30 minutes and the jars are cooling on the counter. Boy, I'm tired! (Maybe it's because I got up at 5 am to make my flight?)