Oat Bars, Second Attempt

Today's oat pulp went into another batch of granola bars. Following the same recipe, sort of, but with more oats to make it a little drier and different mix-ins:

1 ½ cup old-fashioned rolled oats
½ cup cane sugar
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
½ cup oat milk
1 cup oat pulp
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup chopped pecans
¼ cup dried cranberries
¼ cup pepitas

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line an 8-inch square pan with parchment paper hanging over the edge.
In a medium bowl, combine the dry ingredients including the rolled oats, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
In another large bowl, combine the wet ingredients including the eggs, milk, oat pulp and vanilla extract. Transfer the dry ingredients over the wet ingredients and set aside until flavors blend, about 20 minutes.
Fold in the pecans, pepitas and cranberries, and spread combined mixture into prepared square pan.
Bake in the preheated oven until edges are golden brown, about 30-35 minutes. Allow to cool on wire rack for 5 minutes before slicing. Cut into 8 bars, place on baking sheet and return to the oven at 225˚F for another 30 minutes. Turn off the oven and let the bars cool in the oven.

This definitely made them less sticky and more like the vision I have in my head for what they should be. The best part is once I get the proportions tweaked, I can change the mix-ins anytime based on what I have in the house.

A Week of Feasting

After last Sunday's mini-Thanksgiving, we've continued to eat our way through the week. Monday we had a fondue night, with tiny potatoes, broccoli florets and bread and two different types of cheese fondue. Tuesday we went out for Thai food and Wednesday we had some leftovers to clear the fridge for the meals to come. On actual Thanksgiving I was working and our site director sent an entire traditional Thanksgiving meal which was good because it got busy and it was nice to have food ready to eat when we had a few moments.

Last night we went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, Red 8, in the new casino in Boston. We did not go into the casino part because not everyone in our party was over 21 but the whole place was quite the spectacle. After a whole lot of very good Chinese food we went to another restaurant, Sinatra, for dessert, most of which consisted of little pastries on a "gold record" made out of dark chocolate! It was Frank Sinatra themed, after all.

Tonight we finally had our family Thanksgiving, with my parents, while also celebrating my father's birthday. I made the pumpkin pie a few days ago but last night started the candied cranberries for a garnish. This recipe for pumpkin pie really is terrific. Yesterday morning I made the apple pie, this time cooking the apples first before baking them in the pie. I am really pleased with how this turned out. Also, I used honeycrisp apples instead of Cortlands and I think I like that better. I also made a quick cranberry-pomegranate sauce by making cranberry sauce and tossing in the seeds from half a pomegranate at the last minute.

Mom made the sweet potatoes again and, again, I overbroiled the marshmallows but this time I got them out before they entirely burned. Whoops. My husband got the turkey brining on Thursday while I was at work which was so helpful, and I made the stuffing yesterday. So today, between raking leaves and running to the store for last minute things, we got everything cooked and on the table by 4 pm.

So, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and, Happy Birthday, Dad!

A Little Too Much

Of what? Of ghost pepper powder. But it's too late now, I guess...

I wanted to make more things for the fair, so I pulled out some of my cranberries and rhubarb and made a double batch of the Cranberry-Rhubarb Compote I like so much. I added a very heaping 1/4 teaspoon, closer to a 1/2 of a teaspoon, of ghost pepper powder. Yikes! I hope the flavor mellows before the judges taste it. Then again, maybe they like spicy?

That Time of Year

This is the time of the year where I do a lot of cooking but not a lot of noteworthy things and very few canning projects. I've been making bread, and granola, and cooking pretty basic meals. It's a busy time with school and work and travel. However, Thanksgiving will be upon us shortly and I need to get ready.

First of all, no turkey this year. There will only be six of us, so I'm splurging on a goose (they are surprisingly expensive compared to turkeys). We're also cutting back on the sides: no squash and no beets. Mom will make the sweet potatoes and some new brussels sprouts and grape dish (I'm intrigued) in the place of the broccoli. I will make gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and the pies. Those I'll start tomorrow, although yesterday I roasted the sugar pumpkin and got 6 cups of purée. I froze 3 cups for a later batch of pies and have 3 cups waiting for tomorrow. This morning I made the stuffing; since I won't be stuffing the goose it's just in a dish to be heated up at the last minute. I used leeks and duck stock instead of the usual onions and turkey stock, so it'll fit with the flavors of the goose a little better. I have pumpkin bread in the freezer which I'll thaw.

One other thing I plan to do - on Wednesday I'll make brioche dough and refrigerate it overnight. Then on Thursday morning I can make brioche dinner rolls. Whatever doesn't get eaten can become bread pudding later on.

This morning I'm tapping into my cranberry reserve and making cranberry sauce. Just 8 cups of cranberries, 2-2/3 cups water and 2-2/3 cups sugar. I'll be canning whatever I don't need for Thursday as I've been out of cranberry sauce for a while. Never fear, I still have at least 4 bags of cranberries in the freezer!

Rainy Slushy Day

An overcast, cold, slushy day is the perfect day to work on some canning projects!

I pulled out 4 ziploc bags of chicken bones from the freezer and made stock this morning. Four quarts are set aside for canning later and I might set aside more. It depends, as I'm also making chicken soup and we'll see how much I need. So the rest of the morning was spent cleaning out the freezer a bit, reorganizing, and pulling chicken meat off bones.

Also this morning, I made a 2.5x batch of Cranberry Rhubarb Compote, which made 13 cups of compote. Of those, 12 got canned and are just coming out of the canner now. My gift stash is quite complete, I think, but I always add more and more people to my list so I have to double check!

Another thing that I've been working on is baking. I've baked about 12 dozen cookies so far in the last week: Oatmeal Scotchies, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Orange-Hazelnut sandwiches. I have a plan to give some to the staff at work, and I want to make more cookies for home as well. I might have to make some gingerbread cookies soon!

Again With the Cranberries

Today's batch of Cranberry-Rhubarb Compote does not contain ghost peppers. I now have another 9 jars for my gift stash. Hopefully I can make some cookies tomorrow; I am hoping to send both jams and cookies this year. More later!

Cranberry Problem

If you looked into my spare freezer you would think I have a serious condition with regard to cranberries. I keep buying them when they are on sale and tossing them in the freezer, figuring I'd use them eventually. Well, I think I have 8 bags in the freezer as of today. Fortunately, it's the time of the year for making Cranberry-Rhubarb Compote and filling out the gift stash. My list is maybe a little smaller this year but I'm sure I'll keep coming up with names so I'll likely be back up to the 60+ jars needed in no time.

Today's double batch of compote is spiced up with 1/2 teaspoon ghost pepper powder (thanks to Roxanne) and came to a total of 9 half-pint jars. They are processed for 15 minutes in the boiling water bath and then rest for 5 before cooling. This brings the gift stash up to 38 jars. I have enough ingredients for another double batch of this compote which I'll make another day, without the spice.

Happy New Year!

Let's start 2015 off right, by making a pie!

Pears, cranberries and apricots, with 2/3 cup sugar, 1 T. lemon juice and 1.5 T. cornstarch.  One cheese tart and one beach plum tart.  I used my new pastry mat and it was the easiest pie crust EVER.

Mmmmmm.

NOW it's Ready

That gift list grows and grows as I remember more people I wanted to send treats to!

This morning I made another batch of cranberry-rhubarb compote, but on Roxanne's advice I added 3/8 tsp. of the crushed ghost peppers which gave it an excellent kick.  This yielded 9 cups and a single 4-oz. jar.  Now I can start making up some care packages to pop in the mail, and get the rest of the stash delivered.  Once I get some bows or ribbon or something!

Maybe the Gift Stash is Ready?

Today, after the kids left for school, I pulled another pound of rhubarb and 2 bags of cranberries out of the freezer and made another double batch of Cranberry-Rhubarb Compote.  I did wish I had some habanero peppers to add to this batch so I could have some spicy compote, but I wasn't ready to go to the store.  Oh, well!  It's still pretty great without the habaneros.

I now have 65 jars in my gift stash, which I hope will be enough...although, I might need to make some more...wouldn't want to run out or anything....

A Day At Home

There is a lot going on today, for a day which had nothing scheduled.  We have our carpenter here doing some work.  The house next door is being torn down.  And I'm working on a bunch of projects of my own.

First, I popped the two sugar pumpkins in the oven, whole.  I pricked them with a fork a few times each and baked them at 350 for about 90 minutes.  Then I took the flesh and ran it through the food mill, finally using the pumpkin screen for the first time, and now have 3 bags of 2 cups of puree each in the freezer for pies.

Next, I made a batch of yogurt, which is down in the basement on the heating pad doing its thing.

Then I made a double batch of Cranberry-Rhubarb Compote to add to my gift stash.  I'll likely make another batch in a few days, but this made 9 jars to add to the stash.

I also ground up stale bread and made bread crumbs.  These come in handy when I want to make meatballs for dinner.  And it finally got the stale bread off my counter.

Tonight I'll roast a chicken for dinner and then, tomorrow, will make more chicken stock and maybe some soup.

Early Christmas

Since my family doesn't all live in the same place and, since it's easier to travel before or after Christmas rather than during the holiday week, we have part of our Christmas celebration early.  Today, as a matter of fact.

I still had the pie plate from the chess pie my sister-in-law made for Thanksgiving so I felt it was time to return it, filled, of course, with pie!

Today's pie is pear cranberry, from this recipe, but with the addition of some ginger.  I say, "Some," because I just sprinkled.  Maybe it was half a teaspoon, maybe a full teaspoon.  Hard to say.  I used my holiday pie cutters to put snowflakes and holly leaves on the crust.  This crust was 1/4 leaf lard and 3/4 butter (I ran out of the lard) and it was more elastic than usual.  I am not sure why that is.  It was very interesting to work with, much more likely to stretch than to break.  It came out nice and flaky and buttery tasting (we ate the accompanying tarts for breakfast).  Now I can't wait to dive into the pie!

Cranberry Sauce

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday to cook for, whether we have 4 or 14 at the table.  I generally start preparing things a week in advance.  First off, the dishes get divided up.  My mother always makes the sweet potatoes.  My sister in law makes the green dish and, for the second year in a row, a chess pie.  I make the turkey and the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, gravy, and squash, a pumpkin pie and an apple pie, and pumpkin bread.  Most of that can be made in advance which is good because I only have one oven.  Today I made the cranberry sauce and canned it.

It's super easy - 2 cups sugar, 2 cups water, 2 bags cranberries.  Boil for 10 minutes or so.  Can for 15 minutes in the canner and let it rest for 5 before taking it out.  This made 3 pints of sauce.  I'm not a fan of orange zest or any other flavors in my cranberry sauce so I don't get all fancy with it.

Over the weekend I'll start getting everything else all set.  I'm working long days in the early part of next week so the baking will have to be after dinner!

Hot Pepper Madness!

Props go to my brother-in-law who procured a recipe for me for hot banana pepper sauce.  He gave it to me a few years ago with a jar of said sauce, which was hot and thick and wonderful on meats.  Yesterday in the farm share I got to pick a whole quart of hot peppers and, when I saw there were banana peppers, got to thinking about this recipe.  However, since I didn't have the 36-50 peppers the recipe called for or, for that matter, enough mustard (it calls for a quart!), I scaled a bit, and changed a few things.

Hot Pepper Sauce

4 banana peppers, 3 habaneros and 10 chilis. Yum.

Roughly 10 banana peppers (see photo, I improvised)

4/5 cup French's mustard

4/5 cup white vinegar

1 + 1/5 cups sugar

3/5 tsp. kosher salt

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup cold water

Slice off the tops of the peppers and then grind them, seeds and all.  (I found this was easier if I added some of the vinegar to the blender.) Put this mixture in a pot with the mustard, vinegar, sugar and salt.  Bring to a boil.  Mix the flour and water in a bowl and add to the sauce, stirring.  Cook for 5 minutes until the sauce thickens.  Process for 15-20 minutes in water bath canner.  Let rest for 5 minutes before removing from the canner.  (This made about 3.5 cups.)

I also made a cranberry habanero chutney using this recipe.  I doubled the recipe and in the place of the habanero jelly I added 4 minced habaneros (seeds removed) and in place of the jalapeños I added 1 green bell pepper.  This made 7 cups of chutney, a good addition to my gift stash.

I am planning on doing more today but now I'm tired and all my pots need washing, so I think I'm going to rest a bit and see how I feel.  I have to work until 2 am tonight so I might want to conserve my energy!

Spicy Holiday Giving

Habaneros!  Today I made another double batch of the Cranberry-Rhubarb compote but I added 4 chopped habanero peppers (minus the seeds).  And is it ever spicy!

This made 14 4-ounce jars and 3 8-ounce jars and, I'll have to look, but I think this makes my gift stash almost complete.  For now....

Finally I Have Some Time

I've been planning on working on my gift stash for a while but something always seems to get in the way.  So I set aside several hours this morning to try to make a dent in it.  I made two batches today - Maple Pear Ginger Jam and Cranberry Rhubarb Compote (same as last year).

For the Maple Pear Ginger jam I made a few changes from the first recipe attempt.  One change was that I added ginger (obviously).  I cut the pears larger and simmered them with some pear juice and 4 big chunks of fresh ginger.  When they were soft I removed the ginger, mashed the pears, and returned the ginger to the pot.  Then I added the lemon juice and the pectin and then, once it was boiling, the syrup and the sugar.  When it was time to can it I removed the ginger.  This made 5 cups and a little bit.

The Cranberry-Rhubarb Compote was easier since I had 1 pound of rhubarb already measured out in the freezer.  (There's that thinking ahead thing - isn't it great when it works?)  That plus 1 and a half bags of cranberries and 2 golden delicious apples made 9 cups of compote.  I now have 21 8-ounce jars and 31 4-ounce jars in the stash.  I might need more, but this is a significant improvement!

Another Batch

Since yesterday's compote creation was so good, I made another batch using the last 1.5 pounds of the rhubarb in the freezer.  This time I added a second apple and ended up with 12 cups of compote.  Considering my gift list keeps expanding, I'm now up to needing 48 jars.  With this batch, I have 45 completed, only 3 to go!  Well, maybe I'll be adding a few more, I just thought of a few more names!

Working on the Gift Stash

My holiday gift list gets larger every year.  This is a good thing, of course.  But I find that I have to work hard to expand my gift stash to get ready for the latter part of the December.  I was thinking about the pear almond compote I made several years ago, and then I thought about adding cranberries and, well, I didn't have pears but I did have rhubarb, and then I thought, what are you waiting for?

I found this recipe for Cranberry-Rhubarb Compote and scaled it up for my frozen rhubarb.  Some organized part of my brain had thought ahead and weighed the rhubarb before I froze it, so it was easy.  I had 1 pound, 6 ounces of rhubarb so I scaled the rest of the ingredients up by 2.5, except the apple, because I only had one in the house.  I started to peel the apple but then I realized the pectin in the skin was required for this recipe so left it alone:

2.75 c. water

2 heaping cups sugar

5.5 cups cranberries

1 pound, 6 oz. chopped rhubarb

1 large apple, finely diced

This scaled-up version made 11 cups of compote, enough for 9 half-pint jars, 3 half-cup jars, and some for me.  It's nice and tart, not very sweet, but sweet enough.  I am guessing a little bit on the processing part but based upon similar recipes in my books, have decided upon 15 minutes in the boiling water canner and let them rest for 5 minutes before removing them.  I'm sure that will be more than enough.  This makes 33 jars in my stash and I need at least 8 more.  Maybe I'll make another batch!

Farmed, Foraged, Homegrown and Homemade

After my pasta-making extravaganza this morning, I spent all afternoon wondering what sort of sauce I should serve the raviolis with.  I mean, here are these wonderfully fresh pumpkin-sage raviolis.  A brown butter and sage sauce might be too much sage, right?

As I pondered this, I remembered that I had foraged a few cranberries in Maine last week.  So I did a little searching and came up with this sauce, paired with a pumpkin risotto.  I cut the recipe in half and, since I didn't have cranberry juice, just used water.  Here's my version:

1/6 cup water

1/2 cup frozen wild cranberries (foraged)

1/2 T. dijon mustard

1 shallot (small; farm)

2 T. sugar

4 T. brown butter

The first 5 ingredients were pureed in the blender and then the brown butter was added with the blender on low.  I set this aside while I cooked the raviolis and the rest of the homemade spaghetti.  In the pan in which I'd browned the butter I cooked all the little green beans from my bean plant.

The bean plant was brought to me at the end of kindergarten by my 6 year old who was excited last week to see that it was huge and had lots of little beans on it.  I think they were supposed to be kidney beans, but as they were all so tiny, I figured we could just eat them.  Once they were sauteed, I put them on the ravioli and topped it all with the cranberry sauce and a sprig of sage from the garden.  Wow.

Late Night Canning

It's almost 11 pm and I'm processing applesauce.  I wanted to finish up the last of the apples we picked, and I don't have a whole lot of blocks of time to do that in, so I decided to stay up late and make a batch.  This one is chunky with a little cinnamon.  12 or so apples, 2 cups of sugar, a cup of water and a heavy-handed sprinkle of cinnamon simmered for about 20 minutes and then went into 2 quart jars.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I was up in Maine yesterday and, while we were hiking around, I found tiny little cranberry plants.  At least, I am pretty sure they are cranberries.  I ate one, it looked like a cranberry on the inside, tasted like a cranberry, and I'm not sick or anything, so I'm assuming they are edible.  I picked a couple dozen and will likely make a little sauce to go over some chicken soon.  Currently they are safely tucked in the freezer.  I also found a handful of very-late-in-the-season blueberries, which proved the tiniest of treats!