A Whole Lotta No, and a Surprising Yes

Several people asked me recently if I was entering canned goods in the fair - sadly, No. I just didn't can enough things to make it worthwhile. It hasn't been a great year for wild produce. Even the elderberries I have been eyeing all summer seem to have been eaten before I could get to them. 

Then, yesterday, I was supposed to have an in-home macaron making class that I won at a silent auction. I was ready - even though my mixer died earlier in the week, my husband was able to replace the worn out gear in my first dead mixer and get that one working, I had all the eggs, the elderchild was heading home from college to participate. Everything was ready! So I took a COVID test. Just in case, you know?

Shockingly, it was positive! 

I have been working directly with COVID positive patients since the pandemic started. This is the first time I have ever tested positive, and I don't even really know how I was exposed. Strangely, I have zero symptoms. I'm now just stuck at home for a few days and trying not to infect anyone. (Elderchild turned around and left, without getting exposed, thankfully.)

So, macaron class? No. For now.

Eldritch Horror

Elderchild and youngerchild teamed up with my husband to make my birthday cake. I asked for Boston Cream Pie. 

They decided that they would double the recipe, so they could have 3 cake layers instead of 2 and therefore more cream filling. The cream custard was excellent. They also doubled the chocolate, which they didn't need to do. Since there still was only one top layer, and all. 

There was a lot of chocolate. 

After coating the cake, the elderchild dubbed the cake an "eldritch horror," so they attempted to give it some character. 

I present to you, my birthday cake, quite possibly the best I've ever had:

It certainly made me laugh the hardest!

Crabapples at Work

At my new(ish) job, I get a lunch break. It's still a novelty. I've taken to going for walks. The loop around the building and the parking lot takes about 15 minutes so it's just enough to feel refreshed. The other day, while walking, I discovered a couple of crabapple trees. After work, I went back and picked all the crabapples that looked reasonably okay. They're not as large as the ones I picked years ago which were at an apartment complex and better cared for but they're still crabapples and they will still make jelly.

Today I took the 7 cups of crabapple juice I extracted and made jelly. I haven't bought pectin in forever and I don't have any currently so I did this the old fashioned way, using the natural pectin in the apples to make the jelly. It seems to have worked. I ended up with eight jars of jelly. For six of them, I placed into each jar a star anise pod, half a cinnamon stick, one clove, two peppercorns, and a dried cayenne pepper. 

In case I do enter them in the fair, here's the recipe:

7 cups crabapple juice

7 cups sugar

1.5 T lemon juice

Boiled until 220˚F

There aren't too many other forage-able things at work that I've identified otherwise, so this may be the only work related project for a while. 

Berries!

Canning season has been a bust until today. Strawberry season at our favorite PYO place lasted all of three days due to the weather not cooperating. The farm share isn't happening this year. We haven't had time to go out as a family to do any of the PYO things we might have done. I haven't canned a thing since March. Our mulberry tree did well and I did make a mulberry pie but I have plenty of jelly and syrup already so I didn't make any this year.

Finally, today, we went to our favorite wild blueberry spot. The weather has not been kind to these berries, either, and it was hard to find good patches to pick. We did see an Eastern Towhee, which I don't think I've ever seen before. In two hours the four of us had two quarts of berries. We came home overheated, hungry and tired. After cleaning up and having a little food, I got to work and made a batch of blueberry jam (with added pectin). There were enough berries for me to freeze two cups for baking later and I ended up with just shy of seven jars of jam. 

Boozy Birthday

Generally, on my husband's birthday, I make something with chocolate. This year is no exception. It's a time to test out new recipes that I find, and to play around a little with my baking skills. However, I have actually made this particular cake for him before. Sometimes a recipe is just that good. 

This Irish whiskey and Guinness cake is just that good. I made the cake part a couple of days ago and refrigerated the cake until it was time to make the frosting. It's easier to cut the cake layers when they are cold. The recipe says to serve immediately after frosting but that isn't necessary. I made the frosting and frosted the cake several hours ahead of time and put it back in the fridge. The cream cheese and mascarpone in the frosting firm up in the cold and it holds the cake together well.

When I made this cake the last time I did separate the frosting and make part of it with whiskey and part of it with Bailey's. The whiskey was so strong the kids couldn't eat it. This time, I just made all of the frosting with Bailey's. It was still very strong. My husband licked the frosting bowl and felt dizzy for a while afterward. It is a rich, boozy cake that should definitely be eaten in moderation! The Bailey's flavor for the frosting throughout the layers was, in our opinion, a better choice. 

Round Two

Since I still had more chicken bones in the freezer, I made another batch of stock a couple of days ago. Today I canned it, and now have another nine pints in the pantry. I might make a batch of vegetable stock another day but, for now, I have enough stock to last a while. 

Replenishing

Happy New Year, a little late!

Yes, there has been a lot of baking - bread, cakes, cookies. I even tried my hand at popovers recently. I made those lovely cupcakes for my mother's birthday and a celebratory cheesecake for the youngerchild's acceptance to college. So yes, plenty of baking, but not much energy to write about it. 

In other news, I found a dairy near where I go riding that sells raw milk and fresh eggs. Sometimes they have cheese and even raw cream, and they also sell meat but I haven't gotten any of that yet. I buy a half-gallon of raw milk every week and it's helped keep my stomach happy. Several of the cows have had calves in the last month. I met two of them, one was only three days old and so very small and cute. I might sometime get enough milk to make cheese or cream to make cultured butter but, for now, just getting enough to drink is fine for me.

Another update is that the farm is not offering a CSA this year, so I won't be going out to the farm weekly over the summer to gather my share and pick from the fields. I have mixed feelings about this but overall I will miss being out there in the fields picking herbs, berries and flowers. Mocha will likely miss all the kale.

Today I canned seven pints of chicken stock I made a couple of days ago (I chilled it to remove the fat, then heated it back up again before canning). I'd run out of all the stock I'd made last year, and it was time to start getting my supply back up. I have more chicken bones in the freezer and will have to make another batch at some point, but at least I've started canning things again. 

Who knows what this season will bring?