We’re still hungover…from sugar cookies

We are still goofed up from too much eggnog and sugar cookies.  I love too much icing!

Some of my favorite turkeys

Like most of the country, our family overate on Thanksgiving. We always go to Emily’s grandparents house in a small town outside the city. But before the actual feed, we have a tradition. We usually start checking in early on Thanksgiving morning as soon as we get up. Emily’s grandmother typically gets up at dawn’s crack and does the magic that she does to get everything ready. By the time we wake, the turkey is sure to be well along in the oven. We always call and ask how things are looking at their place. “Smells like things are getting along pretty well.” We check in a few times in the morning to make sure everything is under control. Of course, she’s been cooking for 70 or so years but I want to make sure she doesn’t need my expert advice! We try to get the kids to dress in some Thanksgiving-appropriate attire. Typically the kids dress as Native Americans. We couldn’t talk Isaac into it this year. Abigail wanted to be a pilgrim so Emily’s mom sewed her a pilgrim hat. I wanted to give her a blunderbuss to carry but Emily nixed that idea sighting the fact that my shotguns were all far too long for Abigail to carry. Darn practicality!

Anyhow, we headed to their place around 11:30 or so and start to nibble…and by nibble I mean I eat as much as I can sneak away with in my pockets. So, I nibble a turkey leg or a pumpkin pie waiting for everything to get finished up. Eighteen of us gathered for a huge feed and subsequent nap this year. Most of us were able to eat our meal and get away from the table before falling into the tryptophan-trance. We did lose a few in their mashed potatoes this year though. I guess we eat for an hour and a half. There must be a little hobbit in our family though as we always eat a second lunch as well.

Some of us took a walk around the neighborhood this year as we always do. Emily’s Mom and Dad grew up a few blocks from each other and have known each other since before they were in school. We walked through their old stomping grounds and had a great chance to chat and reminisce. I bounce a little as I walk to ensure that my food gets packed in pretty well so I can hit the dessert table again. Unfortunately, Emily had to carry me part way home from our walk this year. Too much nibbling I guess!

After dessert, we played a few games of Tripoli and Uno and goofed around with the kids. The kids enjoy playing on the playground of the elementary school next door. We continued to eating and playing until first supper sometime around 6. The dark is our cue to start to pack up and head home as we sober up from our turkey-induced hang-overs.

I think Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays (Groundhog day is right up there too…more on that another day). It is pretty low-key (easy for me to say since I just show up and eat) and is all about hanging out with family and having fun. It is still a simple holiday and an absolute joy!

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Something for your truffles

Chocolate truffles are God’s gift to humankind I think.  I am sort of picky about the chocolate I like.  For instance, I do not like any chocolate ice cream (really, I don’t like any ice cream), chocolate milk, or hot chocolate.  When I see truffles, though, I am willing to pass through fire (except that it would melt the chocolate) to get to them.  We have a local chocolatier family in Charleston, the Holls.  They own Holl’s Chocolates and make some really great truffles and chocolate goodness.  As much as I love their confections, I can’t really afford to eat their stuff as much as I would like.

Of course, that means it is time to improvise.  I have found a few recipes for homemade truffles that are really pretty amazing and simple to make.  I doubt I will be putting Holl’s out of business, but it surely satisfies my need to be cheap and well-chocolated.  Here is a recipe that we discovered in a flier sent out by Kroger. 

Peanut Butter Truffles

1 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

24 oz. melted chocolate chips (we used semi-sweet though milk chocolate would be good too)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup powdered sugar (optional - for rolling)

1/4 cup cocoa (optional - for rolling)

1/2 cup ground peanuts (optional - for rolling)

Heat Cream with peanut butter in a saucepan.  Whisk together as peanut butter melts.  Meanwhile, melt chocolate in a double boiler (or microwave as I did).  Combine peanut butter mixture with melted chocolate.  Add vanilla and place in refrigerator to set (recipe says 10 minutes, I say 3 hours).  Once set, scoop truffles with a melon baller (or use a spoon and ball them in your hand) and roll in powdered sugar, cocoa, peanuts (or nothing as we did).  Return to refrigerator and let them set again.  Keep chilled until you serve them.

I don’t really know how many truffles this recipe makes because I ate a ton of the mixture as it was setting.  I also made Shrek-sized truffles, much larger than a typical candy.  One is basically a meal in itself!

I only make truffles in November and December for some reason but we’ll make a bunch of them and add to our hibernation weight!  There are lots of other recipes out there and all are simiar and simple.  This is the time of year for experimenting!

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Chinese - making our fortune…cookies

I was reading the Y-2K Hippie blog last week and saw they had posted a recipe for fortune cookies.  I love Chinese food but am usually not brave enough to eat it at a Chinese restaurant.  That leaves us with typically not eating Chinese…but the homemade fortune cookies seemed like a really cool idea so we decided to make some and along with a Chinese entree.  I cut come strips of paper and asked the kids to write some fortunes.  Being young and inexperienced at it, they quickly ran out of wisdom to impart. 

I said, “just write anything, draw a picture…just fill out all the papers.”  Well, they made up in ink what they lacked in content.  Isaac drew all sorts of epic battles on his half-inch wide sheets.  Abigail wrote things like, “dog, dog, cat, cat, Dad, Dad, Mom, Mom”.  Oh, the fortunes we’re great fun.  They were certainly cryptic which made them feel more fortune-like.  Anyhow, we mixed up the recipe :

Fortune Cookies
1 cup Margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3 1/4 cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
I kneaded it some and then rolled it out thin (though not thin enough….it needs to be really thin).  We cut circles with our biscuit cutter, added the fortunes, then folded the circles in half, then in half again.  We baked at 425 for 10 min….and then 5 minutes more. 

Ok, the most important part was done. We also stir-fried some beef and broccoli with a seasoning packet we bought at the store. Based on the fact that we had to add soy sauce and some other stuff, I am pretty sure we just bought a packet of corn starch with Chinese lettering. As we cooked, Mohinder our cat bravely wandered into the kitchen. He made a lot of racket and never realized the fate he could have met.

Anyhow, Emily and I stirred and tended the stuff with bamboo cookware (just to be authentic - plus, it is all we have) and bowed to each other a lot (apologies to all my Asian friends for all of the terrible cliches and inaccuracies).

It was a lot of fun! Anyhow, it cooked up great along with some delicious fried rice. We plowed through every bit of what we cooked as well as a plate full of cupcakes the kids and their Momaw decorated. Our fortunes were interesting, but I am sure I found my real fortune in good food and good times!

Chocolate pumpkin goodness

Weight Watchers has all sorts of cool recipes, even if you don’t participate in their program.  One that we discovered is chocolate pumpkin muffins.  It’s pretty simple to make.  All you do is mix a chocolate cake mix with one can of pumpkin - nothing else is needed.  Spoon it into cupcake papers and bake it according to the directions on the cake mix. 

The stuff is high in fiber and good for you.  More importantly, it make a delicious, moist, chocolatey muffin that is like a party in your mouth when you eat it. 

The best part of the fun is when you serve them to people.  Don’t tell them what the ingredients until they have eaten it…they will never doubt you are a culinary genius again!

Roasted seeds

We planted sunflowers this year as an experiment but, as usual, I had no idea what to do with them come harvest time.  After some searching, we found how simple it is to roast sunflower seeds.  The National Sunflower Association provides a simple recipe  We added 2 quarts of water and 1/4 cup of salt to a regular sauce pan.  We then added enough seeds to make the pan full but not in danger of overflowing.  Once boiling, we covered it and lowered the heat and simmered it for 2 hours.  I stirred it every now and then just to make sure nothing was missing out on the salty fun!  Afterwards, I heated the oven to 300 deg F and spread the seeds on a few cookie sheets. 

The recipe says to bake for 30 minutes but it took much longer than that for ours to be dried and roasted.  Just keep an eye on it after 45 minutes of so.  We checked back every 15 or so minutes until they were done.  Don’t try to pile the seeds on too thick.  A single layer is necessary (don’t ask me how I know) for good roasting.  Once you finish the roast, let the seeds cool for half an hour before you pour them into a moisture and mouse proof container. 

Some folks separate the seeds from the shells when they eat them.  Personally, I just eat the whole thing.  I have no trouble with fiber…that’s all I’ll say.  Emily is a separator.  She doesn’t appear to be ready for the Majors yet as her seed spit is not yet up to par.  We have a bunch of seeds though so I suppose she will have more time to practice!

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Making Apple Cider - part 2

Yesterday I posted about how we found some apples and mashed them in preparation for pressing out the cider.  I’ll let the pictures do the talking mostly.  I’ll include some lessons learned at the end.

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We quickly learned that adding one apple at a time into the crusher is much better than dumping in 10 at a time.  We didn’t empty the bucket for every apple but we made sure one was crushed before adding another.  We also learned that you get a lot more cider if you crush the apples a lot.  We ran several batches of apples through the press with a “poor crush” and got much less cider than when we really crushed the apples.  We only got 2 gallons of cider so we ended up spending $6/gallon which is not cheap, though it is still of value to me since it is fresh and educational.  Anyhow, we’re getting another bag of apples and will crush all of them completely.  I expect at least twice as much cider.  I’ll make a good crusher for next year so this won’t be a problem then.  Some folks completely pulverize apples in a new, only-for-apple-cider dispose-all (like in your kitchen sink).  I didn’t want to spend the money but they do get a great yield per pound of apples.  I’ll likely make some sort of hand cranked grinder.

We learned that yellow jackets and honeybees can smell apples from thousands of miles away and that they can fly at supersonic speeds to get to them.  Cover stuff up whenever possible.

Get a piece of metal to put between the bottle jack and the top of the wooden presing frame.  I thought of it before hand and am glad I did.  The bottle jack would destroy the wood otherwise.  Also, have several blocks of wood around that will fit into the basket.  The bottle jack probably will not fully press all the cider out at its fullest extension without adding blocks at some point to lengthen its extension.

Listen for stress on the wood when you are pressing.  The jack puts the whole system under a lot of pressure and you could tear things up pretty good if you don’t pay attention.  Wood will tell you when it has had enough.  Listen to it!

If the cider pours over the top of the wooden plunger, release the pressure and let it go back down.  Press it again and you’ll get more cider out.  Also, cut a drain hole in your catch pan or empty it often so the cider doesn’t re-absorb into the pomace when you release pressure on the bottle jack.

When you are done pressing, keep pressure on the pomace a bit longer.  Cider will drain for a short while after you stop pressing.

I drilled holes in a single row around the lower side and the very bottom of the stainless steel pot.  I am not sure if more holes would be better or just make for a weaker pot.  I will not likely add more holes.

Run the cider through a coarse strainer.  It just looks better to me without chunks of apples floating in it.

We read that apples sometimes (often?) carry E. coli and that homemade cider should be drunk at one’s own risk or else be pasteurized.  I have read several things but apparently heating it to 160 deg for 1 minute is enough to kill all sorts of stuff.  I also know that heating cider too much ruins the pectin and sort of erases the “cider” taste/texture.  We haven’t gotten sick yet but will likely pasteurize and can most of the cider.  Officially, I’d recommend you do too.  If you choose not to, at the very least, refrigerate it so it doesn’t ferment too quickly (good for 5-10 days).  Of course, you can ferment cider and make adult beverages too.  I’ll leave that for you to research.

All-in-all, this was a good time and I’d recommend building one of these if you have access to apples.  The kids had a good time and the cider is hard to beat!  Holler at me if you want a parts list or more specific/detailed pictures.  I am happy to help!

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Making Apple Cider - part 1

Last week I posted about making a cider press.  We put it to the test this weekend.  We took a lot of pics and learned a lot of lessons so I decided to spread it into two posts.  In preparation for making cider,

I soaked the wooden plunger in mineral oil to seal the wood.  Mineral oil is food safe, and if wiped off after soaking, will not perform its usual purpose (look it up if you are unsure what it’s usually used for).  The plunger was made from 3-2×4s sandwiched between two pieces of plywood and it held together very nicely.

Anyhow, I was going to use our apples but the deer got a hold of many of them and I plan to make more jelly with those that remain. 

We happened to swing by the farmer’s market on Saturday and a man there had “deer apples”.  I asked him about them and he said they were apples from his usual bins that were either too small or slightly bruised.  We got to talking and he mentioned that when he used to make cider, he used the very same sort of apples.  I looked at them some and they were perfectly good apples so I decided to buy a bag - 53 pounds for $12.  To buy them as “regular apples”, I would have spent $89.57.  The added bonus is that they were a mix of varieties which makes the best cider (as compared to a single type of apple). 

The kids and I dumped a bunch of apples into a food-safe plastic bucket and mashed them with a new sledge hammer.  The mash smelled awesome which caught the attention of the yellow jackets also.  They weren’t a problem but I was surprised at how quickly they found our spot. 

Well, that’s about all there is to prepare for making apple cider. I’ll post more tomorrow about the actual pressing and taste testing!

Homemade Apple Cider Press

Sometimes I get hair-brained ideas to build something that just seems cool.  My Mom says my Grandpa was the same way.  We prefer to build something rather than buy it if possible because we know we can do it just a little better (my own pride added there, for a bit of good measure).  I had a friend when I lived in PA that had an apple orchard and a cider press.  I remember a time or two going to her place and gathering apples and pressing cider.  Like most things home-grown, freshly pressed cider is better than store bought any day. 

So, my hair-brained idea this month was to build a cider press.  I had some scraps left over from the shed and a bottle jack from another hair-brained idea so I built this press from the left-overs.  My only real expense was a stainless steel stock pot (from Big Lots - $10) and a roaster pan to catch the cider ($5 at BL).  By the way, to drill holes in stainless steel, make sure you have a good, hard, sharp drill bit.  

Anyhow, the idea is that the round wooden block(made by edge gluing 3-2×4s and then gluing 2 pieces of half inch plywood to the sides, then coated with mineral oil to seal it) will sit upon smashed apples and will be pressed down into the stainless pot with the bottle jack.  The cider will drain out through the holes in the pot and into the roaster pan.  I have seen some fancy apple smashers, but for this project, it was much faster and more macho to use a new sledge hammer.  I washed the new hammer and coated it in polyurethane. 

To smash apples, we’ll simply drop it on a bucket full of apples until they are pulverized.     While the press could crush whole apples, to make proper cider, the apples must be smashed prior to pressing.  Someday I may make a normal apple smasher but this will do for now.  I coated the frame of the press in polyurethane to protect it from the elements and to make for easier cleanup. 

We haven’t tried it yet as the poly is drying (poly is food-safe once properly cured by the way), but I expect we’ll have cider this weekend.  I’ll post again to let you know how it goes!�

Berry Pie

We picked a ton of blackberries earlier this summer and turned a lot of it into blackberry jam and blackberry syrup.  We froze approximately 1 ton of berries also. 

Fortunately, I love blackberry pie and my Mom has the World’s best recipe which I am sharing with you, my closest personal friends.  My Mom’s pies are the best in the world - bar none.  I cannot share all of her secrets but this one is one of my favorite pies she makes:

Berry Pie

2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)
5 cups fresh berries
2 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp butter

Heat oven to 425. Prepare (or buy) 10 inch pastry. Stir together sugar, flour and cinnamon. Mix together with berries. Turn berry mixture into pastry lined pan. Sprinkle with lemon juice and dot with butter. Cover with top crust which has slits cut in it. Seal and flute edges. Moisten fingers and dab on crust. Put butter dabs and sprinkle top with sugar. Bake 45-50 minutes until crust is brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust. Fight off everyone else in household to horde pie for self.

There are a few critical steps.  in particular, you must cut the initial of the pie-type into the top (in addition to the “slits”).  For example, the blackberry pie pictured here has a “BB” carved into the top-crust.  Initially, Emily was not going to follow protocol on this pie.  I informed her that without the intials, the pie should be dumped straight into the compost as it would have been rendered inedible. 

Luckily for me, she got things in order and followed procedure.  Anyhow, the sugar sprinkled on top is also critical.  These may seem like little things but they make the pie!
 

Emily tells me I have a “pie problem”.  I loved (and finished) the squash pie from a couple of days ago.  I have blackberry pie on the brain.  I chalk it all up to getting my winter weight on so I an be ready for hibernation!

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