Cooking / Baking

Fall Foraging

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

DSC_0016 copyI enjoy foraging for forgotten food, and university campuses often offer good pickings. Development marginalises former research and demonstration plots. The plants are abandoned in some corner between buildings, and are forgotten by everyone but the groundsmen who have to mow around them.

Apples used to be a huge crop around Lincoln (until growing houses became more profitable), and the university has done research on apples for many decades. The “Orchard Carpark” is presumably the former site of the University orchard, but only one lone apple tree remains on the edge of the pavement. No one officially picks its fruit, but passersby avail themselves. This year, the tree is groaning under a heavy crop.

This morning, when I stopped by, the tree was well-picked on the lower branches, but there was plenty of fruit on the ground, and my daughter climbed into the tree to reach a few higher up. We came home with a bag full of tart, firm apples. Perfect for pie.

Mommy’s Magical Crackers

/ Robinne Weiss / 6 Comments

DSC_0007 copyNamed by my kids years ago, these are so magical, they start disappearing almost before they leave the oven. It’s a good thing they’re easy to make—easy enough for every day, good enough to include on a fancy cheese and cracker tray at a party.

1 c. all-purpose flour

1 c. wholemeal flour

¼ c. sesame seeds

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1/3 c. vegetable oil

2/3 c. warm water

Mix flours, sesame seeds, soda and salt. Stir in water and oil, stirring just until the dough comes together in a mass. Divide dough into halves. Roll out each half very thin (1-2 mm) on a lightly greased baking sheet. Cut into cracker shapes, and bake at 190°C (375°F) for about 15 minutes, until they are brown and crispy. Check regularly toward the end of baking and remove any crackers that have browned before they burn.

Eat quickly before they vanish!

* Replace the wholemeal flour with rye meal (or a coarse ground rye flour) for a lovely variation.

Pumpkin seeds

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DSC_0013Pumpkin seeds are another of those foods (like onions) that I never really appreciated before I grew them myself. It’s not that I didn’t like them, but they weren’t something I paid much attention to.

I still don’t go out of my way to buy them, but I very much enjoy our harvest of pepitas, roasted with salt and a bit of curry powder. They’re almost as hard to stop eating as peanuts (and just as good with a beer)!

Recipe Reminiscing

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DSC_0001 copyBren’s Quince Paste

Vilma’s Marinated Eggplant

Mrs. Cassel’s Mint Tea

 

Recipes linked to a person. Old friends, neighbours, family members.

 

Susan’s Tofu Meatballs

Ray’s Potato Bread

Mom’s Cheesecake

 

Each recipe is a story, a memory.

 

Virginia’s Chocolate Shortbread Hearts (made for our wedding party)

Lisa’s Orange Biscotti (first eaten at her house while her husband, Pete, taught me to knit)

Granny’s Tabouli (granddaughter Rhian, one of my housemates at Uni, collected bras)

 

Other recipes evoke a place.

DSC_0004 copy

Donuts (Camp Tamarack, where we made them with children during cultural history lessons)

Rosti a la Grenada (Grenada, eaten while visiting friend Ginger during her Peace Corps service)

Ricotta (Panama, made with Klim powdered milk; it was the height of luxury in our mud house life)

 

You could read our life story, know our friends, just by flipping through our recipe book. As good as a photo album; every turn of the page is another image, another taste of from our past.

Celebration breads

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DSC_0007 copyI know it’s not fashionable to appreciate gluten these days, but our household thrives on bread. No holiday celebration is complete without at least one bread. Holidays are an excuse to bake something different, something extravagant. Today rated two special breads. I made hot cross buns for breakfast, and Ian made a challah the size of a toddler, which we enjoyed with home made goat cheddar for lunch.

DSC_0002 copyEnjoy your day, whether you are celebrating Easter, Passover, or just a beautiful day in April! May it be full of bread!

Easter Egg Engineering

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First, they dyed the eggs.

First, they dyed the eggs.

The annual glut of hard-boiled eggs is about to begin. The children dyed eggs this afternoon. This year I challenged them to create Lego machines that would allow them to paint designs on their eggs. They took on the challenge with enthusiasm! One created a remote-controlled machine to rotate the egg. The other created a machine that rotated the egg, and moved it up and down, and held a cotton swab soaked in food colouring, all at the same time. The results were pretty impressive.

The remote controlled model.

The remote controlled model.

The deluxe model, complete with cotton swab holder.

The deluxe model, complete with cotton swab holder.

Peanut Butter Eggs

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With older kids, now, I didn't even need to do anything--they did it all (except the dishes).

With older kids, now, I didn’t even need to do anything–they did it all (except the dishes).

I don’t go in much for Easter candy. Waxy chocolate rabbits and creepy marshmallow chicks? Ick! I do, however, have in inordinate fondness for homemade peanut butter and coconut eggs, made with good dark chocolate. Years ago, one of the secretaries where I worked made them and sold them every Easter, and I had no resistance whatsoever. They were a daily treat for me until her supply was gone.

Thankfully, I don’t have that temptation any more, but last week my son asked me to pick up smooth peanut butter and chocolate for peanut butter eggs. What could I do, but comply?DSC_0008 copy

 

The Daily Bread

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My bread can't compare to these beauties of Ian's.

My bread can’t compare to these beauties of Ian’s.

Last night when I put another four quarts of peaches in the freezer (still working through those 40 kg!), I noticed we were nearly out of bread.

Ian is under a crunch of deadlines at work and is unlikely to take the Easter weekend off, and if he does, he has a huge DIY project underway at home, so there is no way he will be making bread this weekend. That leaves it up to me to fill the gap.

I’m always a bit nervous baking bread. I make a fine loaf, but I don’t have the practiced skill Ian has at bread. Imagine drawing a picture for Picasso—that’s a bit what it’s like to bake bread for Ian.

He is kind, and says nice things about my bread, gives me advice. We both know that putting up with my bread occasionally is part of what it means to live in our family. Just as sometimes he does the milking for me, we both take responsibility for just doing what needs to be done. We’ve tried to teach this to our children—the skill of walking into a situation, seeing what needs doing, and doing it without being asked. It is one of those skills that makes a person stand out as an employee, a roommate, a co-worker, and a friend. People who have this skill are the ones who walk into the kitchen at a party, see the pile of dishes in the sink, and wash them. They are the co-workers who empty the staff room dishwasher, the children who clear their plates from the dinner table, the students who tidy the classroom bookshelves as they look for something to read. We love these people. They make everyone’s lives better.

So I know it is okay that my loaves are not as beautiful or well-made as Ian’s. Part of being on this family team is sharing responsibilities, accepting help, and recognizing that we all need to pitch in and do what we can to keep the whole family operation running smoothly.

Step Away From The Kitchen!

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There's more to life than the kitchen!

There’s more to life than the kitchen!

“I don’t know what is more terrifying…that your blog makes you seem like this insane woman who spends all day in the kitchen, or that you really are an insane woman who spends all day in the kitchen.”

I just want to make it perfectly clear that I do not spend all day in the kitchen. I may be insane (indeed, I’m pretty sure I am), but not in that way.

For example, I spent all afternoon Saturday in the garden, and Sunday morning I cleaned the house and payed a social call to the dentist. I just finished editing a resource management plan for a client, and soon I will move on to the main task of each week day, writing and selling (well, trying to sell) my books (which have nothing to do with food, though sometimes characters do eat).

Have I spent an inordinate amount of time in the kitchen lately? Yes, at least on weekends. But it is harvest time, and extra work now means I can spend winter evenings sewing, or curled up with a book. I intend to enjoy every one of the frozen and canned meals I’ve been working so hard on lately, and I will take full advantage of the extra hours I gain later, spending them out of the kitchen.

Oh boy! Oh boy!

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DSC_0005 copyEvery crack in my hands is stained purple. My fingernails have turned a dark grey. The floor, walls and cupboards in the kitchen are splattered magenta. There is a sticky splotch on my big toe that looks remarkably like a terrible wound.

These are the inevitable result of working my way through the better part of 40 kg of black boy peaches.

The dentist called mid-week to say he had a box of peaches for me; I should call in at the office and pick them up (this is the gardening dentist I mentioned in a previous blog). Along with the 10 kg box of peaches was an invitation to coffee (and more peaches) this morning. We came home with a veritable carload of peaches (more than 30 kg, though I haven’t weighed them all). The first 10 kg became 10 pints of spiced peach butter. Then I filled up my remaining quart jars (14) with canned peaches, and made enough peach crisp for a generous dessert tonight and breakfast tomorrow morning.

There are still about 12 kg left. I’m out of jars, out of freezer boxes. Hmm…I suppose that means we’ll have to eat peach pie, peach cobbler, peach shortbread, peach muffins, peaches on granola, and just plain old peaches all week. Darn. 🙂