Category Archives: Food

What is this?

August 13, 2010Food, Garden, NatureCompost, Gardenwarren

We have a compost pile in our back yard. We throw all sorts of stuff in there, but I always know what it is when it goes in. This year we had volunteer tomatoes, catnip and a mystery squash come up. I have absolutely no idea what kind of squash this is but I know we have never thrown anything like that in the pile. We have thrown pumpkin and zucchini and cushaw and yellow squash parts into the pile but none of those particularly look like this fruit.

For a bit, I considered the possibility that someone was playing a compost pile prank…but who on Earth would do that? Too bad I don’t have any composting friends though…could be interesting.

Anyhow, back to the subject at hand…does anyone have any idea what this is? Maybe a mutation of some hybrid pumpkin or something? Ginny chomped on one, but quickly left it alone (and you know, my dumb dog eats poop so that ‘s saying something!)

We have found other weird stuff in the course of gardening…

It’s purple…and huge!

July 7, 2010Food, Nature, WVFood, Nature, WVwarren

So…ahem…the blackberries are in full glory right now and we found a newish place to pick and this year’s berries are as big as I have ever seen (including those pretend ones you can get at the grocery store). We have picked several “messes” of berries and I have enjoyed 2 blackberry pies that my delightful wife has prepared. She made some good ones 2 years ago, but this year, the berries are purple and huge and AWESOME!

Of course, we live in West-by-God-Virginia where mountain goat commandos go to train. Our new location is significantly more hilly than previous years so picking in our new secret spot has been interesting and a little prickly. I have to wear soccer cleats so I don’t slide down the hill through the briers. I really wish I was more successful at that. Anyhow, because of the danger (yes, the hills are steep enough that it is dangerous), the kids are not picking this year. They mostly run around and look for new spots for me to scale. I think they have grown up a good bunch though. They still fight like mountain goat commandos and mountain lions, but not while we are working on berries…and that’s worth a big hee-haw from me!

Aside from the hills being interesting, our new spot is farther into the woods and we have been assaulted by a few ticks this year. Ticks suck. I think I hate ticks and roaches more than about anything…not sure why because bugs in general don’t offend me, but I am personally offended when I see either of my nemeses. Alas, I shall push on in pursuit of the berry. The blackberry pie calls to me…I must heed its call!

(not) Strawberry wine…(not) 17

May 28, 2010FoodFoodwarren

Last Sunday we picked a powerful lot of strawberries and canned most of it as jam. We were all jammed up (at 53 or so jars which should last us a year) and still had plenty of berries left. My beautiful and loving wife finally heard my subtle hints that a strawberry pie was in order. Though subtle, my wife understood my need for pie. She just knows what I need…because I was subtle after all!

We looked around at various recipes, some from family and some from cookbooks, but we (meaning she) decided upon one from the Interwebs.

Anyhow, Deana Carter sings about strawberry wine and being 17 and all that stuff. I am not too old but I guess I am not 17 either…I’ll take strawberry pie and 38 any day!

Still, this is a cool song:

Anyhow, so here is the recipe:

Eight cups of strawberries
One and a half cup sugar
One and a half cup water
Six tablespoons of Cornstarch
Half teaspoon salt
A baked Crust

Take a bowl and put two cups of strawberry in it. Crush the strawberries completely and add one and a half cups of water to them. Pour this mixture in a pan and bring to boil. Let the mixture simmer for about five minutes. Next, strain out the juice from the mixture and add about one cup of water to it. Add one and a half cup sugar, six tablespoons of cornstarch and half a teaspoon of salt to the pan. Pour the strawberry juice strained earlier in the pan too. Bring the mixture to boil, let it simmer till it becomes thick. Remove the mixture from the stove and let it cool. Take a baked crust and put some whole strawberries in it. Pour the mixture prepared earlier on it. Refrigerate for a few hours and serve the strawberries chilled.

(from here)

Lots of strawberries…some on the floor

May 24, 2010Canning, Food, WVCanning, Food, Strawberries, WVwarren

We went to a you-pick strawberry place in Cottageville, WV on Sunday. It’s about 35 minutes away (though for the kids, it was a 2 year long trip) and was a nice Sunday drive. We got to Hartley Farms and found a huge field of the biggest and best strawberries I have ever seen (though I didn’t know that part right away). The proprietor took us over to a row and told us to, “have at it”. I fully expected to have to search and dig and really work to find a few scrawny strawberries. We picked 2 years ago at a place closer to home and it was pitiful. Hartley Farms was $0.55 per pound cheaper and there were hundreds of big fat berries everywhere!

We filled 7 ice cream buckets to overflowing and weighed in. All told, we had about 32 pounds of berries! The best part is that the kids even helped pick! We jumped in the car hoping to get home before Isaac ate every last strawberry. Though he made a run at eating 32#, we did make it home with a few berries. All four of us started making jam though the kids were tired after a batch each. They wanted to take a jar to their teachers that they had made.

Emily and I continued on into the night making jar after jar of jam. Isaac in particular like strawberry jam so the 43 half-pints we made may last us the year (and may not). We still have somewhere around 8 pounds of berries to go…not sure if that will be jam or something else yet. We have a fair bit of cleanup yet to do. Of course, it is impossible to make jam without making stuff sticky and our floor is sticky indeed. I have mopped it several times but my socks still leave little fuzzy footprints when I walk in the kitchen.

And by the way, when you make strawberry jam, make sure you use a huge pot to boil your mixture. We forgot since last time and we boiled a pot of sticky strawberry syrup over the edge of the sauce pan we had and onto the hot burner on our (wretched) glass-topped stove. You guessed it…it caramelized and tried to burst into flame. We never saw fire, but our house was full of smoke before I could get the mess cleaned up…so, word to the wise, use a huge pot to boil the mix! Luckily we had a better pot so subsequent batches were fine!

05_24_2010 018 — It was fun to clean up too!

The “Deuce” is not on the menu

March 26, 2010Food, Fun, NatureDog, Ginny, Grosswarren

I mentioned last week that we got a new dog from the shelter. She is a super sweet dog now that we got her all fixed up. You see, she came to us from the shelter with parvovirus, fleas, ear mites, and maybe kennel cough (she has that now but it may have come from the vet). So, first thing, I am pretty disgusted that the Kanawha/Charleston shelter doesn’t deal with it’s ickiness better. A few months ago, they had to put down masses of animals because of disease. I have talked to several people who got dogs from there that had parvo and died. Apparently it is a common problem for that shelter, but I think it is unacceptable. I get that it’s a big and busy shelter, but gee whiz, it is what they are all about. Parvo kills a lot of dogs, especially puppies, so not treating/testing/quarantining animals effectively makes them a high-rate kill-shelter depending on how you look at it.

Ok, sorry, I have strayed a bit. So, Ginny came to us and within 2 days she was obviously very sick. Many hundred dollars later and we are fortunate to have a mostly healthy dog. But I wonder…you see, she has taken to eating poop from the yard. We have some less-than-prize neighbors who let their dogs run and poop all over the neighborhood, but that only provides Ginny access, not inclination. We walk Ginny on a leash every day and she has started searching out and eating other dogs’ poop! Did something happen to her brain when she was sick? I am not positive about this, but I suspect that poop doesn’t taste all that good (especially compared to the food she seems to like) so I cannot come up with an explanation why my sweet Ginny would eat every pile of deuce she comes upon. “It’s number 2 Ginny…run away!” Nope, not my dog.

03_26_2010 002 — She's sitting on Emily's back as she tries to sleep

It’s been a long time since I had a dog so maybe this is the new trendy thing that all of the young and hip dogs are doing nowadays…surely not. No, I can definitely say that eating poop is a bad thing. Come to think of it, I may have a new alternative saying for my kids. No longer will I have to say, “Would you jump off a bridge if all of your friends were doing it?” I can now say, “Would you eat poop just because all of your friends are doing it?”

Maybe I am being over-reactive. She’s a puppy and I know puppies are crazy. I hate to say it, but I would prefer she would chew on my shoes rather than the biohazards in the yard. I guess we will have to work on her manners some. The first trick I am going to teach her is “shake”. You see, I can shake her paw without hesitation, but she is definitely not getting kisses from me!

Coffee will do…I guess

February 17, 2010Adventure, Family, Food, FunCaffeine, Coffeewarren

Well, Lent is upon us. I still have my shirt after yesterday so I figure it will be a pretty easy going Lenten season. I don’t typically give up stuff for it but my family does. You may remember last year that Isaac gave up farting on the cat and Abigail gave up wearing Mom’s sparkly eye shadow. This year Abigail is giving up chocolate…typical girl. Isaac wanted to give up school but I told him that was not an option. After much debate, he finally decided to give up graham crackers…way to go trooper!

Anyhow, I have had an ongoing struggle against caffeine which I won’t attempt to beat this spring. I think a big part of it is a correlated addiction to pop. So, this year for Lent, I am going to buck my typical lack of Lenten cheer and actually give up pop. So, without pop, I still need a caffeine delivery system (I’ll work on that addiction another time). The only other alternative to pop is coffee so I have been practicing drinking coffee and actually pretty well like it now. It’s strange that I had to convince myself that I like something but I suppose lots of things in life are that way.

So, for special occasions like delays from school, we stop by the local convenience store and grab a couple of cappuccinos (Isaac likes them a lot) so we can be fully caffeinated as we greet the day! Convenience store cappuccinos aren’t as flashy as “real” cappuccinos but at $1.29, I don’t really care…plus, they are just plain tasty…forget the purism!

At work I don’t (yet) have a cappuccino machine so I stick with the regular style coffee…strong, bitter and black…like my heart. Most regular men would be satisfied with a regular-sized coffee cup, but, because of my caffeine disability, I prefer to drink from a barrel. My barrel of coffee drains about half of the pot at a time. I believe coffee will do…

Not only is WV wild and wonderful, but Isaac and I are as well when we are fully caffeinated!

Blossom Deli saved my life

January 19, 2010Awesome, Family, Food, Fun, WVAwesome, Family, Food, Restaurant, WVwarren

We started indoor soccer at the YMCA this weekend and the kids’ games were spaced just perfectly to mess with the entire day. Abigail played at noon so, by 1, we were pretty hungry. We knew better than to eat before the game as the floor needed to stay puke-free. Anyhow, by 1, we were all pretty hungry so we headed downtown to one of our favorite restaurants. It’s a local downtown place and lately has been somewhat flaky about when it is open. We usually hit it on evenings and weekends though it really caters to the weekday lunchtime crowd. That’s right…you guessed it…they were closed.

Anyhow, we were pretty bummed and more urgently, pretty dang hungry. We stood in the middle of the street with vacant zombie-like looks on our faces, wondering how we would survive…what we would do to get food…whether we could bear to go on. Fortunately, my lovely wife, with cat-like reflexes and an eagle eye, spotted the Blossom Deli a few hundred feet away. If only we could make it the 100 steps to their door-step, surely they would have something they could give us to avert disaster.

Somehow we made it to Blossom Deli alive. It’s all a little fuzzy, but I sort of think ants must have picked us up and were carrying us to their nest when some heroic patrons rescued us and drug us inside…but I have no evidence of that. Anyhow, we got inside and…you’ll never believe this….they sell food at the Blossom Deli!

We were seated right away (I think they noticed our pitiful blank faces and feared a zombie attack) and quickly set us up with liquid salvation from the fountain. Yes, you heard me right…they have a real soda fountain at Blossom! I wasn’t going to push my luck, but I bet they have a real live soda-jerk somewhere too. Anyhow, the whole place seems right out of the 1950s. Inside the place is art-deco floor to ceiling. A lowered grill sits adjacent to the bar seating and simple tables (like your grandma used to have in her kitchen) were everywhere. Ours even had a nice, easy rock to it. I think the only thing missing was a poodle skirt or two.

So, the less creative members of my family ordered hotdogs (all beef as Isaac likes to remind me) while I ordered my usual (see, I am the creative one!). Whenever I go to a restaurant and I see a Reuben on the menu, I order it. I am not sure why but I MUST order it if I see it. So I ordered my “usual” and a cherry Coke. When the waitress (I bet she wants to be called that rather than a server…it’s 1950 afterall) delivered our drinks, I initially wondered how she would tell my cherry Coke from the others’ vanilla Cokes. Silly me, it was easy…she just sipped from each straw and knew right away! Not really. No, she simply looked at the color. My cherry Coke was definitely red…and I think that red was either the fantastic cherry flavoring or the color of awesome!

Isaac and I quickly drained our glasses (he declared his vanilla Coke to be the best he’d ever had and he’s had a bunch) and asked for another. When it finally became clear that we weren’t weren’t about to be hauled off by a creepy guy in black carrying a scythe, I took a look around. The mirrored walls make the inside look much larger than it really is. It’s really quite comfortable but cozy inside. The waitresses gave great attention to everyone and I could see as the cooks prepared my meal…fresh! Blossom Deli offers a daily blue plate special which I will definitely have the next time we go there.

I am sure we will go to our other “favorite place” again when we see it open sometime…but we now have a new go-to local restaurant in Charleston, WV! Blossom Deli, not only did you possibly save my life, you nourished my soul (well…at least my stomach!)

Mushrooms aplenty

October 20, 2009Food, Garden, NatureMushroomswarren

I was pretty excited in July when my shiitake mushrooms first started fruiting. I inoculated several white oak logs (they hold their bark longer than other types) in August of 2008 with shiitake spores. It took a full year of my ignoring the logs before they started fruiting so, after all that hard work, I was thrilled to see the logs sprouting some of my favorite fungi. I was satisfied.

Just last week, as I was…um…doing nothing, I happened to walk around behind the shed where I keep the shiitake logs. I didn’t expect much…afterall, I had a great harvest in July…and I was satisfied. To my amazement, my friends, the old white oak logs and the shiitake mycelia had joined to give me a wonderful Fall gift!

I know it is not ideal to eat shiitake mushrooms when they are as big as my head, but I had so many huge mushrooms that I couldn’t even see my logs (which are 4 feet long and 6 inches in diameter)(ok…so maybe I am exaggerating…there weren’t that many mushrooms, but you get my point)! I began to harvest the beauties and they felt excellent to the touch….like a soft, tender cut of meat I guess (ok…so I know that’s weird but it’s hard to describe).

Anyhow, I did some talking to a friend and she said that mushrooms often delight their collectors when the weather changes, particularly when there is a lot of rain to go with it. That’s precisely what happened this Fall. They are so easy to grow and so wonderful to eat! My mushrooms…they always delight me!

So, do you like mushrooms? Do you grow mushrooms? Do you ever feel like a mushroom?

Vodka…sweet!

October 15, 2009Food, GardenFood, Gardenwarren

Today, I wrote an article for Not Dabbling in Normal about the benefits of growing stevia, a plant that naturally produces very sweet leaves. One can chew on the leaves and get a pretty good rush of sweet, but it’s not terribly convenient or attractive to grind up leaves when cooking.

I decided to make a stevia extract which is a liquid into which the sweetness of the stevia leaves has been concentrated. I saw a variety of articles and recipes on how to make stevia extract, but two in particular caught my attention. Each required a liquid to make the extract. One used water, the other used vodka. I decided to try both varieties and see which I liked better.

I am not much of a drinker. In fact, I am pretty much not a drinker at all except for the occasional medicinal shot of brandy when I have a sore throat. Aside from that, I don’t know the difference between varieties of alcohol. I walked into the local drug store and headed for the liquor aisle where a huge array of vodkas greeted me. I didn’t know one brand from another so I decided the surest way to pick a good vodka must be by the aesthetics of the label. I looked and looked and debated, but I finally settled on Gordon’s vodka. See? Doesn’t it just look pretty. The simple light blue label just seemed pleasant to me…it must be good stuff.

So I got the vodka and headed home. To make both the vodka and the water-based extracts, I coarsely cut stevia leaves until I had 2 cups for each recipe. I don’t really know what a coarse cutting is, so I decided to use coarse language as I sliced the leaves into chunks. I can’t really see how it will help make things sweeter, but if the recipe calls for cussing, I figured I better oblige (actually, I called in Emily…she’s the pro).

(Research…purely for research)

So, into a mason jar I added 2 cups of leaves and one cup of my liquid – vodka in one jar, water in another. I covered each and will let it stand for 24 hours gently shaking the jars a few times during that period. I started the brew last night and the liquid has turned green by this morning. The vodka-based extract is greener so I suppose it has drawn more of the essence of the stevia out. At the end of the soaking period, I will filter each through a coffee filter and then simmer the extract over medium-low heat for 30 minutes to concentrate the extract and remove the alcohol. It’s best to store the liquid in a jar in the refrigerator for future use.

Everywhere I have read says that I will need to dilute the extract with water before using in a recipe. I suppose the sweetness of the mix is very powerful. I’ll know more about that soon! We’ll use these extracts in cooking and I’ll report back later.

So, what do you think? Have you heard of or used stevia (or truvia, the store variety)? Did I buy a descent variety of vodka?

Cider Press Plans

September 17, 2009Food, TinkeringFood, Tinkeringwarren

Since I made my cider press last year, I have had numerous people ask me for the plans I used to build it. I couldn’t find any plans either so I sort of just starting cutting and drilling and painting. I figured that when it finally looked like a cider press, it would be done.

I suppose I did sort of congolomerate the ideas of plenty of folks and I added a few of my own so I can’t take all of the credit. My press is made soley of pine lumber. Hardwood is probably better but it costs more of course. I do sort of wish I would have had some plans when I was starting though so I will provide a few measurements that might help you build your own…

Click the image above to see the cider flowing. (Click here for a quicktime version)

By the way…you can see some of our first cider of 2009 over at Not Dabbling in Normal today.

Anyhow, here is my homemade cider press:

The length between the red and blue squares is 3 feet.
Between the red and green is 3 1/2 feet.
Between the green and brown is 1 foot.
I just added the yellow square because I thought it looked nice

The uprights are 2×4 pine and everything horizontal is 2×6 pine.

Hopefully these additional shots will help it all make more sense as well…

My Home Among The Hills

Life in WV!