Category Archives: Food

Chocolate pumpkin goodness

November 4, 2008FoodFoodwarren

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

October 23, 2008Food, GardenFood, Gardenwarren

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!

Making Apple Cider – part 2

October 14, 2008Family, Food, TinkeringFamily, Food, Tinkeringwarren

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.

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!

Making Apple Cider – part 1

October 13, 2008Family, Food, TinkeringFamily, Food, Tinkeringwarren

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 3-2x4s 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

October 9, 2008Food, TinkeringFood, Tinkeringwarren

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 3-2x4s 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

October 1, 2008FoodFoodwarren

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 initials, 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!

Apple Jelly

September 30, 2008FoodFoodwarren

There are about 5 apple trees between our place and our neighbors’ place. They pick a few of the apples but leave most for us. A friend pointed us to a recipe for making apple jelly from the peels and cores so we decided to dehydrate a bunch of apples and make apple jelly from what’s left. Apparently back when everyone canned, this was a well known process. The apple itself was used for apple butter or apple sauce while the peels and cores were made into jelly.

It turns out that the pectin (the stuff that makes jelly gel) is more concentrated in the peel and core. Anyhow, here is the recipe we use:

Apple peel and core jelly
peelings and core from 15-20 medium tart apples
6 cups water (for cooking cores and peels)
1 (1 3/4 ounce) box dry pectin
9 cups sugar

1. Cook peelings and cores in 6 cups water for 20-30 minutes.
2. Strain through prepared cheesecloth or jelly bag.
3. Add water as needed, to strained juice, to obtain 7 cups liquid.
4. Add pectin (whisk works well) and bring to a rapid boil.
5. Add sugar, boil hard for 1 minute.
6. Pour into sterile jars, leaving 1/8″ headspace; wipe jar rims, adjust lids and rings; water bath 5 minutes.

Besides the jelly, this peeler is a “must-have” if you plan to process a lot of apples. Some folks have trouble with them but if you properly adjust the cutting blade, you’ll peel and core apples all day long with no problem. Abigail, my 5 year old, helped peel a bunch of the apples were used for this run.

Apple jelly is the only type of jelly that Emily will eat. We made enough from 30-40 apples to last her all year!

Cushaw Pie

September 29, 2008FoodFoodwarren

I wrote a post awhile back about our huge cushaw squash we grew this year. I had no idea what to do with cushaw squash but they seemed cool and odd and interesting so I decided to grow a bunch of it. I searched around a few places and read at least 7 minutes online and discovered that cushaw squash can be used in place of pumpkin, butternut squash, hubbard squash or sweet potatoes. Cool! I love pumpkin pie so we decided to make some cushaw pumpkin pie.

Of course, I have never made a pumpkin pie from scratch either so we had some figgerin’ to do. After another 7 minutes of reading, we discovered how to proceed. We cut the squash in half and deseeded it (the seeds are awesome baked too btw! We baked 30 minutes at 350 in a cooking sprayed pan). I lined two baking dishes with foil and sprayed the foil and the exposed squash halves with cooking spray. I baked the squash face down on the foil at 350 for 1 hr 15 minutes (of course, the size of the squash will determine the time. I did a small one first). Once baked, we scooped out the flesh with an ice cream scooper and used in it place of canned pumpkin in our recipe.

By the way, here is our recipe:

Pumpkin/Cushaw Pie

4 eggs
4 cups pumpkin/cushaw (or 1 large can)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
2 3/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or mix your own…see online)
2 large cans evaporated milk

Combine all ingredients and pour into prepared pie crusts. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes. Then reduce heat and bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Makes 2 pies.

We followed the recipe pretty much. Our squash was pretty liquid so we only added 1 can of the evaporated milk. If you want a super orange pie like pumpkin, you’ll need to add coloring. Ours was naturally a greenish, yellowish, orangey color which suited us fine.

The pie was awesome and simple to make. Its flavor was delicious and the lighter color made it really pleasant to look at.

Of course, we did a taste test and our two judges gave two thumbs up…clearly a winner!

We’ll probably bake the rest of our squash and freeze the pureed flesh for future pies. I saved some seeds too so I excpet we’ll plant more cushaw next year!

Hot peppers

September 5, 2008Canning, Food, GardenCanning, Food, Gardenwarren

I like hot peppers of various types. Over time, it seems that my taste buds have become less sensitive. I remember when jalapenos used to send me over the edge. Not so much any more. As a bit of a pepper junkie, I decided that we need tons of peppers to satisfy my cravings. In the excitement of late winter/early spring seed-starting, we planted hot peppers in sufficient number to feed my entire family for a year. We planted jalapenos, hungarian wax, cayennes and habaneros.

I have been drying pepper rings, I have canned peppers by themselves, I have thrown peppers in salsa, pickles, spaghetti sauce, and on everything I eat fresh. Still, we have millions and millions of peppers. I had to resort to something extreme and strange to use up some jalapenos.

I made jalapeno jelly last night. I am not exactly sure how you eat this though I have heard it is good on anything with creamcheese. The recipe is pretty simple so it’s worth a try:

Jalapeno Jelly
3/4 pound stemmed & de-seeded jalapenos
2 cups vinegar
6 cups sugar
2 pouches of liquid pectin
I de-seeded the peppers for the first batch of jelly but got tired of that so I ground seends and all for the second batch. Anyhow, puree the jalapenos until they are nearly unrecognizable. Boil them with sugar and vinegar for 10 minutes. Make sure you stir constantly and have a big enough pan as this mixture swells a lot and really smokes-and-smells-up-your-house-and-your-wife-has-to-scurry-around-to-deactivate-the-smoke-alarms-since-the-kids-are-sleeping when (I mean if) you boil it over (so I’ve heard). After the 10 minute boil, remove from heat, add pectin and boil again for 1 minute. Powdered pectin does not work very well so do yourself a favor and just use liquid pectin. Ladle into half-pint jars and water bath can for 10 minutes. You can add green or red food coloring, by the way. I prefer not to add coloring but you can color it if you’d like.

Some Recipes

August 20, 2008Canning, FoodCanning, Foodwarren

We’ve found a few recipes that we like a lot when we can stuff. A few folks have asked for our the recipes we use so here they are…I credit the sources I know while others remain anonymous.

We can most stuff in pints because that suits our needs but I suppose you could adapt as needed. These recipes work for us but you use them at your own risk. Improper recipes, canning methods, etc can be dangerous. More likely, with a little care, it will be a good time!

Salsa – from my friend Erin

8 cups tomatoes, peeled, chopped, drained
2 1/2 cups onion, diced medium
1/8 cup canning salt
1 1/2 cups green peppers, small chunks
1 cup jalapeno diced fine
3+ habaneros (to taste…more is better!)
6 cloves minced garlic
2+ tsp pepper
1 small can of tomato paste
1/3 cup vinegar
2 tsp cumin
1/3 cup (or less) sugar
sometimes we add a bunch of cayenne pepper diced fine too…

Mix and boil 10 minutes, put into pint jars and seal in water bath for 10 minutes
Makes 5 pints

Pizza Sauce
12 cups chopped ripe tomatoes (Roma tomatoes give best results)
1 cup chopped onion
3 cloves minced garlic
3 tbsp fresh chopped oregano or 1 1/2 tsp dried
1 tbsp fresh basil or 1/2 tsp dried
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt

Combine tomatoes, onion, garlic, oregano, sugar, pepper and bay leaves and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat and boil gently uncovered until very thick (about 75 minutes), stirring frequently. Add lemon juice and salt, stir and ladle into 1/2 pint jars. Water bath can for 35 minutes. Makes 5 half-pints

Zucchini Pickles – Achorn Farm
2 lbs. sliced zucchini
2 medium onions
1/4 cup salt
2 cups white vinegar
1-2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoons mustard seed
Place zucchini in a large pot. Add salt and enough water, cover and let stand for 2 hours then drain well. Combine remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Have glass jars prepared filled with the zucchini and onion then fill jars with boiled liquid, seal jars and boil jars for 10 minutes.

We’ve made this with yellow summer squash too…I suppose anything that will take up the flavors would work!

Hot Pepper Spread
28 or so hot peppers
8 regular peppers
1 qrt mustard
1 qrt sugar
1 cup vinegar

Chop peppers, mix ingredients and cook about 20 minutes. Be sure and spray pan with cooking spray as it sticks very easily. Have ready 1/2 cup corn starch. Add just enough water to corn starch to make a thin paste, then add to the pepper mix…let it thicken. Water bath can for 10 minutes in pint jars

My Home Among The Hills

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