Saturday, May 18, 2013

Instead of cleaning the house today...

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Instead of housecleaning...

I will:

1. draft a family manisfesto and share with the family via email to have them edit/revise.

First draft:


In this house we are real.
We make mistakes. We say I’m sorry.
We give second chances.
We have FUN. We love the woods.
We snuggle.
We say good job.
We DANCE while doing dishes.
We attempt patience. We ask for big favors.
We LOVE.

2. paint.

Pulling out canvases, paper, pastels, oils, brushes. Setting up easel, palette, paint thinner. Sharpening my visual senses and pastel pencils. Focusing on trying to see beauty in a mad world. Breathing. Putting brush on canvas and not just thinking about it.

3. one practical project.

choices:
a. paint the shutters in the den some kind of Indonesian blue
b. cut out the pieces of the quilt I've had the fabric for
c. rake and weed the vegetable garden and erect the fence
d. bake a chocolate cake
e. making strawberry jam



Thursday, March 07, 2013

Maple Syrup Making

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Started a pan of sap a little late today - at 1130am. I thought that with a good sap run we should be able to make a gallon or so.

Monday, March 04, 2013

3 gallons maple syrup!

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Lots of work this weekend with a big payoff!


Sunday, March 03, 2013

Lemon Maple Cookies

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Lemon Maple cookies – 
1 ½ c flour
1tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp of maple flavoring (King Arthur Flour's website has it)
8 T butter (1 stick)

1/2c maple sugar
1/4c sugar
1 egg
1T Lemon zest


1.      Heat oven to 350F and grease 2 cookie sheets.
2.      Whisk together in a bowl – flour, baking soda, salt. 
3.      Cream the maple flavoring and butter in a mixer, then add sugars. Combine well, then add 1 egg.
4.      Stop the mixer and blend in the flour combination.
5.      Blend in the lemon zest.
6.      Separate into 24 pieces and place on parchment lined pans, or greased cookie sheets.
7.      Bake for 8-10 minutes at 350F, remove from oven and allow to cool slightly, then put on cookie racks to cool.

Saturday, March 02, 2013

Tomato Red Pepper Soup on a chilly day

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Making maple syrup calls for standing outside for long periods of time. It's not as cold here in Vermont this March as it is was during the coldest days of January, but it's still hovering only just above freezing. Here's a soup I love to make for days like today.

Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Soup
3lbs of plum tomatoes
3 peeled garlic cloves
1 sweet onion
3 red peppers
1 T olive oil
kosher salt
1 small can tomato paste
4 cups of vegetable stock
1/2 c grate asiago cheese

Chop garlic - and cut tomatoes, onions, and peppers into wedges. Remove tomato and pepper seeds. Toss with olive oil and salt, and spread on a cooking sheet. Roast at 350F for 35-40 minutes.

Add roasted veggies to a soup pot with vegetable stock. Add tomato paste and heat over medium heat for 20 minutes. Blend with an immersion blender. Top each serving with a generous spoonful of grated asiago cheese.



Dinner Tonight

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Tonight some folks will come by for a cup of homebrewed beer, or tea made with boiling sap. We'll cook up some Bosky Dell minicow hamburgers and maple-glazed salmon on the grill.

Two other recipes I've been playing with -- both came about from trying similar dishes at The Purple Pig in Chicago - and then searching online and finding recipes on Food and Wine's site. I've changed the recipes a bit, so I can make them without needing a recipe -

Roasted beets with goat cheese and pistachios 
Wash, peel and cut up the golden and red beets into chunks, toss with kosher salt and olive oil and roast on a sheet for 35 minutes at 350F. When tender remove from oven and let cool a bit, then toss with chunks of goat cheese and pistachios. (I've been using the shelled pistachios you can buy now, which have the perfect salt and crunch and don't need further roasting.)

Whipped feta with marinated cucumbers and toasts - 
8 oz of local Maplebrook feta, blended in a mixer with 2T of cream, 2T cream cheese until smooth - then served with peeled and chopped cucumber that have marinated in a lemon maple vinaigrette on top, and baquette toasts all around.

Lemon maple vinaigrette - 
2/3 c olive oil, 1/3c vinegar (cider, red wine, homemade raspberry, or white balsamic), 2T maple syrup, 2T lemon juice, salt and pepper.

2013 Making Syrup! The simple rules - restated.

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First, wash everything well, before you get started– the pot for boiling, the taps, the collecting bags or buckets, and storage containers.

Make sure you are tapping hard maple trees. A soft maple buds up sooner than a hard maple, and while it will produce sap, the taste can be "buddy" or funny tasting, and throw the whole batch of syrup into the unusable category. Don't tap a tree with a trunk that is less than 10” in diameter, or else you can do damage to the tree. A tree that is 18” can accommodate a second tap, and a tree that is at least 26” can have three taps on it.

Drilling and installing the tap- Use a hand drill or a battery powered drill with a 7/16” drill bit for drilling wood. Place a piece of tape on the drill bit to mark 1.5 inches. Drill the hole in the tree 2-6 feet from the ground. Drill at slight downward angle. Don’t drill the hole directly above or below or within a few inches of the old hole. Use a hammer to gently drive the tap in, but be careful not to drive it in too deep and split the tree.

Collect sap using a bucket, a gallon milk container, a handle and sap bag, or tubing which empties into a larger container. Hang or install one of these on the tap. Make sure the container is covered to keep anything other than sap out. Check on the containers regularly to avoid having overflow. To put a sap bag on the handle, fold the bag down a couple of times, and secure the folds in the inside lip, and press down on the rim. Be careful not to cut yourself on the handle's sharp galvanized metal.
Store the sap in a food grade container outside on the northern side of your house until you are ready to boil. Sap will sour if not kept cold and if you keep it too many days. If it's cloudy, don’t use it.

To boil off the water in sap, you need a good fire. Wood is a good source of fuel, but you need to use a stove pipe to direct ash and smoke away from the evaporating pan. ,You can also cook small batches indoors on the stove, but the process produces lots of sticky steam. The kitchen stove is a nice way to finish off a pot of sap though.

I use a turkey fryer cooking stand and pot, and cook the sap over a propane fire. It isn't that efficient since you have a small surface area for the evaporation to take place, so the next step up in backyard cooking is an evaporator, which is a stainless 5" or so deep pan that sits on the fire.

Boiling the sap in the pan. Add a little cold sap at a time, to avoid having to start over. The sap will foam up while boiling from time to time. Simply touch the surface of the syrup with a spoon with a little bit of butter on it or drop in a single drop of cream. I set a timer and come outside every 20 minutes to check the fire and add fresh, cold sap.

When the sap gets to 219F, 7 degrees above boiling at sea level, it should be done. If you boil too long, crystals will form, or it will scorch. It is worthwhile to buy a testing cup and a hydrometer to make sure the syrup has the proper density to be labled syrup. I've had syrup measure 219 degrees F, that was still too watery to be syrup - so I'm glad I use the hydrometer.

The testing cup is a tall narrow cup that can withstand the high temperature of the sap liquid and allows you to use just a couple of ladles full to test each time. The hydrometer is a glass tube that floats in the syrup and if enough water has been evaporated off, will float at a certain level in hot syrup that indicates there is 66% sugar content in the syrup. It also has a measure for cold syrup too.

When the sap is very close to being concentrated enough to be real syrup, you'll notice that there is a different kind of foam that builds on top of the surface. You really need to stay on top of this and use a drop of cream or a tiny bit of butter to create enough surface tension to bring the bubbles down, or it will overflow the pot.

Some people strain the sap before boiling and some strain it after. Straining before helps by improving the grade of the syrup. Stores carry a special filter for syrup, or you can let the syrup sit and then pour the clear syrup off the top, or you can use some cheesecloth. I've used layers of cheesecloth to filter the syrup and it gets the little flecks of bark out just fine. This year I have a new felt filter.

I store the syrup I make each day in our second fridge. At the end of the season, I group jars of the same color syrup and decant the jars slowly to keep out the maple sand. Maple sand is a calcium byproduct that settles out of the syrup. Rarely does it reform after it settles out and is removed this way.

For each color or grade, I reheat the syrup to just below boiling. Then I pour the syrup into sterile jars that have been boiled in a canning pot for 15 minutes, and seal with sterile lids and rings, leaving ½ inch of jar head space. I store the jars of syrup in a cool, dark place.

Saturday, February 02, 2013

Vegetarian Minestrone and Work!

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Working fulltime - and trying to still do a lot of the things that we enjoy on the farm. But, it's not easy.

Last night we asked friends to go out with us for a quick bite. They didn't want to go out, so I asked them to come to the house for dinner. I thought I'd go out and bring back food from a pizza place. I had a busy work week and didn't feel like cooking.

I also didn't feel like cleaning the house, but the kitchen had half of the contents of the pantry in one corner and the downstairs bathroom needed washing up. I also needed to use up veggies in the fridge or risk them going bad.

So - I finished work at 4pm. Bob was off, so I said - "let's vacuum the downstairs, clean the bathrooms, carry the items from the pantry to the barn that need to be thrown out, and to the basement that need to be stored. Then I'll defrost veggie stock and make a quick minestrone soup - and I'll take a frozen pizza crust out, to be topped with that stump of mozzarella left in the fridge. We have 2 hours - let's go"

So, with the Pandora blaring to some crazy soul music mix, we scurried around.

There are three things I want to keep doing around here even though I'm busy. 1) keep roasting coffee - it's the best way to try small plantation beans and it is so worth the trouble. (imagine best coffee you've ever had x 10); 2) keep the sourdough starter alive - even if I don't make bread once a week, I can feed it for two weeks from now - but I love making bread on the weekend when the coffee is roasting, and we don't have great bakeries near us; 3) veggie stock - when the veggies look wilted or starting to become desiccated in the slightest bit - I put an odd assortment together in a big pot with water and boil for a couple hours. I wash it all, but don't trim off the ends of the carrots or peel them - lots of vitamins in the peels after all. I freeze the strained stock and use it for soups, stews, sauces whenever I need it. It is amazing how much better soups taste with this stock as a starter.

Vegetarian Minestrone Soup -

Ingredients:
3 T olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 stalks celery, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
4 cups green beans, ends removed and chopped into 1" pieces
1/2 green cabbage, cored and chopped
1 red pepper, cored and chopped
8oz box white mushrooms, rinsed and chopped
1 cup dry macaroni pasta, cooked in separate pot, al dente
1 28-oz can of tomatoes, strained with liquid held for another use
1 15-oz can of cannellini beans, rinsed
6 cups veggie stock (recipe above)
1 T dried oregano
1 tsp ground thyme
1 T dried basil
salt, pepper to taste
1 cup of asiago cheese, cut into 1/2" cubes

Preparation:

Saute veggies in olive oil in a large pot while pasta is cooking. Add tomatoes and beans to veggies, then the veggie stock. Add seasonings and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for an hour, then add asiago cheese cubes and allow to simmer for another 15 minutes.

Serve with homemade pizza or sourdough bread.

Saturday, November 03, 2012

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Saturday. Cold cold saturday. I went out to the barn to get some cleaning supplies and it was so quiet. Am I finally missing the cows? After 6 weeks, maybe I am.

The beef has been wonderful - we had steaks, hamburgers on the grill, and chili this week. When I suggested sushi instead last night, Bob said he plans to eat beef everyday until the 800lbs or so is gone. I suggested he get on board with some statin therapy.

Today, I'm doing things I like to do - painting, reading, hiking. I'm also doing a little cleaning, including debulking the collections of things accumulating in the dining corners, straightening the pantry, folding things in the closet.