Tortellini - Won Ton

Lunch today was roast chicken
(with roasted carrots, onions, and potato wedges).

The bones are cooking for chicken soup.
But I couldn't wait - I decided to make a cross between
tortellini and won ton.

Using the food processor, I ground
chicken
onion tops
garlic
pepper
whole grain Rice Crispies
one egg yolk.

I used store-bought won-ton noodles.

Put a dollop in the center of each square.

Brush with egg white to help seal.

Shape like little hats.

Drop into stock seasoned with
onion tops
celery tops
black pepper
a hint of poultry seasoning.

Wait impatiently until they are done

and can be served.

Delicious!

Cider Taste Test

It's a cold, raw day.
Too unpleasant to play outdoors.
So D suggested it was time to test the cider.
There are eight batches using various yeasts, including one of wild yeast.

Isn't the variety of shades and clarity interesting!
Here they are lined up in letter order - G is missing, because it was not decanted earlier.

Chris gave us a sample sanitizer to use - worked well - you need to have killed all the wild yeasts before you add the wine or beer yeasts. He also gave us a siphon to get the liquid from the five-gallon pails to bottles. D siphoned these a month ago. At that time, they all tasted either beery or like regular cider - some yeasts work slower than others.


Some are quite fizzy!!! Others are still.
This one had to be opened and reclosed several times before we could safely pour it.


This was much more fun than playing outside today!

In case you are wondering, these are water bottles left over from the power outage during Irene .

Indian Summer Garden Grows

Who would think that we would be harvesting berries in October!

This is our third day of 80+ degrees.

A real Indian Summer.

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The raspberries are large and lovely.

This is Autumn Bliss.

It puts out a few in the spring, and lots in the fall.

The Mara Des Bois Strawberries are still bearing.

This is an ever-bearing type.

These fall berries do not have the complex flavor of the summer berries,

but it's a welcome treat.

D is harvesting the mangels.

These will feed the chickens later in the fall/winter.

Mangels are a type of beet used for fodder.

Look at the size of these!

To the left of the picture (above) is dinosaur kale.
We found it to be attractive, but strong flavored.

The chickens will love them.
Update - Spring 2012
The chickens do not like the mangels - whole, raw, cooked, chopped.
They tossed it around and did not eat it.

Low Tech Cider Making at Home

Last weekend we made 15 gallons of cider.

We saved out one gallon, and put the rest in the basement.

(That is a story for another day.)

But we have almost finished that gallon,

so we decided to see if it could be made in the kitchen.

We started with gemini apples.

(D has named all the apple trees - this is a twining pair.)

They are not very pretty, but they made a nice apple pie.

We chopped the apples and put them into the blender with a little cider.

Then we ground them to a fine texture in the vintage Osterizer.

The slurry was poured into a straining cloth in a colander over a pot.

The cloth could be cheesecloth, but I don't have any.

But I do have lots of old curtains.

A good wash, a brief bleach soak, and there you go.

It works really well.

In this case, it's folded over to quarters.

Once we had enough pomace, D began to squeeze.

Notice the before and after pictures.

This is the final squeeze.

After we were almost done,

D suggested we could have used the antique fruit press. . .

We'll save that for another time.

We got quite a bit.

We didn't pay attention to time,

but we think about 1/2 hour from start to cleaned up.

This will hold us until we do the next batch of cider this weekend.

This is a banner year for apples, so go pick some wild ones, and

do try this at home.

We recommend not using fallen apples

-

too much risk of picking up bacteria left by our wild friends.

Jelly Time

It's time to make jelly.

D picked two kinds of grapes.

The one on the left has a wonderful flowery flavor.

The other is like a concord, but green. . .

When I picked the last of elderberries, I started to brush off a leaf.

It wasn't a leaf!

It's a not-very-pretty butterfly.

Hurricane Irene and the Week without Power

Hurricane Irene

Well, we survived.  We weren't expecting any trouble - just figure out which way the wind will blow and move the vehicles so that a tree won't land on them.  Put aside some water - just in case.  Enjoy the weather.

Well, it didn't turn out quite like that.  Oh, we were safe.  The vehicles were not struck.   The 5.2 inches of water did not wash us away - did not even flood the basement taking out the hot water heater.

What did happen is that a tree - a half-mile away - took out a power line.  Easy fix. . . 

Except for. . .

The power company had deployed their crews to closer to New York City to be prepared for the hurricane hitting the urban area.  It missed NYC, but made a mess of the Catskills, 

so they moved their folk to the Catskills and the Albany area.

That meant no one was here to fix the lines.

We have a pump and well outside, so we had water - just had to carry it.  

After the first day, the power company provided bottled water and a bit of dry ice - one to a person - pick-up at the fire station in town.  As the outages continued, they did provide enough dry ice to keep the freezer frozen.  

That's where the fun comes in.

There was not enough dry ice for the big freezer - which is full of a year's supply of corn, peas, blueberries, chard, kale, etc. - and the kitchen refrigerator/freezer.  The result was that the kitchen fridge stayed cool but not cold - and when we were pushing a piece of dry ice into the kitchen freezer, a pint of elderberry juice popped out, and it demonstrated it was not frozen by spraying elderberry juice all over the hardwood floors.     And all over us.   What a mess.  While trying to catch the elderberry container,  a second container was dislodged, demonstrating that it, too, was not frozen.  Now we had a quart of elderberry juice on the floor.  I guess that will teach me not to procrastinate making jelly!

There is plenty to do even when there is no power.  Everything takes twice as long in the house - to bathe means heating and carrying water.   I needed to keep the ipod powered, so I had to go to the library every day to check email and the web and to recharge everything.

We used the time to pick the corn for the chickens for the winter.  The corn is Mandan Bride.  It is just lovely.So that is fun to do.

I also picked beans.

These are "Hutterite Soup Beans".  They are delicious.  The entire bean dissolves, so it makes a cream soup with no cream.  Adding garlic croutons and shrimp makes a spectacular dish.

Now that power is restored, we need to clean out the refrigerator.  Well, by not paying attention, I knocked the coleslaw onto the floor - and it opened - and . . .   At least we had water to clean with this time - and the chickens loved the coleslaw - and the leftover meats, cottage cheese, sour cream, and whatever else was there.

D is building a little house for making cider.  He couldn't get much done when we had no power, so he worked on expanding the strawberry and raspberry beds.  

And that is how we spent our week before Labor Day.

Garden, August 4, 2011

We are enjoying the fruits of D's labor.

The Mara des Bois strawberries have given us a generous bowl.

A friend was supposed to visit today.

She had to cancel.

Look at what she missed!

These berries taste best at room temperature and they do not keep.

I'll have to eat them myself!

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D enjoyed this bowl of raspberries as an appetizer before dinner.

And we have our first tomato.

It's a paste tomato - San Marzano - but it will be eaten sliced.

This is what we look forward to when it snows!