The weather has been quite variable this week.
Mornings like today, with ice in the goats' water buckets.
And days that feel like late Spring, when the air is so balmy one can think of nothing but gardening.
~~~
On a 21F morning this week, my thoughts turned naturally to baking. This plum cobbler may not look like much, but I wish you could have been in my house while it was baking. Made me want to bake every day, just for the aroma.
I would be embarrassed to tell you how quickly this disappeared.
Will just say this about cobbler:
good for breakfast, lunch, and late-night snacking.
Not for supper, of course.
That would be irresponsible and self-indulgent.
~~~
On a nice warm day, Piper and I visited a nearby orchard to buy apples in anticipation of the next baking day.
Lots of apples. And cider.
Lovely, delicious cider.
Made mostly from Macintosh apples,
with some other varieties added.
Like this charming Golden Russet:
Then, there was a hard frost and I pulled the cabbages.
The valiant cabbages that continued to grow despite the endless onslaught of leaf-eating insects that escaped my
daily attempts at elimination.
Every cabbage looked like this:
Pondering the subtle differences between "harvest" and "salvage," I made one precious quart of sauerkraut, now fermenting in the kitchen:
and enjoyed the last meal of just-picked vegetables from the 2013 gardening endeavor. A reminder of summer, when the garden was the source of most of my grocery "shopping."
Good times!
~~~
Then, surprise! The weather changed again.
An entire day of rain and gloom.
Time for another bake.
An experiment with fresh cranberries and apples.
It resulted in a sort of cross between a tea biscuit and a scone.
Behold: the "bisconey."
And my method for storing baked goods:
Two of my Grammy's glass pie pans.
This works very well!
Of course, we're probably talking about short-term storage.
~~~~~
