this week

I've been making soup and apple crisp.

Over and over.

Apple crisp is simple to make. And delicious.
I don't even tinker with the recipe except to sometimes include cranberries.

But the soup is freeform, and never the same from one kettle to the next.

I don't think I could duplicate a batch if I tried.

Sometimes I wish I could. The last batch was so good I started rationing it to make it last a bit longer.
~~~

Recent days have been cold, dark, raw...and occasionally sunny.

Sunny enough to melt some of the snow suspended above the ground, not insulated by the collective coldness of accumulated snowfalls and the thick ice layer covering the frozen ground.

You can see the snow melting into icy gems on this hyssop:

Still dazzling, long after the flowers and bees and butterflies of Summer have gone.

~~~

After rainy, snowy, gloomy days, I love to see the herd out in the sunshine.

The lateral light makes each goat glow around the edges.

This is Tsuga's daughter, Fern:

Fern, I am sorry to say, is a stubborn little imp.
But look at that face.

Butter wouldn't melt.

~~~

Are you resettled in Time after the holidays?

This week I spent all day Sunday thinking it was Monday,

then all day Monday thinking it was Sunday.

On Tuesday, I just stopped thinking about it.
Onward!

Winter sunrise after a mid-night snow, view to the West

~~~~~

pumpkins

Do you remember this pumpkin? The vine had grown through the perimeter fence of the big terrace garden and down into the steep bank garden bordering the driveway. The pumpkin's own weight was forcing the fence into the skin, so I harvested right away although I didn't know if a pumpkin could ripen off the vine.

Reporting back: over several weeks spent on a table by a porch window, this one very gradually turned a beautiful orange!

Throughout late Summer and early Autumn, as I walked by the gardens I would sometimes catch a glimpse of bright yellow tucked deep amongst the many shades of foliage and perennial flowers. It's surprising how large a pumpkin can grow without being seen.

At least, seen by me.

I've never grown pumpkins before, and those five little pumpkin seeds have given me so much pleasure and entertainment. It was a very hard summer for all plants, but the pumpkins never gave up. In fact, here are a few pictures of the vines continuing to bloom and set fruit a week ago!

 Recently there was an unfortunate incident in which several goats managed to get into the terrace garden

while I was in the barn mixing up their grain buckets.

Which just seems rude.

In 20 minutes they completely destroyed one pumpkin and tasted several others. It was rather shocking to find so much damage. For example, I'd been admiring the beauty below for weeks. Chompity chomp chomp. You can see my boots on the right, for scale.

While they were there, the goats also ate my first-ever okra plants right down to the ground. Ditto, all the remaining pole beans that I had selected to dry for next year's seed. Someone also tried to nibble a Candy Roaster squash, but gave up. The harder skin of a winter squash must have been too much work for my little vandals!

Last night I harvested the last three pumpkins - two large and one small. I'm hoping they will keep for a while amongst the hay bales as there are already two pumpkins waiting in the kitchen and I only have room to work with one at a time.

I've been baking (or is it roasting?) them in halves or large wedges, smoothing the purée for a few seconds with a stick blender, then freezing in 2-cup packets for winter cooking. The freezer is now full right to the tippety-top (not just with pumpkin!) so I've also been using pumpkin purée to make soups and stews and cake.

Cake!

This is a new version of my tried-and-true cranberry apple mosaic cake, with lots of pumpkin (planned on one cup but my hand slipped!), more spices, and extra flour to adjust for the added moisture.  It came out as a sort of Massachusetts Fruits-cake, with cranberries from the Cape, apples from my favorite nearby orchard, and pumpkin from my own garden. Dense and flavorful, with a texture like a steamed pudding. It's not the cake I was anticipating, but it's quite good. This modified version of the recipe is another "keeper," for sure.

Apples and cranberries and - now - pumpkins!

Welcome to November!

~~~~~

cranberry apple mosaic cake

Rhode Island Greening

This is a rare post for Comptonia: a recipe.

Do you already have a favorite recipe for a simple cake with cranberries? If so, I'd love to hear it - put a link in the comments, please! If not, maybe you'd like to try this one. I don't think it belongs to anyone in particular, and I'm not sure how much tinkering I've done with it by now. Some, for sure.

But I've now made this cake three times in two weeks, the exact same way each time. Including once at 4AM, when I was tired of trying to sleep. A cake that I can put together after a sleepless night is a pretty good recipe to jot down, I think.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1/4 pound) butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

3 eggs (or two huge eggs)

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

8 oz (2 cups) whole cranberries

½ large or 1 small apple

optional: 2-3 TBS white sugar plus 1/2 tsp

~~~

butter and flour bottom and sides of 9” springform pan

(or use parchment paper)

preheat oven to 350F

cream together:

1/2 c butter

1 c brown sugar

Blending after each addition, add:

3 eggs (or two huge eggs)

add:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

add:

2 c (8 oz.) whole cranberries

optional: 2 or 3 TBS white sugar, if the cranberry:batter ratio is worrying.

The batter will be very stiff. Coax gently into pan.

Thinly slice and peel apple. (Genuine food prep tip: I always slice apples first, then peel each slice with a single pass of the knife. Quick, efficient, easy.)

Break apple slices into pieces and lightly press into top for mosaic.

Bake at 350F for 55 minutes. During first 10 minutes, go outside and distribute apple peelings and core to goats. Be rigorously fair, even though some will believe their neighbor got more.

Remove pan from oven, place on cooling rack. Sprinkle ½ tsp white sugar on top (optional), remove side of pan. Cool at least somewhat before slicing.

If you try this cake, please let me know how you like it!

~~~~~

housework can be sort of fun

One of the benefits of cleaning out and defrosting the chest freezer, is knowing that eight gallon jugs of cider will soon create a perfect new bottom layer.

Another benefit is the fun challenge of using up what's left in the freezer. Like baking and roasting and stewing the last of the organic chicken purchased when it was on sale. And those crazy frozen "pumpkin" waffles which I will never - ever - buy again, but which will be eaten this time and not wasted.

And this morning, the cranberries.

Question: how many cranberries can be added to one cake?

Answer: not sure yet!

Will let you know when the cake has cooled. If it turns out to be a mass of cranberries lightly held together with fragments of cake, I will know I have gone a bit too far.

Fun to experiment, anyway! And I wish you could walk through my kitchen right now - the aroma is wonderful. Like taffy? Fudge? Hard to say exactly, I can't identify it. Maybe it's just been too long since I used sugar in a recipe!

~~~

I rarely do this, but I'm coming back with an update.

Less than an hour after posting.

Because:

The cranberry ratio is Just Right!
What a lucky, happy bake :)

~~~~~

commenter appreciation day

One of the best things about blogging

is sharing information.

Blogger and commenter:

it's like a two-way street.

Or maybe it's like leaning out the window

and calling to a friend across the way 

who is also leaning out the window.

I am so grateful to every reader

who leaves advice or shares an experience

in the comments.

I hereby declare a 

Commenter Appreciation Day

with special thanks to Boud, who sent me

straight out to buy a bag of grapes, because:

"frozen seedless grapes work exactly like candy"

And special thanks also to Sandra,

who immediately seconded this excellent suggestion!

With such enthusiastic endorsement,

I knew I couldn't go wrong.

So I bought two bags of grapes.

~~~

I am now extending the supply of frozen apple slices

by alternating with frozen grapes.

Life is sweet!

It's cold, but it's very sweet.

~~~~~

wordy wednesday

I'm trying to pay attention to the small things.

The weather is a big thing.

I am trying to pay very little attention to the weather.

For example, I am trying to make good, healthy things to eat,

even when I don't feel like bothering.

Fresh organic eggs, rice, cheese, gently cooked in butter. Yum.

~~~

Fortunately, I have many daily reminders from the other critters.

Pay attention!

Here is food! Let's eat.

Here is a moment of sunshine!

Quick! Get inside the sunshine.

Then relax.

Enjoy.

The Black Jersey Giant and the Rhode Island Red.

~~~

Also: the treats these days are Really Good Treats.

Remember all those apple slices I put in the freezer in November?

Remember the Macintosh and Winesaps, carefully preserved

for experiments in winter baking?

(Remember "baking"? A moment of silence for my oven, please.)

Well, guess what!

It turns out, a little bowl of apple slices frozen in November

is just about the best snack you can imagine in March!

They even smell like fresh apples. Ahhhhhh!

~~~

And because I know (I do know) that soon the days will be chockablock full of seasonal tasks that Will Not Wait, I am taking this "opportunity" to do a lot of indoor tasks. 

Long overdue tasks, most of them. 

This strange view is the space behind the washer and dryer.
It is now the cleanest space in the house.
This little project took hours.
It seemed worth a commemorative photograph.
Just this once.

Cleaning, reorganizing, tossing, donating.

I've started putting a few things on eBay.

Things that I'd rather not donate, for one reason or another.

Long-held-onto things. Nice things. Useful things. Specific-interest things.

Including - at last - the first steps in dispersing my horse-related library.

(There's a discreet link to the shop on the sidebar, if anyone is interested.)

~~~

In barnyard news: 

the 2014 cashmere harvest is...

bizarre.

"Sure, comb me! Take your time! Until I run out of oats..."

I have no idea what the end result will be, but at the moment I have one goat who is 90% finished shedding, and three goats who have barely started dropping about 5% and who wish very much that I would stop bothering them with a daily check.

The others are hanging onto every fiber, with no indication that they ever intend to shed at all.

Which is okay.

But it's also weird.

And if they all let go of massive amounts of fiber simultaneously,

especially in wet weather, I could be in for a challenging time...

but that is not the kind of thing I am focusing on!

No.

Living in the moment, me!

Look, tulips!

~~~

And now it's evening, and chores are done.

Time for a beverage.

I've recently moved on from hot milk and rum.

This is ginger ale with a splash of Cosmopolitan.

A Gingerpolitan?

Very refreshing. Probably make a nice Summer beverage, but why wait?

At least, that's Acer's approach.

~~~~~

in a rut

In the past two weeks

I have baked this apple and cranberry tea cake

 three times.

Perhaps not every rut is a bad place to be?

~~~

The recipe is Marian Burros' Plum Torte, with minimal modification which varies every time I make it. This is a very simple and adjustable recipe.

The result when made with plums is what I would call a cobbler, with gooey pockets of fruitiness scattered in a plain cake. When made with apples, or with apples and cranberries as above (and above, and above), I would describe it as a fruited teacake. It is not overly sweet and has an even, dense texture. It's a nice take-along cake, and a good choice for a packed lunch that may be jostled a bit in a pocket or backpack.

My only advice is to watch the baking time toward the end, as a full hour may result in a slightly overdone edge. I check it at 45 minutes, and then every 5 minutes til a knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

If you try it, please come back and share!

I'd love to hear more ways to play with this recipe.

~~~~~

apples

Miss Ruth Kellogg demonstrating correct postures for various forms of housework. 1921-26.
Source: Div. Rare & MS Collections, Cornell U. Library

Since my first trip to the orchard, I've been doing a little bit of this nearly every day. Peeling and slicing a few apples.

Some of the slices have been going directly into the freezer, lined up neatly on a tray. The following day, those individually-frozen slices are popped into a labelled bag, and the tray is used to freeze the next batch.

Can you see traces of pink?
These are Macintosh.

Come Winter, I hope to do some very nice baking with these beautiful frozen apples. Won't that make Winter a warmer, friendlier place to be?

Well, that's my plan. Here's hoping.

I'll let you know.

~~~

Meanwhile, there's been some Autumn baking with fresh apples. Mostly, I've been tinkering with one simple recipe, changing up and experimenting. Remember the accidental apple-cranberry bisconey?

Last week I tried making it again: with apples, no cranberries, less sugar, and lots of cinnamon:

It came out with a dense, moist texture.

Not bad.

And yesterday, I tried another riff: making the batter a bit richer and more cake-like, mixing a whole cup of cranberries into the batter, and then adding sliced apples to the top.

Again, quite different in texture and flavor. Again, not bad.

Very surprising the way some of the cranberries migrated to the surface, right over the apple slices.

How did they do that?

~~~

For a person who doesn't really cook much, I am having a lot of fun in the kitchen lately. And it's all because of this:

A small, nearby orchard with a wonderful array of apple varieties. Such fun choosing! Hmmmm...certainly the old familiar Macs I grew up with, but also, well, I'll try a few of these Spitzenburgs (could Thomas Jefferson be wrong? about apples???) and I'll add a few Winesaps, and some Rhode Island Greenings, and oh, I almost missed the Golden Russets, and...excuse me for a second, I'll just carry these out to the car and then I'll be back in for the cider.

Oh. The. Cider.

The gloriously fragrant, snappy-sweet cider.

In the past two weeks, I have never been far from a glass of cider. I think this pressing may be the very best fresh cider I have ever tasted in my entire cider-loving life.

I wish I could pour you a glass right now.

Come on over.

Seriously.

~~~

I'll be going back to the orchard in a day or two, because I am out of apples (!) and about to open my last gallon of cider (!!). I'm waiting for a day that's warm enough to take Piper with me, for a walk along the stone walls.

It's a pretty place, this old orchard, where hard work - so often the backstory to "pretty" in a human-altered landscape - is evident everywhere you look.

The view also offers a nifty example of relativity!

I mean, look here:

Trees, right? An orchard full of big, fruitful trees.

But then you put those very trees next to a forest: 

Whoa! Quite a shift in perspective, no?

And then, you put that forest into a forested landscape as far as the eye can see:

Relativity: just something to think about while you're peeling Autumn apples and keeping an eye on Winter.

~~~~~ 

frontiers in baking

So, what time can you be here? I tried a new recipe!

With apples!

The first step: toasting chopped pecans. 

This was also a new thing.

Previously, the only thing I'd toasted was bread.

 Interrupting this recipe with

a newsflash from the Poultry Palace:

the hens are again presenting me with eggs.

One or two lovely organic eggs daily.

Already, winter looks less harsh.

Thank you, hens!

Returning to the new recipe:

it appeared on my blog feed today,

from King Arthur Flour.

I love those folks.

They are passionate about what they do,

and they really know how to share the joy!

~~~

Most recipes, no matter where I find them, call for ingredients I don't have on hand. So even the most interesting recipes get filed away, until maybe - maybe - one day I remember 

to buy the missing ingredients.

And then remember what the ingredients are meant for.

And where I put the recipe.

Cooking can be so hard.

But not today!

I had all the ingredients for "naked apple-vanilla pie."

Note: the "naked" refers to the lack of crust.

The apples are not naked.

They are also not clothed.

They are peeled, so maybe they are sort of undressed?

You know, I think the "naked" aspect may be a bit of a distraction from the main event, which is this:

 If someone served this to me at a dinner party and challenged me in a playful, dinner-party-way, to identify the dish, I wouldn't describe it as "a crustless pie."

It's hard to pinpoint, really, and I hope in this imaginary scenario my future happiness would in no way hinge upon my response to the host's question.

"Hmmm...well...a delicious variation on an apple clafoutis?"

That's the best comparison I can make. However, now that I think about it, the Comptonia Taste Test didn't include the recommended cream or ice cream for a topper. That addition may very well make it seem more pie-ish, overall.

But I don't know.

Perhaps I should get some ice cream and try it?

(You can bet I won't have any trouble remembering to pick up that ingredient.)

Whatever it's called, I like it!

Perhaps you'd like it, too?

It's easy, quick, and involves apples.

It's different from "the usual" apple desserts.

The pecans - that would be the toasted pecans - add texture.

And the light note of vanilla is lovely.

And I'm adding a link to the recipe.

~~~

Apple season. 

Loving it.

~~~~~

fruit and veg

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.

 ~~~~~