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!

~~~~~

sunday snapshots

6AM: a few inches of fresh snow

9AM: snow stopped.

Sunny.

Very cold.

2PM: bitter cold, constant wind.

Still blowing at nightfall.

A full day of snow predicted for tomorrow.

Appropriate action has been taken:

Also, the last gallon of 2015 cider is thawing in the kitchen.

Preparations are complete.

~~~~~

a smattering of snaps

In no particular order, a few snapshots of the past week.

Hay, more of.

Still plenty of room:

In other hay news:

 I installed four secondhand hay racks, purchased at a recent farm sale. Two are in the bigger barn and two in this little shelter built off the west wall of my workshop last autumn.

Violet, munching.

I thought you might enjoy this view, looking down through the window of my workshop. Lily on the left, Sambucus on the right:

The racks may need to be lined with mesh to slow the goats down, but I'm trying them as is, first. No need to go looking for more projects!

~~~

Enough about hay.

~~~

I did something this week I haven't done in, gosh, maybe 8 or 10 years. I bought eggs. Because the hens are in winter production mode, but I can't seem to stop doing this:

I keep baking cranberry-apple cakes.

Even when I just baked one a few hours earlier, and gave it to the good friend who brought my firewood.

Even when the springform pan is in the dishwasher and I have to experiment with one of my old Pyrex pans.

Even when I run out of cranberries when mixing the batter.

Yes, it has now been proven: 2 cups of cranberries is the minimum necessary for this recipe. I am slowly eating this cake, of course, because wasting food is a sin. Also, it's a pretty fair cake. But it needed another half-cup of cranberries to make it a really good cake.

This is how we learn ;)

~~~

We've had some remarkably balmy days lately.

And I've done an unusual amount of housecleaning this week.

It's not my strong suit, as you may know.

I'm not good at it, and I don't enjoy it.

And it's painful.

I won't pretend I have "become" a terrible housekeeper

as my joints have become increasingly painful.

No, I have never been a very good housekeeper,

and that shortcoming has always bothered me, quite a lot.

But now it is physically difficult to be even a poor housekeeper.

Last week, I decided to force myself to do something more than the minimum in the house, every single day that I was able to. So I did as much as I could, on 5 days of the seven. And it was truly exhausting. Nothing else that wasn't absolutely necessary got done. Piper had no walks in the woods, I am ashamed to say. I cancelled an appointment at short notice. I skipped a holiday fair. I haven't posted anything here for the entire week because I have been so completely wiped out.

I wanted to write here. A couple of times I started to choose images, and fell asleep with the laptop on my chest. Once also with a heating pad on my neck and icepacks on my hands. I didn't know a person could fall asleep holding icepacks.

The house is still mostly a shambles, and I don't know if I can keep up the every-day-possible housework efforts. But right now I'm going to share this little snapshot of my kitchen, looking toward the back door. Because having this much clear space in my little house is sort of a miracle.

~~~~~

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 :)

~~~~~

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.

~~~~~