cici at home

the jelly tastes good

and it doesn't look half bad either.

the caramel apple bars were never made.

pizza was made.

the sauce wasn't.

and the weather station was never made. after a month, all of those links and bookmarked pages of the real books on how to make a weather station just...sat. no time. haven't felt like driving into town for the supplies. husband was gone and so the chores were all mine. it didn't happen for oh so very many reasons.

so i went ahead and bought a weather station. and i'm coming to grips with the fact that its okay to sometimes buy things.  that we - that I - don't have to make everything. sure making a weather station would have been fun. but it will be more fun to actually have a weather station so the great-list-of-bookmarked experiments can actually be tried. and experimented. and performed.

and mama needs to learn to let go.

do you like golden delicious?

I didn't think I like Golden Delicious apples. Really, I thought they were soft and mushy with very little flavor and I never understood why people go gaga over them.  My children have been begging me to go apple picking - doesn't matter if its the season or not - ask. ask. ask. Eventually it will be apple picking season. Eventually mom will have to say yes.

So, "eventually" came today and we were off to the orchard - even though it was Red Delicious season. And Jonagold. More apples I'm not terribly fond of - but the kids wore me down. The Orchard Guy gave us a bite of Red Delicious right off the tree and I realized I was wrong. Red Delicious apples are, well, delicious! But they aren't good for sauce or anything else (the Orchard Lady says she doesn't use them for anything) and I wasn't in the mood for a bushel of Red Delicious apples. Yes, a bushel. You can't take three kids to the orchard and expect to come home with much less. Especially when the trees are laden with ripe fruit.

Back to the Golden Delicious. We were a bit early, but the Orchard Guy gave us a sample of a Golden Delicous and wow! crisp! sweet! flavorful! Delicous! But a wee bit too early - only the south side of the trees were ripe enough to pick. And an elementary class came through yesterday - so everything "yea high" had already been picked (ripe or not). We came home from the orchard with 3/4 of a bushel of Golden Delicous apples. I'm still surprised, obviously. I blogging about it afterall.  Anyway.

Applesauce has been made. I wanted to make more than this, my stockpot wasn't large enough for more than a peck of apples at once - finished it was only 6 pints, and 1 quart.  Speaking of, I'm missing most of my pint size jars - applesauce isn't always a family favorite around here, so I like to put it in the smaller jars. 

Apple jelly started from the "apple leavings."

Apple crisp made for desert and eaten before the camera ever had a chance of taking a picture.

And still two more pecks of apples - or maybe just 1 1/2 pecks. We've got caramel apple bars on the agenda tomorrow. And I'm thinking about attempting to slice and freeze some, too. For baked goods during the winter.

I guess this is another tally mark in the column of "the miracle of fresh tasting food" - it's amazing really, how tasty things are when they are fresh and, I suppose, local. Last year, we did an apple taste test - I guess the results aren't valid anymore. We can't taste all the apples at once for another test either, if we want to test the apples grown locally, as they all ripen at different times over the course of two months.

So there you have it. A long, drawn out post about Golden Delicous apples, canning, and local food. And nothing. I'm good at blogging about nothing.

the taste of spring

Because I want to remember the excitement of realizing that you are in a berry patch. That somehow one of us did not make it out of our pajama top that day.  That his big sister lovingly pulls him down the row, showing him the difference between a green strawberry not yet ready and those plump, juicy, red ones just waiting to be picked.

That sometimes, one of them likes to be alone.  That, possibly, he is not eying the strawberries. He might be noticing the leaves. The bugs. The bees. The sounds of the birds.  Or maybe he is noticing the strawberries. He may be looking for the "biggest one of all" or the "tiniest of all" or the "reddest one of all..."

That the jars are "funny" and look different (than the usual pint sized jars we use - I picked these up at some thrift store over the winter).  The way "strawberry rhubarb" is not written, but drawn. Drawn simply so you can satisfy momma and still get outside and "do".  That "strawberry" does not quite fit across a label and that strawberries are triangles.

Spring in a jar: to be opened, remembered, and enjoyed during those darker months of winter.

recipe: toaster pastries

Over the weekend, I was doing a bit of internet hunt and pecking over whole grain breads and grinding your own wheat and what not.  It all sounds very healthy and fun to do - but will my children eat it? I've heard that the whole wheat flour you purchase in the store does not taste the same as that you would get from grinding a white winter wheat.

This isn't something I know, of course, only something I've read before and the big outlay of cash it seems I would need to even attempt to grind my own wheat seems crazy. Especially if my kids won't eat it. 

So, anyway, one click led to another and then I was on Youtube and then there was another video on the side and it was a lady making her own "toaster pastries" for her bakery. Yum.

Thus, I discovered I can make a Pate Brise, roll it out thin, slop some jelly on and boy. were. they. good.

Much better than the picture. And they don't hurt your stomach. And I'm out of all the jam and jelly I made last year so we used an Organic Strawberry Jam from Costco. So bonus points there, right? If it's organic there isn't as many calories? If you can actually pronounce all of the words on the ingredients it's healthy, right? Let's pretend, shall we? (and then you can explain to me why, all of a sudden, the pie crust recipe I've been using for years is suddenly called "Pate Brise")

Mix together:

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

• 1 Tblspn sugar

• 1 tspn salt

Add:

• 1 cup butter cut into 1 inch cubes (but wait! I forgot to add the second stick of butter and my kids still thought it was great!)

Mix until dough is the texture of coarse meal.

• Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup ice cold water.

Mix together until mixture just sticks together when pressed.  Divide into dough balls, flatten out, wrap in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 1/2 hours. Unless its Sunday and you're running late. Then just pretend 1/2 hour went by, pull the dough out. Roll it out drop some jelly on. Place another layer of dough on top, pinch all the way around, place on a cookie sheet (I sprayed mine with Pam because it seemed like I should), and pop in the oven. I baked mine at 350 for 15ish minutes.

I'm pretty sure you're supposed to let the Pate Brise rest in refrigerator for about 30 minutes after rolling out the dough - say, right after you've put the jelly on and squished it all together - but again, its Sunday morning and we have enough troubles getting to mass on time.

Drizzle with glaze.

magnifying chocolate

Thanks to Randi, my kids had something else to start on fire melt this past week. Chocolate!

Except, when you are two you are not interested in melting chocolate. You are only interested in eating chocolate.

And when you are four. You really aren't sure what you want to do. Melting it looks cool, but the sun isn't quite as hot as before. And the chocolate sure does look good.

Maybe just one bite.

i finally wore an apron today

I love aprons. At least, I love the idea of them. I have only two:  A full apron, a gift, made for me (my daughter has a matching one). And a half apron I picked up at the thrift store. I feel dowdy in the half apron.

 

I usually feel dowdy in the other apron, too. But today I thought I’d try it out again.

 

And then, something happened.

 

I made spaetzle.  Is this what aprons do? Make you get crazy ideas and concoct crazy side dishes for your family? Really?

 

This isn’t the first time I’ve made spaetzle.  I made them for my husband when we first married. At the time, after mixing the dough (batter?) I spooned it into a plastic bag and cut the corner off to plop them into the boiling water.  Don’t make them like that. They take too long.

 

This time, I scooped the dough out onto a cooking utensil I have that has holes in it, and then squished the dough through the holes with a cereal spoon.  Much quicker. I don’t have a stainless steel colander or I would have used that. If you’re going to make spaetzle, use the colander method. My recipe comes from the Joy of Cooking.

 

Mix together:

1 ½ cup flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt.

Beat together:

2 eggs

½ cup milk

Add the egg and milk mixture to the flour and stir with a wooden spoon.

Bring six cups of salted water, or chicken broth (I went for water and chicken bouillion cubes) to a simmer. Drop the dough into the water.  They are done when the float to the top.

I cut up small pieces of butter and put a few at a time into a serving bowl.  As the spaetzle was done, I removed it from the water and then into the serving bowl. Every so often I added a few more bits of butter.  The butter melts, keeps the spaetzle from sticking together, and tastes yummy!