Christmas, the Local Foods Way!

 

 

This year's local foods Christmas gift.

Each year Chris and I make food baskets for our family and friends and like to tie in our love of local foods.  Part of the fun is brainstorming ideas for our basket, and this year, we decided to share homemade mulberry syrup and pancake mix made with organic locally grown wheat.  Every year isn't successful, like the year we made homemade pasta and due to lack of proper drying time, the jar was filled with mold by the time it reached Chris's grandmother.  (Yes, you need to start early for some of these projects, which we don't always do!)  Yikes!  Well, at least we had a festive colored package, even if it wasn't supposed to be green!

I wanted to share the process we went through, okay, Chris went through, to make part of the gifts this year.  The mulberry syrup was an extra special project that expanded my food knowledge.  Here's the process...

Of course, every good local gift begins with the harvest.  Here are a couple pictures of the May mulberry harvest we enjoyed over the summer.  Yes, Clara helped :)

and she enjoys feeding others as much as Chris and I do.

 



Chris began the syrup process by thawing, boiling and mashing the mulberries.

 

 

Once they were adequately boiled, he cut up an old (but clean) shirt and tied them up to drain all the sweet goodness out of them, and to remove the skins and seeds.

 

 

We put what we didn't use in the compost bucket, which made me a little sad because I like to use EVERYTHING if we can.  What could we have used this for?  Fruit leather?  I figured the flavor was mainly gone, so I didn't put up too much of an argument to save this compost.  Chris said it's hard because there are so many seeds.  And really, as compost, what is seen in this picture will become tomorrow's nutritious garden soil and our yummy tomato.

 

 

Before packaging, Chris reduced the mulberry juice, added sugar, corn syrup, salt

and a couple drops of lime juice.

 

 

When I finally got to taste the syrup, I was ecstatic over the flavor of the syrup.  As I described it to Chris, I said the flavor was really "quick" or "short."  That maple syrup has a much longer, milder flavor but this syrup, this was powerful and wonderful.  He confirmed that people in the foodie industry do use the terms "long" and "short" to describe flavors, which was new to me but made complete sense after tasting this mulberry syrup.

 

Now, for the pancakes, the less interesting (in my opinion)  process included milling the flour.

 

 

 

Once he milled the local flour, Chris added a few necessary ingredients like salt, baking soda and cream of tarter (our own aluminum free baking powder mix), etc.  Then it was time to package.

 

 

We hope everyone who received a little part of Kansas this year enjoyed it.  I know I sure do (thankfully, we've got some syrup left over!)

 

From our lil' family to you, hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

 

 

 

 

 

A Heritage of Local Eating...and a Surprise!!



Clara helping Daddy prepare to start seeds in March, 2012.

 

If you're a regular blog follower, you know Chris, Clara & I said goodbye to the garden we planted in the spring, and moved to a new community in June.  We're incredibly pleased with our new home (although, there is a TON of updating and work to do to make it ours, which will take YEARS!)  Friendly faces surround this community, and we already run into people we know regularly.  I felt a little as if we are local food failures this year, but then I began to take account of the winter pantry we built.  Smaller than previous years, but still plentiful.  This year we:

*Picked mulberries, froze.
*Picked June berries, froze.
*Picked apricots, froze.
*Picked apples, dried and froze.
*Picked pears, dried.
*Grew a ton of butternut squash that we are using consistently and squirreling away for the winter.
*Enjoyed a ton of homegrown watermelon.  Gpa's farm grows the best watermelon!

We also planted two grape vines, a pear tree, and a couple apricot trees on our new property.  And of course, we always have our stash of local, organic wheat berries to grind for fresh bread, crackers, pasta and other grain foods.

This summer, while watching Clara (now 20 months) help us harvest various items, I've pondered how there really is a heritage to local eating.  I want to share some pictures of the heritage we are building into her life and the lives of those around us this summer.

This is my little cousin, picking June berries and, according to his father, eating them "like candy."  His mom is an avid gardener and says she doesn't get any strawberries in her house in the summer because he is out there picking and eating the ripe red jewels. 

Here's Clara on one of our many harvesting adventures.  Even at 14 months she loved helping pick mulberries.  Now, anything that looks like a berry (Holly berries, etc.) she picks, so we have to be careful because some of those berries can be toxic if eaten.

 

Here's Clara helping her Daddy make apple cider to take to a local butchering party (note her shoving the apples into the juicer).  Yes, the butchering party is another blog post to come.  Building community over slaying chickens - gotta love that!

 

I hope you enjoyed your local foods season, and if you were able to store away like us, or plant a fall crop I hope you're still enjoying it!  If there are young ones in your life, I encourage you to begin building into their lives a heritage of local eating.  By doing that, they'll know potatoes don't come from a box, but from the rich ground.  We'll for sure continue to do this, and if you haven't heard, we'll be doing it with another new life beginning late January...

 

Hooray!!



A "Smokin' Awesome" Apple Pie for my Sweetie Pie

Fresh from the oven!

This week we picked apples from my grandfather's green apple tree.  Apparently, when you don't pick them soon enough, they start to turn red and begin to taste mealy.  "Can we do anything with the mealy ones, make pie or something?" I asked Chris.  "Nope," replied my chef husband.  My Mom, an ol' country gal who follows the horse around and tastes what it eats, figuring if it doesn't kill the horse, it won't hurt her (yes, that's really true) said, "of course you can use 'em."  So this week I made an apple pie out of mealy apples for my sweetie pie.  How'd it taste?  The rave reviews ("smokin' awesome") from my chef indicated that apple pie is a great way to use overripe apples.  Here's how I made it:

Pie Crust (makes double pie crust)

I looked for a recipe in my cookbooks, but couldn't find one as simple as what I made as a child from my Mom's battered, beaten and faded "Christian Home Cookbook".  So, since we now live only 10 minutes from her, I paid her cookbook a visit.  Here's the simple recipe:

3 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 cup lard or shortening (gasp, yes, I know how this impacts cholesterol, but it has the opposite impact on my taste buds!)

Mix the flour and salt.  Cut in the shortening.  Slowly add approximately 2/3 cup water until dough is a proper consistency for rolling into crust.  I used about 2/3 of the 2/3 cup of water on the day I made the crust.

I'm not an expert pie maker, but my mother-in-law is pretty close.  From her I learned it's important to chill the dough before you roll it out.  Chris says the reasons for this are:  1.)  It allows the fat to harden which helps to create a flaky crust, 2.)   It allows the water to distribute and become homogeneous and 3.) It allows the gluten to rest so the pie crust doesn't shrink (mine didn't shrink at all - first time for that!)  The resting/cooling down process is so important, I've even heard of people chilling their rolling pins.

Apple Pie Filling

I looked in my cookbooks for a recipe, and many of them used an egg.  Apples and egg together didn't sound appetizing.  I found my recipe in "Whole Wheat Cookery, Treasures from the Wheat Bin," a cookbook I picked up at a used book store a few years ago.  Here are the details:

3/4 c. brown or white sugar (I used white sugar)

2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. ground cardamon

8 c. tart apples, cored, peeled and thinly sliced (I like the nutrition of the apple peel, so I left it on.  Plus, these apples were not sprayed with any chemicals, so it wasn't a concern to leave on the peel.)

2 tsp. lemon juice

1 Tbsp. butter

Combine sugar & spices.  Add apples, stirring until well coated.  If apples are extra juicy, sprinkle on one or two tablespoons whole-wheat flour, tossing well.  Sprinkle with lemon juice.  Roll out half of pastry to about 1/8" thickness and fit into buttered 10" pie pan.  Pile apple mixture into pastry shell, mounding apples higher in center.  Dot dabs of butter over apples.  (I forgot to dot dabs on the apples, so I put them on top of the crust.  Chris thought there was butter in the crust.)  Roll out remaining pastry.  Place over apples.  Seal edges & cut steam vents.  Bake in preheated 425 deg. oven 15 minutes, reduce heat to 375 deg. and bake about 35 minutes longer or until crust is golden.  I use our toaster oven for baking when the air conditioning is on.  Since the oven tends to burn edges, I left the pie covered with tin foil until five to ten minutes before it was finished.  My crust was beautiful and didn't heat the entire house by using the large kitchen oven.

In this post I wrote how students rejected fruit because it was imperfect.  Turns out Chris and I were the same way, so we learned a lesson this year, and will for many years down the road use our mealy apples for "smokin' awesome" apple pie (and yes, that's now written in pen next to the recipe in my cookbook. 

Onions for a lifetime.

They're not pretty, but they sure are tasty.

If you are a regular blog follower, you know our little family moved into a new home.  There is a lot of work to do, including adding a garden, fruit trees, berry bushes and the like.  The old owners liked plants, but didn't seem to care for edible plants, except onions.  We have wild onions for what feels like could be a lifetime.  Onions in the front yard, onions in the back yard, onions on the side of the home.  Strong onions, onions I cut standing out on the patio so I don't shed onion tears.  Yes, we're using onions, and boy are they local!

Happy 4th!!  

Celebrate your Independence this 4th of July as we did for "Food Independence Day" a couple years ago.  Here's our local menu from that celebration.