I Survived the 2011 Peaches and Blueberries!

My new favorite thing that resulted from taking advantage of Tree Ripe Citrus deliveries is fruit leather!

I have made and stored lots of little snack packs of peach leather.  It is a little bit fussy to make, but will be worth it when we can snack on yummy peaches this winter.

To make it, I added ½ cup of water to each pound of peeled, pitted, and halved peaches.  I just used an average of 3 peaches per pound so I didn’t have to keep weighing.  It isn’t rocket science, close works.  I brought these to boiling over high heat and then reduced the heat and simmered for 20 minutes while mashing the peaches with a potato masher.  Next, I lined a strainer with damp cheesecloth and drained off the juice until it quit dripping.  The juice can be used for peach jelly, sweetened with honey and added to iced tea, or just drunk straight.  The drained pulp went into the blender with a bit of honey until it was pureed.  I had to experiment with the honey…no honey left the leather pretty tart, which the kids weren’t crazy about and too much left the dried leather sticky and hard to handle.  Since I do everything completely by the seat of my pants, I have no idea how much honey worked; I just eyeballed it.  But if I had to guess, I’d say 1-2 teaspoons per 3 peaches would probably be in the ballpark.  Then I smeared the puree onto the dehydrator fruit leather trays and let her rip at 135°F (which is what my dehydrator recommends for fruit).  It would also work to spread it on wax paper on cookie sheets and dry it in a warm oven.

Here is the finished leather.

I cut it into strips with clean kitchen shears and stuck the strips to wax paper.  I folded the wax paper in half and then folded it up…

…so it would fit in a snack size ziplock baggie.  Since there aren’t any preservatives, I tossed all the baggies in the deep freeze.  I can grab a baggie or two out of the freezer and toss it into my bag when we go to playdates or open gym or the park.  They should be thin enough and low moisture enough to defrost pretty quickly.

From 5 half-bushels of peaches and 40 pounds of blueberries, the final tallies for peachy and blueberry-y goodness put away are:

• Dehyrated Blueberries: 5 pints
• Frozen Blueberries: 2 quarts
• Blueberry Butter: 8 half-pints and 1-4 oz. jar
• Blueberry Pie Filling: 5 pints
• Blueberry Syrup: 6½ pints
• Blushing Peach-Almond Conserve:  10-4 oz. jars
• Honey Peach Syrup (for iced-tea): 8 pints
• Frozen Peach Halves:  2 half-gallons
• Peach Leather:  20 snack bags
• Peaches in Light Syrup:  35 quarts
• Zesty Peach BBQ sauce:  7 half-pints and 1 pint

Yogurt 101

I have been making my own yogurt weekly and eating it most days for breakfast.  It is much yummier than the stuff that I have gotten at the grocery store and it (fortunately) isn't very difficult to make!  I got the culture (more on that in a sec), a recipe, and some helpful hints at Dairy Connection, Inc., which is a short hop away up in Madison.  After some experimentation, I think I have it down and thought I would share.

The equipment and ingredients are pretty easy.  First off, equipment:

An appropriately sized seal-able container.  I find that canning jars work swimmingly as I usually make a quart or half-gallon at a time

A kitchen thermometer.  I love my nifty digital thermometer, but I have a cheapy analog that works just as well.  The important temperatures are 185°F, 115°F, and 110°F.

A sauce pan.

A picnic cooler.  It just needs to be big enough to hold the container upright.

Next, the ingredients:

• milk (a quart to make a quart of yogurt, a half-gallon to make a half gallon, etc.)
• the culture.  I have done this two different ways.  One is using 1/8-1/4 tsp of a freeze-dried culture (I use ABY-2C).  The other is using about a 1/2 cup of a yogurt that you like.  I have had consistently good results with the freeze-dried culture and generally good results with the second option using yogurt from the previous week's batch.  I have found that the results have tended to dwindle with time, but I suspect that as I get more consistent from batch to batch the piggy-back results will be better.  I have had a couple of batches that have wandered away from the ideal temperatures and I think that may have degraded the culture for reuse.

The process (taken from here):

Heat milk to 180°F.  I use medium heat and I stir pretty frequently to prevent scorching on the bottom of the pan.  Since I have a tendency to be easily distracted I keep some knitting or a book nearby so I can keep myself from wandering off.  I have been known to run to the computer to check my email and then head right back to the kit---ooo, shiny.  *time passes*  Hmmm, I wonder why this scorched milk is sitting on the stove?  Oh crud.  Yeah.  Not pretty.

Put the milk into the jar and cool to 115°F.  I use a sink of cold tap water.  When cooled add culture and stir gently to mix.  Put lid on jar.

Fill the cooler about 2/3 full with warm tap water (110°F).

Put jar in water in cooler.

Put lid on cooler and leave for about 8 hours.

Put finished yogurt in refrigerator and, when cool, enjoy!  I usually eat with some granola stirred in or some combination of nuts and/or fruit, a little honey or maple for sweetness, some cinnamon or nutmeg.  The possibilities are pretty much endless.

We shall call her the "Laughing Ho"

Well, actually, in polite company we will be calling her a Snickers Trifle. But she will always be a Laughing Ho to me! This is Daddy's birthday cake (or "happy cake" as Bean calls them). It loosely follows Ms. K's Ho recipe. First just let me say...the chocolate cake recipe rocks. Ms. K is a genius. Really. Send her yarn. Lots of it. Anyway, now for my version. I did use Ms. K's cake recipe (obviously), but I declined getting it drunk. I debated this long and hard. Really, the amount of alcohol in a serving wouldn't be enough to get baby-to-be drunk, but I had to balance that with the fact that pregnancy hormones might lead to an ugly incident with me face down in the remaining Ho, leading to a completely empty bowl. Since discretion is the better part of valor, we chose to take the high road. Instead of Heath Bars, I changed to Kitty Daddy's favorite candy bar: Snickers. So the layers ended up going like this: cake lumps, fudge sauce, caramel sauce, peanuts, cool whip, repeat twice. End with a chopped up Snickers bar. I took the quick and easy route with the fudge sauce (I do have a very yummy recipe for some though), the caramel sauce, and the whipped cream.

We will be heading out shortly, Ho in hand, to join Kitty Daddy at work for lunch with his co-workers. We'll let you know how the Ho goes over!

Pumpkin

Since Bug has been insisting that he needs pumpkin pie for Halloween (not sure where that one came from...probably morphed jack-o-lanterns into pie. Oh well, we can have pie for Halloween AND Thanksgiving.), we found a nice little sugar pumpkin at Farmer's Market last Thursday. Then, on Saturday, Mama took the stem off, cut the pumpkin in half, scraped out the seeds (a grapefruit spoon was a godsend), put the halves cut side down on a cookie sheet, baked them until they were soft at 350°F (an hour or so), scraped the pumpkin out of the shell, and pureed it in a blender.

Meanwhile, while the pumpkin baked, we worked on extracting the seeds from the pulp so we could roast them. I had help...very enthusiastic...for about the first dozen seeds or so.

After the little lost interests, Mom finished sorting seeds. Once the pumpkin was out of the oven, I tossed the seeds with 2 tsp. olive oil, a little salt, and some chili powder, spread them on a baking sheet and roasted them for 45 minutes at 300°F. The end result was this:

Five cups of pumpkin puree in five Ziploc baggies destined for the freezer to become pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, or whatever we fancy. There was a little over a cup left, but we decided to season it with a little brown sugar, a little cinnamon, some freshly ground nutmeg, and a bit of ginger and had it for a bedtime snack while the seeds roasted. Also a delicious bowl of roasted pumpkin seeds that we have been snacking on since then!

The long-lost chili recipe

On my recipe, it's called "Dad's Chili," but since he couldn't replace it when it went missing, I now claim it as "My Chili"

3 lb coarse ground beef
2 small green peppers, chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
4 oz. green chiles or jalapenos, finely chopped

Cook beef, green peppers, onions, garlic, and chiles in oil until lightly browned. Then add:

2 T chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp tobasco sauce
1 c water or beer
3-16 oz. cans stewed tomatoes, diced

Simmer 45 minutes.

3-15 oz. cans kidney beans*

Stir in undrained beans; cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Makes about 4 quarts.

* One pound dry kidney beans may be substituted. Soak beans overnight, then simmer for two hours before adding to chili.

I've never used dry beans, but included it, since it was in the recipe. If you prefer fresh chiles to the canned kind, I have found that one average-sized jalapeno is about an ounce.