Damsons in Distress....or at least, in a pot.

This is me....in case you had any doubts about that. ;)

Ehh...you're right. ;)

Moving on! I must have some home-maker cell in my body that won't let me rest, even on my birthday. Because yesterday afternoon I went for a walk to see if a neighbor's peaches were ready. This neighbor, who passed away recently, was our beloved Miss Virginia. Her nephew told us that whatever fruit comes into season in her yard we are welcome too!

"It has the odor of grave-robbing about it!"

-Miss Pole, of Cranford

Ahem. As I was saying.... It is such a blessing because I've always wanted an orchard! Anyway, we were too late for the sour cherries, and my wisdom teeth mess put me on the too-late side for the wild cherries, but I was just in time for some lovely white-flesh peaches yesterday. Naturally me, being a bit bulkier than what tender, bendy fruit trees enjoy, and Gracie, being too small to climb higher than me, we only picked the fruit on ground level. But then I saw It.

The It.

The It I've been waiting for ever since I heard Miss Virginia mention having s

uch an It the first year or two we moved here....

This It is rare in our county. For heaven's sake! It's rare in America!

Because this It, is a beautiful damson plum tree! :)

Photo courtesy of Google images.

I didn't get any pictures of this gorgeous tree of my own, because that self-same homemaker cell went into over-drive and I commandeered Benjamin to help me strip the tree bare without a second thought. Truly though. Who could resist such a beautiful crop of fruit! The tree, though it's been neglected in recent years and not sprayed or pruned or anything was absolutely dripping with smokey purple plums about the size of large marbles. The tree branches looked precisely like this:

Photo courtesy of Google images.

Isn't It a beauty? Benji and I picked every swingin' damson we could lay our hands down, then shook the tree violently to get the rest. They just *wouldn't* come off the top of the tree despite our efforts with a rake, so I decided to let the birds have those ones. Benjamin and I carted our peach-basket home, two-thirds full of the purple damsons. I had tried the fruits but they were very acidic while still being sweet. Like a plum that dries out your mouth in the same way green apples do. That was when I did some research and found they are cooking plums. Very well.

Homemaker cell went into over-drive again. I'd preserve them. I picked through my loot, taking out any damsons that weren't good, and then measured out the fruit. I ended up with....12 pounds, I believe. The recipe for damson jam stated that since the damsons are cling-stone plums, you must boil the plums in the water first, then skim out the pits. Fair enough. I set the damsons to boiling and a couple of hours later began trying to "skim" out the pits. Ahem. I decided I had better do what one site suggested and let the mixture cool.

This morning I gave in to the job of dredging up damson-stones and I washed my hands really well, then plunged them into the vat of pinky-purpley fruit, squeezing all the damsons until the stones came out, then fished them out. I really needed something like this:

That being done, I reverted to my original recipe.

But what do you know? They wanted me to put 12 pounds of sugar in my jam! No sirree!

I cut the sugar in half at least, but then began wondering if it would jell that way. Thankfully, we had some packets of fruit pectin left in the pantry from strawberry season, so I put those in

and boiled the mixture a long time before finally ladling it into hot jars and putting the lids on. It made exactly 14 pints of delicious jam.

I do hope it jells right....

But if not I already have plans. Damson sauce (yes, that's what I'll call it if it doesn't jell) might be delicious on gingerbread or spice cakes. :) And it wouldn't be bad over vanilla icecream either. I've even heard-tell you can put it on game...think turkey and cranberries. :) I'm not too worried about the end product...we didn't pay for the fruit and so a mistake won't be the end of the world.

Oh yes! I have a book of Victorian-era jam and relish recipes, and so I took the remaining few damsons, packed them in a jar, and per the recipe in that book, made "spiced plums". Only I jerry-rigged the recipe to fit my tastes.

I started with packing the damsons in a clean jar after pricking them all over with a hairpin. Then I made a syrup out of a cup of vinegar, two cups brown sugar, a heaping spoonful ground cloves, and a heaping spoonful of ground cinnamon, boiled together on the stove. When that was syrupy, I poured it into the jar over the damsons and capped it and voila! Another experiment! :)

The only thing left was to clean up. And yes....I looked that glamorous the whole time. ;)

When it Comes to the Kitchen...

...I'm a heavy-metal girl. Cast-iron style! :) This post has absolutely nothing to do with heavy-metal music (I despise that sort) but everything to do with my love-affair with the ironmongery trade! ;)
Nothing cooks like my cast-iron skillet. Please don't bother me with raptures over non-stick pans. They won't last fifty years like my baby. ;) I'd love to get one of these:It would be perfect for making our beef stew in while we are camping! :)Everything cooks perfectly in cast iron, provided you don't let it burn...pancakes...eggs....stir-fry....
Deep dish apple pie... :) It's stove worthy, fire-worthy, oven-worthy....the perfect tool. Hey *whispers* I've also heard it makes a pretty great weapon ;)


Ahhh....I love my skillet! :) Now ya'll know what to get my for my wedding present someday! <3

The Tale Of The Turnip (that sounds scary)

I was sent on a mission today: figure out how to make something with turnips. Something that actually tastes good. Something that we can type out on recipe cards and hand to customers who buy them at the Wilson's on Saturday. They have very generously allowed us to sell our loose-leaf lettuce, turnips, and spinach at their farm pick-up day on Sat. So what is a girl to do who only has a vague idea of what a turnip is used for? I recollected (somewhere in the files of my brain) that you cooked the leafy tops and ate them like regular greens. So far so good. But everyone knows that. The only other inkling I had was that in some AmericanGirl book, the heroine refused to eat her "orange mashed turnips". I am wondering why her's were orange: ours are purple on the outside and white inside! :) So I did a Google search, and I came up with some interesting facts: you can use turnips in any recipe in which potatoes are called for, you can use it instead of cabbage in coleslaw, and it has cancer-fighting nutriets! Yay for that strange vegetable! So I set out to make two recipes, for better or for worse....."Turnip Oven-Fries", and "Mashed Turnips". Sound good? Here's what I did:

Washed, peeled, and cut up the turnips: some I chunked, (to boil) the others I sliced thinly like potatoes. I tossed the thin ones in olive oil, and laid them out on a tray. The others went into a pot of boiling water. Here's a picture of the chunked ones:

The oven-turnips baked at 425 F. for 20 minutes or so, and the stove ones just got the dickens boiled out of them. I like to boil my potatoes to mash until they are nearly falling apart, so I did the turnips the same way.
Back to the oven-turnips: When they were done, I salted them, and had everyone try the finished product: it tasted sort of like sweet potato fry, if you have ever had those. Sort of sweet and mild at the same time. Here is a picture!

Here they are. Aunt Christy added the spinach to the side in lieu of curly kale. :)

Then for the mashed turnips---I strained the water away from them, smushed them up with a pastry-cutter, (I did NOT feel like taking out our whole Bosch thing and doing it the right way! :) and added salt, pepper, butter, and our goat-milk. Yum! They tasted pretty good, if not exactly like real mashed potatoes. I found that they were a bit more wet than potatoes, and a tad bit stringy-ish and lumpy. But that could have been because I didn't use a mixer! Here are a couple pictures of those! :)

Here is a far-away-ish picture. I am dealing once again with our addle-pated camera, so bear with me. We'll call the darkness of the picture "Art" and leave it at that!

And once again, my hand stars in the post. I believe that is all ya'll have seen of me! :) hee-hee. Well, hope this turnip-y post is not too dull! If I were anything like Winnie-the-Pooh, I would have made up a "hum" by now, because "turnip' is a promising sort of word that deserves a rhyme or something! ;) -Rachel

Help me! My Head Shall Explode! For Real! :(

Oh my stars and stockings. That is all I can say, and grasp my head with both hands to hold it on. I had written quite a long post detailing how nothing was going right AT ALLLLLL in the kitchen today, and then lo and behold, the internet disconnected, and the post was lost. Hadn't been saved. Hadn't been anything. Gone! I should make up some new word that expressly describes the frustration I am feeling. Rats! Grrrrr!!! Or, to be cheerful, and give you an idea, maybe the most appropriate word, for when you can't think of anything to say: (And I give a murderous glance kitchenward as I type in bold capslock: SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS!!!!!! There. That seriously relieved me. Now to go deal with dinner. -Rachel

Recipe For Foccacia Bread

Hey guys! I was making foccacia bread yesterday, and I thought I'd share the recipe with you guys! (I don't know if anyone pays attention to recipes anyway, but I'll try this time! ;)
Okay. So here is the basic recipe:

Rachel's Focaccia (foe-cotch-a) Bread Recipe:
4 1/2 tsp. yeast
4 cups warm water
4 tsp. natural cane sugar
5 tbs. plus 1 tsp. olive oil
4 tsp. sea salt
8-10 cups white-wheat flour
By the way, this makes enough focaccia bread that our family of 11 ate it for dinner last night with left-overs, and there is still a pan for lunch with my grandparents today. If you are a small family, just cut the recipe in half or so! :)

Okay. So I started by grinding out white spring wheat in our Whisper Mill. There's nothing like freshly ground wheat!

Then I combined the yeast and the sugar in one cup of the warm water. I let this proof for about 5 minutes. Think it's puffy enough? :)

I added the yeast mixture, along to the remaining water, oil, and salt in our mixer. Then I slowly added the flour until it formed a nice ball of dough. At this point I turned it out on the floured counter, and kneaded it till it was... well as we say, "smooth as a baby's bottom". :) I made a nice, smooth ball and put it in a greased bowl to rise on the warm front porch for an hour or so. Meanwhile, I crammed some more of Ivanhoe. (Still trying to finish it! :)

When the dough is done rising, you grease two pizza pans, and dust them with cornmeal. I didn't have any, so I used flour. It works the same way.

Here is the dough after it has risen!

You then divide the dough in half, and roll each piece out to roughly the size of your pan. Plop that in the pans, and cover it. Let rise again for about 1/2 hour or so. After that is done, comes the fun part! You get to poke a bunch of holes all over the top and dimple it. Brush the surface with olive oil.

Here's where I go off the recipe: I like making a mixture of dried herbs to go on the top. So I just grab whatever is in the cabinet, and make up a mixture that is spicy and tasty enough to suit Daniel and Dad! :) I think I used basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, onion powder, and garlic powder this time. Sprinkle whatever you decide to use on the top.
Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, or until golden brown on top.

So here it is when I took it out of the oven!

And here is a piece after it is cut! This has become a favorite recipe in our family! Hope you enjoy it! :) -Rachel

Here's a Recipe!!!!!!

Hey everyone!I thought I'd share this recipe with ya'll. We tried making it once and it umm.... well, let's just say that they use odd ingredients in the Bible. (does anyone know what coriander is?) So here it is and I'll just let you know that it's not one of those love, joy, peace kind of cakes! :)

A Scriptural Cake

1 c. Judges 5:25
2 c. Jeremiah 6:20
3 1/2 c. 1 Kings 4:22
2 c. 1 Samuel 30:12
1 c. Numbers 17:8
1 c. Genesis 24:20
6 Isaiah 10:14
1 Tbs. Exodus 16:31
pinch Leviticus 2:14
2 tsp. 1 Corinthians 5:6
sweets in 1 Kings 10:2
Mix in order given and follow Solomon's advice in Proverbs 23:14.
I hope some of you try this out, and Enjoy!!!!
Note: You'll have to guess on the cooking time and temperature; we did it on 350 for I don't know, maybe 15 minutes or so.

-Sarah

"Tomorrow is a New Day With No Mistakes in it" (Yet! :)

Hi Everybody! I guess it would be no use to post about Advent since Daniel is doing such a good job! So anyway, today the younger ones are still down with what we are affectionately calling The Black Plague. But never fear! We are learned in the art of bleaching everything anyone could touch. I think I have wiped down the entire downstairs and upstairs in the space of about 15 minutes after people leave, or after we have had sickness! That is one area in the many undiscovered talents of our family! (Oh! The Black Plague I'm talking about is a cough/cold sort of thing. Thankfully it is not a stomach bug! :)
Anyway, today we were supposed to have that cooking day that I described and was in charge of planning! Well, anyone that would have come to help was sick too, or else busy! (Like the Walkers who are showing a house today- actually almost this very minute!) How did it go Matthew?
Anyway, Sarah made Norwegian crunch! Yum! And I was in charge of making Mrs. Chandra Christmas's really good macaroni. At least, um.... her's was really good. Here's what happened:
Among the many other things I had on my mind, was making the macaroni, which has a saucy sort of thing that must be made on the stove.
Well, I think we were using every burner- one was occupied by a tea kettle, the other by a makeshift double-boiler that was holding a strange-smelling garlic and olive-oil tincture we were brewing for Daniel's sinus infection he has. Then one pot was boiling my noodles, and the other one I was gleefully stirring while Sarah read Pride and Prejudice to me.
Believe what you will, but I was not that absorbed in Mr. Darcy's letter to Elizabeth, but I was listening, and saw that my noodles were boiling over. So I stopped stirring the macaroni brew, and dumped the noodles in a colander, only to come back and find that my mixture had started sticking a little. It kind of smelled funny, but as I had never made this recipe before, I hoped against hope that it was just me, and I proceeded with the recipe. Despite my cold I could smell it, but I finished baking some in the oven and let Mama taste it. Whereupon she informed me that it was scorched. I wished I could have sunk into the floor- wasting perfectly good ingredients?!? Now, I pride myself on knowing how to cook and being good at it. I am confident that I shall be a wife that her husband is proud of when she brings a meal to the table, so this scorching of a project, (especially since it was scorching two huge pans full of macaroni) was unacceptable to me. Mama was not worried about it, but still, I couldn't watch as she scraped the bad-smelling mixture into the trashcan. (Why did we have to go and butcher our pigs before this incident? I would have felt better feeding it to an animal) I despise wasting almost perfectly good food, and nearly had Mama convinced that we could bring it to the Wilsons and tell them what had happened, and since most of them have the Black Plague too, they could eat one pan, and we could eat the other. No one would notice the odd flavor since they all have stuffed-up noses! But we tossed that idea and I started over. Boo-hoo-hoo. Oh well. I'll chalk that one up as the first mistake in the graduation-preparations. Please pray for Mama and Dad that they keep healthy as we all get well, because I know they don't need a head-cold on top of plans! -Rachel (Now it is the long-lost-Sarah's turn!)

Hello to All Our Faithful Followers!!!!
This is me, Sarah who hasn't written for 4 whole days!!! (Oh,la!) Sorry I haven't posted much recently, but I've been sick, busy, and I think it's a little much for a blog to have 2 new posts in one day, and since Rachel's been posting almost daily, I haven't.
Anyhow, today, as was mentioned above, we were cooking some. The Norwegian crunch turned out well, although the insides of the Heath bars didn't melt so I had to remove them and chop them up. But, Hey!:) We've gotten the boxes of Christmas decorations down from the attic already and probably tomorrow or something, we'll decorate. We're waiting to put up our tree til after "The Graduation" so we can have as much room as we can inside. Our Christmas tree isn't what some might call traditional, in one sense, but I have and always will admire it for it's warmth and cheeriness! We don't put tinsel on ours and we usually use colored lights, along with a mixture of handmade ornaments or special ones that we've had for a long time. I enjoy reminiscing every Christmas season as we decorate the tree and see familiar ornaments that we've known since we were little! Last night was the first night of Advent and with Mom reading the story by the candle's light you would think it a pretty picture, but sadly I was busied in trying to unclog our vacuum's tube and changing overflowing filters,etc. while all this was going on! Hopefully tonight we'll all be able to keep a fine tune while we sing carols, as last night only a few of us could, due to our stuffy noses or tickley throats!!
I'll look forward to posting something more soonish, but for now I must bid you adieu!
-Sarah