Best Thanksgiving Perk: Cranberries

Thanksgiving is just over a week away, which means one of my absolute favorite fruits are now being sold fresh in bags – often on half price sale – at grocery stores everywhere. For Thanksgiving I use just one of those 12-ounce bags to make my famous Crackberry Sauce (regular whole cranberry sauce with a bag of frozen blackberries added). But I buy as many as I can afford when they go on sale so I can dry them as “craisins.”

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ALERT! Pie Crust Update!

Ah, pie! Who doesn’t love pie? Custard pie, pumpkin pie, berry pie, meringue pie, ‘mater pie… and any good – or merely beloved – pie chef has his or her favorite crust ‘secrets’ that draw the oohs and ash from their intended pie-audience.

Now, there are different sorts of pie crusts for different sorts of pies. There’s the kind of solidly “bready” pie crusts one wants to use for pot pies and quiches and such. There are “sweet” pie crusts of graham cracker crumbs and butter, with a little brown sugar mixed in, that are scrumptious with pumpkin and other smooth spice-heavy pies. There are much more substantial bready (with additions like oatmeal), sweetened crust-like stuff you dollop on top of those hard-won blackberries and raspberries in mid-summer for cobblers.

Then there are the super-flaky, very light and subtle crusts that can be used for any type of pie, but are best for specialty items like tomato pie and some berry/fruit pies. I admit my luck with butter crusts has not been very good. They often turn out hard and chewy rather than light and flaky. Don’t know if that’s because I work it too much, or something else. But I don’t even bother trying anymore, just go with the crust recipes that work reliably rather than on a hit-or-miss basis.

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The Wondrously Stupendous, Very Prestigious Cuisinart Bread Machine

During my year off from blogging one of the Big Projects for the homestead was a total kitchen make-over. We could afford it because my dearly loved Mother-in-Law died last April, after just a month in assisted living, at the ripe old age of 87. Turned out she had so much money in her checking account that even after expenses and splitting what was left with hubby’s brother, I could finally get a nice new kitchen to go with the dining furniture she also left to us.

For eighteen long years the kitchen has been separated from the main living space with a bar, even though the front door enters the kitchen rather than the living room. That bar has been variously attached to the right and left sides of the kitchen (thus changing the traffic pattern), and for the past six years it simply floated in the middle, topped with a piece of plywood painted for paper-flip football, mini-table tennis and various other games. Never managed to have four actually stable, matching bar stools at any given time, but our annual visitors were encouraged to buy or build their own, which would be exclusive to them whenever they were in-house. Some of them are pretty amazing, but of course none of them ever matched. And that front door, just so you know, was a hollow closet door that never actually closed or locked, we used to brace it against wind and possible night intruders with a bucket full of dirt.

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Filed under Building, Doors, Glazing, Holidays, Homestead, Renovating, Repair, Windows | Comment (0)

Finally! The Last of the Pumpkins

Having battled out of control pumpkin vines all summer, I’m glad to report that the last of the pumpkin harvest is finally complete. It rained so much that several rotted on the ground, they’ve been tossed into the compost bin from which I expect next year’s greedy vines will take off. I’d planted an heirloom variety of pie-size pumpkins, not realizing that everywhere there was a leaf there would root a whole new vine. Thus the minimal planting of only 4 vines ended up literally everywhere! It grew over the mints and into the brick pathway. It grew through the roses and tried to cover the grapes. It grew out into the 3rd goal disc golf fairway and down the hill towards the bottomland drop-off. I was literally lopping off new vines daily just to keep some control (and some of my other crops)! Since the compost bin is on the fairway side of the garden, I’m going to go ahead and let the pumpkins have it next year.

Now, processing pumpkins – even pie-size pumpkins of 5 pounds or less – is an arduous task taking lots of time and energy. I spread it out over a couple of weeks, once haviing brought them inside when the temperature dropped to freezing. Once frost is upon them they go fast. Protected from frost in a dry, cool basement or root cellar, they’ll keep for months. So while it’s possible to avoid all that processing by spreadiing it out over the entire winter one pumpkin at a time, pumpkin simply doesn’t last long enough around this homestead to justify not doing it all at once well before the holiday season. I’ve got grandkids who can each eat an entire pie at a single sitting, and grown relatives who fully expect their pumpkin/hickory nut bread along with the fudge and cookies in December (my standard Christmas gifting). One thing you never want to do is find yourself processing a pumpkin at the same time you’re baking cookies/bread and making fudge. You’ll end up not sleeping for days…

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Filed under Food Production, Food Storage, Garden, Harvest, Holidays, Nutritition, Recipes | Comments (2)

Earth Day ’08

In honor of Earth Day (April 22) and Earth Week (April 20-26), I went on over to EPA’s Earth Day Events & Volunteer Opportunities page to see what’s happening in my neck of the woods. I live in region 4, which includes the entire southeast plus Kentucky. If you’d like to pick up on some opportunities in your region, just click on the map and the list comes up.

In Atlanta the Children’s Museum is sponsoring one of the biggest regional events for kids. EPA has a character called “Mother Earth” who will distribute vegetable seeds and help children plant them in pots, and she’ll be giving away sun visors for the “SunWise Parade” through the museum. Sounds like fun, but I’ve no little kids and it’s way too far to drive.

Lots happening in Florida, but I won’t be there until Saturday – for a funeral, alas. Knoxville isn’t that far to go for their Earthfest event on Saturday, but I’ll be in Florida then. Oh, well. Looks like there’s just not much happening – at least, nothing government sponsored – in my Western North Carolina mountains. But wow! I’m looking out my window right now at the new green baby leaves on my hardwood forest, at gorgeous sprays of white-white dogwood scattered throughout, the red azaleas are in full dress around my garden bench, the tulips and cala lilies and jonquils are everywhere, wildflowers are popping up in the garden terraces where I didn’t plant them…

There are some great ideas available on the International Earth Day site, and interesting news and projects on the EarthdayNetwork website.

Hmmm. I’m guessing the best thing I could do today is sip some nice fresh mint tea while sitting on my garden bench planning all the hard work I need to do to get the place in order. It’s a perfect 72 degrees and the sun is intermittent. Happy Earth Day and Earth Week, all you hopeless nature-lovers!

Links:

Earth Day goes political and corporate
International Earth Day
EarthdayNetwork
EPA’s Earth Day Events & Volunteer Opportunities

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A Log Cabin Christmas

During this 2007 holiday season, it seems the children are all nestled asleep in their beds, with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads… oh, wait. You say the “children” are all teenagers now, terminally bored with Christmas and expecting a 10-gig iPod loaded with every album too objectionable to be played in public, plus keys to your a car and $400 worth of “Prison Chic” pants that hang somewhere around the thighs and show off their underwear?

Did the fudge never set, so you had to run to the store to buy enough ice cream to disguise the un-set fudge as super chocolate syrup? Were those tollhouse cookies hard as a rock, breaking grandpa’s dentures with the first bite? Did cousin Jim finish off the entire bottle of rum you’d brought for eggnog before passing out under the tree? Did the dog eat that perfect glazed ham before you could get it into the oven to heat? Did it snow during the night and hide all the firewood you’d stacked somewhere in the yard for the Christmas Eve fire? Are the in-laws insisting on watching Enemy of the State as a “Christmas Movie” instead of It’s a Wonderful Life for the 16th time?

Be of good cheer, enjoy yourself anyway, and…

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

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Your Perfect Homestead Christmas Tree

It’s now just one week until Christmas Eve. Have you found and installed your Christmas tree yet? The holidays around this homestead require a tree that must go up the week before Christmas and come down a week after Christmas, so let me lend a few homestead hints on that particular subject…

Our family stopped buying commercially produced Christmas trees as soon as we moved to our homestead in serious Christmas tree country. They’re a regular Big Cash Crop here, but take years to grow and a lot of work trimming so they’ll have just the right thickness and shape. Heck, there are Christmas tree farms in our immediate region that’ll let you come in with a hand saw and cut your own!

But that’s not what we do. We do have a cathedral ceiling in our little living room from when the loft was built, so we like our trees to be 15 feet tall. But even though Scotch pines and hemlocks and Frasier Firs grow wild on our property and in the forest around us, they’re rangy and thin from growing in a forest. You’ll have this if you don’t carefully trim your growing trees in view of future Christmases.

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