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.”

I’ve written quite a bit about how much I like drying food from the garden rather than canning. Which is a hot and expensive way of preserving things. But this time of year my handy-dandy home-made solar dryer is fairly useless, there’s just not enough hours of sun to make it work. So I use the oven, which can also be a relatively expensive proposition. Still, good craisins are expensive from the store in those little brand name bags, so it works out fairly. Even better, if you make your own craisins at home you can do some pretty spectacular things with them flavor-wise.

This year I’m doing the “Double-Dry” method for orange flavored craisins. It’s easy enough – just dry the craisins in single layers on flat baking sheets in a barely warm oven – I use the lowest setting, 150º – and keep the door propped open a couple of inches to allow the moisture to escape in natural convection. Takes awhile, and many of the berries retain their size and shape until they’ve cooled completely and wrinkle up into the ‘usual’ raisin-like form. I put these into a glass bowl and cover them with hot orange juice. Then cover the bowl and let the berries reconstitute. Then dry them again.

You could use any type of fruit juice to flavor your craisins, even wine or brandy if you want. Just be sure to label the containers you put them in so they don’t get mixed up. They are wonderful additions to holiday cakes, breads and cookies, or just as handy snacks. If you want your craisins to be sweeter, just thoroughly dissolve a tablespoon or two of sugar or honey in the reconstituting juice, it will get absorbed.

It’s cranberries this time of year, but drying and double-drying fresh fruit works any time of year, whenever the local harvest has big lots at the farmer’s market. I haven’t yet double-dried apples, as dried apple slices go so fast as snacks around here that it seems the hoards just stand around drooling to get them as fast as they can be produced. But if ever I did happen to have dried enough for, say, a Thanksgiving pie, I’d probably reconstitute them in spiced juice (mulled cider or even wine) just before putting them into the pie crust, using leftover juice as part of the filling. Just add sugar and corn starch to thicken.

Cranberries don’t grow in my locale, but blueberries sure do. I’m planning to dedicate several terraces on the upper yard slope to the ridge to blueberries, once I find a good source of thinned bushes I can get for free. Say, 4 100-foot rows of good producers, which works out to ~25 bushes per row spaced at 4′. Good producers will return ~5 pounds of berries per bush (some will give 10, but I’m being conservative here). Once they’re producing at that level, I’ll be getting an average crop of 500 pounds a year! That’s big enough to supply my family and friends as well as the local munchy market. Besides, blueberries come in high summer, which would let me use the sun instead of expensive electricity to do the drying.

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.

To that end I have a very good crust recipe from Debrah Madison’s 1997 tome, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone that I use for ‘mater pie and light quiches. It doesn’t sound like it would be the flakiest crust ever, but it invariably turns out that way. It’s difficult to work with, being made with vegetable oil (for lightness I use safflower) instead of butter or margarine. This gives the dough an oily texture that doesn’t lend itself to easy working. But if you roll it out between sheets of waxed paper, it gets nice and thin and is easily peeled out into a pie tin or onto a pie filling. Not something you’d want to use for stuffed anythings, as those do far better with real bread crusts like for pizza.

Pie Crust Made with Oil

• 1.5 cups flour
• 1/4 cup wheat bran
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup safflower oil
• 2 tbsp. milk, soy milk or water

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix oil and milk/water together in a separate bowl, add to the dry ingredients. Mix until the dough sticks together. Shape into a flat disk and roll between sheets of waxed paper to 1/4 inch thickness. Pull off one sheet of waxed paper, and invert over pie tin. carefully pull back the waxed paper to leave the crust in place. Work into the tin carefully, press-patching rips as you go. Trim. This is one 9″ deep pie’s worth of crust, double recipe for a two-crust pie.

Doesn’t take long, and this crust is surprisingly praise-worthy. Given, of course, my notorious failures in All Things Baked notwithstanding. This recipe is one that fails much less often than others I’ve tried, and the family likes it better than any purchased frozen pie crusts other than graham.

But there’s a recent Big Update that I’m anxious to try – Food Hacks reports that using vodka instead of water (or, in the above case milk) makes those extra crispy/flaky pie crusts even better! Which dedicated foodies will nod along with just as I did, while of course figuring the Thanksgiving pie quotient and wondering if Tuaca would work as well, but with more oomph…

According to Food Hackers -

Swapping ice cold vodka for water in pie crust recipes ensures a flakier crust. The liquid makes the dough more pliable to work with, and then evaporates while baking, giving you a lighter result than water.

That makes sense. Tuaca has vanilla and citrus and other spices in it, so when its alcohol content evaporates during baking, it should leave a flaky crust with a lot of flavor. Perfect for pumpkin or sweet potato pies!

I’m with the Food Hacker – cooking or baking with alcoholic content is definitely a good recipe for awesome. The family and guests won’t get high off the goodies, but the cook sure might! Given the amount of hard work that goes into a major feast for mass numbers of people, that can only be a good thing…

At any rate, come this holiday season as I’m busy producing as many pies of all varieties as anybody could ever want to eat, I’ll report back on how well the use of vodka and/or some other alcoholic specialty turns out – in order of best to worst. If I can get past my hangover in time, that is… ;o)

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.

Never had any upper cabinets because the huge 6×8 foot window took up the most of the wall. Worse, it extended well below the countertop level, becoming a catch-basin for all sorts of junk and dirt. My nephew managed to break 4 of its 12 glass panes some years ago with a bad shot from the second tee, I’d replaced them with cardboard and scrap lumber. Very, very ugly. So, for the very first time in my life, I got to go out and buy real building supplies from a real supplier and design the room just as I wanted it to be.

Not that there weren’t some significant “Uh, oh” moments involved, of course. We knew the front door opening had to be enlarged to handle a real, live actual front door. Which we got at such an astounding discount at the freight salvage place (along with window, cabinets and drawers) that we went ahead and bought two. One for us, one for daughter’s place out back. That Saws-All and re-framing job wasn’t so bad, it was the window that took most of the summer. Made me entirely miss out on mid-summer preservation of the harvest, the entire front of the house was wide open and covered (barely) with a sheet of plastic. Put in a standard 2.5×3 foot window – double pane! – and this allowed me to put upper cabinets on both sides once the sheetrock was replaced and painted.

Moved the plumbing so the sink could be right under the window instead of next to the door, put the stove against the far wall and out of its corner hidey hole, replaced the beams on two sides to shore up the roof and attic, and gave up on my planned hardwood floor before the holiday hoards descended. Maybe next year…

New cabinets, new countertops, nice recycled glass tile work (still not grouted), new furniture. All that’s left is a new ‘fridge, but that must await whenever Habitat for Humanity gets a stainless or black glass one they’ll put aside for us. So for Christmas, to celebrate what we described to my retired State Department sis and brother in law as our dramatic rise from Third World to Developing Country, they got me a nice brushed stainless (matches the outlets/switches) Cuisinart bread machine. Because they know that I make a lot of bread, and wanted to give me something they knew I’d use. Hubby continued the theme with Cuisinart super bagel toaster and coffee maker for Christmas, the clean look of matching appliances makes me feel positively… modern!

And while I won’t complain about the bread maker – which is incredibly convenient – I’m now back to kneading bread by hand as I always have because its ‘dough’ cycle doesn’t have a whole wheat option, as its bread cycle does. And my family won’t eat anything that even vaguely resembles white bread. Just spoiled that way, I guess.

Have used the dough cycle for baguettes, for bagels, for pretzels, pasta dough and for basic cloverleaf rolls. All of which require further processing outside the machine, which can only bake loaves. Every single time I’ve had to dump the unmixed mess out onto the counter and start all over again, because the machine can’t handle whole wheat for anything but bread. Now I don’t bother with it, but it still looks nice on my counter along with the rest of the appliances. It does keep us in whole wheat loaves of regular old bread, and I’ve even learned how to factor for sourdough instead of yeast, it does very well with that. It beeps for me to add sprouts and seeds and whatever else can be added after the first rise, and the finished breads are downright scrumptious. Heck, I could go into business with some of the best of ‘em!

But mostly, it just looks very cool on the counter next to the toaster and the coffee maker. Which, if anybody wanted to know, is the best contraption since indoor cooking, for sure. But that’s a whole different blog post…

Until next time, look forward to spring, get those seedlings started, and know that it indeed is entirely possible to make the transition between Third World and Developing Nation right here in America’s very own hinterlands!

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…

Ended up with 12 full quarts of puree, ten of which were bagged and frozen with two for immediate pie-making. This involves cutting, cleaning, peeling and chunking the pumpkin – I like chunks no bigger than 1-2 inches – and saving the seeds. From each of these meaty pumpkins I got about 2/3 usable fruit and 1/3 compost waste, which is a lot better than large modern pumpkin’s yield of half and half.

First, the seeds. squeeze them loose from the stringy pulp, and set aside in a bowl, but don’t wash them. Stir occasionally while processing the rest of the pumpkin to let them dry out a bit. After you’re done using the oven, turn it back to 250º for the seeds. Ad 1 tbsp. vegetable oil per 3 cups of seeds and 1/2 to 1 tsp. of non-iodized salt. You could lessen salt and add pie spices, or chili powder for flavored snacks. Stir well, spread thinly on a baking sheet, and let roast at 250º for an hour. If not good and dry by then, separate and stir, return to the oven for another 15-20 minutes. When dry let them cool and store in zip-lock bag or airtight jar. Eat whole, they crunch easily! High in vitamins E and A, iron, magnesium and trace minerals.

I fill a large oblong cake pan with chunks in a single layer, add 1/4″ of water, cover and bake at 350º for 20 minutes. Puree the soft chunks in the blender (you’ll need to add some water, as little as possible to make it blend well) and pour into quart-size zip-lock freezer bags. These I allow to freeze solid lying flat for a day, and when that’s done they’re the size of a thin box of frozen vegetables and can be stacked or slotted as easily. Some people go ahead and box the bags, but I’m not big on excess packaging. Flat frozen they’re easy enough to find room for.

A quart of puree will make 2 large, deep pumpkin pies or 3 pre-made pie shell size pies. Rather than use the standard pumpkin pie recipe that comes on the back of those cans of pumpkin puree on sale at Thanksgiving in the grocery store, I use a much older ‘traditional’ recipe that my pumpkin pie connoisseur grandson thinks is much better than any other ready-made or home-made from canned pie he’s ever had. Best part is that you don’t have to buy those cans of evaporated milk, which aren’t good for much besides pie or fudge and are always in short supply on a moment’s notice. It’s also very easy…

For a large, deep pie:

2 cups pumpkin puree
1 cup brown sugar
3 medium eggs (2 extra large or 4 small)
1/4 cup whole milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. corn starch
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. each allspice, ginger, nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves

You can go ahead and use the pre-mixed Pumpkin Pie Spice from the spice aisle, or a new spice mix my grandson picked out and now insists upon – a McCormick “Gourmet Collection” blend called Chinese Five Spice. It contains (in order of appearance per the label) anise, cinnamon, star anise, cloves and ginger. The anise gives a bit of a licorice flavoring, I compensate with a quarter teaspoon of extra ginger. If you’re using a blend, 1.5 to 2 tsps. per pie.

Bake for 15 minutes at 425º, then at 350º for ~45 minutes more or until the pie is firm and a butter knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. I like not using “the usual” spice blend or recommends, as they tend to make your pie taste way too much like everyone else’s. That Chinese blend with anise and some extra ginger (which most people don’t use) is truly different, and vanilla in the mix adds a little something unusual as well. Try it!

In addition to the puree, I also dedicated a whole pumpkin to slices. Got it down to meat, then cut into 1.5 x 1.5 inch slices between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. Froze into four family-size portions without blanching or baking, as you’ll want these semi-dry to make sautees spice slices, a truly great side-dish with any meal, particularly good for holiday meals. The same dish can be made with chunks – and the half to three-quarter inch chunks tend to hold together well – but I just prefer the look and texture of the thin slices instead.

To make, first melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a heavy pan on medium-low heat, add your favorite spices or blend (total of about a tablespoon’s worth) and 1/4 cup brown sugar or maple syrup. Keep on the heat until the butter clarifies and the spices release to the fat. Pour into a bowl and add 1/4 cup lemon juice, mix well and add the pumpkin. Stir often to ensure all the pumpkin gets time in the liquid, let it marinate for a couple of hours.

Strain out the pumpkin and reserve the butter/spice/lemon mixture. Put it into a large frying pan on medium and let the lemon juice reduce out. When down to mostly butter and spice, add 2 more tbsp. of butter. When hot add the pumpkin and let it simmer until the bottom starts to brown, flip-stir with a spatula and continue sauteeing for another few minutes. When done you may wish to put the pan under the broiler long enough to evenly brown the top. Very yummy!

That sautee recipe is also good for winter squash if you get sick of the basic mushy baked stuff. Pumpkins and winter squash are jam packed with vitamins and are one of the most nutritious foods the season has to offer. It’s good to remember that pumpkin can always be substituted for winter squash in cookbook recipes, and visa versa. Try those chunks in a hearty winter soup too, always delicious on cold days.

If readers have any favorite pumpkin/winter squash recipes or preservation hints, do let us know!

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

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!

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.

A tree that’s only going to be in your living room for two weeks isn’t required to be seriously fireproof and isn’t likely to catch fire before the New Year’s bonfire (when you burn it on purpose). This is good, because commercial trees don’t burn worth a darn no matter how long you keep them, and who really likes the solid cone effect anyway? I like some real depth to my tree – ornaments and silk flowers and bows and ribbon and lots of lights deeply into the tree, branches that stick out far enough to shade a lot of presents.

Because our tree is up against the wall, it only has to be half-round. The room is too little to accommodate a free-stander, so this is a plus for those rangy Scotch pines on the property that look good on one side, but have nothing on the other. If you put your tree in a corner you need even less fullness! Pre-planning is essential, and the most important thing to remember is…

Duct Tape Is Your Friend. Yes, we duct tape two or three rangy trees together (and add trimmed-out branches to the front wherever needed) in order to get a tree tall enough and full enough to decorate our living room. Yes, the taped-on parts will dry quickly because they aren’t in water, but as I mentioned, it needn’t last long. Once you’ve got the perfect thickness of branches and fullness of shape and height of tree, you can disguise the trunk’s duct tape sections easily with crumpled tissue paper, big ribbon bows and other such decorative tricks.

String those lights in layers from interior to exterior, don’t skimp! We love lots of little white and colored lights on the tree, use lots of strings. The tree itself is attached with cable to eye-hooks in the trim atop the wainscoting, so we just cover the base trunk and under-tree area with skirts. We don’t use plastic or metal icicles – these get everywhere, aren’t good for the environment, and don’t burn. We’ve been collecting plastic and glass icicle ornaments over the years and use those instead. They come off as easily as the regular ornaments do, to be packed away for next year, and don’t hide around the baseboards or in the rug.

So. If there are evergreens on your homestead, particularly scraggly young ones competing for growing space with all the younger ones, make your own Christmas tree and don’t forget to light it up at midnight on New Year’s Eve out in the backyard fire pit! It’ll decorate your holidays twice and warm you up too. What more can anybody ask of a Christmas tree?