I have been told that I like busy food with a lot going on. Here is a creation I baked this morning.
Pumpkin gingerbread streusel coffee cake with apple, blueberries, and walnuts.
Delicious!
Flavor Complexity
Category Archives: Cooking
Harvesting and Processing Herbs
Autumn is a flurry of chores to wind up the growing season. There was putting the vegetable garden to bed and now I am processing herbs that I recently harvested. I cut and dried thyme, oregano, and chives. These are perennials. Once they are dried, I strip the leaves off the stems and grind them up with my mortar and pestle. I store them for use throughout the winter.
Basil is an annual plant. I grow several of them. Just before frost I pull the entire plant up by the roots and hang them on the porch to dry. Then I follow the same procedure as above.
This year I think I will give some as gifts. It is easy to grow them yourself and reassuring to know they are all organic.
White Cake
Yesterday was my first attempt at making a white cake from scratch. That’s what my husband requested for his birthday this year. This picture shows the six egg whites beaten until stiff and ready to fold into the rest of the batter.
I iced it with the requested buttercream frosting. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. It involved 3/4 of a pound of butter. No wonder it was tasty.
When I bake cakes, I generally use a box mix as the base and make flavor additions and adjustments. I will be trying other cakes from scratch in the future.
Now to find something to do with those six egg yolks!
On Not Lounging
Well, today I was NOT sitting in a lounge chair enjoying the patio. And not just because it was so hot.
First I helped tie up some loose ends from a construction project. Then I picked up nails from said project. After that it was time to pick green beans. Picking beans seems to be my new hobby. Either that or cleaning and snapping them.
This afternoon consisted of making rice pudding for this evening’s dessert and then working on cleaning up the office. I never did get around to writing which was the whole point of cleaning up the office.
Oh well, as a line from a great movie says (in a wispy southern accent), “Tomorrow is another day. “
Veggie Season
It’s that time!
We get this many cucumbers, zucchini, and yellow squash every three days.
We also have more than sufficient amounts of green beans, Roma beans, turnips, snow peas, and tomatoes.
I am trying all kinds of new veggie recipes looking for some variety. We have had Mediterranean pickled turnips, Thai cucumbers, old fashioned refrigerator pickles, zucchini fritters, and all the usual standbys too.
We can only eat so much. Time to freeze veggies!
Abundance
Vegetables in the garden are ripening at an increasing rate.
Each meal now we must make the choice between turnips, beets, Romano beans, Slenderette green beans, sugar snap peas, cucumbers, zucchini, or yellow crook neck squash. Sometimes we have multiple vegetables.
This evening it was green beans pan fried with minced garlic and a dash of sea salt.
And none of our six kinds of tomatoes are even ripe yet. Summer can be glorious.
Ovenless Dessert!
It is so hot!
- Ninety-five I do not like,
- I do not like it in the sun,
- I do not like it for a hike,
- I do not like it anywhere.
So, I found a recipe for a dessert that does not require using the oven. Pictured above is Stuffed Sweet Focaccia Bread.
It is cooked in a pan on the stovetop. Recommended fillings are peanut butter, chocolate, or Nutella. I improvised and used apricot preserves, walnuts, and brown sugar. It came out quite well. I will be making it again.
If you would like to try it as well, I found the recipe on Pinterest at the link below.
Garden Dinner
This evening’s supper included beets and a turnip from the garden. I don’t know the particular kind of beets, because we planted a pack that was a mixture. The red one on the left was long and skinny. The candy cane striped one was red on the outside peel. And on the right is the turnip.
I sautéed them all together in some avocado oil and threw in the greens from all three as well. The only other addition was a little salt.
I topped some freshly made polenta with a fried egg and some cheddar cheese. Then I spooned the beet, turnip, and greens mixture over the top.
It was a fine repast.
No Bakes
Here is my recipe for no bake cookies. I have been using it a lot recently because it is too hot to turn on the oven.
With just the two of us, I have been cutting the recipe in half and pressing it into an 8 x 8 pan.
Sometimes, I leave out the cocoa and press a handful of chocolate chips into the top while still warm. Today I used 1/2 vanilla and 1/2 almond extract. Substituting Nutella for the peanut butter would be delicious too.
Enjoy!
What To Do With Serviceberries?
This afternoon was baking time. Pie and bread.
I picked serviceberries over the past few days, saving them until I had enough to make a pie. Well, the birds were faster than me. I fell short on the amount of berries I needed so had to round it out with a few blueberries. I also made it a fruit and custard pie. It was delicious nonetheless. I made a butter crust.
I also baked bread. I wanted to make tuna melts and didn’t have enough bread. And the oven was already warm. I only have one full size loaf pan, so made the rest as mini loaves. These are perfect for making garlic toast or having with butter and jelly.
Oh, and I also weeded the snow peas this morning, and drove the tractor this afternoon to help with bringing down an old mulberry tree. Hubby did all the heavy lifting and skilled work. All in a day’s work around here.
Sanctuary Acres 