Baking Day!

I have found it a real time saver to bake more then one thing at a time. Rarely do I make up only one recipe. While I have the oven on and the mixer dirty, I usually keep baking! I rarely have only one pan baking in the oven. I can usually think of something that I can slide alongside, even if it is just some baked potatoes!

I'm not at all organized about it like MoneySavingMom. I just start baking and see how far I get without any real plan. A lot can depend on the other day's events, children, etc. Maybe a plan would help me have even better use of time. I also don't have any real schedule of how often I bake. When I have the time, desire, and need to bake - I just do it!

I have done almost no baking recently since we were so blessed with food over the funeral. Earlier this week I cooked up several pumpkins. Yesterday I looked at the large bowl of pumpkin puree and decided it was time to use it up! It turned into a real pumpkin baking day!
And the result...
pumpkin muffins
pumpkin torte
pumpkin pie
pumpkin cheesecake
chocolate chip pumpkin bars

I know that looks like a LOT of dessert! We are not eating it all ourselves! The muffins we had for breakfast, the bars went in the freezer, the torte and cheesecake are going to a family reunion on Sunday. That left the pie which we enjoyed for supper! Usually when I bake, I make changes to make a recipe more healthful, adding whole wheat flour and eliminating some of the sugar. But this time, I was making recipes, as is, with all the high fat, high sugar ingredients that make these recipes ones we look forward to at special occasions! I also mixed up a batch of bread to put in the fridge to bake tomorrow.

The pile of dishes looked rather daunting but when I remembered that I could have had a pile of dishes five different days - the pile didn't appear bad at all!

Any of you have regular baking/freeze ahead days? Do you have any tips?

Gardening Year in Review - 2009

What a good year in the garden! We had plentiful rain (except for a few weeks in August) and a cooler-than-usual summer made gardening far more enjoyable. A newborn, born in April, did complicate gardening. It seemed that I would only have begun working in the garden when she woke up! But maybe that was God's way of making sure I didn't overdue it!

Most of my gardening was done in tiny segments of time, frustrating at times but taking lots of breaks probably wasn't a bad idea! Really, I was just thrilled to be able to bend over again and enjoy the outdoors with my children! Gardening is just a joy to me and the produce is just an bonus - though a very nice bonus!

I thought I'd take some time to think back over the year and record some of the things that worked (or didn't)! I may even link this to the Organic Gardening Carnival over at Keepers of the Home. I love hearing from other gardeners and gaining tips for future years.

First some background:
Our garden is in USDA zone 6. (If that means anything to you!) We have been gardening all the seven years since we married and moved to our almost three acres. Most of our property is pasture and a huge lawn, I don't even know how big our garden actually is.

Each year we tackle a few new projects. About the time we think we are about finished making changes - we get a new idea! I couldn't possibly garden without my husband's help. Ed does the bulk of the "grunt" work (tilling, mowing, planting, turning compost). I just get the fun of caring for the plants and harvesting! Oh, and the cooking! And we all help with the eating!

If you want to take a garden tour from back in July, go here.


Best new plant -
'Amish Paste' tomatoes! This was the first year I planted them and I was totally impressed. This is an old heirloom variety. The tomatoes are a paste type tomato similar to Roma but much larger in size. I was so tired of peeling Roma tomatoes for sauce making and the Amish Paste tomatoes made the job much faster.

But there was more then the size to rave about. In the past we've had problems with tomato blight. I expected that this variety would have worse problems since it isn't a fancy new hybrid. But even though we had a wetter then usual summer and I heard of others in the area having problems with blight, our tomatoes were beautiful! The plants grew over six feet tall and produced abundantly. About the only complaint I could think of was they are not an early variety and I was a little impatient for the first tomato. Of the three varieties I planted, all were late bearing. Next year I'll know to plant at least one early plant to enjoy some early tomato eating. But I plan to plant mostly Amish Paste tomatoes for preserving!


Best new perennial-
We couldn't eat it but I also loved this aster 'Monch'. I planted it in May and it bloomed non-stop and is still blooming now in November! I guess the real test will be if it can last through the winter. It is supposed to be hardy in this area. I am not planning to do any coddling. If a flower can't make it in my perennial bed on it's own, then I'll replace it with something that can! I wish there were more flowers this easy to grow and blooms this well!

Best Pumpkin
We grew pumpkins/winter squash for the first time this year. The varieties we grew were Baby Pam, Red Kuri, Green striped Cushaw, and Sweet Dumpling. All were chosen because they were supposed to be good eating, and long keeping - plus look nice for some fall decoration! All the varieties grew well and produced abundantly. My favorite for eating was the Red Kuri. I couldn't really tell much difference between them for flavor but the Red Kuri was such a nice dark orange color and the others were more a pale yellow. But the Red Kuri did not keep as well. While the others are still hard and good, the Red Kuri has slowly been going soft. I have just been keeping my eye on them and when one get soft around the stem, I quick cook it up before it goes bad. I used up the last of them this week, so they still lasted several months.

Worse new plant-
I already wrote about my non-head forming broccoli. I did contact the company and they said they've heard of other with the same problem and offered me a new pack of seeds or my money back. It didn't help me have broccoli this spring but I did appreciate their effort to make it right.

What I learned-
Never plant a new variety without planting some of the old tried-and-true. If I would have planted some of my old broccoli as well as the new variety, we could have still had some broccoli this spring.

What I would do differently -
Start with larger blueberry plants. We planted six small plants. Two are growing well, two are surviving, and two are about to expire. We are new to blueberries, so it could be that we are making other mistakes!

Best spent morning -
We love the simple three bin compost pile that Ed built this spring. With the help of our chicken bedding, we've been churning out compost at much faster rate then ever before! And we can NEVER have too much compost! You can see how simple it was to build here.

Repeated problem -
Keeping onions. I've talked to many other gardeners about how to keep onions. I've tried many of their tips, but still have no success. Our onion crop was beautiful this year. I braided them and hung them in the wood shed. I had plenty of onions for canning pizza sauce but they are now beginning to rot from the inside out. Every time I go out for an onion, I throw several away. It is so discouraging. I am wondering if it has something to do with our clay ground. Our garden lays low and has deep rich soil. We rarely need to water and it hold moisture well - but maybe onions don't like those conditions. I'm just guessing because I've talked to several gardeners who have wonderful success with onions who have sandy or slate ground and much drier conditions, even though they live near us. I may try a raised bed next year. Also the onions I picked first when the stalks were still green are keeping much better. Anyone have other ideas?

Repeated success -
Once I did get broccoli (this fall) I've enjoyed worm free vegetable without sprays, thanks to row cover! I wouldn't want to be without row cover in the garden as it has so many uses. I've written about this simple method here.

I'll do this again -
Covering our strawberries with a simple bird netting was Ed's brilliant idea! It saved so much frustration! See photos here.

Maximizing garden space -
I'm guessing that sometime in the future we'll extend our garden into the pasture. But for now, I'm trying to make the best use of the space we have. I wrote about this year's successes here.
Children's Garden -
We all really enjoyed the Children's Garden. It was fun to grow some unusual plants in their garden like the Rainbow Inca corn and Rattlesnake beans. You can read about it here and here. I'm dreaming up ideas to make next year's garden even better for them.
Gardening for Chickens-
Another new project was gardening for our chickens. The goal was to grow some food (not all) for our new chickens to cut on feed costs. I was told to start when their young to teach them to eat food scraps. Our chicks were only days old when we started giving them grass to scratch through. We've learned what things they enjoy, and what just lays in their pen untouched. Apple peelings are some of their favorite.

I grew mangle beets, swiss chard and kale specifically for them and they enjoy them all. I'll know next year to plant far more. Each morning when I visited the hen house, I would either take kitchen scraps (if I had something they would enjoy) or pull something from the garden on the way out. They also enjoyed overgrown zucchini and cucumbers, old sweet corn (we left some just dry on the stalk) and sunflower seeds.

It was a bountiful year and in some ways I hate to see it end, though I have plenty of inside work that is waiting for me! We are already dreaming of next year. Ed would like to try planting some grain and is already preparing some experimental plots in the pasture. We also talk of adding some more berries, though our blueberries are hardly encouraging this year.

Every year is a new chance to learn about God's creation and enjoy His provision is a very tangible way! We are trying to take some extra time this month and "count our blessings". Certainly our garden this year was one of those!

Maximizing Garden Space

I'm always trying to squeeze the most use out of the space as possible. Successive planting help greatly. In the past when we finished harvesting a garden area, we planted a cover crop. This year we never had opportunity for cover crops because we were always planting a succession crop. When we pulled our peas, we planted late potatoes. Beans were replaced with late broccoli, etc. Some day we plan to extend our garden, but for now, I want to make the best use of each foot.

We did try several new things to stretch our garden space this year. One was planting pumpkins next to the fence, allowing the vines to grow into the pasture.
Last year, a volunteer gourd grew in this spot and I noticed that the cow in the pasture never touched the plant. I figured bovines must not like vine crops and planted pumpkins (notorious space hogs) along the electric fence behind the asparagus and grapevine. They grew lush and huge and, sure enough, the cow didn't touch them, not even eating the grass growing among the vine. At least for a while! One day, I found a huge section of the pumpkins were eaten. Not only were the vines trampled and eaten but large chunks were bit out of the pumpkins as well! It really didn't matter. We had a huge crop of pumpkins even after sharing with the cow!
But I doubt I would plant vines here again because the pumpkins grew up the grapevines. I didn't think it was good for the vines to share their space with pumpkins. Especially since we have struggled with black rot on our grapevines in the past.

The other experiment was growing sweet corn in the strawberry patch. After we finished harvesting the strawberries (end of June) we planted late sweet corn along each side of the two strawberry rows, making four rows of corn. We had some extra seed so I figured if it didn't grow it was no great loss. I just scratched a hole with a stick and pushed the seed in the ground, which was rather hard from being trampled on wet mornings while picking berries.
The shocking thing was that nearly every kernel of the corn grew! In our garden, where we had carefully tilled and hoed a neat row, our corn germination rate was horrible! Usually late corn is shorter and does not produce as well, but this corn took off! Whether it was our unusually cool wet summer, or the compost we've heaped on the strawberries or some unknown reason, it was some of the nicest sweet corn we have ever grown.

Gene Logsdon wrote in his berry book that he grows his best sweet corn in the old strawberry patch. Whatever the cause, it was a beautiful patch of corn. Now the real test will be to see how the strawberries do next year. They didn't seem to mind sharing their space. I think the corn helped to shade out some of the weeds and we were careful to make sure their was adequate water for both crops. If it works, it would be a great way to maximize garden space by growing two crops in the same area.

Do you have any ideas for making the best use of your garden space?

Crockpot Apple Butter

After the success with pumpkin butter, I wanted to try apple butter. Quite a few years ago I had made some but this time I wanted to try using the slow cooker to avoid all of the stirring and potential for charred apples.

There is lots of recipes for crock pot apple butter on the web. I put several recipes together and cut back a little on sugar - and we loved the result.

Here is how I did it:

Fill crockpot with peeled cored sliced apples. My crock pot held about 5 quart of apples. A mixture of apple varieties is preferred and I used Golden Delicious, York, and Staymen.

Cook apples on low overnight.

In the morning, the apples were soft and the crock pot was only about half full. I mashed them up with a fork and added sugar and seasonings.

1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves

I cut back the sugar as far as I dared. Many recipes called for far more. We thought this was sweet enough. I was scared to cut back more because the sugar in apple butter is what gives it the caramelized flavor instead of tasting like applesauce.

Cook on low for several hours, stirring occasionally.

By lunch time, the aroma was wonderful! But the apple butter was not thick enough. I placed a knife over the top of the slow cooker to hold the lid slightly open. This allowed the steam to escape. After cooking for several more hours on low, the apple butter was thick and rich! A wooden spoon could be stood up in the middle of the cooker - a sign that it was finished.

You could put the apple butter through the blender or food processor - or just used a hand held stick blender. To me, apple butter doesn't need to be perfectly smooth and skipped this step.

You could freeze or can the apple butter but I plan to give some away and keep the remaining in the fridge where I doubt it will last long! This just shouts for a slice of homemade bread!

This Month in My Garden - November

The season is winding down. At least here in this area. Sometimes I wish for a climate that allows gardening all year long. But, on the other hand, I love the four distinct seasons. Each one has it's rewards. And work!

Basically the goal this month is garden clean-up. October was a hectic month at our place and not much gardening was accomplished until Saturday when Ed did the final mowing for the season and mulched the leaves that have fallen so far. We have several mature oaks and maples and acquire a HUGE amount of leaves each year. They may make work but also provide the perfect additions for compost and mulch.

We are still getting some broccoli, carrots, and lettuce from the garden but it is almost finished. Hopefully we'll get the tomato stakes out soon. There has been more then one year that they've stayed there until spring!

On the To-Do List this month...

1. Drain garden hoses and store for winter.

2. Clean and sharpen tools and organize the garden shed.

3. Empty, clean and carry in the pots for winter.

4. Mulch or compost leaves.

5. Write down some notes on the past year while it is fresh on the mind to make planning for next year easier.

That is it! Looks easy! But with my house cleaning crying out to me - I shouldn't be bored!

Apple Pie Filling

Making apple pie filling is one of those jobs I do now to save time later. It is so fast to open up a jar of pie filling, pour into a baking dish, top with a cobbler, crumb or crisp topping and bake along with the evening meal. Most of our apple pie filling is used in Ed's dutch oven. Since the apples are canned it is much faster then using raw apples. Great for those impromptu ideas we can have some days!
Use a good pie baking apple such as Stayman or Grimes Golden. I used York, which seemed to do well. Do not use an apple like Granny Smith that cooks into mush.
If you own, or can borrow, a apple peeler, now is the time to use it! I used my mother-in-law's awesome peeler. It makes peeling fun and greatly shortened the prep time!

You'll need:
8 quart of peeled and sliced apples
9 1/2 cup water
4 cup sugar
1 cup clear gel
4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
3 T lemon juice

Bring water, sugar, clear gel, salt, and spices to boil. Remove from heat. Stir in lemon juice.

Stir in apple slices.
Place in quart canning jars. DO NOT fill too full. Can for 25 minutes. Makes 8 to 10 quarts

What to do with Eggs? - Custard

A huge shift has taken place in our kitchen in the last few months. Once upon a time, every egg was cherished. I had a good source for farm fresh eggs from my parents and two neighbors who sold eggs. But even though I'd pick up two or three dozen at a time, I always seemed to be low on eggs. Baking day began with an egg inventory and recipes were chosen accordingly. ("If I use two eggs in the cookies, and one in the bread, I'll still have one egg left for waffles tomorrow morning...") My children love hard boiled eggs and deviled eggs but I rarely made them.

Not anymore! Our chickens are giving us about 8 eggs a day. We have had as high as 11 in one day and as low as 6, but 8 is about our average. In a week, that is a LOT of eggs. And I LOVE it! No longer do I start my morning, looking into the egg carton to see if scrambled eggs is an option. At least once a week I hard boil a dozen eggs for my delighted children. I love that their growing bodies can enjoy this high protein food.

But after several weeks of doing very little baking, the egg situation is getting a little out of hand! Now I'm evaluating recipes for how many eggs they can use, instead of how few eggs I can get away with! My sister was here for a day last week and she helped me make noodles and angel food cake. We also discovered a custard recipe that took 6 eggs and was delicious!

Can you give me some other ideas? Or do you have a favorite egg heavy recipe? I'd love to try it!

And here is the custard we made.

Custard

6 eggs, beaten slightly
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
4 cup hot milk
nutmeg

Mix eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla. Add milk very slowly, while stirring rapidly. Pour into baking dish and sprinkle liberally with nutmeg. For best results, place baking dish into a pan of water, as deep as the custard if possible. Place in oven and bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes. (I baked it at 375 degrees for shorter time.) Custard is finished when knife inserted into center comes out clean.