Bar B Que (Not just for meat!)

The best thick sauces are made with paste tomatoes.  You can use a canned tomato puree or "crushed tomatoes".  But if you go the from scratch route you must cut tomatoes in half and squeeze or scoop out the seeds and more importantly the soft slimy covering to the seeds. Short of fermentation the seeds and slime bits take forever to break down.  The soft stuff around the seeds are what give the bitter acidic tangy flavor to tomatoes so if you want to have sweeter smoother sauce you get rid of that part.  It is also the part of the tomato that breaks down protein so expelling it makes your bbq last longer.

For one 4-5 lb chicken (this will make approximately 5 Cups finished sauce) baked and stripped down  this is the amount of bbq sauce you'll need for a saucy dish.  You can halve this if applying to grilled foods or using as a glaze while baking.  I like this with Pici pastas. num

• 4 pounds of Tomatoes or one 28oz can of tomatoes
• 1 giant (and I mean huge) yellow or vidalia onion minced (teeny tiny pieces) - this adds a lot of round and sweet flavor one of the more important ingredients
• 4-6 cloves garlic pressed or minced
• 1/2 Cup olive oil
• 1/2 tsp cayenne (depending on heat-taste)
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp paprika as real as you can get not just the stuff that makes things red (smoked paprika makes a unique bbq)
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp cumin (fresh ground is best)
• a handful of fresh oregano
• 1/2 -1 Cup honey, agave, brown sugar or Preserves of your choice (cherry, and raspberry are my personal favorites- apricot is also awesome)  I use Bonne Maman or whatever I have been given or have canned myself.
• Sea salt to taste 

Simmer minced onion until translucent, add minced garlic and stir well.
Pour tomatoes into onion/garlic mix simmer on low-med (it should not spit and sputter too much that scorches the sauce). Add spices and then herbs, once nearing the end choose one sugar/sweetener.  Stir in until well blended wait a few minutes to taste before adding final salt -the flavor builds and you can end up with a salty mess if you salt too quickly.  This recipe can be halved easily to be a dip for chicken fingers, fries, sandwiches.

This recipe can be canned or frozen into portions so you don't have to baby a new sauce each time you want some.  If canning add 1 tsp of lemon juice to a half pint,  2 tsp to a pint, 2 TBSP to a quart jar.  Or just test the ph.  I like to just make it easy on myself and add the lemon juice in these increments, it assures there is enough acid to help preserve the sauce.

Blackout friendship

I grew up poor as can be.  Of course as kids we had zero clue and played and carried on like animals.  We knew our clothes were ugly but we were ugly too - so no one was looking.  We had a few strong rituals that made for powerful memories.  When the power would go out we would become a family.  We were of course a family already, but primarily my sister and I ran around outside and played in junk yard heaps.  When there was a power outage mom would get the oil lamps and light their woven wicks and do up the largest room in the warm amber glow.  There we'd sit and talk, really talk.  Joke with each other, about how much we hated each other - or at least it was a joke then.  We duke out some epic games of Skip-Bo and then after laughter and love.  The lights would pop back on.  Whelp, done.  Everyone go back to pretending we are all alone in life.

Recently in my neighborhood there was a power outage.  Everyone gathered on their porches looking up and down the streets.  Each shouting to the house across about what the hell was wrong with the power company and how awful the service was ( The power has flickered MAYBE twice in the year I've lived here- no complaints from me).  Jason and I gathered candles and ran to the porch elated. Watching the neighbors talk at length, giggle together and children frolicking hard like summer fawns.  It was incredible.  Everyone had a candle flame either on their porches or in their living rooms.  You could see every star.  There was a harmony in the neighborhood that was rivaled only by the saccharine joy of woodland creatures in a Disney feature.

At 10 PM on the dot the power kicked back on and a roar of clapping and hollering thundered throughout the neighborhood.  In an instant every one was "happy" after being so happy.  Now they could go back into their caves and turn on their cave-shadows.  No need to be friendly.  We're good, we have Netflix.  New episode of House on Hulu.  Now we could be really happy because we could escape how sad we are and not feel anything at all.   With the clapping my spirit melted and I sat on the porch with Jason until it became a little uncomfortably cold.

Vanilla Ginger Mint Ice cream

Remember the directions from the Pumpkin Ice cream?  That will help with the how.

What you need:

• 1 pint half and half
• 1 scant TBSP vanilla
• 2 handfulls of fresh mint (of your choosing) chopped fine, or use mint oil
• 3/4 inch fresh ginger grated
• 1/3-1/2 cup Vegan sugar 

Whisk together ingredients vigorously then continue to your favored method of ice cream making.  (click the Pumpkin Ice cream link for the two I use)

Apple Ginger Acorn Squash

I have to straddle a fine line to eek some ginger into my life because Jason doesn't like it unless it is soda and even then he likes it far more tame than I prefer it.  This is a good dish to get a ginger fix and still have a lot of savory other things happening to keep the slightly more finicky tongues busy.

What you need:

• 1 large or two small acorn squash
• 1 granny smith apple (peeled and cored then diced in chunks)
• 1/4-1/2 inch little knuckle of ginger
• sea salt to taste
• cayenne (optional)
• a clove of garlic (optional)
• teeny pinch nutmeg (optional)

Preheat your oven to 375.  Oil lightly a pan.  Make sure your acorn squash either does NOT have wax on the exterior or give it a scalding rinse/scrub.  The food wax is the worst.  And if you're in a hurry when buying food it is really tough to see it.  Scratch it with your finger and if you reach the real skin in the scratch, great!  If not, this is very thick wax and may need to be cut off!  It is always best if there is NONE at all.

The easy way to cook squash is to cut it in half, scoop out the interior squish (reserving seeds if you're a gardener in case this is the best squash of your life) place the flesh side down on the pan and bake forever.  Checking every 20 minutes, then decreasing checking time to 15 and the closer to done then to 5 minutes.  It is not a rigid science with the huge variety of sizes these come in. You can't do this method if the wax is stubborn.  It will run down the sides to your pan and then it is on the flesh.  You can skin the squash with a peeler and knife for the crevasses. This way seems painfully intense but, you can then cut 1/2 inch rings and chop the squash into little pieces and it cooks really quickly.

After the squash is half way done... smaller pieces are effortlessly pierced with a fork.  Now it is time to add the granny smith chunks to the pan.  Cook for another 15 minutes until the outside flesh of the apple chunks have a silken but sad looking skin. It should now smell like autumn, and be sweet.

Place cooked lovelies into a tall mixing bowl with abrupt sides (this will keep things from flying out) and using a mixer blend until squash is mashed potato like -apples may most likely remain in chunks and not smooth through.  This is preferable.

You can keep this in an oven dish in a warm oven if it is completed before other things in the meal because this will lose heat quickly!

I served the squash with this:

I slice up some garlic and sautee it in a pan on a low-med heat until golden brown and crispy and then put aside.

I shredded a carrot finely into the remaining oil in the pan and tossing them often I let them darken and then removed them and put aside.

These are Heritage Pork chops which were cooked purely in their own fat, no oil or butter and some paprika I dried and ground from my garden.  After the pork chops are done -they only take minutes to cook and if put into a nice already hot cast iron skillet you are just cooking them until there is a nice caramelizing on the fat of the pork (a good chop will be marbled with fat and may have the caramelizing on the "fleshy" parts as well.  If you like your chops a little well done and cook them a couple minutes (on both sides)  just give a tiny slice to the meatier part on the outer edge.  This slice will firm up and open up looking like a triangle was cut out.  This is a "well" cooked chop.  I prefer mine to still expel a great deal of moisture so I do mine about medium -just touching it with my cooking fork in the center of the meat for firmness and using caramelization as the guide.  A good pork chop will have a PINK tone to it.  It will not be white. The Other White Meat is a campaign for cheap industrialized factory farmed pork. 

After the pork is done I put a TINY amount of butter in the pan which takes a little of the pork drippings off the pan and then I add a handful of pineapple sage cut chiffonade and stir it into the butter until the sage wilts.

I place the sage and garlic chips over the pork.

And a final Pork porn shot.

Pumpkin Ice Cream - It is never too cold for delicious

Traditional method used and then frozen in a freezer that is on a lower setting, making it scoopable! YUM

Traditional method used and then served immediately.  Like soft-serve.  Yum!

I'm not a gadget person.  I have a small electric hand mixer that comes out maybe 4 times a year even though I cook about 800 times a year.  I fail at knowing anything new and usually sit with a puzzled look when folks talk about such toys.  I'm the one who always thinks "WHY DOES ANYONE NEED THAT!?" (yes, sometimes in appalled anger) A mixer, sppfff, a spoon - I have 4 and they are easy to clean.  Well, I fell for the marketing trap of the Play and Freeze.  I wanted it and longed for it.  I called every store in the 15 mile area around me.  I pined for it but couldn't spend 30 or more dollars to order it.  Not finding it anywhere I gave up and shrugged off my "need" for it.  Jason kept insisting we could make ice cream with "just a can and a bowl"  but the initiative was never taken to make it.  UNTIL NOW!!! Yeah!

What you need for 1 quart (breaking it up into two batches cuts the time on it and it will keep in the fridge for a week easily):

• 1 pint /You will only NEED 1/2 of this but can easily use all to stretch your ice cream/ half and half (a local dairy and raw is best... but I know the system makes it tough) **{{also! you can make pumpkin pie sherbet or vegan ice cream skipping the cream}}
• 1 small can of pumpkin 15oz.  or a single 2 lb pumpkin cleaned, cooked, scooped and pureed(You can replace with sweet potatoes, a lot of folks that dislike pumpkin pie dislike ginger - I find it indespensible but? Personal taste, also sweet potatoes are more readily available.)
• 1/3-1/2 (My sugar amount- Jason and most peoples sugar amount) Cup vegan sugar or light brown sugar or maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• pinch nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• tiny bit of grated fresh ginger (use a fine grater and give it a swipe or two fresh is powerful, dry is often mixed with other nasties)
• 1/8 tsp or tiny pinch ground cloves (very strong so go lightly) 

• 1/4 -1/2 Cup of rock salt (it may say ice cream salt)  I got some for .99 cents and since it is only for speeding up the melting of ice because melting ice has more freezing capability and you don't consume the salt so you need not be as picky as if you're feeding it to others.

• A large CLEAN coffee can or quart mason jar.
•  A large bowl or pot which the ice cream can/jar fits well inside of with plenty of outside room for ice.

 The more fat there is in the milk, the quicker it will fluff and freeze, but I don't use anything fattier than half and half because it works really well in the play and freeze for traditional method (shown in photos) fattier cream could cut back active time.  **If you mix everything except the cream into the pumpkin (spices)  then put into the freezer for a few minutes taking it out only to stir and set up the rest of your situation, then it being cold will jump start the whole thing.  If you're making the vegan version I would recommend cutting back on any strong spices just a touch as this is a potent mix meant for flavoring the cream as well.  When storing it you may want to turn your freezer down a touch so it isn't so cold.  High settings on freezers just make ice cream into concrete. For vegan version you can stick it into the fridge and just come back to it later... taking it out of the freezer placing it on the counter for a few minutes to loosen the edges from your container.  Voila!  If you want a fluffy version continue below ignoring the cream.

Traditional method:
In a mixing bowl whip together your sugar, spices, cream and pumpkin then pour/scoop into the can or jar.  (or place in freezer to chill first) The bowl must be large enough to house the ice and the coffee can/jar.  Can/jar goes into the center of the bowl.  Surround the can with ice. Sprinkle 1/4 Cup rock salt over ice. Reserving some salt for next ice batch should your ice diminish before you have the consistency of ice cream you want. Now with the can/jar in the middle of the ice just agitate it like a washing machine.  Swishing back and forth or turning it in your desire direction mix it up.  Doesn't matter as long as it is moving and touching the ice. Ice level should be above the level of ingredients in the jar.

If you have the play and freeze just follow directions they include.  ( It is a pain in the poot to get ice cream OUT of it if you don't stop to stir it - you must stop a few times and stir it to remove the coldest from the walls) It will take about 20 minutes of active rolling to complete ice cream using half and half in the play and freeze.  It makes a fairly firm ice cream.

Still runny, but with plenty of solid pieces to mix in.

Starting to get larger amounts of solid frozen bits.

For the bowl method, you will also need to occasionally stir it with a spoon.  The walls will get the coldest first... so it can create an ice wall making it tough to mix in.  So stir pulling ice cream from the walls to the center and check for the consistency you want.  Once you have that... you have ice cream!
Depending on the fat in the cream and the salt in the ice this can take between 30 minutes and 55 minutes of constant motion! It makes a soft ice cream.

For saving the excess I recommend dialing down the freezer so it isn't crazy cold and turns your hardwork into concrete. To serve remove from fridge and let it sit out for a few minutes to release itself from the container.

My review of the play and freeze is that making the children do the heavy lifting portion of the ice cream making is genius.  The downside is having to stir it so often.  The quality of firmness is pretty rad as well.  Enjoy your ice cream adventures!

Empanadas - samosas, pakoras, Cornish pasty, Jamaican "meat" pie

White Whole Wheat with cayenne, cherry bomb, paprika, potato, yam, sweet pea, onion with olive oil, honey and dried serrano pepper sauce.

 So many countries like to claim this little pastry as their own creation.   I would, if I were a country.  These can be fried like a samosa or pakora, but baked is easier, cleaner and still very delicious.  The filling can be dinner things or dessert things to make them turnovers.  They can be crescent moon shape or little purse shaped.  Whole wheat or white.  Glazed with sugar or with salt. The possibilities are innumerable.

This vegan based dough is just like a tortilla dough. Flour, salt, baking soda, olive oil and water.  The best part is that the dough cooks around the filling so you can skip the extra step of cooking tortillas like you would for wraps, pizzas, gyros or tacos.

Preheat oven to 400

• 1 and 1/2 Cup whole wheat flour (you can do 50/50 white and WW or do just white.  I find whole wheat is a little easier to work with for these so it can help with manageability)
• 1/2 tsp Sea salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1-2 TBSP olive oil (it doesn't require much)
• Just enough hot water to combine everything. You don't want the dough too soupy or wet, you just want it to grab the loose flour from the sides of the bowl.

This will make approximately 10-12 empanadas if you roll out the dough to 1/2 inch thickness and use a 2 inch cutter.  I use a little mason jelly jar for my biscuit cutter.  Roll out or finger press each little circle until as wide and as thin as you wish.  Using a spoon scoop filling into center side of pocket and bring edges together and crimp/press edges.  If it isn't catching and staying then wet one of the sides and go again. 

These cook very quickly so you cannot count on undercooked or crunchy things to cook inside the dough at best it makes it's filling toasty warm. So whatever you choose to fill them with should be nearly as cooked as you wish it to be.

I will chop veggies into tiny cubes so a lot of variety can fit into the little pockets.

Favorite fillings are:

Sweet potato, potato, onion, pressed garlic, oregano, Hungarian paprika, sea salt saute everything until just under firm.  Once the empanadas come out of the oven plate them with a drizzle of honey or agave or whatever sauce you have prepared.

Potato, sweet peas, onion, pressed garlic, pinch cinnamon, nutmeg.  Drizzle of tamarind sauce. Or yogurt

BBQ -ed anything

Pear, sauteed onion or shallots, goat cheese.  Served with arugula and figs

Chutneys and peppers served with yogurt

Whiskeyed up apple pie  - apple chunks, cinnamon, brown sugar, vanilla and of course simmered in a shot or two of whiskey.  For color you can do an egg wash with cinnamon, and allspice. Or glaze with brown sugar after baking.

Jalapeno, yogurt cheese and chicken or steak and/or blended peppers.

Potato, bacon, chives, cheddar. served with yogurt.

Hard boiled egg slice, sliced olives, peppers and chicken. Served with a mole sauce or roasted garlic and dried peppers.

Duck, apricot, yogurt cheese or goat cheese.  Served with a wine or port sauce.

If you want a more bodied dough like a pastry or if you want it to have more decorative capabilities then you'll need to make a pie crust type of dough where you must freeze or chill between workings so that the butter holds together.  Something like say a braided rope end on the empanada's shape.  As it is you can crimp the ends closed in many fashions.  Pastry dough just holds designs better.  But it is the butter and consistant chill times that allow for the more elaborate decorations.

Yum!

Sima (Finnish Lemon Mead)

This recipe is less sweet than many you can sweeten right before bottling by making a simple syrup from honey, agave, or sugar (fine sugars can be added directly to the bottle) and adding that to each bottle.

What you need:

• 4 Cups boiling water (dissolve honey in water)
• 2 and 1/2  Cups honey
• 4 lemons zest pith thrown out and then sliced thinly
• 1/2 tsp yeast in 1/2 Cup of lukewarm water to foam I just used Bob's Red Mill active dry yeast, not brewer's yeast or wine yeast - folks get really specific about what they use and why.  They are all yeast.  So it is up to your preference.
• 16 Cups water

• Food grade non-reactive (anything acidic requires a non-reactive container or it will taste metallic or worse) bucket - 5-7 (I did 6) days

Yield is about 8-10 20oz bottles

Boil 4 Cups water and add 2 and 1/2 Cups honey to it to dissolve.  Zest lemons keep zest.  Cut away the white pith, it is a bad kind of bitter - throw out the pith.  Slice thinly the lemon and expel any seeds as found. Then add to hot or warm water/honey mixture both the slices and the zest.  Stir and let sit.  Prep lukewarm 1/2 Cup of water and add 1/2 tsp yeast to it and let foam.  Once the honey/lemon mixture is warm-tepid (so it wont kill yeast) add it to the bucket and then pour in yeast water. Add 16 Cups lukewarm water to bucket and put either loose fitting lid on the mix or a tight fitting lid ONLY IF you are using an airlock.  An airlock will help pressure escape while keeping the environment save for the yeast to continue growth.  The yeast will turn the sugars into alcohol.  Woo!

Let your Sima be alone for the amount of time you choose.  Recipes vary from 2 days fermentation to months.  We did 6 days.  We may split up our bottles and let some stand longer than others and see what the taste and alcohol difference is.  It also can become champagne like in fizzy-ness.


Sieve, bottle, leaving an inch of room at least.  Put 3-5 raisins in each bottle let stand with loose lids overnight 12-24 hours then move to refrigerator as raisins rise in each bottle if using glass bottles leave lids loose in refrigerator for a few hours so that you can be certain yeast production has suspended (This is to keep the Sima from making bottle bombs from pressure build up).  You must wait until the fermentation process has stopped before closing the bottles securely.  1. the raisins are floating 2. the bottles are cold to the touch. Cold will suspend the yeast activity.   After one final 24 hours in the fridge these delicious bad boys are ready for your festivities!

***update***

We had one about a day after putting it up in the fridge.  Good, but a little zippy in the tang department.  The flavors definitely hadn't fully developed.  4 days later... more fizz, more mellow and middle sweet.  I love the soft sweet of this!   It is now the 28th  (original post on the 10th) and the Sima is amazing.  Fizzy, lightly sweet, lemon tangy and I highly recommend this one!!!  If you want it for the holidays I recommend allowing for this fridge time!!!

Quilting - Or as I like to call it - Quiet time away from everyone

 

I just got this one this past week, very reasonably from The Cherry Chic where others I have were gifts or just great finds.

A favorite is a whole cloth styled boys blanket covered in airplanes. (If you look really closely you can see how angry Jason is, while simultaneously sleeping)

Gee's Bend - Made from Old Work Clothes

There are a lot of these past skills that in this economic climate can not only be handy, but could yield warmth, profit, or just livability for your family.  Some of the best quilts were made without quilting frames (structures which keep the designs taught while hand stitching) and made out of retired clothing for a second life (FREE FABRIC, since you've already purchased it).

Gee's Bend

I have had quilts around my family and everyone agrees they are sometimes gorgeous, and always a lot of work - but it seems no one was making them anymore.   Why was that?  If so many people knew of folks who make quilts but then they pass away and then what?  In twenty years time would we be a nation known for our quilts, and Jazz and become one of all things past and longing.  When the younger generation is older what will they make when they don't have to?  Text messages?  The new grannies will have hands withered and curled from swiffering and texting. Not to send you away too quickly, but this is a nice, very short listen. 

The best quilts there are seem to have been born from those groups of hidden people, and those people are as diverse as the quilts themselves.  Long coveted are Amish wares.  With good reason they are a closed culture (respectfully of course - meaning you are born into it, but it is difficult to get inside of as an outsider) and closed cultures are the only ones that can keep traditions strong.  They maintain the values and knowledge of elders and generations past.

Amish made

Amish made

Have you ever winnowed wheat?  Me either.  Woven a basket?  I've done that... but I'm not skilled or diverse in my over under construction.  These are things people knew and shared.  Days filled with just living and loving.  Quilts carrying a lot of that living and loving and sharing with them which is so much of the attraction to them.  It seems most American families have or had someone in them that loved to quilt.  It may have been written off as a hobby not thinking too much about why they did it, when they started or who had taught them.  It was born out of necessity and now is seen as a frivolous activity.  When you can purchase any color and any pattern of any kind of fabric specifically cut for ONLY quilting then it seems it has be reduced by our being spoiled.  But the quilts were an Amish woman's only means of artistic expression, and a major source of income for Southern Black families during the civil rights movement when Black Americans were losing their jobs based on tumult and prejudice.  Born out of old work clothes, dress scraps and patience some very beautiful forms of subtle resistance, shelter, utility, income, safety, and communication.

I think it goes without saying that we are a spoiled nation and since the last major economic shift have been more in the Have category than the Have Not.  So to remain a Have and to stay far from the Have Not, some basic skills may be necessary.  Cooking, you are here - so you're obviously all over that.  Let's see what else you may need?  I made a list of what I feared most and would wish to prevent and what to protect.  I then thought how best I could be prepared for those things.  Not in any rash the sky is falling way, but more like a Boy Scout.  One of those was that I feared not being able to obtain basic things my family may need.  Food, clothing, linens.  So I have chickens, ducks on their way, been canning like mad, I made certain Jason has nearly 20 pairs of jeans,  I'm making myself a quilt a little to get comfortable with a needle (handquilting - just in case of no power).   I found that preparing for these maybe less than likely fears yielded really positive results.  Not just a bounty of tomatoes in my cabinet, but a real sense of accomplishment.  I could know that should the supply chain breakdown either through people freaking out, the broken system breaking further, or whatever shenanigans, I'd have something warm to wear and for every can of tomatoes a week's worth of food and if no power (fridge) a couple day's worth.  People did this.  They prepared for more life, they lived more life and were happier. Studies have proven we get more miserable with more things and more money and better jobs, and that experiences make us happiest.  A dinner in with friends or a trip makes us happier than buying a pair of heels or a car. 

So then the only answer is to do something for you that you can't believe you accomplished.  Of course you got that job, you worked at it, you went to school for it, you had to pay the rent.  So what do you NOT HAVE to do, that you really have to do?  For you it may not be quilting.


This is one I am working on.  It is just the beginning, but the making it is fun... so we'll see.

This is just the beginning of my pine burr quilt, and not sure when that will be done, but it will be fun to just keep plugging away at it.  The real deal pine burr quilts are nearly three dimensional being made of 1,000 -7,000 little triangles.  They often are made of small squares of the burred circles and then joined together after several squares are made then backed with cloth little to no need for batting (the inner layer) as the mass of fabric makes these quilts very heavy.  Some are made of one solid concentric circle of burrs that goes right to the edges of the quilt.  Making it nearly like a carpet in heft.  It is Alabama's state quilt.  (Do other states have state quilts?)

Here are a few great things to check out if this interests you:

Amish quilts The Revere Collection

Amish and a few Mennonite Quilts

Quilts of Gees Bend
the official site - they have since signed some sort of deal with Pottery Barn to have replicas made, although I feel really bittersweet about this since I enjoy the quilters of Gees Bend doing well - but I don't enjoy the thought of the Chinese slaves that now have to make the quilts. I say buy the real deal, make your own or scout out an old timey quilt! 

Gee's Bend samples images

The Quilts Of Gee's Bend: Masterpieces From a Lost Place book 


Gee's Bend: The architecture of The Quilt book

The Code Quilt by Nora Renick Rinehart and Nellie Kurz  What the specific meanings of quilt patterns were during the underground railroad and the hankie code used by the queer community.  Very interesting read.

International Quilt Study Center   A different quilt each month list is fun to go through.

Beautiful photos A lovely time capsule.  The whole site has great photos, this one just happens to be Quilts.

Storytime  So beautiful to listen to, something soothing about hearing other's stories.