Steamed Corn Pudding

I belong to a Facebook Group, called Dinner Tonight. Our sole purpose is posting pictures of food. Tonight's dinner included steamed corn pudding, made with corn fresh from the garden. If you've ever eaten at a Chevy's Fresh Mex Restaurant, this is the same sweet pudding side dish they call tomalito.

STEAMED CORN PUDDING
5 tablespoons margarine, softened
1/4 cup dry Masa Harina
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
2 cups corn kernels, fresh or thawed frozen, divided
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2½ tablespoons milk

In a small mixing bowl, mix the margarine, masa and sugar using an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. In a blender container, blend half the corn kernels with the water until smooth. Combine this mixture with the margarine mixture, stirring well. Add the remaining corn kernels, corn meal, baking powder, salt and milk and mix well. Pour the corn mixture into an 8-inch round cake pan. Cover tightly with foil or plastic wrap and steam by setting atop a medium saucepan half full of water on top of the stove. Bring water to a boil and steam corn mixture for 50 minutes to one hour (check to see whether you might need to add more water), until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. It should have a smooth, moist texture.
NOTE: The pan must be tightly wrapped at all times.
Makes 10 to 12 1/2 cup servings.

Pink Banana Squash Pie

Pink banana squash is the best large winter storage squash I've found for growing in my high desert climate. I have the room to let the vining variety ramble, but both the bush and the vining varieties set 10 - 20 pound fruit that has time to mature in my 110-ish day frost free season. And the pink banana will keep in storage, in a crate in a corner of my bedroom, for at least 6 - 8 months - long after all the delicatas and butternuts have been used.

Of course, once cooked, a big squash can provide more than a week's worth of meals - muffins, soups, and just mashed with a bit of butter on top. But one of my favorite ways, and especially for Thanksgiving, to eat pink banana squash is as pie. Pies made with pumpkin can have a bit of a greenish cast to them. But a pink banana pie turns out even tastier, with a beautiful brown color through and through.

  

 This year, for the first time in at least 15 years, I get to be a guest at a Thanksgiving dinner instead of the cook. I'd only need to prepare an appetizer (jalapeno pepper jelly poured over a block of cream cheese, served with whole wheat crackers) and a dessert. Of course, my dessert offering had to be pink banana squash pie. I wanted to make two pies, but I won't be in my own kitchen the next few days, to be able to deal with the extra squash pulp. So I picked one my smaller pink banana squash, small enough to fit in the dish drainer, to prepare.

 

First step in making pink banana pie is to cook the squash (don't have a pink banana? this recipe also works well with a butternut or pie pumpkin). Cut the squash in half and remove the seeds. Place, cut side up, in a large roasting pan and add an inch of water. Bake at 375F for 1 -2 hours, until squash is soft and browned (this banana squash took two hours). Scrape the flesh out of the peel for use, as is, in any recipe calling for pumpkin puree.

Pink Banana Squash Pie (one 9" pie)
Line a 9" pin tin with 1 prepared pie crust (your favorite recipe, or you can use a half-recipe of mine - flute the edge of the crust up above the edge of the pie tin. This recipe overfills a 9" pan by a bit, and it will puff up while cooking, then sink down as it cools)

2 cups cooked mashed squash
1 12 oz. can evaporated skim milk (or can use heavy cream, for a more decadent version)

2 eggs 

¼ cup firmly packed brown sugar

½ cup sugar

1 tablespoon molasses or real maple syrup

⅛ teaspoon allspice

⅛ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon cinnamon

(or can just substitute 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice for all the spices)

Blend all ingredients in a blender (in batches if necessary) or with a hand-held mixer. Pour into prepared raw crust and very carefully (it will be very full) transfer to 425F preheated oven. Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350F and continue baking for another 45 minutes, or until a knife stuck in the middle comes out clean.

Baked Cinnamon French Toast, Cinnamon Apples

I recently spent a Soroptimist "girls weekend getaway" in a vacation rental house up at South Lake Tahoe. Arranged by our District Director as a planning retreat for Club Presidents and Presidents-Elect, each club was responsible for one meal or snack. We were assigned Sunday breakfast, for eight.

the weekend was BYOB, and wine was pretty much the drink of choice

I figured our Saturday breakfast would probably be some kind of egg dish (and I was right). So I wanted to do something a bit different for Sunday. Looking through my recipes, I found one in an old Taste of Home magazine Collector's Edition that sounded good: Baked Cinnamon French Toast.

We got the coffee going, and set to work. My co-cook fried up some bacon, set the table, and opened the juice. I pretty much followed the recipe as written, my only change to use non-fat milk. It was easily enough for eight. It is a bit decadent for my usual cooking style, though. To make it a bit healthier, in the future, I'm thinking of tweaking the recipe a bit - trying non-fat creamer instead of the whipping cream, maybe eggbeaters or part egg whites for the eggs, and maybe Splenda instead of the sugar. If it still turns out ok, I'll repost with my adaptations.

Instead of the optional blackberry preserves and whipped cream however, I made cinnamon apples: Cut cored and peeled apples into bite-sized chunks - quarters or eighths depending on size. Pile them in a saucepan, add some brown sugar and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon. Cover and cook on very low for about an hour, stirring maybe a time or two, until apples are tender but not mushy. Notice that there is no liquid added at all.

I'm happy to say that our breakfast was a hit with everyone - and planned just right: no leftovers.

Microwave Broccoli Cheese Soup

Why open a can, when you can have homemade soup, with fresh ingredients, in less than 20 minutes? This is a good way to use up a little bit of leftover meat, and these veggies are at their best right now. Add a slice of rustic garlic bread, toasted and buttered, and we have a favorite autumn dinner. Tonight, I added a glass of Chardonnay; Aries had a glass of home-brewed dark beer. Hot food, warm tummies.

Microwave Broccoli Cheese Soup (serves 2)

1 cup thinly sliced carrot
1 cup chopped fresh broccoli (or a 10-oz pkg frozen broccoli; or substitute fresh or frozen cauliflower)
1 teaspoon instant chicken bouillon granules (optional)
1 cup milk
½ cup shredded cheese (I like cheddar or swiss)
½ cup finely chopped cooked meat (I like chicken, ham, or turkey ham)
2 tablespoons flour

In a 1-quart glass casserole dish, stir together the carrots and broccoli with ½ cup water and chicken granules if using (instead of the little bouillon jars in the soup section of my market, I buy the bigger, cheaper jars from the Mexican food section; if you happen to have some stock in the fridge, instead of the water, even better!). Microwave, covered, 5-7 minutes or until the veggies are tender, stirring once. Stir in the milk, cheese, and meat. Mix the flour into ½ cup cold water until smooth, and stir that in also. Season with a bit of black pepper. Microwave, uncovered, 5-6 minutes, stirring every minute or so, until thickened and bubbly. It's soup!

I just had to post a sunrise photo Aries took this morning, too.

Sour Pickle Experiment

When I was a kid, I asked Santa for a ChemLab one Christmas - back then, a toy laboratory in a tri-fold tin box. The best part, for me, was the microscope. But playing with chemical mixing and reactions was fun too. I still like experimenting with chemical reactions. Only nowadays, I have a whole kitchen for my laboratory (plus now, my results are edible - well, most of the time, anyway).

The end of August this year, I had a glut of cucumbers. For some reason, they did really well (especially the hybrid Sugar Crunch - earliest, prolific, and yummy; next best were from my saved Lemon Cucumber seeds - though later to start setting fruit, they're amazingly prolific, and the last ones picked will keep a few more weeks in a bowl on the counter, on into the fall; not so good - an open-pollinated one, Long Green). I feast on fresh cukes when I've got them, and quite often have planted enough to put up as well. Only thing is - Aries doesn't like pickles, so I'm the only one eating them. I already have enough sweet relish, dill chips, sweet pickles, and bread & butter pickles. I started researching other options.

My dill chips, from my Aunt Lillian's recipe, are tasty, but not crunchy enough. Pickles can add such a nice crunch to a sandwich. Hmmm - maybe pickling them whole would be better. These were pretty good-sized cukes though - two, maybe three, to a quart jar. Then, I started looking into fermenting instead of pickling. Ooo, something new to experiment with. I like sauerkraut; I've got a nice glass crock (extra cool for playing scientist, for observing those chemical changes).

I thought it especially interesting reading about the need to cut the merest little slice off the blossom end of the cucumbers. The blossom end produces an enzyme that hastens ripening of the fruit, and if left intact can contribute to softness in pickles. News to me - I'll definitely have to experiment more with that when I next make any other kind of pickles. Ideally, leaving a bit of the stem attached to the other end also makes for a better pickle.

Especially in the older recipes, layering grape leaves in with the cucumbers was said to contribute to crunchiness in the end product. I just happen to have a couple of organically-grown grapevines, so I picked and washed a bunch of palm-sized leaves. Everything ready, I made a layer of grape leaves, shiny-side up, on the bottom of the crock, then stacked in the whole cucumbers with fresh dill, garlic, and a couple of dried hot peppers. I topped the stack with more grape leaves and a ceramic plate, poured in the lightly salted (with only a little bit of vinegar) brine, and then left it to start fermenting (the recipe I used here).

After a couple of weeks, it was smelling pretty good. The fresh cukes were still rolling in, so I pulled out the plate and top layer of grape leaves, added another layer plus more brine, and replaced the leaves and plate to let it go on fermenting.

And now, it's five weeks later. About every third or fourth day, I use a stainless steel spoon to skim the thin layer of whitish scum off the top of the water. It stills smells yummy. Inside the crock, things are really interesting. The cucumbers have lost their shiny green color, and are starting to take on a more translucent look. At first glance, it looks like a white mold is forming on the top sides of everything.

But disturb the crock and it turns into a 20-pound snow globe. The white stuff swirls around, almost flaky in appearance - floating about, turning the brine milky, and then slowly settling again.

My research said fermentation takes about 4 weeks in a 70-degree environment - our average countertop temperature this time of year. When finished the pickles should have a uniformly translucent appearance, and a pleasantly sour taste. I cut one open, and there are just little bits of still-whitish flesh. It was sooooo good! I left it out on the cutting board this afternoon, and have already eaten half of it - one slice at a time.

A lot of the sources say the finished pickles will keep 4-6 months refrigerated, but should be heat-processed for longer storage. But they also say that if you maintain at least a couple inches of brine above the pickles, and skim the top scum off regularly, they'll keep fermenting, getting sourer and sourer. Fermentation slows down too, the lower the temperature. I don't want to cook the pickles (possibly lessening crunchiness), and don't have much refrigerator space, so my plan is to try keeping them in the crock through the winter. I pulled everything out of the crock, and cleaned and re-sterilized it. I filled a quart jar with a couple of the smaller pickles, to keep on the fast-track ferment here on the kitchen counter. I then re-packed the rest of the pickles back into the crock, mixing up a bit more of the brine to top it off.

We've been opening up the cellar nights now - the inside temperature is now down in the low 60's. I'm going to move the pickle crock down there, and keep a close eye on the scum situation (if left too long, mold then forms too - ruining the pickles and possibly poisoning me). But I'm thinking, the cellar temperature will continue to drop, fermentation will slow down, and I can safely eat yummy sour pickles all winter (or until they're all gone, anyway). Worst case scenario, they'll end up in the refrigerator by February.

**Edit added six months later: Now, towards the end of March, the pickles are still doing fine down in the cellar, where temps are still in the low 40'sF. They pickled all the way through, but since then I haven't noticed that they've gotten any sour-er.

Every week to 10 days an almost gel-like layer of scum forms on the top, occasionally with a couple specks of blue-topped white mold on top of that. It's easy enough to just pinch that layer, pull it out, and toss it.

The pickles are still submerged a couple of inches below the surface, beneath the heavy china plate. When I want another pickle, I'll fish one out, redistribute those left, and replace the plate. Inside the house, I have a quart jar of brine in the refrigerator, where I keep the current pickle, cutting slices off as needed. No scum forms on the jar in the refrigerator.

A lucky bonus came from using the grape leaves. I don't know if they made the pickles any crisper, but they pickled along with the cucumbers. I'll usually eat one or two standing right there in the cellar. I have some recipes for making dolmas, grape leaves stuffed with a rice filling, and might try that if I have any left when it's time to empty the crock to move what's left to the refrigerator as the cellar warms up. They're good enough that I think I'll add even more grape leaves to next year's batch.

Chinese Veggie Time

The Sugar Snap pea plants have shriveled in the heat, without ever allowing any of the few picked to make it into the house. I can't seem to catch the English peas at the right time. They seem to go from no pea in the pod to starchy overnight. But the Chinese pea pods, both the Mammoth Melting and the Oregon 2, are still hanging in there. I've been trying to get them picked daily to keep them coming.

Joi Choi is the only bok choi I've found that holds without bolting once our summer heat sets in, and it hasn't disappointed me this year either. Crispy, crunchy stems and thick, dark-green leaves - thinned earlier by harvesting entire plants, and now I just snap off a few of the outer leaves whenever I need some.

Chinese veggies are especially suited for stir-frys. The short cooking time is perfect for this time of year, keeping the house cooler in the late afternoon. I use a Mix & Match Stir-fry method that lets me vary the menu depending on what I have on hand. I try to get a jar of mung bean sprouts going about once a week, and then just do a wander through the garden before dinnertime to see what's ready. I've written out my stir-fry basic recipe on my post over on the Simple Green Frugal Co-op blog this week. What's in your garden?

Zucchini Brownies

After seeing that zucchini in my last post, the Girl in the Pink Dress asked for more zucchini recipes. In early summer, when we have lots of small, fresh-out-of-the-garden zukes, they'll usually end up either in a quick sauté with garlic and onions, or breaded and baked into zucchini sticks.

This time of year, they often end up in soups and pasta dishes. But it sounds like Girl's really looking for "hidden zuke" recipes (sounds like her husband is a lot like mine). Zucchini hides well in baked goods. After quite a bit of experimenting, I've ended up with a great muffin recipe. The secret is using dry milk instead of adding any more liquid.

Even better than those, though, is a brownie recipe my Colorado sister sent me. Even though this makes a big panful, I'm lucky to get a piece or two from
Mr. Pickymy sweet husband. Sis doesn't blog, so I'm gonna post her recipe:

Zucchini Brownies (the cake type)
1¼ cup sugar
2 cups whole wheat flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons baking soda
½ cup applesauce (or can substitute oil)
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups shredded zucchini (I use the big holes on a box grater)
½ cup chocolate chips (optional)
½ cup chopped nuts (optional)

Mix liquid ingredients into dry, adding zucchini last. Stir in optional ingredients if using (I always do). Spread the thick batter evenly in 8" x 11" greased pan. Bake 25 - 30 minutes, 350º - until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Enjoy!

Chinese Pea Pods and Carrots

Friday evening, 6 p.m. We're both tired, and we're hungry. Aries brought home some fish fillets, so I put them over a bed of chopped shallots and mushroom stems, splash on a bit of dry sherry, salt & pepper, and get them into a 350º oven to bake for 15 minutes. Toss the mushroom caps, with a bit of butter, into the skillet for a sauce for the fish. Now for a quick veg side dish.

Shading the pea roots with lettuce plants alongside (and the netting over the entire bed) has worked very well. My pea plants are still going strong into the middle of July. Peas and carrots sounds good. But this ain't yo' mama's little cubes of boiled-to-death veggies. Adapted for the microwave, this is a fast, healthy version of that old staple side dish (and makes for a great lunch, all by itself).

So I stir up the soy sauce glaze, and sprinkle some flour over the mushrooms in the skillet. The carrot slices cooking, I string the pea pods (picked this morning). Add some milk, salt & pepper, and a dash of paprika powder to the mushroom skillet; add peas to the carrots. The fish cooked, I dump the base of chopped shallots and 'shrooms and fish juices into the simmering skillet and give it a few more stirs. Toss the veggies with the glaze, and dish up the plates. A loaf of bread, and a bottle of wine (from Murphys California, just the other side of scenic Ebbetts Pass to the south) - gourmet dinner, on the table, in less than half an hour!


Chinese Pea Pods and Carrots (serves two)
¼ cup water
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 carrot, thinly sliced on the bias
1 cup of flat Chinese pea pods (fresh or frozen)
2 tablespoons walnut pieces
1 teaspoon butter or margarine

Stir together water, soy sauce and cornstarch in a small microwave-safe bowl. Micro-cook in 3 30-second increments, stirring after each time. It should be thickened, clear, and bubbly. Set aside.

Place carrots with a splash of water in covered casserole dish and micro-cook 2 minutes. Drain. Add pea pods, walnuts, and butter or margarine, cover and micro-cook another minute or two, until veggies are crisp-tender. Toss with the soy sauce mixture.

Anything Oatbran Muffins

Muffins are the quick bread-of-choice around here. In the winter, I'll leave the oven door open afterwards, to warm up the kitchen; in the summer a 20-minute baking time won't heat up the house. With my flours and grains kept in gallon glass jars and various measuring cups for scoops, it's easy to just scoop and mix, and have hot muffins in 30 minutes or less.

Last night, for dinner, we had sausage-stuffed squash. There was enough room in the pan to roast a little butternut squash along with the two Carnival squash we had for dinner, so I had some fresh mashed squash to make breakfast muffins this morning.

This is a great whole-grains recipe and is endlessly adaptive. It can be a sweet breakfast bread or a savory dinner muffin depending on what you have on-hand. I'm always changing up the fruit (or vegetable, as the case may be), the herbs or spices, and the extra add-in(s), which is why I just call them my Anything Oatbran Muffins.

Anything Oatbran Muffins (12 muffins)

1⅓ cup oat bran
1 cup rolled oats
¾ cup flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour)
½ cup sugar (white, packed brown, raw, whatever you've got)
1 tablespoon baking powder
up to 3 teaspoons herbs or spices (today I used 2 t pumpkin pie spice + a bit more cinnamon)

¾ cup fruit puree (I mashed up the squash and didn't have quite enough so made up the difference with some applesauce)
1 egg
2 tablespoons oil (I substituted more applesauce)
1¼ cup milk (I used buttermilk)

½ cup chopped nuts or dried fruit (I added a handful of raisins; sometimes I'll add both nuts and fruit, or fresh corn kernels, or whatever else sounds good at the time)

Preheat oven to 400º, grease or non-stick spray muffin pan. Mix dry ingredients together. Mix wet ingredients together in a large measuring cup. Stir wet into dry, just until moistened. Stir in the extra add-in(s). Divide among 12 muffin cups (cups will be almost full, but that's ok). Bake 20-25 minutes, and try to cool on a rack before your husband burns his mouth snatching one up as soon as it's out of the pan.

Fish and Sweet Pepper Hash

I made one of my favorite planned-leftovers dishes for dinner tonight. We're trying to eat less red meat and more fish nowadays. This time of year, I watch for any kind of white-fleshed fish on sale, and bake it or cook it outside on the grill. I often plan to have enough leftover for another night's meal (this recipe is also a favorite way to use the doggy-bagged half of my entree from eating out, and would probably be good even with canned tuna). In the summer it's even easier. We have a couple of fishing friends that don't eat fish, and they know we'll trade eggs or veggies for fresh-caught trout. Often, those lake trout are huge, and we find one will be enough for both of us plus leftovers (photo is from last summer - one of our nearby high-mountain lakes).

Fish and Sweet Pepper Hash (serves 2)

½ pound cooked fish (more or less)
1 pound thin-skinned potatoes (red-skinned or yellow-fleshed, or a combination - I had Yukon Golds in the cellar)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
large pinch of red pepper flakes
⅓ cup sliced green onions (I quartered and sliced a yellow onion from the pantry - added same time as red pepper flakes)
2 tablespoons water (or stock or fish juices)
½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
2 large red or yellow peppers, roasted and peeled, with juices (I used ones from the freezer, prepped last fall the same way I do chile peppers)
1 tablespoon chopped parsley (I used dried from last summer, added same time as red pepper flakes)

Remove fish from refrigerator to allow it to warm slightly. Scrub, but do not peel potatoes, cut into ¾" pieces.

Heat the oil in skillet over medium heat. Add potatoes, garlic, and pepper flakes. Cook, turning occasionally until potatoes start to brown a bit - about 5 minutes. Add green onions, water, and salt, cover the pan, and cook until the potatoes are almost done - about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, pull fish apart into flakes (remove any bones) and cut or tear sweet peppers into bite-size pieces. When potatoes are almost done, remove cover and stir in fish, peppers, and parsley. Cook until the liquid is gone and the potatoes nicely browned (turn hash gently to brown evenly, but try not to break up the fish or potatoes any more than necessary).

Making Fruit Leathers

After reading my post about making Pumpkin Pie Leather, Annette asked if I had any more leather recipes. I usually just blend raw fruit, cored or pitted, into a puree. Even mushy, over-ripe fruit makes good leather, as long as any bruised parts are removed. I peel apples and pears, but leave peels on the stone fruits. You can also make leather out of cooked fruit puree, such as applesauce, adding other fruit purees to change the flavor.

For leathers, 1½ cups puree makes one 9" x 13" leather. You want a texture thin enough to pour out and spread out evenly ⅛ - ¼ inch thick. Too thin, and it tends to stick to the drying surface. Too thick and it might spoil before drying. Uneven spreading, such as thin corners and thick in the middle leads to brittle corners and a center that might be too moist to store. Add a bit of juice or water to thin too-thick purees; you might have to cook a too-thin one down a bit, or add a bit of a thicker type of fruit.

I like the sweet-tart flavor of plain fruit leathers, but a couple teaspoons of lemon juice to 1½ cups puree can brighten up both color and flavor, or an added bit of honey will make it sweeter. Use a light hand (say, ⅛ teaspoon cinnamon:1½ cup puree) if adding any spices, as the drying process concentrates and heightens flavors. If using a rimmed cookie sheet, coating the surface with a very thin film of oil or non-stick spray can make it easier to remove the finished leather. If using plastic wrap, tape the corners down so they don't blow onto the drying puree (leathers stick to waxed paper and foil, so don't use them. Edit added later: I now have a couple of silicone non-stick mats cut to fit my dehydrator screens - even better as they're reusable). Leathers dried until sticky to the touch, but that can be peeled off the surface, are ready to eat, but will only store for a few months. Leathers flipped over and dried until no longer sticky store indefinitely in a cool, dark place, when packaged to exclude moisture and pests.

I use a combination of drying and refrigerated oil-storage to make tomato paste, and have played around with dehydrating salsa to reconstitute when camping. For those looking for something a bit more exotic, here are a few leather recipes from "Food Drying at Home the Natural Way" by Bee Beyer. Written in 1976, it has almost 200 pages of tips and recipes for making and using all kinds of dehydrated foods. The book is no longer in print, but I see Amazon.com has used copies listed for shipping costs plus a penny, so you might want to check into adding it to your home library. For the following recipes, puree ingredients together in a blender in order given, spread out and dry. Makes leathers approximately 9" x 13".

Banana-Peanut Butter Leather (1 leather)
2 large bananas
¼ cup crunchy peanut butter
(the fat in the peanut butter means this leather will only store for a few weeks in a cupboard; six months to a year if frozen)

Cranberry Orange Leather (1 leather)
¾ cup fresh cranberries
1 orange, peeled and white fibers removed
1 very ripe banana
honey, to taste (optional)

Strawberry Rhubarb Leather (2 leathers)
1¼ cups fresh strawberry puree
1¼ cups fresh raw rhubarb puree
honey to taste

Watermelon-Fruit Leather (2 leathers)
1 cup diced seeded watermelon
1 cup diced banana
1 cup diced fresh pineapple (or canned drained unsweetened pineapple)
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Tropical Combo (2 leathers)
1 cup diced strawberries
1 cup diced banana
1 cup diced pineapple
2 tablespoons lemon juice
honey to taste
Optional: sprinkle cinnamon, nutmeg, or shredded unsweetened coconut over puree on trays before drying

Hot Tomato Leather (1 leather)
1¼ cups tomato puree
up to 1 teaspoon chopped fresh hot pepper
1 tablespoon chopped fresh onion
Sprinkle 1 tablespoon chopped bell pepper over puree on tray before drying.
If dried to pliable, bendable stage, this can be eaten as a leather; if dried to brittle, breakable stage it can be powered and used as a flavoring.

I like eating leathers "as-is", for snacking around the house or to carry with me hiking. If made on plastic wrap, they can be stored rolled up, wrap and all. If then cut into 1" rounds, kids will eat them up just like the fruit roll-ups from the store, but you control the amount of sugar (adding ripe bananas to any leather is an easy way to increase sweetness without sugar). You can dissolve pieces of leather in water and use over ice cream or stir into yoghurt. These recipes are just a start. Get creative and invent your own!

Pumpkin Pie Leather

This time of year, my home-grown fresh-food options are things that store well. Apples, potatoes, beets, winter radishes, and carrots are in the cellar. Garlic, onions, and shallots hang in the pantry. Leeks and kale are still out in the garden. Seeds store well. Last year I let a few Daikon radishes and cole plants go to seed - sprouted, they add a tasty zing to winter meals. But we have one more fresh foods storage spot here at Firesign Farm.

Winter squash, cured in the fall out in the dark garage, spend the winter in crates in the corner of our bedroom. The cellar is too cold for squash, the pantry too warm. But with our only heat the wood stove in the living room, this far corner of the bedroom is perfect. I grow a few different types of winter squash. The difference in sizes and tastes allows for variety in our winter meals. The smaller butternuts are nice microwaved and mashed like sweet potatoes. The acorn types are good baked and stuffed. But then there are the bigger squash. They store the best, lasting until May or June, so there's no hurry to use them. They're so big that once I cook one, we're eating it for days. I try to cook one big squash every week or two. The bumpy Hopi are new - I'm still playing with them. I usually use the pink banana squash for any recipe calling for pumpkin, but last summer a friend gave me a couple of pumpkin plants so this year I have pumpkins to play with too.

To cook a big squash, I split it in half and remove the seeds - saving some to plant, the rest to soak in salt water and then roast. Some have peels so hard I have to beat an old knife through with a hammer. I put the pieces, cavity-side down, in a roasting pan with an inch of water added and bake at 375º for an hour or until the skin can be pierced easily with the tip of a knife. Once cool enough to handle, I scrape out the flesh and mash to use in a number of different recipes. The pumpkins aren't cooking pumpkins - they're the jack-o-lantern type - so once cooked, are more watery than the Hopi or banana squash. So I glop the mashed pumpkin into a colander set into a bowl and put that in the refrigerator to drain. Harry Potter and the Hogwarts kids are right - pumpkin juice really is quite tasty! It also adds a nice layer of flavor to beef stew.

Pie, custard, muffins, pasta, soup - there are lots of winter dishes I cook with mashed squash, and if I have to I can always freeze it too. But since I just wrote about dehydrating fruits and vegetables for my turn posting at the Simple Green Frugal Co-op I thought I'd share one of my favorite treats to make now, easy to store for later (pumpkin pie leather in the big jar, peach unrolled on the left, plum on the right).

Pumpkin Pie Leather (makes 4 9"x13" leathers)

2 eggs
4 cups cooked, mashed squash or pumpkin (or 1 one-pound can)
⅓ cup honey
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
1 can evaporated milk (or 1 c dry milk + 1½ c water)

Put into blender in order given, blend well. Spray rimmed cookie sheets with a thin film of non-stick spray, or line dehydrator trays with plastic wrap or parchment paper (edit added later: or even better, a silicone non-stick mat cut to fit -nice because it's reusuable) held down with a bit of tape on the corners. Spread mixture uniformly ⅛ to ¼ inch thick on prepared trays. Dry 8-10 hours at 115º, or until leather will pull away from the tray. Roll up and store in a cool, dark, dry place. Will keep indefinitely.

Soup & Bread for Christmas Eve

The traditional Christmas Eve supper at our house growing up was always Oyster Stew. Basically just canned oysters (we were in land-locked Colorado, after all), milk, and butter, served with round oyster crackers. It was ok, but I didn't really like eating the big oyster chunks. The hot, buttery milk was good, but not really enough. So I've adapted Dad's tradition to suit my own tastes. Sticking with the idea of a seafood soup, I make a red vegetable chowder using canned baby clams. Add a homemade artisan-style crusty loaf of bread and some champagne with a splash of peach brandy (a budget Bellini, and really dresses up cheap champagne) and we've got a wonderful Christmas Eve supper (candlelight optional).

Vegetable Clam Chowder (makes 4-6 supper-size servings)
1 cup clam juice
1 cup water
8 oz tomato sauce
16 oz canned whole tomatoes, cut into chunks
2 medium potatoes, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 onions, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 tablespoon marjoram
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon sugar
10 oz canned baby clams
1 cup corn, fresh or frozen
salt & pepper to taste

Combine clam juice (from canned clams too), water, tomato sauce, tomatoes, potatoes, green pepper, carrots, onion, celery, marjoram, thyme, salt, pepper, and sugar in large saucepan. Bring to boil. Lower heat, cover, and simmer about 20 minutes, or until vegetables are crisp-tender. Add clams and corn. Simmer soup for another 10 minutes. Adjust seasonings to taste. Optional: garnish with chopped parsley when serving.

I'm starting the bread tonight - a very wet, no-knead dough that gets its flavor from sitting overnight on the counter; its crusty goodness from being baked inside a very hot dutch oven. The recipe is now many places on the Internet. I first came upon it a year ago in Mother Earth News and love how easy it is to turn out an artisan-style loaf, without any fancy equipment, and very little effort (read the article all the way through, and some of the comments - I love the suggestion to use your microwave as a bread box. I, too, have to reduce the heat a bit for my cast-iron dutch oven, but the amounts work well for me).

Quick and Easy Fudge

A lot of my Christmas recipes are traditional family hand-me-downs - Grandma's Meringue Cookies, Mom's fruitcake recipe with just candied fruits and nuts, my sister's Cranberry Liqueur. But my favorite holiday treat is homemade fudge, and the family recipes just didn't cut it. They called for candy thermometers or boiling the mixture to something-something stage involving dripping it onto a plate or into a cup of cold water, then glopping around with it to assess when it was ready. And then the fudge didn't ever stay creamy good - it quickly turned into hard sugary cubes. I now use a new recipe, begged from a co-worker a few years ago. So quick, so easy, and so, so good!

Quick and Easy Fudge (makes 64 one-inch pieces)
1 can sweetened condensed milk (see note below)
12 oz semisweet chocolate chips
1 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups chopped nuts, or craisins, or dried pie cherries, or ?

Butter 8"x8" pan. Heat milk and chocolates in 2-quart pan, stirring constantly, until melted. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla and whatever else you're adding. Spread evenly in pan. Refrigerate 1 hour, then cut into 1" pieces.

Note: If you have a no-canned goods kitchen, here's a recipe for making your own
Sweetened Condensed Milk (equal to a 14-oz can)
1 cup instant dry milk
3 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
⅔ cup sugar
⅓ cup boiling water
Mix in a blender until smooth. Store refrigerated.

Salmon Dip or Spread

I'm going to a potluck holiday party this evening, and I'm supposed to bring an appetizer. The party is in Reno, about a good half hour's drive away, so I didn't want to do anything hot that would get cold, or cold that would be wilted by the time I got there. I didn't even ask about the availability of kitchen equipment - once I get to the party I didn't want to be cooking anything there. Mom's Salmon Dip is always a crowd-pleaser - that would be perfect.

I already had all the ingredients. I'd bought a big carton of soft cream cheese for stuffing celery for Thanksgiving, and had plenty left. Canned salmon is readily available in the grocery store, if a bit pricey, but I still have a couple of jars the folks had canned, fishing in Colorado. But I couldn't find my recipe! And here, I'd just written over at the Simple Green Frugal Co-op about how I really do need to organize my recipes better. How embarrassing! But it's Mom's recipe, Mom's at my sister's house right now, and besides, I knew my sister loves that recipe and frequently takes it to potlucks too. So I gave her a call (and that recipe is now securely enshrined in my little Grey Book).

Salmon Dip (makes a little over 2 cups)
Note: start the dried onion reconstituting about 20 minutes ahead of time

8 oz. cream cheese, softened
13 oz. canned salmon, drained, skin and bones removed
4 teaspoons dried minced onion, pre-soaked in
4 tablespoons lemon juice
3 teaspoons horseradish (I know on my recipe, if I ever find it, that I have that written as 1 tablespoon. So I asked Frogtail why write it like that? She said because a tablespoon doesn't fit in the horseradish jar. Good point.)

Mix everything together and refrigerate.

This can be just mounded on a platter, surrounded by crackers or little toasts. But looking through my cupboard, I spied a vintage cup, from when Tiki Bars were all the rage, from the now long-gone Top of the Wheel restaurant up at Lake Tahoe. It was the perfect size, so I packed the dip in there - it'll travel better. The party is an employee one for the tour guide company I work for. I think they'll get a kick out of this presentation. I've got a bowl for the crackers, so I'll just swing by the grocery store on my way out of town, pick up a box of Wheat Thins, and I'm all set (and if they don't eat it all, I'm getting me some onion bagels on my way back through town - that'll make a decadent breakfast tomorrow. I suppose I should mention that this freezes nicely too - I can save half for a New Year's Day brunch).

Zucchini Muffins

Now is the time of year when my stored vegetables make up the bulk of our fresh eating options. Over time, and by experimenting, I've learned which items need to be used sooner than others. Some of the big zucchini, the last of last summer's crop, are now starting to soften down in the cellar, so I've been going through at least one of them per week. When using a big stored zucchini, I'll split it length-wise and scrape out the fibrous seed cavity just like a winter squash, leaving only the edible green skin and flesh. I can then cut half-moon slices for soup or a stir-fry, or shred it using the big holes on a box grater to make fritters or muffins. After much tweaking and experimenting, I finally have a zucchini muffin recipe we both really like. The key was using dry milk instead of adding any more liquid to the zucchini mixture.

Zucchini Muffins (makes 12 muffins)

Mix together:
2 cups shredded zucchini
1 egg
2 tablespoons applesauce (or oil)
¾ cup sugar
⅓ cup dry milk powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon lemon extract

Mix together, then stir in, just until all is moistened
(Grandma wisdom: stirring only 17 times):
1½ cups whole wheat flour
1½ teaspoons baking soda (sift out any lumps)
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Then stir in (Grandma again: stirring only 3 more times):
⅓ cup raisins, with enough chopped nuts to make it ½ cup

Divide between 12 sprayed or greased muffin cups. Bake at 375º
20 minutes.

Cornbread

Fall is here, the nights are frosty, and that means dinner is often a hot soup and bread. Soup makes a great meal. I've got a lot of favorite soup recipes, but sometimes I'll just throw something together from leftovers. Last night, I had some white beans I'd pressure-cooked a couple of nights before. Chop some leeks and kale from the garden, carrots and garlic from storage, and add a couple of glops of cooked-down tomato puree (the last of the paste tomatoes, that I didn't feel like canning so have just kept a big tupper-ful in the refrigerator), and I soon had a wonderful soup simmering on the stove (I also stirred a spoonful of basil pesto into each bowl when I dished it up). Now, for some kind of bread . . .

I buy most of my grains and flours from the bulk bins in a local supermarket. It's more economical and saves on packaging waste. In my kitchen, from years spent working in restaurants and bars, I've amassed quite a few gallon glass jars for storage (during my ski-bum days in Colorado, I worked in a restaurant on top of the mountain; occasionally skiing down after work with an empty jar in my backpack - being especially careful not to fall). Whenever I'm in a thrift store, I like to browse the kitchen area, and have picked up various measuring cups to keep in the jars as scoops. The scoops are distributed according to what will be the most useful - half-cups in the flours and oats, quarter-cup in the sugar, third-cup in the dry milk, one-cups in the rice and couscous. It makes it easy and quick whenever I want to bake something - one scoop of this, two of that.

Cornbread sounded good. By the time the kale and carrots would be done, the bread would be coming out of the oven. Here's the basic recipe, with the adaptations I made this time:

Cornbread one 8x8" pan, 10" cast iron skillet, or 12 muffins

1 cup cornmeal (I prefer yellow)
1 cup flour (I used half whole-wheat & half whole-wheat pastry flour)
1/4 cup sugar (the Colorado relatives use 1/2 cup, but I don't like my cornbread that sweet)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup oil (I used applesauce instead)
1 egg
1 cup milk (I used buttermilk)

Grease pan well, or use non-stick spray (for skillet-sizzled cornbread, see note below). Mix dry ingredients in bowl. Mix wet ingredients together in large measuring cup. Add wet to dry, stirring just until combined (optional: I'll often then stir in ½ cup something extra - maybe cheddar cheese, or frozen corn, or chopped chiles, but not this time). Pour into prepared pan, leveling top surface. Bake 400º 20 minutes (muffins take only about 16 minutes).

Split pieces of leftover cornbread make a good toaster-oven pizza, or it can be cut into cubes and left out to dry, then stored in a jar or bag, and used for making stuffing/dressing some other night.

Note: After being gifted The Cornbread Gospels, by Crescent Dragonwagon (a great book - a couple hundred corn-based recipes, meal menus, plus trivia, background, and wonderful tales by a gifted storyteller), I now prefer baking my cornbread in my cast-iron skillet. Preheat oven 375º, and prepare batter. Melt a tablespoon of butter in skillet on stove top until it sizzles, swirling it around to coat bottom and sides. Pour the batter into the skillet, cook another minute on top of the stove, and then bake 20 minutes.

Enchilada Sauce (pressure canned)

Another annual tomato processing project around here is canning a batch of enchilada sauce. I grow and dry my own peppers (and the onions, garlic, and thyme), but if you have some extra tomatoes and a pressure canner/cooker it might be worth your while to shop for the dried chiles. Most of our grocery stores here have a Hispanic foods section, with a pegboard display of herbs, spices, and dried chiles in cellophane packets. I always check there for herbs - prices are a lot better than buying the little jars in the spice aisle (then just transfer them to the recycled glass jars of my spice rack). In my supermarket, more than enough dried chiles for this recipe were less than $3.

The big chiles are usually labeled California or New Mexico chiles. They're the pretty shiny chiles most often hung up as a decoration (if you're using ones from a decorative string, make sure they haven't been varnished or treated with any kind of preservative coating. If you use them from the bottom, you can keep the string looking nice, if just a bit shorter). Chipotle is really a generic term meaning any smoked chile. Jalapeños are the ones most commonly preserved this way, so here chipotle usually means a smoked jalapeño. But the cellophane packets are marketed to Spanish-speakers, so the smoked chiles you want for this recipe will more likely be labeled Morita (or maybe Tipico). They'll look like little wrinkled reddish-brown cigar butts.

Enchilada Sauce (8 pints)

2 onions + 3 bulbs garlic, drizzled with olive oil (no need to peel, just make sure root end is clean). Wrap in foil packet, roast 45 minutes at 375º.

8 dried California + 24 Chipotle chiles. Rinse with cool water, remove stems, cover with boiling water and soak 45 minutes. Drain before proceeding.

4 pounds tomatoes, cored and halved

Add veggies above to 6 quarts water with 8 sprigs thyme (about 3 tablespoons dried) and 4 teaspoons non-iodized salt. Simmer 45 minutes.

Discard half the cooking water (about 3 quarts - I ladle it out, pouring it through a wire sieve into a measuring bowl). Puree the veggies (I just run it all through my blender - I don't have a food mill, but that would probably work too) and press through wire sieve along with remaining cooking water. Discard the dry pulp remaining in the sieve. Fill sterilized pint jars to ½" headspace. Seal, pressure-can 50 minutes at 7-10 pounds pressure (depending on what type of pressure regulator you have). Let canner return to zero pressure on its own before opening.

Making Enchiladas
One pint of the sauce above makes a 9x13" pan of 12 enchiladas. This sauce is hot, a concentrate, and needs to be stretched and mellowed. Traditional recipes use cream (8 ounces sour or whipping), or you can use a can of evaporated milk, but I usually whisk one can of condensed cream of mushroom soup into the pint of sauce. Prepare approximately 2 cups of filling (beef, or shrimp & crab, or pork, or leftover turkey, or sauteed onion & mushroom with tofu, or eggs & potatoes, or whatever else you think might be good. I'm going to experiment with diced eggplant - don't tell Aries) binding it together with a bit of sauce. Soften corn tortillas according to package directions. Divide filling equally, roll up in the tortillas, and place in baking pan seam-side down. Pour sauce mixture over all, smooshing them down with your spatula to completely cover and soak edges of the tortillas. Top with shredded cheddar (optional - and I also sprinkle with chopped black olives). Bake uncovered 400º 20 minutes or until bubbling. Comer, beber, y reir (Eat, drink and laugh)!

What to Do With Green Tomatoes

Forecasted low for tomorrow night is 25 last I looked, so I was out in the garden again today trying to pick/dig/store most everything that a hard freeze will harm. One of my local readers emailed, asking what to do with all her green tomatoes (a very likely occurrence around here - forget growing Brandywine or Beefsteaks; we're lucky to get vine-ripened Early Girls). I picked just about all my tomatoes five days ago. I break away all the stems as I pick them, as those can puncture the other tomatoes, leaving holes and bruises that will rot instead of ripen. I leave the hard, little green ones, with an almost frosty white look to them - they won't ripen and aren't big enough to do much else with (don't really care to pickle them). But any green tomato close to full size, especially with darker green shadowing on the top part, is easy to ripen indoors.

The paste tomatoes I want to ripen quickly, so I can get them processed and out of my way. Some say to pull up entire plants and hang them upside down (say, in the garage) to ripen green tomatoes. That's too messy. When the tomatoes get ripe, they'll fall and splatter. And forget the old-timers advice to wrap each green tomato in newspaper - too time-consuming and too hard to see when they're ripe. The best way I've found is to spread out an old shower curtain or other piece of plastic, then spread the green and orangy ones out in one layer. Then, cover them all with a couple layers of newspapers. This traps the ethylene gas, same way the old-timers' wrapping method did, but it's so much easier to just lift the paper to pull out the ripe ones. Top photo shows my paste tomatoes five days ago, on the table that just fits over my guest room bed. Lower photo shows them today, after five days under the newspapers. The red ones, I'll can whole in a day or so; the orange ones will be ready for a batch of sauce in a few more days, and the ones green now will be ready for second batch of sauce not long after that. Within two weeks, I've got my sewing/crafting table back, and a full pantry!

The green Early Girls I want to ripen slowly, so I can have fresh slicing tomatoes as long as possible. I've got them on a tray down in the cooler cellar. It's about 50 degrees down there now - cooler than in the house, but not as cold as the refrigerator. Refrigerating fresh whole tomatoes wipes out just about all the taste, so I never do that, but the cellar is cool enough to let them ripen slowly. I can eat fresh tomatoes until early December. Maybe your house has a cooler closet, or a spot under the bed that would work for you.

Of course, you can always make Fried Green Tomatoes (firm red ones will work too). Slice tomatoes, 1/2" thick, and dredge them in flour with a bit of salt and sugar added. Brown the slices in a bit of butter or oil until crisp (to be authentically Southern about it, you'd use bacon grease), turning them only once. Keep cooked slices warm in a dish in a warm oven. When all the tomatoes are cooked, gradually pour some milk into the frying pan, stirring constantly to make "gravy". Add salt and pepper to taste, and pour over the cooked tomatoes. Serve right away, before the tomatoes get soggy.

Basil Pesto

I always start a few sweet basil plants in Spring, and plant them out in the tomato and pepper bed. I start picking leaves as soon as possible to use fresh all summer long. But basil is one of the first things nipped once the nighttime temps drop even close to freezing. When that time comes (2-3 weeks yet? maybe?), I'll cut what ever is left and hang to dry. In the meantime, the plants are lush and I just cut a big bunch to make another batch of pesto to freeze for later.

I swish the basil through a couple sinkfuls of cold water, pile it back into the wire harvest basket, take it outside and swing it vigorously 'round and 'round overhead (the country version of a salad spinner), then bring it back in and dump it into the dish drainer to dry completely. Pick just the completely dry leaves from the stems, until you have a 2-cup measure packed tightly full. My recipe is adapted from one published by Ellen Ecker Ogden in her book From the Cook's Garden, where I got the idea to add a bit of lemon juice to the traditional recipe.

Basil Pesto (makes two ½-pint jars)

4 garlic cloves
2 cups tightly packed basil leaves
¼ cup pine nuts
¼ cup lemon juice
½ cup extra virgin olive oil (plus extra for topping off jar)
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Starting with just the garlic, then adding the rest, blend everything together in a blender (you can use a food processor - I don't have one - or if you want to really do it the traditional way, use a mortar & pestle to pound everything together), stopping frequently to mash everything down until it churns continuously in an homogeneous paste. Divide between two ½-pint jars, leaving ½" expansion room, smooth the tops, add enough oil to completely cover the pesto, add lids (can reuse clean old ones), and freeze. If you have any left over, make yourself a pesto and tomato sandwich!

All winter long, I thaw out a jar as needed - stirring glops into soups or pasta dishes, spreading on sandwiches or pizza, topping veggies or chicken. Keep a thawed jar refrigerated, and just make sure to re-smooth the top and add more oil to cover as needed. Made now, it will bring a welcome taste of summer brightness to those dark winter nights.