Herbed Yogurt Cheese

I am so delighted with how these turned out!

First, make yogurt, or purchase plain yogurt.

Next, take your yogurt and turn it into what I call yogurt cheese, or what is also known either as cream cheese or greek yogurt. (Basically, you just put it in some cheesecloth, let the whey drain out, and you have a thick creamy tangy ball of yummy stuff.)

Then, take your yogurt cheese and roll it into little balls, and refrigerate.

Next: choose your spices. I picked rosemary, thyme, parsley from my garden, and ground them in my mortar and pestle.

Then I added some freshly cracked black pepper, sea salt, and Penzey's Creamy Peppercorn mix. Yum.

Now, marinate your yogurt balls in some yummy olive oil - I would not skimp on quality here, I used an extra virgin organic olive oil, very yum - and your herb mixture. Truthfully, you can just mix this up and eat it and it's still pretty damn good, but it's better with a bit of marinating time. But hey, we do what we gotta do, right?

Next: EAT! I ate this on crackers. YUM. I think it would also be fantastic smashed onto fresh bread. Double yum. I also want to try this on pizza some time. I bet it would be good with fresh veggies as well.

BRILLIANT idea for next year's VMD's (Veggies of Mass Destruction...my pet name for those oversized crazy zucchini that always...appear.....)

Zucchini Candy.

Posted by my friend Abby, and as she says - I'm sure we could come up with something better than Kool-Aid to flavor the zucchini.

long time, no blog -sorry. Been busy!!! You know how it goes, right?

Last night I was gifted with these apples. (cat shown for scale.) Just after some friends told me how they wanted to learn to can stuff. So guess what - we're going to have a canning party! with apples! There are many lovely things to make with apples - applesauce, apple butter, apple pie jam, chutney, apple pie filling, and Miss Effie just posted this yummy recipe for cinnamon apple ice cream topping. I'm going to let the canning "class" decide what they want to make, but my vote would be for caramel apple butter, and apple sauce with berries. mmmmm!

In other news. IT SNOWED. Yep, October 10th, snow. Not a tiny bit of snow, but actual snow that fell and stuck and covered everything. Crazy, huh?? And tonight - 24 degrees predicted low temps. Which means, hard freeze, which means, gardens go bye-bye. :( I will be sad to see them go. I *am* a little tired of the 3-hour post-work canning sessions, which delay dinner until 9 or 10 and make for a slightly cranky Maggie the next day. But I AM grateful for shelves full of grape juice, apple pie filling, jams and jellies galore, salsa, tomatoes, soups and more. It's worth it.

I got a copy of Wild Fermentation from Chelsea Green Publishing and I am utterly fascinated. My first fermentation project - Pineapple Vinegar! Shown on the right. I also have a juicer that a WONDERFUL friend gifted me - so I am using some of the apple/orange/carrot/lemon/ginger pulp to make vinegar (shown right). I'll let you know how it turns out.


I'm also making tonic for some friends...trying a different recipe this time. (Spike felt the need to get his butt in this picture. he's like that).


and today - I got some hula hoops to play with. :) :) :) SO FUN! and really good exercise!

I'm-Broke-And-Cleaning-Out-The-Cupboards-But-Damn-This-Turned-Out-Good Vegan Lentil Soup

(Made this last night and it is sooooo yummy).

1 bag mixed green and yellow lentils (given to me by a friend who didn't want them - so free to me, retail value about $1.00)

5 carrots (the last from my CSA - cost estimated at 60 cents)

1 onion (40 cents)

1 quart bag frozen heirloom tomatoes (from my CSA - estimated value $1.00)

1 head organic elephant garlic (I traded flats of white peaches from my orchard for a bag of organic garlic from a neighbor, so free to me but....I believe these sell for about $1.50 each)

3 wineglasses tap water

Spices: loads of basil, parsley and sage from my garden. Some sea salt, cracked black pepper, and some Old Bay Spice Seasoning. (est. cost 25 cents)

Dump everything in crock pot, turn on high, and go to work.

Come home 8 hours later to amazing delicious food smells!!!!!!!! Cook 2 more hours (while salivating), then eat.

I had 2 bowls. It was awfully delicious for such a simple recipe. No fat, high fiber....I think this would be delicious with rice, too, or could be a filling for crepes or a tortillas.

My cost: $2.25
Street value: $3.75

I estimate that this will feed two adults for 4 or perhaps 5 meals, so the average cost per serving is somewhere around 25 cents.

This is what passes for "fast food" in my house. A long day at work followed by a long evening getting my van repaired (grrr) - coming home late, I just want to EAT! So i dig around in the fridge and freezer. Found some puff pastry dough - open it up, spread it on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Dig out a wedge of brie (LOVE brie). Top with some apple slices (local of course), red raspberry jam (homemade of course) and lots of walnuts.

Fold up puff pastry, and pinch edges together. Put in a 400 degree oven until the pastry is brown and you suspect the cheese is hot and bubbly - or until you're too hungry to wait any longer.


I sliced it up and served it with lots more fresh apples slices. YUM!

Had a blast this past weekend meeting some real cool fiber artists/spinners from eastern Iowa. In particuar I enjoyed meeting the wonderful writer of this fantastic farmblog! She drinks great beer, owns a cut-your-own flower farm, and loves many of the same things I do - local food, canning, spinning, and havin' fun with great folks.

In other news, I need to get back to blogging more regularly - been busy around here, but in a good way. :) We had our hard freeze the other night (and of course now the weather is gorgeous again.....grrrr) so the harvest is pretty much done. I canned 7 quarts of apple pie filling last night using this amazing recipe and now I'm on the hunt for more apples...

I've been busy listing some naturally dyed silk shawls on my etsy store. It's getting cool, and time to break out the lovely warm silks and shawls!

I've also started listing some furoshiki - I have quite a few, 12 or 15, which I will be listing (again, in my etsy store) over the next week or two. They are mostly cotton, but some are silk. (the one shown above is rust-dyed cotton). I'm quite in love with the art of furoshiki and have been buying fabric for dyeing and sewing into assorted sizes of furoshiki.

Here is one of our cotton squares wrapped around a book.


And another one wrapped around a wine bottle. I just think they're so elegant, functional, and, best of all, totally reusable and recyclable. SO cool. Visit furoshiki.com to learn more, and get great wrapping information.

Thanks to John for both is fantastic photography skills (he took all those pictures) and his mad furoshiki skills!!!

In other, unrelated news: I created a really interesting cake recipe last night. I hacked the "Beet Bundt Cake" recipe from allrecipes.com, to suit my tastes, and what I had on hand. Here's what I did:

• 1 cup sour cream
  
• 1 1/2 cups turbinado sugar
  
• 3 eggs
• 4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate
• 2 cups pureed cooked beets
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 tbsp. cocoa powder
• 2 tbsp. olive oil

Bake beets; puree them. Melt chocolate and oil together over low heat; add eggs, sour cream, sugar, vanilla, olive oil, cocoa powder. Blend well, and add other dry ingredients. Pour into greased bundt pan and bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, or until done. Cool. Serve with sweetened raspberry puree, OR, raspberry jam thinned with brandy or congnac.

In my opinion, the raspberry (esp. the jam/booze mix) REALLY tie the cake together. It is really quite a heady mixture of tastes. I think it would be divine with black coffee or espresso, after dinner.

Yesterday, I learned to sew a french seam, thanks to this fantastic tutorial. I stretched my sewing skills a bit, helping construct this. Which is good, I really want to increase my sewing skills. Although I must say - I never thought I would be working with lame!!!


I also made this fantastic "Apple Pied" - A delicious apple-cider based liqueur, perfect for cold, windy, rainy/snowy afternoons like yesterday. (Just rain yesterday, no snow....but snow will be here before we know it). I did make some modifications - here's the recipe I used, based solely on what I had on hand:

1/2 gallon local apple cider
3 cinnamon sticks
3 large sliced candied ginger
5 cloves
a generous pinch mace bits
2 tbsp. local honey

Place all ingredients in pan, bring to simmer. Let simmer until it smells really divine. Cool; add 1 cup vodka. I would have added more booze but, all I had on hand was really cheap vodka and I didn't want this to taste like, well, apple cider with cheap vodka. I'd love to try this recipe again with brandy. And, I WILL be making it again, as it is delicious and really does go down very, very smoothly. I like it warmed, in a small mug, with a cinnamon stick. YUM.

Huh. this is really interesting. Make your own aluminum-free baking powder.

Last week, it was peaches.

This week, tomatoes!

Our garden tomatoes did, well, nothing, so I got a printer-paper box full of canning tomatoes at the farmer's market last weekend. I spent 2 days making this amazing canned tomato soup: (my friend Jill gave me the recipe, but then I found it online too, at this site:)

• 6 onions, chopped
• 1 bunch celery, chopped
• 8 quarts fresh tomatoes (or 5-6 quarts of juice)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup salt
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup flour

Directions

1. Chop onion& celery.
2. Place in large kettle w/ just enough water to keep them from burning.
3. While this simmers, cut tomatoes (remove stems if not using strainer).
4. Add to kettle& cook until tender.
5. Place this all through Victorio strainer (or similar).
6. Return to kettle.
7. Add sugar& salt.
8. Cream butter and flour together& mix thoroughly with two cups of COLD juice, until dissolved (or blend together in a blender), to avoid lumps of flour in the juice.
9. Add butter/flour mixture to warmed tomato juice. (Add before it's hot, to avoid lumps of flour!).
10. Stir well.
11. Heat just until hot. (If it gets to a boil, it can make the flour lumpy).
12. Just prior to boiling, turn off the burner. (It will continue to thicken as it cools.).
13. Ladle into jars& close securely with lids.
14. Return to canner & process 20-30 minutes (start timing when it's at a 'rolling' boil).
15. Remove from canner & allow to set until sealed (approx. 12 hours) To serve, mix equal parts tomato concentrate to milk, and add 1/2 t. of baking soda per pint as it cooks (1 t. per quart).

It is SUCH a delicious recipe. It's not at all difficult, it just takes a bit of time. I did 2 batches, and got 10 quarts and 8 pints of soup concentrate. The total cost to make that amount of soup was about $30 - and I used local organic flour, butter, and onions, and raw sugar (i should have tried substituting a bit of honey for the sugar. Next year i will!). If I had my own garden tomatoes, it would have been only $15. Pretty incredible, huh?

Next year I'm hoping for better luck in the garden. I'd love to try this recipe with roasted garlic and loads of black pepper added.....

I made this last weekend, and it was delicious. I'm not a *huge* cake fan, but this was so very moist, and not too sweet. I ate it for breakfast.

Here is the original recipe:

Pumpkin Bundt Cake

1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 can pumpkin -- (15 ounce)
puree
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups white sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease one 10 inch bundt or tube pan.

Cream oil, beaten eggs, pumpkin and vanilla together.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking soda, ground nutmeg, ground allspice, ground cinnamon, ground cloves and salt together. Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture and mix until just combined. If desired, stir in some chopped nuts. Pour batter into the prepared pan.

Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cake cool in pan for 5 minutes then turn out onto a plate and sprinkle with confectioners' sugar.

And here are my adjustments:


I used cooked, mashed butternut squash, because it seems silly to buy canned pumpkin when there are all kinds of great locally grown winter squashes.

I added 2 grated carrots, because I have LOADS of them from the CSA and am putting them in everything I can. Plus, if something has 2 vegetables (butternut squash and carrots), then it is a casserole. Right?? haha.

Anyway.

I added black walnuts, and raisins, and substituted homemade apple butter for 1/2 cup of the oil. I also cut back on the sugar by a half cup. I didn't use any frosting and found it plenty sweet, but of course this cake could be frosted.

I bet it would alos be delicious with shredded zucchini, chocolate chips, or candied ginger pieces. or all three. :)

This cake freezes beautifully! Also it would be just as good baked as a sheet cake or made into cupcakes.

This has been the year of the peach.

The vegetables have all done horrible this year. Ironically, I managed to grow okra and eggplant, and hardly anytomatoes. Go figure. I garden primarily by neglect, and tomatoes usually do pretty well under that treatment. but not this year.

The fruit, however, went bananas. (ha).

Last year we had a late frost that nipped all the blooms, so there was a near total crop failure, statewide, on almost all fruits - particularly peaches, apples, plums, cherries, and elderberries.

This year, the trees and bushes have made up for it by producing last year's fruits, PLUS this year's fruits. I swear.

Our little orchard is just a few years old now, and this is the first year I have had a peach harvest. I have 2 "white peach" trees. I don't know the proper name, just that they are small, white-fleshed peaches that grow very well in this climate; they don't seem to mind the cold.

anyway, these trees produced like mad. I estimate that we picked about 20 plant-flats full of peaches. They were divided among about 7 people, some taking just a bag full, some taking 5 or 6 flats. we all had plenty to make jam, pies, cobblers, baby food, and more!

I froze most of mine, for use in pies or cobblers, but plan to make this yummy recipe that my friend Linda found in her Better Homes cookbook:

Rum Peach Jam

3 pounds fully ripe peaches, scaled, peeled and finely chopped(4 cups
chopped)
1 1 3/4 ounce package powdered fruit pectin
5 cups sugar
1/4 cup light rum

Combine peaches and pectin in a very large suacepan or dutch oven. Place
over high heat and bring to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly.
Emmediately add all the sugar and stir. Again bring to a full rolling
boil and boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat: stir in rum: skim off foam. Stir and skin for 5 minutes
to cool slightlyt and prevent fruit from floating. Ladle into hot scaled
jars. Seal at once. Makes about 6 half pint jars.

Thanks to John for this great photo of the peaches - they were sitting on our porch and a shaft of sunlight hit them just right, and he grabbed his camera to catch the moment.

Oh. YUM.

I got my latest enewsletter from Templeton Rye the other day, and they included this amazing recipe (I'm including it as they printed it in their newsletter, so as to give everyone full credit.)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Templeton Rye recipe: "The Temptress"

Juli Hale from Des Moines, Iowa, sent a great TR cocktail recipe to us, and wrote the following:

"This is the first cocktail I have ever created. As a recovering Mormon, I'm awfully proud of myself."

The Temptress
Ginger Simple Syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 cup chopped fresh ginger
In a small saucepan combine water, sugar, and ginger. Bring to boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Let cool to room temperature. Strain and discard ginger.

The cocktail
Fill a cocktail shaker with ice
Add the juice of half a lime
3/4 oz. ginger simple syrup
2 oz. Templeton Rye
Cover and shake well; strain into a cocktail glass

++++++++++++++++++++

Well, as it so happens, I have some Templeton Rye at home, and a fresh lime, AND some amazing "gingerbread syrup" my friend Jill made from scratch and gave to me. (I'd been hoarding the last little bit, because the though of being out of this divine concoction was just too much to bear).

I just whipped up one of these, and WOW. this is going to be a winter drink staple for sure! The ginger and the whiskey are both warming....and the fresh lime juice keeps it from being too heavy or cloying.

DELICIOUS!

And in other booze news. Last time I went to the local booze emporium, I saw this cool organic midwest-produced spirit - Prairie Organic Vodka. And it even has a cool bottle! Next time I need to buy vodka, I'm getting this for sure!Want to check out some other organic liqueurs? Here is a great article about making "ecococktails" at home.