Monthly Archives: November 2009

Cranberry Cherry Relish

Posted on November 22, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 6 Comments

cranberry-cherry-relish

Since we are having a slow food Thanksgiving I’m starting now and one of the earliest things you can make is the cranberry relish.

I’ve been making this for years and was delighted to see a cranberry booth at the UW farmers market a few weeks back. Mt. Rainier Cranberries are grown in Eatonville, and while they are not organic they explained to me that there are no organic cranberry farms around here. They said they had tried to go organic a few years back and ended up losing four out of seven acres to pests.

So I’ll be happy that they are local and eat them sparingly. That’s difficult because this relish is tasty. Last summer I had bought ten pounds of sour cherries from One Storey Farm then pitted and dried them. We’ve been using them in baked goods and they are perfect in this relish as well.

To make the relish I cooked the cranberries and dried cherries in a small amount of water until the cranberries began to open. At that point I added enough organic sugar to make it palatable. They cooked gently for about 20 minutes in total and when they were done I gave them a good splash of rum.

There isn’t really a recipe because it depends on how many cranberries you use and your preference for sweetness. I prefer this slightly tart but not so tart you end up making faces. How do you like your cranberry sauce?

→ 6 Comments

Posted in Thanksgiving

Tagged

Dark Days Challenge Week 1

Posted on November 22, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 13 Comments

Week 1 of the Dark Days challengeand we’re looking ok. 

backyard-breakfast

Breakfast of fresh made spelt/wheat bread, our strawberry jam, bacon from Akyla Farms and our amazingly yellow backyard eggs.

steak-and-fries

Steak from Cascade Range Beef, delicata squash slices glazed with local honey, creamed kale from the garden and steak fries from blue potatoes Michael Pilarski grew for me – fried in beef tallow from when I made beef stock.

beef-burritos

Burritos from Cascade Range Beef, tortillas I made from Lentz spelt and rendered pork lard, fresh greens and carrots from the garden, farmstead cheese from Pleasant Valley Dairy, salsa and hot sauce I made from our tomatoes, onions, garlic & cilantro with peppers from Tonamakers.  I put up 3 kinds of hot sauce last summer, as well as several varieties of pickled peppers.  I can’t tell you how thankful I am for that now.  Little things like pickled pepperocini on an anti-pasta platter or cherry bomb peppers on a pizza make all the difference going into our eleventh month of this local pledge. 

farro-fettucini

Fettucini from Blue Bird Farro. We finished these with a garlicky alfredo sauce made with Golden Glen cream and some bitter greens – a favorite combination of mine.

pulled-pork-sammies

Pulled smoked pork sandwiches – the pork butt from Akyla Farms, buns from Lentz spelt, barbecue sauce from our tomatoes that I put up last summer, baked navy beans from Quincy using tomato sauce from our tomatoes, Akyla bacon and Rockridge Orchards apple cider, cabbage and carrot slaw with Golden Glen cream dressing since I was too lazy to make mayonnaise (plus the olive oil would have been from California)

se-cheddar-bacon-scones

Cheddar bacon scones with Akyla bacon, Pleasant Valley farmstead, Lentz spelt, Golden Glen butter.

I’ve been a little cocky about my ingredients but when I looked up my grain source I realized it’s actually 173 miles to Blue Bird Grains and even further to Lentz Spelt.  I have to be happy with that since grains just don’t grow in Western Washington.  It’s true you can buy flour from Bellingham but that grain isn’t grown there.  At least by buying it as close as possible and grinding myself I’m not only saving a ton of cash but the footprint is minimized.

My soft wheat and hard wheat are from Blue Bird Grain as part of the wholesale club buy I organized last summer.  I haven’t actually been using as much wheat since then, however.  I’ve been using a lot more spelt and farro from Lentz Spelt Farm.  By buying whole grain in 50 pound sacks there is minimal packaging and one delivery from farmer to me.  I’ve shaken their hands and thanked them countless times as I go to eat the grains they’ve grown to nourish me and my family this year.

There is something to be said for personally knowing the folks who grew your food.  Once you go there, there is no going back.

→ 13 Comments

Posted in Dark Days Challenge, Growing Groceries - Plants, Seeds and Growing Tips

Tagged

Experiment #643 – Apple Cider

Posted on November 22, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 2 Comments

I’ve been wanting to make apple cider for almost as long as I’ve been wanting to render pork lard and finally got invited to make cider with my friends Cinda and Wally.

Wally built his own cider press and the boxed garbage disposal that he uses to grind up the apples. It’s simple and brilliant. The apples are ground tout suite and then slide down a length of pipe into a waiting 5 gallon bucket.

grinding-up

grinding-apples

apple-mash

The press he made from hard wood and laminated Formica onto the surfaces that would touch the apples. Wally places a frame on the bottom of the press, covers it with cheese cloth and then pours the ground apples in. He folds up the cheesecloth and places wooden slats over to hold it in place. He then repeats another layer of apples in cheesecloth.

pouring-into-frame

pressing-apples

He then places wooden blocks and what appeared to be a car jack to achieve constant pressure and “press” the juice out of the apples.

apple-press

After this he ran the juice through cheesecloth one last time to filter out any remaining sediment.

In the end I got about 2 gallons of cider from roughly 25 pounds of apples. I started one quart as hard cider by leaving it on the counter for a few days until it started to bubble. At this point you can move it to a garage for a week or two to become even more alcoholic, then cap it and move it to the fridge to stop that process.

I’m also making a ginger bug to carbonate some for the kids. We’ve drank quite a bit fresh and the final gallon I’m saving to spice and take with us when we go chop down our Christmas tree with Grandma.

Thanks Cinda and Wally!

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Apples, Preserving Food, Recipes for Seasonal and Local Foods

Tagged

Experiment #642 – Rendering Pork Lard (How Not To)

Posted on November 22, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 11 Comments

Ever since reading the Homesick Texan’s entry on rendering pork lard I’ve been wanting to try it. I don’t make pies frequently and don’t have a favorite butcher so I let that stew.

This fall, however, we had a pig butchered and I requested the give me the leaf lard – otherwise they just throw it out. It’s been in my fridge for a few weeks now and pressed for pie crust, I finally got around to rendering it.

To render it you simply put it in a pan on low and as the fat renders out (literally melts) you suck it up with a turkey baster and put it into a new container.

rendering-pork-lard

liquid-lard

When you are done you are left with something crispy that believe me tastes NOTHING like pork rinds despite what you are told. If you are going to try it be close to sink or other vessel where you can immediately spit it out.

pork-cracklings

I rendered my lard and then made dinner. While we ate the lard in the bowl started to solidify a little. Realizing that I still needed to strain it I grabbed a sieve and piece of cheese cloth. The lard dripped lazily through the cheesecloth for a moment and then stopped. I grabbed the pot it was dripping into, complete with sieve and lard in cheesecloth and put it on a burner, setting to low thinking to barely warm it and get things flowing again. What I couldn’t see is that the cheesecloth at the far side of the pan was drooping and quickly ignited from the gas flame of the burner.

Now a grease fire is not my favorite thing to do on a Saturday night by any stretch so I quickly alerted my husband who was closer to the door, passed the pan over the heads of the children underfoot and he whisked it outside. The clever guy that he is (and well versed in dousing grease fires that occur regularly on our grill) he requested a box of baking soda even though I was reaching for the fire extinguisher.

The soda immediately put out the fire without the huge mess and expense of replacing the extinguisher.

lard-fire

So I was left with the lost time and mess of rendering lard but no lard for my efforts.

Once I got the kitchen mess down to manageable size I went outside in the rain to retrieve the pot and clean it out. My husband had covered it and I saw when I brought it back in the lard had solidified into a beautiful snowy white blob. I did what any self-respecting lard renderer who almost burnt the house down would do – I scraped the layer of baking soda off the top and scooped it into my container.

rendered-pork-lard

It smells and tastes vaguely of fire but I’m test driving it out in a pie crust anyway. If it’s bad I can always spit it out, right? But in the meantime I’m going to find out if leaf lard is the answer to the flakiest pie crust quest, or if it’s just hogwash.

→ 11 Comments

Posted in Rendering Pork Lard

Tagged

Dark Days Challenge

Posted on November 17, 2009 by Annette Cottrell| 12 Comments

darkdays09-10_bug

I’m a day late with this post but isn’t that par for the course with me? November 15 through March 15 is (Not So) Urban Hennery annual Dark Days Challenge and I am signed up.

What is the challenge you ask? From the horses mouth:

Cook one meal each week focused on SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients and write about it on your blog. It’s really that simple, but at the same time, it can really be that hard.

It seems this challenge was made for me because I started it back on January 1. I strive not just to eat this way once a week but every meal of every day.

My challenge was to not give a single dollar this year to food companies. I’ve cheated a few times. Like for instance my husband begged me for orange juice so he got some – and some tortilla chips – for his birthday. Once we were shopping too late past lunchtime and too far from real food and I broke down and bought a bag of chex mix for the kids. Then that one orange juice has since led to another 4 half gallons of orange juice. And that bag of tortilla chips has since led to two others. When we went on vacation in July I bought a box of crackers, box of cookies and two boxes of cereal. And in a moment of guilt last April I bought a box of bunny crackers.

Other than that we have stayed true to the course. It’s not been easy and I do have purchases I make that are not  necessarily to what I would call food companies but they break my local rule like coconut oil, coffee, chocolate, salt, baking powder, vanilla extract and twice now mayonnaise. But at some point you have to pull back and be realistic. Sure I can make the mayo all the time but we don’t eat that much of it and it does take considerable time when you are in the middle of another recipe calling for mayonnaise. I believe I even had a face book post at one point reminding myself that buying mayonnaise is not extravagant.

I’ve spent untold hours this year sourcing local farmers, researching them to be sure I was giving my food vote to the right person and setting up wholesale buys to make this all affordable.

This Thanksgiving? Got it nailed. An apple quince pie from local apples and quince, crust of rendered leaf lard from our pig that Akyla Farms raised for us and spelt grown by Lentz Spelt Farm.Pumpkin creme brulee from my homegrown pumpkins, backyard eggs and raw milk from Dungeness Valley Creamery. A turkey grown by Shawndra of Pastured Sensations just for me and mine. Brussel sprouts from the garden, picked minutes before cooking. Mashed potatoes from Michael Pilarski in Okanogan. Cranberries from Rainier Mountain Cranberries in Eatonville. Acorn squash that I grew glazed with local raw honey from Tayuha River Apiaries. And perhaps a few other things I haven’t yet had time to dream up.

Nearly eleven months into this it is becoming old hat. It’s fun and exciting to find new farmers because I feel like I know them all. I know the deals, the tricks and have my own garden still brimming with fall produce to fall back on. In fact, I rarely buy produce at this point but it’s nice to know what is out there and supplement with some additional variety.

So I’m down with the challenge. I say, bring it on.

Related Posts with Thumbnails

→ 12 Comments

Posted in Thanksgiving

Tagged ,