Mince … uh … Meat?

Looking fairly disgusting, to the left is the beginning stages of MinceMeat. In the pot is an unfortunately small amount of our green tomatoes, mixed with some pears, apples, orange peels, lemon peels, raisins, dried cherries, orange juice, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, port wine, sherry, Pomona’s Universal Pectin, sugar, and spices. This is the first of what looks to be around 100 quarts of mincemeat (with maybe some of that 100 turning into chutney).

To give you some perspective upon the size of what turned out to be 10 quarts, please note our poor stove straining beneath the massive cooking vessel. It performed admirably, I must say, but wrestling that pot into a position from which to move lava-like liquid into jars? Terrifying.

I had intended this batch to be a full twelve quarts – ’cause that’s how many quart jars I’d dragged up from the garage/basement – but in this pot it’s difficult to measure 1 quart. It turns out that a quart is about 1/2 an inch as measured against the side of the pot … and that’s difficult to figure when you’ve got lumps in your liquid. So, 10 quarts it is.

Shown in jars it’s not so exciting – yes, that’s an excuse for having not taken any pictures of them yet – but here’s the final shot before being jarred up. We’ve got some nice caramelization, and the green tomatoes? Can’t even tell what they are when you taste it, which is as it should be. They really do suck up whatever flavor you throw at them, and aside from being nutritious and a great filler, that’s all you could ask for.

Note that this, as most everything we make, is vegan. No meat involved, I’m sorry, but the idea of mixing Suet (beef fat) into this lot? Utterly disgusting, and never crossed my mind until I was writing this post and realizing that the name “MinceMeat” had to come from somewhere. Bleh.

Each 1-quart jar will fill a couple of pies: just add corn starch and bake in a blind-baked shell for about 1/2 an hour and you’re there.

Just for Sarah, here’s some idea of the recipe we used. It originated with the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. It’s sort of a variation / combination of Tomato-Apple Chutney (page 50) and Brandied Mincemeat (page 84), but with our own twist to it.

  • 10 Quarts chopped, de-seeded tomatoes
  • 2 Quarts diced apples (Fuji, Granny Smith, or something which holds up to cooking)
  • 3 Pounds raisins
  • 2 Cups candied ginger, diced
  • 2 Cups dried apricots, chopped
  • 2 Cups dried cherries
  • 1 Cup dried mango*, chopped
  • 1 Cup dried papaya*, chopped
  • 8 Orange peels (use a vegetable peeler, to just get the skin), matchsticked
  • 8 Oranges’ juice
  • 4 Lemon peels (same technique)
  • 4 Lemons’ juice
  • 4 Cups brown sugar
  • 4 Cups white sugar
  • 1 Liter Port Wine (we used Christian Brothers brand; it really should be just the cheapest you can find)
  • 1 Liter Sherry (again, whatever’s cheap)
  • Freshly-Ground spices: 6″ cinnamon stick, 20 allspice berries, 10 whole cloves, 2 Tbsp dried ginger.
  1. Combine everything.
  2. Boil it until it doesn’t taste of raw liquor any longer (maybe an hour, maybe 2)
  3. Jar, leaving 1/2-inch headspace.
  4. Process 30 minutes in boiling-water canner**.

*note: vary these fruits as you see fit. We did one version that was a “tropical” version, another version that had pears instead of apples, one pretty much just tried to make them each unique. They all turned out marvelously, so … go crazy with the dried fruit!
**note: we processed ours 30 minutes in a pressure canner. We did this because 1) we had such a thing, and 2) we’re paranoid, since we varied the recipe by not adding apple cider as it calls for in the blue book. Yes, the brandy & sherry should have been acidic enough … but we weren’t going to risk it.

Pepper Preserving

So, we’ve been making our way through our supply of dried and drying peppers, trying to knit them into something suitable for storage … and also something decorative, if we’re going to have them sitting around. Shown to the left is the first bundle – of what we had thought to be Thai Bird chiles, but about half of which seem to have a miraculous lack of heat. We’re probably going to end up saving these as simply decorative … or giving them away as such. It’s sad, really, because we know that one of the two plants was Thai Bird – we tasted the peppers, and they were truly magnificent in their heat. The other, though? Completely decorative and devoid of heat. I’m hoping that one of the two bunches is the Thai Bird and the other is the decorative, because of the differences in color and in ripening speed. We’ll see.


Next up are our Bolivian Rainbow Peppers. There’s no doubt that these babies are hot – painfully so, and of a type of pain which comes back to get you especially cruelly if you try to brush your tongue to take away the pain.

We’re going to let them dry, to see what they’re like that way. Shown to the left are the ripe specimens, and to the right are the immature fruit. They start out life purple and progress through a cream into a yellow and then red. The red ones seem to be holding up to the drying process better than the purple, which are wizening into almost pea-sized little black nubbins. The reds are keeping their shape, and not wrinkling.

Everyone should have a good, white wall in the house, upon which to hang their herbs (and fruits).

Here’re the lot of them, hanging in an out of the way area to dry. They will probably not be joined by the remaining peppers, which will go into the cuisinart to hopefully provide some flavor for the winter. We’ll see.

Maundering

Anti-Intellectualism is the topic of today’s maundering, and most of this is going to be links for me to look at later, when I’m interested in buying books.

What started me on this path of investigation was a prolonged discussion with a pastor, whom I suspect of being an anti-intellectual. In the course of hunting around for background material I came across a wealth of material out there, and discovered that I’m probably interested in it all – “religious antirationalism, populist antielitism, and unreflective instrumentalism, or the tendency to value thought only for its practical or material yield,” and the list goes on. Guess I’m in for some deep reading over the winter. Anti-Intellectualism in American Media: Magazines and Higher Education, by Dane S. Claussen, is a derivative work, based largely upon that of Hofstadter (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life), with additional research. Hofstadter is probably the deeper source here, but at 400+ hardbound pages, the work for the serious student… and I’ve had to read Hofstadter before, way back in A.P. European History in High School, so I’m familiar with the quality of work there. Or, I suppose I could dig more deeply into the Religious aspects in Full Gospel, Fractured Minds?: A Call to Use God’s Gift of the Intellect … if I really wanted to go there, and if I wanted to spend another long afternoon arguing with a pastor.

Which I don’t. Which is why I’ll perhaps bring a more complicated knitting project to church, so that I’m less able to listen to the man, and more able to tune out the stupidity.

Or perhaps I’ll become a Quaker, where there are no pastors.

Operatic Death of the Garden

OK, so we yanked out the garden on October 2. By “yanked out” I mean to say that we tore down the tomatoes, harvested anything which was in any way shape or form edible, and left the rest … without water. Well, we were bright people this year, and turned in WaterSorb by way of drought protection. It worked. The silly garden is still cranking out produce three weeks later. True, we didn’t really leave much … but to come back (we garden at some friends’ house) to find nice, fat Armenian cucumbers is just rather a shock.

We’ll be adding more WaterSorb next year, too, ’cause the stuff degrades in about 5 years, so we added only 1/5 what the recommended quantity was, planning on adding that same amount every year, so that it’d be fairly constant. It should be interesting to see what happens when it’s got twice as much drought protection.

It truly is much like watching a Ballet demise, though. Scary.

Now, back to reinstalling software from the ground up … to make things nice and fresh for the next client. Sigh.

Delicious Delicata

FoodI know I’ve already gone on about how much I loathe squash, but I found another contender — possibly even better than Acorn, The Perfect Food, for the best winter vegetable: Delicata. A warning to all the hapless victims of our garden largess, THIS is what I’m growing next year, by the bushel. This tasty sweet squash is, per 3/4 c. serving, 30 calories, 1 g protein, and just 7 g carbohydrate. It lends itself to eating plain baked, mashed with a little salt and pepper, or added to risotto. This was its debut at our house:

Delicata Roasted Veg Bread Pudding

  • 2 medium sized skinned, gutted and cubed Delicata – if you choose them very small, the skins are tender enough to eat without skinning them. Three cheers for laziness!
  • 3 small chopped onions – or fewer, or even add garlic if you like
  • 2 cup seasoned bread crumbs – I had some bread guts from Mac’s herbed bread in the freezer from when we hollowed out small boules for chili – both handy and tasty,
  • 1 cup fresh, chopped, greens – I used arugula, and their pungency was a perfect counterpoint to the sweet Delicata, and they’re just too strong to use in salad in that amount,
  • 1 c. ground “meat” of your choice
  • 1 c. shredded mozzarella, or some other tasty cheese you like
  • 1 c. of white wine and a splash (1/2 cup-ish) of milk
  • ground pepper and salt to taste; I forgot about that, but salting per serving works just as well in this household of both hyper and hypotension.

Gather your ingredients, and go through the tedious process of gutting the seeds out of your squash. As a reward, those you can save and roast, just like pumpkin seeds. Yum. I just tossed my ingredients into a lightly spritzed casserole dish, in layers, as if I was doing lasagne. I started with the breadcrumbs on bottom, and build up. If you don’t have herbed bread in crumbs, use it in a solid layer of slices. And if your bread isn’t herbed, bodge in some chopped rosemary and a sage and garlic powder, will you? I also added an optional 1 tbsp. of smoked torula yeast (which we found in tiny amounts in a store, got sick of that noise, and then ordered wholesale).

When I was finished with this, our house smelled like winter… filled with the smells of those good, filling, post-Thanksgiving dinners that make you happy when the whole wet/cold/rampant flooding/mold is starting to get grim and you’re a bit sick of rain. And the dish is colorful and really low in calories… next time I make it, I may add another squash for contrast, and skip the bread bit altogether.

You may wonder why I’m angsting over the caloric content of a vegetable dish? Weeell, it’s because my sister has suggested that she can borrow some of my clothes for maternity things later on this year. And while she didn’t mean it unkindly (because I really do have wider shoulders, am a little bigger frame)? Er, she wasn’t kidding. Time to lose a few pounds but seriously! And if I can have this great veg casserole with a big salad for dinner every week, it will it be really easy! (Note: I’ll miss the bread, with great aching pain. It’s been fun… but I want to make sure people can tell which one of us sisters is the one breeding. Already I am stiffening my spine for the comments of the clueless who will do the math, see it’s been twelve years, and start suggesting that ‘shouldn’t you be expecting too?’ Siiiiiiigh. It’s all in the details, you see…)

Arachnophobia

May I just ask WHAT’S UP with the vermin this year!?

Yeah, you know which ones. We’re being freaking OVER RUN with spiders in this fair state. It’s not like we’re in Louisiana. Katrina left NOLA suffering from all of the creatures who are out of place after the levee breakage; they have brown widows right now, which are the mildly-less-toxic cousins of Lady Black. But I just didn’t expect the number of creatures crawling around here. It must have been the late rains — people reported a lot more garden pests and fleas, which is why I let the dill and cosmos go mad — they attract beneficial insects. We had a really bug-free garden this year, in terms of bugs eating plants (and I don’t count the fluffy, feathery quail-bugs). Nobody said they weren’t hanging out in the plants, however more on that later…

Meanwhile, the TV news gleefully reports that it’s tarantula breeding season, so you won’t catch me within five miles of beautiful Mount Diablo where all this is happening — or Texas, or Arizona or the Nevada highlands, or anywhere else where the great furry things just blanket the landscape, running around breeding. They’re so neat, my teacher’s mind tells me… but fuzzy spiders and me? And fuzzy spiders larger than my palm? Um, no can do, sorry…

The number of black widows getting acquainted with me personally is also worrisome. Saturday’s paper carried a column about wrestling dinner from black widows, and it reminded me of a scene I’d effectively blocked from my mind. The weekend we pulled out the garden, I was pulling out a pepper plant, and I saw a fat, black, marble-butted spider — and I was two rows away before I knew how I’d gotten there, leaping like an Olympian. (Fear promotes the most astonishing reflexes.) I recalled this yesterday, and Mac said, “Oh, yeah… I’ve killed about five in the garage. And then there’s the one that was in the kitchen…”

All right. Usually, I get my Zen on, and try to respect all creatures and all, but there’s only going to be one fat, marble-butted lady in my kitchen.

I’m just saying.

Retail Insanity: Catching

It’s craziness, but you kind of have to admit that at some point, you KNEW it was going to happen…

See, it’s like this: just having the idea of a book contract — idea only, since the bloody thing will take between 5 – 8 weeks to get here (on the backs of flea-ridden camels, apparently), and first half of the advance money, sans the agent’s cut, apparently, will take even longer (since she has the bad-timing to get married this month – oy vey, not another one!) — gives you the feeling that immediately, if not sooner, you should just jump into all of the House Projects you’ve been putting off until you Had Money.

Never mind that you still don’t actually have cash in hand, just the promises of various people practically a continent away are enough to send you off into nonsense. To that end, today I got my floor samples. I haven’t opened them yet, but I am gleefully waiting for the opinions of Very Random People I catch and pester within the next few days to give me their input. Should you drop by this weekend, my question to you will be “Light or dark? Vertical, or horizontal? Or cork? Paper or Plastic?

And then, next Sunday I look forward to going over these questions with a Phil the Contractor. Already it bodes… amusing to work with him; he cannot for the life of him remember my name (nor my Senior Sibling’s name, and she lives next door to him and has since April), so he calls me …Sweetie. (He calls Senior Sibling “Girlie,” which is just no improvement.) Now, only ONCE in my life have I let someone get away with calling me ‘sweetie’ and it was because it was a boss of mine, and he was a minister, and some of those guys just can’t disconnect from the paternalistic thing in moments of stress. I let him do it once, mind you. Once. So… not sure how I’ll ultimately handle Contractor Phil. I shall feel like either a toothless grannie or a sticky three-year-old throughout my entire remodel. Oh, bliss.

But seriously – with the prospect of floors that pretty, can much honestly bother me for long?

Stove Redux

I’ve been told that I need to praise the stove. I was told this because I’ve used the broiler in it two days running, and have found it to be absolutely fabulous, and then realized that (except for the self-clean ‘incinerate everything’ setting) we’ve used every feature of the oven … and it’s come through with flying colors.

We were scared of having a glass-top stove (ceramic-top stove – same thing), because of all of the horror stories which abound out there. We were afraid we’d drop something & break it, we’d scratch it, we’d get sugar on the surface & it’d pit / pock. No such thing has happened, and let me tell you that we don’t eat out, like ever. So. Every meal now for a month and a half has been cooked on this stove (with a wee bit of help from the 1970’s microwave), and we’ve had no problems. That’s not to say that we haven’t had some scares, but we soon discovered that what looks like a scratch isn’t, really, but is most likely some heated-on gunk that got stuck to the bottom of the pan and dragged across the surface, and comes off with a non-metallic scrubby sponge.

About the only down-side is that the bottom racks heat differently from the top racks, and that if you’re going to try to bake like 8 loaves of bread … well, you have to test the two racks independently. And the ones on the bottom will have darker bottom crusts, where those in the middle / upper racks will have more even browning.

Aside from that, the thing’s been endless fun, especially the timer / delayed-bake functions. It’s SO fabulous to throw a whole bunch of things into a casserole dish (onions, green beans, some grain or other, some meat substitute thing, some wine, some sauce, etc.), set the delayed-bake function & tell it to cook at, say, 3:30 pm for an hour, and then to arrive home to find hot dinner sitting there, driving TadMack crazy with the smell because she’s been writing and wouldn’t have come up for air OR food ’til like 8:00. Ahh. Sweet torture of regularly-scheduled meals.

Can I praise this oven more? Perhaps. We’ll have to see how nicely the sourdough turns out this evening, and I’m sure I’ll try not to forget which appliance was responsible. But having something which is modern? This is a first for me, and I’ve truly grown used to it!

Barley Boules

So, I feel like for the first time I’ve gotten it right with the sourdough thing. Don’t get me wrong – the other loaves have been beautiful, some have been sour, some have been boules … but I’ve not done any truly SOUR boules up until these. These babies … well, first off, they don’t have any sweet things in them whatsoever – nothing for the yeast to eat, even, except for the flour. (They were kick-started with commercial yeast, but that’s just by way of insurance.)

I’m going to give an ingredient list, just because I want to be able to come back to it and I’m told that I need to start writing these things down. Yes, I suppose I might want to … but then again, I should really start measuring out the flour – by weight – so that I’ll really know how to re-create these things.

Ingredients:

  • 3 Cups of the sour (1.5 of whole wheat sour culture, 1.5 of white sour culture – yes, they’re different in flavor, and it’s worth maintaining two)
  • 1 Cup of water (110°F)
  • 2 Tbsp Active Dry Yeast (insurance, you know)
  • 1 Cup Barley (with the hull still, please), steamed for 1.5 hours in 1.25 Cups water
  • 2.5 Cups Oat Bran
  • Whole Wheat Flour
  • White Flour
  • 1 Tbsp Brown Mustard Seeds
  • 1 Tsp Caraway Seeds
  • 1/4 Tsp Cumin Seeds

Go for a single, short rise, ’cause it seems to work better with sourdough than going for multiples – or, at least, it’s worked better for me. Of course, it could be said that I actually go for multiple rises, ’cause I give the sour & the yeast & the first dose of flour (whole wheat) some time to get acquainted in the mixing bowl … so I guess I’m saying to not give them three rises like I ordinarily would with something to which I’ve added honey & molasses. I know what I mean. If you need to know … well, let me know and I’ll explain more.

For tonite, I’m just glad that the pictures of these lovelies turned out so well, and that I’ll be making more tomorrow evening … ’cause there’s only about 1/2 a loaf left.

I must say that they make you mindful … of how you eat, because the barley hanging out on the crust? Way hard. I only steamed it for 1 hour in these loaves … so I’m saying 1.5 hours, above, so that you’ll have some dental happiness if you use the recipe.

Pruning Out the Deadwood, Changing Seasons

Autumn is making me melancholy. Or something is. On nights when the moon is full, and the sky is that particularly brilliant shade of blue, when the wind is cool, even at noon, and things all around you are changing, well… you don’t really need an excuse to gently indulge your melancholia, do you?

‘Tis the season to read books and sip spiced hot chocolate, to ponder life truths and have a good cry for no particularly good reason; to write letters sans keyboards, with actual pens that use ink; to cement friendships, or slough off particularly noxious ones you’ve been hanging onto for too long. ‘Tis the season to shake off the deadwood, prune back the branches, and prepare to go dormant so that new growth can take place. Autum-time — it’s the slow-down that comes before the little death which comes before life returns.

Part of me hates change so much that all of this pruning and such makes me want to go back to bed, but letting something die back without pruning it, in plants, anyway, means that it’s not easy for the plant to come back to life. Trying to make changes stick in myself, without making room for them, without giving things up a few things that are comfortable, but hurtful, probably won’t work out either. So, it’s time, and every year this time rolls around again. I look forward to seeing how it will all turn out.


Meanwhile, the Silly Sibling’s Ceremony that took over my life is now over — (Which has me convinced that there is a God, if not, we’d still all be at the church still, waiting for her to finish her pedicure and maybe show up on time…wow. There are no words.) so I’m finally digging out of the filthy dusty house, returning library books, putting up the rest of the produce in the freezer and into the dehydrator, and finding the bedwarmers. It’s actually been coldish and rainy and it’s a welcome respite from the state of Eternal Summer via Global Warming. I’m relieved. Admittedly, I’m still disappointed at my retarded sunflowers; the only one I got is a full four inches tall — it looks like an oversized dandelion — but it’s time to shake off the failure and put in the bulbs and the sweet peas, maybe some amaranth, and more kale. Hopefully better results next time…

I have a wee dram of champagne waiting for me to take notice of it. Can you believe that someone had the good sense to make a sweet potato chutney that calls for champagne? I can’t drink it, but I can eat it!

Sweet Potato Chutney

  • 1 large yellow onion, chopped
  • 4 cups sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
  • 1/4 cup champagne
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup dried cranberries
  • 3 Tbs. crystallized ginger, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 Tbs. curry powder
  • 1/2 tsp. sea salt
  • 3 Tbs. fresh mint, minced

In large saucepan over medium high heat, place onion, sweet potatoes; champagne; sugar, dried cranberries; crystallized ginger; cloves garlic, curry powder; and a spoon sea salt. Reduce heat to low and cook 30 minutes, stirring frequently.Remove from heat and stir in minced mint. Garnish with minced sprigs.

Meanwhile, I have a hankering for some more ‘classical’ applications for sweet potatoes… (and NO, they don’t include marshmallows, sorry): I think I’m going to jazz up the traditional caramelized sweet potatoes with ginger and orange juice instead of using brown sugar and butter. Or, better still, I might just try the whole thing with delicata squash; I hear it’s great baked with apples and caramelized.

The season of change: brings many possibilities!