Fruity Cordials

I will pick the last of the raspberries from the patch tonight and head out to a local orchard (Cherry Hill) tomorrow for my last batch of fresh picked cherries. I need a few more pie cherries to dry and maybe make a cherry crisp.

After every batch of jam I've made the past few weeks, there has been enough berries to do something with, but not enough for another batch of jam. What to do?! Then, I remembered a good friend saying something about cordial so I searched the internet for recipes. Be careful what you seek, there are nearly as many cordial recipes as there are people who drink cordial.

The raspberry cordial (on the right) is made with 2 lbs. of whole berries, 2 cups of vodka and 1 cup of sugar. It took about 5 days for the sugar to dissolve and the fruit to start breaking down. You can see a layer of seeds at the bottom of the jar.

The cherry cordial is made with a mix of bing and rainier cherries. I had two large bowls full of cherries and am home alone for a few days. It contains 2 lbs. cherries, 2 cups sugar, 3 whole allspice, 1 cup of brandy and 1 cup of rum. Hopefully the bing cherries will add some of their deep red color to the mix. I don't like the dirty look of the rum/brandy mix. The sugar dissolved better in this mixture, but you can still see a thin film of sugar at the bottom of the jar. I'm sure this is going to be one "sweet" drink when it is ready.

I used these wonderful 2 quart Kerr canning jars that I rescued from my aunt's garage. As a kid I remember her making grape juice in them - it was wonderful stuff. I'm hoping these cordial recipes turn out as well.

Experimental dinner

We are trying some new things. This week it was egg rolls.

We loosely followed a recipe, using lots of vegetables. We chopped cabbage, yellow peppers, green onions, grated carrots, bean sprouts, water chestnuts and added it all to some cooked ground beef. After watching me roll up a couple, the kids gave it a try.

Using a pie making secret, we wet the corners of the egg roll squares with milk to make them stick and hold together better.

Once we had all the wrappers stuffed, you couldn't tell the difference between mine and the ones the kids created.
Lacking a deep fat fryer, we used a skilled with about an inch of oil. They cooked quickly and browned nicely. When it was all said and done, everyone enjoyed our first batch of egg rolls. The kids decided that next time we won't use meat and we need to add bigger pieces of carrots.

Cherries!

My father-in-law arrived with two flat boxes filled with cherries. One filled with Rainiers and the other with Bings, freshly picked that morning from the Yakima Valley.They made for challenging project of preserving them while simultaneously hosting company in my house, helping my sister and mom hold a yard sale in my yard and entertaining children.

My mom helped clean all the cherries. She rinsed and pulled stems while I searched through our storage for my canning supplies. We water bath canned most of the cherries in quart jars. I find the process of canning, especially when doing it with my mom relaxing and productive - productive in a way that is different from other housework or office work.
There were enough for 28 quart jars and 14 pint jars of cherries. I even did one jar with a mixture of the two. The Rainier cherries look stark against the deep red juice the Bing cherries make in the jar.

There is something very gratifying about seeing your shelves filled with the "fruits of your labor."

After a couple hours of canning, there were still more cherries left than we could possibly eat before they spoiled. So, into the dehydrator they went. I cut each cherry in half and removed the pit. They looked like tiny peaches or nectarines. They were treated with Fruit Fresh in hopes they would retain their color after drying.

And, they did! They look wonderful and taste wonderful.

Sir Loin

He has been dubbed 'Sir Loin of Holestine" and he rules our little pasture.This happy guy is our beef steer. He is well fed, pampered and mostly just loves to keep you alert with his little horns. The kids have kept their distance from the pasture since he's moved in. They are used to their goats, but this guy is quite a bit more intimidating.

The goats like to pester him at feeding time because his feed is a bit richer than what they typically get. He gently nudges them away from his feed with his horns, but they aren't easily deterred when there is food involved.

Obviously he won't be staying to live out his years as a pet, but he is entertaining and has proven to be friendly and rambunctious

Littlest Pastry Chef

I remember standing on a step stool at the end of the counter watching my granny make pies, cookies and other tasty goodies. Hopefully my kids carry the same happy memories of creating delicious treats.
Keeli had a great time playing with a small handful of left over pie crust dough, a bowl of flour and the rolling pin for nearly an hour after our project was completed. She thinks the cinnamon sugar cookies we make from the remaining crust dough were "hers."

For the Love of Pears

The farmer's market has been a treasure trove of fresh fruit. We have purchased four 20-pound boxes of pears from a Wenatchee area orchardist. For the first few days they have this vibrant green color.
We place them on newspapers in the cool, semi-dark basement and one week later they are this beautiful, ripe yellow. Some have a nice touch of salmon pink to their skin.
Then, it's peeling, paring, cleaning and packing. After about a half hour in the canner, we have some lovely fruit to enjoy later this winter.

I also had to spend part of the day "reprocessing" a batch of jelly that didn't set. I've never made jelly before on my own, we're usually the types to enjoy strawberry and raspberry freezer jam. But, this year I wanted to make jelly. The juice for this jelly is 50% sour cherry and 50% plum. It came out a really pretty color.
On a crazy side note, does anyone else think that once you halve a pear the seeds and core resemble popular drawings of aliens? Those little seeds look like their almond shaped solid colored eyes and the core is sort of tapered to the bottom like a chin. Too strange, or maybe I've been in the kitchen too long.

The Sweetness Factor

Sweet corn...this will be yummy in our tummies during the winter months.
We were recently invited to pick sweet corn from a local organically managed field. The corn has fantastic flavor (I sampled far too much while processing) and every ear was full of yellow, plump, juicy kernels.

All our little pickers were out in the field pulling ears from the corn stalks. Of course, one picker did the majority of the work in the field, but he doesn't complain too much and works relatively cheap.

After about two hours of picking and building a pile of corn in our truck bed, we headed for home - where my work would begin.

I spent two days blanching, cutting, freezing and vacuum packing corn for our freezer. Corn is one of the few things I refuse to preserve by canning. Canned corn isn't as visually appealing or as tasty as frozen corn.
We can't wait to enjoy it as a simple side dish with melted butter and in Mexican corn bread and corn chowder and meatball soup and corn pudding and ... ...

Old Time Threshing

We commonly see all sorts of harvesting equipment from potato and onion diggers to grain combines and manual laborers who pick the fruit and other vegetables we enjoy.

Sunday we had a rare treat. We came upon an old time threshing, complete with steam engine, threshing machine and cut and bundled wheat.

Threshing means: to separate seed from (a harvested plant) mechanically. The word "thresh" is actually Old English and Old German and dates back to before the 12th century.

The Case steam engine is connected to the threshing maching with a wide belt. Workers took bundled wheat from a flatbed trailer and loaded it into the threshing machine.

This machine takes the grain from this:

to this:


We all had a great time enjoying the heat, dust, flying chaf and noise.

Little Farmers

Goat rustlin' apparently isn't enough for Tatum and Rikard. They want to learn the asparagus business and when given the opportunity they jumped in with enthusiasm.

Once upon a scortching Saturday we visited the asparagus patch at Papa Charlie's house. With the sun beating down on the hot, sandy soil the kids worked up a sweat helping bring in the crop.Rikard, who just completed Kindergarten, was in charge of stacking and counting the boxes collected along the rows. He was really starting to build up a "farmer attitude" near the end of this process - if you know what I mean. He knew everything about how to do this job and no one could propose another, possibly better way.

This was the kids' view from the trailer as it cruised along the rows to the next grouping of full boxes ready to be picked up. I enjoy the composition of the photo with the row lines, and how Charlie kind of looks like an upward or forward arrow going along the rows with his red cap leading the way.

This is my favorite view of asparagus - the finished project. Pickled asapargus is one of my favorite treats and it isn't just asapargus that tastes like plain old pickles. I've been experimenting with several different recipes over the past couple of years. Rick's grandpa has a fantastic recipe that has a nice little bite from garlic and hot red Chinese peppers.

This particular batch was made from an adapted recipe found in the book The Joy of Pickling. The original recipe calls for short jelly jars. I prefer the longer stalk of aspargus rather than just the tops as you get when you cut them down to fit the shorter jars. The spices you see at the bottom of the jar include minced garlic, allspice berries, peppercorns, coriander seeds, nutmeg pieces, hot pepper flakes, all swimming in a brine made from white wine vinegar. Yum, yum, yummy.