Posted in Changing Seasons, From my kitchen, Locally grown, Working the earth/harvesting its bounty on Aug 25th, 2010
The tomatoes are starting to ripen! Can’t wait to take them in to BCS on Friday!! Families have been asking for the last month when we’d have fresh, ripe tomatoes.
90 percent of the tomatoes are still green, including many gigantic beefsteaks, like this Brandywine (look at that sucker in my hand! HUGE!). If you’ve got [...]
Posted in From my kitchen, Locally grown on Aug 12th, 2010
Ah, summer dinners in the backyard…
Here’s one of my favorite summer dessert recipes – we’ve been making a lot lately, with whatever fruit we have on hand:
Larksong’s Farm Stand Fruit Pie
For the filling:
5 peaches, peeled and sliced or 10-12 apricots sliced
4 big handfuls of raspberries, blueberries, or blackberries
2 Tbsp cornstarch
1/2 cup white sugar
For the crust:
1 [...]
Posted in From my kitchen, Moderation and Economy, Playing/ Free Exploration on Jul 28th, 2010
Just a quick post to share the recipe for my favorite childhood snack.
We were given 40 lbs of honey (albeit, crystallized, so I’ve had to de-crystallize it in batches), so I’ve been trying to come up with ways to use it in my cooking. We’ve made several batches of jam, substituting honey for a portion [...]
Posted in From my kitchen, Learning, Locally grown, Uncategorized on Jul 20th, 2010
Little Hen’s new favorite jam: Black Currant!
I’ve always loved a little Cassis in my hot tea in the winter, but this is the first year we’ve tried jam made from these relatives of the gooseberry, which have a distinctive, smoky/ musky flavor.
Black currants are full of pectin, so they are perfect for jam – all [...]
Posted in From my kitchen, Locally grown, Moderation and Economy on Jul 19th, 2010
A bit late, but here are some pics from our drive out to Sandy Farms last week to pick sour cherries. (A big thanks to Chris at Lost Arts Kitchen for letting me know about the good cherry picking there!)
This was the first time I’ve cooked with sour cherries, and we made sour cherry + [...]
Posted in From my kitchen, Locally grown, The Gift of God on Jul 14th, 2010
The early morning was spent preparing a big batch of Hood River organic cherries for the dehydrator. We ate oodles fresh, and what is left will go in a batch of sweet cherry brandy (makes the best fruitcake for Christmas).
If you don’t have a cherry pitter, check out this tip, and these, for how to [...]
Posted in From my kitchen, Homemaking, Locally grown, Moderation and Economy on Jun 23rd, 2010
A while back, Sunset Magazine called for summer recipe submissions with 5 ingredients or less. I sent in a recipe, and they published it in the July 2010 issue!
It’s a super easy fruit salad recipe based on a dish I make all the time in the summer. (It’s a great dish to take to a [...]
Posted in From my kitchen on Jun 22nd, 2010
Larksong’s Simple Stone Fruit Cake
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup white flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
approx 3 -4 apricots, plums, pluots, etc, washed and sliced, or a large handful of pitted, halved sour cherries
sanding sugar to sprinkle on top (about 1 Tbsp)
Directions
1)Preheat oven to [...]
Posted in Building Community, From my kitchen on Jun 14th, 2010
The other night we tried out a new pizza recipe from Good Eat’s guru, Alton Brown.
I really liked that the dough is made the night before and allowed to set-up in the fridge – this way, when I’m in a hurry to make dinner the next night, I can quickly take out the dough, [...]
Posted in From my kitchen on Jun 11th, 2010
Well, one upside of all the cool rainy weather is that it’s prolonged the “baking season.” It has yet to be so hot that I can’t justify running the oven.
Firecracker and I tried out a new recipe and whipped up some cookies for the neighbors – Martha’s Chocolate Malt cookies. We’re working our [...]