Nice Day in the Kitchen- Apple Pie and Macaroni(and cheese)

I got to go cook for a field trip at Locust Grove last week. I haven't gotten to do this in awhile, and it was a lot of fun. It was actually a homeschool group, and they nicely divided the kids up into three groups by age. It was especially nice to get to talk to three different age levels in one day, but not all at once. The smallest ones are usually at the level of 'yes, you can make food with fire, wow!', the second group was about the right age to learn what we mean by primary sources, and the older ones, who were about 11-13, were able to understand a bit better when I talked about how this work was done by slaves at the Croghan farm. 

A Buttered Apple Pie - Amelia Simmons, 1796

Pare, quarter and core tart apples, lay in paste..cover with the same; bake half an hour, when drawn, gently raise the top crust, add sugar butter, cinnamon, mace, wine or rose-water

It's times like this I really wish Locust Grove had a bake oven, since this wasn't the easiest thing to handle in a dutch oven. Getting it out without burning your fingers isn't the best thing ever, and I managed to mess up the crust a little between that and rising it up to add the rose water. But, no matter, it was very well received! I absolutely love rose water as a flavoring, and this reminded me why. 

Macaroni - The Virginia Housewife, 1824

Boil as much macaroni as will fill your dish, in milk and water, till quite tender; drain it on a sieve,  sprinkle a little salt over it, put a layer in your dish, then cheese and butter ....put the dish in a quick over, twenty or thirty minutes will bake it. 

This has become another of my go-tos. It's easy, it's vegetarian, it is absolutely delicious, AND it really gets peoples attention. I actually brought this one in to one of my classes where I teach last semester and the students really enjoyed it. 

I was quite pleased with how it came out this time- when it looked almost ready I put a few more coals on top of the dutch oven and just left it 3-4 minutes longer to get some nice browning on the top. I was very careful not to wait too long so it wouldn't get burnt, and it came out just right. It was a big hit with the other volunteers and my kitchen helpers.

This was election day in Kentucky, which meant that the public schools were closed to serve as polling places (for a state with notoriously low voter turnout, we actually do a decent job of marking the day). There were two neighborhood children playing on the grounds who were just awesome. They kept coming into the kitchen to see what was going on, and eventually became my helpers. Normally I don't feed the public at these things, but one of them has a dad on the board, so I said they could have pie if they got permission.

It was delightful seeing them pop back up all sweaty and breathy, because they had obviously run home and then run all the way back after having asked mom (the one boy lives next to the Grove, so they weren't dodging traffic or anything). It was just really nice to see kids outside, playing, having adventures. And they even walked away with a taste for rosewater in pie :-) 

1812 Orange Liqueur Recipe

This recipe came from a book called Advice to a Young Lady in the Colonies; being a letter sent from Mrs. E. of England to Maria Macarthur in the Colony of N.S. Wales in 1812.

 Apparently "Mrs. E" was some kind of godmother to the young lady and new bride who had just set off to begin her housekeeping in Australia. It is principally concerned with food; recipes, menus suitable for different sizes of parties and occasions, etc.

I have had this book forever. Someone gave it to me at some point years and years ago, and it looked interesting, but sat on my shelf. Every time I moved and went through my books, I would look at it and say 'oh yes, that, still looks interesting, still totally mean to look at it one day,' put it in a box, schlep it to the next place, put it on the shelf, and there it would sit till I moved again.

I think this is where having had to make the very hard choices on what to move 2300 miles came in handy- if I decided to take it, I sure as hell better finally crack the pages and do something with it.

Upon finally perusing its pages, I found the following recipe

"Orange Liqueur

Into a wide-mouthed glass jar put a quart of good brandy, a pound of powdered lump sugar and a quarter of a stick of vanilla. Stir these until the sugar is melted. Then put in one fine, smooth-rinded, unspotted orange, whole, without being cut in any way. Cover the jar close, and set it aside in a warm place. This liquer takes two or three months to make, so as to be well impregnated with the perfume of the orange."

"Yes, let's definitely do that thing" said we "sounds yummy'. However this proved somewhat easier said than done, since upon further reflection, this list of ingredients actually started to look pretty foreign.

 For starters, we realized that what we thought of by 'powdered sugar' was probably not the same as what someone in New South Wales in 1812 would think of. Upon consultation with some educated folks, the general consensus was no, it isn't, and your best bet is probably to get some natural cone sugar from a Mexican market. 

The label said "Before best December 2014"....which is how you know it's legit. 

Unfortunately, this was not 'powdered'. No matter......

Me: "Am I being insane about this?"

Brian: "Yes, but its cool, we're the same kind of insane"

Me: "Ah, alright then, just so long as I have company...."

I powdered it myself. 

I got it mostly powdered, with some small chunks left I was hoping would just dissolve. As it was, there is actually still quite a bit of sediment in the bottom which does not seem to have any intention of further dissolving. Brian assures it will be fine and we can strain it if we need to, but in future I'm not gonna stop hammering till it's smooth. 

We also weren't entirely sure about what a 'stick' of vanilla would be. We are guessing this must be a bean. I mean, they're pretty stick-like. They are also, as it turns out, extremely expensive. Luckily the recipe doesn't call for much. I actually put in one half of the two beans you get in a jar for $8.50 at Kroger. 

"I cost more than a latte."

This was another point of 'Are we being insane? well, yes, but let's just accept that and go with it."

In other words, yes, one could probably figure out a conversion to just use vanilla extract, but by then we were hell bent on actually recreating the original recipe. At this point we had spent at least two months talking about this and tracking down the ingredients. I believe the orange I finally put in there was the third one we had bought for the purpose, since the other two had gone bad waiting to be used.

Since it said 2-3 months we are hoping it will be ready to share at Jane Austen Festival in July. 

This shit had better be fucking delicious.........

The orange 'impregnating' the brandy.....should I be blurring this?

Lentil Soup

So since I met the Fella, I have been introduced to the magic of lentils. Delicious, nutritious, and no pre-soaking or any of that malarchy involved! Tonight was my first actual experience cooking with them, and it seems to be a resounding success! I made up the following after looking at a few different recipes and based on what we actually had in the house.

All the recipes I found online called for using vegetable stock, which I did not do because a) it is chock FULL of sodium and goodness knows what else and b) there is no reason for it! If you have a nice base of olive oil and onions plus other delicious ingredients, in this case including the juices from a can of stewed tomatoes, you will get plenty of flavor. There is no reason to go with prepackaged sodium filled garbage!


Lentil Veggie Soup

Enough olive oil to coat the bottom of your pot.
(The) 1 small (sad) carrot (left in the fridge).
2 stalks cellery
1/2 yellow onion
Kosher salt- about a tablespoon
Several grindings worth of black pepper
2 bay leaves
basil and oregano - a goodly amount (Yes, that's a unit of measurement now).
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 14.5 oz can stewed tomatoes
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar.
1 1/2 cups lentils
8 cups water

Heat olive oil in the bottom of your pot on medium and chop the veggies. Add garlic and kosher salt once the oil is warm, followed by the chopped veggies and other seasonings (except the vinegar). Most recipes tell you to saute onions before other veggies, but I've started putting them in with the carrots and celery because those things take a little while to cook, and I don't like to destroy my onions.

Saute until veggies are tender. In the meantime make sure you don't like, need to chop the tomatoes. Because apparently those can still be in pretty big chunks, and you wouldn't want to have to like...fish them out of your soup once you dump the can in to chop...yeah...anyway...

Once veggies are getting tender, add water, lentils, and tomatoes. Make sure you don't drain the tomatoes or lose any of their juicy goodness, you want that for your broth.  Raise to a boil, then simmer till lentils are tender, about 20-30 minutes.

Once it seems ready, take a final taste test. Add any salt, pepper, etc. Then and only then add in the vinegar.

Serve with fresh baked bread, if your honey is awesome and makes you fresh bread :-)

Potato, Mushroom and Kale Soup

So it's been some time since I actually posted anything cooking related, but here we go. I have made this soup before, and I really like the combination of things. I also added rice for the first time this time, and like it.

All ingredient portions are estimates, you can add as much or as little as you want! I also tend to go insane and make a GIANT pot of soup- you may wish to exercise more restraint ;-)

1 yellow onion- I really wanted to use a leek, but I couldn't find a store that would sell me just one, and there is no way I will use three leeks before they go bad. Grumble, grumble...
2 big portabella mushrooms, or most of a pack of small ones.
2-4 regular brown potatoes, depending on size and preference.
1 bunch of kale
1/2 cup rice
10 cups water - most recipes for soup tend to say 4-6 or some tiny ass amount, but I want more soup than that, and this is America, DAMNIT!
olive oil- enough to coat the bottom of your pot to saute the mushrooms and onions, and maybe springle a bit on top.
thyme- lots
oregano- some
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste- I usually put in a moderate amount and figure people can add however much they want. It's harder to take it out than put it in.

Chop the onions and mushrooms to desired size, and saute them in the bottom of your soup pot with the olive oil. The olive oil will form your broth base, so don't be stingy. I throw the mushrooms and onions in together instead of the onions first because the mushrooms take awhile and I like onions to still have some substance. If you were so lucky as to obtain a single goddmaned leek to use,  you might want to give that a little while first before adding mushrooms.

Make sure the mushrooms are cooked through before you add the rest of the ingredients, because they will not cook well just by simmering. If they aren't done before you add the water, it will be very hard to get them done.

All of this should create a nice, juicy pile of deliciousness while you chop the potatoes and pull the kale off the stalks. You can add the salt and pepper here, then the water,rice and potatoes, and other spices and bring to a boil then simmer. This should take about 15-20 minutes to simmer.

Nom nom, kale...

Add the kale 5-7 minutes before you want to be done- it doesn't need to cook nearly as long, and you don't want to totally kill it, it tastes better fresher. To prepare it, just rip it off the hard stalks in the center and rip into medium sized piece, then drop them on in. It will look like a lot before you cook it, but just remember it will cook down a bit.

This tasted good last night, though the broth was even better today.

Recyclepolooza

We've all heard the stats- Americans will use up one billion times more crap in their lives than some kid born in Africa or Cairo, there's a texas sized pile of plastic in the ocean, if you throw out a plastic bottle you've essentially hugged an oil selling terrorist-, and M Night warned us THE TREES WILL HAVE THEIR REVENGE!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, our apartment does not have recycling of any kind. Hell, at this point it doesn't even have laundry. But we want so, SO badly to be good and not fund terrorist trees, so we try, we really try. We try so hard that at any given moment the pile of 'to be recycled' is in fact taking over a good 15% of the place. There is, at present

- the second garbage can for cans-to be taken to recycling pod thing by store or on way to Hollister

-the trash can under the sink for glass bottle- same

-the plastic lined paper bag (oh, the irony) of yet MORE glass bottles-same

-the two large boxes of smaller boxes to be taken to ...i'm not sure where

-the paper bags full of paper bags- these may conceivably be left with our CSA on pick up day, though by now there are SO MANY I don't think they'd like me too much. Also one could theoretically take these to the store but can NEVER freakin remember and even if I did don't you think I'd use of the half dozen or so reusable bags I have collected over the years for this purpose

-the growing bag of plastic bags, also under the sink, to be taken to the drop off bin at Lunardi's. I cant afford to shop there, mind you, but they're nice enough to take my bags.

- on top of all thise there are usually a few 'odds n ends' of things we dont really know HOW to recycle but cant' bear to throw away - juice cartons, wine bottles (for some reason the recycle pod doesnt want them) floating around the counter tops and taking up room.

-also, I really feel I should be composting, but I've yet to find a good way to do that, and there is no room to store the damn stuff.

*whew*

I forget, are *we* the generation our parents didn't save the Earth for, or is that the next one.......?