Indigenous Meal Photo Post

Indigenous Meals Photo Post

My Indigenous Food Game has become a satisfying habit rather than just a day's delight.  Here are a few random photos of meals we've made from (mostly) indigenous foods:

Scrambled eggs with onions and sweet peppers, mashed potatoes and a fresh salad made a quick and filling dinner.  Everything but the salad dressing, butter and milk were from Hawk's Hill.

Vegetable Tian:  This is a slightly tweaked version of Ina Garten's Vegetable Tian (click here for the original recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/vegetable-tian-recipe.html  ).  I used yellow summer squash instead of zukes, and added some sweet bell peppers, omitting the cheese.  Delicious and so quick to prepare.

Pancakes made with fresh eggs and homemade maple syrup are my favorite breakfast for slow mornings.  Also, a few home grown apples alongside.  Yum.

This is the chicken I used to make chicken and dumplings one night for dinner.  The bird was a rooster I raised, butchered and froze.  It was delicious with dumplings, mashed potatoes, and green beans.

Here's the recipe:

Put chicken in a pot, cover with water and bring to a boil, simmering until meat falls off of bones.  Pull meat from broth and allow to cool.  Strain broth and return to pot.  Pick meat off of the bones, chop into bite-sized pieces, then make dumplings, roll out very thin and drop two at a time into boiling broth.  Simmer for 12 minutes and then add meat chunks, salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

Dumplings:

2 cups sifted flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup butter

1/2 cup milk, about

Sift dry ingredients together, then rub in butter and add enough milk to make a soft dough, as if you were making biscuits.  Roll dumplings out very thin, and cut into 2" by 2" squares, roughly.  Drop dumplings in two at a time, keeping the broth boiling.  Turn down heat, and simmer for 12 minutes.  Return meat to pot, season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

Hope you are enjoying local foods.  This is the best time of year for eating from the land!

Betsy

An Autumn Journal Page

The flame orange and scarlet that once flickered in the Granddaddy Sugar Maple south of Soulstice now spreads to encompass more than half of the tree.  Chipmunks call a steady “chuck-chuck-chuck-chuck…” low under the canopy of the maples and oaks in that spread from my land into my neighbor’s as they strive to defend the rolling acorns and hibernation holes inside of their domains.  

The high, cold sound of morning traffic on Route 168 intervenes in the aloof and disinterested manner of jets flying overhead, intermittent, speeding, apart from, not a part of the landscape like the chipmunks, the mockingbird warbling behind the barn, my dog flopped on the floor waiting to go feed the chickens, my hunky man eating his toast, and me.  A Blue Jay’s rusty pump call is followed by the moxy call “Jay! Jay! Jay!” And the horizon glows clean of clouds, in gentle peach and golden light as the rising sun illuminates the long strands of cirrus clouds, transforming them from dawn’s pastel lavender-gray into peachy golden into cream.  

The magical haze of fog in the valley and low pastures lifts and dissipates.  Does it withdraw into the woodlands like fairies; is it inhaled into the woods duff like breath?  What does a mouse know of the fog, trundling about between grass blades, snuffling for seeds, searching out fallen fruits under berry canes and apple trees, leaving those tiny tooth scrapes I find when I pick apples?  Do the animals witness the hazy navy blue of the horizon as beauty against the foggy fields and verdant woodland whose canopy now blooms into crimson, gold, copper, and scarlet?  Are they like me at my harvest pots, stirring, focusing, chopping, mentally checking lists of ingredients and procedures with my ears dulled by the kitchen fan, then momentarily lifting my head to witness the glory of creation around me?  Or do they breathe glory all day long?  

Perhaps that is the garden of Eden, breathing glory all day long.

The Great Salsa Caper

Our Buff Orpington pullets were happy to eat the scorched tomatoes.

Yesterday, I made two dozen pints of hot salsa, which my True Love and I canned up in the big shiny metal canner that now rests, cool, on the stovetop.  I struggled against a sinus headache that sunk into the roots of my teeth for the bulk of the day, slowing my progress, and assisting me in scorching a whole pot of tomatoes.  But, I was glad for the experiences behind me in scorching pots of applesauce, tomatoes, and spaghetti sauce, for I knew after seeing the look on David’s face after he tasted the tomatoes that we didn’t want to tuck that salsa away for winter, for gifts, for parties.  We wanted to serve those tomatoes to chickens who would gobble their overcooked taste right up and ask for more.  No tears shed, no cuss words necessary.  Acceptance makes the road so very much smoother.

At this point, I took a break, fed my failed tomatoes to the young pullets, who gobbled them up delightedly, and flopped in the grass behind the barn to talk with David of plans for winterizing Soulstice’s north porch with some huge, 1970’s era glass windows a friend of a friend gave us when she was refurbishing an indoor pool room.  The step back, the sunshine of my love’s countenance, the young chickens’ vigor lifted my soul, and I returned to the kitchen, flipped open my laptop and Googled Tasha Tudor, a favorite artist, author and countrywoman mentor of mine.  I scrolled through Pinterest pages of photos of Tasha’s art and the art of her everyday handmade life, invoking her pluck, her strong will, her resourcefulness.  Spirit lifted.

And still, the sink was full of Amish & Orange Banana Paste Tomatoes waiting for a dip in boiling water to skin and core.  Back into the steam, and I emerged a few hours later with 8 quarts of peeled, cored, chopped and drained tomatoes simmering -- gently -- on the stove.  The ‘Jaluv An Attitude’ Jalapeno, Hungarian Hot Wax and Cayenne Peppers my Beloved and I had picked the day before got chopped to join sweet bell and horn-shaped Carmen frying peppers picked Monday night ahead of our first frost, as well as pungent Copra Onions, and hardneck garlic cloves I had chopped and added to the mix.  

I think my man was a steam train engineer in a previous life, because he has a flow-mind when operating my pressure canner.  The smoothest rises and decompressions of pressure result from his Zen-like mastery of the simple machine.  As he removed the jars from the canner at the end of the runs, we heard the magical metallic sound of lids pipping as they flexed in, pulled by the vacuum of the cooling jars.  

Our late dinner felt like a balm as Kate, David and I sat down to Tofurky sausages, organic pasta and last year’s homemade spaghetti sauce -- one of my fast-food meals when I’m in a pinch.  We sat around the table, victorious after the day, hearing about plans for a model UN, and the latest in the Vlog Brothers’ efforts to raise funds for providing Ethiopians with clean water.  Kate’s face beamed when she handed over some of her hard-earned cash to David in payment for a credit card donation to the cause, and she glowed with delight as she watched the ‘Funds Raised’ counter advance with her gift.

This morning, I tripped down to the kitchen with the joy of Christmas in my heart to press my index finger into the centers of each ruby jar of salsa, delighted by the hard resistance the lids met me with.  Now the lot of them cram into the kitchen sink for a wet rag wash-up and labeling for the nearly-full canning shelf in what our Sarah calls “Mrs. Mouse’s Storehouse.”

The pot of tea now emptied, the toast is eaten, and the day shines brightly, calling me to feed chickens, to pick beans, to revel in another day in the beauty of Creation, this time without the headache, to seize this magical day.

May your day be magical and your soul full of harvests.

Betsy

If you want to make your own salsa, here’s the recipe I cobbed together from several I found in books:

Hawk’s Hill Organic Salsa:

16 cups peeled, seeded, chopped & drained tomatoes, preferably paste

6 cups onions, chopped

3 cups hot peppers -- Hungarian Hot Wax, Jalapeno, plus a Cayenne -- seeded and

chopped (Leave some seeds in for extra heat).

4 cups sweet peppers, seeded and chopped

6 cloves garlic, minced, or more to taste

1 ½ cups cider vinegar

2 tsp. salt

Wash, blanch and peel, seed and chop the tomatoes first, draining the chopped tomatoes in a sieve or colander.  You can catch the juice and save it for soup-making.  Simmer the drained tomatoes in a large, heavy-bottomed pot, stirring to prevent scorching!  You can cook the tomatoes down a bit to remove excess liquid, just keep stirring.  Chop and add all of the other vegetables and the vinegar and salt, and boil for 10 minutes, stirring.  Jar, seal and process.  I used my pressure canner at 10 # for 15 min., but you could use sterilized jars in a boiling water canner.  My Ball Blue Book calls for processing 15 minutes in a boiling-water canner.  Check here for a similar recipe: http://www.freshpreserving.com/recipes/zesty-salsa.

Tomato Photo Post

The end of the summer has brought us the final harvests of tomatoes.  On this difficult tomato-growing year, with cold temperatures that held off ripening until late, we are trying to use up all of the tomatoes the earth graces us with.  Here are a few photos of our last spaghetti sauce making day on Hawk's Hill.

 A bounty of tomatoes gets blanched first:

Then run through a "Tomatopresse" from Italy that I got at a rummage sale.  It works wonders, pouring out tomato puree through one fount and seeds and peels from another spout.

David runs the Tomatopresse while I cook.

Cooking down the tomato juice into thicker sauce, stirring, stirring seemingly forever.

Chopping up onions, sweet peppers and garlic -- all homegrown.

We mixed in heirloom Paul Robeson, Rose de Berne, Brandywine and other flavorful slicing tomatoes with the Orange Banana, Vilms and Amish Paste tomatoes to make the sauce, and used Red Tropea (an Italian Heirloom) as well as Candy (sweet) and Copra (pungent) onions.  I had chopped and frozen basil in olive oil, so it was easy to incorporate into the sauce with the onions and peppers.

Red and green sweet bell and frying peppers like Carmen and Odessa Market (a Ukrainian Heirloom) Peppers

We pressure canned the finished sauce, and tucked it away on the canning shelf.

A small picking of tomatoes yielded tomato juice for winter soups.

Hope you are tucking away good foods for winter, and enjoying the sun while it shines!
Betsy

Autumn Applesauce with Friends

My exploring sack full of green apples.

When we searched for a homestead, we had an uncommon list of attributes we were looking for in a property:  good schools, a south-facing hillside, some woods, bramble berries, open space for a large garden, and an apple tree or room to plant some apple trees.  Oh yeah, and a place where we could live  - an old house, a trailer, some sort of dwelling we could abide in while we built our solar home.  A place we could tear down after we moved into our new house.  The land came first.  When we found Hawk's Hill, I was blown away by the amount of apple trees -- old, needing a good pruning, but in good health and still producing.  Our upper orchard, with trees from way back in the day (1960s/70s?) produces red and green fall apples. The lower orchard was planted by old Zeke in the late 80's/early 1990s, and has green early fall apples.  Unless we have a terribly frosty spring, we usually have some apples for sauce.


Friday dawned a gorgeous September day, and we celebrated the harvest season with my friend Cheryl and her 7 year-old son, Caleb, by picking green apples for applesauce from our lower orchard.  Last spring's frosts had killed a number of the plentiful apple blossoms, leaving just the king fruit to grow fat and healthy.  The green globes we plucked, and that rained down from the tree when Caleb climbed up and shook branches for us, were crisp, juicy, and remarkably free of blemishes considering they had not been sprayed.  Tasting mildly sweet with a bite of tartness, they served the need for applesauce.

 

I scrounged in the barn for the metal basket apple picker with plucking tines a friend had kindly given us, and David attached it to a telescoping aluminum painters' pole.  Now we could reach the really massive fruits at the top of the tree!  Caleb, Cheryl and I each took turns craning our necks back, standing on the garden cart, squinting at the sun and fishing the long-poled tool clumsily around clusters of apples until we managed to scoop one or two into the basket, then lift up to snag the apples, as if setting the hook in the fish's mouth, and then pulled back to pluck them from their boughs.  We had a pretty good success rate, and cheered every time the pole swung back down like a massive crane and dumped its goods into waiting hands.  Caleb would look at each big apple, rotating it in his hands and prizing it up, then say,"This one says Cheryl on it."  or "This one has Betsy's name on it."  and dole out his prize.  We ate our fill of fresh apples, juice dribbling down our chins, and we chucked the cores for Max the dog to chase, retrieve and eat.

     The splendid September day melted away as we hauled our bushel and a half of apples back up to Soulstice, scrubbed, chopped, cooked and processed them through Cheryl's Victorio Strainer.  The mushy, seedy discards got dumped into a bucket and delivered to the chickens, who delightedly gobbled them up.  The pureed apples, we returned to the big sauce pots, and added brown sugar and cinnamon to 2 of the pots.  I rustled around in the pantry and found a jar of maple syrup from last year, and added half of that to the third pot of apple puree, until it reached a perfect sweetness, with just a hint of maple flavor.  It still gives me a tickle to think that the third pot was 100% indigenous.  Even the energy to cook the apples probably came from the solar power generated that lovely, sunny day.

 Three pots of pureed applesauce which had just been apples hanging on a tree hours ago simmered on the stove, and I could feel the bounty of the earth in the food treasure sitting on my stove top.  Imagine a jar of applesauce this winter heated in the microwave, sending its appley scent wafting through the house again as it did when the first pot of apple chunks began to boil.  What made the day melt away so quickly with so much work to be accomplished?  Cheryl's friendship.  Her memories of childhood in her mother's kitchen making apple pies and sauce; talk over the best hand-cranked apple and tomato processing equipment (Victorio Strainers beat Foley Food Mills hands down!); and Cheryl's laughter.  Caleb proudly told us they have set a challenge for themselves to avoid all refined sugar for the mont  They allow themselves local maple syrup and honey. Inspiring.

Cheryl and Caleb took home a bucket of apples that they turned into 16 quarts of sauce and a pie, and David and I jarred up our sauce and canned a dozen quarts for our winter larder.  With each jar, we will relive the memory of the sunny September afternoon spent with our friends as we eat it.

Here's hoping you find a forgotten apple tree this week, whose fruit you can retrieve for really good applesauce  -- or tart apples from a local farm market -- for an old-fashioned taste of autumn.

Happy First Day of Autumn!
Betsy

The Indigenous Day Report

Clover & Catnip tea with lavender

My day of indigenous eating has been going well.  After breakfast, I made herbal tea with red clover blossoms, catnip sprigs and a stalk of lavender -- all herbs growing just outside my kitchen doorstep --which yielded a refreshingly minty tea to sip while snacking on juicy sweet Poona Kheera cucumbers.

Poona Kheera cucumbers

When I set the challenge for myself, I had forgotten the sourdough bread dough I had made yesterday and left to rise for a baking today.  I have been cultivating the wild starter for over a week -- from nothing more than water, and whole wheat flour.  I fed it daily, adding water and flour, and when we had mashed potatoes for dinner, I used the leftover potato water to help supercharge the yeast.  I had to taste a slice right out of the oven -- sooo sour, but with a soft, moist crumb and a hard, crunchy crust.  A taste I enjoyed in my lunchtime hunger.  My husband and daughter gamely tried the bread, but opted for less sour tasting cloverleaf rolls for their bread.  The dog loved the hunks the rest of the family tasted and couldn't finish!

The yeast and potato water are all from Hawk's Hill, and the butter I put on the bread is at least local! The rich sourdoughy taste fills in remarkably for cheese and junk food at the same time.  It was a guilty pleasure today to sneak back into the kitchen and nibble another slice and a half of the cooled, cheesy-flavored bread.

 For lunch I made a quick soup from chopped potatoes cooked in tomato juice.  When the potatoes were done, I added a quart of zucchini and yellow squashes, sauteed with onion slices and rosemary in olive oil, leftover from dinner a few nights ago.  The tomato juice, squashes and onions added a delectable sweetness, and the potatoes stuck to my ribs until dinner.  My True Love even filled a bowl and joined me at the picnic table to lunch in the fresh autumn air.

Dinner:

These were the materials on hand for dinner:

So ratatouille was clearly called for.  I sauteed up some onions and garlic, then added the peppers you see in the bowl above, then the tomatoes, a medium-sized zucchini, chopped, and finally, the 3 little eggplants, chopped.  Simmered with basil, salt and pepper, the classic French stew was delicious and rich without a hint of bitterness at all.  

Finished ratatouille

I snuck one more slice of sourdough bread -- couldn't keep out of it, and it gave me a feeling of eating something more substantial than just veggies.  So good.  Topped it all off with a slice of cantaloupe melon.  Yum.  I feel stuffed full of good food, without any desire for dessert.  

Not a bad day of eating.  And, I used up some of the produce that has crowded my kitchen counter for days.  It was also a super cheap day of eating, as the only foods that had to be purchased at the store included whole wheat flour, some olive oil, 4 tea bags, and a smidge of salt and pepper.  I ate for less than a dollar, and I've got loads of leftovers for tomorrow.  Thanks, garden!

By focusing my attention on the foods that have come from Hawk's Hill and not on whatever my whim of the moment was, I also ended up only eating very healthy foods.  Not a gram of refined sugar, nary a bit of white flour, and no preservatives or additives went down the hatch with my body fuel today.  I feel close to the earth, grateful for the work of the plants that are feeding me, and like I know what that keen look in a chickadee's eye means --we are both alive and alert on this big green earth.  You could live like this.

Thanks to you for following my adventure!

Betsy

The Indigenous Food Game

Today I set a playful challenge for myself.  Really an exercise in gratitude and immersion in the gifts rolling from Hawk's Hill.  Today, I pledge to only eat food grown on my property.  I've just finished breakfast, and looking at my plate as I took the last few bites, I realized that it had all been home-grown:  2 fresh fried hens eggs with leftover sauteed pak choi greens and onions from last night's dinner.  And a pot of black tea.

Of course the black tea was grown in India (though the water came from my well).  But, I have a caffeine addiction and a love of a good pot of hot tea that I don't plan on laying down any time soon. So, I will give myself the caveat of tea, and seasonings like the soy sauce, olive oil, and salt and pepper in my breakfast that came from the store.  Also, of course, the Bob White brand layer crumbles  that supplement our flock's diet of pasture grasses and bugs came from the feed and seed.  A local company, Bob White Feed probably gets its corn and soybeans from farmers within about 50 miles, so at least the hens' feed is local.  Fine for the hens.  But for myself, today, my experience will be of only Hawk's Hill grown foods. Just for the fall harvest thrill of it.

With the first day of fall just a little over a week away, now is the best time of year to play with homegrown food.  Ancient people called the Fall Equinox by the name Mabon, and celebrated it as the second harvest of the year-- the first being the Summer Solstice, and the time of year when carrots, beets, turnips, broccoli, peas, and spring greens began to come in from the fields.  On Hawk's Hill, I celebrate this time of year as the season of what I call accidental food:  I go out for a walk around the farm, just to walk, and discover fresh red raspberries to munch on, the first ripe fall apples dropped on the ground, a zucchini that we missed in the rush of picking for market, or when at work in the garden, a potato gleaned while pulling weeds from around young kale (sowed after the Red Gold potato crop), more sweet corn that needs to be eaten before it goes too starchy and dry, and the first butternut squashes (they seem early this year).

Waltham butternut squash and Blacktail Mountain watermelons from our garden

So let the celebration of the harvest begin this overcast, cool autumnal day.  Instead of crackers, it will be cucumbers when I want a crunchy snack.  Instead of a cheese and tomato sandwich, it will be leftover sauteed zucchini.  Perhaps I'll defrost a chicken for tonight's dinner.  Or make tomato-vegetable soup with all the leftovers in the fridge.

Poona Kheera Cukes fresh from the garden

I promise to report back with pictures of the day's experience.

May you feel the earth's bounty keenly today, whether at a farmer's market, driving past agricultural fields, visiting an orchard, receiving a baseball bat sized zucchini from your neighbor, or in your own back yard garden.

Happy Autumn!
Betsy