frugal

Ready, Set, Go

~ Rue ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know whether we’ll get the 12″ of snow and power outages predicted for our area tomorrow, but I do know we’ll be eating well.

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I did my usual storm-prep cooking marathon today, making everything I could think of that can be eaten as is or warmed on our propane stove. Dishes are done, laundry is clean, firewood is in the house. Throw it at us, mother nature, we’re as ready as we’re going to get.

This recipe makes 24 muffins. If you’re fairly sure you’ll have power over the next few days, you can bake half, stick the rest of the batter in the fridge, then bake the other half when you run out.

Blueberry Muffins

Preaheat oven to 400.

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten

8 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

4 cups flour

2 cups milk

2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen

Cream the butter.

Add the sugar.

Add the eggs.

Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk, stirring til everything is well-combined.

Fold in the blueberries.

Pour into lined muffin tin and bake for 22 minutes.

Kiss the Cook

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Word to the wise: when choosing a life partner, be sure they like garlic as much as you do. You want them to be so distracted by their own garlic breath they don’t notice yours.

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At our house, dinner prep begins with chopping garlic more often than not. That being said, this recipe uses a ton of garlic even for us. Other than that bit of work, though, it’s quick to throw together, and it makes enough to keep us in leftovers for a good while.

You’ll notice I don’t give amounts for the spices. Don’t panic! I’m not cooking dinner, you are, and you’re going to make this your way. If you end up over-spicing, just serve it with some extra rice or wrap it in a tortilla; under-spicing, sprinkle on some more curry powder. Once you’ve made it a couple of times you’ll have found your perfect balance.

Curried Peas

1/2 cup chopped garlic

Olive oil

Curry powder

Ground black pepper

Red pepper flakes (optional)

3 Tablespoons butter

2 bags frozen baby peas

3 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed

Fill half of a one cup measure with chopped garlic.

Sprinkle a layer of ground black pepper over it.

Add a few red pepper flakes if you like.

Pour olive oil over the garlic to fill the cup measure.

Melt the butter in a very large frying pan on medium high heat.

Sprinkle curry powder over the surface of the butter. Don’t be shy.

Add the olive oil and garlic.

When the oil and garlic are dancing, add the peas.

Before stirring, add another layer of curry powder, along with a bit of black pepper.

Continue to cook at medium high for 5 or 10 minutes, until the peas are warmed through, stirring occasionally.

Add the chickpeas, topping with curry powder as you did with the peas, then stirring and cooking til everything is hot.

Serve with jasmine rice.

No Muss, No Fuss

~ Rue ~ 2 Comments

Little did I know, as a teenager eating soup at my boyfriend’s house, that 30 years later that same soup would be a long-loved staple for our kids.

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Every family develops its own food culture. We construct it without intention, for the most part, picking up bits and pieces along the way, but it becomes infused with meaning. What this soup means to me is this: Welcome. No need for fuss. We’re family.

Vegetable Soup

6 or 8 or 10 carrots – whatever you’ve got – peeled and sliced

Celery, optional (My mother-in-law says yes. Everyone has their shortcomings.)

1 onion, peeled, quartered, and sliced thin

lb can crushed tomatoes

8 oz tomato sauce (whatever you use for spaghetti is fine)

1/4 cup barley

6 vegetable bullion cubes

4 cups water

Bring everything to a boil in a large pot, then turn down the heat and simmer, covered, for about 40 minutes, until the carrots are soft.

Straight and Narrow

~ Rue ~ 1 Comment

After the first rush of excitement when the plant catalogs start pouring into the mailbox each winter, it’s easy to get a bit overwhelmed by the variety of plants available.

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While it would be lovely to have the money and space to plant some of everything, that’s not reality for the vast majority of us. Sure, maybe you can plant twenty kinds of seeds, but planting twenty kinds of fruit trees is less likely to be an option. Everything in the catalogs is bound to look appealing in the dead of winter. Narrowing down the choices is part science, part art, and part deciding you’ve packed and repacked your parachute enough times and taking the jump.

In order to spread the costs out and avoid decision fatigue, my own approach has been to focus on one section of our property each year, all the while keeping my big picture in mind: grow a variety of food, plant enough to share, give the plants what they need, minimize labor, and aim for pretty.

The area I am working on this year has a mulberry tree and a small wisteria, each about fifteen years old. The mulberry fruited its first and second years, but hasn’t since. This was a disappointment, as mulberries are one of my favorite childhood foods, so I knew I wanted more mulberries. Other than that, I was open to anything.

For each plant I considered, I researched the following questions:

Will it grow well in my zone? (Zone 6)

When does it fruit? (I’d like to be harvesting continually, rather than all at once.)

How big is it? (Will I have room for it, and will it thrive among nearby plantings?)

Is it self-pollinating? (If not, I’ll need more than one.)

Does it have thorns? (I’m anti-thorn.)

What kind of soil and sun does it need? (Wet, hot, shady, dry?)

Do I want to eat it? (Just because I can grow it doesn’t mean I’ll like it.)

Do I like the way it looks? (I’d sacrifice looks for flavor if necessary, but it rarely is.)

Is there likely to be a market for excess? (Not a concern for everyone, but as I sell produce and preserves and hope to sell a greater quantity in the future, important for me to consider.)

I settled on three varieties of mulberry: Illinois Everbearing, Shangri La, and Weeping Mulberry. The Illinois is a large tree that begins fruiting in June. The Shangri La will fruit a bit earlier, beginning in May, and is mid-sized at about 20 feet. Smallest of all is the Weeping Mulberry, which is the kind I grew up with, making it more a nostalgic choice than a strategic one.

Along with the mulberries I’ll be planting two pawpaw trees, Sunflower Pawpaw and SAA Overleese Pawpaw. Again, one is a bit larger than the other. My objective is to create something of a food forest – a garden which mimics nature, where plants grow in layers, tall trees spaced widely to provide an open canopy, shorter trees, shrubs, and groundcover plants nestled around and under. Plants in straight rows may look tidy, but I want to garden as a participant in nature, not a director.

To begin my shrub level I chose three varieties of honeyberry (Blue Moon, Blue Pacific, and Blue Velvet) and to get started on the groundcover I chose wintergreen. The honeyberries will bloom early and the wintergreen late, extending my fruit harvesting season.

I’ll likely need more for the shrub layer, and will plant some bulbs and possibly some herbs as well, but we’ll be off to a good start this spring. All told, I’ll spend about $300 on this area. That’s about half as much as we spend each month on groceries for our family of four. Not small change, but I’d just as soon have my savings grow in my backyard as in the bank.

Mix and Match

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Granola is a perfect foundation food.

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If you’ve got some in the house, you’ve probably got other things that will go well with it. With milk and raisins you’ve got cereal. With yogurt you’ve got a parfait. With nuts, dried fruit, seeds, and/or chocolate chips you’ve got a bowl full of yum, and a good source of energy to boot.

Granola

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

5 cups oats, or 4 cups oats and 1 cup nut of choice

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1 cup maple syrup

4 Tablespoons vegetable oil

2 pinches salt

Mix the ingredients in the order listed, stirring til well combined.

Spread in a thin layer on two silpat, parchment, or tin foil-lined baking sheets.

Bake for 15 minutes, then stir it around a bit.

Bake for another 15 minutes and stir again.

Bake 10 more minutes, and you’re done.

Store in an airtight container.

Two of a Kind

~ Rue ~ 2 Comments

Let’s get back to bread, because what’s better than bread, really?

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This is a traditional challah, comfort and family and warmth braided in dough. The recipe makes two loaves, because you will need to eat it plain, and with butter, and in sandwiches, and as french toast with strawberries and cream cheese, and let’s face it, one loaf simply will not do.

Challah

1 1/2 cups very warm water

1 Tablespoon active dry yeast

5 egg yolks, + 1 for glaze

1 1/8 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup + a generous Tablespoon sugar

5 1/4-6 cups flour

Combine everything but the flour.

Add 5 cups of flour, stirring with a spoon after each cup is added, until eventually you need to get in there with your hands.

Knead the dough, adding more flour as necessary until you have a dough that is not sticky and is easy to work with.

Continue kneading for a few minutes.

Set the dough back in your bowl, cover it with a towel, and leave it to rise in a warm spot for 1 hour.

Divide the dough into two equal pieces.

Divide each of those pieces into three parts and roll each into a snake about 18 inches long. Keep the middles of the snakes a bit wider than the ends.

Line 2 baking sheets with silpats or parchment paper.

Lay 3 pieces of dough on each baking sheet, side by side, almost touching.

On each sheet, begin in the middle and braid towards yourself, then turn the baking sheet and braid from the middle towards yourself again, this time moving the outside snakes under the center one rather than over. At each end tuck the dough under. This will give you a neat braid.

Cover the loaves with a towel and put them back in your warm spot to rise for an hour.

About 45 minutes into that hour, preheat your oven to 350.

When the hour’s up, mix up one egg yolk with just a little bit of its white and brush that over both loaves.

Bake for 25-30 minutes – no longer. I find 28 minutes to be perfect, but it will depend on your oven. The crust should be soft and golden, the middle airy and not dry.

Alternatively, you can bake this in loaf pans, braided just as above.

Happy New Year

~ Rue ~ Leave a comment

As a gardener, my internal calendar doesn’t quite match up with the one that governs other people.

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Garlic goes in the ground at the end of October, marking the start of my new gardening year. I planted over 200 cloves yesterday, on what was luckily for me a gorgeous fall afternoon.

If you’ve never grown garlic, I recommend giving it a try. You can find all sorts of instructions for complicating the issue, but in my experience keeping it simple works just fine. Separate your garlic into cloves – don’t peel them – and pop them in the ground with the pointy side up. Give each one enough space to grow into a head of garlic. They’ll be ready to harvest some time in July, when the leaves of the plant begin to yellow and die.

Garlic from a grocery store may not sprout, as it is sometimes treated to prevent that from happening, so your best bet is to buy from a garden supplier. But if all you have access to is what’s at your local grocery, give it a try. Food generally wants to grow, and will if given a chance.

Slow Food

~ Rue ~ 1 Comment

Sauerkraut tastes pretty much the way its name sounds.

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I thought making it would be a bit of a chore, but it’s pretty simple, really. We shredded up a cabbage, added a teaspoon of salt, then tamped down on it with a heavy stone pestle until quite a bit of liquid came out. We packed it firmly into a large glass jar, making sure there was enough brine to completely cover the cabbage, and put a bowl with a jar full of water in it on top to ensure the cabbage would stay submerged. A dish towel over the whole business kept out dust and sunlight.

The flavor began to change after just a few days. I liked it at that point, but we decided to keep it going  a while longer, and what we ended up with has a very strong flavor that will hold up well to whatever it’s paired with. Now we’ve transferred it into mason jars, and we’ll store it in the fridge for use. It will continue to ferment, but the cold will slow it way down.

Must be a similar process that has me slowing down as the temperature drops.

Smell My Feet

~ Rue ~ Leave a comment

Halloween is coming.

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Your payback for scooping mounds of stringy, wet, goopy mess with nothing but a spoon and your bare hand? Something good to eat.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Preheat oven to 400.

Rinse seeds.

For every 1/2 cup of seeds, mix 2 cups water with 1 Tablespoon salt.

Put the seeds in the salt water and bring to a good boil.

Remove the seeds from the water, spread them on a cookie sheet, and sprinkle with salt, cayenne, cinnamon and sugar, whatever you like.

Bake for 10-20 minutes, til crunchy.

Easy as Pie

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Is it possible to make a pie without your kitchen ending up looking like a flour bomb went off?

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I think not.

If I’m going to go through all that work, there had best be cheese on my apple pie.

Apple Pie with Cheddar Crust

Preheat oven to 425.

Combine the following ingredients and set aside:

7 cups peeled, chopped apples (7-8 apples)

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

In a small bowl, beat an egg to use later as an egg wash and set that aside as well.

Cut a sharp cheddar cheese into very thin slices, enough to go all the way around the edge of your pie.

Shred a little pile of the cheddar as well – somewhere around a cup.

Now for the crust.

2 1/2 cups flour

2 Tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 sticks butter

6 Tablespoons cold water (approximately)

Combine dry ingredients, then cut the butter into them. You’re going for a cornmeal texture.

Add the water and work with your hands until the dough comes together. If you need more water, add it a very little bit at a time. It’s more likely you need to work it longer than that you need more water.

Roll out half of the dough on a floured surface for your bottom crust and lay it in your pie pan.

Pour the filling on top.

Roll out the second half of the dough on a floured surface for your top crust, and lay it over the filling.

Cut any excess off the edges and press the top and bottom layers of dough together firmly, then work a design around the edge with your fingers or a fork.

Cut vent holes in the top crust and brush with the beaten egg.

Put tin foil over the edges of the pie.

Bake for 15 minutes at 425, then turn heat down to 350 and bake for an additional 20 minutes.

Take the pie out of the oven and remove the tin foil. Place your cheese slices around the edge of the pie, just in from the outer crust, and sprinkle the grated cheese in the space that’s left in the middle of the pie.

Return to oven and bake 20 minutes.