Stuffed Pumpkin and other things...

Last night for dinner I made stuffed pumpkin. It's something I've been making for years and have never written down the recipe so that will have to wait until the next time I make it. Generally I don't use recipes other than for the base of an idea of what I want to make if it's something I've never made before. I usually just throw stuff together and go by intuition(you have taste buds and a brain, use them!!) instead of sticking to a recipe to the letter.

Anyway, the stuffing for the pumpkin is a cranberry, apple, walnut, sage stuffing. I didn't have any apples last night though since the kids had eaten them all so I made it with just the cranberries. It still came out pretty tasty, but is definitely better with the apples.

Veggie Stock

Another thing I finished up today was the veggie stock I was making. Since I'm staying home again I actually have time to make all of these things again, it's great! Basically what I do is save all the bits, pieces, and peels from onions (not the papery stuff though), carrots, celery tops, parsley stems, mushroom trimmings, etc. in a freezer bag and then when I have enough, I bust out my huge stock pot and make stock. If by the time I go to make the stock I don't have enough of something to follow the balance of a basic mirepoix, I will add whatever is needed. In this case, I needed to round out what I had with some onions, carrots, and then of course a bouquet garni for added depth and flavor to the stock. I don't mess with making an actual bouquet or even a sachet, I just throw it all in the pot since I strain all through cheese cloth later. Bring it to a boil, reduce a simmer, and wait....stir and wait...and wait...


...6 hours later... I kind of just let it do it's thing on the stove. You really don't have to watch it if you keep the heat low and if you have enough water in there the veggies won't stick to the bottom and burn. The longer you can let it cook, the more developed your stock flavor will be. I ended up just pulling it off the stove to finish in the morning.

After seasoning the stock with some sea salt, a little Bragg's liquid aminos, and fishing out most of the veggies with a small mesh strainer I have into a square of cheese cloth over a bowl, I try to press as much liquid as possible out. Then I set those veggies to the side and strain the remaining liquid into a huge mixing bowl. The veggies go back into the pot for the second extraction and I bag up the first batch for freezing. I was able to get almost a full gallon out the first batch. The second batch will be smaller and will get the last bit of flavor and nutrition out of the veggies which I'll just toss afterward. I guess I could compost them or something, but that's a project I plan to undertake next year or whenever I actually get around to it.

Another thing I want to try to start doing is saving all the cooking water from any veggies that I steam or boil and incorporating that into my stocks and soups. (unless it's something that would make everything taste weird like cabbage water) I got the idea from reading on the Bragg website here. It really makes a lot of sense. I also remember from my reading on the Hunza people, the most long lived people in the world that they also consume all cooking liquids from their vegetables. I think the common thread here is to consume as many nutrients in their natural state as possible.

Funky Carrots

Here are a couple of shots of some carrots we picked at Miller Farms that I thought were very interesting...

These two grew twisted together. They're like little love carrots!














And these ones remind me of the mandrake roots from Pan's Labyrinth.

Moment of Eggy Truth

Ok, so the pickled beets and eggs that I made a few days ago were done pickling today and we were able to eat them. First impression of the beets was, hey, these are pretty tasty...much better than the canned beets I had growing up as a kid. Normally I can't stand raw onions, but these onions had mellowed and soaked up the sweetness of the brine and a touch of the flavor of the beets, they were pretty tasty. The eggs were...interesting. I mean you're eating a fuschia egg! Eggs aren't supposed to be that color! But again, we were pleasantly surprised with how they came out. By themselves they were decent, but when eaten with the onions and little salt and pepper, they were really good! Brian (the boyfriend) said he liked the eggs the best and the beets he liked better not pickled, which I have to agree.




I'm not sure if I'll make these again, but I do have requests now from the boyfriend to make just regular pickled eggs...another food I've never had. And, now that I understand the technique behind the pickling, I will be attempting to make eggs like you get in your bowl of ramen at Oshima Ramen. I don't know if they're authentic Japanese...they're 5 spice flavored. But what they are is tasty and a nice complement.


We haven't been to Oshima's in ages...the last time we went the food wasn't up to par with how it used to be. It used to be soooooo good, but it was just ok the last couple of times. Maybe it was an off day, I don't know. We'll probably go again as it's right by the dollar theater there. They used to have 50 cent Tuesdays so that was our cheap date night. Since the theater remodeled the entrance though, they've done away with 50 cent night which sucks.

Pickles!!!

This year I'm attempting something I've never done before which is making pickles! I'm making refrigerator dill pickles, and with a nod to my Pennsylvania Dutch heritage, Pennsylvania Dutch pickled beets and eggs.

Dill Pickles

The dill pickles were inspired by combining the recipes and methods from the recipes here and here. I read over the reviews and started by slicing the cukes into spears and the soaking them in ice water in the fridge for the better part of the day which is supposed to help keep them crisp. For the brine I combined the following:

4 cups water
3.5 cups white vinegar
3.5 Tbs. coarse salt
3 packages fresh dill, chopped (4 sprigs reserved)
2 Tbs. dried dill (as I didn't have enough fresh)
6 bay leaves, crumbled
12 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbs. pickling spices
4 tsp. dill seed

I omitted the sugar because I wanted a more classic dill pickle flavor and the extra red pepper flakes because the little kidlets won't eat things that are too spicy. Had they just been for Brian and I, I would have made them hot, hot, hot!

I combined the ingredients and brought the brine to a boil while I packed the cucumbers and dill sprigs into the jar. (half gallon pickle jar that I normally store rice in but happened to be empty) I had to do this in two layers and get creative with the placement so I would be able to fit everything in there. Next time I'm going to see if I can find a larger glass jar to do this in! I ended up with slightly more brine than needed so I strained off the spices and packed those into the jar so that they would season the pickles as well. Then I put the lid back on, gave it a good shake so the spices would work their way around the cucumbers and stuck it in the fridge.

I'll admit, they do look a little weird compared to what we normally get in the store. But the brine was tasty and the cucumbers were tasty...so in theory tasty × tasty = tasty² right?! In a week (if I last that long before giving in to temptation...) I'll be able to see if this worked.

Pennsylvania Dutch Pickled Beets and Eggs

So normally I either roast beets with other root veggies and herbs, or just have them plain boiled, but keeping in the spirit of the dill pickles I decided to give pickled beets a go too. When searching for a recipe I came across this one and immediately wanted to try it out. Like I mentioned earlier, this is a nod to my Pennsylvania Dutch heritage on my mother's side. Pickled eggs have been a quirky little fascination of mine lately anyway (eggs that are pickles?!) so it worked out quite nicely!

I started out by boiling the beets we'd picked for about 30 minutes and then peeling and slicing them. I slivered the onions because I thought that it would look prettier and work better when we go to eat them than chopped. I forgot to reserve the beet cooking water so I just used water. I'm hoping that it doesn't effect the flavor too much. I also only did 6 eggs because that's what we had in the house.

Here is what I used for the brine:
1.5 cups water
1 onion, sliced
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
12 whole cloves

I brought this all to a boil and then simmered for about 5 minutes. While that was going I layered the beets, onions, and eggs in my jar. When the brine was ready, I ladled it over the beets, covered it up, and stuck it in the fridge. These only take 2 days before they're ready!

Miller Farms 2009

Every year we make the drive up to Miller Farms for their annual fall festival. I absolutely love going there as it's reminiscent of my childhood where I had the luxury of running around the acreage that we had at my parents house as well as my cousin's and grand parent's houses. (which happened to be right next door to each other)

We discovered Miller Farms by accident 3 years ago when we were heading up to a pumpkin festival in Lyons, CO. As we were driving up to the originally intended festival and storm was coming down off of the mountains and the festival was rained out. When we'd gotten off the highway we had seen a small, wooden, roughly painted sign that said Fall Festival with an arrow pointing to the east. The weather looked clear out on the plains so we decided to go check it out since were already out there and the kids were really bummed about the first festival getting rained out. It's funny how life throws you things like this sometimes and how much the outcome depends on whether you choose to ride the roller coaster or get off and go home.

Anyway, Miller Farms is a family owned farm that sells their produce at local farmer's markets, but every fall they also have this amazing festival. It's not all flashy and commercialized, it's just regular old good fun. (which is probably another reason why I love it) They've got so many thing for the kids to do there that growing up in the city, they would never get to do otherwise. There's a corn maze, a llama, goats, and horse that they can feed and pet, a hay mountain, a dirt mountain, little tractor peddle cars, a western "town", an old airplane they can climb in, bouncy house, etc. you get the idea. They also have live music periodically as well as honey people that come up from New Mexico with about 30 different varieties of honey that they farm from their hives along Rio Grande river area.

All of that stuff is great, but the highlight (for me anyway) is the hayride where they take you around their fields and you can pick nearly as much as you can carry. There are about 4-5 different stops and you're able to get 2-3 10lb. potato bags full of produce, per person at each stop. Perryn (my oldest son) has never been able to go to this because he's always had to go back to Ohio the previous years so we decided to take him up there this past weekend. We figured that for what we hauled away from there, we probably spent about $0.40 per pound for the produce we picked out of the fields. If you have the chance, go, go, go!!

I'm not sure if they're fully organic, a transitional farm or whatever but the lady working the little market barn in the front said that they don't use pesticides, herbicides, or anything like that. I felt good about the fact that I was supporting a local family farm and the freshness of what I was getting before hearing that, but it made me feel even better about the money I was spending. We're probably going to go up once more closer to Halloween with the other kids too since they were a little miffed that they didn't get to go this time.

So here is a picture of our first haul which more than covered our entire kitchen table that seats 6:

About 25lbs. of red potatoes, a ginormous bunch of flat leaf parsley, carrots, 4 bunches of celery, kohlrabi, turnips, a golden beet, pie pumpkins, green and wax beans, poblano, anaheim, hatch green and white bell peppers, broccoli, green and red cabbage, pickle cucumbers, patty pan squash, zucchini, red beets, baby artichokes, massive amounts of eggplant, and corn. What you don't see are the dozen peppers and 4 eggplants we'd already eaten, the huge bunch of basil, the other half of the pickle cucumbers, and the onions we were also able to get.

The past few days have consisted of scrubbing all of this (the picture was taken after the fact) and then prepping and freezing a good portion of this. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do with all this eggplant yet.