Thanksgiving, PA Dutch style: Dried corn. November 24, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in gardening, homesteading, recipes, wit and wisdom.Tags: Cope's dried corn, dried corn, Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, Pennsylvania Dutch Thanksgiving recipes, Pennsylvania Dutch Thanksgiving traditions
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Silence Dogood here. As a native Tennessean, I had never heard of dried corn when our friend Ben and I first came to scenic Pennsylvania. Now, obviously, I’d seen ears of dried field corn, and many a kernel of dried popcorn. But around here, when you talk about dried corn, that’s not what you mean. For the Pennsylvania Dutch (that’s “Dutch” as in “Deitsch,” dialect for “Deutsch,” German, not “Dutch” as in Holland), dried corn is oven-dried sweet corn kernels that are then reconstituted during cooking into a variety of dishes that are considered Thanksgiving staples.
Corn, of course, is one of the “Three Sisters” of Native American cuisine, along with those other Thanksgiving classics, pumpkins and green beans. But by Thanksgiving, fresh corn on the cob would have been a distant memory before the days of worldwide transport that for decades annihilated the concept of seasonal cooking and had us all eating fresh corn, tomatoes and watermelon in January. Mercifully, regional and seasonal cooking is making a comeback. So is drying and canning summer’s bounty to enjoy the rest of the year. And that’s where dried corn comes into its own.
As far as I know, there’s exactly one brand of dried corn available for grocery-store purchase, and that’s John Cope’s. Cope’s—located in Lancaster County, the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country—has been making and selling dried sweet corn for more than a hundred years. If your grocery doesn’t happen to stock it, you can mail-order it from a number of sources, including Amazon.com, Farm Stand Foods (www.farmstandfoods.com), and Zingerman’s (www.zingermans.com). Our favorite site was Farm Stand Foods, which is apparently the official Cope’s site and also offers paraphernalia for the Cope’s corn fanatic, including Cope’s theme mugs, decorative tins, and tee shirts (“I Brake For Cope’s Corn”), as well as gift baskets, other regional specialty foods, and recipes.
The recipe page was almost mind-boggling. You can find recipes for Corn Souffle, Chicken and Corn Pie, Curried Corn N’ Tomatoes, Lancaster County Corn Pudding, John Cope’s Baked Corn, Baked Corn Supreme, Cornburgers, Corn Fritters, Baked Corn with Oysters, Stewed Corn, Corn Puffs, Corn & Beef Hash, Chicken Corn Soup, Corn Chowder, Ham & Corn Royal, and Creamed Corn. A quick search revealed that many of these recipes used Cope’s canned or frozen corn rather than dried. But one, the recipe for Creamed Corn, which also happens to be the traditional Thanksgiving dish, uses the dried corn. Here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth:
Creamed Corn
1 7.5-oz package Toasted Dried Sweet Corn
3 1/2 cups milk
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter
Combine Toasted Dried Sweet Corn and milk and let soak in refrigerator for at least 4 hours. Add sugar, salt, and butter. Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. (They have a microwave version as well: Mix all the ingredients in a 2-quart casserole, cover with wax paper, and microwave on high for 10 minutes. Stir and let stand for 15 minutes. Microwave on high for 5 minutes, and let stand until the desired consistency is reached.)
If this doesn’t sound particularly fabulous, listen to what the Zingerman’s site (which is quite delightful) has to say about Cope’s dried sweet corn: “Makes the best creamed corn you’ll ever eat. John Cope’s corn couldn’t be more of a culinary secret to everyone outside of Rheems, Pennsylvania, if we’d made a national policy to hide it. Martin Cope made his first batch in 1900, and despite a conspicuous lack of notoreity the company is still doing it now as they were then. They buy corn only during the height of the season, when the sugars are at their highest. Quick to the drier—like olives for oil, one key is to get the corn into production right after picking, before its sugars start turning to starches. The drying caramelizes the natural sugars in the corn, lending a subtle, sweet flavor that’s so pleasing you’ll want to eat it right out of the tin. Anything you make with fresh corn is fair game for Cope’s dried sweet corn.”
Intrigued? I was, too, especially after reading an article by Diane Stoneback in out local paper, the Allentown, PA Morning Call, that focused on dried corn and had a bunch of recipes for it, including how to make your own from scratch (well, from your own-grown or store-bought fresh ears of sweet corn). Read the whole article, “Roots in the first Thanksgiving,” at www.themorningcall.com, for fascinating insights into the history of creamed dried corn, its occasional moments in the spotlight (think Emeril, Thomas Keller, and the White House), directions on making your own dried corn, and additional recipes.
Diane Stoneback tells those of us who weren’t raised with dried corn how to make it part of the Thanksgiving feast: “Just top a serving of plain mashed potatoes with a spoonful of creamed dried corn and you can skip the butter. Let the corn’s ‘gravy’ mix in with bread stuffing for a special treat.”
The descendants of the original Copes have their own special recipe that they love even more than the famous creamed corn:
Cope’s Baked Corn Supreme
1 7.5-ounce bag John Cope’s toasted dried sweet corn, ground in a blender or food processor
5 cups cold milk
3 1/2 tbsps. butter
2 tsps. salt
3 tbsps. sugar
4 well-beaten eggs
Mix ingredients thoroughly. Bake in buttered 2-quart casserole for 60 minutes in preheated 375-degree oven. Serves 4 to 6.
A variation on this recipe made it into Gourmet magazine as corn pudding:
Gourmet Magazine’s Toasted Sweet Corn Pudding
1 7.5-oz. pkg Cope’s toasted dried sweet corn
4 cups whole milk
1 cup well-shaken fresh buttermilk (not powdered)
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 Tbsps. sugar
2 Tbsps. all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsps. salt, 1 tsp. pepper
Preheat oven to 350 with rack in upper third. Butter a 2-quart shallow baking dish. Whisk together all ingredients in a large bowl. Transfer to baking dish. Bake until pudding is set, 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Cool 10 minutes before serving. Note: Corn pudding can be made 3 hours ahead. Reheat, covered, in a 300-degree oven.
Corn pudding was one of the best things our friend Ben ever ate as a child. He had it rarely—perhaps on trips to the Shaker Village in Kentucky en route to his grandparents’ house—and it was always made with corn fresh-cut off the cob. But, hmmm. I know there’s a box of Cope’s dried corn in my pantry someplace. Maybe I’ll surprise OFB with a Cope’s corn pudding for Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, if dried corn is a Thanksgiving tradition in your home, and you have a favorite recipe I haven’t listed, please share it with us!
(Ahem. As an editor, it just kills me to list recipes in nonstandardized forms—tbs., tbsp., Tbsps., and etc.—in the same post. I don’t care how it’s listed, as long as all the recipes are listed the same way in the same post. But in this case, drawing from many sources, I simply listed them as they were published in each case rather than “fixing” them for consistency’s sake. But please don’t assume I was simply too clueless to notice! The one change I made was to omit “margarine” where a recipe said “butter or.” Margarine is a tool of the devil. Use butter, please! Not that I feel strongly about this or anything.)
‘Til next time,
Silence
Thanksgiving: Green beans. November 23, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in gardening, homesteading, recipes, wit and wisdom.Tags: thanksgiving, Thanksgiving green bean recipes, Thanksgiving recipes
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Silence Dogood here. Green beans are a traditional Thanksgiving side dish—like turkey, pumpkins, corn, and potatoes, a native New World crop and therefore appropriate to the day. (I’ll be talking about another regional Thanksgiving tradition, dried corn, tomorrow, and tackling the whole sweet potato issue on Wednesday, leading up to desserts for the day on Thursday, and frugal tricks with Thanksgiving leftovers on Friday. Stay tuned!)
Getting back to green beans, we always had them at Thanksgiving when I was growing up, but Mama served them simply boiled, topped with butter, salt, white pepper, and thinly sliced almonds. I had never heard of the apparently ubiquitous green bean casserole until I moved to Pennsylvania, and have still never tasted one, though that may change this Thanksgiving, since we’ll be celebrating with our neighbors.
I still love green beans the way my mama made them, and I still think “classic” green bean casserole sounds like a bad idea. Not because of the crunchy, oily “French fried” onion topping—hey, both our friend Ben and I love a good, crispy-crunchy, greasy onion ring, bring it on!—but because of that can of cream of mushroom soup, the milk, and the soy sauce. Soup, milk, and soy sauce with green beans? Good grief.
In case anyone besides me has never made a green bean casserole but might want to, here are two versions, from those who should know, Campbell’s, maker of the cream of mushroom soup, and Birds Eye, provider of frozen cut green beans. You’ll note that the amounts of each ingredient differ slightly, even allowing for the 12-serving Campbell’s recipe versus the 4-serving Birds Eye version, but the concept is definitely the same. I’ll depart from the original recipes only in eliminating the brand names.
Classic Green Bean Casserole
This is the Birds Eye version.
1 10 3/4-ounce can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp. soy sauce
ground black pepper
1 1-pound bag frozen cut green beans, thawed and drained
1 1/3 cups crispy French-fried onions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In an oven-safe casserole dish, mix soup, milk, soy sauce, black pepper, green beans, and 2/3 cup onions until well combined. Bake for 25 minutes. Sprinkle remaining onions on top and bake an additional 5 minutes until crispy. Serves 4.
Green Bean Casserole
Here’s the official Campbell’s version.
2 10 3/4-ounce cans cream of mushroom soup
1 cup milk
2 tsp. soy sauce
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
8 cups cooked cut green beans
1 6-ounce can (2 2/3 cups) French-fried onions
Stir soup, soy sauce, black pepper, beans, and 1 1/3 cups onions in a 3-quart casserole. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes or until hot. Stir. Top with remaining onions. Bake for 5 minutes more. Tip: Toast 1/2 cup sliced almonds. Add with remaining onions. Serves 12.
Well, I guess Campbell’s was trying to make a gesture with the almond tip, but still. I remember reading a “gentrified” version of green bean casserole in my favorite cooking magazine, Cook’s Country, but I can’t find the issue, nor could I find the recipe online. Sigh. If I do, I’ll revise this post and include it. Once again, stay tuned.
Meanwhile, there just have to be other options for serving green beans on Thanksgiving. Here’s one I found in Parade magazine. (I love that it’s called “String Beans,” when mercifully most people now wouldn’t even know what that means. Back in the day, green beans had tough, fibrous strings running down the side with the line on it. Before you could cook them, you had not only to snap off the sharp, rough ends—thus “snap beans”—but also to pull off the “strings.” Modern varieties have somehow managed to do away with the tough strings, so now you only have to cut or snap off the ends.)
String Beans
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 yellow onions, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 14 1/2-ounce can diced tomatoes
Kosher salt and finely ground black pepper
1 tablespoon each finely chopped fresh oregano and flat-leaf parsley
1 pound fresh green beans, trimmed
Crumbled feta cheese
In a saucepan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions and saute until soft and clear, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and cook briefly until soft and golden brown. Add tomatoes, salt, pepper, oregano, parsley, and about 1 cup water. Stir in the green beans and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and let simmer until beans are just tender, about 12 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Spoon onto a warm platter and top with feta cheese. Serves 8.
Actually, this sounds good. In fact, it sounds like it might make a great topping for pasta or rice, especially if you sauteed some sliced mushrooms with the onion and garlic. But, whoa, it certainly doesn’t sound like Thanksgiving dinner, at least not to me. Yes, tomatoes are also New World plants that should perhaps be given a place, along with bell and hot peppers, on the Thanksgiving menu. But in the salad (and perhaps the sweet potatoes—we’ll be getting to that), not the green beans, thanks very much.
So, okay, what green bean dish should you be serving with Thanksgiving dinner? I still love my mama’s buttered green beans with sliced almonds. But when push comes to shove, what I usually make is a simple dish of boiled green beans (cooked just long enough to be tender, but still bright green, drained, and topped with sauteed sliced mushrooms in browned butter with salt (we like RealSalt or Trocomare) and lemon pepper. Yum!!! Easy and oh-so-good.
Do you have a favorite green bean recipe? If so, I’d love to hear about it!
‘Til next time,
Silence
Thanksgiving: Cranberry sauce and beyond. November 22, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in homesteading, recipes, wit and wisdom.Tags: cranberries, cranberry sauce, Thanksgiving recipes
6 comments
Silence Dogood here, kicking off a week of Thanksgiving recipes with that classic, cranberry sauce. Our friend Ben and I grew up in households where our mamas lovingly made cranberry sauce for every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Their recipes were pretty similar—fresh cranberries, oranges, cinnamon sticks, and cloves, cooked up into a glittering but bitter dish served up in elegant cut-crystal dishes. Yes, they looked gorgeous. No, we didn’t like them. We’d take that canned cranberry jelly any day.
So, how do you make cranberry sauce without making it bitter? I saw a recipe in the Parade magazine last week that I thought would do the trick, from noted food author Dorie Greenspan. I plan to try it this Thanksgiving (with the changes I’ve noted in the recipe). You might want to as well.
Dorie Greenspan’s Cranberry Sauce
2 bags (12 oz. each) fresh cranberries [Note from Silence: I have read emphatic assertions that frozen cranberries are actually better than fresh cranberries in cranberry sauce. I didn't even realize there were frozen cranberries, but I might try them if I find them and see what I think.]
1 cup orange juice
1 cup apricot jam
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. powdered ginger [Note from Silence: No way! I'd mince either fresh or crystallized ginger and add it instead.]
1/4 pound dried apricots, finely diced
[Note from Silence: I'd at least think about adding 1/2 cup of dried cranberries---aka "craisins"---or dried tart cherries, too. And I know plenty of folks add a splash of Grand Marnier in their cranberry sauce. We've never done it, but can't hurt, might help should you choose to try it.]
Stir all the ingredients together in a large, heavy pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring, until the berries pop and the sauce starts to thicken—it will thicken much more as it cools—about 8 minutes. Cool to room temperature, cover, and chill.
Okay, sounds easy and good, right? But you might want to halve the amount—Dorie claims this recipe serves 20. (It certainly wouldn’t here! We love our cranberry sauce.)
FYI, we posted lots of great Thanksgiving recipes and resources back in November 2008. To access them, use our search bar to look for the ones that speak to you: “Putting some heat in your Thanksgiving celebration,” “Curried pumpkin soup,” “Try this with turkey,” “Cookbooks to be thankful for, parts 1-3,” Silence’s Chili Surprise,” “Fabulous easy salad dressing,” “A good day for baking cookies,” “Pumpkin chili, glazed carrots, and sweet potato souffle,” “Time for pumpkin bread!”, “Picking pumpkins,” and “Silence’s Amazing Cranberry Stuffing.”
Meanwhile, keep an eye on this site for recipes and lore that will take you to Turkey Day and on towards Christmas! And please, we’d love it if you’d share some of your own favorite Thanksgiving recipes with us.
‘Til next time,
Silence
Frugal living tip #46. November 21, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in wit and wisdom.Tags: frugal living, frugal living tips, money management
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Silence Dogood here. In 2009, we’re committed to bringing you a Frugal Living Tip every week to help people like us survive these tough economic times. This week’s is about not losing what little money you may have.
I’ll get to that in a minute. But first, a couple of statistics I read in the local paper that struck me as ironic. Savvy gardeners and homesteaders won’t be surprised to hear that, thanks to the recession, home canning is up. Sales of canning equipment were up 30% this year. That’s the good. Unfortunately, hard times also make us crave cheap indulgences—something we can still do to make ourselves feel better. So another sign of bad times is the skyrocketing sale of potato chips (up 22% this year) and other fatty, salty comfort-food snacks, rising dramatically after years of stagnant sales. Sansabelt, here we come. That’s the bad.
Now for the ugly, the point of this post: It’s bad enough when you don’t have much money sitting in the bank. But it’s a lot worse when what little you do have is siphoned off through overdraft fees. Here’s some scary data and excellent advice from Humberto Cruz in his article “Invest time to avoid fees.” (To read the entire article, go to www.themorningcall.com.)
First, the scary stats: 51 million American adults overdraw their checking accounts once a year; 27 million, five or more times a year; and 18 million, ten or more times each year. Those overdrafts come at the cost of $26.6 billion in hard-earned money, at an average of $29.58 per bounced check. Many banks charge fees if your checking balance falls below a minum each month as well. And late fees on credit cards are supposedly rising into the high 20s—in other words, heading towards a third of the bill.
The bad news doesn’t end there. Not only are fees for using debit cards at banks not affiliated with your own rising steeply—the average is now $2.22 per transaction plus a $1.32 fee levied by your own bank—$3.54 each time you use another bank’s ATM. (I’ve also read that some banks organize debit charges from highest to lowest amount rather than by transaction date, so unless you record each and every transaction as you make it in your checkbook and balance the total immediately, you may think you have more money than you actually do at any given time and overdraw inadvertently as a result.)
Yikes! How can you avoid this mess? Mr. Cruz offers some good advice from a consumer-oriented website, Bankrate.com: “Match your accounts to your needs. If it’s just simple checking, bill pay, ATM or debit card transactions, a non-interest-paying but free checking account with no minimum balance or per-check charge is best.” He also advises you to keep track of all your transactions and balances, including ATM and debit transactions and your credit cards. He checks his accounts online daily, and swears he can do this in under a minute. You may not want to check every single day, but if you have the uneasy feeling that your balance is bottoming out, it would be well worth it. After all, the last thing you need when money is already tight is to be handing what little there is over to the bank!
‘Til next time,
Silence
Attention fans of “Monarch of the Glen.” November 20, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in wit and wisdom.Tags: Glenbogle, Monarch of the Glen
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Silence Dogood here. Our friend Ben and I have been catching up on the seven seasons of “Monarch of the Glen” via Netflix. If you don’t know this lovable series, set in the Scottish Highlands, you really should check it out. Great scenery, great characters. If you’re already a fan, we have a few questions for you:
1. What and where is that castle they use for Glenbogle House? Wow.
2. Who are your favorite characters? (Mine are Kilwillie and Duncan; OFB’s are Hector and Golly. Useless ranks high on our list as well, and I did have a soft spot for Lancelot Fleming.)
3. Who are your least favorite characters?
4. Which was your favorite season, and why? (We’re only starting to watch season 4 now, so there’s still a lot to see, but so far, we’ve liked the first two seasons better than the third.)
5. If you were the screenwriter, what would you have done differently? (We’d definitely have married Molly off to Kilwillie, and perhaps have encouraged Golly and Duncan to go in together to found the greatest single-malt Scotch enterprise in the Highlands.)
6. Favorite things about the series? (I of course loved the chance to see lots of men in kilts, and OFB and I both loved the fantastic views and the playing of the pipes.)
7. Why was it called Glenbogle? (Does “bogle” mean something?)
8. Other thoughts?
Speak up, now!
‘Til next time,
Silence
Going to the dogs. November 19, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in pets, wit and wisdom.Tags: dog-friendly cars, dogs, Honda Element, pets, Puppy Cake
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Those who know our friend Ben and Silence Dogood know that we have a real weakness for dogs (and cats, and birds, and fish, and chickens, and… ). Our beloved golden retriever Molly lives large in our memories, and our black German shepherd puppy, Shiloh, holds a huge place in our hearts. Still, we’re amazed at the lengths people will go to for their beloved pets.
Last weekend, our friend Ben saw an ad in the paper for the new Honda Element. Excuse me, for “The new Dog Friendly Honda Element Package.” (Don’t ask us why the only word they chose not to capitalize was “new.”) I quote: “Cushioned pet bed. Car kennel and leash. Unique badging and ramp. Rear fan. Seat covers. Dog-bone rubber floor mats. Spill-resistant water bowl. And more.” Badging, say what?!! Sadly for Shiloh (and for Molly and Annie before her), the small print notes: “Package not intended for dogs larger than 80 lbs.”
Well, our friend Ben would like to inform Honda that our battered old 11-year-old bought-used VW Golf has it all over your souped-up Element when it comes to dogs, including those over 80 pounds. First of all, it has an incredibly cushy “pet bed,” aka the back seat, which is even lined with fleece for our dog’s added comfort. We too provide a leash and even a halter if needed, as well as a spill-proof water dish in the form of a recycled plastic food container and a bunch of plastic water bottles that we refill at the sink between trips. (It’s spill-proof because we give Shiloh water after her walks and before she gets back in the car. If she ends up dumping it all over the parking lot, who cares?!) We provide other amenities as well, including toys for the trip, liver treats, and a bag with plastic grocery bags, latex gloves, and zipper-lock bags to take care of any rest-stop bathroom breaks. Who could ask for more?
Apparently plenty of folks. Just today, Silence, who subscribes to the online service DailyCandy to keep up with trends, saw that an enterprising woman in Pittsburgh, PA had launched a business specializing in cake mixes for dogs (check it out at www.puppycake.com). Puppy Cake offers carob and banana cake mixes (with icing), as well as a cupcake pan that makes bone-shaped cupcakes, organic sprinkles, and ready-made cookies and cupcakes. All human-grade ingredients, of course. You can even find suggestions for party games and theme parties on the site (Luau, Birthday, Wedding, Puppy Shower, Costume, Spring, July 4th, Beach, Halloween). OMG.
Silence would like to point out that all baking done here at Hawk’s Haven is exclusively with human-grade ingredients. Any bread, cornbread, rolls, muffins, biscuits, oatmeal cookies, crackers, chips, or other comestibles served to us and our dog on-premises are guaranteed to be top-quality, without the added expense of buying mixes (mixes!!!) specifically for dogs. OFB has found himself in the doghouse more than once for sharing a fragment of doughnut with Shiloh, but no one could deny the human-grade ingredients in said doughnuts.
As for party tips, our dogs have always had one comment when it comes to party food: “Just hand it over and nobody will get hurt.”
Mercy. We love our Shiloh and all our pets, and we indulge them as we indulge ourselves, no more, no less. But doesn’t this trend strike anyone besides us as over the top?
And what the heck is badging, anyway?!!
Roberts Roost fudge. November 18, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in wit and wisdom.Tags: artisan fudge, blogging adventures, fudge, Gethsemane Farms, goat milk fudge, Roberts Roost
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Silence Dogood here. Unlike our friend Ben, I wasn’t blessed with much of a sweet tooth. It’s not that I don’t like sweets, I just don’t crave them. So for me to be willing to invest the calories in something I know it will take hours of strenuous exercise to work off, that dessert or piece of candy had better be good or it’s staying on the plate or in the box (at least until, ahem, someone else comes along and wipes it out).
The one thing I have always had a weakness for is good homemade fudge. My mama would make it as a special treat at Christmas, and it had exactly five ingredients: unsweetened dark chocolate, salted butter, sugar, milk, and plenty of vanilla. Let me tell you, it was so delicious! The texture is indescribable to people who’ve only eaten storebought fudge with its adulterants. I don’t know what they put in it, but every piece of storebought fudge I’ve ever tried, including every piece from specialty fudge shops, is… um… slick? Gooey? Sticky? Gummy?! It’s just not right. Real fudge is a little grainy because of the sugar. You can break it in pieces with your fingers, but the pieces are soft. Try to break a piece off that storebought fudge! And if you hold real fudge in your mouth for just a second, it melts, with the flavor simply exploding on your tongue. Heaven!
Before my encounter with Roberts Roost fudge, the closest I’d ever come to finding real fudge for sale is from the Trappist monks at Gethsemane Monastery in Kentucky (www.monks.org). They sell three kinds of fudge: chocolate bourbon pecan (our favorite), brown sugar bourbon walnut, and chocolate pecan (no bourbon). And their fudge is really good. We try to find excuses to get a box for ourselves every Christmas.
But I thought I’d finally died and gone to fudge heaven when I got a fudge sampler in the mail from Alan Roberts of Roberts Roost (http://robertsroostfarm.com/). The beautiful box should have alerted me to the quality of its contents: big, gorgeous rectangles of vanilla latte, chili chocolate, chocolate espresso, and butter pecan fudge, lovingly cradled in layers of gold foil. But it was reading the ingredients lists that got me really excited: sugar, goat milk, butter, and the flavorings: cocoa, vanilla, pecans, chili, coffee, espresso. Period. Here at last was the fudge that Mama used to make!
Sure enough, there was that marvelous, melt-in-your-mouth texture. Yummmm!!! This fudge was so fresh, and so delicious, even I wanted to say to hell with the calories, I’d like some more. Unfortunately, every morning I was confronted by the ongoing depradations of the Midnight Rambler (aka our friend Ben), who apparently is capable of eating two entire rectangles of fudge in a single raid and leaving pretty much nothing for other household members who, ahem, might have at least enjoyed a tiny piece or two. I was especially incensed by the virtually complete wipeout of the butter pecan fudge—OFB was in the doghouse after that!—and had to hide some of the chili chocolate to give to our heat-loving friend and fellow blog contributor, Richard Saunders, who of course loved it.
I wish I could tell you how long the fudge stays fresh, but in this household, we’ll obviously never know. What I can tell you is that it’s simply the best fudge going, and you can order one kind or an assortment and get it freshly made, beautifully packaged, and carefully packed before you can say Roberts Roost. Alan is always experimenting with new flavors, so check his website to see what he has available. You can read all about it on his blog post, “Goat Milk Fudge.” And while you’re there, be sure to click on the link and place your orders. You’ll be so glad you did!
What is it about woodpeckers? November 17, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in critters, homesteading, wit and wisdom.Tags: backyard bird feeders, backyard birds, woodpeckers
8 comments
Here at Hawk’s Haven, our friend Ben and Silence Dogood are lucky enough to have a lot of backyard birds stay with us through the winter. Our property is densely planted, and the trees, shrubs, vines, groundcovers, grasses, and perennials provide plenty of food and shelter for all sorts of birds. In addition, we have a stream that offers water, and we also set out numerous tube feeders, a cabin feeder, and a suet feeder for our feathered guests.
Like everyone, we have our favorite winter birds: in our case, the juncos, cardinals, bluejays, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, goldfinches, house finches, wrens, and purple finches. We long for towhees, cedar waxwings, flickers, and rose-breasted grosbeaks. We wish the snow geese would choose to spend the entire year in the fields behind our house, rather than just two weeks every spring and fall, and that more wild turkeys and pheasants would decide to turn up here.
But there’s one special group of birds we always are thrilled to see: the woodpeckers. Typically, here at our rustic home in Pennsylvania, we attract downy, hairy, and red-bellied woodpeckers, along with both white- and red-breasted nuthatches (which are sort of woodpeckerlike). We’d love to see red-headed woodpeckers, flickers, and pileated woodpeckers join them here, but so far, no luck.
Still, anytime a woodpecker does show up, it’s a huge thrill for us. The first red-bellied woodpecker (which has red down the back of its head, not on its belly, what were those idiot taxonomists thinking) showed up at our cabin feeder this morning. Welcome, redbelly! You and all your kind are what helps us get through the winter. Looking at you, your kin, and all feeder birds, we can appreciate the brevity and uncertainty of all life and of our lives. But if you hang on, grab the rope of human connection and hang on for dear life, we may yet pull through and rise above me and mine to find ours and everyone’s. Let’s please at least give it a try.
Pie in the sky. November 17, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in gardening, homesteading, wit and wisdom.Tags: canned pumpkin, canned pumpkin shortage, Libby's, pumpkin pie, pumpkin shortage
3 comments
Silence Dogood here. The front-page headline in our local paper was enough to give pumpkin-pie lovers palpitations: “Be prepared for a paucity of pumpkin.” The caption beside a can of Libby’s pumpkin pie filling went on to explain: “A rainy growing season in 2008 led to a poor yield of pumpkins and a nationwide shortage of canned filling as the holiday season approaches.”
Gasp. “There was a run on pumpkin at the Giant supermarket in Trexlertown earlier this month, prompting the store to sell out of 29-ounce cans,” the article continues. “A sign on an empty shelf alerted would-be bakers that supplies may be limited this year.” One pumpkin-pie lover was quoted as saying, “No pumpkin pie? That’s just un-American.”
The article (which you can read in its entirety at www.themorningcall.com) went on to offer some fascinating facts for pumpkin-pie enthusiasts: ”Libby’s is the big banana in the pumpkin business. The division of Nestle sells about 80 percent of all canned pumpkin, using Select Dickinson pumpkins, which are smaller, heavier and sweeter than the big fruit carved at Halloween.” It went on to say that Libby’s grows its own pumpkins on 5,000 acres in Morton, Illinois, where the company is based.
Are you heading for the store yet? Luckily, I bought a can of Libby’s 100% pumpkin (as opposed to pie filling) a couple of days ago in blessed oblivion of the shortage. I don’t use it in pie—in my family, pecan pie is the traditional Thanksgiving pie, though I do sometimes indulge in a slice of swirled pumpkin-vanilla cheesecake from a local landmark, Louie’s Bakery in nearby Emmaus, PA. But I do use it in curried pumpkin soup and as a “secret ingredient” in chili. Now that the article’s made front-page news, I might not be so lucky trying to find additional cans. But this year, our friend Ben and I decided to buy only edible pumpkins for our Harvest Home display, which we have up from October to December, so we can cook them once we transition to our Christmas decorations.
What about ‘Select Dickinson’ pumpkins, though? I’d never heard of them or seen them listed in any seed catalogue. Heading over to Google, I discovered that this was an exclusive strain Libby’s created itself, more properly called ‘Libby’s Select Dickinson Pumpkin’. The photo showed pumpkins that looked more like Butternut squash (or maybe like really elongated Butternut squash that were ribbed like pumpkins) , which made me feel better, since I’d always been told that the “pumpkin” used in canned pumpkin was actually winter squash, because it tasted a lot better than actual pumpkin.
Libby’s website confirmed that the ‘Select Dickinson’ pumpkin is exclusive to Libby’s, which is why we home gardeners haven’t encountered it. (Er, Libby’s, haven’t you heard of the Irish Potato Famine? Growing a single crop—or worse, a single variety of that crop—on the same land year in, year out is the exact recipe that gave the potato blight the chance to devastate Ireland. Better wise up and diversify before your shortage becomes chronic.)
The website added a bit of trivia: More than 50 million pumpkin pies are baked every year. At that rate, no wonder canned pumpkin is in short supply! Better swing by the store and grab a can or two on the way home, unless you want your pumpkin pie to end up being pie in the sky!
‘Til next time,
Silence
Cooking with compost. November 16, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in homesteading, wit and wisdom.Tags: low-tech innovations, Peace Corps, Peace Corps innovations
5 comments
Silence Dogood here. You never know what you’re going to read in the paper. In yesterday’s “Parade” magazine, there was a brief interview with Aaron Williams, the new director of the Peace Corps. Reading along to see Mr. Williams’s plans for the Peace Corps, I read the following:
“Since many volunteers are tech-savvy, I want to use their expertise. For example, in Nicaragua a man with a background in mechanical engineering is developing a stove that people can use to cook with compost instead of wood. I want to put his blueprints and techniques online so that volunteers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America can see what he’s doing.”
Hey, what about putting them online where all of us can see what he’s doing? I’ve read before about Peace Corps volunteers’ inventions, from low-tech energy sources to water purifying systems to simple toilets and showers, that I think could help homesteaders here, especially if they’re cash-strapped and/or off-grid or simply seeking to reduce consumption and dependence on corporate services and their accompanying monthly bills.
To me, these inventions display ingenuity at its best, making something useful and wonderful from practically nothing with minimal equipment and expertise. It’s inventions like these that make the world a better place. It would be great to have them all online, at a single, public-access site, where we could all see them. If nothing else, they might inspire us to develop innovations of our own, or at least to think about reducing our appalling overconsumption, be it refraining from taking two showers a day or drinking bottled water or tossing out perfectly good clothes and accessories because they’re so last week. In our disposable society, we could all use a good lesson in sustainability.
‘Til next time,
Silence
