Log Cabin Cooking

On Matters of the Heart

By Barbara on February 8, 2016 in House and Garden, Pie, Quirky Food Musings

Valentines Day is nearly upon us and I can’t help but sing this enchanting holiday’s praises. I get that it can be a tough day for those who are lonely and have experienced loss, but it’s also the one time of the year when we somewhat restrained Americans are encouraged to openly express our fondness for one another. And truly, the simpler the bestowing of appreciation and affection the more meaningful to the recipient … so in that spirit, I’m dashing off a few handwritten and typed notes to unsuspecting acquaintances and loved ones. Including you.

In case you’re in the business of finding romantic love, this is your lucky day. Forget OkCupid and Match, I’ve been accumulating some timeless courtship advice over the years from last century’s experts in matters of the heart. You need look no further than 20th century agricultural journals for good news such as this from a 1926 Rural New-Yorker magazine:

“Who says Rural New-Yorker is not a good advertising medium? The woman who made those cherry pies described on page 827 received an offer of marriage sight unseen. She will continue to make pies at the same old stand.”

(Note to guys: women like men who bake pies too!)

As you can see, the 1974 Mother Earth News Lost Souls and Positions and Situations pages held promise for love seekers as well …

Jerrold of Fairbanks Alaska, (where there are 12 men to every women), did you ever find your UFO-lovin’ vegetarian outdoorsy gal?

Let’s say you’ve found a love interest. This 1931 book below has some excellent communication advice for both fellers and fems. Except that it’s a girly looking book written by a man named Hugh, bless his heart. And speakin’ of hearts … what guy would buy a book covered in hearts for himself back in 1931? Who, really, is this modern love letter advice for?

Anyway, here’s what he suggests:

Don’t write love-letters on gaudy, perfumed or colored papers.
Never typewrite a love-letter unless you are writing a love letter book, then you can type (see below). Instead, use your best legible handwriting.
Number pages if there are more than two so your lover doesn’t freak out.
Don’t cross out words or make ink splotches.
Do NOT write a love-letter on a postal card ’cause peeping toms (a.k.a. mothers) will read it.
Never hold up an answer to a love-letter … procrastination kills a budding romance.
Don’t write a love-letter on stationery with a firm’s name on it as it makes a business matter out of a love missive. That is bad form.

The actual booklet is beyond hilarious. It contains the romantic blitherings of Edward and Lucille, who meet at a dance. They live 100 miles apart, so they must conduct their courtship via appropriate stationery, with proper assistance from Hugh, the author of this charming piece of work.

Note the letters are TYPED! and NUMBERED! (Bad form). Of particular interest is letter number 27, the “I love you!” letter.

Now that you have found your person of interest, and you have conducted an appropriate courtship culminating with letter no. 45 entitled A Knight Goes Riding to his Girl, you will be needing some additional inspiration for keeping that spark a-sizzle. That’s where Elizabeth Gordon comes in with her teensy yet fabulous 1912 book of poems entitled “Just You.”

Well, friends, it’s time to Valentine your acquaintances, friends, family and lovers now. On a postcard, or typed on a crumpled piece of pink, perfumed business stationery. Or an email. Or even a text.

Happy Valentine’s Day! xoxoxoxoxoxox

P.S.

Sure as the vine grows round the stump,
You are my darling sugar-lump!

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I got up early ….

By Barbara on November 23, 2015 in log cabin, Pie

Although the Blue Ridge Parkway national parkland adjoins our backyard in Asheville, we need to drive 20 minutes to catch a view like this. (As long as you get up at 5:30 am, that is.)

It is the old-time mountain way to live down and view up. To leave the mountains be. But things change.

Only not so much here in our neck of the the Madison County woods, just 35 miles north of the city. Nary a power line has touched these 65 acres of up, and I’m pretty sure they never will.

No indoor bathroom. No furnace switch to flip on chilly mornings. No hot running water. No nightly newscast.

Which suits me fine along about now.

About the time we bought this old cabin in 1999, I quit my job as a family therapist. For 15 years, I had the great gift and honor to work with children and parents in every situation you can imagine … or not even imagine. I did the hardest stuff early on … working with court-ordered groups of “offender” parents whose journeys were so painful that I am surprised by little of the horrors that lately rip through our evening broadcasts with malignant regularity. Sometimes all I could do for these damaged and damaging mothers and fathers was to bake them cookies. And hold my babies tight when I came home.

Annie, Rita, Wes & Me, 1987

This Thanksgiving, the grown-up babies will return from their far-flung homes.

Rita, Wes & Annie, 2008

And we’ll play rowdy games of spoons by the fire.

And bake pies …. because you know how pie brings people together. And we all could use a little more of that.

To quote first-born Annie, “Pie fills a longing for home – or for what you wish home had been.”

A peaceful and homey Thanksgiving to you each.

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It’s Picnic Time!!!

By Barbara on November 19, 2015 in products, Recipes

I know for certain that it’s Picnic Time because we have 5,000 reminders of that fact in our warehouse. And also because, as you can see, it’s always been Picnic Time with my family, who might whop me over the head for posting this picture. While I’ve been collecting antique outing recipes, booklets, and vintage picnic ware for many years, it took a kick in the pants by family and friends and The Monday Night Picnic Club to follow through with my vision for this book. So many thanks to all of you for helping with this project. Here’s the picnic club at the UNCA botanical garden enjoying a healthy antique Doctor Bag picnic.Speakin of which I’ve included lots of fun DIY projects in the book. There’s the 1947 doctor bag picnic basket …And how to make a road trip picnic hamper out of an antique train case, and instructions to make an updated version of a tin can rocket stove.

Of course you’ll need to know what to wear on your motor picnic … we’ve got that covered!

And then we have the perky garden inspired boozy (and not) beverages …

And of course, lots of fun and un-fussy picnic foods like this French travel cake (recipe below).

The book is available on our Native Ground Website, Amazon, Indie bookstores, and, if you’re in Asheville, at Mountain Made in the Grove Arcade downtown, Guild Crafts on Tunnel Road and at our house until it gets distributed to bookstores, gift shops and historic sites here and throughout the country.

At only $6, wouldn’t this fun little book make a fetching holiday gift along with a vintage picnic treasure like this 1950s picnic tin.

Whew. On to the next project!

Here’s the recipe for the French travel cake pictured above from the travel bites section of the book. A slice of this savory cake will make a dandy road trip lunch/snack to enjoy en route to your Thanksgiving destination!

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I made you another birthday (orange cake pie) pi, Albert Einstein!

By Barbara on March 13, 2015 in Pie, Quirky Food Musings, Recipes

Saturday 3.14.15 at 9:26 is the BIG pi day and Albert Einstein’s 136th birthday. Two years ago, I wrote an authoritative post on how Albert Einstein came up with his Theory of Relativity and various equations that actually totally escape my understanding, which I am yet again re-posting, as now it’s tradition. Speaking of things that defy comprehension, do you ever wonder how it is that you can create children that have analytical and all sorts of other capacities well beyond your own? Wayne and I ponder this frequently. As it turns out, my ability for doing math ended in 4th grade, and Wayne claims his ended in 3rd. So how did it come about that we managed to raise three scientist kids who DO understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity? Who use squiggles that aren’t even numbers anymore to figure out that stuff?

Well, Einstein’s not the only one who can make up theories … I have made up a couple, myself on this topic …

First of all, we had 3 kids in 2 years. (Annie and 24 months later, twins Wes and Rita).

Well let me tell you, this is not an organized, serene home we had/have here. It’s more of a get-over-it and let’s have fun sort of a home which works like this with school-aged kids:

Kid: I can’t do this word problem! How do I do this? AAAACK! Parent: I have no idea, go outside and play!

Kid: My 800 page paper is due tomorrow and I don’t have a topic yet!!! Parent: Go outside and play, a topic will appear.

Kid: My math teacher made me sit in the hall today because my pencil was too short! (This really happened by the way). Parent: Go outside and play, and I’ll have a little chat with the teacher about that one tomorrow.

You get the idea. Somehow we all muddled through, but I will tell you that while we do take learning seriously, we did not put pressure on our kids to achieve high marks in school, nor am I a fan of so-called “gifted” programs which included everybody else’s kids but mine (or so it seemed). And then the whole honors and AP thing, bleg. Can’t you be in high school when you’re in high school? And what’s the deal with Just try your hardest? Trying is never-ending. Does Just try your hardest mean giving up because you can’t do it? I’m thinking that building forts in the woods and digging a giant hole to China in the middle of my veggie garden and nightly family dinners discussing important facts gleaned from “Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers” helped peak our kids’ curiosities. And inspire them to want to learn things that they were capable of learning, when they were good and ready. We’re a whole family of late-blooming bloomers, but there are plenty of us out there. The birthday boy, for example, whose advice on being curious we take to heart:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein

Annie and Rita building a winter fort

And in conclusion, here’s theory number 2: You can’t take so much credit (or blame) for how your kids turn out because they are raised by a world in which your parenting is only the refrain in the song of their lives. The part they came from and go back to which doesn’t include their genes, the other better math teacher who came along and rescued them from sitting in the hall because their pencil was too short and the scientist grandfather who taught them about black holes and string theory when they were still in preschool (thanks, Dad!). I hope y’all enjoy this special pi day around the table with loved ones and a slice or two of orange cake pie.

Leon Swell as a Biochem grad student

2013 Re-post:

OK, I have a basic physics lesson for you that explains quite simply what pi and Einstein and orange cake-pie have in common. Since I have successfully avoided most things physics and pretty much all things math during my lifetime, I have consulted with my three scientist offspring about today’s topic. Rita, who studies nursing at Emory U in Atlanta, says to ask Wes. Annie, who is a medical physicist, says to ask Wes. And that pi has to do with Einstein’s Field Equation of Relativity which looks like this:

$e782a708f8a82b60f25eea21a9862ad0 I baked you a pi for your birthday, Albert Einstein!$

Wes is a billion floors down in the atomic, molecular, optical physics lab at Kansas State U. where he shoots electrons with a laser and then makes up stuff about why they land where they land. Evidently he’s busy, so I will just fill in the blanks for you about what Einstein had in mind with his equation, that I’ll call “Rik” for short.

When Einstein was about 2, he let go of his ball and became obsessed with why it went down instead of up. Or maybe that was Richard Feynman. Anyway, when Einstein was about 9, he was struck out at a little league game because he was preoccupied with calculating the trajectory of the ball as it traveled toward him through the curve of spacetime. He used pi to calculate the curve. Of course. Well, he got benched after that and he had time to think about electromagnetic fields and linear momentum and stuff like that, and some of these things had something to do with pi. And then, as he was spacing out on the bench, his stomach started growling which reminded him about how a particle of pie would be so nice about now. So as he was walking home to get that piece of pie, he whipped up the geodesic equation which expains how if you drop an electron, it will not go straight down, it will go in the straightest possible line on the curve of spacetime and it will end up in Wes’ lab and he will zap it with a laser as soon as he finishes eating his orange cake pie.

I think that about covers it, don’t you? Except for calculating the circumference of a 9-inch pie plate. You do that while I tell you about orange cake-pie.

This orange cake pie is really creamy!

About this pie. It’s a bit homely but so good, you won’t care. Lemon cake pies became popular in the 1930s and then there was a renewed popularity with the 1950s bridge party set. That’s where I learned about lemon cake pie … from my Aunt Mary of Athens, WV, the bridge party queen of the 1950s through 70s. Lemon sponge is a much earlier British version of this pie, without a pie crust …. which is how we often eat it. This is one of those magic pies where you mix it all up and the innards separate out into a creamy custard on the bottom topped by a yellow sponge cake on top. The pie is really delicious and creamy. Not my best crust, however. Instead of a whole grain crust, I recommend one that is buttery and crispy! Actually next time, I’ll just skip the crust.

Talking about crust …. Can you believe Rita’s pi crust toppers that went with her lemon cake pienstein pie this year? Makes a mamma proud!

Orange cake-pie

2015-03-13 10:31:07

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Ingredients

A 9-inch unbaked pie crust, fluted and refrigerated for 30 minutes
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, separated (and egg whites beaten til stiff)
1/2 orange, juice and zest
1 lemon, juice and zest (1/2 cup of both juices total)
3 Tbsp. flour
3 Tbsp. butter
3/4 cup whole milk

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400º Roll out your pie crust, place in a 9-inch shallow pie plate, flute and refrigerate while you make the pie innards. Beat sugar, egg yolks, and butter. Add juices, zests and flour and mix well. Add milk, then fold in egg whites which have been stiffly beaten.Try not to leave any big clumps of egg white floating around (they'll darken fast). Pour filling into prepared pie crust and place in oven on lowest shelf (gas oven), or next to lowest shelf (electric oven). Bake for 10 minutes and turn oven to 350º. Continue to bake until filling is set, about 30 more minutes. If it's getting too dark on top, cover with a piece of tented foil that touches the crust, not the filling. Let it cool at room temp, then refrigerate 3 hours until set.

Notes

I used a tart satsuma orange for this pie. If your orange is super sweet, you may want to decrease the sugar a tad or increase the lemon juice.

By Barbara Swell, log cabin cooking

Log Cabin Cooking http://logcabincooking.com/

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Chocolate Orange Chili Picnic Popcorn

By Barbara on February 17, 2015 in Recipes

It’s picnic time. Even though it’s 9º outside give or take. Which makes it really hard to write a book about picnic time, which I am doing because it’s not only picnic time, it’s also coming up on deadline time. All last spring, summer and fall my friends and family and I picnicked our little hearts out in forest, park, roadside, porch, cabin-side, microbrewery, campfire and mushroom log. I have enough picnic fodder for a 950 page book which I must cram into 72 teensie pages because that’s how big this book gets to be. So here I sit …

Up in the attic, thinking about roasting black raspberry marshmallows over a perky campfire. Not being good at sitting, I figured if I just had the right chair, I’d be happy to sit and write and layout. Got that 1960s chair. Then if I only could find a matching vintage typewriter (and learn to repair and maintain said vintage typewriter), well, THEN I would be able to sit and write.

Done …..

Now, wouldn’t it be handy to have just the right handwriting font in addition to the vintage typewriter type for the little book, and don’t you know you can make a font out of your very own handwriting. Which is well beyond fun.

But what I want to know now is how is it that you other writers get down to business? Maybe if I just did the writing instead of every bit of the layout, art and writing but the cover, it would be less distracting …. but still. Do you get up early, walk five miles, do yoga, milk the cow, eat your homemade granola and then have 3 chapters written by 9am? How long do you sit at a stretch? Do you drink endless cups of dried orange chai tea or do you sit with a thermos of coffee by your side? How often do you check your email and the likes? It’s always fascinating to hear about how the deed gets done by people who appear to be so darned focused.

Speaking of straying off task, how about a fun Valentine’s day chocolate bar leftover recipe distraction? This winter, dehydrated oranges have been visiting pretty much everything we eat and drink.

They’re in jars …. to be plunked into tea and water and wine …

They’re in powders … that find their way into chili and now chocolate orange chili popcorn which would be just dandy for an anytime picnic.

Mandarin, blood orange, finely powdered Cara Cara, Clementine

Here they are standing in for crackers on a cheese plate with a little homemade fromage blanc that’s been laced with orange booze soaked cranberries and dried orange shards.

And don’t they look so pretty in a jar with their mulling spice buddies? Dried fresh ginger slices, Ceylon cinnamon sticks, allspice, cloves, peppercorn and maybe a star anise. To be joined with cider, red wine or tea.

We’ll get to the popcorn in a minute, but let’s chat about which oranges to dry first. You do need to choose thin-skinned varieties and organic is best, but hard to find. Here in the WNC mountains, we don’t have as many varieties to choose from as you would, say, in California or the southern citrus states. So far the clear dried orange winner is Clementine followed by Mandarin, then blood orange, and then Cara Cara. All these varieties will do well as “crackers” without being bitter, and as powders which you can combine with spice blends. As far as mulling spices and tea, any variety will do. Slice them thinly, place them on dehydrator trays and dry at 120º until crispy, about 8 hours or so. (You can also try your oven, turning it on and off to maintain the temp.) Now you can store the dried orange slices in a jar for all your orangey purposes.

And then, if you want orange powder, you’ll give it a whirl in your blender and it will look kind of coarse because the oranges still contain oils and a bit of moisture. Which is fine … or you can dry further and then process again. I don’t recommend making super fine powder … there’s something not right about it. What the heck, just go ahead and experiment and get back to me.

And now my new favorite thing to eat while I do or don’t get down to writing business …. Chocolate orange popcorn and Mole Popcorn blends. The mole blend works well in chili as well as an all-round sprinkle.

The mixture of grated chocolate, cocoa powder, orange powder (or orange zest) and zippy chili pepper powder can be made by the pint jar and stored for 6 months or so at room temperature. Add a good pinch of cinnamon to the mix for a mole type of seasoning. You can salt your mixture, but I like the flexibility of cooking with it. In addition to chili, the mix has fun with iron pot barbeque pork, chicken tamales and as a corn on the cob sprinkle.

Package the popcorn in waxed paper bags, glassine bags (available at craft stores), or clear plastic gift bags. Paper bags are lovely, but the grease stains, not so much. Staple a dried orange and some seasonal greenery or flowers onto to the bag, and it’s PICNIC TIME!

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Be popular, gift homemade Garlic Salt blends

By Barbara on December 12, 2014 in Recipes

When my husband, Wayne, was 15 and had been playing guitar for, oh, about 6 months, he decided to share his freshly acquired skills in the form of a class held in his parent’s living room. He plastered nearby UCLA with signs saying “Be popular, play the guitar” and somehow managed to attract a large gathering of folks of all ages with visions of becoming 1960s hootenanny rock stars. Who knows if the students made good on their intentions, but I do happen to know that Wayne sure made a great life out of playing and teaching guitar (plus banjo, fiddle, mandolin).

1960s guitar-playin’ Wayne Erbsen

So if you have a hankering to be a culinary hootenanny rock star among your family and friends this holiday season, I recommend making a couple of these garlic salt blends and packaging them in nifty little jars to give as gifts. They’re so easy and fun to make. I invited a few girlfriends over for a fall garlic salt-making crafty party last month, and everyone brought fresh herbs from their gardens to add to the salt blends. It looks like a lot is going on in these photos, but really … you just chop up a few ingredients, dry on a cookie sheet and you end up with simple fragrant salts that will change your life.

Mary Lou carefully chops kaffir lime leaves, (not her fingers!)

Today, we’ll make 4 salts. Use them in place of salt to liven your food, here are some suggestions:

Ginger/lemon garlic salt … Sprinkle on kale, tofu, anything carrot, salad dressings, adds a fresh zippy flavor

Smoky garlic salt … Pork or chicken, beans oh so wonderful with beans, cream of potato soup, everything.

Celery and herb garlic salt … I use this in any soup or dish that includes celery. LOVES eggs. Deviled, fried, scrambled.

Tuscan style garlic salt … Soups, baked potatoes, roasted veg of all sorts, fresh peas, sauteed carrots, corn on the cobb, etc.

Feel free to get creative with your own blends, but you’ll need to keep the salt to garlic ratio the same. First, let’s talk salt and garlic.

I’m not a salt expert by any stretch, but I recommend you use a crunchy salt to make these blends. I suppose you could use Kosher salt, but I usually use Maldon salts (both regular and smoked) which are readily available in Whole Foods type markets and online (about $5 a box). Salt is big business and you can find all kinds online, but I don’t think I’d use a super fancy variety because the texture and taste will be lost when combined with all these other flavors. A clean crunch is what you want. If you splurge, let it be for the smoked salts. I’ve been meaning to try this one from LA. Okay, now for garlic. I grow the red Russian type of hardneck garlic because I love its medium spicy flavor and big cloves. It starts to sprout come January, so December is perfect timing to use it before it fades. The better your garlic the better your salt, so see if you can find something interesting, if possible. If not any fresh garlic will do.

RATIO of GARLIC to SALT: One medium clove to one tablespoon of big flaked, crunchy salt. If using Kosher salt, you can use one large clove to one tablespoon of salt … or two small. You get the idea …

To make each salt, you start by chopping the salt and the garlic together until they’re medium dice. Then you add the other ingredients and you just chop until everything is way fine. Don’t be in a hurry, enjoy the fragrances!

First up is ginger garlic salt. Fresh ginger, garlic, lemon zest, chili pepper and I had lemon grass growing in my garden, so it also joined the party. (Those are kaffir lime leaves, oh so optional.) The photo shows one large garlic clove, but I added two great big, fat ones.

Chop chop chop, until it looks like this.

Then sprinkle on a parchment lined cookie sheet and allow it to dry at room temp. for a couple days. This one takes a while to dry out. You can turn your oven on to 170º and once it warms up, turn it off and put your garlic mixture in until it’s dry.

Now, the smoky salt. Oh mercy me it is so good! Garlic, smoked salt, smoked paprika, and dried chipotle peppers. If you don’t have dried smoked chipotle peppers, some sort of hot pepper will do. Chop the salt with the garlic and then add the other ingredients. I recently found some smoked black pepper and tried that with success. Use just a little and crack it first. Penzy’s has a nice smoked paprika. You can also find a so-so version at Trader Joe’s.

Celery and herb salt blend is next in line. Garlic, salt, chives, fresh celery leaves, parsley, red pepper. I love this blend.

It looks like this when dried.

And last, my favorite salt I use on everything … is the Tuscan herb salt. Splendid table did a version of this one with a great little video. You’ll need rosemary, sage, red pepper, a little lemon zest if you like, garlic and salt.

And it looks like this when it’s finished.

And then, of course, you need some little bitty salt spoons. Notice the tiny orange spoon on the left. I made it from a carrot. Yep, a carrot salt-spoon. I took a carving class this week where I made the very extremely primitive spreader knife because what I want to carve is little salt spoons. I poked myself with the point of the uber-sharp carving knife more than once, so I thought I’d practice with this tiny gouge knife on a carrot before making a mess of the real thing + moi. I kinda am having fun with veggie spoon culinary fantasies.

And then, finally, you can put your herb salts in tiny glass jars … make a sweet crafty label and tie on a tiny spoon and there you have it. You will be so popular that come February, your gift recipients will be bugging you to make them more salts!

Larger 3.5 oz. jars are from Kitchen & Company, Bormoli. Tiny 2 oz. jars are made in Portugal, from World Market, also 3 oz. Weck jars are fun.

Potato soup with celery herb garlic salt

Herb Garlic Salt Blends

2014-12-12 22:53:13

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Ingredients

GINGER GARLIC SALT: 4 medium cloves garlic, 4 Tbls. coarse salt, 2 or 3 strips lemon zest, about 2 Tbls. ginger chunks, fresh or dried chili to taste, few grindings coarse black pepper
SMOKY GARLIC SALT: 4 medium cloves garlic, 4 Tbls. coarse salt, 1 Tbs. smoked paprika, 1/2 dried chipotle pepper if you have one or hot chili pepper to taste
CELERY HERB GARLIC SALT: 4 medium cloves garlic, 4 Tbls. coarse salt, handful of fresh chives, parsley and celery leaves, hot red pepper to taste
TUSCAN HERB GARLIC SALT: 4 medium cloves garlic, 4 Tbls. coarse salt, 1 strip lemon zest,
up to 1/2 cup total of fresh sage, rosemary, and parsley (not basil, it turns dark)

Instructions

Chop garlic and salt roughly. Add remaining ingredients and chop until well combined and finely diced. Sprinkle onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and air dry a day or two until crumbly and completely dry. If it's being poky, then heat your oven up to no more than 200º, turn it off and let the garlic salt sit in there with the oven door closed. Don't bake the mixture!
When super dry, place in a festive glass jar, lid on.

By Log Cabin Cooking/Barbara Swell

Log Cabin Cooking http://logcabincooking.com/

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Thanksgiving Pie Class for the pie lady/feller in all of us

By Barbara on November 4, 2014 in Recipes

Yikes!!! Are you having a Thanksgiving pie-making emergency? Well don’t fret, darlin, you’ve come to the right place. Join my daughter Annie and I for an evening of pie-making fun next Wednesday, Nov. 12 from 5:30-8:30. Together we’ll whip up Mrs. Tennis E. Painter’s Appalachian Candy Roaster pumpkin pie (with chocolate ganache if you please), Super boozy bourbon pecan pie, and a wonderful 1930s toasted oat and coconut mock pecan pie.

And pie crust? Yes we are all about the crust! Choose to make either Barbara’s locally milled wheat pastry flour crust or Annie’s fabulous gluten-free flour version. Classes fill up super quick, if you’re interested, let us know pronto. Particulars are here.

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Roasted Peach Butter goes for a walk in the woods

By Barbara on September 2, 2014 in Recipes

It’s a fine day for a walk in the woods with Mrs. Roasted Peach Butter and her five little “offspring.” Sweet late summer peaches are abundant here in the south, from giant to little and everything in between. They’re ripening on counters, and not-ripening in the fridge and I thought I’d just gather a smattering of varieties and turn them into a fragrant low-added-sugar peach butter spread. Starting with 3 pounds of peaches, I added 1/2 cup sugar (about 100 grams) and juice of a couple lemons. The peaches were so sweet on their own, the modest amount of additional sugar just took over. Bleg. So I took out the stick blender, gave the hot mess a beating and then poured it into a big glass pan to bake in the oven. For an hour at 250º.

Which turned into about three hours because I was playing with okra pickles … recipe testing for the picnic book at hand.

Okra freaks me out, but okra pickles are so good and slimless enough once they sit for a couple weeks. The super tall Weck asparagus jars make for some gorgeous smoky-okry and garlic dill okra pickles.

Anyway, the “forgotten” roasted peach butter was so so SO much improved, that I’m going to forget it from now on. The color is deep and seductive and the flavor is frankly, stunning. It’s too good to eat with anything other than a little espresso spoon. There was just enough for 7 three-ounce Weck jam jars. So I promptly ate one and a half and water-bath processed the other five.

Good thing Mama peach is guarding her babies!

Roasted Peach Butter

2014-09-02 16:04:06

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Ingredients

3 lbs. peaches
1/2 cup (about 100 grams) white sugar
Juice of 2 lemons

Instructions

Peel peaches by giving them a 30 second bath in boiling water. The skins will slip right off. Remove & compost the pit and chop the flesh. Place in a saucepan with 1/2 cup sugar and the juice of 2 lemons* Simmer the fruit on low heat for about 30 minutes, or until the fruit starts to fall apart. Give the hot pulp a toss with a stick blender, food processor or blender. Oh do be careful with splattering! Some like their fruit butters super smooth, but I prefer mine with some texture. You decide for yourself. Pour the fruit batter into a glass baking pan and bake at 250º for three hours or until it cooks down to a deep golden hue. It's ready whenever you think it is. Water-bath can according to recommendations of folks like those at the National Center for Home Preservation. http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html Or, just get out a little sugar spoon and go to town.

Notes

If using organic lemons for the juice, be sure to zest them first. Citrus zest keeps perfectly in a small glass jar in your freezer for later use.

Log Cabin Cooking http://logcabincooking.com/

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Fresh Farmhouse Cheesemaking Class

By Barbara on July 7, 2014 in Recipes

“Cow” vending machine

If you Asheville folks have a hankering to learn to make artisan farmhouse cheeses from local cow (or goat) milk, do we have a fun evening in store for you! My daughter Annie Erbsen De Bacco will be teaching a class on Wed., July 16th, and she knows a thing or two about the subject. After all, she has spent the last 5 years living with her husband, Gianluca, next door to the roadside “cow vending machine” (photo above) in the alpine village of Aosta, Italy.

Roman coliseum, Aosta, Italy

The Latteria sits on the side of a narrow road on the edge of a cow pasture. Drive or walk up, insert a Euro into the machine, and out comes a quart of fresh, raw cow’s milk.

Not only can you get fresh milk from cows that are mooing a mere few feet away, you can also choose from fresh fontina, yogurt, or butter from the cow-automat just to the left of the milk dispenser. Made, of course, in the cheese kitchen within a stone’s throw of the barn. And that’s not all … see that cow at the top of the page? Well that’s sweet Cobra-the-cow who is pretty much, the most famous cow in the valley d’Aoste for being the cow battle champion several years in a row. Cobra lives in the cow vending machine barn and you get to drink her milk for mere pennies. Annie learned to make all sorts of fresh and aged cheeses from Roberta … who lives at the top of an alp with her family … and makes the most amazing cheeses from her cows and goats ever … And here Annie learns from a cheesmaker from Branzi, only a 30 minute blood-curdling mountain road drive from another well-known cheese town of Taleggio.

You will not get to eat the fabulous, creamy, famous Branzi cheese of this cheesemaker.

Or any of these other versions of cheeses you might have heard of ….

Unless you travel to the upper Val Brembana in the Bergamo region of northern Italy where Branzi and its neighboring cheeses are born. There is precious little of them and they are consumed where they grow.

Which brings us to what grows in the mountain region around Asheville, and that is plenty of good milk, both cow and goat. And, in fact, Western North Carolina has abundant small batch artisan cheesemakers and its very own cheese trail now.

Annie will source local, low-temperature pasteurized cow’s milk (and maybe goat as well) for her class, and participants will learn to make fresh mozzarella, ricotta, and fromage blanc cheeses. She’ll also discuss how to work with raw milk in case you have access. To register, go to the classes page and we’ll see you next week!

PS: Do not procrastinate signing up; the last class Annie taught filled up in 2 hours!

Fontina cheeses from Valle d’Aoste, Italy

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Homemade Maraschino sour cherries, elderflower cordial + the high price of pussyfooting

By Barbara on June 12, 2014 in Recipes

Ugg. Somewhere due east of remorse is regret. And I have it bad. But at least I didn’t dawdle away the chance to make three fetching early summer flavorings in the aftermath. And I hope you don’t dally either, if you have any of these in mind to make. Before I tell you what they are, here’s my regret confession ….

This was at a yard sale last weekend and I did not bring it home.

A 1953 Chambers gas stove in perfect working order to be had for a song. All I had to do was find some way to move the billion pound beauty in an hour, on a Saturday afternoon. Rather than gather my wits, I talked myself out of it because to take on this stove would have been like buying my first car: A 10 year old 1966 VW bug which came with a copy of this book, which I came to know all too well:

But now I’m sorry because I’ve been looking for a vintage stove like this for years and years. It’s a trivial regret, to be sure. But to be a pussyfooter, which is a real word, by the way, is to be cautious in a “don’t dance in the rain, you’ll catch a cold” sort of a way. No thank you to that. Lesson learned, let’s make Maraschino sour cherries.

You’ll need a bit of Luxardo Maraschino liqueur, a slightly bitter, sweetened cherry liqueur. Mind you, Luxardo = luxury = pricey. But at least it’s a huge bottle for $35. Brandied cherries are wonderful as well. Anyway, pit fresh sour cherries such as Montmorency or whatever kind you can find at your local farm market and place them in a pretty jar. Warm up about a third of the amount of liqueur as you have cherries … don’t boil, just warm. Pour over the cherries and refrigerate. If using brandy, dissolve sugar to taste to the warm brandy and add to the cherries.

Now on to #2: Garlic scapes.

The little twisty seed stalks of hard-neck garlic are ready and available in your garden or at farm stands right NOW, depending on where you live. You have some time if you live in the North. You can read about garlic scape pesto here, but all you need to do is buy about 5 or 10 bunches of them (usually around $1.50 a bunch), if you don’t grow your own, and just store them in the fridge in an open bag. They’ll be good until August. They will change your life.

On to the most urgent of the three non-regrettable summer pantry items: Elderflower cordial.

We planted two varieties of “bought” elderflowers which have just about finished blooming. York and Nova. And the native wild bushes are in flower TODAY here in Asheville.

Elderflowers smell like happy. So sweet and seductive. The fragrance of the blossoms and of all they infuse is subtle, yet memorable and so fresh. Like that summer rain we’re going to dance in.

Pick the flower clusters just as they all open before the petals start to fall off. Thanks, Annie, for going for the high ones! Do you know that old saying …. “Reach for the high apples first, you can get the lower ones anytime!”

Pluck the flowers off with a fork straight away, the blossoms will not wait. All parts of the plant but the flowers and berries are toxic. So do as you’re told, dear.

You can make a syrup out of the flowers, which will keep in the fridge a couple weeks, or you can freeze in ice cube trays. Store the cubes in jars. Into fizzy water, prosecco, or rhubarb mojitos they go, with a few fresh berries and mint. Here’s a prosecco, elderflower cordial/strawberry ice cube, and maraschino cherry fizz. Maybe, just maybe … almost as good as a 1953 Chambers gas stove.

Or not. Cheers!

Elderflower Cordial

2014-06-12 16:22:16

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Ingredients

15 heads of elderflowers, about 2 cups of blossoms
2 cups water
1/2 cup sugar for light syrup. Up to 2 cups sugar for heavier syrup.
One organic lemon, sliced (or 1/2 a lemon and 1/2 an orange)
1/2 tsp. citric acid (optional)

Instructions

First make absolutely positive that you have identified correctly your elderflower bush. Pluck off the blossoms of 15 freshly picked flower heads with a fork. You should have about 2 cups. Pick out any green stems while you prepare your sugar syrup. Boil water and sugar until sugar dissolves. Then add lemon and orange slices and citric acid if you're using it. (See note below.) Allow the syrup to cool a little. It should be warm but not super hot. Add the flowers and place all in very clean jar. Sit at room temperature for 24 hours and strain off flowers through cheesecloth. Store in a sterilized pint jar in the refrigerator for two weeks, or freeze to plop into summer beverages.

Notes

Most elderflower cordial recipes call for the use of citric acid. This will keep the cordial from going funky for about 4 weeks or so, but I'm not a fan of the taste of it. So I just freeze mine, sometimes with a strawberry in the middle. You can also make an alcoholic version by stuffing a jar with blossoms, filling with vodka, and then placing lemon slices over all. Strain after a few days or up to a week. Sweeten to taste with sugar syrup (two parts sugar dissolved in one part boiling water, then cooled).

By Log Cabin Cooking

Log Cabin Cooking http://logcabincooking.com/

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