Oh my god, they POPPED!

Today marks my first ever foray into canning.  I have no idea if I did it right.  I have no idea if I'm going to poison myself trying to eat the fruits of my labor (although I'm trusting that I'm still sufficiently instinctually hardwired not to eat rotten food).  I canned a bunch of beautiful heirloom tomatoes that I bought at the farmers market on Saturday, in the hope that I would reach for these to make pasta sauce this winter rather than my old standby Ragu.

Canning wasn't as difficult as I expected, but it was time consuming, especially in the "world's tiniest test kitchen."  Its title doesn't even deserve capitals.  With about six square feet of counter space, a chopping block on a rolling cart, and a kitchen table covered in old newspapers and fresh produce, there isn't a lot of room to work in here.  Because the kitchen is small, I tend to own mostly smaller pots, pans, baking dishes, counter-top appliances, etc., which makes it hard to do anything in bulk.  There's also not a lot of elbow room - two people have to know each other pretty well (and be skinny) to work in this kitchen together.  Luckily, I was on my own today, and had the gift of time from a surprise corporate celebration of Columbus Day (which isn't typically observed on the West Coast).  All told, it took me over three hours to can six pints of tomatoes, since I could only put three jars in the steam bath at once.  I have to say, it wasn't cheaper than buying four jars of Ragu, but it was a heck of a lot more fun.  Similarly, making my own bread pays me about $2 for three hours of work, but probably saves me $300 on therapy sessions.  As I was cleaning up the kitchen, I heard, over the running tap water, a low popping noise.  I was so surprised by the first one that I wasn't quite sure what it was, but after the second one popped I identified it as the sound of the seals sucking into place (meaning I'd done something right).  I was so excited I shouted to my empty house, "Oh my god, they POPPED!"

Spelt Bread and Fall Cooking

It always pleases me to see this . . .

. . . turn into this . . .

 . . . even though there's usually a lot of hard work in between.  Besides the fact that this spelt version of the River Cottage Break Handbook's basic loaf was wetter and absorbed a ridiculous amount of extra spelt flour during kneading, it behaved pretty much as expected.  I added a little bit of applesauce in place of some of the water, and the bread has a little bit of sweetness that goes really well with the nutty spelt flavor.  My only major miscalculation is that spelt isn't gluten free - of course it isn't!  You can't make bread rise without gluten!  So I guess I can't bring this lovely bread to work (where I would feel guilty parading the fresh baked bread in front of a gluten-intolerant co-worker).  Oh well, more for me!

Today was also a day for using the apples and pumpkins I picked in Hood River yesterday.  I ran out of time/energy after cooking and pureeing two pumpkins, making pumpkin butter, dehydrating some apples, making the spelt bread, and cleaning my house.  I feel about as worn out and used up as these:

I really thought I'd find the energy to make an apple pie tonight, but I'm thinking that maybe finding the energy to watch a movie is a more realistic expectation!

Whole Wheat Ciabatta

This ciabatta was good in practice, even though it was bad in theory - a welcome departure from my usual experiments.  I decided to try to make "healthy" ciabatta by changing the recipe from all white bread flour to 1/3 whole wheat bread flour.  In theory, because ciabatta is supposed to be very light and airy, the whole wheat flour should have dragged it down and made it less ciabatta-y.  In addition, part of the wonderful flavor of ciabatta comes from the semolina flour, which wouldn't come through if the semolina flavor had to compete with the whole wheat flavor.  In practice, this bread tastes excellent, retaining more than a hint of the sun-baked, homey flavor of traditional ciabatta.  It is a little denser than my last ciabatta effort and the dough wasn't quite as easy to work with.  It definitely tastes more earthy and whole grain-y than regular ciabatta, but the semolina flavor still comes through strongly.  I'm going to rate this effort a B+ for introducing healthy grains into a recipe without killing what was best about the original.

The Perfect Oregon Day

Today I started the perfect weekend.  Some friends and I drove over to Hood River - the home of Full Sail Brewery and many, many fruit farms - and stocked up for fall.  I bought at least 15 pounds of apples - about 2lbs for eating and the rest for baking apple pies, making applesauce, making apple butter, and drying for snacks this winter.  I can only imagine that this is just a dent in the amount of apples I'll really need to get me through the winter, but I was trying to be realistic (and also not freak out my friends by buying $30 worth of apples . . .)

I also picked up these lovely baking pumpkins, which I plan to puree and freeze for my future pumpkin needs.  I may have to make a little pumpkin butter, too, and I'll continue to buy more pumpkins throughout the season to make pumpkin pies and other treats.

Finally, because I can't resist anything jam or marmalade related, and because I've bought these marmalades before and they are completely addictive, I picked up some local Hood River pear marmalade and raspberry habenero pepper jelly, as well as Walla Walla onion mustard.

I'm tired, my feet are dirty, and my house is full of fruit and vegetables.  I have a ciabatta experiment rising in my kitchen right now, and I feel very content indeed.

Happy (Subway) Graduation!

My awesome friend Holly threw a graduation party for her boyfriend Cam, who not only was an amazing son and helped his mom buy a Subway franchise, but also attended Subway university with her.  Since I was pretty sure that 2 1/2 weeks of Subway college was more work than 4 years of liberal arts college, I decided to make a cake for him.  I tried to follow the spirit of my super cool and talented friend (from back in middle school) Treacy Silverstein, who writes the most decadent blog on the internet - http://treacycakes.wordpress.com/.  But, I also ended up following the method of Meggie - don't do anything too difficult or frustrating, because I don't want to show up at someone else's party in a huff.

I wanted to create a cake that looked like a Subway logo.  I started with two eight inch lemon cakes - made from a box mix on Wednesday night after work, no time this week to make vegan cake or bake from scratch.  On Friday night after work, I mixed up a big bowl of buttercream frosting.  I dyed most of it dark green and reserved two small bowls for decorating.  By the time I got the frosting green enough (it took almost an entire bottle of food coloring), it was nearly seven, and the party started at 7:30.  I made the executive decision that even with all the time in the world I would have a hard time drawing the subway logo in any medium, especially frosting.  So, I sort of hinted at the logo, and it was enough.  People liked the cake, Cam felt celebrated, and everyone ended up with green tongues.  Success!

So . . . this is embarrassing . . .

I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's awesome Animal, Vegetable, Miracle over the past couple of days, otherwise I doubt this would have come up.  Or, at least, it wouldn't have been quite so shaming. 

I love pumpkin.  I would eat pumpkin all year round if it were available.  In fact, during pumpkin season I like to spend a weekend cooking and pureeing and freezing pumpkin and other winter squash, just so I can keep eating them all winter long.  There are probably better ways of storing them, but I like the convenience of having a freezer full of pureed squash that will quickly and easily add bulk and flavor to any meal.  Of course, none of this started until I realized that a pumpkin was an actual delicious vegetable, and not either a canned puree for pie-making or a jack-o-lantern.  I only figured that out about two years ago, and the first year I tried to eat my jack-o-lantern.  However, once I figured out cooking pumpkins - sorry, only ate frozen green beans growing up, it's a learning curve - I fell completely in love and used them in everything.  Pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cupcakes and muffins, pumpkin ravioli, pumpkin pasta sauce, pumpkin lasagna, pumpkin soup.  If it's edible, I'll try to make a pumpkin version of it. 

Which brings us to my busy week.  The last time I was at a farmers market was ten days ago, and I didn't see any pumpkins there.  My neighbors don't have any pumpkins yet.  My freezer has been pumpkin-free for months.  But I was ready to cook with pumpkin.  So I fished around in my cupboard and pulled out a can of pumpkin puree that I had probably been there since before I "discovered" actual pumpkins.  I used it in the muffins on Sunday and thought it looked bizarre and too orange, but didn't really notice the difference in taste (especially with all the other fruit mixed in). 

Fast forward to tonight, after having read in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about how bizarre Kingsolver finds it that we would ever eat out of season or overly processed fruit and vegetables, since they don't taste nearly as good.  In general, I agree with her, but we all have busy schedules and sometimes quick meals are more important than "from scratch".  I needed something fast to make for dinner, so I pulled the leftover canned pumpkin out of the freezer and whipped it up with some shallots, peas, milk, and parmesan into a (usually tasty) pasta sauce.  Not only does it taste nothing like this dish usually tastes, it's also orange!  The pumpkin is weirdly mono-flavored.  My favorite thing about pumpkin is that it tastes earthy and rich without being overpowering.  This was simultaneously stronger and flatter in flavor than a real pumpkin.  I can't tell if I'm more sensitive to it because this book is reminding me of the value of fresh food, but if so I'm grateful for the reminder.  I knew when I grabbed the can off the shelf that I was letting convenience win out over common sense.  But I figured that I'd bought the can years ago, so the damage was already done.  It turns out the worst damage was yet to come . . . canned pumpkin ruined my dinner!

Grab Bag - A Slow Week for Baking

Apparently, being employed full time is quite a bit different from being employed part time and being a student part time.  The difference being that you can bake while you're studying.  When I was in school, it always seemed like I was keeping the craziest hours - the commute was long, plus, if I worked and went to class on the same day there was dead time that wouldn't exist if I just went to work for 8 hours.  Wow.  I was really mythologizing my old work schedule!  I'm still commuting nearly an hour each way to work.  I'm working a bit of overtime.  And, ALERT, when you have to wake up at 6am EVERY DAY (not just a few days a week or when you want to get a little extra studying in), you have to go to bed at a reasonable hour EVERY NIGHT.  I'm not claiming that I didn't work hard, or that I got very much sleep in law school, but I did have a bit more freedom to tinker with my schedule.  Since I've been temping, and also making an attempt to visit the gym, I've barely had time to cook a healthy dinner by the time I get home, let alone launch into a four hour baking extravaganza.  This weekend, I took a little much-deserved baking time:

I turned to a couple of old stand-by's.  One out of convenience, and the other out of my total love of fall.  On Sunday afternoon I whipped up a batch of Parker House Rolls.  Not the most thrilling, or even the healthiest, the Parker House Rolls have the advantage of being fast and providing me with sandwich bread for a week.  When I'm busy and hate to buy lunch out, the convenience of the basic sandwich can't be overlooked.  Still, it was probably the least thrilling baking I've done all month!

Luckily, I also had time to mix up a batch of my delicious (to the point of being weirdly addictive) fall muffins.  These muffins are most addictive (I think) because they don't taste nearly as healthy as they are.  I use a recipe of my own creation (although loosely based on a recipe for vegan zucchini bread that I found on the internet a year or so ago).  It's a little free form, so it's hard to write down, but here goes:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

• One mashed banana (I prefer them just ripe, but not overripe)
• Some quantity of pureed cooked pumpkin or squash - the amount depends on how much you have on hand and how pumpkin-y you're feeling.  I'm always feeling really pumpkin-y. 
• 1 cup (or less) of sugar (mixture of white and brown is tasty)
• about 2/3 cup applesauce and 1/3 cup vegetable oil - sometimes I use soy yogurt and skip the oil altogether, but watch out for the sweetness of the yogurt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

Mix the first five ingredients, then add:

• about 3 cups of flour - this will change depending on how much pumpkin you used.  I also like to use a mixture of white and wheat flour, plus some oats and some ground flax seed.  All of this will affect how much flour you need.
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 to 3 teaspoons cinnamon - I like to just open the top of the cinnamon and shake until it feels right.  Sometimes I mix in a little nutmeg or allspice too, for fun.

Once you've got that all mixed together and feeling like a thick batter, or just wetter than a moist dough, mix in:

• about half of a large pear or apple, diced and roasted - I usually roast the fruit in the toaster oven while I'm mixing the rest of the ingredients and preheating the oven.  I wrap the diced fruit in tinfoil and set the toaster oven to 350 or 400 degrees.
• a handful of finely chopped nuts (walnuts taste best, I think)
• a handful of chopped sultanas

Scoop the batter into a muffin tin that you have greased or lined with muffin cups and bake for about 45 minutes, or until they're done.  Because they'll already be brown, it's hard to tell when they start to brown on top, but they typically get somewhat firmer as they finish cooking.  These muffins turn into hard tack when overcooked, so I always opt for taking them out earlier when in doubt.  If you've really undercooked them, they'll fall apart when you try to take the wrapper off, so I sometimes test one and then pop the rest back in if the first one disintegrates.  For reference, the muffins absolutely rise better when you use soy yogurt, but I personally like the taste better without it. 

The number one thing about these muffins (well, other than the facts that they're high in fiber and have a full serving of fruits and vegetables) is the way they make my whole house smell like fall.  Roasting pumpkin and cinnamon are two of my favorite aromas.  Adding a baking pear to that is just about the best thing ever.  Plus, making these muffins lets me get all the enjoyment from these scents and flavors without the guilt of eating pumpkin pie for breakfast for a week.  Although I would love that.