Preserving the Harvest: Drying Food for winter storage

Since my last post, where I wrote that we had found a home and things were moving forward for us to close and move in a couple of weeks, everything has fallen apart, well in the house realm that is. Working with banks and trying to buy a foreclosure is an interesting learning experience. Although I must admit that I would be very glad to be done with the "learning" aspect of this process. It turns out the bank who owned the foreclosure we were trying to buy decided to change their part of the agreed offer leaving us having to back out of the deal. We've been scrambling once again to find a place to live, now focusing on renting on a short term basis, since there is no longer enough time to buy a place before we move (which is in about 2 weeks). Finding a rental property is hard where we live. Well, it's hard if you don't want to spend a fortune or commit to a 12 month lease and you have pets. Both my husband and I are working towards not feeling overwhelmed with so many unknowns in our life at the moment. It's been and a hard and exhausting process. What we know is that we are going to trust in our Lord our God. We know He can give us the wisdom we need for making the right decisions and He can also provide us with the right place to live. So for now, I am packing, and scouring the internet for places to live and hoping that something opens up for us in the next day or so, so we at least can know whether we need a storage unit, if we need to sell more of our stuff, when we need to rent a check and all the other fun stuff that goes with moving. For those of you who are believers in Christ Jesus and our Holy Father in Heaven our Savior, please lift us up in your prayers.

Now, how about something that actually deals with food?!

Last weeks CSA box. Doesn't it look delicious and what amazing colors?!

This time of year I keep my eyes wide open for ways I can get fresh foods in bulk for an excellent price, so I can put it away for winter. I also put aside any extra food we don't or can't get through in our CSA box.

Spring Salad with a Honey Vinaigrette

My family and I headed to the St. Paul's Farmers Market on Saturday morning and were happy to see all the fresh produce beginning to make its appearance. I snapped up a bunch of different salad greens, green onions, radishes, garlic scapes, strawberries, sugar snap peas, asparagus and a mushroom growing kit (will show you it in my next post, super cool!) along with my usual purchases of meat and eggs from Farm on Wheels. I even got some more beautiful flowers and herbs to add to my growing flower pot garden.  With the live music and the crowds of people milling about, it's truly a great way to start your morning. The earlier you get there the better it is. If you haven't been to the St. Paul's Farmers Market, do your best to do so. It's totally worth the trip and you just might find yourself making it a regular occasion, especially as the season goes on.

What You'll Need:

For the Salad

• A variety of salad greens like lettuce, spinach, pea shoots, radish leaves, arugula, dandelion greens
• Sliced fresh fruit like strawberries, apples and peaches
• Raw sunflower seeds

For the Dressing

• 3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 2 Tbsp. honey
• 5 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
• 1/2 Tsp. sea salt

Getting Started

1. First, mix together your dressing ingredients and if possible let sit for at least 30 minutes before using. This will allow the garlic to add some extra flavor.  If your honey is hard (mine always is), melt it over low heat in a small pot and then add it to your other ingredients.

2. Mix together your salad greens and add your fresh fruit.

3. Toast your sunflower seeds in a small pan over medium high heat then add them to your salad

4. Give your salad dressing a good stir with a fork  (the vinegar and oil like to separate) and then drizzle on your salad

Enjoy this refreshing and light meal. We had this salad last night and enjoyed it with fresh broiled salmon with garlic scapes on top. It's was delicious!

Rhubarb Pie

Hurray! Home-grown spring fruits and vegetables are beginning to make their appearance! My mother-in-law recently brought me a very decent amount of rhubarb and asparagus from her garden, so I thought this would be the perfect time to share a rhubarb pie recipe. We are and have been enjoying a lot of rhubarb desserts. The question is do I make a rhubarb cake or rhubarb crisp next?

I used rapadura to sweeten my pie and it worked great. Next time I might try decreasing the sugar amount and using some stevia in replacement. I should mention this pie isn't overly sweet, more like just sweet enough. Some recipes I've seen use 2 parts rhubarb to 1 part sugar, wow, that would be much too sugary for my taste buds as I prefer to taste the fruit. The vanilla ice cream or whip cream you serve with it (which I say is a must) adds all the extra sweetness you'll need, if you need it at all.

When picking rhubarb try to get stalks that aren't any thicker then your thumb. The thicker they are the more bitter and stringy they are. Young, fresh rhubarb works the best.

What You'll Need - one 9" covered pie

Whole Wheat Pie Crust
3 cups organic whole wheat or spelt flour
1 tsp. sea salt
2 tbsp. rapadura - optional, but works well with this pie
1 cup cold, organic butter
12 tbsp. cold, organic milk

Filling
6 cups rhubarb, washed and cut into 1/2" pieces
1 1/2 cup rapadura or white sugar
1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp cornstarch (I did try arrowroot the first time I made this pie and didn't have much success. I'm going to try it one more time with a couple of changes. I'll update the recipe it it works.)
1/4 tsp. sea salt
2 tbsp. cold butter

Other Items
2 large mixing bowls
Pastry Blender or two knifes
Fork
Mixing spoon
Measuring cups and spoons
Rolling Pin
9" pie pan
Rimmed cookie sheet lined with tinfoil


Getting Started

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

1. Follow the instructions for making the whole wheat pie crust from my previous post:
http://artistta.blogspot.com/2010/05/whole-wheat-or-spelt-pie-crust.html

2. In a large mixing bowl, stir together your rhubarb, sugar, cornstarch and salt.

3. Roll out your bottom pie crust so that it's at least 2" larger than your pie pan when the pan is upside down. See the picture below.








4. Place the rolled out dough into your pie pan and fill with your pie ingredients, then chop your 2 tbsp. of butter and place on top.



5. Roll out your top crust so it's about 1" larger than the top of the pie. You can either place it directly on the pie and cut several 2"-3" slits in the top to allow steam to release or you can cut it into strips to do a lattice top. As you'll be able to see from the following pictures I decided to do a lattice top.

Trim your edges of excess dough, then crimp them with your fingers or the tines of a fork.







6. Optional Step: Brush the top of your pie with milk, cream or an egg yolk mix with 1/8 tsp. of water then sprinkle a little sugar on top.

7. Place your pie on your cookie sheet that has been lined with tinfoil. This is in case the juices from the pie overflow. You don't want them to get on the bottom of your oven and start to smoke, unless you like that natural smoke flavor in your pie! :-) I've made that mistake before and it's so frustrating, because once the juice starts smoking there's nothing you can really do about it, except clean your oven really well before you use it next time.

I'd also recommend covering the edges of your pie with tinfoil so they don't burn. They will bake much faster then the rest of the pie.

8. Put your pie in a pre-heated 425 degree oven and bake for 30 minutes. Then turn your oven down to 350 degrees. and bake the pie for an additional 30-35 minutes. If you covered the edges of your pie with tinfoil, remove it when you turn the temperature down.

Allow the pie to cool completely before serving and make sure there is a large scoop of vanilla ice cream or whip cream to go with it!

Strawberry and Raspberry Ice Cream

Spring is here and at least for the next couple of days so is some warm weather. After recently making some homemade vanilla bean ice cream (recipe to come soon), I was reminded of how delicious homemade ice cream can be. Honestly, there is no comparison to ice cream made at home and the stuff at the store with fillers and thickeners, whether it's organic or not. Have you ever taken the time to read the ingredient list of store bought ice cream? Why they need so many extra ingredients, even in plain vanilla, I shall never understand.

Simple, healthy ingredients always make the best food, at least in my opinion! This dish is very easy to make and you can use fresh or frozen fruit. I have been trying to use up all the berries I froze from last summer, so I'm ready to go for the fresh ones that will be arriving in the next couple of months. Buying berries in season and than freezing them can be a huge money saver and allows you to enjoy those summer time items all winter long. They can be a huge lift to the spirits when your tired of all the normal winter time foods. I love berries in muffins, pancakes. smoothies or making fresh berry syrup to put into yogurt, on ice cream or top off pancakes.

This ice cream is excellent by itself, but even better with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream along side it. You'll be begging for seconds! You can use all strawberries or a mix of strawberries and raspberries. You could also use all raspberries, but depending on how sweet they are, you might need a little bit more sugar.




What You'll Need

• 2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen strawberries
• 2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries
• 1 cup organic sugar
• 2 tsp. pure, organic vanilla extract
• 2 cups organic whole milk
• 2 cups organic cream
• 1/4 tsp. salt

• Ice cream maker
• Blender
• Measuring cups and spoons
• Large mixing bowl
• Mixing spoon
• Sharp knife
  

Getting Started

1. Using your blender, blend together your whole milk, 1 1/2 cups of strawberries, 1 1/2 cups of raspberries, sugar and salt until mixture is smooth.






2. Pour mixture into large mixing bowl and stir in cream. Chop your last two cups of fruit into small pieces and then add to above mixture, mixing well.






3. Pour into ice cream maker and follow manufacturer instructions for making ice cream.

Note: This filled my ice cream maker to the very top. Depending on what your ice cream makers capacity is, you might have to do this recipe in two batches.



Now the wonderful part, eating it all up! What's great is this recipe doesn't have an excessive amount of sugar and you could easily use a sugar substitute like stevia if you wanted to avoid sugar all together. If you use good quality ingredients, this dessert is actually healthy for you and can be a great desert for kids, especially if you omit the sugar and use stevia. Yes, you read correctly I did write that this could be a healthy dessert, remember the right types of fats are great for our bodies. Our bodies will actually burn the calories better and we need healthy fats for our brains to function properly. Now I'm not saying to go and eat a gallon of ice cream, but you could do much, much worse in the dessert department.