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- Penobscot River Bridge
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- Fort Knox, ME
Caramel and Apple
Last week I was perusing the King Arthur Flour catalog (a guilty pleasure of mine) and they had a recipe for Apple Cider Caramels. I thought, hmmmm, this might be a fun thing to try with the potential of being delicious, anything that contains heavy cream and butter has to be good. It also was something that I could make with ingredients I had on hand. The recipe calls for boiled cider – a bottle of which is sitting in my refrigerator. I’m always looking for ways of using it because the apple flavor is intense. The website Foodie with Family has a good description of boiled cider and the simple, albeit long process of making it.
The recipe for the caramels can be found at the King Arthur Flour website. They are extraordinarily simple to make. The biggest problem I had initially was the size of my pan. I had to watch it for a bit to make sure it didn’t boil over (what a mess that would have been). Basically you put everything together and let it boil away for about a half hour until the mixture reaches 248 degrees on a candy thermometer. The spices are mixed in and it is poured into a prepped 8×8 pan. It then has to sit for 12 to 18 hours.
I was wondering about that a little – 12 to 18 hours? When I took this off of the stove it looked like one foamy mess quite honestly. I stirred and then poured it into the pan and let it sit the required time. It was beautiful when I turned it out of the pan.
I learned a couple of things about making caramels – they don’t stick to anything. When you are done cutting them your hands are sticky but they don’t stick to any surfaces. They came right out of the pan and didn’t stick to the knife at all as I was cutting them. They didn’t stick to each other. I can only assume it has to do with the amount of fat that went into it in the beginning.
I cut them into 1 inch squares and wrapped them in parchment. I also ate a couple during this process and fed them to people around me (even if it was 10:00 in the morning). Apple pie is what you think of when you are eating this delightfully chewy confection. The boiled cider shines in this recipe.
I made these to see how they would be for a Fall gathering we will be having at the house in a couple of weeks. I wanted to use as many of the fruits and veggies that are available for the food and the desserts are just begging to be apple and pumpkin – isn’t that what you think of when you are having a harvest party? Meanwhile I will be passing these out to friends and family for the “taste test” but honestly, this is a winner.
“Fresh Fish Sold Here Today:” The Slow Decline and Agonizing Death of the News Business
This is sad and not unexpected. But I long for the film days with a Graflex 4×5 Speed Graphic and time spent alone in a darkroom.
The Chicago Sun-Times has laid-off its entire photography department.
I had to take a moment to digest that idea. Photography has been an essential part of the newspaper business since the New York Daily Graphic ran the first half-tone photo reproduction (of New York’s Steinway Hall) on its front page in 1873. William Randolph Hearst apocryphally sent his photographers and illustrators to Cuba in 1898 with the message “you supply the pictures, and I’ll supply the war.” For more than a century, photography and journalism have been virtually one and the same. This was a shock!
Yet, in another breath, it is not such a shock. The photographers of the 19th century – like Alexander Gardiner and Matthew Brady – and the 20th century – Robert Capa, Weegie and many, many others – were highly-trained craftsmen in the fullest sense of the term. Photography was an enormously…
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Chester Swims
Chester swimming –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln25i3bAA8A
Percy’s Point is one of our favorite spots right now. It’s quiet, peaceful and the perfect spot for Chester to getting his swimming in. He’s come a long way since his first swim in June. I was afraid my water dog would be a panic swimmer forever. Not so, he LOVES it.
Dragonflies in My Garden
From Vikusik on Flickr
Sunday was a sunny, beautiful day. I sat in a chair at the edge of my garden husking my popcorn when a huge dragonfly landed on the front of my t-shirt. It’s rather startling when an insect of this size lands on you – especially when you hear it coming in for a landing. It was stunningly beautiful. It sat in a spot that allowed me close inspection. At first I was wondering why it had little red legs under it’s chin then realized (due to the crunching) that it was eating another insect recently caught.
The property has a lot of wetlands and I look forward to seeing dragonflies every year. There is usually a yearly swarm which is a sight to behold. We have flying ants that take off from nests in the stone patio and it seems like the dragonflies are ready and waiting for this event. A few years ago it looked like a dragonfly cyclone over the patio as hundreds of dragonflies swarmed over the emerging ants for dinner. They must have been tasty.
Last spring the New York Times did an article with a few videos about dragonflies, thought I would share – Nature’s Drone, Pretty and Deadly.
I’m just glad I’m not a flying ant or mosquito.
Weaving Wednesday 15 – Round Robin Week 1
I had lost track of time and realized (yesterday) that I was a week off in getting my loom ready for the class round robin. I left work early to get the loom slayed and tied off. I have to admit I always love the way the loom looks at this point.
It is warped in a 5/2 unmercerized cotton. Once that was done I had 3 hours to weave my 27″ before I could move on to the next loom. The pattern is called “Crooked Check” from Margaret B. Windeknecht’s Color and Weave II. It’s a straight twill and was fun and quick to weave.
I kept getting a little confused using two shuttles in a different way than I do with the overshot. With overshot you use two different shuttles for every row you weave, with this it was 4 rows of white, 4 rows of blue. That may be the inherent problem in weaving two totally different projects at the same time. About two hours into it I was getting the hang of it.
I did my 27 inches in the alloted time and was very pleased with the results. This pattern is so cute, it looks like little snail trails.
The round robin project is perfect for me. I love hand-woven towels, they get better each time you wash them but I find them insufferably boring to weave. I was a little tired of this by the time I finished it. I would have been able to weave a second one but by then I would have been done with it. Next week I will pick another loom, another project without having to warp it. Sweet!
On Grandparents
My Mimi (Lena Babineau Alix) with me – 1956
Last Friday a long time customer of ours came in to have the oil changed in her car. She and her husband have been bringing their cars into us for over 25 years. Her husband passed away a little over a year ago after doing battle with dementia for a number of years. She was with him 6 days a week for over 3 years at the veterans hospital.
Before his illness they spent a good deal of their time outdoors. He was an avid fisherman, they had a place in Maine, I believe on a lake. Family was everything to them and all would spend many, many days fishing with their father/grandfather.
As she reminisced about the days shortly after the death of her husband she told me the first words out of her 12-year-old granddaughter’s mouth were “Who will take me fishing?’. Father and uncles all said that they would but her response was “But it won’t be the same”.
I felt her granddaughter’s pain. My grandparents have been gone for many, many years now. I miss them dearly. They all had their strengths, the things that they played to. Grampa was the Red Sox, beer and spanish peanuts, always. Nan taught me how to embroider, we learned to quilt together, handcrafts were the game. Pampi always tinkered with things (he was actually quite brilliant in his mechanical ability) and was always ready to laugh. Mimi was the one I played with, laughed with, hugged, adored. She was the one who I trusted and loved more than the others. She was always on our level through every age. When visiting Mimi and Pampi I always felt unconditionally loved, I could do no wrong.
It’s the little things that we remember. I drank my first cup of tea at their table (really warm milk). Tea was always ritual with them – a pot was brewed after supper, every night. We would sit around the table and talk. We would laugh at Pampi’s antics to get a rise out of the wife he clearly adored. The great aunts and uncles would visit, tales of the past and gossip of the present would rule, an uncle would slip into French when he was excited. Laughter, always lots of laughter.
One of my nieces was lamenting the fact that her children will never know her Mabel the way she does. It’s true we said but you never knew our Mimi and that is sad for us. Each child in each generation has their own experience. I hope that I am the kind of grandmother that my grandchildren can lament their children not knowing. I do know that they will probably grow up drinking some sort of hot beverage, sitting around a table and talking about the old days. They will probably also spend a good deal of time outdoors looking at bugs, birds and plants. I can teach them to use their hands and hopefully their minds and I hope that’s what they’ll remember.
End of Year Garden Assessment
I took this photograph yesterday morning overlooking the best garden of weeds I have ever had. I have had a vegetable garden for a good ten years now and this has to be the worst one yet. Fortunately the rest of the view is pretty nice.
For some reason in my mind it is the first week of October (I even tore off the September page of the calendar on Saturday and didn’t realize it until Sunday). It may be the weeds or my confused state but I decided to dismantle most of the garden this past weekend. I had Cherry Belle radishes the size of beets – over 5 feet tall and gone to seed (which was interesting since I had never done that). I had a total of two beets the size of radishes.
I really began by pulling up all of my popcorn. It had been raining the past week a good deal and I thought I should probably get it out of the ground. I laid all of the stalks in my garden wagon thinking I would keep the ears on the stalks to dry further. This was Tom Thumb popcorn, an heirloom variety developed in New Hampshire. It was bred to do well in a short season. It only grows 3 feet tall and is quite cute. It did well. Sunday I decided to pull all of the ears off of the stocks, peel back the husks and let them dry further. They are supposed to dry to a 14% moisture content. I’m not sure how you’re supposed to figure that out but most people just try popping a few kernels every so often during the drying period to see when they pop. Works for me. Did I mention that none of these ears is more than 4 inches long? Most are in the 3 inch category – hence the name Tom Thumb.
I then pulled what carrots I had. I had planted two varieties – the old standby Danvers and Atomic Red. Another rather disappointing harvest. This is all I had – a total of 6 pints when it was all said and done. When I saw them scrubbed up in the bowl I was glad I had planted both, they look great together. I canned them with a brown sugar glaze. I had heard a review from my sister that this was the only way to go. Well, when you only have 6 pints you have to make a choice, I went with sweet.
The rest of the potatoes were dug on Saturday and left out in the sun until yesterday afternoon. Not a particularly good year for them either. We had a lot of rain and the earth really compacted around them. The potatoes are delicious, the yield was just not there (that and the fact that we ate fully half of them as new potatoes).
Then there is the matter of tomatoes. The vines in the garden have been brown without leaves for a couple of weeks. The yellow cherries just kept coming – we are at a loss to understand why. This tomato is extremely prolific. The bonus is it takes them a long, long time to rot. Another interesting thing is they drop off of the vine as soon as they begin to turn yellow so rather than pick them off of the plant you end up picking them off of the ground. I was pulling the stakes up that were holding the plants and these tomatoes were everywhere. Not being one to let good food go to waste I picked them up and canned them with 4 red tomatoes that were the only ones left. I ended the tomato season with an additional 6 pints of beautiful golden sauce.
I planted a total of seven eggplants – they produced 4 fruit. They were delicious but I’m not sure if it was this particular year’s weather or my growing season is just too short. The plants are blossoming like crazy right now but I know there won’t be enough time before we have a frost. I feel a little bad pulling them up but I’m not going to weed around them.
The asparagus looks great. The bed will be cleaned out, mulched and some edging will be put in this fall. The rutabagas are just okay this year, they will stay in the ground until a couple of frosts hit, then I will pull them. They are smaller than usual. The rest of the garden will be tilled in the next week or so (because I can’t look at the crabgrass any more).
We have scoped out a new area for the garden. This will involve outside help for excavation and some fill but it holds the promise of being a better location long term. We have some mature maples along the south end of where the garden presently is and that is the one tree we are loathe to cut down. I figure the way the crabgrass grew in this year it would take about a month to turn the present garden into lawn since most of the lawn is crabgrass anyway.
Weekly Photo Challenge – Inside
Little Gifts
I ran out of the grape jelly I made two years ago from grapes grown on a friend’s property in Rowe. I was lamenting the fact that she wasn’t around to ask and I didn’t want to wander around on her land without permission. I had just come to the sad conclusion that I would have another year without it. Yesterday, at the shop, I walked over to get some information on a car and looked up at the fence that is in between our lot and the next. Grapes – loads of them. I brought out a box this morning and picked away. They are small, they are wild and they are tart. With the amount of sugar that is used in jelly making this is the perfect fruit.
This is a classic case of finding food in unexpected places. This is on a fence in a parking lot. There is maybe a 4 foot wide span of earth in between the lots and that is where they grow. They have been growing there for years judging by the size of the vines. With all my whining about not having any grapes I’m surprised that Bill didn’t say anything about these. After I said I was going to pick them today he told me that he had a customer that used to come in and pick them every year. I guess I’m not really that surprised. He, like me, never thinks we are going to see wild food growing anywhere down here. It always seems so . . . urban. Too much asphalt and concrete. Then again we have an old Italian body shop owner 3 doors down from us that cut a 3′ x 6′ patch out of the parking lot and grows tomatoes and peppers there every year – right up against the building. They are spectacular but I always looked at that as the Italian gift, they seem to be able to grow tomatoes anywhere.
I think the lesson here is to open your eyes and expect the unexpected. Then be brave enough to pick what you see and use it.
Now I’m just dreaming about those PBJs.
Fort Pelham Farm 