Ovens are wonderful things

We made rolls this weekend using the sour dough starter again. We also sprouted wheat berries that helped give them an interesting texture and taste. I like them the best in the mornings with coffee and some jam.

While the oven was heated, we baked a round of cookies. We made the old farm hand molassas cookies we made a few months ago but this time blackstrap molassas was used and the sticky stuff gave the cookies an almost chocolate appearance and more robust flavor.

I remember once when I was a kid and my sisters and I had made friends with a girl near Underhill, VT whose parents worked on one of the first big corporate owned farms in VT. They raised swiss brown cows. We went into the kitchen and her mother was busy baking pies, and cookie sheets full of cooling doughnuts. The kitchen smelled of deep fat frying, a method of cooking my own mother hated. I was captivated with the scene and all the food.

Bread baking

Our sour dough starter has somehow survived another year and we continue to use it in breads. I have gotten into searching out flour from small mills. I recently bought a sack of whole wheat flour from New Hope Mills. I also brought home some wheat berries that we soaked for a few days and mixed into the bread sponge.

The fun of bread baking is trying various flours and experimenting with textures. My sister came back from Amish country a few months ago and brought back some overly sweetened raisin and cinnamon bread. My mother rolled out the dough much as the Amish ladies had done and spread the surface with a layer of brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins. It made for great toast.

We usually have the bread toasted in the mornings along with alot of coffee. My Dad tends to drink too much coffee and munches day old doughnuts he prefers to the bread. He gives Spencer a few bits of the doughnuts that has the dog salivating all over the rug.

So next we'll try the sprouted wheat bread again with about 2 cups of the sprouted berries instead of the measly 1/2 cup we started with last week.

This week we baked Irish soda bread in honor of St. Pat's day. I worked as a data-entry clerk for a few months at the county court house and met quite a few policemen and security guards. One of the sheriff's deputies gave me his grandmother's recipe for soda bread and we've been making it ever since. I had sampled it a few times in the past and always found it a little dry and not very flavorful but this one called for over a cup of raisins that kept the bread moist for days.


Irish Soda Bread

4 cups sifted all purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp double acting baking powder
2 tbl spoons caraway seeds (or more to taste)
1/4 cup butter
2 cups raisins (I use dark and white)
1 1/3 cups buttermilk
1 egg unbeaten
1 tsp baking soda
1 egg yolk, beaten

Heat oven to 375. Grease cast iron fry pan. Into mixing bowl sift flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Stir in caraway seeds with pastry blender. Cut in butter till its like course corn meal. Stir in raisins. Combine in another bowl, buttermilk, egg, soda. Stir this into flour mixture until just moistened.

Turn dough onto lightly floured board and knead lightly till smooth. Place in pan. Leave center higher than sides. Cut across 1/4 " deep in center. Bursh with egg yok. Bake about 1 hour or until done. Let cool 10 minutes in pan before removing.

Getting Ready for Spring and Summer

I'm starting to look forward to Spring and all the projects I have planned. I got a small babysitting job until the end of school getting two boys to school on time. I'm going to buy some fencing with the babysitting money and set up some pens for the chickens. I just can't free range them because of stray dogs and hawks. Also want to get a truckload of top soil to surround the garden and create some flower bed borders that will help deter pesky bugs.

I've been studying temporary fencing made from plastic. Although its only good for 10 years, it'll hopefully help me rotate the chicken pasture and keep them in fresh grass.

I stopped in Ithaca last week for a visit and some shopping. I bought some lemon grass that I'll sprout and plant. The lemon grass makes a great landscaping bush during the summer and you can harvest it in the Fall and freeze the stalks for Asian cooking. You just stick them in water until they have rooted and then plonk them into pots until the warm weather allows outside planting. Right now, in a big vase with glass beads at the bottom, the bouquet of lemon grass looks like some crazy window display.

I've begun planting peppers and eggplants upstairs near the big window. I've never had a much luck with eggplants from seed. Eggplants have to be the slowest of all plants to get started, but I love baba ganuj and like any addict, I just keep trying.

I am going to buy some portable fencing soon for both the chickens and possibly to extend the garden a bit more. Not sure how the garden will go this year with my Dad's illness. I've bought multiple packets of greens and lettuces from Johnny's Seeds and I'll start thinking about getting my Farmers Market gig going again. I'll bag mixed greens and lettuce that sold very well last year when I had a stall at the Bath Farmers Market. Its a ton of work to get up at 4 am and cut wash and bag greens but satisfying. People liked the bagged greens and I had a small group of people who bought from me each week.

So I'll start planning the garden, begin working on the chicken coop extension and think about all the other summer work I'm now going to have to do. Mowing the lawn, bush-hogging the field, trimming, fixing the rock walls and keeping the pond clean and weed whacked.

Its going to be a very busy summer.