Hearts Full of Joy

from the bounty of the earth

one of my most delightful experiences this fall was discovering the dutchman general store in cantril, iowa. a friend took me to this mennonite store (where you can watch happy rosy cheeked children playing in their traditional clothing. we drove through scenic, rolling, autumn farmland, and i repeated this magical journey for my in-laws when they visited.

i came home with boxes of apples, pears, and tomatoes, delicious and decorative squash, bulk spices and other goodies that i haven't been able to find here in the midwest, like millet, flax seed, unrefined sugar. oh! and unbelievably yummy dark dutch cocoa. and all at great prices! dreamy!  

i am enjoying a continuing love affair with canning this fall. the apples and pears combined made scrumptious juice, apple/pear sauce, and my favorite sauce that i discovered last year by accident: follow the apple pie filling recipe on the minute tapioca box (using both pears and apples), cut the sugar by 1/3, and cook until very juicy, then can it to put over pancakes, waffles, etc. so yummy!

i used the tomatoes to make surprisingly delicious fresh chunky past sauce and salsa.

we had fun with crabapples again.

and have been canning more chicken and beans with the new pressure canner.

we've picked apples at baxter's vineyards down the street more than once this fall, and on our first visit found 10 old blue glass canning jars waiting for a new owner. here they are with spices and goodies from the dutchman's store.

now they are full of apple/pear juice. somehow so much funner than clear glass jars.

i'm still drying apples from our last apple picking at baxter's last week.

i thrill at the bounties of autumn.

cold lunch

we made the big move to sack lunches this school year. the price of lunches for 4 children who don't like the lunches (the food is not our favorite part of life in the midwest) and so don't eat much of what we pay for was very unappealing. still, i hesitated. adding one more thing to our ever chaotic morning schedule, always needing to be stocked with yummy lunch ingredients, etc, etc - seemed crazy. i believe that i have post-traumatic stress syndrome from making lunches for yochien (kindergarten) in japan - must always have a meat, vegetable, and grain. no yogurt. no peanut butter. no jelly. weiners (more healthy than peanut butter???) must be cut and fried to look like little octopi (octopuses) with seaweed neckties....i could go on. trauma. especially during early pregnancy.

pleasantly surprised! i've enjoyed our lunches and so have the kids. i feel like i'm sending them a little love from home to enjoy halfway through their day. at least for the little ones. i confess i'm not up and making lunches before early morning seminary. (if i was japanese i would - it is normal for a mother to be up at 5:00 am to prepare gourmet breakfasts and lunches for a family) but the girls have done great with it on their own. and i'm enjoying the challenge of composing healthy, yet yummy mobile meals.

mia reports that at school, lunch brought from home is "cold lunch" and she has to tell her teacher every day that she is eating "cold". doesn't that seem a little....well, cold? hopefully it doesn't feel that way to her.

the lunch in the above photo is made from felt and is from a very fun etsy shop, buggabugs. if you're feeling crafty, (or have committed to have a handmade christmas like me) hop over and buy a pattern to make your own.

more on mulberries....

i have a request for the mulberry jam recipe i used.
when i first decided to use our mulberries i searched the internet and found lots of amazing sites on cooking with mulberries, including lots of different jam recipes of varying difficulty and complexity. after reading through them all, i chose to just use the berry jam recipe in the pectin box. next time i will try it with the no sugar or low sugar recipe. i'm sure that it would work for freezer jam too....mmm, mmm. i've enjoyed my fresh strawberry freezer jam so much that it's almost gone.

great mulberry cooking sites i found:
http://www.pickyourown.org/mulberryjam.htm
http://www.allaboutstuff.com/Cooking/Multiple_Mulberry_Recipes.asp
i found the mulberry syrup recipe here, with lots of other amazing looking syrup recipes i want to try:
http://www.recipegoldmine.com/syrup/syrup.html

healthy treats

our family's new favorite treat is yogurt bites. i saw the recipe in the guidebook for the new food dehydrator that brock gave me for mother's day. it is basically fruit leather made with plain yogurt, pureed fruit, and agave nectar (healthy sweetener). after drying, you roll it up, cut it into 1/2 inch pieces, and dry again for an hour or two. so yummy! better than candy! my kids beg for it!

banana pineapple yogurt and strawberry yogurt.

strawberry yogurt bites sitting on banana pineapple yogurt leather.

i've found that if you add banana, it is extra yummy, but also extra difficult to remove from the paper after drying.

the mulberry experiment

i abhor waste. i keep ridiculously small scraps of fabric, carefully saved in ziplock bags. i can't bear wasted food, or wasted anything. i suspect it was bred into me by my pioneer ancestors.
whatever the reason, i love to find uses for things that seem less than useful.

we work and work and work to get certain fruits and vegetables to grow, and then some are just given to us without effort. the second type tend to go unappreciated, and fall to the ground unnoticed. i so enjoyed (and am still enjoying the rewards of) my crab apple project last fall.

this spring/summer mulberries have been the unappreciated fruit that i felt determined to make into something yummy and useful.  first i made a batch of mulberry syrup - yummy! next, a batch of mulberry jam - very yummy too! my syrup turned out a little thick, and my jam is a little runny, so they are similar consistencies...but both are delish!

the down side of working with mulberries: removing the stems is somewhat labor intensive, and they have lots of seeds.
upside: they grow abundantly for free, and they taste really good.

i enjoyed my jam making enough that also i made some fresh freezer jam from strawberries that needed to be used - really, really good! my family is enjoying all three efforts, and that is satisfying....and good for the kids who got tired of gathering mulberries, but now feel a sense of accomplishment as they eat the mulberry jam and syrup.

berry good

savoring the handful of strawberries we get each day, and
discovering mulberries. two huge mulberry trees hang onto our property and drop hundreds of berries daily. we're finding that gathering them off the lawn is a nice evening family activity. this photos shows last night's gatherings. even little miss 2 years old can gather, but doesn't understand how to avoid stepping on the ungathered. i've googled and found lots of yummy recipes. should we enjoy them all fresh and raw, or make jams, mousses, muffins, cobblers, and more?
nothing tastes better then freshly home-grow, picked when ripe, pesticide free berries.

we're hoping for raspberries this summer, and blackberries and blueberries next summer.

warm wishes & wonderful food

pies are baking in the oven....chocolate pecan, apple, & pumpkin chocolate cheesecake (it's all bout the chocolate for me), christmas music fills our home....this is when we break it out and start to get in that christmasy mood, and my mom's cranberry salad is marinating. my other favorite thanksgiving flavor (besides pumpkin & chocolate) is cranberry. and i could go without the turkey (i'm not a big meat eater) before i could skip my mom's cranberry salad.

here's the recipe:

grind 1 package fresh or frozen cranberries in a blender (frozen works best if you have a powerful blender) my mom & i buy them fresh, and then freeze them.

add:
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 can crushed pineapple - drain as much as you can
1 package miniature marshmallows

refridgerate overnight

add:
chopped apples - i add as many as i can, because they make it yummy & healthy (got to compensate for all the marshamllows )
8 or 12 oz whipped topping (i use 8 oz, i like it less fluffy and more tangy)

here is a great sweet potato/yam recipe from bonnie.
i used freshly baked sweet potatoes and doubled the recipe without doubling the sugar, butter, or topping, and i loved it and felt healthier. add some salt if you try this. but thanksgiving isn't a time to count fat and calories, so enjoy it full on if you like.

she also has a fabulous looking recipe for pumpkin pie waffles posted, i haven't tried it yet, but really, really want to.

i wish you a cozy, warm, and wonderful thanksgiving!
we are off to bloomington & the smiths when the pies are out of the oven.

thankfulness

believe it or not, i've been canning again. i was offered boxes full of free pears and apples, and although i had to talk myself into driving to carthage and picking them up, i felt that i couldn't let good food go to waste. i spent three days canning apples and pears in cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, pumkin pie spice, and combinations of the above, canning pears in apple juice with cinnamon sticks, canning and freezing apple & pear pie filling, and making more jam. i tried a spiced apple & pear jam and then tried adding apple & pear jam to a batch of crabapple jam....still have crabapples hanging on my tree.
 
spiced apple-pear jam, pears in apple juice with cinnamon sticks, & crabapple-pear-apple jam.

it feels to good, and so provident, to have almost 4 dozen more jars filled and ready to eat & enjoy. and somehow all of this canning has re-awakened the love of homemaking arts inside of me. i have always loved homemaking, until about 4 years ago when a darling and lovable little boy turned my life upside down, not allowing me time to do anything but try to keep up with his messes, which was impossible. so my house was dirty, i was discouraged, and too tired to enjoy cooking, cleaning, etc. my quilting kept me somewhat sane. but my zest for being a homemaker waned and vanished. now it is back, and i am grateful.

so satisfying

i was bitten by the canning bug after canning our own fresh & free grape juice last month. so after brock & i enthusiastically ordered 8 fruit trees and 6 berry bushes to plant in our yard this fall, i thought about how long it would take them to bear fruit. and then i thought about our crabapple tree. it was beautiful in the spring when we were house hunting, covered with blossoms,

and it has been beautiful in the fall, covered with little red apples:
i hadn't imagined it being useful in any practical way. but as i thought about fruit and canning, i remembered hearing of crabapple jam. i hopped on the internet and pulled up lots of yummy sounding recipes. and we started picking.
 
even tiny fingers could pick these apples

they piled up

and i started cooking. first i made a crabapple pie for family home evening dessert.

the flavor was great, like cranberreis, but better. but the texture left much to be desired...to many little seeds and core pieces (i just chopped them up like the recipe said....). plus it was very labor intensive. next i borrowed my friend's faithful steam juicer and went to work. i found that it is not at all necessary, or even helpful, to chop the apples first. just throw them in the juicer, stems and all.

with that juice, i made crabapple hot pepper jelly - very delish, and just plain old crabapple jelly - also yummy. for my final stage of testing, i made crabapple jam and crabapple butter. the jam was the winner because my family likes it the best, it was the least amount of work, and it gave the highest yield of finished product for the amount of crabapples used. but the hot pepper jelly is so yummy with cream cheese and crackers. i have made 4 batches of it so far, and given away much, much.

remember our apple picking day? we ended up with 7 boxes after two days of picking. 3 or 4 boxes were used at our relief society apple canning enrichment activity, and i used the rest.

with the help of sherry's juicer, these apples & their peelings made the loveliest rosy red juice and sauce.

apple slices, apple juice, apple sauce (nutmeg was my favorite seasoning for the sauce), crabapple jelly, butter and hot pepper jelly.

6 dozen quarts of canning later (including the grape juice), i feel very satisfied. to take something that i got for free, and would have gone to waste, and use it to make something beautiful, yummy, and useful that my family can enjoy is very fulfilling. after mia had her first after-school snack of toast with crabapple jelly, she asked if she could run outside and pick some more crabapples. a little while later, she came back with another boxful. and i knew it was all worth it. i have many generations of this kind of pioneer practicality bred into me, and i am grateful.

as we were picking our crabapples, two neighbors stopped by and made disparaging comments about my little round red fruit friends. unfair. and so in their defense i offer their good points:
1. birds and bugs don't like them, so you don't have to spray. this saves time, energy, money, and pesticides in your family's airways and stomachs (i hate pesticides, and all of our canned fruit this year was pesticide free - another benefit of gathering free fruit that no one planned to use) 2. the fruit is small and branches are low, so even little ones can help pick. 3. fruit flies don't like them either. i wish that was true for grapes and apples. 4. they have a really yummy tangy zip in jams & jellies. 5. they grow in abundance with no effort.

i have enough picked crabapples (and many more still on the tree) left to make another batch of jam....and i think i will.

caramelicious

for stacy:
my mom's caramel recipe (it's very good)

2 sticks (1/2 pound) butter
2 cups whipping cream
2 cups corn syrup
2 cups granulated sugar

cook, stirring occasionally over medium heat to a soft crack stage.
butter a 9x13 pan and line with chopped nuts.
pour caramels into pan and cool.

for anyone who love a great caramel apple:
my mom's caramel apple recipe (i've never had any better)

15-24 aples with sticks
4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup corn syrup
2 cans evaporated milk, divided

cook sugar, corn syrup, & 2/3 cup evaporated milk in heavy kettle, heating slowly until sugar is dissolved. stir until thick & syrupy. add remaining evaporated milk, a little at a time, keeping mixture boiling. cook to soft-fimr ball stage, stirring occasionally (caramel will be thick and brown with bubbles slowly rising and pooping....if you are my mom, you don't have to test for the stage, you can just tell). remove from heat and let it stand until it quits bubbling. quickly dip apples.
 
we made these for family home evening tonight. we didn't have popcicle sticks, so we used waribashi (disposable chop sticks). this represents all that is good about fall for us. i have a very lovely memory of a field trip on a fall day in elementary school. mom packed my lunch, and packed me one of her apples in a sandwich bag lined with butter. i thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to me, so did all of my friends.

and a post about my mom's caramel recipes would not be complete without:
my mom's caramel popcorn recipe (this is to die for - no other caramel popcorn even comes close)

3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 pound butter (2 sticks)
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/8 tsp cream of tartar

mix all ingredients in sauce pan. boil to soft ball stage (almost as soon as it boils). remove from heat and stir well. add 1/4 tsp baking soda. pour over 3 poppers full of corn.