Aah Spring

My husband, Dave, took this video of our old apricot tree on the first day of Spring. That was last Monday.

The temperature was hovering around 80 degrees and we could hear the bees buzzing fifty feet before reaching the tree.

I took this video of the same tree this afternoon. The weather forecast says we could get three inches of snow before it is finished and low temperatures around 28 degrees. Maybe the snow will be enough insulation to keep the buds and newly pollinated flowers from frost damage. Maybe not.

I have to admit I have mixed feelings about losing this year's crop of apricots. A full tree of fruit means a solid week of hard work. Each day I pick fruit in the morning, then I find myself pitting and cooking jam or freezing or drying the halves for the rest of the day. By the end of the week I am exhausted with a cellar full of the best apricot jam I have ever tasted. So I will have to wait to see if Mother Nature has a vacation from apricots in store for me this June.

Here is a recipe for Apricot Butter. It uses apricot jam but you could try it with other types like strawberry or raspberry. It is wonderful on home made bread, muffins, scones, and even pancakes.

Apricot Butter

1/2 cup (one stick) lightly salted butter, softened

2 Tablespoons home made apricot jam

1 Tablespoon powered sugar

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Put all the ingredients in a small bowl and stir together until smooth. Serve at once or cover and refrigerate. If refrigerated, soften to room temperature before serving.

Springerle

Here it is, Christmas Eve.  I am continuing our German family tradition of baking lots of cookies in celebration of Christmas. Usually I try at least one new recipe but there are a few recipes that must be baked each year.  At the top of that list are Springerle. Springerle are a very basic egg, sugar, and flour cookie flavored with anise and formed with a carved mold or rolling pin. Some people paint them with food color after they are baked.  I don't.

Making Springerle is like stepping into a culinary time machine. Food historians think that these cookies date back to Pagan Germanic winter festivals. Molded breads in the shape of animals and fruits were made as tokens in place of live offerings to the Gods. Early Springerle molds can be dated to the fourteenth century.  Many from the nineteenth century are very elaborate and some may have been used as edible holiday greeting cards. I have to confess that Springerle (fondly called Springers by people who know and love them) are not my favorite cookie to eat. I do love the mold I use to make them and the fact that my friends and neighbors are delighted that there is still someone around who can produce a small, tasty, work of art that reminds them of their mother or grandmother.

My Springerle mold was a given to my Mom when she was a young woman. It was from an elderly bachelor neighbor and it belonged to his mother so I can guess that it is at least a century old.  As with most antique molds it is hand carved wood, in this case walnut. When I am not using it, it hangs in a shadow box frame in my kitchen because it is a work of art and a piece of history.




















My recipe is a combination of old and new ingredients. My Mom got this 'new and improved' version from the woman I grew up calling Aunt Verana even though she was not related to our family. The powered sugar is a new convenience. It makes incorporating the sugar into the eggs much easier.  The hartshorn (ammonium carbonate) dates to the time before commercial baking powder. The method I use to beat the eggs also dates from that time. Springerle that are made correctly are light and a little chewy, not hard square rocks as many I have tried.
Here is the recipe I use:

Let me elaborate on the ingredients and method a bit.

As I have said hartshorn is ammonium carbonate. It is a white powder much like baking soda but it smells of ammonia. Some old fashion drug stores still carry it but you have to ask for it. I am lucky that there is a small family owned place called Crystal and Spice Shoppe a few miles from the farm that keeps it in stock during the holiday season. They also carry a good quality anise oil. You want anise oil, not extract.

Eggs: Bring them to room temperature before you beat them because they will develop more volume. Then beat them until they are very light and frothy, maybe five minutes or so. When you dip your finger in them they should almost hold a peak. Remember you are using the eggs as a form of leavening also.

I refrigerate the dough overnight to make rolling and getting a good impression from the mold easier.

Place the cut cookies on baking parchment covered cookie sheets and let them dry at least 3 hours. Sometimes I let them overnight. This "sets" the impressions.

When they are finished baking, the cookies should be white with no signs of browning with the exception of a little color on the bottom surface. Do NOT take a deep breath when you open the oven door to check on them. The ammonia can be overwhelming but will dissipate quickly.

Merry Christmas and may we find our way forward into the new year by remembering the people that bring love and joy into our lives.

A load of …organic matter

In this case organic matter would be horse manure. Early this spring I called my cousin Kay who has two horses and asked if she had any horse manure I could have. She said,”When can I bring it over?”

Manure is great for garden soil. It fertilizes as well as aiding the soil structure, not to mention it is green in many meanings of the word. Long before the modern world knew the terms green, sustainable, organic, community garden, seed saver, or locavores they were part of daily living for my family.

The way of farm life for my grandfather and the generations before him was to grow food to feed your family and sell what you couldn’t eat, preserve, or store. Grow grain and grass to feed and house the animals that helped you till the fields and sell the surplice grain. Clean out the manure in the animals’ stalls and spread it in the fields where it helps the next crop grow. You can’t get much more sustainable or labor intensive than that.














This is a 1937 photo of my Grandfather cultivating (weeding) his corn field with his two mules. Grandfather is riding behind the mules as they are pulling an implement called a cultivator which is essentially a large hoe. Now we would call it organic weed control.

The first thing I fertilized with my delivery of horse manure was the asparagus. I planted two short rows two years ago and this is the first year I cut a few of the largest shoots. Asparagus takes a few years to get established. If you cut too many too soon the plants will not do well. But patience pays off because a well established and cared for couple of rows will produce for many years. There is nothing to compare to the sweet green flavor of freshly cut and lightly steamed asparagus.





















To my delight I found a new product that is wonderful for steaming fresh vegetables. It is Ziploc brand Zip’n Steam bags. As the Ziploc folks will tell you on the site these zipper bags are designed for the microwave oven and contain no dioxin. Some how this method of cooking makes my garden fresh veggies taste better than steaming them in any other way.

I just put the clean asparagus in the bag, added a little butter (the Ziploc guys suggest you add butter after you finish cooking but I like to add it before) and hit the cook button. Delicious. I have tried this method with broccoli, green beans, and fish so far and have not been disappointed. I found the bags at my local supermarket next to the other storage bags. The cooking directions and suggested cook times are printed right on the bag. If you can make microwave popcorn you can cook fresh vegetables!

This spring I only cut the largest spears of asparagus for a few weeks. I left the other stalks grow into fern-like five foot tall plants aided by Kay’s horse manure. Next year their roots will be fully established and I will be able to harvest as much as I want.

Mother's Day

Last week a friend said to me that when someone who has lived a full, long life passes away a library dies with them. My sad news is that my Mom passed away on April 28. I have tried very hard to learn as much as I could from her library. She packed her 95 and half years full of life, cooking, gardening, and taking care of her family. Those are certainly passions that I have learned from her. Since December, it was a long five months of caring for her but she was as comfortable and content as I could make her right up to her last hour.

So here I am on my first Mother’s Day without her with a hole in my heart and wonderful memories. She gave me a lifetime of instruction and insight and shaped my interest in cooking and gardening as well as teaching me how to aspire to be a good person.

She taught me how to make Angel Food cake from scratch when I was 9 years old. I loved the cake and was always requesting it. She had a hen house full of chickens and a bountiful supply of eggs so she just taught me how to whip the egg whites and fold in the flour so I could make the cakes myself. Together we wore out that old Sunbeam Mixmaster mixer with the milky glass bowls!

Here's a photo of her in her element--at the kitchen table surrounded by our family celebrating what looks like my 16th birthday!

She taught me the fine points of making pie crust; use lard for the flakiest crust, don’t add too much water or the crust will be tough, bake your crust at 400 degrees for 15 minutes then turn down the oven. Of course, filling the crust with fresh or frozen fruit from the garden was an essential component.

Then there was jam making; hours of picking and pitting then mixing the fruit with sugar in Grandma’s soup pot and boiling and stirring. Ladle that hot, sweet fruit into jars so you can have the taste of summer on your toast in January.

She was my introduction to growing things. As a girl I helped her plant the kitchen garden. Onions, corn, beans, tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers for pickles were just the beginning. Then there were flowers. Heirloom perennials like honeysuckle, roses, iris, and peonies and annuals like zinnias, cornflowers, and petunias were all in her palate. One year when I was in college she arrived at my apartment in St. Louis with two five gallon buckets overflowing with peony blossoms! In the last twenty years we planted things together and in the last couple of years she gave the orders and I did the digging!

Many of her peonies and iris were blooming last weekend so I found a florist in town that would use them in her casket spray. She would have been so proud of how beautiful her own garden flowers were. I hope that wherever she is she was wearing a huge smile.

The hole in my heart will heal but I will always have the things she taught me and her love to guide me and give me strength.

Montmorency Cherries

My February and March have evaporated into a haze of sleep deprivation enveloping the routine of round the clock care for my Mom. My best intentions to accomplish projects—blog posts included-- disappear into the mist as the daily requirements of food, medicine, cleaning, and sleeping take precedence.

I have accomplished ordering seeds and plants. All of my seeds have now arrived. My bare root Montmorency cherry tree from Trees of Antiquity arrived last week. Fortunately our weather has cooperated with warm early spring days so Dave and I were able to plant it the day after the big brown truck brought it up the lane to the house. The tree gets its name from the Montmorency Valley in France where it is said to have been developed sometime before the seventeenth century.

Sadly, the cherry tree that was in the orchard for as long as I can recall died last spring. It was from old age as far as I can tell without calling in a botanical CSI forensics expert. It produced many a bucket full of small, bright red, tart, cherries packed full of intense flavor. There is no better variety of cherries for pies and jam. Forget canned cherry pie filling. Don’t even think about putting a purchased frozen cherry pie in the oven. Everything else cherry pales in comparison to these bright, profoundly flavored, little gems so much so that it makes the labor intensive process of picking and pitting worth the effort.

Hopefully the new tree will thrive where we planted it. We won’t have cherries this year. Maybe we will have a few next year and maybe the year after we will have enough for one pie. I still have enough cherries in the freezer for one more pie so I will wait for a special occasion to savor the last Montmorency cherry we will eat for a couple of years.


Montmorency Cherry Pie

Enough pie dough for a double crust pie (See Flaky Foundation post)

4 cups of Montmorency cherries –fresh or frozen

¼ cup minute tapioca

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon pure almond extract

Mix the cherries, tapioca, sugar and almond extract in a bowl.

Let stand 15 minutes while you roll the crust. See Flaky Foundation II for detailed instructions.

Fill the crust with the fruit mixture, cover with the top crust.
Bake on the lower shelf of a preheated 400 degree oven for 20 minutes then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees and continue to bake the pie until the juice is bubbling through the vent hole about another 45 to 60 minutes. Cool completely before cutting. Serve with whipped cream.

Excalibur Cookies

That stack of seed catalogs is still on my desk. All I have had time to do is thumb through the tomatoes in the Territorial Seed Company catalog and casually ask Dave,

” Should I plant okra again this spring? What about watermelon? Cantaloupe?”

I silently wonder how much of my time this spring might be needed to care for my Mom instead of tending the garden, but with the ever present hope of a dyed in the wool gardener I will likely order the full array of plants and seeds anyway.

I have to admit that seed catalogs are just a small percent of the volumes that arrive in my mailbox. Most go straight to the paper recycling container at our neighborhood grade school but occasionally I find something interesting in one of them such as the cookie recipe in the holiday edition of the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Catalogue. The King Arthur folks describe them as a cross between a cookie and a bar. They call them Lemon Jam Slices. I decided to try them because they looked easy and I could use my homemade jam for the filling. I substituted lemon juice and zest for the lemon powder in the original recipe. I was pleasantly surprised about how quick and easy the recipe is to make. The cookies disappeared quickly too.

The Sands, Taylor, and Wood Co. is the parent company of King Arthur Flour. They have been producing flour and other products since 1790. Excalibur is a retired name for one of their flours. Come to think of it these cookies filled with raspberry jam would be great for Valentine’s Day.

Excalibur Cookies

1 cup (8 oz.) soft butter

1 cup (7 oz.) sugar

¾ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Juice and zest of one lemon

1 large egg yolk

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup raspberry or apricot jam

Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

1 Tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon milk

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or lightly grease them.

Beat together the softened butter, sugar, salt, vanilla extract, and lemon juice until fluffy.
Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl and beat in the egg yolk. Mix in the baking powder and flour until well blended.

Divide the dough into four pieces. Roll each piece into a log about 12” long and 1” in diameter.

Put two logs on each prepared baking sheet, leaving several inches between them. Use the handle of a wooden spoon to make a trough down the center of each log. Fill the trough with jam. I used a spoon but you could go to the trouble of using a pastry bag.

Bake the cookie logs for 18 to 20 minutes, until they are set and lightly browned around the edges. Let them cool about 3 minutes, and then carefully slice them on the diagonal into 1” pieces. I found that I needed to wash my bread knife frequently to get a clean cut because my jam stuck to it as I was slicing.

As the cookies continue to cool, make the glaze:
Sift the sugar into a bowl. Add the lemon juice. Heat the butter and milk together until the butter melts; then add it to the sugar and juice. Beat until smooth. Drizzle the glaze over the cooled cookies.

This recipe makes about 4 dozen cookies depending upon how thick you slice them.

Leap of Faith

As the days grow longer the winter grows stronger.

My folks would quote that in German. It rhymes in German too and it is all to true in any language.

For most of the first two weeks of January our thermometer didn’t rise above freezing. The fields were frozen solid and covered with powdery snow. But the past few days have brought us a warm front with the temperature nudging 50 degrees on a few warm afternoons. The smell of wet earth and the muddy footprints on the kitchen floor have turned my thoughts to the tall stack of seed catalogs on my desk. The catalogs started arriving in the mailbox at the end of the lane in early December, each one holding its own promise of distinctive vegetables and fabulous flowers. I have my favorite places to order seeds and plants so I set aside their catalogs. Territorial Seed Company, The Cooks Garden, Select Seeds, Kitchen Garden Seeds, McClure and Zimmerman, White Flower Farm, and Trees of Antiquity are the major sources of the seeds and plants that make up my garden.

Territorial Seed Company is my favorite source for tomato plants, herbs, and supplies including some kitchen equipment. The Cooks Garden has a wide variety of lettuces and salad greens along with other vegetables and flowers. I always order their Spring Mix lettuce. Select Seeds specializes in heirloom flowers and foliage although they offer a few herbs and vegetables. If you are looking for flowers that grew in your grandmother’s garden, look there. Kitchen Garden Seeds has a nice variety of vegetable and flower seeds. McClure and Zimmerman are exactly what they claim on the front of their catalog, quality flowerbulb brokers. They have most every flowering bulb, corm, tuber, and rootstock you could want, heirloom and otherwise. White Flower Farm has a wide variety of annuals, perennials, shrubs, bulbs, and edible crops all of the highest quality. Trees of Antiquity is a new source for me. Last year when my Montmorency cherry tree died I went looking for a source of heirloom fruit trees so I could plant a replacement. I found a huge selection of heirloom fruit trees in Trees of Antiquity’s catalog. Their selection of Apple trees is especially impressive. I ordered my cherry tree and it will likely arrive in March.

Ordering seeds and plants is a leap of faith, a belief in the future, and the promise of honest hard work. I haven’t had time to plan my garden or put in any orders yet, except for the cherry at Trees of Antiquity. My Mom’s declining health has kept me busy just keeping the family comfortable, fed, and clean but somehow I will find the minutes and hours in the days and months to come to plan and plant my garden. The last time I spoke with my mother-in-law, Dorothy, before she passed away last October I promised her I would plant a yellow grape tomato this spring. Territorial Seed Company has just the plant to fill that request.

Somehow I will also find the minutes and hours in what I expect will be trying and emotional days ahead to continue to post to this blog. I may not post as regularly as I would like but I will continue.