A day at the farm!

When you live in the city, sometimes you just need to commune with nature on a farm. My favorite kind of a farm is a sheep farm, specifically Rising Meadow Farm in Liberty, North Carolina. Once a month I go to sit and spin and knit and eat dessert with friends at the farm. On clear nights we stop at the end of the driveway and have a little star gazing time. There is so much less light there than in the city that we can see lots of stars.

But this visit to the farm was all about Farm Fest. It is a once-a-year event with animals, crafts and food that is a real treat.

The alpacas were very friendly and really soft. 

There was music under the big tent, which we enjoyed while eating a lamb burger with spinach and feta cheese---yummy.

While waiting in line for the lamb burgers we passed the time with a dish of ice cream from Homeland Creamery. Dessert first is a good idea, don't you think?

These angora goats have built in back scratchers, you wouldn't believe how they can bend around to scratch their backs with those horns, I envy them. They produce mohair and I love to combine it with the sheep's wool to spin.

These lambs were born last spring. The dark one in the middle is a Navarro-Churro. His fleece is great for rugs. The one with the dark face on the right is a Corriedale. Maybe next shearing day (Feb. 2014) I can try to buy his fleece.

Farm Fest occurs each year in the fall at Rising Meadow Farm. In February they shear the sheep. Watch their website for information.

www.risingmeadow.com

Variations on a theme--more bread flavors!

The basic recipe for the Whole Wheat Curry Bread (see the previous post) is a great one-loaf recipe. The bread is soft and great for sandwiches, has a nice crumb (internal texture) and browns nicely in the baking process.

This time I added Smoked Sundried Tomatoes, shredded sharp cheddar cheese and sunflower seeds. Instead of making a long loaf, I tried a round boule shape. Just be sure to omit the curry and tumeric in the original recipe.

I used about 1/2 cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese, 1/4 cup of raw sunflower seeds and 1/3 cup of minced smoked sun dried tomatoes. These amounts worked well and didn't adversely affect the texture of the bread. The smoky flavor of the sun dried tomatoes seems to be the prominent flavor and the cheddar melts in the cooking process and colors the bread a light orange. It was yummy and smelled great right out of the oven. I added these new ingredients when I added the last of the flour. All of the kneading was done in the mixer with the dough hook, just about 5 minutes. This recipe is so easy!

I wish the color of the bread showed up better here, but you can see the bits of sunflower seeds (no need to mince them at all) and sun dried tomatoes.

Here is the recipe again. Go to this link and remember to omit the curry and tumeric. Add the cheese, tomatoes and sunflower seeds with the last 3/4 cup of flour. Kneading the bread in the mixer with the dough hook and these added ingredients was not a problem. 

Whole Wheat Curry Bread Recipe

To get that design in the top of the bread try these steps:

• after the 2nd rising of the dough dust the surface lightly with flour, I use a little bit of flour in a sieve
• use a serrated knife and cut the slices or a crisscross design about 1/4 inch deep in the surface of the bread.
• the surface will open slightly and will open more while baking
• the results will be like the first picture above

This was a delicious experiment...

Wonder what we can try next?

Curry Wheat Bread

While searching for a recipe for curry flavored bread I found this link:
Curry Wheat Bread Recipe

The recipe is easy to follow and creates one beautiful loaf of a soft crust bread that is great to eat with dinner or use to make sandwiches.

I added more tumeric than the recipe calls for to get a deep yellow color and also added shelled raw sunflower seeds, about 1/8 of a cup. Next time I will add close to 1/4 of a cup and maybe some pumpkin seeds too!

The resulting loaf was beautiful and delicious.

I love the yellow color and the loaf slices like a dream. Just before you bake it you dust the top with a little flour and make 1/4 inch deep slices with a serrated knife. The top photo shows this best.

If you aren't interested in making a bread like this but want to try one, go to Loaf Bakery, South Elm St. Greensboro, NC, on Saturday mornings. That is the day that they make their curry bread. It is marvelous! See their link on the right.

Cool weather, time for soup, yummy!

There are a lot of great soup recipes on the Food Network website. One is a white bean soup with ham and potatoes by Cathy Lowe.

Senate Bean Soup

I followed the recipe except that I added 3 potatoes instead of one. Slices of country ham with the hock included provided most of the salt and little bits of meat. I also think it would be good with the left over ham bone from a baked ham. More salt would be needed though. Just season the onions, celery and carrots with salt and pepper when cooking them prior to adding to the beans if using the baked ham.

After everything is tender, take a couple of cups of the broth including the beans and potatoes (no meat) and put it into the blender to puree. Then add it back to the soup pot. This makes the soup wonderfully thick.

All you need is some good home made bread to dip and enjoy!

Baking bread again, part experiment -- part invention -- all good!

It's time to bake bread again. This time I am going back to a recipe from Ann Faye of Rising Meadow Farm in Liberty, NC. It is one she makes constantly and one I have made successfully. This time I am going to change the kinds of flower a little, none of the other ingredients or amount of flour, just how much of different kinds of flour I use,

This recipe makes 3 loaves in 9x4x5 inch loaf pans. Bake at 350 in a preheated oven.

Combine in a sauce pan to heat until just warm:

• 3 cups of milk
• 1 Tablespoon of salt
• 1 stick of unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup of honey

In the bowl of your mixer with the paddle attachment, combine the following dry ingredients:

• 7 1/2 cups of flour, this time I used:
• 2 cups of King Arthur whole wheat flour
• 2 cups of King Arthur white whole wheat flour
• 2 cups of unbleached all purpose flour (not self rising)
• 1 1/2 cups of King Arthur bread flour
• 3 Tablespoons of yeast (from packets)

Add 2 beaten eggs to the flour mixture, mix gently.

When the milk mixture is just barely warm,  add it to the flour/egg mixture.

Switch to the dough hook and knead for 5 minutes at medium speed on the mixer. The dough will be sticky. 

Scrape it out onto a floured surface to continue to knead by hand, adding all purpose flour to keep it from sticking to the surface. 

When the dough is elastic (it responds to being poked with your finger by returning to its shape), turn it out into a large bowl that your have lightly coated with butter.

Roll the dough over to form a smooth top, it will have a coating of butter.

Allow it to rest in a warm place until doubled in size. I used my newly created proofing box to let the bread rise till doubled in size. It took about 35 minutes to double in size.

Previously I had made a "proofing box" using a cardboard box and a large plastic garbage bag. That worked well, but I didn't like having to find a place to store it between uses.

After another conversation with the bakers at Loaf Bakery and enjoying one of their brioche rolls with cinnamon (see their link on the right) I got an idea about how to convert a shelf on my storage rack in the kitchen to a proofing box. I installed a 25 watt bulb on one side of the shelf. This device was previously used to view slides (photographic, not microscopic). Next I cut a sheet of heavy duty plastic to wrap around the sides of the shelf and attached it to the shelf above using magnets. Hurray for metal shelves!  This worked fabulously and the space can be used to store baking pans when not being used for proofing!

On the right you can see the bulb inside the old slide-viewing apparatus. The dough has just been divided into the 3 pans. I had to turn the light off to get this picture,  The plastic is clear and doesn't show up here.

Turn out the dough which has doubled in size onto a floured surface. Knead and divide into 3 portions. Flatten and roll the dough with your hands, tucking the ends to fit into the buttered loaf pan. 

Place the 3 loaf pans to the proofing box to allow the dough to rise a second time. When the dough has almost doubled in size, put the pans into a preheated 350 degree oven on the middle shelf. 

Bake for 25 minutes.

Cool in the loaf pans for 15  minutes and turn out onto a wire rack to completely cool.

When the loaves had cooled, I cut into one and made a tomato sandwich--with cheddar cheese--and mayonnaise--and salt and pepper.

Life is good!

It's pie time!

One of the cookbooks on my bookshelf that I haven't explored is Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Pie and Pastry Bible. I was told that it was a great resource by someone who had actually met Ms.  Beranbaum and who is also a pastry chef.

Grocery shopping this Saturday included the ingredients for an apple pie. Not just any apple pie mind you, The Open Faced Designer Apple Pie as it appears in her afore mentioned book.

Not only do you get a recipe in this cookbook, but a detailed description of how different kinds of flour affect baking. It is like a class in baking. Trying to be a good student, I poured over the instructions, digressing to every note about this and that, found on another page.

I devoted the whole day to this pie and it was worth it. Now I don't have permission to give out her recipe, but suffice it to say that the crust making is crucial. The crust has cream cheese and butter and very little water. It also has apple cider. Cream cheese I learned has a lot of water in it. There is a reason given for each ingredient and how it affects the outcome of the pie.

Apples were purchased at the farmer's market on Saturday. Rose suggests using a combination of apples, choose firm apples that will stand up to baking.

Each step in the recipe was followed exactly--you really do need to get this book!

Hours later, I hurry for no one these days -- retirement has its perks, Don and I were enjoying a delicious apple pie with vanilla ice cream of course! Wish we had smell-a-vision so you could enjoy this too!

Apples are cut very thin and allowed to macerate for up to 3 hours. The juices are collected and reduced to make a concentrated syrup which is poured back over the apples once they are placed in the pie crust.

A final touch is a coating of apricot jelly over the apples!

The little koala spoon rest is my kitchen mascot and was a gift from Australia, thanks Rainey! He shows up in a lot of my cooking posts.

Oh yes, it was soooooo  good!

The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

Scribner, 1998

click this link below to go to Rose's blog:

Rose Levy's blog

Three strikes and you're out? No, no no !

I tried making my flan recipe for my brother-in-law's family today. Ed and Betsy have been so kind to host us these last few days in Denver. We had a big family dinner on Sunday and seeing all of these nieces and nephews who grew up too much this last 10 years was lots of fun.

So back to the flan. I could make this stuff in my sleep, but was not prepared for the challenge of an induction stove top and unfamiliar pots to use. My tried and true step to caramelize the sugar--failed. The sugar & water mixture, like wet sand, just crystallized into a glop into the pan.

Ok, try number two, different pan, same glop.

Try number three, same pan different burner, same glop..total failure!

Now when presented with such a problem, there is only one thing to do....go to Google. Remember in the movie The Godfather when they said, go to the mattresses? Well, my solution in such a battle is Google. You can find anything there, except about my problem of how to caramelize sugar on an induction stove top.

Ok, plan 'B', forget this strange cooktop, I miss my gas stove and favorite pan, and try the microwave. While looking for info about the induction stove I did run across an article about doing this in the microwave.

The 4th time is the charm! All you need is a Pyrex 4 cup glass measuring cup. Pour 1 cup of sugar and enough water to make 'wet sand' our of the sugar, put it in the microwave on high for 5 minutes. Watch it the last minute, it will start to change color and make a nice amber syrup. My try actually needed 6 and 1/2 minutes to get the amber golden color I was looking for.

Now use a hot mitt and be very careful when taking it out of the microwave. This syrup will burn. Pour it into the metal loaf pan you want to use and coat the pan. Directions are on my post from July 17th, "Flan, the perfect dessert."

Now I have a flan cooking away in its hot water bath in the oven,  it will be ready to put in the fridge in about a half an hour.

I owe my sister-in-law Betsy a new measuring cup. The plastic one I used does not want to let go of the last residue of caramelized sugar in the bottom, small price to pay for success at last!

Mesa Verde, Colorado

About 550 AD, before Europeans explored North America, some of the people living in the Four Corners region decided to move onto the Mesa Verde. For over 700 years these people and their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of the canyon walls.


After entering the park you drive up and over the top of a mesa and then down and up again to arrive at the place whee the cliff dwellings are found. Ancestral Pueblo people grew crops and hunted on the mesa tops. Hand-and-toe hold trails connected the mesa top fields to the alcove villages below.

This is Spruce Tree House, the best preserved cliff dwelling. In the mid 1200's it had 130 rooms and 60-90 people lived here.

This is a view of Spruce Tree House from the opposite side of the gorge separating these two parts of the mesa. From this point there is a winding trail that crosses to the opposite side. There is a spruce/piñon pine forest on top of the mesa.

Archaeologists called the people who lived here Anasazi, from a Navajo word sometimes translated as "the ancient foreigners." Now they are called Ancestral Pueblo people, to reflect their modern descendants.

The Kiva is a round chamber, usually underground built in almost every village or homesite. They were likely used for combined religious, social and utilitarian purposes. Entry was by ladder through a hole in the center of the roof. The word Kiva comes from the Hopi language. In modern Pueblo communities the kiva is still an important ceremonial structure.

The hole in the center is the fire-pit. The rectangular opening behind it is the ventilator for smoke from the fire.

Fire destroyed much of the vegetation on top of the mesa. Grasses and flowers have regrown, but the trees will take more time.

Views of cliff dwellings from across the gorge are impressive. Imagine climbing down from the top of the mesa to take crops to your home.

Ancestral Pueblo people lived in the cliff dwellings for less than 100 years. By about 1300 Mesa Verde was deserted. The last quarter of the 1200's saw drought and crop failures and maybe they had depleted the land and its soils, forests and animals after years of intensive use. Maybe there were social and political problems and maybe the people simply looked for new opportunities elsewhere, no one really knows whey they left. Local ranchers reported the cliff dwellings in the 1880's while looking for lost cattle.



Since the discovery of the cliff dwellings, archeologists have sought to understand the lives of the people who lived there. Despite decades of excavation knowledge is incomplete. The people  who lived there were adept at building, artistic in their crafts and skillful at making a living from a difficult land.

Information from the brochure published by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.
Photos taken by Don & Patsy Bohlen

Pike's Peak or bust!

More than 30 years ago we drove up the dirt road to the top of Pike's Peak outside Colorado Springs, Colorado. They run road races driving up that same road! Don saw one of them when he was young. Sometimes the cars would have back wheels off of the road as they slid around the corners at breakneck speed! Unfortunately they paved the road--no fun!

This time we opted to take the cog railway up.

In Manitou Springs, just northwest of Colorado Springs, there is a cog railway that takes tourists up the mountain.

We spent the night at El Colorado Lodge, a resort almost 100 years old. The rooms are traditional adobe construction with 'kiva' fireplaces in the corner of the rooms. The rooms were decorated with woven blankets

and dream catchers over the bed. That was a really good night's sleep!

On the way up you pass through lots of different habitats, going from 6,000 to 14,000 feet!

The rock formations and Engelmann spruce trees were beautiful.

Groves of Aspen Trees with their straight trunks.

The bark of the ponderosa pine trees changes to a cinnamon color when they reach about 80 years old.

Even before you get to the top of Pike's Peak, you are above timber line.

On one side you can see Colorado Springs....

and on the other side, mountains that are 150 miles away.

Our train had two cars and was almost full on the way up. We picked up a couple of hikers at the top for the way back down. It was about 40 degrees on top of Pike's Peak. My sister Dianne was there in June and there was still snow on the top.

Huff, puff, boy I am glad we didn't have to hike to the top in order to get this picture. I am also glad we took the train instead of driving, much less stressful. We were only there for about 30 minutes, so we didn't need oxygen tanks. Just walk slowly, no wild running around. As long as I had a jacket on I didn't mind not having long pants and shoes and socks

Several marmots were out scampering over the rocks even above tree line.

The change from forest to bare rock is dramatic, so is the temperature change, all of a sudden everyone is reaching for their coats.

The rocks on top of Pike's Peak and near the summit were pinkish grey granite. To read a little more about how Pike's Peak was formed go to this link:
How Pike's Peak was formed.

We wondered why in the world these big rocks didn't come raining down on the rail road tracks, maybe they do, but can you imagine trying to move them. All I could think of was pink granite counter tops.

We had to stop a few times to allow for changes in the tracks, done by hand.

One last look at the rocks, I may have found a new interest...

geology, 
to add to...

cooking,
knitting,
spinning,
gardening,
star gazing..........


and someone asked me what I was going to do when I retired!

Chili - it's not about the beans!

One thing we have learned on this trip is that in the south west, chili doesn't mean meat with beans. The variety of chilies here is amazing and they put them on EVERYTHING! They ask you in a restaurant if you want red or green chili with your dinner. I usually chose green.

Nick's Garden Center is a produce-plant-chilies store in Aurora, Colorado. Today they were roasting chilies. They have every kind of chili imaginable. My sister-in-law Betsy bought two bushels of anaheim chilies that were roasted while we waited.

There were hot, medium and mild chilies.

Red, green and yellow chilies.

Dried chilies strung together to forma a 'ristra'.

and EXTRA HOT CHILIES! Is anyone brave enough to try these?

After you select the kind of chilies you want to buy, Diego washes them.

Then he pours them into a metal basket where they will be roasted with a propane fired flame. The roaster rotates for about 6 minutes until they are cooked and slightly charred.

Humberto keeps watch over the chilies while they are roasting,

then he empties the basket of roasted chilies into a plastic bag ad packs them into a cardboard box. The chilies steam and in a while will be ready to be peeled and seeded.

Diego was also keeping watch over the roasting ears of corn. We brought some home for dinner.

Humberto made sure the corn was cooked 'just right'!

Joey had lots of great information about chilies.

There were bags of chilies waiting to be roasted. Southern Colorado is an important chili producing region.

The aroma of the roasted chilies was amazing! Back home we opened the bag and began to prepare the chilies to put in the freezer.

Step one back home - peel the charred skin off of the chilies. Notice Betsy is wearing gloves.

Step two - clean the rest of the charred skin off and take out the seeds.

The chilies are chopped and placed in zip lock freezer bags, the air is squeezed out and the bag sealed. They they are placed in the freezer to await their turn to become part of a delicious meal!



Our visit to Nick's Garden Center was a treat for the eyes and nose! Check out their website:
Nick's Garden Center