The Big Apple

Sorry, New York.  I'm talking about an actual big apple here.  

We've been watching this apple for months.  You see, our apple tree produces fruit every other year and this year is NOT the year for it to make babies.  So when we saw this little apple starting to grow, we knew it was something special.

Normally we don't end up using our apples as eating apples- I make sauce or cider or butter, because our apples aren't usually the prettiest.  But somehow this apple was perfect!  You might look at it and see some spots or little blemishes, but it's by far the most beautiful apple we've grown.

I'm looking at our apple tree differently now-  I know what it is capable of and it just needs a little help to make all of its apples this beautiful.

Way Too Much Cuteness...

I started changing some colors on my blog and ended up totally redoing how it looks.  I really do have better things to do, I swear.  

Like stick my head in a wooden cutout of a hayride!

Today was a really fun day!  I went apple and pumpkin picking with some friends about an hour away from the Cities. I scored a huge bag of Haralson apples ($14) and 3 beautiful pumpkins ($8.50).  Plus, look how pretty the trees are and how cute my friend's stepdaughter is:

Okay, now for more cuteness- Look at this bunny!  Isn't she perfect?

Cuteness overload!  Now look at this goat chillin' up on his/her climbing contraption:

 This trip reminded me how much I love goats and bunnies, reminded me how much I love hanging out with my friends, and reminded me that I NEED to make some apple donuts sometime.  

I didn't do much cooking this weekend- Mostly I ate leftovers and cleaned out the fridge.  I did harvest from the garden and freeze about 8 bell peppers and a pound of pasilla chiles.  Oh, and made 2 kinds of salsa.  And baked bread and granola.  But oddly, all these things didn't really feel like cooking.  Or rather, they didn't feel like cooking for fun.  They felt more like chores today.

It's true that I really did need to bake bread for lunches this week and I needed to make granola for breakfasts.  And I had to preserve the peppers and use up some tomatillos and tomatoes in salsa.  But usually it is more fun.  I think that I was a bit tired after attending two social events this weekend and all I really wanted to do was knit and read and zone out. I think I'll go do that right now...

Ginger Honeycrisp Sorbet

Katie at Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk is hosting a Vegan MoFo Iron Chef Challenge!  The "secret ingredients" are apples and ginger.  

I should be modest and say that this sorbet is nice or good, but really- It's totally freakin' amazing!  Some credit should go to the Hoch Orchard apple cider and the super fresh Honeycrisp apples from the same orchard (in La Crescent, MN).  The ginger gives a nice bite to the cut the sweetness and the whiskey keeps the texture just right.  I like some actual fruit in my sorbet, but if you want it really smooth, you can leave out the apples and simmer the cider with ginger, chill, and then make the sorbet.

Ginger Honeycrisp Sorbet

Makes 3 cups of sorbet

2 honeycrisp apples, peeled, cored, and diced

4 Tbsp. lemon juice

1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced

2.5 cups apple cider

1 cup evaporated cane juice

1 Tbsp. whiskey

In a small saucepan, combine apples, lemon juice, and ginger.  Simmer on low heat until apples are tender enough to be smashed with a spoon (6-8 minutes).  Then put apple-ginger mixture in a food processor or blender with 1 cup of the apple cider.  Puree until smooth.  Then add the remaining cider, 1/2 cup of the evaporated cane juice, and whiskey.  Process for about 20 seconds.  Taste the sorbet and see if it needs more sugar.  Add sugar as needed and process until dissolved.  Then add to your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions.  

This would go perfect with Michelle's Apple Ginger Donuts!

There's nothing for dinner...

Do you ever have those days when you've spent so much time working on a project in the kitchen (homemade bread, a cake, jam, etc.) that you're too tired to cook dinner? I've had a few of those lately. I've had some serious fun making jam, baking for other folks, and gardening, but sometime after all that I just want to order pizza. And since I'm still taking the Eat Local America challenge, I should really focus on making practical meals.

Yesterday I realized that we had a TON of cucumbers. I pick 2-3 per day and we only eat 1 every few days. So it was time to make pickles. This time I used this recipe and added some chili peppers and grape leaves (to keep the pickles crisp). I'm always on a hunt for the perfect pickle recipe. Today after weeding the garden, I found another quart's worth of cucumbers. Of course- AFTER- I make pickles I find the hiding cukes.
Amazingly enough, I still cooked some actual meals after making the pickles.

So here are some of the foods I've enjoyed in the last 2 days. Yesterday the kids and I went to the Farmer's Market and found some really awesome stuff. Perhaps our favorite thing to get is garlic bread from some folks that use local, organic flour. We sliced it up with some Veganaise, fresh local tomatoes, and basil from the garden to make some super good tomato sandwiches. I love that lettuce-leaf basil.


Last night I wanted soup for some reason (maybe because it was nearly 90 in our house and, like, 100% humidity). So here are the local veggies I rounded up for the soup:

Carrots from the farmer's market (hooray for local carrots!)
The first sweet corn of the season
local purple scallions from the co-op
Garlic from the backyard
local shell peas from the co-op
pasilla chilies from the garden

I just simmered this up in a soup pot with a vegan bouillon cube. It sure was tasty.
This morning I got to spend some quality time with the boys. We had tofu scramble with the aforementioned veggies, sesame semolina bread from the farmer's market, and "apple dippers" as mcdonald's would call it: Early crop tart apples dipped in wildwood plain yogurt with maple syrup and cinnamon. Plus some local raspberries.


So I didn't feel tempted to order pizza today- Mission accomplished.

Pasta, Pizza, and Carmel-PB Apple Bars

Last night I really wanted something with mushrooms. I didn't really care what it was, it just needed to have lots of mushrooms. That's usually how I decide what to eat: I crave something intensely and then build a meal around it. (What's really weird is when I crave something I've never eaten before- and, no, I'm NOT pregnant).

I was going to make mushroom wild rice soup, but Mike prefers not to eat soup unless it's my seitan and dumplings, so I decided to make a mushroom pasta dish instead- An instant winner in Mike's eyes. I cooked some fusilli pasta (white pasta, even!). Then I sauteed portobello and button mushrooms with thyme and sage and set them aside. I made the sauce with a flour and Earth Balance roux and added almond milk, tamari, sage, thyme, salt/pepper, a bit of nutritional yeast, and a big blob of plain soy yogurt.


The sauce thickened up nicely and looked a lot like a stroganoff. Mixed with the pasta it was a perfect 11pm dinner!

Today is Sunday, so that's my day to really pull off a great dinner. We eat dinner together as a family several times a week, but Sunday I try to make something really special to look forward to. Unfortunately, I felt like crap all day and didn't think I'd have any energy to cook. But I got a great idea to use up last year's bumper crop of pesto (before we harvest this year's basil). I made two big batches of pizza dough and added 3 ice cube sized things of pesto to eat batch. The crust looked kinda green which might be a turn-off to some people, but it smelled and tasted great! It would be really nice for foccacia bread, too. The toppings were local red onions, martini olives, green peppers from the garden, homemade tempeh sausage, and an awesome quick "cheese" sauce modeled after the late great Spokes Pizza in Minneapolis.


This close up makes me want to go to the fridge right now and eat the leftovers! But I'll be happier if I wait and eat them for breakfast.After all the talk on the PPK about Isa's PB Caramel Apple Bars, I really wanted to try them. And when Mike walked in the door with 3 bags of free Granny Smiths, I knew this was my chance.

WOW! Even just the Caramel PB Sauce is enough to make this amazing, not to mention the crust, apples, and crumble topping.

Next time I'm going to try the topping and sauce on top of a thick apple pie, though. The toppings are a bit rich for such a thin bar... But maybe I'm just a wuss.

Breakfasts and an Easy Dinner

I don't usually make fancy breakfasts because I generally prefer leftover stir-fries, pizza, or bagels for breakfast. But when I have time I like to make a nice breakfast for the family. The last two really good breakfasts I've made were using new recipes. The first is Susan's Vegan Omelet for One, only quadrupled. I filled it with sauteed onions and kale from the garden and the Gee Whiz cheese from the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook. I love that "cheese" by itself, but it was so similar to some of the ingredients in the "omelet", that it made the texture of the omelet seem too undercooked (it was a bit undercooked anyways because I had the flame too high and it browned too fast). But really, this is so close to a real omelet that it's almost scary. Very versatile and the kids loved it! I'll definitely try it again.

I baked some thin slices of locally grown yams and sprinkled them with coriander, cumin, and salt to serve with the omelets. They were crispy and really tasty!


My next good breakfast is these cornmeal pancakes. I just substituted Earth Balance for the butter, rice milk with vinegar for the buttermilk, and Egg Replacer for the eggs. They look just like regular pancakes, I guess. But they are corny! The kids enjoyed them with Earth Balance and maple syrup, but I was excited to try them with a savory topping. So I melted some Earth Balance and mixed it with the South River Miso Company's Garlic and Red Pepper Miso. WOW! It was great- Now I'm mixing that miso with my Tofutti cream cheese on my bagels, too. (But I just noticed that I don't see that variety of miso on their website anymore...But the Dandelion Leek Miso looks good as well. And in another 9 months I'll have more homemade miso than I know what to do with.)


Tonight I got home from a long day of work at around 5:30pm. Mike and the boys were out exploring, so I quickly put some dinner together for when they got home. This looks complicated, but only took about 30 minutes. I made my favorite secret recipe for fake chicken breasts made from wheat gluten that is ready (mixing and baking) in 20 minutes and I chopped up potatoes, onions, carrots, celery, and one lonely garden eggplant with salt, pepper, fresh parsley, sage, and oregano. I sealed the veggies in a baking dish with foil and baked them at 450 for about 30 minutes. While those were baking I mixed up an Apple Buckle. I know the recipe calls for blueberries, but this is my favorite buckle recipe and I have tried it with peaches, mulberries, and cherries (separately) with great results. I also mixed up some gravy that was so good I later stood in front of the stove for a good 15 minutes, breaking off little pieces of "chicken" and scooping up the last of the gravy.
We washed this all down with Hoch Orchard's local apple cider. The best!

The picture of the buckle to really bad. But I think you get the idea: Cakey on the bottom, apple slices in the middle, and crumbley on the top. Like apple crisp on top of cake! You can't beat that!