Recipe Improvements

I made the butter-swim biscuit recipe from The Kitchn website yesterday, at Poppy's request. I was reminded as I was reading it how stupid the first instruction is in the recipe.

You're supposed to melt the large quantity of butter that goes in the baking pan. The recipe suggests microwaving the butter or melting it on the stovetop.

But the oven is supposed to be heating up to 400 degrees, and the melted butter is immediately poured into the baking pan and then swirled around to coat the pan.

So why, in the name of all that is efficient, wouldn't you just put the butter in the pan and put the pan in the heating oven to melt the butter instead of using a whole other dish and another step? 

Silly.

I will give credit to that same recipe, however, for listing the ingredient amounts in the instructions. I dislike having to look back to a separate ingredient list to find out how much of anything I need to add as I'm going through the recipe instructions.

Do you have any recipe pet peeves?

A Potato Salad Tip

I have always been a big fan of potato salad. The American kind, with mayonnaise and hardboiled eggs in it. I don't use a recipe for it, but I have noticed that recipes for potato salads always recommend an all-purpose potato for potato salads.

In case you're not as interested in potatoes as I am and so don't know what an "all-purpose" potato is . . . there are waxy potatoes, like those red "new" potatoes. And there are floury potatoes, like baking potatoes (also known as russets or Idaho potatoes). All-purpose potatoes are in between the two in texture. The most recognizable kind is Yukon Gold.

The reason all-purpose potatoes are recommended is because they won't fall apart as readily when boiled. 

I don't buy all-purpose potatoes. I don't buy waxy potatoes, either. I only buy russets, because those are what come in the ten-pound bags, and I am all about quantity at this stage of my cooking life.

But! Russets, in my opinion, are actually better than all-purpose potatoes for potato salad because they will more readily absorb the dressing. Potato salad recipes also always tell you to put the dressing on the potatoes when they're warm, because then the potatoes absorb the dressing better and become more flavorful. So why wouldn't you want a potato that absorbs the dressing better?

You do, but you don't want to it to fall apart. Which leads me to my tip: Boil the potatoes whole, with the skins on. Just rinse them quickly, cover them with salted water in a big pot, and bring to a boil, simmering until the biggest potato in the pot is easily pierced with a fork.

(The fork is a better tester than a knife because it's not quite as sharp as a knife. So if a fork slides in easily, you know it's really done. And nothing is worse than an underdone potato.)

After that, drain the potatoes and let them cool down just a few minutes before peeling (a paring knife helps with this) and chopping into your desired size.

Boiling them whole does require a longer cooking time and more heat released into what is probably an already-hot summer kitchen, but it will retain the shape. No crumbling. 

Russet potato salad is the best potato salad.

I also put mustard and vinegar and diced dill pickles in my potato salad, but that's a matter of personal taste preference, so I'll leave that to you.

Just remember: Whole boiled russets and you're good to go.

Homemade Jello

I guess that should just be gelatin, so as not to use a proprietary name, but then would you know what I'm talking about?

Actually, I guess I really should just call this Mom's Gelatin, because it doesn't resemble the brand-name stuff in anything but texture.

I started making my own gelatin maybe two years ago. I have one child with an unfortunate tendency to frequent digestive upsets. When liquid diets are prudent, gelatin is one of the very few things that can be more or less eaten, rather than consumed as a drink. It's interesting how much one misses chewing when on a liquid diet. Gelatin requires a little chewing, which makes it a nice break from juice or stock.

I didn't do a whole lot of research into the best brand of gelatin. I just went online and bought one that looked good.

Grass-fed, unflavored, etc. With the unfortunate name of "Hearthy."

You can see that I wrote right on the bag the proportion of gelatin to liquid. I had to figure that out for myself, because all the recipes I found online for homemade gelatin were from keto people who wanted as much gelatin as possible. Those recipes made a very, very firm gelatin. That wasn't what I was going for. I wanted something as much like the texture of the name-brand Jello as possible. After some experimentation, I settled on 3 cups liquid to 2 tablespoons gelatin powder.

The next thing I learned was how important it is to dissolve the gelatin all the way. The general recommendation is to sprinkle the gelatin powder over cold water and let it sit for a bit before stirring it into hot liquid. I don't do that. I just sprinkle it over the hot liquid right in the dish and then vigorously whisk it until it's dissolved. If I see any little lumps, I just fish them out with a spoon.

Flavor is really where this is different from store-bought gelatin. Whatever liquid the gelatin is mixed with needs to be a clear juice. I don't have strawberry or raspberry juice to imitate the flavorings used in the name-brand stuff. What I make most often is lemon gelatin. That's just lemonade--sugar, boiling water, bottled lemon juice, and for this a bit of salt as I'm trying to hydrate the eater--with the gelatin mixed in. 

For the child who loves switchel, I'll make switchel with all boiling water and mix in the gelatin. I have also successfully used the liquid poured off of home-canned pears and apples, which makes a gelatin that tastes like apple cider. I bet peach juices would work as well, although I haven't had enough of that to try yet.

It takes a few hours to set the gelatin properly, so it needs to be made well ahead of time. And then you give it to the sick child and cross your fingers that solid food can be consumed before you have to make another batch.

A Dangerous Discovery

When my children got home from their trip to Arizona to visit family, they presented me with a bag of kettle corn my mom had sent home for me.

I love kettle corn. Like, a lot. It checks all the salt/fat/sweet boxes that make something taste good to me.

I did send a jar of it with each of the younger two children to be their school snacks a couple of days, but then I ate the rest of the bag all by myself. Which is what I do when given access to kettle corn.

Popcorn, however, is a pretty healthy snack all in all, and I thought maybe I could make something like kettle corn that would satisfy my desire to eat something sweet without going overboard on the sugar.

I make popcorn on the stove in a big saucepan. Typically, I pop the popcorn in the pan, dump it into a bowl, and then put the butter right in the very hot pan to melt before drizzling that over the popcorn and then salting it. 

To make something like kettle corn, I figured I could just add my very dark maple syrup to the pan before the butter, and the maple syrup would quickly release most of its water content on contact with the hot pan. Then I could add the butter, etc.

That is what I did, and it did indeed work quite well.

But then, of course, I had kettle corn. A lightly buttered and sweetened kettle corn, to be sure, but still the salt/fat/sweet popcorn that is so hard for me to stop eating.

I fear I did not. I managed to put a few cups in a jar for one child's snack. But I, um, ate the rest of the batch. It was like five cups of kettle corn. 

The only survivors.

So I will not be making it again unless all of my children are home to eat it before I do, but now you know: Homemade kettle corn is easy. And addictive.

A Quick Cookie Tip

I make a lot of cookies. They are my younger children's primary snack at school, which means I make cookies once a week. I have the recipe for chocolate chip cookies memorized because that one uses melted butter and thus requires no creaming with a hand mixer. And THAT means I don't have to have soft butter to start with. Handy. 

I've made those cookies so often that I play pretty fast and loose with the ingredients, usually adding peanut butter in addition to the butter and some oats instead of all flour. I also don't actually measure the salt, baking soda, and chocolate chips, instead just eyeballing those ingredients.

When I make other recipes--peanut butter, gingersnaps, oatmeal--I do more or less follow a recipe, but with one exception: I never, ever mix the wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls. Instead I mix the wet ingredients first--fats, sugars, eggs, vanilla--and then right on top I put the flour and other dry ingredients. 

I'll sort of shallowly mix the dry ingredients right there before incorporating them into the wet ingredients, but I really do not see the point in two bowls. Cookie dough is always thoroughly mixed anyway. It's fine to just stir it all up vigorously in the same bowl.

Wet on the bottom, dry on top.

This saves time and another dish to wash. So feel free to also be a rebel and disregard the "in a separate bowl" instruction if you, like me, are always trying to find more efficient ways to get through kitchen tasks.

Taming the Wildflowers

When we first moved here seven years ago, I was surprised at the variety of wildflowers I was seeing every year. 

I am still surprised. That's because the varieties are actually different every year.  

We have highly variable rainfall here. About the only constant is that we don't get very much of it. Our average is only around 18 inches a year. When we get it is the question. We don't really have a very reliable wet season, but we can get a heavy storm at any time. And when that rain comes determines which flowers bloom.

This year, we've had huge amounts of some wildflowers I've seen only rarely in other years. As soon as I am able, I always want to put wildflowers on my table. The flowers that have been available to me thus far are small, kind of weedy looking ones. I haven't had any larger ones yet to serve as the anchor flowers in the arrangements I like to make.

These smaller flowers are very pretty, but arranging them into something that doesn't look like literally a bunch of weeds has required some different techniques. And I'm going to show you how I do it. Whee!

The first thing to note is that I always gather way more plant material than I think I'll need. One reason I do that is because when working with smaller flowers, many of them must be grouped together to make a larger grouping of color in the arrangements. I need a dozen of the small flowers rather than one or two large flowers.

Also, these plants have a high ratio of greenery to flowers. It's this greenery that makes these plants look weedy, so much of it is going to be discarded.

This whole big pile will turn into just two smaller arrangements.

After I gather a large pile of plants, I start stripping and trimming them. I'm trying to keep the stems as long as possible, but get rid of all the excess leaves, spent flower stalks, etc. This will leave me with only the flower at the top of the stem. I'll use my fingers to strip the stem if it won't break as I do it, but sometimes I have to snip with scissors.

I do this outside, because there's a lot of plant material to be thrown out. It's easier when I can just throw it on the ground as I work.

Then I bring the stripped and sorted flowers inside to my sink, where I cut them shorter as needed and arrange them in my vase or jar. I still use something as a background screen--in this case, the yellow clover--and then I bunch the smaller flowers together to serve as my anchors.

All those flowers I gathered ended up making two small arrangements.

Yesterday I had one rose on my Mother's Day rose bush that was open. I have learned that there's no point in leaving these on the bush. They get whipped by the wind, dried out and beaten up so quickly that it's better to bring them inside so I can enjoy them for a few days. Knowing I had one big flower to serve as my anchor flower, I kept an eye out on my morning run for plants with complementary colors.

What I started with.

I stripped all the lower leaves and then snipped off the undeveloped flower buds at the top.

What I brought inside.

The final arrangement.

Dealing with these weedier flowers takes more time and care than just putting a few sunflowers in a vase, but the end result is very satisfying. And I love having unlimited flowers to decorate my home with. I currently have five arrangements of flowers in various places around the house. Too many? No such thing.

Another Onion Tip

A couple of weeks ago when I made my first batch of dill pickles, I found myself with just a little bit of extra brine. This pretty much always happens when I make pickles. I either have not quite enough and have to make more to top off the jar, or I have only a cup or so of extra brine.

I never throw the extra brine away. Usually I just put it in a jar and save it for the next time I have more cucumbers to pickle.

But this time, I happened to have half an onion from something else on my cutting board. So instead of just cooking the onion like I typically would, I decided to try putting thinly sliced onion in the brine, along with just a bit of sugar.

And now I will never be without pickled onions.

They are so good. They're kind of like green onions, in that they still have an onion flavor, but the pickling tames the bite of raw onion.

I love them in my salads. They are also great on sandwiches, and I've used them to top chili, too. It's amazing how many things I find for them to go on and in when they're just waiting in the refrigerator.

A tomato and cucumber salad can always use onion.

All I did to make them was cut my half an onion in half (to make shorter pieces), and then slice those quarters as thinly as possible. That filled a pint jar. I poured the hot brine over the onion, added maybe a quarter teaspoon of sugar, shook it all up, and put it in the refrigerator. They were ready to use in just a couple of days.

When I finish up the big jar of refrigerator pickles I have right now, I think I'm going to strain the brine (to remove any bits of dill and cucumber seeds) and heat it to boiling again so I can make a really big jar of pickled onions. This should work because I make my brine really strong to start with, so it doesn't get diluted too much from the cucumbers. 

You're never too old to learn new things in the kitchen, I guess. Or anywhere.

Growing Food: The New Mexico Wrap

Many moons ago, when the gardening season was still a time for starry-eyed visions of big boxes of tomatoes and crisper drawers full of cucumbers*, someone in the comments recommended I try the Florida weave to support my tomatoes.

I had never heard of it, so I looked it up. There are, of course, many videos showing it. I watched this one. Which is actually from the LSU Ag. Center, so maybe that's a Louisiana weave?

Anyway.

I tried it this year. 

A. split some cedar posts for me and pounded them into the ground about three feet apart. For the twine, I used the innumerable pieces of baling twine that are always hanging around after we cut them off of hay bales. I had to tie them together, of course, but it pleased me to use something that is otherwise just a nuisance to be thrown away. It's not going to win any design awards, but I enjoy such re-use.

Tomato post with very aesthetic baling twine.

The video shows the man just going on alternate sides of each post as he goes down the row until he gets to the end. This is presumably the "weave" part. I tried that the first pass, but then realized there is absolutely no point in that when it works much better to wrap the twine around each post a couple of times, ending up on the alternate side from the previous post and then continuing. 

This makes for a much tighter length of twine, and the tighter the twine, the better it holds the tomato plants upright. I have no idea why the video I saw didn't show this. Maybe everyone does it like that? Dunno.

This is why I'm re-naming my method The New Mexico Wrap. Catchy, no?

Anyway.

As the plant grows, more courses of woven twine are added above the existing ones to support the plants. The plants themselves can just be gently pulled inside the twine to hold them up. No tying.

This very sickly tomato plant allows us to see the plant inside the twine. The other plants are thankfully so robust that the twine has pretty much disappeared inside the foliage.

This has not been a year of really exuberant growth for my tomato plants (or, well, anything), but the tomatoes I have left are actually fairly big now, and the twine is holding them up. So I will do this again next year.

A couple of things I learned for next year, however.

As previously mentioned, do not just weave the twine in and out. Wrap it around each post as they come before continuing.

Smaller posts are better. The smaller the diameter of the posts (within reason), the closer together the two lengths of twine, and the better they hold the plants upright. 

This old stick where one plant died is about the right diameter. You can see the wrapping here, too.

I thought it would be great to have bamboo posts like I had at Blackrock, but then I remembered how slippery those bamboo posts were. I think the twine would probably slide down on them. Small diameter rough wood, either large sticks or small split wood, is better.

More posts are better. No more than two plants between each post seems to work pretty well.

So! To whoever recommended the Florida version to me, thank you. And to anyone else who wants to try it, feel free to make your own modifications and name it after your own location. It's fun.

Tips: Lime Preserving Eggs

Somewhere in my wanderings on the Internet in the last couple of years, I came across the idea of preserving fresh eggs in a solution of water and hydrated lime. I vaguely thought about doing it last year, but never did.

This year, however, I mentioned the idea to my friend who has many more chickens than I do, and from whom I get extra eggs in the spring. 

Pretty! And clean, which, as you'll see, is more important than pretty.

She had also heard of it and wanted to try it. So I did some online research, collected a bunch of eggs from her, and tried it.

And now I'm going to tell you all about it! Whee!

First, I have to say, because it bugs me that people seem to repeat this without doing any of their own investigations: Lime preservation of eggs is NOT the same as water glassing. Many online homestead-branded people seem to call lime preservation water glassing. They are not the same thing, although the process is similar. Water glassing eggs requires sodium silicate. Lime preserving eggs requires only hydrated lime.

I did lime preservation because we have a fifty-pound bag of hydrated lime in the barn already for A.'s masonry projects. 

Which brings me to the next point: What lime am I talking about?

Hydrated lime is also called pickling lime. If it's labeled this way, it's probably sold in much smaller quantities. At a building supply place like Home Depot, it would be labeled "hydrated lime" or "slaked lime." It's sold in much larger quantities when labeled this way, but all three are the same thing. It's a white powder that is mildly irritating to skin if you submerge your hands in it like A. does for masonry, but I never had a problem with the small quantities I was using.

That leads neatly to the next point: quantities.

The ratio repeated over and over online is one ounce of lime in one quart of water. But is it a liquid ounce, which would be two tablespoons? Or an ounce by weight, which is more like four tablespoons? I don't know. I saw somewhere (yes, this is very scientific) that two tablespoons is about right, so that's what I did. All I did was fill a half-gallon canning jar with two quarts of water and four tablespoons lime, put on the lid, and shake it up. Then I poured it over the eggs.

And about those eggs . . .

The eggs cannot be dirty in any way. BUT. They also can't be washed. I used only the eggs that came out very clean from the coops. This is why it was helpful to be getting extra eggs from the glut my friend had: I knew she hadn't washed them, and I could pick through them for the very cleanest ones.

They have to be put carefully in a non-reactive container. A lot of people recommend five-gallon buckets with lids. I don't. That's far too big to be practical. It gets much too heavy, and I would think the weight of the eggs on top might crack the ones on the bottom.

I used a smaller bucket with a lid that had held 12 pounds of honey, as well as some old commercial-sized sour cream containers with lids I got from the school cafeteria.

So! Really all it is is layering the eggs in the container and then pouring the water+lime until the eggs are completely submerged. I found that I needed to leave several inches of space--maybe four?-- over the last layer of eggs to have room for the water at the top to completely cover them.

Then I put the lids on, labeled them with the date, and stuck them under Poppy's small table in the corner of the dining room.

Along with some extra lemon juice, and Poppy's "Mary Poppins" bag. You'd have to ask her about that one.

All together, I put around six dozen eggs in those containers. And then I just left them there. I started using them around May, when I was no longer at school and getting eggs from my friend. (She works there, too, so once school was over, so was my easy egg supply.)

I am now using eggs that were put in those containers almost five months ago, and they are still perfectly fine. I do check each egg before I put it in anything. Cracking them into a separate bowl individually is the safest way to check them.

Quality check before making scrambled eggs.

To be honest, though, since the best way to check the eggs is to smell them, I usually just crack the egg and then sniff in the crack before I open them up. If the egg was rotten, I would know it immediately.

I did have one egg that seemed to kind of explode when I cracked it, like it was pressurized. Oddly, it had no off smell at all, but I still gave it to the dogs. Better safe than sorry, right?

The only difference between these eggs and fresh eggs that I can see is that these are more likely to spread in a pan, and the yolks are more likely to break when I crack the egg. I've used them for fried eggs, scrambled eggs, and in baking. I haven't tried hard-boiling them, just because I can't check them before I boil them.

All in all, I was very pleased with how well this worked, and will likely do it again next year. It's really nice having a supply of home eggs on hand when I don't have a glut of them. I haven't had to buy eggs from a store in months, and that's just the way I like it.

Tips: Doing Windows

The problem with my habit of (over) alliteration is that when I change the day I post something, it doesn't make sense anymore. This, for instance, is a tip. But it's not Tuesday. How annoying.

So I guess we now have non-alliterative tips on whatever day I feel like posting them. 

The chaos is coming for us.

Anyway! It's a good tip! So let's carry on, regardless of the day.

I always seem to have extra-dirty windows. Especially in the kitchen. There are many children putting their grubby little mitts on them, of course, along with, occasionally, their mouths (why do children do this?). So there are many smears on the lower part. 

And then there's the soot from cleaning out the woodstove in the winter, the abundance of swatted flies that smear filth all over in the summer, dust and whatever from open windows in warmer weather . . . 

It's a lot. They just get really gross. And that makes cleaning them something of an operation. But I have a good method for doing it.

Because they are SO dirty--especially the dried smears of fly guts that adhere to the windows--I can't just spritz on some cleaner and quickly wipe it off. I need to scrub them with quite a lot of cleaner first. And then I wipe them clean and get rid of the streaks.

This requires two separate cleaning tools: one for scrubbing, and one for the finish work of de-streaking.

What I have discovered is the best way to do it is to use a small rag for the scrubbing part, and then a paper towel for the second pass.

I often use a piece of cut-up t-shirt to scrub the window, taken from my stash of toilet-cleaning rags. Old socks work well, too, especially if they're turned inside out so the nubbly inside part can be used for scrubbing. In any case, the idea is to have something pretty sturdy to scrub with to start.

I spray the window liberally with a spray bottle filled with vinegar and water, and then scrubscrubscrub until all the solids are off the window. Whatever cloth I'm using will absorb most of the liquid, and the little that is left can be buffed off with a paper towel.

As I move on to more windows, the cloth for the initial scrubbing with get more and more damp, but I can keep using it, because I have the paper towel to do the final shine.

In this way, I can clean five or six windows using the one cloth and only one paper towel. If I were to do this with just paper towels, I would need new paper towels for each window, and as soon as they got damp, they would start to fall apart. A damp cloth doesn't do that.

Now, of course, I could use only another dry cloth to do the second part and not use a paper towel at all, but I find the paper towels really do get all the remaining streaks the best. Since I'm only using one, I don't feel too guilty about it.

And then, when I'm done, I have clean windows free of fly guts through which I can view my drying laundry.

So satisfying.

T.T.: The Glue That Binds

I have a tip! And it's not about food! It's not a Tuesday, but I'm going to pass it along to you anyway in the hopes it might help one of you. 

I tend to dry skin, and my hands are one of the biggest issues I have with that. I spend a lot of time with my hands in water or damp. Mostly because I cook so much that I'm constantly washing them, but also because of dishes. And I absolutely detest the feeling of gloves. I won't wear them. I always feel too clumsy in gloves. 

This results in dry skin on my hands, and, most annoyingly, in skin fissures on my right thumb.

A skin fissure is just a small crack in the skin that looks like a slit. I most commonly get them on the corner of my thumbnail. They're tiny, but surprisingly painful and hard to heal. 

The past week, I got one of these fissures in the center of my thumb, and it actually extended underneath the nail. 

It's very hard to get a good picture of a skin fissure, apparently. But it's there! (And trust me, this is a way less disgusting picture than you would see if you searched for the term skin fissure. I cannot handle the images that always accompany medical articles online. Gross.)

It was very ow, and also kept getting dirty because I was working in the garden so much.

Before anyone says it, no, I won't wear gloves in the garden, either.

Anyway.

Apart from the pain of this little fissure, I really wanted to keep it covered so the dirt wouldn't get in there. But the tip of a finger is a very hard place to keep a bandage on, especially because, again, my hands are constantly wet, which means I'm constantly having to change bandages on my hands.

Superglue to the rescue!

Okay, actually, I used Gorilla Super Glue, but same idea. Just a little dot right there on the fissure, and I could go about my merry way.

I don't know why it took me so long to think of this.

The glue only stayed put for about a day, thanks to, again, all the work my hands do and the subsequent washing, but that was long enough for the skin to start knitting together.

So! If you too are too stubborn to wear gloves and plagued by tiny little slits in your skin that keep getting vinegar or whatever in them, causing you to swear internally while you sprint for the sink to wash your hands YET AGAIN . . . 

Head to your nearest hardware store and grab some extra-strength adhesive. It'll cure what ails you.

T.T.: Balloons

Last week on a rainy, nasty day, I was compelled to have recess indoors while I was at work. One of my duties at school is recess monitor, and I really don't like indoor recesses. The kids seem to become completely hysterical when they're racing around a gym instead of on the playground.  

However, when I brought the youngest class into the gym for their recess first, we discovered that the balloon decorations from the volleyball game the night before had been left up. And the teacher who did the decorating said we were free to take them down to play with them. In fact, she said she would be delighted if we would, because then she wouldn't have to do it.

So then the kids got to run around hysterically with balloons at every recess that day, which was great.

Balloons are the perfect indoor plaything, which is an important thing to remember as most of the world approaches the seasons in which indoor play is more frequent. Balloons are cheap. They are light. No one can get hurt by them or break things (at least, not easily). Multiple children can play with one balloon.

The only rule I have in my house is that they can't be played with in the kitchen, because I don't want any filthy balloons near food, and also they will pop if they land on something hot.

After that day of indoor recesses, the older classes had the most fun of all: They got to pop the balloons for me with pencils. Then they picked up the pieces and threw them away. In this way, everyone was happy. The kids got to play with balloons at every recess; I didn't have to haul around equipment or break up disagreements over basketball games; and the balloons were cleaned up. Yay.

Random photo of our road:

No balloons necessary on a day like this.

T.T.: Finncrisps and Cheese

This is going to be kind of short, but I was reminded of and subsequently purchased online a few boxes of Finncrisp sourdough rye crisps recently. And then my sister brought us good sharp cheddar. This is how I was reacquainted with a most delicious combination: melted sharp cheddar* scooped up with rye crisps.

So good.

The rye crisps are also good for scooping up cottage cheese, or just spread with butter, but scooping up good melted cheddar with them is one of the the small pleasures of life I didn't realize I missed until I had it again. 

So if you ever see rye crisps at your grocery store, you might want to try them. Get some good cheddar while you're at it and raise your rye crisp dripping with melted cheese in my direction. Salud!

 

I don't have a relevant photo for this, so here's another good New Mexico landscape shot for you courtesy of A.

*I just microwave thin slices of cheese in a bowl until melted. I learned of this combination, by the way, from the MiL. Thanks, MiL.

T.T.: Just Call Me the Reduction Evangelist

Much like it took me years to come up with the bright idea of seriously reducing my stock before canning it, it took me until, um, now to realize I could do the same thing with tomatoes.

I have canned a lot of tomatoes. Gallons upon gallons. And just this summer did I think to reduce them to about half their volume before canning them. Just like with stock, there's really no need to have all that liquid in the tomatoes. Almost half the jar will be a watery liquid when tomatoes are canned. This means more jars needed to can the tomatoes, and that means more lids. Which are getting harder to find, and more expensive when I do find them.

What I've been doing this summer is sticking a pan of halved tomatoes with nothing but salt into the oven when it's on for something else and baking them uncovered until the tomatoes have reduced by about half. The amount of time this takes depends on how hot the oven is. 

Before . . .

And after. Water, begone!

After the liquid is mostly gone, I puree the tomatoes, most often with my immersion blender. A regular blender or a food processor work, too. Then I can it, using the Ball Blue Book times for tomato puree. I usually end up with four pints, which I can juuust fit covered with water in my largest pot without having to mess around with the giant water bath canner.

This is much easier than prepping and stuffing seven quart jars full of whole tomatoes, and anyway, I never want whole tomatoes in anything I cook. I always end up mashing them when I cook with them. 

One of the greatest benefits to this is not peeling. I really, really dislike peeling tomatoes. Making a puree that includes the skins means no peeling, but also no curled up bits of skin in the food. Bonus.

What do you think I'll discover I should be reducing next? Probably something I should have been reducing all along.

I may be slow, but I get there in the end.

T.T.: Refrigerator Dill Pickles

This time of year, my refrigerator has several jars of dill pickles in it. I don't actually can cucumber pickles, because they tend to get softer that way. I like how crisp the refrigerator dills are, so I save my pickle canning for dilly beans and use my cucumbers this way.

Refrigerator Dill Pickles (makes 5 quarts)

Ingredients

6 pounds cucumbers

5 heads dill (or 1 1/4 cup fresh dill or 5 tablespoons dried dill weed)*

5 large garlic cloves, peeled and lightly smashed

4.5 cups water

3.5 cups vinegar of 5% acidity 

1/2 cup salt (canning or kosher)

Method

Line up five clean quart jars. They don't have to be actual canning jars, so you can reuse other jars for this. Wide-mouthed ones are easiest, though.

Heat the water, vinegar, and salt--either in the microwave or in a pot of the stove--until the brine is hot and the salt is dissolved.

Into each jar, drop 1 head of dill (or 1/4 cup fresh dill or 1 tablespoon dried dill weed) and one garlic clove.

Wash your cucumbers and slice off the blossom end, then cut them into whatever shape you like. I usually do spears and then top off the spears with rounds of cucumber to fill the jars all the way. Stuff the cucumbers into each jar until they're almost to the top and cover with the hot brine.

Put on the lids and leave the jars on the counter until they're not hot anymore, then put in the refrigerator. Leave at least a day before eating.

Notes

This makes a very strong, vinegary pickle. If you open a jar and find it too strong, just pour off a bit of the brine, fill with water, shake it up, and leave it in the refrigerator for another day. The extra water will leach out some of the vinegar in the cucumbers and they'll be milder.

These will keep in the refrigerator for months. At least four months, which is as long as we've ever had them before they were all eaten.

You can re-use the brine/dill/garlic one more time after all the pickles are eaten. Just heat the the brine, etc. again and stuff it with cucumbers again. You can only do this once, though, before the water in the cucumbers will water down the brine too much.

You can also eat the pickled garlic. It mellows a lot over time, but will be pretty fiery at first. My children (and A.) fight over this.

 * The head is the starburst of flower buds that form on the top of each dill plant. If you don't have heads of dill, you can use fresh dill weed or dried dill weed. The dill will float around and stick to the pickles, so it's not as aesthetically pleasing, but will still taste good.

Happy pickling!

T.T.: How To Pickle a Toilet

Just kidding. I don't know how you might pickle a toilet, but I do know that vinegar is an excellent option for cleaning one.

I've used vinegar in a spray bottle for cleaning bathrooms for a long time, but I still bought toilet bowl cleaner. We've always lived in places with hard water, so the toilet bowls would get that annoying mineral ring on the inside and would need to be soaked in toilet bowl cleaner before being scrubbed.

Or so I thought.

I was never a big fan of the smell of the toilet bowl cleaner. It was pretty much just a chemical concentrate. And then, I started to notice that even the kind that I had been buying for years was all of a sudden this very virulent blue color. And it stained my toilet bowl.

I tried another brand. It was a violent green color that also stained my toilet bowl.

My sister the veterinarian told me they started making the cleaners that way so you can tell if there's still any of the chemical in the bowl. Presumably so you don't poison any pets that might be drinking from your toilet bowl? 

I don't know. All I know is that it seemed counter-productive to try to clean my toilet only to end up with a stained toilet bowl.

So I tried vinegar. And it worked.

All I do is pour a few glugs of white vinegar in the toilet bowl and let it sit for awhile. Sometimes I only let it sit as long as it takes me to clean the tub, sink, and floor. Sometimes I leave it in there for a couple of hours. The longer it sits, the better it works, obviously. After it sits for however long, I scrub with the toilet bowl brush.

And then my bathroom smells like pickles for a little while. It goes away quickly, though, and it does work. 

I don't know if it would have worked in northern New York, where we had the hardest water of all. But it works here, and that's all I care about.

I don't have a picture of my toilet (you're welcome), but here's one of Cubby standing on top of the toilet in the kids' bathroom.

He was re-positioning a towel rack for me. I knew encouraging his early love of tools would pay off in the end.

T.T.: Non-Medicinal Comfort

We just went through the first illness of the school year. It was just a cold, and everyone had it with varying degrees of sore throat and congestion.

It was nothing major, but it always feels major to a child. They don't really get the concept of stoicism. The younger they are, the less stoic they are, and the more insistent they are that I should just fix it. I should do something. Even though, in the case of a cold, there really isn't much to do other than wait for it to go away.

However, over the past decade or so of dealing with ill children, I have discovered a bunch of things I can do to make them feel better, at least temporarily. 

1) A hot bath. Are you congested? Have a hot bath. Do you have a headache? Have a hot bath. Have you had a hard day and are feeling a little emotionally delicate? Have a hot bath. Have you been doing mad dog drills (don't ask--I didn't) at football practice every day and every single part of your body is sore? Have a hot bath with Epsom salts.

2) The heated sheep. This is one of those microwaveable heated bags filled with rice or something. We got ours many years ago from my sister-in-law. She got it for us because it is in the shape of a sheep, but let me tell you, that thing is invaluable. 

A well-loved heatable sheep is a wonderful thing.

Any child with a sore neck or an upset stomach gets the sheep to curl up with. An actual heating pad works, too, but the sheep has the advantage of not having a cord. Plus, it's fuzzy and in the shape of a pillow, and is therefore much more comforting than a hard, flat, plastic bundle of wires.

3) Honey water. For sore throats. This is the lazy mom's answer to tea. Kids don't really want to drink actual tea, anyway, so why bother. They just want the honey. So I just put hot water in with a spoonful of honey, stir around to dissolve the honey, add a few drops of lemon juice to cut the sweetness just a little, then top off with a bit of cold water so they don't burn their mouths. I make SO much honey water when there is sickness in our house. It's one of the reasons I bought a 12-pound bucket of honey.

4) A steam tent. For those awful, dry, barking coughs. Also sometimes for congestion. All you need is a bowl of hot water on the table, scoot the sickling up to the table in a chair, and drape a thin blanket over the top to trap the steam. A couple of my children hate this, but a couple of others request it when they don't feel well. A really hot shower would do the same thing, but young children do not enjoy scalding hot showers. 

5) Soft foods. When you've got a sore throat and you're so congested that chewing interferes with breathing, soft foods are the way to go. Custard requires no chewing at all. Rice pudding doesn't really, either. My children's favorite sick soup is a potato soup, which I usually make with bacon, onion, carrots, potatoes, and rooster stock, cooked and pureed and finished with sour cream. Even easier is mashed potatoes with grated cheese stirred in. A lot of soft food tends to be sweet, so potatoes are a good option for a soft but more substantial food that feels more like a meal. Scrambled eggs with cheese are good, too.

What non-medicinal options do you use when you're feeling poorly?

T.T.: Very Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding

Rice pudding is something that I had never in my life eaten until I had the MiL's. Hers is still the only recipe I have ever eaten, because I make it the way she did, using her recipe.

Her recipe, in turn, came from her father. He used to make it when the cows on their farm were in full milk, which, as anyone who has ever milked a cow can tell you, means A LOT of milk. That's what this recipe uses: A LOT of milk. 

Although we have no cow, I also make this recipe when I have too much milk. That happens when I have a gallon (or more) that is on the verge of going bad. Making a triple batch of this rice pudding uses more than half a gallon.

I was made aware somewhat recently that this is a rather unique recipe for rice pudding. It calls for a lot more milk than most, and that is because it cooks for so long in a low oven. Baked rice puddings--as opposed to stove top--appear to now be considered a British version of the pudding. 

The MiL told me her MiL made it the same way. It might just be such an old American recipe that it originally came from Britain and has been passed from generation to generation, mostly surviving in its original form on farms, which had the quantity of milk to make it at certain times of year.

So! The method for this is a long time in a low oven, with a lot of stirring. This means that you must be present and attending to it for some hours. It is not a strictly hands-off recipe. But the large quantity of milk that reduces in the oven, along with the stirring that keeps a skin from forming and distributes all those rice starches, will result in an unbelievably creamy pudding that has no actual cream in it.

It's best to make this when you have something else in the oven at the same time--like a brisket or stew--so that you can make your oven do double-duty. 

The recipe as written is for a single recipe. I triple it and bake it in my 10"x15" Pyrex casserole dish, which is almost completely full with that quantity of ingredients.

Very Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding

Ingredients

1 quart whole milk

1/4 cup short grain rice (I just use the cheap stuff we get from commodities)

1/4-1/3 cups sugar (I prefer the lesser amount, but you might like it sweeter)

pinch of salt

1/2 cup raisins

1 teaspoon vanilla

grated nutmeg

Method

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees and butter your casserole dish. You want a relatively wide and shallow one, so there's a large surface area. For a double recipe, use a 9"x13"casserole and, um, something smaller for a single recipe. (I've never made a single recipe, so I don't know what size would work.)

Pour the milk into the buttered casserole, then sprinkle the rice, sugar, and salt into the milk.

Bake uncovered for 1.5 hours (3.5 hours for a double or larger recipe), stirring every half hour.

After 1.5 hours, stir in the vanilla and raisins, and sprinkle the nutmeg on top, and bake for the remaining half hour.

Remove from oven and let cool. You can serve it warm, but I chill it until cold.

Notes

If you don't care for raisins, you can leave them out, but I would increase the sugar a bit. And, if you have a family disagreement about the desirability of raisins, you can do as I do and only sprinkle them into half of the pudding.

You want to remove the pudding when it still looks a bit liquidy. The rice and raisins will continue to absorb the liquid as it cools, so if you leave it in until all of the liquid is absorbed, the end result will be too dry and stodgy. It should be a bit saucy when it's cool. 

If you forget to stir it for awhile, it will form a skin on top that will then brown. You can just remove this and give it to your dogs or chickens, and then carry on with your stirring.

Or I suppose you could throw it away if you're lacking in livestock to eat it.

The finished product. 

Amazingly, my family will eat that entire giant quantity of rice pudding in one sitting. I hope you love it as much as they do.

T.T.: Riesens for the Win

Do you know about Riesens? If you don't, I am sorry and am now going to educate you. Because anyone who loves chocolate and caramel should know about Riesens.

Riesens are chocolate caramels, you see. That is, they are chocolate-flavored caramels with a chocolate coating. Sort of like Rollos, which I suspect are a more well-known version of this sort of candy. But Rollos are vastly inferior to Riesens. 

And the reason (Riesen/reason, ha) for that is that Riesens are not made by Heshey's or Mars. They are not American. They are made by a German company. That's why the chocolate is actually good dark chocolate and the caramel is actually a very chewy, not too sweet caramel.

In fact, Riesens are made by the Storck Company, which also makes Werther's Original, about the only hard candy I consider worth eating. 

I had not had Riesens in many years, but I saw them at the grocery store in Taos and bought a bag on impulse. They proved to be just as popular with the rest of the family as they are with me. 

At ten dollars a bag, they are definitely not cheap, but there's actually almost a hundred caramels in a bag, and the bag lasts a long time. It's kind of hard to overeat them, because they're so chewy.

Despite their relative priciness, I think they're definitely worth it. They're all gone now, but the next time I see them at a store, you can bet I'll be getting more.

Auf Wiedersehen, my tasty little friends.

T.T.: Roasted Tomato Sauce

For years and years, I made and loved Finny's tomato sauce. She called it The Best Tomato Sauce Ever, and it is. If you ever get a chance to make it just the way she does, you should.

But I don't make it the way she does anymore. There are a couple of minor changes I made so as not to use aluminum foil, but mostly it's different because I don't typically have red wine in the house, and I can't easily get it, either. So when I'm slammed by the tomato harvest that needs to be roasted and frozen pronto, and the nearest red wine is 60 miles away, this is what I do. 

First, I use Romas from my garden. They make the best sauce, because they have much more pulp and much less liquid in them than a slicing tomato. You can use slicing tomatoes, but they will take longer in the oven and yield less.

I cut off the stem end and then slice them longways, laying them on my half-sheet pans as I go until I've filled both pans with a single layer of tomatoes. I do not line my pan with foil or parchment paper, because I would rather scrub a pan than throw something away, but it is easier if they're lined.

After the pans are full, I mound all the tomatoes up in the middle of the pans and douse them with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Mixmixmix until everything is all coated, then spread them back out in a single layer.

Any recipe that tells me to toss vegetables and oil in a bowl before putting them on a roasting pan is immediately suspect. I do not want to wash an extra bowl for no reason. 

I also put a whole head of garlic right on each pan with the tomatoes. Again, I do not wrap it in foil because I don't want to have to throw the foil away. All I do is wash and rub off the dirt from the outside of the head, but if your garlic is from the store, it will already be clean.

Ready for the oven.

The pans go in a 400-degree oven for about 45 minutes. I scrape and stir the tomatoes around a few times. When they're done, there will be very little liquid in the pan and some char.

I scrape the tomatoes up into a pile while they're still hot, mostly avoiding the black spots but trying to get all the jammy spots of tomato.

After the pans are out of the oven, I let them sit for awhile so they're not burning hot. It's much easier to handle the pans and the tomatoes when they won't burn you on contact.

When they're cooled a bit, I dump the tomatoes into the food processor and scrape the olive oil in there, too. Because the garlic wasn't wrapped, it doesn't squish out of the skins. I can just pull the skins open and pull out the garlic cloves whole. Those go into the food processor, too, along with a handful of fresh basil leaves.

Here is where we come to the biggest difference: The wine. If I had red wine, I would certainly use it, because this sauce is best with it. But it's almost as good with balsamic vinegar, so that's what I use. About two teaspoons.

After everything is in there, it just needs to be pureed, checked to see if it needs more salt or vinegar, and that's it.

Yum.

It makes a very thick, flavorful sauce, and it freezes perfectly in zip-top bags.

With very abbreviated labels.

What really makes this good is the method. The roasting concentrates the flavors and adds some caramelization that doesn't occur on the stovetop. All that garlic is key, too. 

It's best with wine, but the balsamic version is also delicious. I have even made it with cans of whole tomatoes--removed from the juice--dried basil, garlic, and the vinegar, and it's still good.

So even if you can't make it exactly like the original recipe, at least try roasting the tomatoes and garlic and see how you like it.