I had a hard time sleeping last night, so the question is what keeps a farmer up at night?
Well, it was August 8th and not only had we not started the season yet (the peas were growing to ENORMOUS SIZE.) but we had only 12 members. And I was supposed to get more members, in August!?!
I woke up so anxious until I remembered it was the night before Christmas Eve, my family was visiting, and all was right with the world...
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
KitchenAid - two things in one day!
If you are a regular or occasional reader of my blog you know how unhappy I am with my KitchenAid Stove and just KitchenAid in general. Well today I get to add TWO items to my "Why I hate KitchenAid" list.
In case you had not noticed Christmas is less then two weeks away! OMG! How did that happen?!?!
Well, I woke up to that reality today, probably because yesterday my niece asked about the BEST cookies, and was I making them? Well the "best" cookies are Christmas tree (sour cream) press cookies covered in an confectionery sugar icing and sprinkles. Last year she ate dozens of the things. I accused my husband and my brother in law of eating them all, and no one noticed that it seemed that Ellie, ALWAYS had a cookie in her hand or pocket. The dog noticed way before us, and took to following her around, and she probably gave him a couple dozen! Anyway with that kind of cookie consumption I better get going!
So I started this morning. First I made a double batch of my mom's "Hungarian Christmas cookie" dough. It is simple: flour, butter, and sour cream. But this simple dough puffs so well! So that got put in the fridge to chill.
Then I made some Springelle dough, and rolled it out, cut them and set them on the wood cutting board to dry until tonight.
Finally, I made a double batch of the sour cream press cookies. The reason I have a 6 quart "Professional" KitchenAid mixer is because of Christmas. I usually make cookies pretty non-stop for 2 weeks. I used to give them as gifts, until I decided they were not appreciated, but still there are a dozen or more types on my list every year, and I make at least a double recipe of each one.
So anyway during the process of making the dough my mixer died. It stopped mixing and starting clicking. I immediately turned it off, pulled the dough off, and it went around OK. I put it back in the dough, it went around one time and stopped!
I yelled a curse word! (or three.) Farmer Hubby came in and asked what was wrong. I told him the damned thing stopped working again! (Two years ago I broke it at Christmas making Marshmallows.) My dear husband is a very handy guy and the first thing he did was break out the screwdriver and pull the case off. About 5 minutes of Internet research reveled that a plastic piece inside the thing was replaced with a metal piece. Huh? Our problem?
Turns out it was. The plastic piece flexes which causes damage to the gears. So I now have 2 gears, a bearing, and (new and improved) metal housing on it's way to us. The damage $83. Last time we had to fix the thing KitchenAid wanted us to send it to them in a special ($89) box so they could tell us what was wrong with it. That time hubby was able to just replace a fuse (3 for $2 at Radio Shack) and the thing was fixed.
This will slow down cookie production, but thankfully I have a second mixer, a 4 quart model (350 watts instead of 525) that was a gift from hubby last year, as a response to my complaints that my 6 quart mixer has a problem mixing anything less then a double recipe, of almost anything. Now I wish he had got me a SunBeam instead of the KitchenAid.
I finished mixing the dough by hand and was ready to start baking. Should be quick, press cookies, one sheet can hold 3-1/2 dozen and bakes in 10-12 minutes. Well, 10-12 minutes if your stove is being good that day and holding temp, which mine is not! So annoying! It comes up to temp at 375 and by the end of the 12 minutes it is down in the mid-low 300s (went as low as 225!) So I started reheating the oven in between every cookie batch, turning the oven off and preheating back up to 375. Added 5 minutes plus to every batch.
Sigh. I hope it behaves better, but I need to figure out some holiday meals I can do without worrying to much about the stove, to spare a repeat of Thanksgiving.
Well, back to work with me! Lots to do in the 4 days before company comes...
In case you had not noticed Christmas is less then two weeks away! OMG! How did that happen?!?!
Well, I woke up to that reality today, probably because yesterday my niece asked about the BEST cookies, and was I making them? Well the "best" cookies are Christmas tree (sour cream) press cookies covered in an confectionery sugar icing and sprinkles. Last year she ate dozens of the things. I accused my husband and my brother in law of eating them all, and no one noticed that it seemed that Ellie, ALWAYS had a cookie in her hand or pocket. The dog noticed way before us, and took to following her around, and she probably gave him a couple dozen! Anyway with that kind of cookie consumption I better get going!
So I started this morning. First I made a double batch of my mom's "Hungarian Christmas cookie" dough. It is simple: flour, butter, and sour cream. But this simple dough puffs so well! So that got put in the fridge to chill.
Then I made some Springelle dough, and rolled it out, cut them and set them on the wood cutting board to dry until tonight.
Finally, I made a double batch of the sour cream press cookies. The reason I have a 6 quart "Professional" KitchenAid mixer is because of Christmas. I usually make cookies pretty non-stop for 2 weeks. I used to give them as gifts, until I decided they were not appreciated, but still there are a dozen or more types on my list every year, and I make at least a double recipe of each one.
So anyway during the process of making the dough my mixer died. It stopped mixing and starting clicking. I immediately turned it off, pulled the dough off, and it went around OK. I put it back in the dough, it went around one time and stopped!
I yelled a curse word! (or three.) Farmer Hubby came in and asked what was wrong. I told him the damned thing stopped working again! (Two years ago I broke it at Christmas making Marshmallows.) My dear husband is a very handy guy and the first thing he did was break out the screwdriver and pull the case off. About 5 minutes of Internet research reveled that a plastic piece inside the thing was replaced with a metal piece. Huh? Our problem?
Turns out it was. The plastic piece flexes which causes damage to the gears. So I now have 2 gears, a bearing, and (new and improved) metal housing on it's way to us. The damage $83. Last time we had to fix the thing KitchenAid wanted us to send it to them in a special ($89) box so they could tell us what was wrong with it. That time hubby was able to just replace a fuse (3 for $2 at Radio Shack) and the thing was fixed.
This will slow down cookie production, but thankfully I have a second mixer, a 4 quart model (350 watts instead of 525) that was a gift from hubby last year, as a response to my complaints that my 6 quart mixer has a problem mixing anything less then a double recipe, of almost anything. Now I wish he had got me a SunBeam instead of the KitchenAid.
I finished mixing the dough by hand and was ready to start baking. Should be quick, press cookies, one sheet can hold 3-1/2 dozen and bakes in 10-12 minutes. Well, 10-12 minutes if your stove is being good that day and holding temp, which mine is not! So annoying! It comes up to temp at 375 and by the end of the 12 minutes it is down in the mid-low 300s (went as low as 225!) So I started reheating the oven in between every cookie batch, turning the oven off and preheating back up to 375. Added 5 minutes plus to every batch.
Sigh. I hope it behaves better, but I need to figure out some holiday meals I can do without worrying to much about the stove, to spare a repeat of Thanksgiving.
Well, back to work with me! Lots to do in the 4 days before company comes...
Saturday, December 12, 2009
My food day!
I figure I should blog, because I am watching Julie & Julia. And since I am watching a show about food blogging, sure I will blog about today's menu in our house. (Please note this is not a typical day.)
For breakfast/lunch today my loving hubby made me his best breakfast. I honestly don't know if it has an official name, but here is what he does. He takes a couple slices of good fresh bakery bread, cubes it and browns it in a pan with some butter. Then he adds some onions and diced potatoes (both ours). When they are browned as well we mix in some of our eggs (beaten) and serve like an omelet with a little ketchup and sarachi sauce. Yummy!
Yesterday we stopped at Costco and hubby tryed some of their lobster bisque which was OK, but a bit oily. They had some huge, beautiful lobster tails so we got one because I was going to try to make bisque. Well, a 1-1/2 pound Bahamian lobster tail is not what you need for that project. You need lots of shells (as it turns out when I looked up bisque recipes.) So instead I decided to make a lobster mac and cheese. I used Ina Garter;s recipe from Food Network and it came out pretty well. Actually, it was the best baked mac and cheese I have ever made, as it did not get oily which they often seem to! But the lobster, while good, was not as prominent as I would have liked with $20 of it in there! Still it was good.
Then came the words out of my hubby's mouth I hate hearing "Did you get anything for desert?" Well no, but today seems to be a cooking day so I will try something new. A Flan! I pulled out The Art of Simple Food and it looked easy enough so off I went. Well, let me say now, I should have known our stove would let me down (yet again, in the continuing saga of my stove) and it baked unevenly and had that bit of scrambled egg flavor that comes with a poorly cooked custard! That and I messed up the topping. The cookbook did not give me a temp, I thought I was at least at the soft ball phase, I guess not. So disappointing.
So my wonderful hubby made it all right. He made me some crostini with some locally cured meat from Chef's Choice in Berea (products I really need to watch, as yummy as they are I think they may exacerbate my migraines.)
So that was my day in food. With 100 other things to do I probably should have done some of those things, but it was a pretty yummy day, all in all.
Now I can finish my movie with less blog induced guilt.
For breakfast/lunch today my loving hubby made me his best breakfast. I honestly don't know if it has an official name, but here is what he does. He takes a couple slices of good fresh bakery bread, cubes it and browns it in a pan with some butter. Then he adds some onions and diced potatoes (both ours). When they are browned as well we mix in some of our eggs (beaten) and serve like an omelet with a little ketchup and sarachi sauce. Yummy!
Yesterday we stopped at Costco and hubby tryed some of their lobster bisque which was OK, but a bit oily. They had some huge, beautiful lobster tails so we got one because I was going to try to make bisque. Well, a 1-1/2 pound Bahamian lobster tail is not what you need for that project. You need lots of shells (as it turns out when I looked up bisque recipes.) So instead I decided to make a lobster mac and cheese. I used Ina Garter;s recipe from Food Network and it came out pretty well. Actually, it was the best baked mac and cheese I have ever made, as it did not get oily which they often seem to! But the lobster, while good, was not as prominent as I would have liked with $20 of it in there! Still it was good.
Then came the words out of my hubby's mouth I hate hearing "Did you get anything for desert?" Well no, but today seems to be a cooking day so I will try something new. A Flan! I pulled out The Art of Simple Food and it looked easy enough so off I went. Well, let me say now, I should have known our stove would let me down (yet again, in the continuing saga of my stove) and it baked unevenly and had that bit of scrambled egg flavor that comes with a poorly cooked custard! That and I messed up the topping. The cookbook did not give me a temp, I thought I was at least at the soft ball phase, I guess not. So disappointing.
So my wonderful hubby made it all right. He made me some crostini with some locally cured meat from Chef's Choice in Berea (products I really need to watch, as yummy as they are I think they may exacerbate my migraines.)
So that was my day in food. With 100 other things to do I probably should have done some of those things, but it was a pretty yummy day, all in all.
Now I can finish my movie with less blog induced guilt.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Lots of time spent this week hearing people talk about spray rates for this and application timing for this. Not really our type of farming, but if you have 400 acres of onions or 800 of cucmbers you really have no room to not spray! One session showed a photo of a tomato field and the same one 10 days later. The first showed not a hint of late blight. The second was BLACK! In diversified operation there are more things to go wrong, but much less impact if they do!
The biggest suprise was how often we heard about mustard cover crops. In the conventional onion session the growers did not seem impressed, but some of them have machines which lift up the top 4 inches, steririlize it, and puts it back. For us, mustard is a godsend before root crops (or it turns out green beans!) it kills bad nemitiods and soil dieseses!
The trade show was good too, but makes us feel poor! We could spend $100,000 and mmight still lust after more!
please excuse this weeks posts, all sent from my cell
The biggest suprise was how often we heard about mustard cover crops. In the conventional onion session the growers did not seem impressed, but some of them have machines which lift up the top 4 inches, steririlize it, and puts it back. For us, mustard is a godsend before root crops (or it turns out green beans!) it kills bad nemitiods and soil dieseses!
The trade show was good too, but makes us feel poor! We could spend $100,000 and mmight still lust after more!
please excuse this weeks posts, all sent from my cell
Mobile post sent by CSAFarmerGirl using Utterli.
The snow hit today, not that bad but the hotel offered us an extra night for a low price, so we took it! It is so nice to not have to worry about driving tonight since we were going to only drive halfway home tonight anway.
The best quote of the day "Organic vegetables can feed the world, but not on a diet of high fructose corn syrup and hydroginated soy bean oil."
This was from an organic grain farmer with 1400 acres in organic grains.
The best quote of the day "Organic vegetables can feed the world, but not on a diet of high fructose corn syrup and hydroginated soy bean oil."
This was from an organic grain farmer with 1400 acres in organic grains.
Mobile post sent by CSAFarmerGirl using Utterli.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Spoiled!
Wow, are we spoiled in Northeast Ohio! We just got back from Grand Rapids "best bar-b-que seven years in a row." A meal which was not cheap and just a little better then not good!
There are a couple restuaraunts around here which have good reviews but are just a little out of our price range with Entrees at $35 and way up!
The best food so far has been at the Skywalk Deli, a little lunch place with 10 small tables, but good sandwiches and soup.
We have decided that we are just spoiled with so manyy excellent chefs who make their places accessable (even to poor farmers.)
Oh, and I know they have microbrewaries around here, but asking about local microbrews is getting blank stares from waitresses.
There are a couple restuaraunts around here which have good reviews but are just a little out of our price range with Entrees at $35 and way up!
The best food so far has been at the Skywalk Deli, a little lunch place with 10 small tables, but good sandwiches and soup.
We have decided that we are just spoiled with so manyy excellent chefs who make their places accessable (even to poor farmers.)
Oh, and I know they have microbrewaries around here, but asking about local microbrews is getting blank stares from waitresses.
Mobile post sent by CSAFarmerGirl using Utterli.
Scrach baking!?!
So I admit it, I am niave. I assumed that the bakery session I attended this morning on "scratch baking" would spend lots of time on, I don't know! scratch baking.
Last year at the confrence I attended a bakery session and was amazed that EVERYTHING the did was either from a mix or a dough! I thought "scratch" would mean - well - scratch! NOT SO!
There are 4 degrees of "scratch" baking according to the presentor. First degree is actual scratch baking, second is from mixes, third is from doughs, and forth is thaw and sell! And don't be emarrased to say you "bake from scratch" regardless of which of these 4 you do.
The speaker pointed out that at their orchard their "signature" apple pie is a frozen pie they add their own carmel and nuts to! They also sell apple fritters they just thaw and sell. And if the stpped selling them "their customers would tell them about it!" I wonder if their customers even know they are not buying a product with their apples? Be aware
Last year at the confrence I attended a bakery session and was amazed that EVERYTHING the did was either from a mix or a dough! I thought "scratch" would mean - well - scratch! NOT SO!
There are 4 degrees of "scratch" baking according to the presentor. First degree is actual scratch baking, second is from mixes, third is from doughs, and forth is thaw and sell! And don't be emarrased to say you "bake from scratch" regardless of which of these 4 you do.
The speaker pointed out that at their orchard their "signature" apple pie is a frozen pie they add their own carmel and nuts to! They also sell apple fritters they just thaw and sell. And if the stpped selling them "their customers would tell them about it!" I wonder if their customers even know they are not buying a product with their apples? Be aware
Mobile post sent by CSAFarmerGirl using Utterli.
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