Rye Brot

The Big Guy decided to try his hand at bread-baking on Easter Sunday while I slept the sleep of the exhausted. He says he was tired of waiting for his parents to bring him some from the German store, so he looked up a German recipe online. In German. He was so proud of his little rye loaf. I think it looks like a giant biscuit. I told him he could do all that in the bread machine next time, but hey, he didn't used every pan in the kitchen, he knew the difference between waxed and parchment paper, and he cleaned up after himself, so however he wants to bake his rye brot is fine with me.

Off The Grid Cornmeal

For Christmas, brother Ralph found us one of these:

The grain mill, not the dog, although she's pretty cute, all supervising. This was quite the find for something like $20. Just Google "hand mill grinders" if you don't believe me.

We finally got around to trying it out the other day. Look at The Big Guy go! His arm is a veritable blur!

Here comes the cornmeal! It was far easier to crank than we expected, and it's even adjustable for coarseness. We played around with the settings and discovered that we could grind our corn even finer than I had with the combination of electric grinders.

And here is the finished product. All 2+ pounds of it.

A-maize-ing.
(sorry)

Ravensdale Red Huckleberry Pie

Having a wonderful pie. Wish you were here!

*****FYI*****

Did you know that you're looking at only one of 4 blogs by me? Look over on the left side for "My Other Blogs" and click!

Did you know that if you put your cursor over a picture in any post and click, it gets way bigger and easier to see?

Did you know that you can leave comments and read comments others leave? You can! Be nice, be funny, or be gone!

Did you know that if you get to the bottom, you can click on "older post" to see all the previous posts ever posted on whichever blog you're currently viewing? Try it! You may have missed some!

Thanks for visiting. Come back soon!

Punkines!

Ha, I still crack up every time I think of that road-side sign we saw that declared "Punkines!" In fact, that's all we've ever called them since. I'm pretty sure they were selling pumpkins, but now that I think about it, wouldn't that be funny if the joke was on me, and there really is something called "punkines?" Is there?

Punkines! (I think)


Canned punkine.

Punkine puree. (is this picture gross? I wanted to show my prowess at getting this stuff pureed, but I know food pics can be iffy, so I apologize if this makes anyone else a little whoopsie.)

Roasted punkine seeds.

Chanterelles

(It was hard to know which of my blogs to post this on. It was a hike to gather these, so it could've gone on Dirty Walking, but since it was ultimately about food, I'll put it here, although there is a related nature story coming, so be ready for that.)

These are Chanterelle mushrooms. (shon-ter-ELZ) We go up to Tiger Mountain most every autumn to hunt for them. I do not like to eat them, but I do like to hunt them. And I like that there aren't other mushrooms that look like them that could kill The Big Guy who does like to eat them.

Finding these requires climbing up the steep slopes of Tiger and bushwhacking through the underbrush. It takes a LOT to make a little once they're dried.

See? That whole picnic table-full is all right here in this cannister. No kidding. So now when you go out for a really fancy dinner or you watch Iron Chef America, and you see Chanterelles on the menu, you'll know why it costs more than your house.

Now for the nature story:

There we were, scrambling along the slopes of Tiger, when I look up and not 15 feet in front of me is a pretty mule deer doe. Why she wasn't running from us since we were making lots of noise, I didn't know, but then I thought, "Gads, maybe she's not scared because she's sick, and any minute she's going to charge and start kicking the hell out of me!" Fortunately, that did not happen, but what did happen was she would move a ways away, and then circle around and sort of hang out near us. She did this several times. A couple times, we thought she had finally moved on, but then she'd come bounding through again Boing! Boing! Boing! Let me assure you it is very humbling when you're using every ounce of strength and balance you have to stay on the side of a steep forest slope and a deer springs through like it's a meadow. Show off!

If Life Hands You Old Corn

Make corn meal! Remember my lamenting about getting to our corn a little late and not liking it's stickiness and chewiness? How could you forget, its like two entries ago?! Anyhow, I said to myself, "Little Glutton, why don't you throw some of that old corn in the dehydrator and see what happens." So I did because I always listen to myself. And what happened was that it dried all up. What did you think was gonna happen, it's a dehydrator, silly. Then I threw it in my little nut-chopper gizmo and then into the old coffee grinder. It looked pretty darn good.

I had to put it to the test, though, so I made some whole wheat cornbread. The Big Guy said it was the best he ever had, and he liked my cornbread before.

I'm thrilled about this because I was so unhappy about all my hard work in growing all that beautiful corn being for naught. Making cornmeal from future corn crops is not the plan, but it's comforting to know we have a great use for our old, sticky corn this year.