Month: December 2016

by

Cheddar Powder = Cheddar Chex Mix

Over our long weekend (2 snow days + Saturday & Sunday), we did a family movie night at home.  The girl and I made homemade chex mix, the way my family used to do before the company started packaging it.  It’s so much better crisp and still warm out of the oven, redolent of the Worcestershire and a hint of garlic, IMO anyway.  The beauty of it being you can make it your own too.

Chex Mix

1 C. Butter
3 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 tsp. Garlic Powder
2-4 Drops Hot Pepper Sauce
6 C. small Pretzels or Pretzel Sticks
4 C. Wheat Chex
4 C. Rice or Corn Chex
5 C. Cheerios (or Make a Trifecta of Chex)
3 C. Mixed Nuts

On saucepan mix butter, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder and pepper sauce. Heat and stir until butter is melted. In large roasting pan mix remaining ingredients. Drizzle with butter mixture and toss to coat. Bake in 300F oven for 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. Spread on foil to cool.

I left out the hot sauce; its not much, but my girl is very sensitive to spice.  I also used only cashews.  Two of us don’t like peanuts and I don’t like almonds, so mixed nuts were nixed.  I also did Corn, Wheat and Rice Chex, and no Cheerios, because I forgot to buy them.  But really, you could add a lot of different things to give it your own spin, bagel chips, goldfish, sesame sticks, what have you.  Just stick to about the same volume of the dry ingredients so the butter mixture can have the same coverage.

I dipped into my food storage and tried the cheddar cheese powder I got from Hoosier Hill Farm to season half the batch.  I didn’t really measure.  I just sprinkled on what looked like a good amount when it first came out of the oven, still a little “damp” and hot, and tossed it well.  I’d probably gotten better results and more even coverage if I’d put it in a little mini sifter (like the one I use for powdered sugar on desserts), but it came out just fine.  The cereal bits that got a little too much cheese powder turned out to be the boy’s favorite bites.

He said it was better than the cheddar cheese flavor packaged Chex mix, so if I can’t figure out how to use the cheese powder otherwise, we could have a LOT of cheddar Chex mix. ;)  I am going to use storage powders and see if I can come up with a decent cheese sauce for veggies this evening.  Wish me luck!

by

Holiday Season

Keeping busy as the holiday season crawls along towards Christmas.  Have holiday baking to do, presents to wrap (last minute thing around here since we still have a Santa believer), but for the most part, I am prepared for Christmas.

We got a couple days of snow, meaning a couple snow days off school for the kids.  Snow is not the norm here, so people aren’t really prepared, no one knows how to drive in it (myself included, I can’t lie!), and pretty much the city shuts down.  Even if they manage to get the main streets clear and things moving, we are stuck, because we live at the top of a series of steep hills.  If you make it to the bottom of the first, and try to move out into the bigger world, you get to a junction with a hill going up left and a hill going up right.  Getting home is a big challenge, even if you make it out.

Besides, we live in the boonies version of suburbia, pockets of homes surrounded by protected wilderness.  So the road deicers never make it this far.

I still haven’t received my water barrel storage unit ordered on 10/28.  Part of me worries that I am getting scammed.  But I did email at the end of November and got a quick response that they are waiting on material from their fabricators, which if the email was accurate they would have received the first week of December.  The website says “Turn around time is typically 3 weeks.   So the sooner you place your order…the sooner it will be ready but there is a lead time for the fabricators to make everything.”  All I can do is hope I am not getting strung along so that it will be too late to register a complaint with my credit card company.  My gut tells me that they are just a small company (or even just “a guy”) and since they have to outsource everything, I just need to be patient, and eventually they will come through. I was “order 204” not 14,204 or 183, 204.  So, I am practicing patience.  And hoping I am not an idiot.

However, I haven’t wanted to fill up my water barrels, only to have to empty them to rack them, so I feel a little vulnerable.  On the other hand, its winter and we get precipitation fairly constantly.  If the SHTF and I didn’t have to worry about legally collecting rainwater (only collecting roof runoff is legal here), then I could put out the kiddie pools and buckets and tarp collectors and have plenty of liquid to run through the berkey.

by

Initial tests of the dehydrator

I don’t know why I didn’t take pictures, but I ran a semi successful test of the dehydrator.  I used up stuff that I wasn’t going to be able to consume before it went bad mostly.

I had a mix of items.  I was worried that the onions would flavor the fruits, once it started, because the whole house stunk of onions.  It didn’t seem to though.  Also, the noise isn’t too bad.  It sounded a lot like the microwave in use; and aside from the fact I kept expecting the food in microwave to stop (hah), it wasn’t overly disruptive.

I made Kiwi chips.  These are ok, but when we buy dehydrated kiwi, they are much thicker and a little chewier, and my kiddo prefers that to the thin ones I produced.  I sliced them 1/4 inch thick on my V-Slicer, and they dehydrated down to a double thickness of cardstock.

I did some pineapple slices.  I pulled them out a little chewy, but they are still thinner than my kid would like.  I learned that if there is the tiniest bit of the skin left on, after its dried, the skin is VERY prevalent.  It doesn’t shrink up like the flesh and … yuk.  Bits that I didn’t even notice on the 1/4″ slices before drying made it inedible without trimming after drying.

I also had some chile peppers from my CSA box.  Somehow I ended up with 2 bags with 6-8 peppers per bag.  I am not even sure what they were.  They were much longer than a jalapeno, and red.  Not too spicy, but half my household doesn’t like food that is spicy at all. I didn’t roast and remove skin.  And it seems like that is all there is too it once it dried.  It’s all thickened basically inedible skin.  They don’t have nearly as much flesh as a bell pepper, so I’m not sure I could even skin and de-seed them and leave anything else.  They would likely be candidates for going very dry, whole, and then using like dried chiles in Mexican cooking, cooking in a liquidy dish to add a little spice and then removing, or possibly rehydrating, slitting open, removing seeds and trying to scrape some of the flesh out for adding heat to a dish.  They aren’t good for storing as diced peppers, IMO.

Edit: Turns out they are Doux des Landes Chili Peppers, which are only about as hot as an Anaheim or Dried Pasilla Pepper.  They come from the south of France and are often used in a Basque recipe pipérade, which is a stew like dish made of tomatoes and peppers, flavored with a pork product (Bayonne Ham is the traditional product, but pancetta is probably very close and more readily available here).  Sometimes eggs are poached in it, like a shakshuka.  It is also served over scrambled eggs, polenta, or poached chicken.  Interestingly, I am having trouble finding an authentic recipe that actually calls for these chiles.  Everything in English just says red bell peppers, which I suppose would be similar.  I am straining my high school French lessons from 1000 years ago.

La piperade des Landes

LA piperade des Landes, la plus ressemblante à celle de mon arrière-grand-mère (cap-breton) :

– 3 oignons
– 1.5 kg à 2 kg de tomates, bien mure de préférence.
– 5 – 10 piments vert et doux des Landes (on peu aussi y mettre d autres types, notamment des poivrons, mais c plus tout a fais pareil ^^)
– quelques morceaux de jambon de Bayonne, idéalement les morceaux trop dur et les “coin” avec le gras.
– huile d’olive
– sel, poivre, sucre.
– 3 – 4 gousse d’ail
– thym et laurier.
– un peu d’eau (ou vin blanc).

Haché les oignons, les faire colorer dans de l’huile d’olive. Ajouter piments couper en rondelle et sans pépins, les tomates peler et couper en carré, les coins de jambon, le bouquet garni, l’ail, sel poivre et sucre à votre convenance, un peu d’eau.
Laisser mijoter 30 mn à 1h00 (plus c long, plus c bon). Il faut obtenir une sauce un peu épaisse.

Servir avec des tranches de ventrèche ou jambons de Bayonne poêler. Vous pouvez pocher des œufs dedans.

I believe that this is a recipe for pipérade from the poster’s (Great?) grand mother.  Onions, tomatoes, my chile peppers, hard and fatty corner pieces of Bayonne ham, Olive oil, salt, pepper, sugar, garlic, thyme and (Laurel?  We don’t use that as a cooking thing here, and that’s my daughters name, heh), water or whine wine.  The instructions are harder than the ingredients.  Chop onions, sprinkle with the olive oil (I think in the pan?) and add the sliced peppers (in rounds?), peeled tomatoes (couper en carré?  is that “cut into squares”?  meaning diced?).  Tie up the herbs in a bouquet garni, toss those in, season with salt pepper and sugar and then simmer 30 minutes to an hour until it gets thick.  Serve over slices of  “ventrèche” (a cured pork product like pancetta made from pork belly) or steam fried Bayonne Ham.  Or poach eggs in it.

Well, that was a long interlude, oops 😉

I did some onions, both diced and in rings.  These turned out just fine.  I am going to give them a try in a recipe tonight and see how they are after rehydrating in a dish.

I also dried some citrus fruits.  I had some lemons and mandarins.  I will try grinding a few into powder to see how that goes.  The rest I am using for holiday decorating.

All in all, a good first run of the dehydrator.  I am excited about putting up larger batches of things for my LTS.

by

What’s the hubbub, bub?

Been a crazy week around here.  I’ve got dental stuff going on, multiple days.  Youngest has had multiple doctor appointments, taking her out of school.  She’s got hypersensitivities and has been exhibiting a lot of anxiety; enough to worry us, so trying to get her some help for that.  Oldest broke his glasses, and can’t see anything more than 5 feet away without them.  I had purchased the protection plan for them, thank goodness.  Since I had to take his in anyway, I got around to getting new lenses ordered for me.  They were supposed to be scratch resistant, but look like someone took sandpaper to them.  I haven’t treated these any differently than any other pair I’ve owned in 30+ years and never have had glasses scratch so much that everything looks a little blurry.  Super annoying.  Since I had protection plan on mine too, his frames and my lenses cost nothing.  I think the plans were 79$ each pair, but his frames were 300$ and my lenses were close to 800$ (progressive lenses with anti-glare and scratch resistant coating) so it made the protection plan worth the money I spent.  It’s going to take a week to get son’s frames in, which makes school really challenging for him.  Given his autism, anything out of the norm is even more challenging than the challenges it presents on its own.  My lenses will take longer.  When I first got my glasses it took almost 3 weeks.  I’m hoping they will come before Christmas at least.

Despite my best intentions, I ended up out in public doing some more shopping.  We are supposed to see snow in the next few days.  It may be nothing, but just in case (I can’t forget being snowed in for 13 days on our steep hill once upon a time), I wanted to make sure I had plenty of meat, vegetables, butter and milk in the freezer.  I also ended up having to do a little more Christmas shopping.  Needed new lights for the Christmas tree, and while my girl is 7, she still really believes in Santa and there’s one specific item she wants so badly and is just certain Santa will bring it that I had to break down and get it for her, lest I destroy her still oh so innocent beliefs.

This weekend I plan to do my first run with the new dehydrator (ok, so it was supposed to be a “Christmas present” to myself, sue me!) and need to take the girl to choose a birthday present for a friend; she has a birthday party to attend on Sunday.  Will likely finish up decorating for Christmas, aside from the tree, which we won’t have until Wednesday.  In my spare time at the computer, I am continuing to copy LTS recipes into a document that I can print and have available should we lose power and I need to get creative with food storage meals.

And that’s my life right now.