Enter the Lion

We've had an odd mix of weather here in Western Washington these past few weeks. Torrential downpours interspersed with gorgeous sunshine and freezing overnight temperatures. Mother Nature's seasonal schizophrenia has tricked many a plant into popping up early, only to be zapped by frost. Of the nettles, daffodils, fiddleheads and dandelions, believe it or not, the one that I am most excited about this year is the much-maligned dandelion.

The dandelion, or Taraxacum Officinale, is so named because once upon a time, the raggedly-toothed leaves reminded someone of a lion's tooth or dent de lion. Like pretty much everyone else on the planet, I've hated them with the fire of a thousand suns for as long as I can remember. But if there's one way to change my tune about a plant, it's to tell me that it is not only edible but can be made into wine. Viola - instant dandelion fan!

Having been long-since sold on the sheer delightfulness of dandelion wine (described by many as "sunshine in a bottle"), I've been keeping a sharp eye out for the appearance of the first yellow menace. I found my first few just today. So far, they are only growing on the south side of the house which tells me that I caught them nice and early in the season - woohoo! And so, I pluck a few dozen flowers and sit down to the larger task of separating the petals from the greenery. This takes forever and a day, of course, and yields an amount so paltry that it won't even register on the scale. Hooboy I've got a lot of dandy-pickin' in my near future. I've already enlisted the kids to help me with the next batch of blooms. Wrangling my kids into helping me make wine - I've got the Mother of the Year award practically sewn up!



Fortunately for me, the recipe that I am using calls for a volume of petals (6 cups!), rather than a weight or I'd need to be picking weeds 'round the clock. As it is, I'm kind of eyeballing my neighbor's yards for dandelions. If I play my cards right, in addition to Mother of the Year, I can also be that-weird-lady-who-steals-weeds.

Right now I only have about a cup of petals, so it'll be at least a week before I can start my wine, but when I do, I'll be sure to post details & pics of the process.

The Bird Girl of Oly-town

Today was the last day of this year's Great Backyard Bird Count. For those of you who don't know my family personally, we have, in the form of a sassy soon-to-be 10 year old girl, a self-described "bird nerd" in the house. She was a penguin this past Halloween, and a big yellow chicken the year before that. We have 7 critters in the house, 6 of whom are birds. She has literally memorized word for word every field guide in the house. The girl likes birds.

Therefore, this bird-centric day was practically Christmas part 2 for my sweet Olivia. She, her little sister and I joined my friend and her son for a leisurely walk through the woods to see and hear who and what was either living in or passing through our home turf. Here is the list of birds that we either saw/heard or both in the wetland meadow and woods near my home, as well as a few that we spotted in the back yard today.

Western Gull - 1
Downy Woodpecker - 1
Steller's Jay - 2
American/Northwestern Crow - 1
Black-capped Chickadee - 4
Chestnut-backed Chickadee - 4
Bewick's Wren - 1
American Robin - 2
Spotted Towhee (Pacific) - 2
Fox Sparrow - 1
Song Sparrow - 2
Dark-eyed Junco - 4
House Finch - 2

You think that all of that walking and watching would have been enough bird-filled action for my girl, but nooooo. She wanted to make the birds a snack to boot. Fortunately, I happened to have all of the necessary ingredients on hand to whip up a homemade suet cake. Here's what we used-

1 cup +/- rendered beef fat (from last night's dinner of short ribs)
1 tbsp organic peanut butter
1/4 cup +/- each of cornmeal, unbleached flour, unsalted sunflower seeds, cracked corn & roasted pumpkin seeds (leftover from Halloween)

We mixed the dry ingredients well, while the fat was melting.



Then we slowly added that melted fat & peanut butter to the dry mixture. After combining well, Miss Olivia patted it all firmly into a pie plate to harden.



After about an hour in the freezer, we popped out our "cake" and hung it up in the feeder (made by my darling husband especially for this project) in the cherry tree just outside our picture window.



And there you have a banner day for my little Miss bird nerd and her feathered friends.

Roses and Wine

Actually, it was roses in wine on this particular Valentines Day. We strained and racked the rose hip wine today. Here it is going into the bottle, in which it will continue to ferment and clear over the next three months -



The color was pretty surprising since I was expecting a pinkish-orange brew, rather than the o.j. color that we ended up with. It just goes to show you never know with chemistry...



But the thing that you're probably most interested to hear about is the taste, and I'm pleased to say that both the wine's taste and smell (or should I say bouquet?) are quite good, even at this very early stage. It has a light, sweet apple/pear flavor that reminds me of a very light version of a hard cider, but with - at this stage- a very yeasty kick. I'm always impatient when it comes to drinking my finished wine, but this one has me counting the days 'til we can pour a glass. :)

Rose Hip Wine - Day 3

"Ferm, baby, ferm! Vino inferno! Ferm, baby, ferm - makin' al-kee-hall..."



I know it looks a little scary, but we're just 2 days away from straining out all of the chunkage and moving this yumminess into a jug to continue fermenting. This is my first non-fruit wine, so I am both excited and nervous to taste this. Provided that the first sip doesn't kill me, I'll keep you posted on it's progress.

Aunt Ethel's Cobbler

Having recently stumbled upon a massive cache of frozen blueberries, I've been mulling over how to best use them - ice cream? sorbet? maybe pie? Then I came across the Huckle Buckle recipe contest over at Fat of the Land and knew immediately what I wanted to do with all of those lovely berries - make up a batch of Aunt Ethel's cobbler.



Aunt Ethel was the baker in my Grandmother's generation. She made this incredible cobbler for every family reunion and I remember passing up the home made ice cream for seconds on cobbler. Oh the calorie-careless days of youth...

Anyway, this is my version of Aunt Ethel's recipe. You can use just about any fruit that you want with this cobbler batter, but I most often use berries (blueberries, huckleberries or blackberries, typically) or, once in a while, peaches. My absolute favorite thing about this recipe - besides the taste! - is that it is SO quick and simple to make. I have mentioned my ineptitude at baking many times, but my success with this cobbler proves that foolproof recipes do exist, and if you're really lucky, you also have a really cool Great Aunt to give them to you. ;) Without further ado, Aunt Ethel's Cobbler-

Batter-
1/2 Stick Butter
1 1/2 c. Sugar
2 c. flour
1 c. milk
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. baking powder

Fruit-
1 1/2 c. blueberries (or just about any fruit)
1 tbsp sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in a 11x7 (or similar size) casserole dish in the oven. Remove and let butter cool slightly.

In a large mixing bowl, mix the sugar, flour, salt & baking powder well.

In a separate bowl, measure out your berries or other fruits and sprinkle them with the tablespoon of sugar. Toss well.

Finally, add milk to the flour mixture and mix well until a thick batter forms. Pour the batter into the buttery casserole dish. Some butter will come up over the batter, that is ok. Lastly, sprinkle/drop the sugared berries into the batter - do not stir. Bake @ 350 degrees for about 1 hour, checking every so often to ensure that the top doesn't get too brown before the middle has had a chance to set-up. If you see this happening, you can put a piece of foil over the top to slow things down a bit. Check for doneness with a toothpick. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving.

This tastes AMAZING with vanilla ice cream, but is pretty fantastic all by itself.

Hippy Wine

After much dawdling, I finally got around to starting my first gallon of rose hip wine today. I've actually had these rose hips in the freezer for a while, being that I was 4 ounces shy of the amount required for the recipe that I wanted to use. Not able to ever lay my hands on more, I decided to make up the 4 ounce difference with the rose hip's botanical cousin, an apple.



I sliced, crushed, sugared and added water to these lovely hips (and half a yellow delicious apple) and set them to steep in the primary fermenter for 24 hours. Tomorrow I'll pitch the yeast and in a few days we'll see what we see. If this batch works out, I'll post the recipe here along with my fudges and observations.

On a related note, the hubby is starting another batch of beer today as well - a Czech/German Pilsner, he tells me, as if I'd have any idea at all what that meant. I figure that between our parallel booze brewing efforts, we will have a few lovely intoxicants to imbibe in the months and years to come.

Freezer Raid

I've been blabbering on a lot lately about cleaning and purging, and today's victim lucky recipient was our chest freezer. I went a-diggin' in there today to remind myself of what treasures lay within and hopefully spark a little creativity in terms of cooking and consuming my frozen goodies before spring and summer bring a whole new crop of edible delights. I found a LOT of things that I had forgotten that I had stashed in there and am kind of excited about getting to use them all in the next few weeks and months. Some of my newly re-discovered treasures-

*Six whole Red Rock Crab! - Crab cakes, anyone? :)
*5 pounds of blueberries - I knew that I had some in there. I just forgot how much.
*A honkin' bunch of zucchini
*LOTS of wild berries - huckleberries, salmon berries & wild blackberries. I'm going to try making a sorbet out of some of these.

I also found a few packages of sliced nectarines in there from last summer. What a treat to stumble on in January! And so, I am sort of knocking together a frozen dessert with these nectarines. It's basically an "ice cream pie" with a cookie crumb crust and homemade nectarine frozen yogurt, made of course, in the handy-dandy Kitchenaid. Here she is, my lovely freezy-pie -




I'd post a recipe, but I didn't really use one. So in lieu of a proper recipe, here's a quick rundown of what I did to make this lovely little treat -

1. I smashed some Meyer lemon cookies that we had lying around, mixed in a little butter and pressed them into the bottom of a spring form pan. Baked it at 350 for 5 or 10 minutes. Cooled it.

2. Mixed 2 cups plain Greek-style yogurt with 2 cups of whole milk peach yogurt, plus the thawed nectarines, a few tablespoons of maple syrup and some cinnamon & ginger.

3. Threw the yogurt mixture into the ice cream maker.

4. Poured the newly made Fro-Yo into the cooled crust and chucked it in the freezer.

That's it! I'm pretty darn happy with how it came out, but the kids weren't so keen on it. I think the yogurt was just a little more tart that they wanted in a "treat". Picky little beasts. Oh well, more for mama! :)