Well, the "Just Right" hybrid turnips I planted in December are bolting, right on schedule to attract bees to pollinate the Royal Rosa apricot and the Flavor Delight Aprium.
"White Lady" turnip, planted the same time, is not bolting yet. "Just Right" is a great fall turnip, resistant to cold. Not such a great spring turnip. Just as described in the catalog.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Thumbprint Cookies
These are rich butter cookies, resembling shortbread. They contain no eggs or leavening, so if you want kids to have the experience of eating cookie dough, this is a good recipe to use.
Little Cooking Lessons
Creaming butter and sugar: Some classic baking recipes (such as butter cakes and some cookies -- like this recipe, which contains no leavening and very little liquid) depend on creaming butter and sugar to add lightness and proper texture to the finished product. The temperature of the ingredients, especially the butter, is important. Butter and sugar will cream to a "light and fluffy" consistency when at 65 to 67 degrees. Start creaming the butter first, then add the sugar,as described at the link. Beating creates some heat, so you may need to put your bowl in a shallow container of cool water to keep the butter from melting, especially if the room temperature is above 67 degrees F.
Sifting Flour: Some precise baking recipes still call for sifted flour, which gives a more reproducible measurement than newer methods. When I was little, Mom, who hates to measure, had a flour sifter in the flour canister. My high school cooking teacher, Miss Hauser, had us sift flour onto a sheet of waxed paper with a relatively fine-meshed strainer, spoon the flour into a measureing cup and level with a knife without shaking or tapping. She also had us sift the measured flour together with the salt and/or leavening in a recipe two or three times for the highest-quality results. This recipe calls for sifted flour.
Some popular recipe books simplified the method for measuring flour by calling for stirring the flour in the canister then spooning the flour into a cup without shaking or tapping, then leveling. Then came the "stir, dip and level" method. It is good to be familiar with the method recommended by your favorite recipe books (accurate measurements matter more for some recipes than others). Heritage recipes were often developed with sifted flour. People who compete in baking at state fairs, etc. usually use recipes which call for sifted flour.
Ingredients
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened but not mushy
1/2 cup superfine sugar (baker's sugar)
2 teaspoons vanilla or a combination of flavors*
Directions
Mix measured, sifted flour with salt, sift together and set aside. Cream butter, then cream with sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in flavoring. Gently fold in flour about 1/2 cup at a time. Do not over-mix. Cover dough and refrigerate for 1 - 2 hours (you can also divide into 2 or 3 portions to use on different days. Avoid over-handling. Keep sealed and refrigerated).
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Roll cold dough into 1-inch balls and place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets (I line a cookie sheet with heavy-duty aluminum foil) if making a single sheet of cookies). Make a deep indentation in the top of each cookie with your thumb. Avoid handling dough too much. Cookies don't have to be perfect, especially if kids help. Fill with jelly or preserves (or fill after baking with chocolate or preserves). Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, or until edges start to brown. Makes about 48 cookies.
I don't fill the cookies before baking. Instead, for a chocolate version, I slide the foil off the baking sheet onto a cool surface or a wire rack, immediately place 3 big Guittard milk chocolate chips in the indentation of each cookie and press the chips together slightly when they have partially melted. For a more traditional thumbprint cookie, I put a little dab of boysenberry preserves in some of the cooled cookies. Someday, I may try a baked filling with brown sugar and coconut, almonds or pecans.
Allergy information: This recipe contains no baking powder and so is free from corn products (unless toppings contain them - watch for corn in jams and jellies). It is one of a limited number of cookie recipes that don't include eggs.
* You can also use a combination of flavorings to make exactly 2 teaspoons: 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla with 1/2 tsp. almond or lemon extract or 1 3/4 tsp. vanilla with 1/4 tsp. almond or other extract. I think that 3 parts vanilla to 1 part almond is sometimes called "Viennese vanilla".
Little Cooking Lessons
Creaming butter and sugar: Some classic baking recipes (such as butter cakes and some cookies -- like this recipe, which contains no leavening and very little liquid) depend on creaming butter and sugar to add lightness and proper texture to the finished product. The temperature of the ingredients, especially the butter, is important. Butter and sugar will cream to a "light and fluffy" consistency when at 65 to 67 degrees. Start creaming the butter first, then add the sugar,as described at the link. Beating creates some heat, so you may need to put your bowl in a shallow container of cool water to keep the butter from melting, especially if the room temperature is above 67 degrees F.
Sifting Flour: Some precise baking recipes still call for sifted flour, which gives a more reproducible measurement than newer methods. When I was little, Mom, who hates to measure, had a flour sifter in the flour canister. My high school cooking teacher, Miss Hauser, had us sift flour onto a sheet of waxed paper with a relatively fine-meshed strainer, spoon the flour into a measureing cup and level with a knife without shaking or tapping. She also had us sift the measured flour together with the salt and/or leavening in a recipe two or three times for the highest-quality results. This recipe calls for sifted flour.
Some popular recipe books simplified the method for measuring flour by calling for stirring the flour in the canister then spooning the flour into a cup without shaking or tapping, then leveling. Then came the "stir, dip and level" method. It is good to be familiar with the method recommended by your favorite recipe books (accurate measurements matter more for some recipes than others). Heritage recipes were often developed with sifted flour. People who compete in baking at state fairs, etc. usually use recipes which call for sifted flour.
Ingredients
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened but not mushy
1/2 cup superfine sugar (baker's sugar)
2 teaspoons vanilla or a combination of flavors*
Directions
Mix measured, sifted flour with salt, sift together and set aside. Cream butter, then cream with sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in flavoring. Gently fold in flour about 1/2 cup at a time. Do not over-mix. Cover dough and refrigerate for 1 - 2 hours (you can also divide into 2 or 3 portions to use on different days. Avoid over-handling. Keep sealed and refrigerated).
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Roll cold dough into 1-inch balls and place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets (I line a cookie sheet with heavy-duty aluminum foil) if making a single sheet of cookies). Make a deep indentation in the top of each cookie with your thumb. Avoid handling dough too much. Cookies don't have to be perfect, especially if kids help. Fill with jelly or preserves (or fill after baking with chocolate or preserves). Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, or until edges start to brown. Makes about 48 cookies.
I don't fill the cookies before baking. Instead, for a chocolate version, I slide the foil off the baking sheet onto a cool surface or a wire rack, immediately place 3 big Guittard milk chocolate chips in the indentation of each cookie and press the chips together slightly when they have partially melted. For a more traditional thumbprint cookie, I put a little dab of boysenberry preserves in some of the cooled cookies. Someday, I may try a baked filling with brown sugar and coconut, almonds or pecans.
Allergy information: This recipe contains no baking powder and so is free from corn products (unless toppings contain them - watch for corn in jams and jellies). It is one of a limited number of cookie recipes that don't include eggs.
* You can also use a combination of flavorings to make exactly 2 teaspoons: 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla with 1/2 tsp. almond or lemon extract or 1 3/4 tsp. vanilla with 1/4 tsp. almond or other extract. I think that 3 parts vanilla to 1 part almond is sometimes called "Viennese vanilla".
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Easier Gardening, Lower Food Costs
The weather in Mexico and the world's financial situation have prompted people to think more seriously about gardening. I left a comment here concerning the value of good seed catalogs and gardening books. If you want me to recommend a good seed catalog for you, let me know.
I get some resistance to treating our own garden more like a garden and less like a farm. But I'm starting to introduce the ideas of gardening beds where rows are not practical. This is a farming region, and people are used to farming. There is less interest in gardening than there might be in some non-farming areas, interestingly enough. Following are some ideas which might inspire you to consider gardening.
1. Square Foot Gardening
The link above takes you to an Amazon video about Mel Bartholomew's famous Square Foot Gardening system. Check out the written summary of his Latest Improvements here. There is much more emphasis on making gardening easy than in the original book. These changes are included in a 2006 book, All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space! which is recommended by the Cox family.
It appears to be out of print at the moment, but I recently bought a copy. Major changes from the original book include:
(a) Drip irrigation
(b) Raised beds filled with soilless mix and lined with weed-stopping landscape cloth
(c) Wider aisles between beds for easier maneuvering.
I would also recommend lining the bottoms of beds with galvanized 1/4 inch hardware cloth if there are gophers or moles in your neighborhood. These beds require the outlay of a little money at first, but will pay off in the long run. There's also a new cookbook to go with the new gardening book. Fun video.
In cold-winter climates, raised beds have the advantage of warming up faster in the spring. In a hot-summer climate like ours, they carry potential disadvantages of faster loss of water and sometimes salt accumulation at the surface. These problems can be lessened through the inclusion of water-retentive materials in the soil mix, mulching (as with reflective mulch which also repels bugs) and through periodic soil leaching. In windy desert climates, sometimes beds are build lower than the surrounding land. If you're ambitious, you could try this.
2. Weedless Gardening
This is a cheaper alternative which allows you to use your native soil (still utilizing beds rather than rows), Lee Reich, a former agricultural researcher, wrote a book which provides a scientific rationale for Ruth Stout's emphasis on mulching, but does not require you to have as much mulching material as Stout originally recommended. I love the title to Stout's book linked above, but haven't read it.
Reich recommends laying down four sheets of newsprint over the soil, covering it with mulch, and planting seeds in the mulch. Lots of people swear by it, as long as there are no really nasty weeds (like certain perennial grasses) in the soil. I used a modification of this system on some tomato beds, and it really did eliminate weeds.
3. Cinder Block Gardens
The photo shows my first cinder block garden, containing young plants for my hybridization experiment for last year: Bidwell Casaba x Small Persian Melon. I'll plant some of the resulting seeds this year. You can use pretty much all of the same techniques as the Square Foot Gardening, though bed dimensions will be a little different (up to 40 inches wide in the planting space, 55 inches wide on the exterior if the unit is 3.5 blocks wide). If your ground is level, you need no tools except maybe a hammer to drive stakes and a level to check your work. The beds should be level. If you build it on, say, level concrete, you may not need any tools at all. These beds can be easily dismantled and moved if necessary.
The bed pictured above is narrow because it is against a fence. It required a couple of short (8-inch) blocks. It's made of "lightweight" cinderblocks (thinner). If you build your frame two 8-inch cinder blocks high or three 6-inch cinder blocks high and cap it, you can sit on it (lay the blocks on halves, as with brickwork, if you use more than one layer of blocks). The neighbors' yards near this bed are full of gophers, so I lined this little bed with hardware cloth. This size bed allowed me to use an entire 2-foot wide roll of 1/4 inch galvanized hardware cloth without cutting. Lining the entire planting area with commercial-grade weed block before laying out beds eliminates weeds in the aisles, too. Eventually, you would want to cover the aisles with wood chips, gravel, or something similar. This advice also holds true for square foot gardens.
Fill the cavities in the blocks with native soil or sand. You can also secure with stakes like I did. I wonder if bottles of water in the cavities would moderate temperatures? I used a soilless mix (potting soil) for the bed itself.
Cinder blocks wick water, so I lined the inside surfaces (NOT the bottom of the bed) with plastic and topped them with foil to repel aphids and whiteflies. In more moderate climates, you can plant herbs or some veggies in the cavities of the cinder blocks.
4. Self-watering containers
If you're short on space or time, try these. GardenWeb is a good source of information. One commercial type is the "Earthbox", typically big enough to hold two indeterminate (staked or caged with a PVC pipe support which fits around the container - see photos in thread at the last link) or up to four determinate or short-node indeterminate tomato plants. Someone put some thought into this system. You can also make your own containers. Do a little research first.
Have fun. Don't get too ambitious all at once.
I get some resistance to treating our own garden more like a garden and less like a farm. But I'm starting to introduce the ideas of gardening beds where rows are not practical. This is a farming region, and people are used to farming. There is less interest in gardening than there might be in some non-farming areas, interestingly enough. Following are some ideas which might inspire you to consider gardening.
1. Square Foot Gardening
The link above takes you to an Amazon video about Mel Bartholomew's famous Square Foot Gardening system. Check out the written summary of his Latest Improvements here. There is much more emphasis on making gardening easy than in the original book. These changes are included in a 2006 book, All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space! which is recommended by the Cox family.
It appears to be out of print at the moment, but I recently bought a copy. Major changes from the original book include:
(a) Drip irrigation
(b) Raised beds filled with soilless mix and lined with weed-stopping landscape cloth
(c) Wider aisles between beds for easier maneuvering.
I would also recommend lining the bottoms of beds with galvanized 1/4 inch hardware cloth if there are gophers or moles in your neighborhood. These beds require the outlay of a little money at first, but will pay off in the long run. There's also a new cookbook to go with the new gardening book. Fun video.
In cold-winter climates, raised beds have the advantage of warming up faster in the spring. In a hot-summer climate like ours, they carry potential disadvantages of faster loss of water and sometimes salt accumulation at the surface. These problems can be lessened through the inclusion of water-retentive materials in the soil mix, mulching (as with reflective mulch which also repels bugs) and through periodic soil leaching. In windy desert climates, sometimes beds are build lower than the surrounding land. If you're ambitious, you could try this.
2. Weedless Gardening
This is a cheaper alternative which allows you to use your native soil (still utilizing beds rather than rows), Lee Reich, a former agricultural researcher, wrote a book which provides a scientific rationale for Ruth Stout's emphasis on mulching, but does not require you to have as much mulching material as Stout originally recommended. I love the title to Stout's book linked above, but haven't read it.
Reich recommends laying down four sheets of newsprint over the soil, covering it with mulch, and planting seeds in the mulch. Lots of people swear by it, as long as there are no really nasty weeds (like certain perennial grasses) in the soil. I used a modification of this system on some tomato beds, and it really did eliminate weeds.
3. Cinder Block Gardens
The photo shows my first cinder block garden, containing young plants for my hybridization experiment for last year: Bidwell Casaba x Small Persian Melon. I'll plant some of the resulting seeds this year. You can use pretty much all of the same techniques as the Square Foot Gardening, though bed dimensions will be a little different (up to 40 inches wide in the planting space, 55 inches wide on the exterior if the unit is 3.5 blocks wide). If your ground is level, you need no tools except maybe a hammer to drive stakes and a level to check your work. The beds should be level. If you build it on, say, level concrete, you may not need any tools at all. These beds can be easily dismantled and moved if necessary.
The bed pictured above is narrow because it is against a fence. It required a couple of short (8-inch) blocks. It's made of "lightweight" cinderblocks (thinner). If you build your frame two 8-inch cinder blocks high or three 6-inch cinder blocks high and cap it, you can sit on it (lay the blocks on halves, as with brickwork, if you use more than one layer of blocks). The neighbors' yards near this bed are full of gophers, so I lined this little bed with hardware cloth. This size bed allowed me to use an entire 2-foot wide roll of 1/4 inch galvanized hardware cloth without cutting. Lining the entire planting area with commercial-grade weed block before laying out beds eliminates weeds in the aisles, too. Eventually, you would want to cover the aisles with wood chips, gravel, or something similar. This advice also holds true for square foot gardens.
Fill the cavities in the blocks with native soil or sand. You can also secure with stakes like I did. I wonder if bottles of water in the cavities would moderate temperatures? I used a soilless mix (potting soil) for the bed itself.
Cinder blocks wick water, so I lined the inside surfaces (NOT the bottom of the bed) with plastic and topped them with foil to repel aphids and whiteflies. In more moderate climates, you can plant herbs or some veggies in the cavities of the cinder blocks.
4. Self-watering containers
If you're short on space or time, try these. GardenWeb is a good source of information. One commercial type is the "Earthbox", typically big enough to hold two indeterminate (staked or caged with a PVC pipe support which fits around the container - see photos in thread at the last link) or up to four determinate or short-node indeterminate tomato plants. Someone put some thought into this system. You can also make your own containers. Do a little research first.
Have fun. Don't get too ambitious all at once.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Quick and Rich Fudge
Well, this is actually closer to being a ganache than to real fudge. But no matter. Quick to make. Kid friendly. You can load this up with chopped nuts and drop teaspoonfuls on a cookie sheet covered with waxed paper, then top with a pecan or other whole nut if you like. But most people seem to prefer it plain.
Oil an 8 inch square baking dish or spray with cooking spray. Fold a sheet of waxed paper to fit along the bottom of the dish and up two sides. Smooth into oiled dish.
Have all ingredients at room temperature.
One 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
2 to 4 Tablespoons butter
11.5 oz. bag (2 cups) Guittard milk chocolate chips (or other milk chocolate chips)
1 cup Nestle mini semi-sweet chocolate chips (or other semi-sweet chocolate chipe)
Melt all ingredients over medium heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, stirring constantly. This won't take long. When smooth, remove from heat and quickly stir in one to two teaspoons vanilla. Quickly spread evenly in pan. A stiff but flexible nylon or silicone scraper helps. Cover and chill until firm. Slide a knife around the edges of the pan and lift out cold fudge to remove waxed paper. Cut into small pieces - it is very rich. Keep tightly covered.
NOTE: If you use the maximum amounts of butter and vanilla, this fudge will be quite soft at room temperature. It will hold its quality best if refrigerated until shortly before serving.
Oil an 8 inch square baking dish or spray with cooking spray. Fold a sheet of waxed paper to fit along the bottom of the dish and up two sides. Smooth into oiled dish.
Have all ingredients at room temperature.
One 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
2 to 4 Tablespoons butter
11.5 oz. bag (2 cups) Guittard milk chocolate chips (or other milk chocolate chips)
1 cup Nestle mini semi-sweet chocolate chips (or other semi-sweet chocolate chipe)
Melt all ingredients over medium heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, stirring constantly. This won't take long. When smooth, remove from heat and quickly stir in one to two teaspoons vanilla. Quickly spread evenly in pan. A stiff but flexible nylon or silicone scraper helps. Cover and chill until firm. Slide a knife around the edges of the pan and lift out cold fudge to remove waxed paper. Cut into small pieces - it is very rich. Keep tightly covered.
NOTE: If you use the maximum amounts of butter and vanilla, this fudge will be quite soft at room temperature. It will hold its quality best if refrigerated until shortly before serving.
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