The Urban Farmer's Almanac

The little crabapples out in front of the run-down church next door are ready to go, so Robbie and I filled up a basketful yesterday. The sauce they make is really tart, but the batch we froze last year was perfect as a base for pie filling, adding either apples or rhubarb. The first batch today made 7 pints of applesauce, and I have the rest prepped to cook down tomorrow, hopefully for another 5 or 6 pints. That should get us through to next year in pretty good shape. Though pies have become my go-to potluck dish, so I think we’ll also do some apple pie filling this fall.

I got a little artsy with the photos this time, just to warn you. Here’s to steamy August nights in the kitchen.

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My mom used to make biscuits for breakfast all the time, and we’d have them with butter (let’s be honest, it was margarine) and jam or honey. Then I went off to college and the one thing I still miss from the Fairhaven dining hall is their biscuits and gravy, which I think were usually available on the weekends. Despite these fond memories, I rarely make biscuits these days.

Enter the New York Times Magazine a couple weeks ago. Like most weeks, one of the first things I read on Sunday morning is the recipe in the magazine, and it happened to be about biscuits, so I cut it out and pinned it to the fridge, which in the past has meant that Alicia will have to recycle it when I’ve forgotten about it in about 6 months.

But I woke up (or rather, was woken up by a baby) early today, and after finishing the last 25 pages of the book I was reading, I was ready to face the day, starting with a fresh batch of biscuits. You can get the recipe here, and the only change I made to the easy recipe was I did all the sifting and mixing in the food processor, instead of getting a bowl dirty too. The sausage gravy looks awesome as well (and the recipe features the instructions to cook “until its flavors are gathered close”, which is awfully poetic for a truck-stop specialty.) But I think the full biscuits and gravy assault on my arteries is best attempted on a weekend.

Breakfast today was equal parts nostalgia and the New York Times, a perfect description of most of the things I love, and it makes me laugh at the person I try so hard to be.

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There have been a couple ingredients that have been languishing around here, causing me all kinds of guilt. One was a bowl of porcini mushrooms (King Boletes) that we foraged out near Leavenworth when we went camping a week or two ago. I owe you a post about those, by the way. The other was bok choi that’s been ready for at least a month in the garden, and was starting to flower.

Finally today, we woke up to a bit of rain after a string of 8o° days, and inspiration hit. I decided to make some mushroom and bok choi miso soup with rice noodles for lunch. It hit the spot, used some food up, and the kids even ate it.

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Awhile back on this blog we wrote about the revolution that was the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day .  It was a great change of technique that really improved our bread making.  However I still ended up buying or making a lot of our sandwich bread because I prefer whole wheat bread – it just makes me feel like a better mom.  Enter Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.  A new (ish- I am little late to the table with this one) book by the same authors that includes 100% whole wheat, sandwich bread and many enriched breads.  I’ve checked it out from the library twice and am now thinking I will just buy the darn book so I can always have it around.  It makes a really nice sandwich bread and I am anxious to try some of the other recipes in the book.

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Our strawberry patch is doing MUCH better this year, having been hooked up to the main watering system.  Even with this improvement though there is no way we can grow enough strawberries for the jam we need for the coming year.  Luckily we are close enough to local u-pick fields to make acquiring strawberries not too difficult.  This year Hannah and I went to Harvold farms in Carnation, WA.  This is a no-frills farm that charges $1 a pound.  I was hoping to get 20 pounds, but my co-picker’s steam ran out pretty quickly so I settled for 13.

With this I managed to make 6 batches (30 cups) of Dan’s favorite freezer strawberry jam.  We actually had enough berries for a couple more batches, but we don’t want to run out of freezer space this early in the season.  Besides if we can’t make 30 cups last a year we may need to take our jam consumption down a notch. We’ve already enjoyed crepes with jam for breakfast today and now have plenty to last us a year, plus a gallon of frozen berries and a 4th of July strawberry shortcake to boot.

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