Sweet Potato Cornbread ToTry

Posted on by October 5, 2017
INGREDIENTS
  • 1 large sweet potato (yielding 1.5 cups mashed; roasting instructions below)
  • 1 cup whole grain cornmeal
  • ½ cup dry creamy wheat (i.e., Cream of Wheat)
  • 1 cup all purpose flour
  • ½ cup granulated sugar
  • 1 TB baking powder
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • ½ tsp ground nutmeg
  • ½ tsp table salt
  • 2 large eggs, room temp
  • ½ cup whole Greek yogurt, plain
  • ¾ cup milk
  • 2 TB olive oil
  • 4-5 pats real butter
DIRECTIONS
  1. Do ahead: Wrap sweet potato in heavy foil and roast 1.5 hours at 425F in oven or toaster oven. Once it can easily be pierced with fork, it’s done. Carefully unwrap (it’s hot!) and let cool enough to handle. Mash sweet potato. Measure out 1.5 cups for use in this recipe.
  2. Spray a 10 inch cast iron skillet with oil and set in oven on lower middle rack. Preheat oven to 425F.
  3. In a large bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, dry creamy wheat, flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. In a separate bowl, combine mashed roasted sweet potato, eggs, yogurt, milk, and olive oil. whisk to combine well. Mixture should be smooth and thick.
  4. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold sweet potato mixture with the cornmeal mixture just until no dry streaks of flour remain. Do not over-mix.
  5. Place preheated/greased skillet on a heat-safe surface. Scrape batter into skillet, evening out the top into the edges. Bake 25-30 minutes or until top is puffy and golden brown. There should be cracks visible around edges of cornbread. Place cornbread on wire rack. Immediately place 4-5 pats of butter on top, letting butter melt into the cornbread. slice and serve with additional butter, if desired.

Pear Preserves

Posted on by October 4, 2017

All from the same tree

10/1/2017 – Using sand pears picked from the tree in the garden at the farm, Mary made preserves inspired by the blog post and advice here at the BlindPigAndTheAcorn web site. See the post about picking them here at SundownFarms.com.

The directions at the BlindPig site plus what she added are as follows.

  1. Pears were peeled, cored and soft places discarded. Then sliced, white sugar was shaken on and stirred with her hands. The bowl was covered and put into the refrigerator for two days, i.e. until Tuesday. We did not use as much sugar as the recipe called for.
  2. Went through the pears and sliced some of them thinner and cut some of them in half. We had already made a crisp from some of them and found that we should have sliced them thinner.
  3. They had not made much liquid so added water to barely cover them and simmered for about an hour or until the juices started to thicken. This took a while because these pears were not very ripe.
  4. At about half way I decided to add 2 tsps. of ground ginger along with the zest of 1 medium lemon and the juice from that lemon. Just thought it would be a good idea.
  5. All this time I had a pot of water boiling to submerge my ball jars and lids when it was just about time to fill them.
  6. Broke some longer pieces of cinnamon sticks in half and placed 2 pieces each in the bottom of the hot jars.
  7. Filled each hot jar with the hot pears and covered with the liquid.
  8. Immediately placed the hot lids on each jar and let them cool.
  9. Just happened to have a few that would not fit into the jars.  They are absolutely delicious.

Jalapenos Fermented

Posted on by October 15, 2017

9/10/2011 – Started 2 quart-size jars of sliced jalapeno rounds consisting of green and red peppers. Added about 3 large garlic cloves, cut in half, to each jar. Made one quart of Shockey’s Standard Brine* by adding 1/8th cup of pickling salt to 1 quart of water and poured it into the two filled jars. Had very little brine solution to discard. Put on the airlock lids and into the fermenting bathroom.

* Basic Brine on page 78 of Fermented Vegetables is 1 gal water plus 1/2 cup of salt.

9/17/2017 – They have stopped gassing. The red and green rings look fine but a very mushy. The green is a little spicy but the very soft mushiness is almost nasty.

10/14/17 – Calculated the percentage of salt using his volumes and it is 3.28%.

German Style Saurkraut

Posted on by July 7, 2020

9/3/2017 – Made our first spiced kraut and did it German style inspired by this recipe at the www.TheSpruce.com.  Had half of a large white cabbage from Honk Kong Market (991 gm) bought two weeks ago. Sliced half like cole slaw (forgot what I was making) and the rest into long thin slices.

Mixed in 14 gm pickling salt or 1.4%. It tasted a bit salty but not too much. Added:

  • 14 juniper berries
  • 1 rounded teaspoon caraway seeds
  • 1 rounded teaspoon yellow mustard seeds

Hammered down with the meat cleaver for maybe 5 minutes. Put the mix into the 2 qt. fermenting jar–the 991 gm plus spices filled it perfectly. Installed air lock and put into the dark guest bathroom. After several hours it still had not produced much brine. Perhaps, there is value in letting it sit salted in the bowl for several hours like the recipe called for.

9/4/2017 – only about 2/3 of the depth of cabbage was in a brine. Mixed 1.4% brine solution and added until the shreds were covered but still about 1″ head space.

9/5/2017 – A goodly number of gas bubbles are in the soon-to-be kraut.

8/15/2017 – First try and it was crunchy with a very mild taste. Almost no flavor

8/17/2017 – Still crunchy but little flavor. Cannot detect the mustard or juniper. Good but not what I expected.

10/1/2017 – Emptied the 2 qt jar to make the second batch and had about a pint of brine and some kraut. The kraut is crunchy but the large irregular pieces are a bit much. Looking forward to the second batch cut on the mandoline in which I added some of the brine from this batch.