Something is afoot...

Fall at last !

It's a gray, rainy day here at the farm. After 90 degree plus temperatures, it's finally beginning to feel like fall !

Time to cook something warm and yummy for dessert. How about an old fashioned French apple pudding from Normandy ?

Marmelade de Pommes

4 T unsalted butter

2 pounds apples, peeled and thinly sliced

2 T lemon juice

2 T Calvados ( apple brandy from Normandy, don't substitute, leave it out if you don't have it )

1/2 c plus 2T sugar

2 large eggs

Heat oven to 350 degrees F and butter a 4 cup terrine mold.

In a heavy pot, melt the butter and add the apple slices, lemon juice, Calvados and sugar. If your apples are very sweet, you may want to adjust the amount of sugar.. Cover and cook the apples slowly, stirring once in a while, until they are soft and falling apart. If they are very juicy, uncover and boil away the liquid. Mash any large lumps with a fork and adjust the seasoning, adding lemon juice, Calvados or sugar , if needed. Basically, you have just made fancy apple sauce. Now it gets interesting :

Take the pot from the heat and cool just a bit. Stir the eggs a little to break up the yolks and add to the apple mixture. Beat to combine. Spoon the pudding into the prepared mold and smooth the top. Set the mold into a roasting pan and fill it halfway with boiling water.

Transfer this bain marie plus pudding to the oven and bake until the pudding is firm to the touch, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Serve warm or at room temperature, in slices. Pass the vanilla custard sauce separately. How about replacing the vanilla with Calvados in the sauce ? Sounds good to me.

Speaking of apples - this weekend there will be some crazy cider making going on here at the farm. T and friends have made a cider press and we are all curious whether the thing will work. Our trees are loaded down with apples and I am envisioning gallons of cider and possibly making some of our very own Calvados. Hope that's not illegal....

Labor Day Weekend

We really did labor this weekend mowing the pastures, clearing the garden of spent plants, mulching and composting ,getting ready for fall and winter.




T put together a new composting machine ( Finished Compost in A Mere SIX Days !!! ) It's fun to fill up the compartments to see whether it really will turn into compost that fast. The idea is to turn the drums every day - there's a handle on the right , aerating the contents and thus speeding up the decomposing process.

I was going to show pictures of all the lovely meals I had cooked for the Eat Local Challenge, but they all disappeared as soon as they hit the table. I'm beginning to wonder if the Eat Local Challenge is turning into a Butternut Squash Challenge here at chez RFD. We have a wheelbarrow full of squashes and have eaten them for every meal for days !
First I roasted cubes of peeled butternut with some butter and finished with a sprinkle of brown sugar - elegant with a roasted chicken and a green bean salad with sweet SunSugar cherry tomatoes, garlic and basil.

Next, I sauteed slices of squash in olive oil, garlic and a splash of white wine, why not ? I also cooked slices in butter and oil with garlic and then removed the squash from the pan and deglazed the pan with red wine vinegar and a little brown sugar until the latter had caramelized and poured this over the squash - divine ! This squash is terrific hot, warm or cold, even straight out of the refrigerator if you want a little snack.

I am beginning to wonder if we are sufferingfrom a vitamin A deficiency ( butternut is high in A ) or if we are simply eating seasonally as well as locally.

Get ready, get set ...

Tomorrow the month long Eat Local Challenge starts and I thought I would do a trial run tonight at dinner - and what a delicious dinner it was !
Both hamburger and accompanying vegetable were inspired by Emlyn, who is an inventive and imaginative cook who combines sometimes odd ingredients fearlessly and comes up with surprising new creations.
The hamburger was mixed with chopped onions and a generous scoop of black bean sauce with garlic, a Chinese sauce. The patties were cooked on the grill by Mr. T while I made the following :

1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into bite-size slices

1 zucchini, sliced the same way

5 small, mildly hot, red peppers,diced

1/2 onion, sliced

Bunch of chard, washed and cut into ribbons

garlic, minced

olive oil

1/4 c white wine

Saute the squash in olive oil until slightly caramelized and soft, add a generous sprinkle of garlic, salt, pepper and 1 t sugar . Stir gently, cook a few more seconds and reserve.

In the same large pan, saute the zucchini in some more olive oil until slightly soft, add peppers and onions and cook until vegetables are crisp-tender. Salt and pepper and reserve.

In yet the same pan, heat some more olive oil, add the chard and saute until it turns dark green and looks cooked. Add garlic and salt and cook a few seconds more. Finally add 1/4 c white wine and boil down until wine boils away. I used Riesling, which is slightly sweet and combined really well with the sweetness of the butternut squash.

When ready to serve, arrange chard around the rim of a serving platter, place zucchini mixture in the middle and top with the butternut squash.

This is such a pretty presentation - too bad we dove right in and ate it up before I had a chance to take a picture.

The dinner was judged to be delicious. I have a feeling we will not suffer by eating locally ! All the vegetables came from our garden, the rest of the dinner was food that was in the pantry or the refrigerator.