View from the farm

October 12, 2010 Cheeseburger Pie

It occurred to me that it’s been a long time since my daughter and I did a recipe for my blog.  This afternoon we get thinking about what we wanted for supper and we decided on Cheeseburger Pie.

I’ve mentioned in the past that we buy a 30 count stack of foil pans at Sam’s Club for less than $10.  They are sized to fit 1/2 of a steam table frame.  That’s what we use for baked food like this.  Cleanup is a snap – right into the trash can.

Cheeseburger Pie

Ingredients

1 pound (or more) good quality hamburger

8 ounces sliced mushrooms (we like Baby Bellas)

1 small can low salt tomato sauce

2 rolls of refrigerated crescent rolls

Sliced white American cheese

 

1.  Wipe the bottom of the foil pan with a little olive oil.  Unroll  the crescent rolls, but do not separate the triangles.  You are going to use about three squares on the bottom of the pan, and the last square, plus the second whole roll on the top.  Pat, fit, or cut to fit your pan, as necessary.

2.  Bake the bottom crust about 8 minutes or so, until it starts to set.  You don’t want to brown it, just cook it enough that the bottom crust gets cooked and doesn’t stay soggy when you bake it with the filling.

3.  While your bottom crust is baking, sauté the hamburger until it is cooked and crumbly, adding and cooking the mushrooms when the meat is no longer pink.  Stir in the tomato sauce and season to taste with your choice of salt, pepper, Montreal Steak Seasoning, Steak Dust, parsley, basil, or some combination that appeals to your family.

4.  Take the partially cooked crust out of the oven and spread the meat, mushroom, sauce mixture in an even layer.  Cover the meat mixture with slices of American cheese.  Top the cheese with the crescent roll squares. 

5.  Bake at the temperature recommended for the rolls until the crust is golden brown.

6.  Slice into squares.  Watch it the cheese is HOT!

 

 

Later.

October 5, 2010 Chicken Soup for the...

Good evening...from the farm.

My Dad would have been 82 today (Miss you Dad!). and he loved homemade chicken soup,  This is a variation on the family version.  The basic chicken soup recipe is in the archives.  This is more a methodthan an actual recipe, since the quantites are general.

This time we started with two chichen leg quarters in  a glass baking dish.  We added about 1/2 inch or so of water, and set the pan in the oven to roast.  The skin gets nicely crisp, and the water soaks up all the good juices.  I prefer white meat chicken, so I usually add a chicken breast.

Once your chicken is gooked and browned, place it, the water with cooking juices, and some more water in your soup pot.  For this amount of chicken, we needed about two quarts or so of water.

Next, add your seasonings.  Select your favorites from Italian seasoning, parsley, qoultry seasoning, Montrial Steak seasoning, or a bay leaf.

Add two or three stalks of celery snapped into pieces.  Be sure and use the green leafy tops.  I sometimes cut them off a fresh stalk of celery, and freeze them, just to have them available for soup.  The next item is the most important to give that Italian taste.  Add one medium sized onion, peeled, into which you have stuck three whole cloves.  No more, no less.  Drop that into your soup pot.

Now, let the pot cook on low for as long as you like.  Your whole house will smell like chicken soup!

Sometime around now take out the chicken, remove the skin and bone, and return the chicken pieces to the pot. 

!/2 hour before you want to serve the soup, add your vegetables.  I like either big chunks of carrot, or whole baby carrots.  I don't like potatos in my chicken soup.  Add them or not as you like.  I do like to take out the old, limp celery, and cut a few more stalks into chhunks to cook and eat in the soup.

While the vegetables are cooking, bring a separate pot of water to boil.  Cook a package on cheese or meat tortollini according to the directions.

Ladle some meat, vegetable chunks, and chicken broth into a bowl.  Top with a handful of cooked tortollini.  Eat with hunks of good Italian bread and butter. 

As they say in the cooking world, yum-o!

 
Later.

September 27, 2010 Veggie Stuff

I admit.  I never met a vegetable I didn’t like.

When I was at the Dollar General store in Montrose the other day, with their canned goods, I found an interesting selection of “Southern” style canned vegetables.  I’ll go back, I’m sure.  These are just two of the “different” canned  veggies they had.

I ate the can of triple succotash as though it were a soup.  It wasn’t as brightly colored as the picture on the can, but tasty nevertheless.  I haven’t tried the squash yet.  Maybe I’ll make it into a little squash casserole – another dish popular in the south.

Thinking about veggies got me going.  I went downstairs and sautéed a small green pepper, an onion, and a large fresh tomato in some butter.  I added 2 tablespoons of additional butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, a cup of milk, and about 8 very thin slices of American cheese.When the sauce had thickened and the cheese melted, I stirred in some leftover cooked elbow macaroni.  My Aunt Dodie used to make this vegetable macaroni and cheese.  If you look back in the archives, you can probably see some pictures of it, from the formal recipe I did.  Of course, that time, I didn’t bother with a cream sauce, I just threw in the cheese and called it square!  Either way, it’s a nice hearty, different version of mac and cheese.

Later, y’all.

September 25, 2010 Buy Local: Endless Mountains Apiaries

Good morning…from the farm.

If you’ve been on antibiotics for a while, you know how important it is to get yoghurt in your system.  My favorite is Stonyfield whole milk plain with the cream on top.  And one of the best things to top it with is good honey.

The last few years I’ve been getting mine in the fall from the folks at the Endless Mountains Apiaries.  Right now they have a special sale going on:  you bring in your container, and they will fill it for $2 per pound. 

I stopped in at the Dollar General in town to look for a nice glass jar with a wide mouth.  Other years I have just used regular glass canning jars.  I was lucky and found a nice sized jar with a wide metal lid for $2.  What a deal!

I had a nice chat with Marcie, and she filled my jar for me.  I was happy to hear that the bees are doing better this year.  I try to bee nice to the ones I find on my property.  They don’t bother me, I don’t bother them. 

 

Which reminds me of another good use for honey:  hot tea.  I love Bigelow Constant Comment, and have for years.  I was really happy to find their green tea version, as well as their Oolong.  I’ve only been able to find them on the shelves at the Redner’s grocery store in Scranton, or on line of course.  Either of these two teas are outstanding, and with the spring blend honey, just what I need on these colder mornings!  Try some if you get a chance.

Endless Mountains Apiaries is in New Milford, PA, about two miles past the Tractor Supply store going east on SR 706.  You can order their products by calling (570) 465-3232.  Thanks again, Marcie.

Later.

August 2, 2010 Baby Eggplant

Good evening...from the farm.

It's summer, so vegetables are plentiful.  My daughter - a meat eater is ever there was one - actually likes eggplant.  We picked up a couple of small ones when we were shopping Saturday, and this is how she made them for us.

Crusted eggplant

Slice your eggplant into disks about 1/2 inch thick

Prepare your crumb mixture

About a cup of crumbs of your choice.  (We had a bag of plain pita chips and we crushed some of them for this dish.)

Season the crumbs with garlic salt, oregano, and basil to taste.

Dip your slices of eggplant in beaten egg, then in your breadcrumbs.

Saute in olive oil until crispy on both sides.

These were yummy.  Now when I cook eggplant, I slice them into disks and sprinkle salt on both sides and allow the slices to sit on some paper towels.  It is supposed to take any bitterness out of the eggplant.  Works for me.  My daughter said these eggplants were too young to be bitter.

Side comment:  Deliver me from automatic programs.  I uploaded these pictures into my Photoshop application.  For some reason it decided it needed to fix the "red eye" in this picture.  I figured out how to turn it off.   Red eye?  What red eye?

Later.

 

 

July 31, 2010 Happy Blueberry Birthday

Good morning...from the farm.

Happy Birthday to my Aunt MG!  Since we knew she liked blueberries, we decided to go to a local U Pick blueberry farm ro get her some.

Yesterday, I spent nearly three hours uploading pictures of the Hilltop Blueberry Farm.  I had 23 pictures in place, and was trying to edit some text when I accidentally deleted the whole thing.  Nope, I hadn't saved an interim copy.  I was so bummed out that it took until now for me to try to post the pictures.

Drive up to the farm and follow the signs to the parking area.

Up there on the right, near that white car, is where you check in and have your container weighed and marked.  If, like us, you didn't think that far ahead, you can buy a nice sized picking bucket for $1.50.  (I forgot to take a picture of the table.)

They direct you up the road to the place to start picking.  One family was upset.  They wanted to pick the blueberries from the bushes closest to the stand.  The attendent tried to explain to them that, even if the berry was blue, it needed to sit on the bush for a few days to turn from sour to sweet.  Since those bushes had been picked recently, those berries may have looked ripe, but they weren't - quite.

 
  When I thought of blueberry bushes, I thought of short, low to the ground, watch out for snakes.  I asked how old these bushes were and was told.  They are 61 years old.

Arn't they gorgeous!

 

 

Everywhere you look there are blueberry bushes.  They actually have 13 acres of bushes!

 

Look, even the pink, unripe berries look pretty on the bushes.

When you've picked (and occasionally eaten!) all the berries you can stand, you take them back to the table to be weighed and checked out.  My daughter was teasing me.  In the time it took her to fill 2/3 of a bucket, I had maybe two inches of my bucket full.  Less pictures, more picking she said.  Not surprisingly, we combined our two buckets.

 
No, I didn't pick this batch.  I just wanted you to see the variety of containers that people use to get their berries.

A man in front of us a ways was getting the second part of an enormous order.  We figure he had about 235 pounds (!) of blueberries in the back of his truck.  He makes wine.

 
The Hilltop berry farm has been in business since 1949.  (Hence, the 61 year old bushes.)Besides U pick and commercial supplies of blueberries, they also sell a variety of preserves and syrups made with their own fruit.  I have to go back.  A jar of raspberry salsa is calling to me.  In addition, they sell berry and other bushes and plants. To find them, go to the New Milford exit (223) off Interstate 81, and follow the signs.  Go.  You'll enjoy your visit.

*****

 

   

 

 

July 30, 2010 The Best Hard Roll Ever

Good evening...from the farm.

Friday morning early I was in Scranton.  Since that rarely happens, I got a chance to do something that I had not done for a while.  I drove over to National Bakery, on the corner of Poplar Street and Capouse Avenue to get some of their outstanding hard rolls.

Sorry about the picture.  I wasn't counting on the glare from the early morning sun.  

Now, you might have had National Bakery rolls in your local supermarket, but they taste NOTHING like the rolls you get fresh.  In the supermarket, the rolls are packed in plastic bags, and are soft.  When you buy them fresh from the bakery, they are packed in open brown paper bags.  They are French bread crisp on the outside, and meltingly soft on the inside.  We buy a dozen and eat them as fast as we can during the course of a day.  If you store them in a plastic bag, they will last a bit longer.  If you leave them in the paper bag, they will turn as hard as rocks overnight.

We cut them in half, and spread them with (real) butter and eat them plain.  When you bit in to the roll, it shatters, but the inside is soft and tender.  Yum.  Our other favorite way to have them is (when they start to get hard) sliced in half, topped with very very thin slices of Land 'o Lakes white American cheese, and broiled in the oven.

When my Dad was alive, we'd get fresh hamburger meat from Gutheinz meat market (I'll talk about them another time!), Land o' Lakes white American cheese, and National Bakery hard rolls, and grill hamburgers that could only be considered "gourmet". 

It occurs to me that National Bakery says something about the way people in this part of the country view change.  That is, they don't like it.

National Bakery moved to this location in 1978.  They moved from someplace fairly close - blocks away.  My daughter remembers her Grandfather taking her there when she was a little girl.  Here's the thing.  The store still looks the same.  It still has the same breads in about the same locations.  The bakery case still hasn't changed, and most of the contents of the bakery case look the same as they did 30 some years ago.  I bought a Lafayette, a special yellow cupcake, glazed in red jelly, and rolled in coconut, topped with a rosette of white icing, with a little red glaze in the center.  They looked and tasted the same as they have for over thirty years.  And it was still just as delicious.  I'm glad in some ways that things like that don't chance much.  It's nice to know that - at least around here - you can still go home again for some of the foods you love.

On the other hand, it should give you a clue about just how resistent to change we are.

Later.

July 25, 2010 Homemade Southern Style Sweet Tea

Good morning...from the farm.

I know I've put it in here before, but sometimes it's hard to get back to the older posts.  If you drink your ice tea at McDonald's, this is how to make that Southern style sweet tea at home.

1.  First, the pot:  I use a gallon, stainless steel pan to heat my water and brew my tea.  That way there are no odd tastes from oils embedded in a non-stick pan, or old sediment from a tea pot.

2.  Then, the water:  Always use fresh, cold water.  The oxygen in the fresh water helps brew the tea properly.  Never start with hot water from the tap.  It adds weird tastes to the tea.

3.  Place 8 cups (1/2 gallon) of cold water in your pan.  Add 1 cup sugar.  (In the south they sometimes add 2 cups or more!)

4.  Bring the water to a full, rolling boil.  That means big bubbles all over the pot.

5.  While your water is boiling, get out your tea.  I use either 16 individual tea bags or 4 quart (or family) sized tea bags for a gallon of tea.  I prefer Teatley tea when I have it.  I have also used Price Chopper family size bags with success.  I do not like Lipton.  I think it has a bitter taste, but not everyone agrees with me.  I like to tie my tea bags together to make it easier to remove them.

6.  When your water is boiling, take the pot off the heat, dunk in your tea bags, and cover the pot with a lid or plate.  Don't put your tea bags into water that is still boiling on the stove.  My Irish Great-Grandmother would have said:  Boiled tea is spoiled tea!

7.  Set your timer for 5 minutes.

8.  At the end of five minutes carefully take out the tea bags and throw them away.  Do not squeeze the bags.  That only gets bitter oils into your tea.

9.  Cover your tea again.  (Hey, I live in the country and this stuff is sweet!)  Let it cool.

10.  Add 8 cups cold water (1/2 gallon).  Pour into your storage container.  (An old Arizona sweet tea container works for me.)  Refrigerate.  Serve over ice.  Enjoy!

Perfect, brewed ice tea, every time.

Later.

 

LaRue Produce

I was out driving around, distracting myself this afternoon.  I ended up on the section of SR 706 between the East Rush Road turnoff and the Elk Lake Road turnoff.  We hardly seem to travel that stretch of road, but I'm glad I did today.  I stopped at a great little produce stand and picked up some squash and some corn straight from the fields.  Check it out.

Of course I didn't get a picture of the actual stand - but I will at a later date.  Then I'll insert it here.

Now this is what a vegetable garden should look like.  Next time I'm by, I want to talk to them about the "bags" in which the plants are growing.

 
 
This is the other side of the road, and only part of their cornfield.  Thanks folks.  I'll be coming back for more veggies. 

On July 13, we went back for more veggies.  Here is the front of the store.

*****

Maple Bread Pudding

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Lightly butter an 8 or 9 inch square pan.  (I like to use glass.)

Toast and butter 10 slices of bread.  (Toasting makes all the difference in the taste.)

Cut the bread into cubes and put in the baking pan.

In a bowl, or very large size glass measuring cup, beat together

4 eggs

1 can evaporated milk

1 cup maple syrup

1 cup milk

Pour over the toast cubes, and allow to soak for 10 to 15 minutes.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes.  It should puff up nice and high, then flatten out when it cools.

Serve hot with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.  Also good cold, and anywhere in between.  I like mine with a splash of half and half, or cream, if I have it.