Tonight's Harvest

Tonight I harvested kale for our soup, and pulled a few of the baby carrots. It doesn't seem that they are getting any bigger, but I left a few in the ground because I'm curious how long the carrots will last in this weather for reference in future year. One of the most regular ways we've eaten our kale this year is in this tortilla soup recipe. It lets us use a little bit and enjoy it, without totally denuding the plants to create a saute.
The light in photos is poor because with the waning daylight I'm no longer at home during the week when the sun is bright. So our poor indoor lighting and a flash will have to do.

The kale and very baby carrots went into our Tortilla Soup. It's based on a recipe from 101cookbooks.com but we've modified it to make it our own. Its very similar in flavor to a recipe I grew up with called Mexican Vegetable Stew. So we've combined the two recipes to get the best of both.

Tortilla Soup

To make the tortilla strips:
Preheat the oven to 350. Cut a stack of 6 to 8 corn tortillas in half and then into thin strips. Toss with olive oil and salt and lay out on baking sheet. Bake for 10-20 minutes (depending on your oven) until golden and crisp.

For the soup:
Basically you saute an onion and garlic in some olive oil. Add tsp cumin and 2 tsp coriander and 1 tsp chili powder. Saute the spices for a bit and then add 1/2 of a 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes. Cook the tomatoes down a bit until thicker. Add 1 cup water and puree this base. Return the base to the pan and add 5 more cups of water. Bring to a simmer. We like to add left over chicken, corn off the cob (or out of the can), sliced zucchini if available, and shredded kale. Simmer until chicken is warm and veggies are cooked. Serve with goat cheese or cheddar cheese and tortilla strips.

You can pretty much add any vegetable you feel appropriate. Kidney beans or black beans would be good too. Tonight we had half a sweet potato that I sliced thin, microwaved for 2 minutes and then threw in to the soup. It was a nice sweet contrast to the more savory flavors.

Rye Dill Bread

On my day off last week I was eager to make bread and to use two ingredients: rye flour and dill seed from my garden. I used two Joy of Cooking recipes as my guide and made plenty modifications.

Here's what I ended up with.

Rye Dill Bread

Combine the following in a large bowl or mixer.

1 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup rye flour
1/2 whole wheat flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp dill seeds
1/4 cup chopped onion
I package yeast ( 2 1/4 tsp)
1 1/4 tsp salt

Mix dry ingredients together.

Add:
3/4 cup warm water (115-125 degrees F)
1 large egg

Mix together with spoon or dough hook on mixer. Add 1/4 cup of all purpose flour at a time for a total of 3/4 to 1 cup, until dough is smooth but not sticky.

Knead 10 minutes until elastic.

Place in oiled bowl and let rise for 30-45 minutes until doubled in size. Punch down and place in greased loaf pan. Let rise again for 30-45 minutes until doubled again. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 450 degrees F. When loaf is risen, brush top with melted butter and sprinkle with dill seeds and salt.

Bake 10 minutes at 450, then decrease oven temperature to 350 and bake 35-40 minutes more. Loaf is done when crust is a deep brown and sounds hollow when knocked on the bottom. Turn out of pan and cool on wire rack.

My loaf made a nice brown crunchy crust because I used a stoneware baking pan. The rye flavor wasn't pronounced, I may increase the rye next time. I was conservative with it because I know it can negatively influence how much the bread rises. The dill flavor was definitely there, but not too strong.

Transplanting Seedlings

With the cold weather setting in, I'm doing a few things backwards. Usually one starts seedlings indoors and then transplants them outside. I'm doing the opposite. I dug up lettuce seedlings that are not making much progress outside and am moving them inside. When I went out to transplant them into a window box, I waited until 10 in the morning so that the chill would be out of the air. However, when I went around to the garden I found it still in the shade of the house and covered with frost. I attempted to dig up the lettuce, but the ground was pretty frozen for the first few layers.
I waited an hour and came back when the sun had melted the frost and warmed the soil a bit. As it was, I was pulling up chunks of frozen soil, which gave the advantage of holding the roots and soil together. I filled my window box mostly with soil from the garden, placed the seedlings on top, and then added some potting soil to the mix.
Though my south-east facing windows don't get full sun the warmth should give the lettuce an advantage for growth. It seems as though the garden isn't getting much sun these days anyways. In another experiment in indoor gardening, I've also planted lettuce seeds around my potted swiss chard. We'll see if they sprout.

Plum Cake

I subscribe to a Tuesday Recipe email from Tori Ritchie. The recipes are always interesting by I think this is the first one I've used. It came just as we were wondering what to do with the rest of the Italian prune plums. They were getting soft and very ripe. We'd made a Plum Tart with the first part of them, but wanted to do something different. A friend came over for dinner on Wednesday night so that gave us a good excuse to make the Plum Cake. The batter was especially good with almond and lemon flavors. My plums were a little past prime and so it was hard to cut them. My other problem was that I didn't have a spring form pan and the plums sinking into the batter made parts of the cake weaker. So when I turned it out onto a plate, the middle fell a part a bit. It still looked and tasted good. I think I'll be using the cake dough recipe again with another fruit like apples or pears.

Here is what's left of the cake.

Boatneck Sweater 1

I started this sweater on Oct 18th and have been working slowly on it. Last Fall I attempted a sweater, but found after knitting the back and front that I didn't have enough yarn for the sleeves. I'll be frogging that one sometime. This time I looked carefully at a variety of patterns on Ravelry and found on I liked. The pattern is a Cotton Classic Boatneck Pullover and the best part is it is free. I wanted to use wool and found another knitter who had successfully used Swish DK from Knitpicks I am following her lead by using size 5 needles to achieve gauge. I choose Amethyst Heather. Since the back and front are identical, I decided to knit it in the round and save myself the trouble of trying to match exactly if I added extra rounds by mistake. I'm also modifying the pattern to make the cables mirror each other. Hopefully I'll finish before winter is over!

New (to me) Jars

Every Columbus Day weekend one of the local town fire departments has a large fundraising yard sale. People donate to the sale and they always have quite an assortment of furniture, books, and odds and ends. We've gone the past two years and found some nice finds. Last year my husband got a first edition G.K. Chesterton book for the hardback price of $1. This year I picked up a stack of 30 Cooks Illustrated Magazines from the past few years that I'm looking forward to reading. I also found a whole bunch of wire clamp top canning jars. I picked through the three boxes and chose 10 that had the least rust on the wires. They are an assortment of sizes and brands, both Atlas and Ball.

I already have a few wire clamp jars that I use for more decorative purposes. These hold a collection of shells and sea glass collected in Newfoundland.
However, I wanted to use the new jars for storing food. I looked around on the internet for rubber seals so that I could use them to store food. I found a site in California, but by the time I paid for shipping it was going to be $20 for the seals! I'd only paid 25 cents a jar, so that seemed quite ridiculous. I decided to stop by the local grain and feed store that has canning supplies and was pleasantly surprised to find he had dozen for $2.45. That was more like it. Now that we've cleaned up the jars and run them through the dishwasher they are being put to good use storing dry goods. We use other canning jars for food storage also, but then find that every time I need to can, my jars are in use. I don't plan on canning with these jars, though some people still do. I'll be using them to store some foods that sit on top of our bread box for easy access.
We'll be looking forward to the Fireman's Foliage Sale next fall.