The holidays are winding down, and I'm ready to get back to my daily routine.  But for those of you who might like a bit more celebration, I've posted my recipe for Sugar Free Cranberry Raisin Pie. 

In our family, no Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner is complete without this pie, made with honey for the sugar free folks.  Nearly equally good is a variation which uses apples instead of raisins.  Both recipes, plus homemade cranberry sauce, explain why I want to plant cranberries in my garden some day.  Meanwhile, I buy several bags of cranberries in the store every winter and pop them straight in the freezer where they last for a year or longer.

People either love this pie or hate it.  It's not your run of the mill pie, but I can't live without it!

Finally --- the holy grail has been attained!  I discovered a whole wheat bread recipe which Mark will eat.  100% whole wheat, and he still cut off sliver after sliver to gobble up.

This webpage gives the recipe in great depth.  I don't know what made it work so well, but figure it was probably some combination of the extra rise in the sponge stage, the long kneading, the special Mennonite flour we used, and the half cup of gluten.  Ignore the fact that both the photos on that site and my photos here are subpar --- in actuality, the loaves are tall and beautiful. 
Now that we've found a recipe Mark and I will both eat, it's time to figure out how to fit such an elaborate recipe into our weekly routine.  But Mark liked it so much that he told me that he'd knead it himself if the thirty minute knead flares up my carpal tunnel, so it might just make the cut!

When Sheila sent me Full Moon Feast by Jessica Prentice a week ago, I flipped it open to peruse the recipes then got sucked in and stayed up until after midnight reading it.  First, let me be up front about the book's downside --- I don't think I would ever try a recipe out of the book since every single one calls for exotic ingredients I am unlikely to own.  (Orange blossom water, anyone?)

But the text, which makes up about three quarters of the book, covers a fascinating range of history, myth, and psychology about our relationship with food.  I particularly liked one of the winter chapters which asserted that electricity has changed our winter sleep patterns which in turn has changed our winter eating habits.  The author says that without electricity, we would sleep for fourteen hours on these long winter nights, half waking in the middle for a few hours of near meditation.  (In passing, she also notes that in nature most women give birth between midnight and 4 am for this very reason --- that at that point in the night, you are in a slightly altered state of consciousness and don't feel pain in the same way.)

I know that as the nights get longer and longer, my body wants to sleep more and more, and I have to poke it to get up right at dawn to match my usual summer wake-up schedule.  The book makes me wonder if perhaps I should be sleeping more in the winter.  I'm such a creature of habit and efficiency, I find myself pondering how I would get all of my winter chores done if I slept more in the winter.  And how sound is her science --- after all, didn't humans evolve in the tropics where the nights would have always been the same length?  Needs more thought....  Still, I recommend the book to anyone interested in how food affects our lives.

I prepare the turkey breast and throw it in the oven.  Chop up potatoes and sweet potatoes and onions and garlic and spread them around the base.  Baste the turkey and prepare the stuffing.  Baste the turkey and throw the stuffing in the oven.   Baste the turkey....

...and Mark comes in next to frantic.  Half an inch of rain last night and the creek has risen to mid calf.  The golf cart is mysteriously ill, the footbridge treacherous.  How will my family make it in to enjoy our feast?

I look at him with soapy hands, three different side dishes yet to be begun running through my head.  I don't know.  Can they wear boots and wade through the water?  Read more....

Thirteen months ago, I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner.  I was daunted by the task, so I made extensive lists with start times for each dish.

It's funny how far I've come since then.  Tomorrow, I'm having Mom, Maggie, and Joey over for Christmas lunch, and though I've made lists they're far less extensive.  This morning, I whipped up a cranberry raisin pie, two little pumpkin pies, peach turnovers, and cranberry sauce (all sugar free for Joey.)

I dried out some bread crumbs for stuffing and am slowly thawing out the free range turkey breast in some water in the sink.  In the fridge, I'm thawing green beans, corn, summer squash, apple cider, and chicken broth (for the stuffing), all homemade.

Of course, the hardest part is yet to come --- making the trailer and yard presentable for visitors!

Part of my solution to the Christmas gift problem this year is going to be baked goods.  Everyone gives sweets for Christmas, and I did bake a lemon merangue pie with a cookie crumb crust for Mark's mom, but I've decided to go for the salty side of snacking for most of my presents.

The photo doesn't really do my Cheddar-Parmesan Cheese Crackers justice.  I've been working on this recipe for the past month, trying to come up with something to replace Mark's dependence on storebought snack crackers.  I finally succeeded a bit too well --- when I make a batch of these crackers, they're gone before the day's out.  Luckily, they're extremely easy to make.  Blend the ingredients in the food processor, roll out the dough into a cylinder, cut off slices, and bake.  You can probably make a batch in half an hour or less, including baking time.  Enjoy!

Mark and I tried out a new bread recipe yesterday.  As the picture here shows, it hit the spot.  I had no time to get the camera before every slice was gone.

We don't eat storebought bread because the choices there are either insipid or way too expensive.  Instead, I usually make bread in the bread machine, which is definitely better than storebought bread, but could use some work in the crust department.

Unfortunately, I never seem to set aside the time to make real bread, so I was thrilled to see an article in the most recent Mother Earth News touting real bread which you can make in five minutes a day.  The recipe is enough for four loaves --- you mix the dough up in about ten minutes (no kneading required) and then cut off a quarter to bake.  The rest goes into the fridge where it can sit for up to two weeks.

I may tweak the recipe when I try it next time --- I like my bread a little eggier, a little sweeter, and a little less white.  Still, it was hard to argue with the loaf's crunchy crust and moist interior.  And the fact that I still have three more loaves to bake over the next few days!

The seemingless endless line of unrecyclable empty cocoa tins in the barn pushed me over the edge into buying in bulk.  The concept of bulk food makes ecological sense (cut down on packaging), emergency preparedness sense, and financial sense.  Still, it took me a month after considering bulk food before I actually made the leap --- here's why:

First I had to figure out what to buy, and how much.  I've summarized how long various foods can be expected to last in the table to the left.  I decided to start out with a "small" amount of a few items for our first experiment, skipping the sugar and pasta which seem to cost the same in the grocery store as in bulk, any items which last less than six months, and items we don't use enough of to merit a bulk purchase.

We live at least an hour and a half's drive from the nearest bulk food store, so I initially considered buying online.  Most folks recommend Walton Feed for online bulk food, and their prices did indeed seem to be perfect.  However, once you load up your shopping cart and proceed to checkout you'll find out that shipping costs are as high as food costs.  Not my cup of tea!  Read more....

For future reference, the best way to feed chicken or turkey feet to your dogs is whole and raw.  Unfortunately, the turkey feet I got a week and a half ago came with instructions to cook them for a long time until the meat fell off the bones.  So I did, using up all of the propane in our outdoor cooker's tank then finishing the feet on our kitchen stove where they stunk up the entire house.

Once cooked, turkey feet turn into a gelatinous mass which will stay on your hands until scrubbed extensively with scads of soap and hot water.  I gave up on trying to pick the meat off the bones after about five minutes and threw it all back in the pot to cook some more.  Eventually, I strained off the liquid to add to Lucy's dog food, wasting all of the meat, skin, and bones.  Next time I'll know better!

Still, Lucy adored her dog food, and I was thrilled to have finally taken the time to make a week's worth so that I won't have to feed her dry when I'm too busy to make up a batch.  It would have made two weeks' worth, though, if I'd stuck to raw!  So be forewarned!

Sunday, I chopped up the two massive turkeys Mark and I had been given for our labors the day before.  Each turkey will make four big meals --- one meal of the drumsticks, two more from the two halves of the breast, and a fourth meal from making soup out of the back.

I have a lot of poultry recipes to choose from, but with nice young birds I tend to fall back on my roast chicken recipe.  I roasted the drumsticks, then on Monday turned some of the copious leftovers into Curry Chicken Pot Pie.  Until I tasted this recipe, I didn't think I liked curry, but the curry is a perfect match for lightly steamed vegetables and fresh chicken or turkey --- and it makes the dish a beautiful brilliant yellow!  I highly recommend you check it out as a post-Thanksgiving use for leftover turkey.