Farm: October 2006 Archives

I have a new favorite apple. I like it better than the apples in my orchard. It is a Virginia Stayman. The stayman is the perfect all purpose apple I have ever cooked with. Virginia Stayman The photo just cannot show you the detail in the color. This apple is not one grown commercially for grocery stores and the like. The skin it not perfect and has a bit of texture. The skin is also prone to splitting. Gorgeous yellowish white flesh The flesh is beautiful. I picked these up yesterday from a grower down in Nelson County. These are so very juicey. I can't begin to even relate the beauty of the yellowish white flesh. Nor can I even begin to describe the perfect tartness when you bite into it. I have never been much of an apple lover. I like apples and do cook with them but I am not much of a pick an apple to eat kind of person. These have made me change my ways. They are an awesome vintage apple developed from an 1866 winesap from Kansas (I think). Simply delicious. I am thinking about making a batch of applesauce for the baby and maybe some applebutter to have at Christmas. Yummy! Last night I cooked pork chops for supper. As a side dish I sauteed a few apples in butter and sprinkled with cinnamon. It was a perfect addition to the meal. Time to mash the pumpkin I went yesterday and purchased two more cushaw pumpkins like Steve asked. The guy was so very nice and gave me a third one at no charge. I baked one last night and one this morning. Mini bread loaves and a quart of soup I made a batch of pumpkin bread and pumpkin soup. I took him down a quart of soup and a few loaves as a thank you. The cushaw pumpkin soup recipe is very similar to thePumpkin and Potato Soup I made last fall. The cushaw pumpkin bread recipe is also posted over on the recipe journal. Now you know what has taken me so long to get this post published this morning ... errr.. afternoon. Look! A sweet baby pumpkin. Well, that and trying to type with a baby banging on my keyboard. Or pulling my mouse cord. Or wanting to nurse. Or learning how to open the cabinet doors and pulling out a gazzion things. I do mean sweet. But he was so darn cute while doing it I couldn't resist smothering him with kisses and making him giggle. I have to go get ready for the trick or treating tonight. I'll have plenty of photos tomorrow. Happy Hallowe'en to you all.

Saturday afternoon we took the kids to get a pumpkin for the front porch. I was not at all pleased at the pumkin farm we have been going to. This year they charged $2.50 just to walk in their gate to buy a pumpkin. Every thing there had an additional charge. WTH? Believe me this tiny farm is not a carnival and does not have anything to draw much of a crowd. The pumpkins this year were not good either. We left quickly and saught out other means of pumpkin goodness. The pumpkin is bigger than the baby and he weighs in at 21 1/2 pounds! We drove a few miles into the tiny town that is our county seat, turned right and just as we passed under the railroad trussel we made a left into a little garden patch. We eagerly made purchase of green tomatoes, old fashion tan cheese pumpkins, sugar pumpkins, a cushaw pumpkin and the kids chose a huge pumpkin for their jack o'latern for Tuesday night. Cushaw pumpkin The cushaw pumpkin is an odd looking thing making one mistake it for a gourd or squash but it is a pumpkin. It is also a variety prized in the Appalachian mountains. It makes a better pie than any other pumpkin I am told. The neck is solid meat.The dar area is the juice welling up. So, I brought it home and scrubbed it up. It was a beautiful pumpkin. Heavy and firm. The fat end is slightly hollow and not filled with nearly as much goop and seed as the standard field pumpkin for jack o'lanterns. When I sliced into it to scrape out the seeds immediately the juice began to weep from the yellow flesh. It was just gorgeous. I baked it at 375 degrees for about an hour. Being large as it was (about 5 pound maybe) it took two pans and two roasting sessions. It is cooked when it is fork tender, about an hour, maybe a little longer for the thick neck pieces. Allowing it to cool I then scraped the meat out of the skin and mashed it with a potato masher. The meat flaked apart easily with a fork. I ended up with almost four quarts of mashed pumpkin meat. With a little butter, salt and pepper this is perfect for a supper side dish as is. (Maybe served it with chicken or pork chops. Yummy.) Sunday morning, I went into the kitchen peeked at my pumpkin meat and wondered what to do with so much pumpkin. We can't eat that much pie even if I am giving one to the neighbors. The light bulb went on and I thought "Pumpkin Pancakes!" We heat our kitchen with an old cast iron wood stove. I use my cast iron griddle pan on it. So this morning as the griddle heated on the fire I pulled out an old recipe for pancakes and got busy with breakfast. Pancakes (and other things) cook better on cast iron with wood heat. We had bacon and sausage and piles of pumpkin pancakes. Not one was left over. The baby ate an entire pancake himself also with a cup of milk. You know they had to be good! You can find the recipe over on my recipe journal listed under cushaw pumpkin pancakes. Tomorrow I will show and tell all about pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread and pumpkin soup. Steve liked the cushaw pumpkin so much he asked me to go get another 1 or 2 to put in freezer so we can have the pie and bread at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Believe me, if Steve wants more, it is damn good because he doesn't have any food preference much at all. If I didn't make him eat meals he would go days without eating. Find yourself a cushaw pumpkin and be prepared for a bread recipe that is delicious and good enough to give as a gift.

I was going to tell you about my trip to Walton's Mountain. Instead I have to tell you about my chimney. I scheduled an appointment with a local chimney sweep for our annual cleaning of the chimneys so that we can safely heat and enjoy our winter evenings by the fireside. Wednesday the sweep was scheduled to be here at 4pm. He showed up at nearly 6:30pm. I plainly asked him if he could properly clean our chimney at night. He answered that it was no problem whatsoever. His assistant got out the ladders and brushes and climbed his way up 27 feet to the top of my chimney. The sweep, a retired fireman, came inside and set up his vacuum and dropclothes and other things he needed. The pair spent the better part of an hour brushing and vacumming. They cleaned up the mess, loaded the van and wrote out an invoice. I paid them $109 for about 45 minutes work. Not a bad hourly wage, huh? Saturday evening we laid a fire. Two things happened. One, the chimney would not draw. Two, the fire would smother out when we closed the stove door. What could be the problem?! The chimney sweep just cleaned the chimney so there couldn't be an obstruction. With smoke backing up into the house and with burning eyes we smothered the fire and gave up on it. Sunday morning, early before the sun came up, I set about to see if I could get a fire built. I opened a window just in case there was a negative draw in the chimney. Once the fire started it would burn clean and bright as long as the door was open. Close the door and it smothered out and set about smoking. We checked outside and smoke was rising from the chimney. Exasperated I closed up the fireplace and let it smother out. I planned to call the chimney sweep, you know the ex-fireman, and have him come out here and show me how to start a damn fire because for the first time in my life I can't start a damn fire! Grrrr! We heard a sudden wooomfff from the fireplace and thought well, that had to be the change in draw. Sure enough the smoke was now rising at it should up the chimney and not back into my livingroom. Defeated and pissed off I closed it back up and gave up on it until this week when I could clean it out and call the manufacturer to find out what they had to say about their noncatalytic combustion and lifetime warranty. Steve went outside to check his work on the roof. I went to the kitchen and began making the kids a late lunch. About 20 minutes later Steve came in and says, "What did you do? Smoke is pouring out of the chimney. Is the fireplace overburning?" I looked him and told him to open it up but first open the windows in case smoke started backing up. Holy Smokes!! He opens the stove door and up in the very top where the chimney pipe is was a blazing fire. We had a chimney fire in a chimney that was supposed to be clean as a whistle. A chimney fire has a roar to it that sounds like a train traveling down the tracks at a fast speed. I have heard many things describe as a sound of a train, including a chimeny fire, but this is the first time I have expereinced it and I can say that indeed it does sound like a train. Steve began raking out the burning coals. I got on the phone and called the chimney sweep and had to leave a message that I had an emergency. The sweep called me back immediately. I told him Steven was raking buckets of burning material out of the stove that was falling from the chimney. He seemed to not believe me. He promised he would have someone come out here and check the chimney about this week. Tuesday was as early as he could fit me in. I was angry but held my tongue and explained I paid him for a clean chimney and did not get a clean chimney and I want what I paid for. He agreed and was apologetic to the max. Steven kept sweeping out burning bits and pieces and eventually the fire up the stove pipe was out. We closed the fireplace and let everything die out. The chimney will be cleaned again tomorrow but I imagine after the burn it is clean as a whistle now. Again today I will clean out the firebox, vaccuum the brick liners and clean the smoked door and windows. Maybe tomorrow we will manage a warming fire in our fireplace to put all of this behind us. We are fortunate that we did not sustain any damage. We had our chimney lined last year with a stainless steel liner and the stove vent pipe. The fire did not cause any harm. I urge you that if you have a fireplace and use it at any time have it cleaned and inspected every year by a licensed chimney sweep IN THE DAYTIME when they can look down it and see the inside more clearly. A chimney fire in a normally constructed chimney can burn your house down. Don't wait. Call a sweep today and take care of your chimney. Give your family a safe warm winter. I am still a bit nervous about it all. And my house still smells of lingering wood smoke.

Those rains we had last month? Did more damage than we thought. This is what my dining room ceiling looks like this morning. This is part of the original house. Lathe and plaster ceiling. Very cool. This baby has been doing this since we came back from Georgia. He turned 8 months over the weekend. I suspect he may be walking before the month is out. He is very brave and lets go without having his balance. He is very cool, also. I am not so sure I am ready for him to grow up so fast but I am excited to be in his presence and able to witness every single one of his success to date. I pray I am always blessed to do so.