So easy! Spritz with olive oil, sprinkle with seasoning and bake.
Roasted pumpkin seeds.
The bread: Oatmeal pumpkin bread
At the end of the last bear story there was this teaser photo of a mini loaf of bread:
With the not quite 1 cup of pumpkin from my last pumpkin roasting, I decided to try Oatmeal pumpkin bread from page 100 of Artisan Bread in 5 minutes per day…my high moisture dough “Bible”. I highly recommend this book if you want to try the high moisture thing….aside from good recipes there are lots of instructions, troubleshooting and info that helps understand the why and how of working with high moisture dough. And understanding some of the why and how helps if you want to experiment. And if you experiment some things work and some don’t and the book info helps you tweak things so they DO work…I speak from experience :)!
But for this dough, I followed the recipe exactly.
For the bread, I followed the adaptation on page 102 for Oatmeal Pumpkin Seed bread – almost…I used sunflower seeds instead of pumpkin seeds because I wasn’t thinking or reading carefully. In this case a “mistake” that worked fine!
This little bread was as good as it looks. And the dough – it rises wonderfully. This is not a sweet cake like pumpkin bread ala banana or zucchini bread. It is very slightly sweet as there is a little honey as well as pumpkin in the dough. It is a whole grain bread: half white flour, but the remaining is a mix of oatmeal, whole wheat and rye flour.
The cranberry seed variation made a wonderful roast turkey sandwich. And black forest ham was good on it also.
It made excellent toast.
I made an apple hand pie with the same dough on Saturday morning. It smelled so good and was sitting there with a bit of carmelized apple and cinnamon so I ate it!
No photo.
But, on Sunday, I decided to add some sausage to the apple so I could call it breakfast. I drizzled a little maple syrup over all before sealing them up.
A bit of egg wash and they are ready for the oven.
The hardest thing about making this kind of thing is waiting for it to bake and cool enough to eat.
My kitchen floor is nearly always sticky or crunchy or both. So I cleaned the floor. 10 minutes down, 20 to go.
Tick-tock.
Worth. The. Wait.
I made a mini loaf without cranberries and seeds.
And then I was out of dough.
The big green squash are “winter squash”…I think. I looked at a number of photos, conferred with my mother…we think they are winter squash. They are wonderfully flavored. I like them better than pumpkin – the texture is smoother and they are just a bit sweeter. Most of the flavor we associate with pumpkin stuff is the spice combo. If you’ve ever tried plain pumpkin, you know it is nothing like the flavor of a pumpkin pie.
Second round for the dough, I thought I’d try some of the winter squash in place of the pumpkin. Not a risky experiment and the only difference I detected was that the goods are a tiny bit sweeter. I am not talking sweet like a cake or or cookies…just a bit sweeter than a plain dough.
Since bagels are a plain dough with a bit of sugar…
This dough makes wonderful bagels – crunchy outside, chewy inside.
On to “English” muffins and pizza. The muffins are cooked in a cast iron skillet. I did as I always do…a little cornmeal on them, a bit of olive oil and butter in the pan and a lid on top: 2-3 minutes per side.
Keeping with the pumpkin/squash, sausage and apple theme, for the pizza I spread a thin layer of squash for the sauce, thin slices of mozzarella, then sausage and apple slices. Fifteen minutes on a stone on the grill, a drizzle of balsamic syrup (reduced balsamic vinegar) and it was pizza for supper!
Nice crispy crust with just a bit of chew – perfect!
Wonderful, delicious, beautiful dough with a taste of Fall.
Another bear story without a photo of a bear.
Bear and I saw another bear today. (see Another episode of Wild Kingdom for Bear’s first bear encounter.)
A black bear.
A BIG black bear.
So.
Bear and I were in the Jeep returning from a brief outing to our walk on the empty subdivision road a bit to the north.
Shortly after we entered the “tree” part of our road, Bear’s nose was in the air and he was doing the scent gulp thing.
It had just registered in my brain that he was smelling a bear when we rounded a corner in the road and THERE WAS THE BEAR!
I am fairly vigilant for bears and particularly in the Fall and Spring. But as I think about it, I have NEVER seen a bear when I was expecting to see one. No, they are always a surprise.
And today was the first time I’ve ever seen one on a road.
The ever alert Bear sounded with the bear bark.
The bear turned toward us briefly…Bear was barking loud and continuously…the bear exited stage left off the side of the road, down a steep incline and into the woods.
Somewhere in there I was fumbling for the camera on the seat beside me.
Rats! Another bear story without a photo of a bear.
But…we cannot have a post without a photo…oh, no!!! THAT would not do.
So…a bit of a teaser…
What I did with that extra pumpkin:
I don’t think I have ever made a more beautiful little loaf of bread.
Oatmeal Pumpkin Sunflower Seed Cranberry Bread.
More later.
The frost is on the pumpkin… the first of probably several pumpkin posts…
If I had pumpkins outside, they would certainly have frost on them as it was 27 by my thermometer this morning.
Thankfully my pumpkins are inside, in a sunny window.
And so are the herbs. I have a plan for 2 window table/shelves and some extra lighting to see if I can coax the group to stay alive and growing through the Winter. I’m not much for inside plants so we’ll just see how this goes.
Rosemary…probably my favorite herb…she is nice and green, but the whole growing thing has not been happening. I did some reading. Rosemary likes sun and heat. Hoo, boy – she definitely will need the grow light AND the best sun spot. And she likes to be moist but not wet or dry. Rosemary, she is high maintenance: pray for her, please!!
Back to pumpkins. I had three from my CSA farm distribution. One has been dealt with…the smallest I cooked with the smallest squash to refine the process and decide if I wanted to buy a few more for extra pumpkin as well as squash puree.
I do! The process is easy and not time consuming. I think I have 20 minutes in this morning’s effort and that includes doing the dishes after.
The hardest part is slicing them open! I found that taking off the top is fairly easy. Then, halving and quartering is not so difficult as trying to halve from the get go. I think there is a physics principle in there somewhere about the strength of a sphere…
I put a bit of water in a pan, quartered (or smaller) pieces flesh side down and bake in a 400 degree oven for about 40 minutes.
Meanwhile, the seeds. I LIKE pumpkin seeds and they are full of good stuff. I buy them roasted (and shelled!). I decided to try roasting a few of my own as long as I have them. It is not the roasting, but the shelling part that might be the show stopper.
I’m not big on a mega processing kind of thing…a whole day making jam or dealing with the veg – I much prefer doing a number of small batches. So, one or 2 pumpkins at a time. But the seeds I decided to save until I have enough for a cookie sheet full. Today’s chore was just the cleaning and that was easy…soaked them in some water and the pulp slid off.
These went into the frig for later roasting…probably :)!
Pumpkin is done.
The skin is easily peeled off with a paring knife at this point. I defy anyone to peel an uncooked pumpkin with a paring knife and as far as I’m concerned peeling an uncooked pumpkin is putting fingers and hands at great risk with a large, very sharp knife that is apt to careen off who knows where. Too scary for me.
This method is easy, safe (r!) and I didn’t lose much pumpkin in the process.
I gave it a light mash – just enough so that I could pack and measure. A pie takes 2 cups.
Unfortunately, I decided to taste the mashed pumpkin. It was good!
A few bites too many and I ended up with a bit less than 2 cups. So…1 cup for the freezer and the partial for the frig and something other than pie. I haven’t decided what but I’ll probably share the result(s).
Swallow Crest Farm CSA 2012
Last Thursday, I picked up the final distribution from my CSA.
Beautiful!
And most of it is long lasting.
Except for that head of red leaf lettuce which was part of a BLT with Mozz breakfast sandwich.
And today’s (Sunday) salad.
The week prior included the last of the kale and chard, a nice amount of potatoes and carrots, beautiful leeks and some onions.
Green eggs and goat cheese! I would have added ham if I’d had any :) !!
As disclosed previously, I have been making Bear’s food. Usually it is brown rice, yogurt and hamburger (from Costco’s organic ground beef), but on occasion, for our breakfast, I whiz some kale and eggs in the Vita-mix and then scramble them, ie. green eggs.
This morning, I added red pepper to mine.
To Bear’s, I added his usual brown rice, yogurt and a bit of burger.
I continue to use the fresh chard in place of bread for sammies and taco/tortilla wraps. This morning a nice leaf of chard held salmon, goat cheese and capers…with a side of cherry tomatoes.
Not very much from the CSA, but these tamale pies…oh, so good – had to share!
There are some onions from the CSA in the pulled pork mix that sat under the corn bread topping. And the fresh corn in the topping is local sweet corn!
I’ve not yet made homemade tamales, but this pie was so good and so easy…maybe I won’t! I topped a pulled pork tamale “filling” with my standard Mexican Cornbread (muffins). That’s it.
Another leaf of chard for a tomato-mozzerella burger and a side of late summer potato salad. The potato salad is CSA potatoes and organic celery dressed with homemade mayo, pickle juice, greek yogurt, sugar and mustard dressing.
Leeks… The leeks were the basis for soup two weeks in a row. I made a leek-sweet potato soup and a leek-cauliflower soup.
I’m getting a bit smarter…although I ended up with a LARGE pot of soup each time, I froze 1/2-2/3 each time…YEA for me. I have two containers of leek soup in the freezer awaiting some dark Fall-Winter day when soup MUST be had!
My freezer this year…it is stocked! More than any year in my entire 57 years on this earth…I have things to eat that only need defrosting. Again…YEA for me.
Because I live 30-45 minutes from town/supplies and because I live in a place where the roads become treacherous (actually, it is the other drivers…) – I have always made sure my pantry is stocked by October 1. But this year, courtesy of my CSA subscription and just thinking and LOVING fresh fruits and veg…my freezer has become part of the Fall-Winter food stocking.
So, when the snow flies and the roads freeze, I will thaw a bit of the soup as you see above and be thankful for my freezer, for my forethought and for Swallow Crest Farm CSA!