Sticky Bun Day!

 Happy Sticky Bun Day! I don’t know how official this designation is. It was listed on the “free” calendar that Terry got with his order of obscenely expensive beef sticks from Burgers’ Smokehouse.  In February, the holidays include the familiar Ground Hog Day, Valentines [sic] Day, Presidents Day, and Ash Wednesday as well as lesser events, such as the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras. Then there are several that the Burgers’ Smokehouse Research Department had to dig deep for: Homemade Soup Day (Feb. 4), Make a Friend Day (Feb. 11—is this so you have a date for Valentine’s Day?), Sticky Bun Day (Feb 21) and Toast Day (Feb. 25—mark your calendar!).

As far as I’m concerned, any excuse to make sticky buns is good enough. It worked out well when my Dad was alive, as he ate three right off the bat. We have more leftovers now. When I mentioned this to Terry, his response was, “And you think we’re going to throw them out?”

Caramel pecan rolls, a.k.a., sticky buns

They are best fresh from the oven, but a short time in the microwave can almost restore them to their previous glory. The real problem, of course, is “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.” I’ll work it off when gardening season starts, right?

The turkeys showed up again last week, but only four this time. Other than looking for bird seed that isn’t there, they spend a good deal of time under the deck. I wonder if they are looking for gravel for their gizzards.

Turkeys emerging from under the deck

When I first saw the turkey in the middle, I thought it was sitting in the snow. It turned out that it was standing in a drift, and it struggled to get out.

Seen from a different angle, the turkey in the middle is up to its belly in a drift

Later in the week, we had this unusual cloud formation. It looked like someone had stuck four huge fingers in the cloud and smeared it toward the horizon.

Odd cloud formation

What with Sticky Bun Day, I suspended my sourdough experiments for this week. I was moved to try Edith Wallace’s Cracker Torte. I mentioned a few posts ago that I was reading How America Eats by Clementine Paddleford. When I got to the Cracker Torte, I could not imagine what it would be like. Whipped egg whites, sugar, cracker crumbs, and chopped nuts. Would it be like a meringue or spongy? As luck would have it, I ended up with the requisite 3 egg whites when I used three yolks in knoephla (NEF-la) soup. I froze them until we were done eating the sourdough chocolate cake. The first thing I learned was that frozen and thawed egg whites will still whip. Whew! I whipped the egg whites by hand, thinking that it would be easy. I was surprised at how viscous they became when I gradually whipped in one cup of sugar.

Egg whites whipped with sugar is more viscous than you might think

I folded in cracker crumbs and chopped walnuts and baked it.

Cracker torte fresh from the oven

It didn’t look bad, although it fell quite a bit, as egg-white based cakes are wont to do. I topped it with whipped cream, covered it with foil, and chilled it overnight, just as Edith instructed.

The final product

Actually, it was pretty good. The outer crust was slightly chewy, giving way to the crunchy nuts within. The crackers seemed to only contributed salt to counteract the sweetness of all that sugar, although it wasn’t salty. And there you go.

It just started snowing again. Terry is so excited about shoveling snow again tomorrow. NOT!

No sign of spring

 I’m not sure what atmospheric conditions make the sun look like a white smudge on a gray slate (is that redundant?), but this is what the winter sun looks like. The milky light has no warmth to it, and even though it isn’t nearly as bright as in a clear sky, the unbroken whiteness of the snow makes you squint anyway.

Winter sun

The cold continues. I shouldn’t gripe about it. Six or seven below is nothing compare to the -40°F that I endured every morning for two weeks when I lived in North Dakota. Still, it’s getting to me. When the snow is flying horizontally by the windows, and you can’t remember when it was even as warm as 20°, and it doesn’t seem like spring will EVER come, you just need to do some brunoise to lift your spirits. Or maybe that’s just me. I find the quiet, focused meditation of making tiny little cubes of vegetables soothing.

Celery, carrots, onions, and potatoes in brunoise cut

Plus we got a hot and filling Graupensuppe (German barley soup) to sustain us through another winter night.

Graupensuppe

This week’s sourdough experiment was crumpets. This recipe is pure genius on the part of King Arthur Flour. It takes one cup of discarded sourdough starter and transforms it into 4 crumpets with the addition of three ingredients (sugar, soda, and salt). What I like best is that it does not make an overwhelming quantity of product. Four crumpets don’t even have to go in the freezer.

Crumpets on the griddle

Fork-split crumpet with butter and jam

I made my second loaf of sourdough bread. This loaf does have to go in the freezer. Still, I ate all of the first one in two weeks, which is faster than most other breads I make. I just can’t leave it alone! I often have it for breakfast AND lunch. So delicious!

My second loaf of sourdough bread, even more beautiful than the first

We had some visitors this week. Six tom turkeys appeared, walked all over the property, including all the way down the driveway and back. They checked underneath the feeders in vain. Hilda has not been able to get out to feed the birds this winter.

This turkey came quite close to the house

Two turkeys coming toward the house

It was fun to watch them hiking through the snow. They did the same thing that humans do—try to walk on top of the snow only to break through with a lurch as the crust gives way.

Note the difference in snow depth

I was struck by how much their tracks look like little dinosaur feet.

Dinosaur tracks!

More snow may or may not be coming. The forecast changes daily, a clear sign of an unstable system. Stay warm, y’all!

 

Brrrr

Fourteen degrees below zero this morning. I waited until it got to a balmy five below before I went out to feed the chickens. Some of the pullets haven’t caught on to using the nest boxes yet, preferring to drop their eggs in a corner of the main area. And this morning, one of those eggs was cracked right down the side. Sure enough, it was frozen solid. I threw it out. The floor of the coop is not exactly clean.

So cold that an egg froze solid in the coop

We had frozen fog again this week. A couple of weeks ago, we had five cloudy, foggy days in a row. This time, the fog burned off, and the hoar frost sparkled against the blue, blue sky. Beautiful, if chilly.

Hoarfrost against a blue sky

And what says winter comfort more than braised meat? I made a pot roast Thursday following a recipe for hunter-style short ribs. I tromped through the drifted snow to the high tunnel to see how the thyme looked. It looked pretty good! A bit red at the tips, but still green underneath. I used it.

Thyme from the high tunnel

I browned chunks of pot roast, sauteed mirepoix, deglazed with red wine, added thyme, dried-and-soaked morel mushrooms, tomato paste, garlic, and paprika, and braised with equal parts red wine, chicken stock, and the mushroom soaking water. It was worky but totally worth it.

Pot roast

Yesterday, I made lemon chicken using Ina Garten’s recipe via my friend Nancy. It was written for a whole 4-pound chicken, butterflied. Four pounds? Ha ha ha. Not in this house this year. I split a 7.5-pound chicken in half. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: no one needs a seven-and-a-half pound chicken. We need to butcher a week—maybe two—earlier.

Lemon chicken

It turned out well, but needed more time to get done.

This week, we defrosted and finished the last of the Linzer Christmas cookies and January pumpkin bars. These are fine desserts in their own way but seriously lacking in chocolate. You know what that means! I can bake again! I tried another sourdough recipe, this time for a sourdough chocolate cake.

Sourdough chocolate cake. Interesting.

It’s interesting, a word that is not necessarily good when used in reference to food. It has a definite sour taste to it.  Not sure I’ll do it again, but I can definitely eat it. Especially with the fudge frosting. I had a bit of white buttercream left from (embarrassing to admit) the first round of Christmas cookies in early December. I tried a drizzle on top to be fancy. It was a failure, but at least it’s out of the refrigerator.

Jane called about 4:00 to report that she is home from Florida. Soon we will once again be without cat and turtle (tortoise). Dutchy has spent the last two days sitting in her water dish. Hard to know what turtles think about. She does move occasionally, so I’m pretty sure she’s still alive. I’ll be glad to not worry about her anymore.

Dutchy camped out in her water dish

The Superbowl is looking like the dreaded “defensive struggle.” How boring. And both teams are red and white. Pfft. I usually like to watch the commercials, but so far I have only learned that there are a lot of very strange movies coming soon. I am such a curmudgeon.

 

January snow

 It’s been a week of cold punctuated with snow. We got 5” on Tuesday. It was pretty coming down, but Terry had to run the snowblower twice because he had an early doctor appointment. The first time was so he could get out of the driveway, and the second time was after the snow stopped.

Tuesday brought a beautiful snow

We have one more houseguest while Jane is in Florida. She’s had a box turtle, Dutchy, for a long, long time. (technically, all completely terrestrial “turtles” are tortoises. True turtles inhabit the oceans. Fresh water “turtles” are terrapins, winning the award for the prettiest name.) Dutchy goes dormant in the winter, sort of. She hasn’t eaten since she got here, but she has had some water. The day she put her head down and looked dead, however, I was a bit alarmed. But after a day, she opened her eyes and looked around again.

Dutchy having a winter's nap

The big storm was scheduled to arrive on Saturday evening. The forecast was dire—a mix of rain, sleet, and heavy, wet, heart-attack-inducing snow. I prepared by doing all the things I had to do outside, with included cleaning Skippy’s litter box. We use pressed wood pellets and a double litter box system. When the pellets get wet, they disintegrate into fine sawdust. The top box has an open grid at the bottom so the wet sawdust, in theory, drops through. In practice, it needs quite a bit of encouragement. I take the litter box to the compost bin and shake it over that. That’s the outside part of the chore.

Skippy and a clean litter box

I also gave the chicken coop a good cleaning. The wood chips stay clean a lot longer in the summer when the girls run around outside all day. In the winter—hoo-boy!—the wood chips are barely distinguishable in the solid mass of chicken poop after a few weeks. TMI, I know. It looked and smelled much better when I was done.

Clean wood chips in the coop

The girls are laying very well. We’ve been getting 4 to 7 eggs a day. The pullet eggs are getting a little bigger all the time.

Seven eggs on one morning

When I was done in the coop, I took the old water (I put fresh water in the waterer daily) to the high tunnel. Amazingly, the lettuce, mâche, and spinach look pretty good still. The beds get dry, though, so I water sporadically. In another month, who knows? Maybe the plants will pick right up where they leave off. Still not sure about the sad, sad, little onions.

Lettuce on theleft, mache on the right with dying radishes in between.

Spinach on the left, more lettuce on the right

With the outdoor work done, I turned to the kitchen. I suffer from SABD—seasonal affective baking disorder. I started with bran muffins (sort of healthy) and orange chocolate chip scones (chocolate has antioxidants).

Bran muffins in the back, orange chocolate chip scones in front

Now that the sourdough started is ready, I made the sourdough pizza dough. It needed to rest frequently before I could get it stretched to 12”, but it made a lovely chewy crust.

Pizza with sourdough crust (tomatoes have health-boosting lycopenes)

I also started a batch of sourdough bread, which was really the whole point of putzing with getting the starter going. The recipe, recommended to me by my brother, requires an overnight rise. On Sunday, I got out my new ceramic bread pan, formed the loaf, and left it to rise. It was the best loaf of sourdough bread I’ve ever made, maybe the best I’ve ever eaten.  Just as Doug said, the crust was shatteringly crisp.

Sourdough bread (the staff of life, after all)

And I still have six sourdough recipes to try, and those are just the ones I’ve printed. King Arthur has many more.

The storm came on schedule, dumping another 5” of snow along with a wicked east wind. The deck, on the lee side, got buried.

Drift on the deck

There was a big drift between the house and the chicken coop, coming all the way up to the top of the propane tank. While Terry was slaving in the driveway again, I helped with a little tiny bit of snow removal by tunneling through the drift and clearing a little bit of the run so the girls could stretch their legs.

A path to the coop through a drift

And now it's February, the short month when winter gets very, very long. Only baked goods will carry us through.