When the wind changes.

Greetings! I am back! 

So much has happened since my last post. I will give you the nutshell rendition and slowly peel it away for future posts. First off, we decided to sell our townhouse in April when our already too high taxes were assessed for double. Selling a house is quite a chore. I had to empty it out, it has to be sparse and clean at all times because you never know when an agent will be requesting a viewing or an open house. It sold fairly quickly and we began our search for our next home. 

After viewing many homes, we decided to rent instead of buy. We began to feel strongly that we may not want to buy in NY again. Like Mary Poppins, the winds are changing and we want to be free and flexible to go.

We moved into our wonderful rented home in August. It suits our needs so well, my girls for the first time each have their our rooms. The grounds are beautiful, butting up against woods, lots of big rocks, moss and lichens, which I am crazy about.

During the moving/settling process these things occurred:

My younger daughter was found to be Lyme free!! After a year of unrelenting treatment that was amazing news. (This is a story I must unravel for you in future.)

My older daughter "graduated", finished her homeschooling. 

We had no fridge for a month.

My sister and her son came to stay with us because she has a chronic disease and needed help and care.

Almost every weekend we had out of town visitors sleeping here, before we even had furniture. One airbed...and it leaked.

We don't know where we will end up, but for now Halloween 2017 we are all together and well and happy. The foliage is spectacular. I will introduce myself to my new neighborhood as Mary Poppins tonight. My daughter just informed me that she is going to bake some black pretzels.

Life is good and this is where you will find me...until the wind changes.

 “The wind blows wherever it will, and you hear the sound it makes, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." John 3:8  

Loving Fall (and food)

Beautiful isn't it? Autumn, it's the best. We sat on a rock with friends, eating our picnic lunch. This was the scene before us. Winter is rough here in NY, but I don't think I would ever be content to live somewhere without the four seasons. I'm sure there are people who would disagree. I guess it's what you are used to.

The candles are lit. Bringing warmth and light to the table since it's getting dark early these days. Anything left in the fridge is being turned into soup. "Leftover Soup" is always a hit. I can never duplicate Leftover Soup, but I can make an equally tasty new one.

Curries and stews are happening, cosy comfy bowls of warmth. As it gets colder and those beautiful leaves disappear, I put the color on the table. I am a true believer in the effect of beauty and color on our souls. Those gourd candle holders are festive and very simple to make. Just drill the proper size hole and stick your candles in. Bringing natural beauty into the home is easy and very cheap, even free. Grow some gourds (they pretty much grow themselves), pick up some acorns and leaves.

I'll take any excuse to use the oven, it warms up the house. Just like Leftover Soup, crumbles are  popular on my table. Any fruit or fruit combination will work. Frozen, fresh or canned fruits topped with oats, sucanat, butter and flour make for a more cheerful afternoon when that sun starts to go down. The smell of good things baking always lifts up the mood of the home.

I don't bake cookies that often. Just for holidays or special occasion. Halloween kicks off the cookie baking season for me. I'd rather the kids satisfy their sugar urge with home made cookies rather than the artificial candy that will inevitably appear. To color the gray mushrooms and black bats I used activated charcoal, just like my black donuts and black pie. 

I consider the arrival of Fall a worthy enough occasion to celebrate with friends and fall leaf cookies.
I am feeling happy, warm, and almost ready to take on winter.

September 22, 1991

On this day Sept. 22., (1991) Billy Graham preached to an estimated crowd of 200,000 people in Central Park. His largest event in North America. 

 My then boyfriend, now husband took this picture of me there on the The Great Lawn. The Spiderman duffle bag was what he toted his camera equipment around in. Cameras couldn’t fit in your pocket in 1991! 

Were you there?

Eating Acorns

The day I found those Giant Puffballs we were actually out collecting acorns. My husband was interested in learning how to make them palatable since we have so many in this area. He is into trees the way I am into healing plants. 

The White Oak is the one to collect, they are naturally less bitter.

First we froze them, that made the skins come off easier. The skin is the layer just under the shell. My husband shelled them.

Next began the process of  making acorn flour. There are different ways to do that. First the bitter tannins must be removed. Some people boil the acorns multiple times until the water runs clear. We went with a non cooked method of leaching out those tannins. 

First we ground them up in the wet Vitamix. More water was added to them in a jar and this sat for 24 hours. Each 24 hours fresh water replaced the old until the water was clear.

Once the tannins were cleared out, we dehydrated the wet acorn meal. I have an Excaliber 4 tray. It came out really nice, nutty and tasty. (I snacked on some.) The grain was quite rough still, so we ground it to flour consistency in the dry Vitamix. It is came out very smooth, with a feel and look of cocoa powder.

My first test was on some cookies. Some GF friends were dropping by for tea. I grabbed everything that I had that was GF and went to work experimenting. 

I kept it simple, much like a shortbread: butter, sugar, vanilla, with cashew meal, acorn and oat flours. They were so good! Even the smallest of humans wanted more, which is really how I judge a "healthy" cookie.

Next was a recipe from the book Acorn Pancakes, Dandelion Salad, and 38 Other Wild Recipes. A simple classic, pancakes with butter and maple syrup. The acorn is so mild and nutty. It doesn't have that extra bitter taste that many of the darker grains have.

Yesterday's yummy breakfast. I had some leftover pancake batter. I waffled it and topped it with butter and smoked salmon. Again, it came out really good. 

Acorn flour is a winner!I love the idea of eating wild foods that man has not tampered with. Everything that fed that tree is now feeding me and my family. It is nutritionally excellent and it is extremely tasty and versatile. Oh, and the acorns were free!

Spooky

Our Halloween...

There was a ghoulish girl,

a guinea pig with bat wings,

and a black pie. 

Unexpected Gourds

A few weeks ago this plant popped up outside my front door. It grew very fast and started flowering profusely. Bees were always buzzing around it. They would burrow deep down into the blossoms. We could even pet them and they were so drunk on pollen the didn't even budge. I decided to let it keep growing, for the bees sake. 

And keep growing it did! Like a magic beanstalk, it grew up the house and into the rain gutter.

My home is always decorated with all kinds of nature bits: gourds, nests, pumpkins, shells, acorns, pine cones, insects, feathers, skulls, and more.

When a pumpkin or gourd gets a bit soft I display it outside, that way I can enjoy the beauty a little longer. Apparently, one of last years gourds planted itself at my front door.

Now we have all these lovely little gourds. We cut them off at different stages so we can enjoy the different shapes. They will end up back outside and hopefully the cycle will continue.

So inspired by the adorable gourds, my daughters decided to capture a couple in watercolor...

The Younger

The Older

Foraging the Giant Puffball

It's a good time for foraging here in NY. We have been getting lots of goodies. Just last week we scored a haul of Chicken of the Woods and Puffball mushrooms as well as white oak acorns and plantain (not the banana!). I needed to get more plantain before the frost to make my healing salves. My husband was after those acorns, he is going to make acorn flour out of them. If I don't eat them all first as a snack!

This is a lovely white Puffball Mushroom. I set those two brown ones in the background to show you what not to eat. A Puffball is good when it's all white, feels firm and a bit spongy. When they are brown they are past eating and have moved on to their spore making phase. They are quite large and easy to spot. I grabbed two this size, but left a larger one for the next human or animal forager.

You can see how easy the dirty outside peels right off. You should not eat this mushroom raw. In fact it's best to not eat any raw mushrooms.

I treated the first Puff like tofu, sauteed and seasoned with cajun spices. That's my default way of cooking and it's always tasty. But since I had so much of this mushroom I decided to experiment.

 This idea came to me while I was slicing it up. The slices really held their shape, which made me think of eggplant. Puffball parmigiana was born! 

Here you can see what the inside looks like, the texture was very good this way. There is no poison lookalike for this mushroom, so feel free to forage up some yourselves.

Fall Food

Fall has hit New York. I have a fire in the fireplace, an ever brewing teapot, knitting projects in full swing, and a mind filled with the tastes, colors and smells of autumn. I recently discovered this one and have already made them four times. Sweet potato ravioli in browned butter with basil. They are so good and very addictive.  I make them when I am having company, so I don't eat too many.

I found them in Simply Ming One-Pot Meals. What makes them so easy is that you use pre-made wonton wrappers. I baked up a bunch of sweet potatoes and mashed them up in the Vitamix. I actually do a batch of sweet potato puree each week because I love my sweet potato smoothie every afternoon. When folks get that mid day coffee craving, I get a sweet potato smoothie craving.

I got that over at Sweet Potato Soul.

Super easy, I flavor the mash only with ground ginger and black pepper. You must use a little egg was to "glue" these guys together. 

When they are all assembled you brown them in salted butter, throw in lots of chopped fresh basil and there it is. Easy to make and way too easy to eat. A great appetizer or meal.

Morning Mushroom Walk

 We are experiencing a NY heat wave, so we haven't been in the woods lately.  The heat makes us droopy and the most annoying loving bugs are out.  My family is missing the nature walks that are such a integral part of our life. This morning we set out extra early to avoid the heat and the bugs.

I didn't think that we would see so many mushrooms, the burning sun dries them up quickly. 

We were happily surprised that there were so many.

We stopped to eat our breakfast and the girls fed the fish.

Enjoying my morning tea on a nice shady rock, looking forward to autumn.

Sleepy Hollow Acorns

Looking for a little treat without calories or sugar? Try my little acorn cushions. I just finished a batch and FINALLY added a new item to my Etsy Shop. These spookies were actually gathered from the grave site of writer Washington Irving in Sleepy Hollow NY. 

This huge ancient oak towers over the other trees at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and just happens to be in the private family plot of Washington Irving. It showers the ground with these little shaggy capped acorns. 

Irving's grave is the one decorated with flags and pumpkins. Quite humble, not what one would expect from the writer of such stories as The Headless Horseman and Rip Van Winkle.

 I gathered my acorns on an overcast, drizzly October day. Noisy ravens perched on the tops of gravestones. It could not have been a more perfect day for my spooky task.

I was determined to stay until my basket was full even though it started raining. I did fill that basket and I ended up with a stow away.

My Spooky Acorns would make a nice addition to your Autumn nature display or could even be a stocking stuffer for those people on your Christmas list who enjoy the eerie all year round.

Autumn: bringing it in

We bring bits of nature into the house during every season. Fall though seems to make the biggest  impact. I love it! Even on the short walk to my mailbox I come back with something pretty. Although we have a couple of designated "nature shelves" the rest of the house is being taken over by the great outdoors.

Did you ever do this as a kid? I did and now I do it with my girls. Collect leaves and iron them between waxed paper to hang in windows or use as place mats and table runners.

Of course I am crazy about things that represent the natural, like my pumpkin teapot. Yesterday I got the notion to make acorn shaped cakes for tea time. The baking pan I used is shaped kind of like an egg carton. I dipped the tops in chocolate and there you have it---acorns!

 I made these gluten free pumpkin bars even though I don't have a gluten problem. I am always looking for nice recipes that I can serve my GF friends. Use any pumpkin pie filling recipe that you love and bake it on this GF crust. I pre-baked the crust first for about 15 minutes before pouring on the filling. It's really good. 

Crust: 1 1/2 cups almond meal + 3 TBS fat (butter/coconut oil) + 1 TBS sugar (or packet of stevia)

Press crust into pan evenly, I used a rectangular  tart pan with removable bottom.

See more of my Pumpkin Tasties here: 

http://childrenofeve.blogspot.com/2012/11/pumpkin-lattes-and-things-like-that.html

Pumpkin Lattes and things like that

Pumpkin Latte. Just the name itself conjures up images of all that is good about fall. Autumn perfection.  Many of my lady friends have a very serious relationship with the Pumpkin latte. They just love it, some say it's an addiction. In the company of a lovely friend or two I have too succumbed to it's charms. The first sip almost delivers the happy feeling that the name conveys. But, sadly when taking tepid gulps from the bottom half of the cup I feel kind of let down. Maybe it has something to do with that fake pumpkin, too sweet syrupy stuff that sinks to the bottom. After just such a moment I determined not to drink another. Unless I made it myself. I did it, and it has all the promises of an autumn day. Without the lousy feeling afterward. If you too are interested in a healthier Pumpkin latte here is what I did:

Made a cup of my favorite coffee. I use a hand drip funnel or coffee press.

Heated up some milk with pumpkin puree (whisk together). About one tablespoon pumpkin per cup.

Sweeten coffee with sweetener of choice. I use stevia and maple syrup combination.

Pour the milk/pumpkin mixture over the sweetened coffee, the whisking froths up the milk nicely.

Grate or sprinkle on some cinnamon.

There you have it. Aside from the obvious benefits of it being natural, you can customize it for your own taste. Your coffee, your sugars, your milk (almond is good too), you can add on cardamon, vanilla, chocolate....you get the idea.

I have been putting pumpkin into anything I can get away with it lately. Here is the pumpkin smoothy, which is a big hit. My girls love it. Actually they really like all of my pumpkin concoctions. I don't know of any other healthy vegetable type that is so easily accepted in their sweets. The smoothies were made from almond milk, banana, pumpkin puree, vanilla extract and again that stevia/maple syrup combo.

Little pumpkin cakes for tea with milk chocolate icing. Sure they have chocolate on top, but I consider them a fairly healthy sweet. They are made with whole wheat and no fat (oil). They get all their moistness from the pumpkin puree. Another winner all around.

Have you noticed how as you scroll down the foods are progressing toward the more decadent? Being home bound for days after Hurricane Sandy was all the excuse I needed to make pumpkin donuts. Maybe not the healthiest thing on the planet, but compared to store bought donuts they're not so bad. The benefits of whole wheat flour and pumpkin again. A spoonful of a maple syrup and sugar glaze goes a long way in flavor so you only need a small amount of sugar in the dough. Yes, they are fried. That's because I like them better than baked and donuts don't just happen every day.