When life gives you lemons....

.....make cake!

That's not how the saying goes, I know, but it's still tasty. I thought I would share a picture of the cake I made for my son's 4th birthday.















This is a cake I've always wanted to make, so when my grandmother sent a box of oranges and Meyer lemons from my great-grandmother's citrus trees, it seemed like the perfect time to do it! Normally, when faced with an abundance of lemons, I make lemon curd. I have plenty of jars on hand right now, so I zested and juiced 8 Meyer lemons and froze all of it in ice cube trays. Two tablespoons fill one ice cube space and a tablespoon of zest with another of juice will make nearly one cube. Having those on hand really cut down on prep time for this cake! And the lemon curd from the pantry completed the cake as filling between layers, so making this from scratch was far easier than I could possibly imagined. I found my recipe for this cake here. Let me tell you, the frosting was the best I have ever made, and I'm guessing that's all thanks to the stand mixer that my husband bought me for Christmas!

You cannot go wrong with this cake! I will definitely be making this one again. As a special project, I saved the seeds from the lemons and planted them in trays. My g-grandmother is nearing 102 years old and there is no telling what will happen to her house when she should pass away (which could be years away). Meyer lemons are easy to grow indoors and with any luck, in 5 to 10 years, I will be making this cake again with lemons from my own trees!
That would be a really special keepsake to have around to remind me of my grandmother!

What to do with burned brownies...?

Well make chocolate bread pudding, of course! Earlier this summer, I made my favorite brownies but substituted natural sugar for the regular white sugar. You wouldn't think there would be a difference, but boy was there ever! They just wouldn't set up! They were oily, hard and way darker than they should have been. I considered them completely inedible, not even good enough to chop up for ice cream add-ins. Then I decided that I should try to use them, not dump them, and thought that maybe they would work in a bread pudding, if I let them soak a REALLY long time in the batter before baking. And hooray, it turned out great! WARNING: This should NOT be considered a breakfast food. It is far sweeter than a regular bread pudding and SUPER chocolately. This would make a great dessert to serve to company - custardy, chocolatey and with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!

Brownie Bread Pudding

Birch Tree Tapping

In April, I had the opportunity to take a class for teachers about teaching environmental subjects - habitat, resource preservation, environmental impact. These were all aimed at elementary kids, and when we completed the class, each of us was given a collection of curriculum for teaching these things to K-12. It was really neat. The class was centered on birch tree tapping, which I had always wanted to know how to do. Infact, most of my interest in ever visiting New England was to learn how to tap maple trees! I was thrilled to be able to learn how to use the trees in my own area, and how to get my kids involved and interested, from a scientific perspective. Explanation out of the way, here are some pictures of our first attempt at tapping birch trees!




From top to bottom: My group-mates at the class, Betsi and Kathy;
Betsi with Cal and Ed, tapping our first tree after the class! ;
Cal tasting the fresh sap;
one of our tree set ups.

I learned a lot about making syrup and tapping trees. Initially, we used my wine making supplies to collect the syrup. We now know that glass, while sterile, will heat up in even a small amount of sunlight, which makes the sap cloudy. Sap needs to be kept cool, and collected daily. Only use food grade buckets for collecting! Second, we were able to keep our taps from the class, which gave us three, and after all the cooking down, everyone ended up with a pint or so of syrup (divided four ways, collected for a week, about 3 gallons collected daily). We did find that it was a higher sap-to-syrup ratio than we had expected, partly because you cannot cook birch down to the consistency of maple or table syrup without sacrificing taste. Cooked down at just under 200 degrees F, it was pretty time consuming. We also discovered that the recommended tapping times vary greatly by area - farther north in the Matsu Valley, they tap in April, and southward in Haines, they tap in early March. We figure that for the peninsula, we should start no later than mid-march and finish mid-April. We caught the season a little late this year (and we had an especially warm spring) and so only tapped for one week.


Recently, my family used up the last of our syrup (goes pretty fast with 5 people eating pancakes!) and it was DELICIOUS! I am ready for next year, already planning how many taps, buckets and hoses to order, as well as planning a better set up for cooking it down. I am addicted! I cant wait to work this into homeschool - data collection, cooking ratio's, charts, charts, charts!




If we get a good amount of syrup, maybe I can even give some away next year :)

Recycling Christmas Dinner

Okay, I know. What is the point in blogging if you never blog!? Its been a while. But here we are at Christmas and Im just catching my breath, preparing for the new year that is just 5 days away! I think Im ready. Heck, at this point, I have no choice!

Ill save pictures of Christmas and things we did for another time. Today I want to talk about something that is near and dear to me.....FOOD!

It was suggested that with all my cooking and recipe developing, that I blog. So I will at least include it, however sporadically.

If you know me, my life pretty much revolves around food. Family and food. Arts and crafts with food. Gift giving of food.... Yeah, I like food :) One of my favorite things about cooking and being a woman of the house is that I can find creative ways to use leftovers. You can call it recycling, repurposing, but I call it yum!

For instance, tonight we are having a breakfast strata (a.k.a. savory bread pudding) for dinner, using leftover Christmas stuffing, potatoes, bacon and eggs. These are all things I have in my fridge and need to be used because everyone is sick of eating them in their original form. This is a sure winner at my house and is a staple for brunch type meals:

Breakfast Strata
3 or 4 cups stuffing (or potatoes, roasted, mashed, biscuits, stale bread, the list goes on....)
Bacon or sausage (or ham, or turkey, pepperoni, you get the idea)
Leftover chopped veggies and onions, 1-2 cups max
8-10 eggs, or 2 pints egg beaters
1/2 milk, cream, etc.
salt and pepper, 1/2 tsp. mustard powder if you want it...


Preheat oven to 350 F.
Spray casserole pan with nonstick spray.
Layer leftovers in pan, starting with the starchy food (i.e. stuffing). Sprinkle meat over the top. Blend eggs and milk, with salt + pepper , pour into pan on top of everything else. Bake 20-35 minutes. Keep an eye on it, but dont worry, its hard to mess this one up! You can change the pan size and ingredient amounts to accomodate whatever you have on hand, little or big, just change the baking time too!

So here are a few more examples of how Christmas dinner (Goose with apricot stuffing, truffled lamb with chantrelle mushroom rice, roasted butternut squash with parsnips, brussel sprouts with pecans, and rye bread stuffing) will be repurposed this weekend (because, you know, Im supposed to start a diet on Monday, so the leftovers have to go!):

Butternut parsnip ravioli, lamb risotto, served alongside zucchini latkes, for the last night of Hanukkah.

It might seem silly to you, but this is how I make dinners stretch and ease the burden of cooking for myself. I freeze leftovers (extra brussel sprouts for St. Patty's Day, leftover cream cheese icing to be used later for pumpkin cheesecake muffins, the goose liver from my Christmas dinner for pate, Halloween candy for Christmas fudge and gingerbread houses!) Why waste it when you can freeze it for later?

My strata's done. Gotta go! Tomorrow breakfast: Eggnog french toast!