Seeds, Recipes and Frigidness

Hello All!

The winter has hit New Hampshire with a vengeance. Of course, I’ll not complain too hard because it is super late arriving here.  I got up in the middle of the night to my dogs insistent bark that some evil being was surely breaking into our house (no. no one was.) and noticed the temperature outside was reading 16 degrees.  This was about 2 a.m.  When I got up at 5:30 with my high schoolers, it was reading 12 degrees.  What the heck?  Shouldn’t it be going UP, not DOWN by that time of morning.  And the wind chill is much colder than that 12 degrees.  Walking the dog a few minutes ago elicited an ice cream headache.  Not my favorite time of year, for sure.  Since we are predicted to have two separate snow storms in three days this coming weekend, we’ll be getting in lots of roof raking, shoveling and snow blowing.  It was bound to happen, it is New England after all.

I was thinking that perhaps you might enjoy the recipe for the Cranberry Pudding that I made last weekend for our dinner guest.  This was a big hit, everyone enjoyed it.  It was nice to use up those extra cranberries I had hanging around from the holidays, too.  This recipe comes to you via the cook book, “Morning Glory Farm and The Family That Feeds An Island”.  A creation of the Morning Glory Farm of Martha’s Vineyard Island, I love this cookbook.  And Morning Glory is on my “some day” bucket list.  The only change I might make to the recipe is next time I will add some orange extract to the frosting, which would be a delicious compliment to the cranberries.  I love cranberries and orange together, add a little cinnamon and it just screams “winter holidays!” at me.  Now, though this is called a pudding, it’s actually a cake.  Not sure why they call it pudding, but there you have it.  Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Cranberry Pudding

3/4 (scant) cup sugar                      For Hard Sauce (frosting)

2 tsp baking powder                        1/2 c soft butter

2 c all-purpose flour                         1 c sifted powder sugar

1/2-3/4 tsp salt                                     1/2 tsp vanilla

1 c milk (not skim)                            1/2 tsp orange extract (optional)

2 c rinsed fresh cranberries

2 tsp melted butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease 8-inch square pan.

Mix together sugar, baking powder, flour and salt. Add milk, cranberries and melted butter.  Stir until it is well mixed.  Pour into prepared pan and bake for about 30 minutes.  Let cake cool.

Meanwhile, prepare hard sauce (frosting):

Beat butter on medium speed in a small mixing bowl until fluffy.  Bean in sugar and vanilla and chill.  Spread on cranberry cake just before serving.

Super easy, and super delicious!  I hope you enjoy it!

So, been contemplating some changes here on the homestead. I have been applying for a full time job now that the boys are not needing me at home so much.  Since I am the driving force behind the homestead, I am concerned that I may not have time to do all that I have done in the past.  One because I will be away from the homestead doing a job and time is finite, but another because the stress and mental strain that going back to work full time will put on me.  With my medical health issues, I only have just so much energy before I hit a wall and can’t do more.  My body will only let me do what it will let me do.  And the frustrating thing is that I won’t ever know how much that is in advance.  Some days are better than others and it is an unpredictable business.  But, I think that since I have the garden beds in, I may be able to do the garden.  I was hoping to expand that this year, but if I am working full time, that likely won’t allow me the energy to handle more.  Hopefully, it will work out okay.

We also were contemplating doing meat birds again this year since the meat is so much better, but you really need someone to attend to them during the day.  They will get shavings in their water after about 3 minutes from changing the water and they make a mess.  We have also had them jumping out of their bins, even with the netting over the top of it.  If one of them got out, Brady would have a delicious chicken snack if no one was here to rescue it.  So, I don’t think meat birds will be happening for a while.  I will have a period of adjustment to deal with also- since raising my kids, caring for my family and this homestead have been my exclusive job for 4 years now, and leaving this for a full time job is a daunting thought.  We will adjust to this situation if it occurs for our family, until then, I’m just mentally adjusting.

Well, it’s a shorter entry today, but not much is going on that’s all that interesting around here right now.  I will get back to planning the garden this year soon.  Making some choices like I think tomatoes will be out for the near future.  The blight was so bad in our area last year that a couple of my tomato growing friends have been making the same decision.  It’s devastating to have blight take your plants after so much care and tending go into getting them to fruit stage.    So, might stick to the things I know will prosper and hit the farmers markets for the rest of the items we need.  Will be back in touch soon! Until then, be well, be kind to each other and blessings to you all!