The lot o' youse know that I don't say things like all y'all because my pumpkin farm is in Western New York, but I love saying all y'all (the plural of y'all which shouldn't be confused as the plural of "you" except sometimes it is).
You're welcome.
So life here is crazy but the Good Lord saw fit to give us longer days in summer so that we have time to get work done!
Preview of coming attractions!!!! Not fully ripe, but you have a Cinderella pumpkin (great-cooking squash!!!!), a Hoargarth (green/orange warted), a Crunchkin, (mini orange pumpkin, so cute and a great stack topper!) Blaze (gold with orange stripes) and Specter (white pumpkin). Shortly these will be joined by thousands and thousands of friends as we move toward our kickoff Labor Day weekend to mark the change in seasons. This week we're prepping for new display areas, expanding the pumpkin spots so that people can be outside and socially distant... We will be killing grass (a lot of it) in our efforts to expand the space, but better to sacrifice grass than safety for our customers. I'll show you pics as we move forward.
And our full moon this week was stunning, it came on a night of high winds and clouds racing across the surface of the moon, as if running for their cloudy lives!
And this, from Logan: Note that this transformer-style (or Minecraft, maybe???) creature is mobile! Wheels!!!!!
And I have made nearly forty jars of jam this week..... We sell it at the produce stand and I've done thirty jars of Blackberry Jam (from our wild bushes) and ten jars of Triple Berry (from frozen berries). Today will be Strawberry and tomorrow will be Sour Cherry..... And as long as I have a stock of each done ahead, I can enter the season and breathe!
Most of the current work load is the guys on pumpkin duty to keep the pumpkin plants happy and hearty.... I'm on house painting and jam and zucchini bread duty. When we get to the fall season, then I'm on baking duty because we add a bunch of things to the mix... but we glide into that as the seasons change.
So this week I ordered a 40 lb. box of sour cherries through an IQF program. That's "Individually Quick Frozen" and I love working with these cherries. I filled 8 bags with about five pounds each, but had enough cherries left over to make pie filling so I tried a tapioca based pie filling...
It was good, but for cherries I like the corn starch as a thickener better because the tiny tapioca bits were weird.... Now I love them in peach pie!!!!! But it wasn't my favorite in this one, maybe because of the cherry texture?
Anyway, for the jam I grind the cherries with my food grinder and make them into jam, but I always save some for our winter cherry pies and/or desserts. I love having food on hand, and it's never a bad idea to stock up now and be prepped for winter. I think that especially holds true with a pandemic.
CHERRY STRUDEL
1 Package Puff Pastry
Cherry Pie Filling
3 cups or so of pitted sour cherries
1 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons Minute Tapioca
2 Tablespoons butter
Mix sugar and tapioca together. Put cherries into a 4 quart saucepan. I like stirring room so they don't scorch on the bottom when the mix thickens. Pour sugar and tapioca over cherries. Add 1/3 cup water. Stir and let sit for about fifteen minutes for tapioca to soften.
Then... heat over medium/medium/high heat, stirring. Add butter. Stir until mix thickens and comes to a boil. Chill. Use as pie filling.
For the cornstarch version, use 1/4 cup corn starch in place of tapioca. Mix with sugar, then mix sugar/cornstarch mix with cherries and butter and heat. No need to wait.
Thaw Puff Pastry.
Lay out on wide cookie sheet or two separate cookie sheets.
Fill middle third of each pastry sheet with pie filling.
Fold sides in. Pinch ends (I used fork tines, old-fashioned and quite effective!!!) Put slits in top for steam to escape.
Bake in 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes, or until pastry has puffed and turned golden all over.
Glaze with simple frosting:
1 cup confectioner's/powdered sugar
1 Tablespoon butter
Milk (just enough to thin to drizzle
Mix butter with sugar, add milk to thin, then drizzle over warm pastry.
This is delicious warm or cold.... Next version will be blackberry, following the same steps... the plants are loaded this year!
All right, it's back to story telling for me right now, and wishing you health (yes!) and joy, the joy that comes from being at peace with yourself. God bless you and keep you!
You can order IQF cherries??? Why didn't I think of that?
ReplyDeleteBack in the day (as my oldest son likes to say) I bought cans of IQF cherries from a local place. The problem is that we lived in Indiana at the time, and it isn't local anymore. It's time to start searching around here!
Because I love cherries, love having a stocked freezer, and love this recipe.
I love the look of those pumpkins, too! But can you believe it's time to start gearing up for fall already? The Sturgis Rally starts this week, and that always signals the beginning of the end on summer for me. Mid-August we start seeing fall-like weather! Time to hunt for the sweaters!
Jan, it seems like your weather just turned warm! I think my sense of time has been totally out of whack during the pandemic.
DeleteYum, Ruthy! I sure wish I could make a visit and buy some of your yummy products!
ReplyDeleteOkay, y'all can have a really good laugh at me right now. I went to look up IQF to find out what brand that is to see if I could order some. :)
ReplyDeletehahaha
Ruthy, around now is the time that I really get bummed that I don't live closer to you! Your posts of your farm and all the yummy things you're making really make me antsy to visit! Probably won't be this year, though! LOL
ReplyDeleteI always enjoy your posts! I’m with Missy—I wish I lived closer so I could buy some of everything you have!
ReplyDelete