CertainSeason

Bean Baking Weather

Well it's finally turned to Autumn here...at least temperature-wise. Precipitation-wise it's still monsoon season and I've just about had it.  Can't get in the garden. Can't mow the lawn. At least the mosquitoes seem to have abated with the temperature. Leaf raking has entered the To-Do List. Not that it does much good...as soon as you rake up what's there, more fall with the rains.

But it's nice and cool, so what do we do? We pull out mom's beanpot and we bake beans, of course. Yellow Cap beans from Rancho Gordo to be specific. Big meaty beans. We used this opportunity to clean out a good part of the fridge, too...in addition to the normal ingredients we added mango hot sauce, harissa and boiled cider to the beans. And just for good measure, instead of using ketchup, we used Stadium Sauce (a secret Milwaukee ingredient, usually found on brats). Had some nice chunks of salt pork in the fridge, too. I'm rather excited about these beans.

 

 

B&B (Bo & Bill) Baked Beans

2 C beans

4 oz salt pork or bacon

1 onion, finely diced

3 T molasses

2 t salt

¼ t ground black pepper

1/4 t dry mustard

½ C ketchup

1 T Worcestershire sauce

¼ C brown sugar

1. Soak beans overnight in cold water. Simmer the beans in the same water until tender, approximately 1 to 2 hours. Drain and reserve the liquid.
2. Preheat oven to 250˚
3. Arrange the beans in a 2 quart bean pot or casserole dish by placing a portion of the beans in the bottom of dish, and layering them with bacon and onion.
4. In a saucepan, combine molasses, salt, pepper, dry mustard, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil and pour over beans. Pour in just enough of the reserved bean water to cover the beans. Cover the dish with a lid or aluminum foil.
5. Bake for 3 to 4 hours in the preheated oven, until beans are tender. Remove the lid about halfway through cooking, and add more liquid if necessary to prevent the beans from getting too dry.

 

Hearth Cooking Redux

A new camera should be in my hands tomorrow or soon thereafter. But until then, I'll cadge my pix from the internets.

Alas, there is no way to do justice to Sally Brillon's Hearth Cooking classes without a camera of one's own. Fortunately, my sister-friend Patty Wesner, took a number of photos as we three...Patty, Mark and I...took Hearth Cooking guidance from the inimitable Sally Brillon. There were nine of us, in all, in the class. Sally lights up the home fires about 7:00 a.m. and we all arrive at 9:00 a.m. and commence to learn the subtle arts of home cooking from the 18th and 19th century.

The menu on this occasion was roast turkey, done in the reflector oven set inches in front of the fire. Sally's objective is to teach each of the various methods used in hearth cooking, so a lot of food is to be made. The rest of the menu included cranberry sauce, made in a tin pot hung from the crane over the fire, apple stuffing for the bird, done in a crockery pot in the beehive along with the Hubbard squash (with maple syrup, of course, we're in maple country on the Vermont border, after all) penny loaves baked in the stone oven and two apple pies, one in the beehive, the other in a Dutch oven. Patty and I did the pies...a competition  well-met. There were two categories: Best Cut-Out Crust and Best Lattice.  You can't see the beautiful cut-out pie Patty made, but it is over-lapping hearts and it was cooked in the Dutch oven.

One thing that stands out for me, now, after having taken this cooking class twice now is how beautiful all the food is and how refined it looks. I suppose when you initially think of "hearth cooking" it can sound rustic. But the food we ate yesterday, and the first time Bill and I took the class back in November, is worthy of any fine restaurant. A more perfectly cooked turkey I have never seen. And the crusts on the pies was nothing short of perfection.

All I can say is, if you love food and if you love cooking, this is an experience not to be missed. If, for not other reason, than the opportunity to cook this kind of meal authentically, in an authentically restored 18th century house (1786, if I am not mistaken.) Sally and Joe Brillon live in the Wilson Homestead and Sally, being the historian she is, has done extensive research on the house and the lives that were lived there. In between mixing and kneading and baling and pouring and the turning of meaty beasts on the spit, we sit and go through the diaries she has transcribed from the original owners of the house, entries dating to 1790 and on. Sally presents you with the list of topics that the diaries cover, and people call out their picks and she reads from an alphabetized, 4 x 6 card file she keeps from her notes on the diaries. Dinner follows, in the beautiful dining room off the cooking kitchen, food dished out from the long harvest table, we all sit at antique tables and listen to stories.

A delightful time was had by all.

Tapping In

Tyler Morey, our 23-year-old neighbor, stopped by about two weeks ago, asking if he could tap our maples for sugaring. We agreed, so long as he would show one of us how he does it and knock on the door when he comes by to do it so one of us could go with him and learn about it.

So this week, he came by and we tapped the maples on our land. And I'm here to tell you, it was hard work. Not so much the setting of the lines (more on that in a moment) but the trudging up and down the hillsides where the maples are...nature's StairMaster! 

Tyler has promised us a gallon of the final syrup. Even now, we've been to the local sugarhouse, Rathbun's, and we bought a half gallon of their syrup. A half gallon of grade A medium amber maple syrup! I don't think I've ever had that much maple syrup in my personal possession, ever. And now we can look forward to a whole gallon...maybe more since I've been helping out. 

I've been out with Ty two days now. We've tapped eight trees on our property, six of which have never been tapped before, which Ty promises me means sweeter syrup (I can't even imagine sweeter maple syrup.) And we tapped trees surrounding our fields, on other people's land, across the street, and the stand down by the Congregational church. In all, 500 taps. He is placing 55 gallon drums under the multiple tree taps, and 15 gallon drums under single tree taps. He tells me that when the sap starts running, one of those 55 gallon drums will fill up in half a day!

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Earlier, I stopped by the Pember Library and Museum, here, to get a library card. I've been meaning to do this for some time, and my old friend, Carol, wrote me this morning, suggesting a book. She asked if we had a library and I said that we had one of some note, actually. The Pember. 

It is a very lovely Victorian building, inside and out, sheathed, I'd guess, in local slate (Granville is, after all, the "colored slate capital"). The library is on the first floor and the Pember Museum is on the second story. It is a very small version of one wing of the New York City Museum of Natural History and is based on the private collection of Franklin Pember, a wealthy man from the area, circa 1860. There is also a nature preserve connected to the museum. 

I got my library card, donated a subscription to Paper Crafts Magazine to the library (thereby eliminating any late charges for books I check out for a whole year!) And then I decided to take a look at the museum on the second floor. I'm so glad I did!

 I got into a conversation with a woman who was sitting at a desk. I asked if Pember had collected all the specimens himself. Apparently he had. I spoke about how I had moved here recently from New York City and how the Natural History Museum there was one of my favorites. I mentioned another book that Carol had recommended to me...Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, and The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles (an incredible place, a marvelous book)...and somewhere along the way of this conversation, I mentioned that I had been a grantswriter and from the back of the exhibit room a forlorn voice rose saying "Please! I need your help!"...or something like that.

And this lovely woman comes over and introduces herself. Before I knew it I was sitting at her desk, surrounded by stuffed birds, animals and objets de curiosité. Patricia Wesner is her name and she and her husband have recently bought a house in East Greenwich (pronounced green-witch hereabouts) and we discovered we both had beehive ovens...and it was like Old Friends Week. We got along like a house afire.

She was writing a proposal to be submitted to the NYSCA (New York State Commission on the Arts) and she said there were things in the grant that she just didn't think applied. As an example, she read a portion about the requirements of her board. The want diversity, but when you are in a county and a town that is 97% white, how do you diversify? Her board is mostly women, she said...and I, half kiddingly, said "Well I can offer you a white, gay man." And she said "Yes!"

So, pending a formal invitation of course from the board, it seems I will be joining the board of the Pember Library and Museum. At least I hope so...I can't imagine a more fun way to "tap into" this community. My grantsmanship and development skills can be put to use and I think I can make a contribution.

And on top of that lovely happenstance, I think Pat may well become a friend. We both have similar houses and are both just starting in them (they have a larger house and more land). Her husband is an architect who specializes in historic restoration! How perfect is that!?

 

Saturday: Amtrak, Chickens, Eggs, Hubbards, Wild Plums, Walnuts, Apple Trees and Pillow Tops

The afore-mentioned, afore-pictured chicken is roasting with Hubbard squash as we speak. 

Bill got up from The City last night by train. Bless Amtrak.  Brewster has a whole new fan club at the Fort Edward train station (where there was a string quartet playing everything from the Ashokan Waltz to Chattanooga Choo Choo). The ladies in the station cooed over and petted Brewster as the fiddles played. Pictures of the Fort Edward train station, a beautiful, award-winning restoration, to follow...

We began the day with coffee and cake with Charles and Louise Halderman, who brought the cake. (Not exactly accurate...we began the day trying to impose some order on things before they arrived!)

They are the estimable the sellers of this property we now call home. They're in the house up the road from us, en route to their children's place in Ohio. Their son is on the astronautics and aeronautics faculty there. Mr. Halderman is formerly on the faculty at an M.I.T. lab where his other son now serves.  After coffee they walked us around the property identifying trees (we have Freedom apples, golden delicious, Cortlands...a sour cherry tree, a wild plum and several black walnut trees...a veritable grove to make Thoreau blush, about whom we also spoke as they also live in Concord.) Mrs. Halderman pointed out the lilacs and the peony beds...the hydrangaea and and day lilies. Bill and Charles consulted on something mechanical I don't quite understand in our cellar.

On our way to do some errands today...heading out to do all sorts of things...hit the recycling center, a high-lo thermometer, a new bulb for the upper oven...lots to do in a new old house...we

 stopped at a nearby vegetable stand that everyone had been telling us has "the best vegetables in the area." It's a honor system stand, of course, and as we picked up some eggs (I loved that the dozen had different colors and different sizes) and the afore-mentioned squash (they had BOXES of potatoes and assorted squashes...for $5 a box!) ...the farmer pulled up. Said he'd seen us out in our yard talking with "Chuckie Halderman" and thought we might be his new neighbors. 

Elmer is a sweet, old (he made me guess how old...I thought 70...I said "a young 65"...he blushed and said I had to add ten years), apple-cheeked, sun-burnished, snaggle-toothed guy (a lot of adjectives...not enough for Elmer) who farms 8 acres of vegetables and helps out with milking at the Parr Farm (off of which our parcel was subdivided, and from whom we received the chicken). He talked an arm and an ear off both of us...we know of a good deal of his family now...and offered to drop off fresh eggs once a week for us. Just let him know if we need one or two dozen. Said he understood if we wanted to have our own chickens at some point, but that we should keep in mind that if we had any more than a dozen chickens, the upkeep would cost more than the eggs.

We bought a new bed (eventually for the guest room, but now for us) today (it has been, Bill noted, a month since I've slept in a real bed.) 

Got home sort of late. Roasting a 9.5 pound chicken is going to mean a late dinner.

A real, pillow-top bed, way way way off the ground with my fere-husband is going to be mighty sweet-dreamy tonight. 

Hearth & Home: Cooking with neighbors

We took a class in hearth cooking and it was, in a word, AMAZING!




Sally, the woman who offered the class, is the Washington County historian. Her house, built in 1786, is restored to the smallest detail...it was like cooking in a museum. She deals in antiques and books and we used original and reproduction equipment, just as promised. Beautiful grounds, barns, a brook with a rapids and waterfall...the day here was bright and clear and brisk. Working in front of the open fire from 9 a.m. to noon, it was nice to walk outside, no jacket, just to take in fresh air and cool off a bit. Everything was done with original equipment.

Lunch, which we made, was a roast pork loin, red cabbage with apples, roasted potatoes with onions, whole wheat bread, a two crust apple pie and a pumpkin pie, all done in the hearth or in the beehive oven, just like the one we have. There were about five other people in the class (all women) and I ended up doing the lion's share of the cooking while they chatted. One woman did the apple filling for the pie, and then came over and took my pie crusts and finished assembling the pie. Other than that, I did the bread and the pork; Bill did the cabbage and the potatoes. One of the women took photos the whole time and has promised to send them.

The pork was cooked on a spit in this tin oven, shaped like a small, C-shaped, half-barrel with a whole side exposed to the fire. You turned the spit every 15 minutes. The beehive oven was just incredible. I had been curious that the interior of ours seemed completely new looking, as though the bricks had just been laid. This, of course, is because the heat that is generated completely burns away any ash! That, in fact, is how you know that the fire has reached proper temperature...the soot from the fire is burned off completely. And just watching the pyrodynamics of the oven was fascinating...the way the fire is drawn over the top of the oven, to the flue in front of it. Sometimes there was this thin layer of smoke, clearly defined in a strata, being pulled out of the fire and up the draw. Then flame. She had this thermometer that you aimed into the fire...it topped out at 600 degrees before registering only "..." and Sally said the internal temperature was probably in the 700 degree range. We did the pumpkin pie, the bread and the vegetable dishes in the beehive. The apple pie we did in a Dutch oven in front of the open fireplace, on a bed of ash and coals. It was really a treat.

The house was breathtaking, incredible. The class was exactly what we were hoping to find so we could start playing with our beehive oven. Sally Brillon was absolutely lovely and I think we will become friends. Couldn't have been a more perfect thing to do. I would certainly do it again. And the house...oh my goodness...perfection. 1786...seven fireplaces, beautiful wood paneling throughout (original, restored, of course) the interior, plaster walls and ceilings in soft shades of yellow, period art, period furnishings. Just amazing. Like I said...it was like eating and cooking in a museum.

And the best part is now we know exactly how to use our beehive oven.