Chester P. Greenwood and Milk Punch

Yesterday was a day of celebration in Farmington, ME: Chester P. Greenwood Day, celebrated yearly on the first Saturday of December. This year, C.P.G. Day also happens to fall on Chester's birthday (born in December 4, 1858).

Chester famously invented earmuffs while breaking in a new pair of ice skates. He got sick of his ears freezing in the bitter wind, and after little success with wrapping a scarf around his head he had his grandmother sew some wool to ear-sized wire loops.

Greenwood's Champion Ear Protectors were worn by U.S. soldiers in World War I, making them Chester's most famous invention, but he also patented a whistling tea kettle, a steel-toothed leaf rake, an advertising matchbox, and a machine for making wooden thread spools.

The most important aspect of the Chester Greenwood Day celebrations is always the parade. Everyone wears earmuffs, what could be better? A few highlights from this year's parade, in order of appearance:

Butternut Squash Pie

I love the Southern Heritage Cookbooks. I have several. They have great recipes and bits of food trivia interspersed with vintage labels, photographs, advertisements, and postcards.
(I recently saw the whole set at a used cookbook website listed at $400.00!)

Mine are interspersed with smudges of butter and crumbs, and cocoa here and there.

Most recently I have made

- to wide acclaim -

Butternut Squash Pie

1 C. (or more) butternut squash, pureed

3/4 C . half and half

1/3 C. white sugar

1/3 C. brown sugar

2 eggs

1 t. cinnamon

1/8 t. nutmeg

1 t. ginger

1/4 t. cloves

dash of salt

2 T. bourbon ( or rum or optional)

1 unbaked pie crust

3/4 C. chopped pecans

1/2 C. brown sugar

1/4 C. softened butter

Combine, squash, half and half, sugar, 1/3 c. brown sugar, eggs, spices, salt, and bourbon. Mix well .Pour into pie shell. Bake @ 375 20 minutes. Combine pecans brown sugar, and butter. Remove pie from oven and sprinkle pecan mixture over the top. Return it to the oven for 25 minutes.

(about 10 minutes into the second baking, I noticed that the crust was getting real brownish, so I made 3 aluminum foil protectors and set them on the crust.)

Christmas Pepper Jelly

Our plan is to make one thing each week for our Christmas Gift Baskets. Today it was Pepper Jelly!!!! We used the directions on the liquid pectin package, with some alterations.

Christmas Pepper Jelly

3 Large Red Peppers (we used Ancient Sweet)
6 Medium Orange or Yellow Peppers
2 Medium Pablano Peppers (to add some heat)
2 Cups Cider Vinegar
1/2 Cup Apple Juice
6 Cups Sugar
2 Pouches of Liquid Pectin
1/2 tsp Butter

Pulse the peppers in a food processor in small batches (you should have small pieces...not puree).
Drain in sieve for one minute.
Mix together peppers, vinegar, apple juice, sugar, pectin and butter in large pot.
Stir over medium heat until sugar disolves. Cover and boil for 2 minutes, them remove lid and continue boiling for 8 minutes.

Ladle into sterilized 4 oz canning jars, seal, and process for 10 minutes in a water bath.

Makes 12-14 jars of deliciousness.

For a wonderful appetizer, pour one jar over cream cheese and serve with crackers.

Concerning Hobbits and Apfelkuchen

I am completely in love with the Lord of the Rings (books, movies, mythology, geeky merchandise--I love it all), but my dear boyfriend, codename: Pierogi, had never seen the movies. So, over the summer we watched the Fellowship and Two Towers. In an ideal world, we would have watched all three movies over one weekend, while eating exclusively food mentioned or eaten in the movies. However, not everyone has my stamina or enthusiasm. So, for my birthday (which is on Thursday), we decided to celebrate by (finally) watching the Return of the King and spending an entire day eating like Hobbits.

There is something completely wholesome about Hobbits. They are content with the details of their little lives, and unconcerned with the big world, which has always managed to keep existing without their help so far. As long as one is comfortable, well-fed, and has a few nice things to look at or play with, they see no reason to look for adventure or confrontation. In the introduction to The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien writes that Hobbits are now rarely, but that their favorite places are in the "well-ordered and well-farmed countryside," where life moves slower and they are less likely to encounter loud and unpleasant machinery. In many ways, they could easily be the poster-species for the modern slow food and back-to-the-land movements. Though not pretty, hobbits have good-natured appearances, their faces being designed for laughing, eating and drinking: "And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them)."

The six meals a day part was the biggest challenge of our day of Hobbit food. By checking out this list of foods in the books and movies, remembering a few things of my own, and using my imagination, it was easy to think of several days worth of Hobbit food, but we had to keep it down to 5 (we couldn't handle 6) meals, and somehow find time to eat those 5 without exploding. So, here's what we did...

Biscotti

BonBon and I started our Christmas baking today. We made biscotti. We made Almond-Cherry, Triple Chocolate, Chocolate-Orange, Chocolate-Peanut Butter, Lemon-Poppy, Traditional Almond, White Chocolate-Macadamia, and Christmas Biscotti with cranberries and pistachios (All Red and Green!). We mixed up the doughs and will bake them off just before Christmas.

But Obviously we needed

to taste them so we baked

up some samples.

Best Corn Bread Recipe

Sadly, I have no photo of the lovely cornbread that BonBon and I made last night (because my camera turned up broke this week).
It was sweet, moist, and dense.
It did not disappoint by turning to crumble in my hand when slathered with soft butter as have so many other promising cornbread recipes.
We made one mini loaf for each of us.
I ate mine entirely by myself since Stanley declined to participate. Most at supper but the rest for breakfast.


BonBon's Sweet Cornbread

1 stick butter
1 C. buttermilk (or milk soured with 1 tsp. vinegar)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 eggs, beaten
2/3 C. sugar
1 C. cornmeal
1 C. flour
1/2 tsp. salt

Melt butter.
Combine buttermilk and baking soda.
Stir together butter, milk, eggs, and sugar.
Add cornmeal, flour, and salt.
Mix well.
Pour into greased 8x8 square pan (or preheated cast iron skillet).
Bake @ 375 30-40 minutes.

An Unintentional Collection

Peanut butter is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest foodstuffs known to mankind. Without peanut butter, I’m not sure I would have survived high school. Although our cafeteria was not the worst, it got pretty awful after eating there exclusively for three or four weeks, so the diet was supplemented with a myriad of healthy and unhealthy foods. Plenty of kids ate ramen and Mountain Dew or Vault every day. One girl seemed to survive almost exclusively on avocado and tea (she was a vegan in public boarding school, poor thing). For me, it was macaroni and cheese (usually eaten after 10 PM and split between a few roommates and friends) and large spoonfuls of store brand creamy peanut butter.

Since I left high school, I have stopped eating peanut butter by the spoonful, except in extreme situations. Usually that means late-night writing sessions when I need easy energy or quick breakfasts when I forgot to set my alarm clock. But I do eat a lot of peanut butter. I eat peanut butter with tea and crackers, on English muffins, with cold noodles, on ice cream, with celery, and, of course, in peanut butter cookies. This requires a pretty steady supply of peanut butter, particularly my favorite kind: Hannaford’s store-brand creamy. I know, it’s not glamorous, but it tastes just right.Unfortunately I now have a surplus of peanut butter. In and of itself, that is not a problem. The problem is that it is mostly peanut butter I don’t like.

Figure 1. From left to right: Hannaford’s Creamy, Hannaford’s Crunchy, Peanut Butter & Co. Mighty Maple (“blended with yummy maple syrup”), Nature’s Place (Hannaford’s) All Natural Creamy, Organic Sunbutter, Teddie Old Fashioned All Natural Smooth, and Teddie All Natural Chunky with Flaxseed.

Only two of these belong to me: the Hannaford’s Creamy and the Sunbutter (which is, I feel, a healthy alternative that does not force me to compromise my peanut butter standards). I live in what you might call a two peanut butter household. My boyfriend was raised (brainwashed, I assume) to prefer the natural, sticks-in-your-mouth kind of peanut butter whose flavor I find pretty underwhelming. Ideally, this conflict is solved by simply stocking two kinds of peanut butter and in itself does not explain my current situation. Easiest to explain is the crunchy peanut butter, which belongs to a friend’s dog that I used to look after. The three natural peanut butters (for the record, we just finished a fourth jar of Teddie’s Creamy) are the result of my boyfriend’s work as an archaeologist, which leads him to spend 4-10 days at a time living out of hotel rooms. He hates bringing food into the field, so he usually comes home with a few bagels, a few bottles of beer, and a half-empty jar of peanut butter. Thus, three (four, until today) jars of natural peanut butter.
So, I need to use up some peanut butter.

My first project in this endeavor is the classic: peanut butter cookies. My family has long held that we make the best peanut butter cookies. Every peanut butter cookie I have had at a pot luck, Christmas party, or wedding not made by a member of my family inevitably disappoints. They are pale, weak imitations of the real thing...

Figure 2. Peanut butter cookies and milk.

Ingredients
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter, softened1 cup peanut butter (I used ½ Hannaford’s Creamy and ½ Nature’s Place Creamy)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 ¼ cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Figure 3. My lovely assistant demonstrates the appropriate fork pressing technique for ideal peanut butter cookies.

Procedure
-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
-Mix flour, baking soda, and salt in a small-medium bowl
-In a large bowl, cream together butter, brown and white sugar. Add peanut butter and beat well. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.
-Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until completely combined.
-Roll tablespoons of dough into balls and set on an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten each ball with a lightly floured fork.
-Bake for 7-10 minutes, until desired coloration and crunchiness are achieved (there is some debate as to the appropriate levels of each of these, but I stand firmly in the browned-and-crunchy camp. The sugars have a chance to get a tad caramelized and the texture is just right for dipping in milk while maintaining structural integrity)

The Chief

I recently moved to Portland, Maine, America's Foodiest Small Town. So I have been taking advantage of testing out that title and sampling as much delicious food as possible, especially for lunch on my daily walks with my 1 and 1/2 year old son.

Although I have tasted fancier and definitely more expensive sandwiches, my obsession since my first week here with one particular sandwich has not waned. In fact its recent absence from the menu has unfortunately not brought out the best in me.

The sandwich is called The Chief. It is one of the rotating specials at the West End Deli. Although the ingredients are simple, when combined they create the perfect sandwich experience.

Ingredients: roast beef, sliced cheddar cheese, cold grilled onions and carrots, spinach, and a basil aioli on a baguette.

Perfection.

As a full-time mom in a one income household, my lunch budget is not extravagant. The Chief is an $8.00 sandwich which I can never seem to split between two days, although it is definitely large enough. So its rotating schedule of showing up on the lean-to specials board about once a week worked for my appetite and my budget.

Of course it also created some problems too. How could I tell what day The Chief would show up that week? I started rerouting my daily walks to always pass the lean-to specials board. On rainy days I would call the deli and nonchalantly ask to hear about their special. (I didn't specifically ask about The Chief because I did not want them to start recognizing me as The Crazy The Chief Lady).

This system was working well for me until a few weeks ago monday-friday passed by without The Chief making an appearance on the lean-to. I thought nothing of it. Maybe I had accidentally forgotten to check one day and missed it. But another week passed and still no The Chief. Week after week the lean-to mocked me with specials like The Explosion and The Patsy Cline. But never The Chief.

Finally last Thursday after an unsuccessful peek at the lean-to I was pushed over the edge and I became The Crazy The Chief Lady. Baby strapped to my back and a determined/crazed look in my eye, I accosted a West End Deli employee who was outside taking his break. "Where is The Chief?" I asked. "My heart is breaking for The Chief. I love it, I miss it!" I exclaimed. I think I caught him off guard, and he definitely thought I was nuts. But he promised it would be on the next weeks specials menu.

So dutifully Monday morning I began my trek with a stop in The West End Deli. The lean-to wasn't out yet so I had to go in the store. The clerk I had confronted saw me from across the store and immediately hollered "We'll have it on Wednesday" I smiled and bought a drink so I could pretend that I wasn't just in there to stalk The Chief.

Today is Wednesday. I turned the corner and... the Patsy Cline.