Darienne

I make meatballs from a Mexican recipe, half beef, half pork. Cook them in the oven. (Am very fidgety if I have to stand around and fry little things and turn them too.) Then they go into anything or over anything. A really good dish is the African stew Mafe which I make a lot and freeze. Chicken, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts. Not too exotic, but easy to make. http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/african_chicken_peanut_stew/ This is a good thread. I have a couple of friends who visit the farm a few times a year and they have troubles getting home from work and not knowing what to do for supper. It occurred to me that we could cook stuff while they are here and then they could take it home, freeze it, and have ready made suppers. We were discussing this idea just the other day. Oh, packets of shredded beef, pork, chicken, with or without extra saucy stuff...whatever he will eat.

I also use waxed paper to separate rows of cookies and bars, particularly breakfast bars. Use it to line small paper boxes in which I pack toffee and other things for giveaways.

I'm here...part of the usual bunch which follows your adventures up there. We've got to get up to Manitoulin one of these days.

I'm not a great cookie maker because I either undercook them or burn them it seems. My oven is not reliable either. Which makes two of us. Christmas cookies however always include Shortbreads handed down from a friend's Mother. Best Shortbreads I ever tasted. My friend used to make them every year after her Mother stopped making them, but now she won't do them and so the baking has passed on to me. `She swears by making the entire process by hand...I don't think so, but don't tell her.

To make a small cream cheese or mousse type pie absolutely fabulous for special occasions, I tend to cover it with a dark chocolate ganache topping. If you can cover it with chocolate...I do. That's only one, but it's one I live by.

We are popcorn lovers although in our neck of the woods, we can't buy much of any speciality (which has its positive side). Wednesday supper is popcorn and my Orange Julep recipe. DH eats his in the traditional fashion with salt and butter, but mine has olive oil, pepper and ground chipotle and a touch of sugar. The dogs like Ed's better than mine.

I'm no expert at all...but could it be Chinese Sesame Oil? It tastes like nothing else I can think of.

We have neither store in Peterborough.

From Anna N: Extra? Extra? What is this extra? One went to my daughter's family and one is in my freezer being safeguarded for my bachelor son who has dinner with me each Thursday. His is missing the slice I had to try. Thank heaven for family to take my baking else I would weigh even more than I do now! It is delicious. (My computer is refusing to work properly this morning.) We, alas, have no family within giving goodies to. But we do have neighbors who will love us and in town businesses which will appreciate the fairly regular donation of confections and other sweet goodies.

As for the butter in CatPoet's recipe being listed by weight: I measure most all ingredients still by volume, but have measured butter by weight for years now. I made up a little cheat sheet so that I have all volumes translated into weights. I always hated the mess I made when measuring butter by volume...first getting it into a cup and them making sure I got it all out of the cup. It just made much more sense to use a weight, especially with Canadian butter which is packaged in one HUGE brick (as compared to US butter which is in 4 sticks and is more easily managed. Why this difference? Well, I don't know, eh?) So that might explain the use of two sets of measuring techniques... Works for me.

Puffballs sprouting all over the farm. What a year for mushrooms. DH managed to cut down a number of them unfortunately while mowing the 'promenade' on the farm perimeter. Today a mature puffball went to the neighbors across the road and tomorrow a second mature one goes to a dog friend. I wonder how many more will be harvested this year.

My first Trudeau silicone spatula was a gift from my confectionery partner, Barbara. I love it. And I love all the extra ones just like it that I have purchased. A woman cannot have too many excellent spatulas.

Hello Ted from outside Peterborough, ON and welcome. You'll find quite a number of Ontarians and Canadians on this list...always looking to find those elusive items which you can't yet buy in Canada.

Oh, recipe, please! It looks scrumptious!

Rotuts: Where exactly do you spray the 'light oil'? David Ross: We don't use anything on our trees, not fertilizer nor pesticides. Not a big problem. If there's a worm, we do as the 'old-timers' did: cut the worm out with a paring knife. As DH was telling our B-i-L yesterday...one use to eat and apple with a paring knife in hand to cut out the bad parts and the fauna.

Not yet apple season here in East Central Ontario. We have at last count 20 apple trees on our 100-acre hemp farm although many are hardly edible now. Some are heritage apples no doubt, going back over 100 years. We don't know...no one has documented any of this. Some taste OK. Some are well...we don't want to eat them. All are growing wild. In our back yard we have two nicely-producing trees - a Macintosh and a Northern Spy. And you can't beat a Northern Spy for pies. (Which Canadians eat traditionally with sharp cheddar...not whipped cream, not ice cream.) Two years ago we had WONDERFUL apples up the wazoo. We juiced as many as we could stand to juice and froze the results. And apple-sauced the rest. Some were pies. Nothing noteworthy except for the incredible abundance of the apples. Next year we had lots of apples...but small and not really that good. Didn't really do anything with them. This year the Northern Spy has NO apples on it. And the Mac has a very few, up high in the branches and we haven't tried one yet. The pattern above is not new over the last 19 years. I have no idea why. It's time to call in a professional apple grower I think. Any advice is gratefully received. I realize that this post entails more than the cooking of apples. Sorry.

Update on foraging on the farm. The tree has been identified as a choke cherry by an expert and already much of the berry production is gone, eaten by local birds. I don't think I'm going to make anything with it. The berries are still red and I'll watch this year and see if they turn darker as time passes. Ed's puffball up at the Drive Shed was allowed to grow too big and the innards were beyond eating. Ugghh. However, this must be the year of the puffball because yesterday on our perimeter walk with the dogs we counted at least 10 puffballs growing. They're little now, but they can expand so quickly you can hardly believe it. I'll report back if we eat any more of them. Smilax or the Carrion Flower. We have two of these on the farm, with one being gorgeous to watch. The green berries turn navy blue as time passes. It's called the Carrion Flower because the flowers smell like carrion. Simple. The references state that it is edible however...I just don't feel comfortable with the idea. Maybe I'll try... Last year was the first time I had ever seen it in my life and the local go-to naturalist had never heard of it. The spheres of berries are quite unusual. This photo was taken last week and already the navy blue coloring has spread a lot. My camera just officially died a couple of days ago, so that's it for photos for now.

I know that you mentioned salads...but for me Tabbouleh is ALL about mint...tons of mint.

I am going to check it all out again tomorrow morning. I've Googled pin vs choke cherry and have some good points to note. I'm pretty sure these are choke cherries. Pin cherries form in umbels for one thing while choke cherries are in racemes. And they are attached slighted differently. And pin cherry leaves are more scalloped while choke are serrated. All in a day's work.

Kerry as usual is correct...but then DH likes to wait until they are ginormous. The one up by the Drive Shed is huge. (My camera refused to work this afternoon. It's a dreadful camera.) I'll try to get a photo again tomorrow and see if I can convince Ed to pick it and then cut a slice off it for a photo. I should admit that I have long ceased to be much of a mushroom lover.

And there's a second one growing up at the Drive Shed as we speak. If you asked my DH what they taste like, he might go on at some length about how delicious they are. I think they taste like nothing much and if you fry them in butter, they taste like buttery nothing. But that's just my opinion.

Thanks Kerry. Just read a post from FB, from my B-i-L, who speaks also of the large seed. I'll test for the seed tomorrow. And then I'll watch for deepening of the colour. Google images do show both the bright red and the later darker colour. It's not the end of the summer yet...although it sure feels like it with this weather lately. The photo does not show the trees very clearly...they are not small. But this is the very first year that any berries have been on them, so they are teenage trees I guess. Choke cherry juice? I'll google it and see how much sweetener it needs.

And now for the Choke Cherries? Are they Choke Cherries? They look like the item described online and in our Peterson book. What on earth can one do with them besides jam or jelly...which we don't eat more than 4X a year? If that. Is there anyone nearby who can identify these trees for sure? Or who wants the berries? (Don't suggest local folks coming to the farm and picking them please. I'd love to allow that, but our insurance would not cover any ensuing law suits. And we don't have pathways for us to give them to anyone that I know of. At this point. I'll investigate.) It's a shame if they go to waste. The trees are so heavily laden...if they are choke cherries...which I don't know for certain. I'll pick a puff ball any day...but choke cherries I've never seen before.

In our house, it's just plain apple and sugar and I am more than welcome to add cinnamon to my own pieces as cut if desired. Mostly I don't bother and we eat apple pie with 5-year old cheddar. The cheddar provides all the 'spice' needed. But then we are Canadians.... I would tend to try cardamom.

They're back.... Puffballs which grow in random places on the farm. This one we have been watching for a week now and finally DH picked it today. Heaven only knows how big it would actually grow. It's not the biggest we have ever picked, but close. It will be sliced, fried in butter, some eaten and the rest frozen for later use. Forgot: 11 " (28cm) high with a circumference of 38" (96.5 cm)