144. Squashed, but not defeated

September 1, 2015September 1, 2015 / Apple Hill Cottage / 8 Comments

Is there any squash with better flavor than butternut?

It’s the only winter squash I’ve ever grown, because, really, why grow anything else?

The groundhogs like it too.

This summer, from four hills of squash, we grew 24 lovely butternuts. And seemingly overnight the groundhog took one or two bites out of half of them. When I discovered the treachery, I covered the garden plot with fencing, just casually thrown over the plants. It seemed to work, and the twelve unblemished squash remained perfect. They are currently curing in the side yard with some early onions.

But that left twelve of these beauties that couldn’t just be stored for fall.

I’ve been trying to can rather than freeze, because our freezer is full, and there’s not much room for anything extra. So I found this website from the University of Minnesota that recommends canning cubes of squash or pumpkin for 90 minutes (quarts) in a pressure canner.

Yes, I had just purchased a lovely made in USA granite-ware pressure canner; and I had two loads of green beans under my belt. I was ready for the 90-minute ordeal…

I peeled and chopped and steamed twelve butternut squash, just cutting out the groundhog bites — they were only skin deep, mostly — although there was one that he had obviously had for salad, dinner, and dessert. I only got half of that one…

I wish I had taken a picture of those lovely five quarts of squash for you.

But sixty minutes into the process, I could smell burnt squash. Not good.

I turned off the heat, waited until the pressure dropped, and opened the lid. The water in the canner was gone; it had boiled or steamed or vaporized away…

So now I had five beautiful quarts of squash, just waiting to be botulized.

I let them cool, and the next morning drained all the cubes of semi-canned squash into my big colander, smashed and squashed the squash into puree and put it into bags for the over-crowded freezer.

The El Cheapo Method for vacuum packing: Zip the bags most of the way closed, insert a straw just a little way inside and suck the air out of the bag. Zip it shut quickly while pulling out the straw.

Yes, I only got three bags, because I MADE A PIE with the other two cups. We ate it so fast I didn’t get a picture of the pie either. But here you can see the gorgeous orange of fresh squash. We had some for dinner that night as well. It was the most delicious squash we’d ever eaten — picked that day.

My pie recipe was just a regular pumpkin pie recipe using the squash instead — though I do highly recommend the addition of cardamom with the spices. Instead I give you three! yes, three! simple recipes for that delicious butternut squash you are going to buy at your local farmer’s market soon.

Recipes for butternut squash:

Roasted Butternut Bites

Peel squash and cut into cubes. Discard seeds. Toss with olive oil, sea salt, pepper, and balsamic vinegar, and roast in the oven at 425 for 30 minutes, turning the cubes with a spatula every ten minutes. Squash candy…

Fall Butternut Casserole

1 large butternut squash
2 medium onions
2 eggs
Fresh nutmeg and thyme to taste
1 c. grated sharp cheese
panko or roughly chopped pumpkin seeds for topping, optional

Halve a large butternut squash, and scoop out the seeds. Brush with olive oil and place face down on a cookie sheet and pierce skin with a fork several times. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or so, until squash is tender. Let it cool.

While the squash is cooling, chop two onions and sauté them in a skillet with olive oil or butter. Add some herbs — thyme is good, and freshly grated nutmeg. Beat two eggs in a bowl, add the onions and herbs and a cup of grated sharp cheese. Salt and pepper to taste, and pour into a greased casserole dish. If you like, you can cover the casserole with panko crumbs. (Another optional topping is roughly chopped pumpkin seeds.) Bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

Squashed Date treats

I have to say I’ve been meaning to make these for months, and I’ve just put it off, so I made a batch finally — especially for this post (and Mr. H.C. needed a treat for his lunch tomorrow) And yes, I’m sorry I put these little treats off for so long. Yummy and healthy, and a quick little snack — with NO ADDED SUGAR! All told, it took about 20 minutes. I found this recipe on Paleo Grubs, but I changed it up a bit.)

Toast 1/2 c. nuts — pecans, walnuts, cashews, or pumpkin seeds and grind them small. I left mine a little chunky because that’s the way I like them.

Soak 1 c. pitted dates in just a little hot water for 10 minutes, so they get soft, and then drain them.

Puree or mash 1/3 c. squash (I had canned pumpkin in my cupboard expressly for this recipe, but why open a can when you’ve got fresh squash?)

Put these three ingredients in your blender or food processor. Add 2 t. vanilla, 1 t. cinnamon, 1/2 t. freshly grated nutmeg and 1/4 t. ground cardamom and a pinch of sea salt. Pulse until the dates are chopped up to your liking. I added a little bit of the sweet date water to help; if you have a food processor, you might not have to do that.

Scrape your blended mass into a bowl; add 1/4 c. unsweetened coconut flakes, and stir. Roll into one inch diameter balls. Refrigerate for 30 minutes if your dough is too soft to roll. Mine wasn’t. Now you could roll the balls in the coconut if you wanted. It might make them less sticky to eat. I would have gotten 12 balls if I hadn’t been so eagerly testing them to make sure the spices were correct. :-) Store them in your fridge, if you have them that long…

Mr. H.C. gave them a thumbs-up.

138. the missing bees

June 28, 2015June 28, 2015 / Apple Hill Cottage / 10 Comments

I lied.

In a post a few weeks ago, I waxed poetic about the blooming catalpa tree in the side yard. And I said, “Birds and bees love her”.

This year there were no bees buzzing around the catalpa blossoms.

I know because the hammock is hung on the lowest branch of the giant catalpa tree, and this year, the only hammock hazard was from falling catalpa blossoms. There was no potential problem of a bee sting, because there were no bees.

In a beginning backyard fruit tree orchard, this is not good.

In an effort to see if the bees have really disappeared, we stopped mowing the back yard and let the clover bloom. There actually seems to be more clover in the back yard than grass — perhaps a leftover from when clover was routinely sown between the older apple trees.

And we watched.

Over a period of a week, we saw about ten honey bees in the clover (and five rabbits, ten deer, and a groundhog).

This has become such a worry that Mr. H.C. has actually suggested we buy a hive of bees for next spring.

We’re thinking of buying the hive, the bees, and some supplies, and asking a friend to take care of it the first year, while he is mentoring us. This is quite a step for Mr. H.C. — he actively dislikes bees — though neither of us is allergic to their stings.

It has become a national anxiety about bees. You can read about the issue here and here and here. No one will say exactly what the problem is, but to me, a non-scientific, tree-hugging, crunchy, suspicious-of-all-big-corporations type of person, it is obvious. Pesticides.

Duh. If we spray to get rid of insects, we’re going to get rid of insects, yes?

It’s called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD for short) and since 2004-2005 beekeepers have reported a loss of bees in their hives from 35 to 90%. What is most mysterious is that rather than finding dead bees around the hive, the bees just disappear. And once I started reading about it, there are several dozen reasons/theories/government plots for the disappearance of the bees. (To be fair, there is a wide range of opinion –some people doubt if the bees are really disappearing and some people think the bees are being abducted by aliens….)

But if you want to be concerned about this issue, consider these points (that are all taken from the above articles.)

A full third of the American diet is dependent on pollination, and wild and domestic honeybees are responsible for 80 percent of pollination.
About 200,000 species of plants rely on insects and a majority of those rely on bees.
Commercial beekeepers are often feeding their bees on high fructose corn syrup, a questionable man-made sugar substance at best; a cancer-and-diabetes-and-obesity causing substance at worst.
Not surprisingly perhaps, organic beekeepers have not experienced CCD, leading to speculation that overall greener management practices could be the answer even if direct causes are not determined.
If honey bees disappeared, the following crops would be affected: tree fruits — think apples, oranges, pears, lemons; tree nuts — think walnuts, hazelnuts, cashews, almonds; garden vegetables — tomatoes, beans, squash, cucumbers, onions, pumpkins; alfalfa and clover — think hay for animal feed; berries of all sorts — straw, blue, cran, black and razz; coffee; cocoa; cotton; flax; and you can read a much longer list here. (And also to be fair, I must note that we have a bumper crop of raspberries this summer, so something is pollinating the berries.)

So come next spring, we may look like aliens ourselves. But we won’t be abducting bees; we’ll be helping to pollinate catalpa trees.

And apples and peaches,

and cherries and beans,

and pumpkins and peas…

137. Critter Wars: they shoot groundhogs, don’t they?

June 21, 2015June 21, 2015 / Apple Hill Cottage / 11 Comments

The long, gentle summer evenings of my childhood were sometimes pierced by the crack and zinging whine of a twenty-two rifle.

It was my grandfather, defending his country sweet corn patch from the groundhogs.

His main garden was in town behind his house, where he planted and tended and grew enough vegetables to feed us and his entire neighborhood.

But oh how he loved his sweet corn. And in the country below our house, there was plenty of room for as much sweet corn as he could plant. It seems we had corn on the cob every night for dinner in July and August.

Pa wasn’t a cussing man — he was a school teacher — except when it came to the groundhogs who ate his corn. For awhile when I was a kid I thought damgroundhog was one word.

I feel his pain.

He would sit in a yellow lawn chair in the back yard above his garden with a glass of sweet tea and his twenty-two across the aluminum arms of his chair. Waiting.

I’ve been suggesting to Mr. H. C. that he do the same with the deer. Of course, we aren’t allowed to actually shoot them, but he could aim above their heads… (Or he says shooting in front of them on the ground is the safer way). Perhaps they would think it was hunting season and disappear into the deep woods.

He didn’t seem to be interested, so I got out the yellow lawn chair and the twenty-two rifle for him yesterday. This evening, I saw him cleaning it, and there is now a clip sitting near the back door. I suppose I could try it, but I think I am such a bad shot, I could accidentally hit one when I’m aiming over their heads.

Can you be arrested for poaching the King’s deer on your own land?

Yes, you can.

waiting for a groundhog