Grind - Bake - Enjoy!

David has long baked bread using a "peasant" method of baking in a dutch oven. He has always wondered what would change if he milled his own grain.

Hence, the new grain mill (Country Living Grain Mill) from Lehman's Hardware. He was given fresh grains at the holidays (interesting gifts come in 40 pound bags). Today, was the first test - seems to work fine. Now it is part of a Peasant's Hearty Rye - can't wait to try it out.

Elderberry weekend

This weekend we spent working on the wild elderberries on the lot.  Its been two years since we last preserved these tasty fruits. It has been a great year for all sorts of berries and the tiny elders are no exception.  Saturday, David trekked to the bush - and brought home lots of snipped clusters. 

We spent all afternoon removing the tiny berries from the tender vines and sorting them into 2 pound bags.  In the end, there were 17 pounds of fruit.  I stored 4 pounds in the fridge for Sunday and put the other 13 into the freezer for this winter.

After breakfast on Sunday, I transferred the fruit into elderberry syrup (recipe on my RecipeBoxMemory Blog).

This was our first attempt at using the press - and it extracted every last bit of liquid from the softened berries.

Technorati Tags: elderberries

Mixing Pretzels

Dave got a new KitchenAid Professional 600™ Series | Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer | Flour Power™ Rating - 14 Cup stand mixer for Christmas and today it was babtized. 

A couple of weeks ago, Robyn posted a recipe for Homemade Soft Pretzels on DogNamedBanjo that really sounded good.  So, we downloaded the recipe and today Dave took the plunge.


The mixer worked like a dream (sorry for the last few seconds):


and the pretzels are delicious.

So, today we made a new RecipeBoxMemory for ourselves.

softpretzels
dognamedbanjo
sharonbetts
recipeboxmemories

Recipe Box Memories

I decided to start another blog for my 2010 challenge.  Visit Recipe Box Memories and add your thoughts and reflections prompted by "food from your past".