"Recipes are Common Property"

The kind lady who owns the Bobcat Bite in Santa Fe once said that to me when I asked for one of her signature recipes... "The World's Best Cole Slaw." You can have it too if you buy the book Hamburger America. (FYI Order the pork chops or the chilli if you want to look like a local.)

Now what was I saying??? Oh yes, recipes and cooking... my current occupation and lifelong obsession.

Laussanne, I bought the only dehydrator available in Floyd. It's a Back to Basics brand one and it does a pretty good job. It drys at 120 degrees F. more or less. Apples take about 12 hours with the humidity we've been having. Maybe next year I'll get a big fancy machine after I make Mr. Fuzzy do too much research on the things. They're bloody expensive!

Language Wench, you know I'd never deny you a good thing, so here's the recipe for Grammie Starbird's Vegetable Relish.

Ingredients
3 1/2 med-lg onions
1 small cabbage
5 large green tomatoes
6 green peppers
3 sweet red peppers
1/4 C pickling salt
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3 C sugar
1 Tbsp mustard seed
1/2 T celery seed
7/8 tsp turmeric
2 C cider vinegar
1C water

Chop up the first set of ingredients, sprinkle with the salt, and let stand overnight. Rinse and drain. If you have a meat grinder, grind everything through the coarse plate. Add the 2nd set of ingredients. Boil 5 minutes. Fill hot, sterilized, jars to within 1/4 inch of the rim and process in boiling water 10 minutes + your altitude adjustment. Makes about half a gallon.

Don't do what I just did... forgot the water and vinegar. Now I'll have to try decanting the stuff, cooking it with the vinegar & water, and re-process. oh well. Should have quit the late night processing with the 13 pints of chutney.

I totally get it now when mothers of young children say they work all day and get nothing done.

I'm taking a much needed break from the kitchen to say "hello, I ain't dead!" So, um, Hello. I'm really very much alive and Mr. Fuzzy doesn't keep me shackled to the canner ALL day. (Just kidding honey.)

Having Young Master Rufus in the kitchen most of the day with me has really created a rhythm to getting things done. In the morning we play games like "down-stay-get treat" and "let's get all worked up and then calm down now." Then Mr. Fuzzy takes the wee lad up to the mailbox to get the mail and we play another round of "sit up vs down" before Rufus curls up in his kennel for a nap.

That's when I cut up vegetables and get the dehydrator humming. With all the moisture in the air these days it only gets a new batch once a day. (We've had several weeks where the low humidity was above 60% and one week where it never dropped below 75% water. Yuck!) When I'm done it's time for lunch which always wakes the dog up.

After lunch and a wee stand on the porch to confirm that the rest of the universe exists I take advantage of afternoon nap time. All eleven animals siesta at the same time so it's quite calm until three or four o'clock. This is when the canner and stove top gets going or I make up things for the freezer.

This year the canner is mostly dealing with fruit while the veggies are being dried. Next year I hope to have things in a more sane order which will allow me to branch out into pressure canning some vegetables. For now, the goal is to just get the food saved in whichever manner is most efficient and tasty. I will be attempting to can some tasty soups, baked beans, cakes, quick bread, and steamed breads once cold weather sets in and I can have the oven on all day.

Yes, you read that right. Canned cake and bread. Look here for the method.

So, back to my day these days. About 4 o'clock the first kitten awakes, comes crying for a cuddle, wakes the dog, and enjoys a game of "sit on the chair and whack the dog" before changing over to a game I call "race for the furthest exit and lie just beyond Rufus' nose." This is repeated five or six times over the next hour depending on the feline boredom level. If I'm smart, all the food is off the table and I'm doing dishes. Rufus is strangely calm if I'm washing up. Otherwise it's a game of tug or taking him down to the garden for an hour or two.

Then it's up again to make dinner followed by more of our morning amusements when Mr. Fuzzy and Rufus have returned from their romp. About 9 o'clock I declare a collapse and go read my herb books. Mr. Fuzzy recently gifted me American Household Botany: A History of Useful Plants, 1620-1900 by Judith Sumner and it's a great read.

That's what I've been up to of recent. Except last week where I got to meet my new (excellent) dentist, get yet another root canal, and discover that I'm exceptionally sensitive to nitrous oxide. I can wholeheartedly recommend the Doctors Huff DDS in Christiansburg, should you be in need of a dentist.