Maple Sugaring & A Chicken Dinner

Rick started our small suburban homestead maple sugaring project last week, hoping to ultimately produce about two gallons of our own homemade maple syrup. Last Thursday morning he tapped six of our maple trees (five sugar maples and one red maple). Three of the sugar maples are fairly big and yielded a good amount of sap each. The smaller maples, not so much. But we were getting so much sap altogether that we were quickly running out of storage space. It was perfect weather for the sap to run -- freezing nights and warmer days. We hurriedly researched food safe plastic garbage cans and Rick ran out to our local hardware store to pick one up -- a handy 32 gallon commercial garbage pail, which he rinsed out and had ready just as we started overflowing our other containers.

A little music, coffee, & sap boiling down.

Rick and I had planned our firepit in the fall and had built a pretty simple one from some cinderblocks that had lined the front part of a garden. The first day of boiling down the sap, we both went outside. It was a fairly warm, bright, sunny day. After getting the fire going and everything else in place, we sat outside and played a bit of music. Sitting in the sun, with a roaring fire close by, snow on the ground, and playing music was relaxing but almost anticlimatic. The sap boils down so slowly, time passed by even slower. After about two hours, Rick told me to go do something else that needed doing. Poor Rick stayed outside well into the dark, though, feeding the fire and adding sap to the pan. As the sap got very very close to syrup, he brought it inside to finish up on the stove where I helped him judge the right consistency, filter, and can it. That first day we ended up with only 2 1/2 cups of syrup, but the taste of that syrup was to die for. We were so excited that I woke up early the next day and made pancakes just so we could drizzle some homemade syrup on them. And because it had taken so long to get that precious small bit, Rick watched us like a hawk, admonishing us to use a scant teaspoon per pancake.

Rick was up and outside by 6:45 a.m. to get a fire going and boil down the rest of the sap already collected. (He ran inside to eat the pancakes.) Since then, he's gone outside two more days to boil down the sap collected. We now have almost that hoped for two gallons of syrup. Rick is hoping to get outside at least one more time, maybe more depending on if the weather cooperates and the sap continues to run. Our set up is small and we only have a few trees, but we now have more syrup than we usually use in a year (normal consumption ranges from a half gallon to three-quarters of a gallon total per year).

Rick wrote all about his adventures in maple sugaring on his blog. Please visit it for more details and some great photos. I have thanked him profusely every day for deciding to try his hand at this. The taste of your own pure maple syrup is indescribable.

I made pancakes twice this week, drizzled maple syrup on my homemade yogurt, and finally decided to try it in dinner tonight. I defrosted some chicken thighs and drumsticks, and flipped through a cookbook I had gotten Rick for Christmas, Maple Syrup Cookbook by Ken Haedrich. Since I planned on making this in my Pomaireware clay pot and letting it cook for hours on low in the oven, rather than grill it, I made a few adjustments.

My take on Ken's Maple-Mustard Glazed Chicken:

Maple-mustard glaze:

1/4 cup maple syrup

3 tablespoons dijon mustard (I used spicy brown since it was all I had)

3 teaspoons tamari sauce

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Other ingredients needed:
1 1/2 to 2 pounds cut up chicken pieces (I used a mix of thighs and drumsticks)

1/4 cup red wine

Directions:

1. Brown chicken pieces in a frying pan.

2. Place browned chicken in clay pot (or black pot if putting outside in the solar oven, or even a crockpot).

3. Deglaze the frying pan with 1/4 cup red wine, scraping up any bits off the bottom.

4. Add the maple-mustard mixture to the frying pan, mix, and then pour on top of the chicken in your clay pot/crockpot/solar oven pot.

5. Cook the chicken on low for 4 - 5 hours. (I cooked the chicken in my clay pot for 4 hours in a 210º oven, then upped it to 350º for about 15 more minutes to get it nice and hot.)

The chicken was absolutely delicious! Since it's a dark, snowy, cold winter night I didn't even think to photograph this until I was reheating it for Annalee when she got home from work. Here's a hurried shot of the bottom of the pot as it made its way to the table. And I'm sure it's just as good grilled.

Slow Cooking cookbook review

I have just discovered my new favorite cookbook!! Well, until I discover another since cookbooks are a bit of an addiction.

One of the first things Erica bought when she was getting ready to move into her own place was a crockpot. At the Christmas potluck at our (Quaker) meetinghouse someone looked at her Pumpkin Soup contribution and exclaimed "that is one serious crockpot." Her soup was the big hit of the get-together, but apparently the crockpot itself was a close second. Now, I never cooked in a crockpot so Erica didn't grow up with the tradition of eating meals made in one. Neither did Chris, as far as I know, but he had it in his head that having a crockpot slowly cooking food in the kitchen was homey and, if nothing else, he was super excited about creating a home with Erica. So she bought one. I had done a lot of reading and research on cooking in the solar oven when we bought one, interlibrary loaning cookbooks on the subject. After Rick bought me a Pomaireware clay pot for my birthday I added clay pot cooking to my list of essential reading. At both times, I also loaned out crockpot cooking cookbooks. After all, it's the same idea: Cooking one pot meals for a longer time at a lower temperature.

With Christmas coming my cookbook reading collided with my Christmas present buying. I was "wandering" around Amazon looking for ideas when I hit on Art of the Slow Cooker by Andrew Schloss. The front cover looked soooo inviting. I was about to switch over to the library Web site and put it on hold when, instead, I placed it in my shopping cart. I'll buy it for Erica, I thought. About a week later I subjected Rick to a look-see at all the presents in my cart before I placed the order. He okayed everything except the cookbook, not being as excited about the enticing front cover photo nor the description as I was. Sheesh, how could you not get excited!? But I ignored him and ordered it anyway. 

The night the order arrived I took the cookbook up to bed so I could gaze longingly at all the delicious recipes and drool over the photos before I fell asleep. Rick was probably reading something heavy, like he always does at night (although right now he's reading Chasing Chiles: Hot Spots Along the Pepper Trail, which looks really interesting and which I'll probably read next). I kept oohing and aahing over everything, probably interrupting his thoughts. Finally, he asked why don't I just keep the darn thing. But it was to be a present, so I sighed and put it away. I tested the chicken cacciatore recipe the next day, substituting my clay pot for the crockpot, and it was delicious. I then wrapped the book before I was tempted to try another recipe and get it dirty before I gave it to Erica. Another sigh.

Erica has tried quite a few of the recipes since Christmas and liked them all. She kept e-mailing me with updates. I tried this, I tried that. It was yummy. It was to-die-for. I had to get myself a copy of the book! Rick didn't understand my obsession. It's only a cookbook, he said. Come on, look at my shelves! I have as many cookbooks as he has music books. I have now made two more recipes: Jerk Pork with Yams, which was out of this world yummy; and last night I tried Chocolate Chicken Chili Soup, inspired by Rick's reading about chili peppers and the fact—most importantly—I happened to have all the ingredients on hand.

The whole idea of adding chocolate to the dish didn't excite me, though. I'm not a huge fan of cooking with chocolate. But the recipe promised that the amount of chocolate was subtle. And it was. Even Annalee, Miss Picky, enjoyed it. Rick says he'd like a bit more chocolate next time, though.

Next time. Hmmm, this is a three for three win on the recipes in this book so far. If Rick was doubtful before, he's not now. In fact, he might even buy me the cookbook so I can return this copy to the library. How about for Valentines Day some nice dark cooking chocolate and the Art of the Slow Cooker (hint hint). He might go for it because he opened the fridge earlier and searched desperately for leftovers to have for lunch. When I informed him there weren't any he physically deflated.

I won't ever buy a crockpot since it doesn't really fit into my non-electric (or minimal electric gadgets) stance, not to mention I have zero counter or cabinet storage space left, but the idea of slow cooking and the delicious from scratch recipes in this book are easily adapted to both clay pot cooking and solar cooking. Schloss says that the low setting on crockpots is about 200 and the high is 300, and clearly states how long to cook each recipe at either setting, making it easy to adapt the recipes for a conventional oven or the solar oven. I'm really looking forward to trying some of these outside when I can get a few decent hours of sunlight again.

As Schloss writes on the back cover: Good things come to those who wait. Amen. Now I just need to choose which recipe to try tonight!

Sunshine Daydream Chicken

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.  – Steve Martin 

I've been waiting for that bright sunshine to show up and shine in my back door someday. – Luther Allison 

You've got to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine. – Ken Kesey 

Our mostly shady yard

I haven't been able to cook in the solar oven in, like, forever. I did manage to make another coffeecake one day, but ended up bringing some chicken drumsticks inside to finish on another day's attempt. Our property is heavily treed and at this time of year the trees still have leaves and the sun is lower in the sky. Doesn't make for good solar cooking. Also, although we've had a few sunny days, some warm days, and even a hot day here and there, we've mostly had clouds and rain. And more rain. And even more rain. Including thunderstorms today.

We performed last weekend at the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival. We left on Friday around 1:30 pm for Saugerties, which is normally a 3 1/2 hour drive. As we neared the Throgs Neck Bridge we were listening to the traffic reports. The upper level of the George Washington Bridge was flooded, head for the lower level. But, oh no, there was an accident blocking two lanes so the Cross Bronx Expressway had heavy delays. It took us 45 minutes or so to get off at the Bronx River Parkway exit. I think that was about a mile. But, guess what!? That was backed up also and all traffic was being diverted. We went 5 miles in 3 hours. Apparently, all Hudson River crossings were flooded. And the rain kept coming down. We eventually made it to our hotel a little before 9 pm, exhausted, frustrated, and very hungry.

But the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival is the Woodstock of garlic festivals and we look forward all year to performing there. They have 5 stages of music and zillions of garlic growers, food vendors (including garlic ice cream), arts & craft booths, and fresh & prepared food vendors (like fresh peppers or prepared salsas). They can get crowds of 50,000 people if it's nice—and, thankfully, it was an absolutely gorgeous weekend after so much rain, although the grounds were pretty darn muddy. We played three one-hour sets each day with an hour break in between when we dashed around like chickens without heads to buy buy buy and eat eat eat. We ate garlic pizza, garlic chicken, garlic sausage, garlic pickles, pulled pork sandwiches with garlic, and Annalee even got a sticker for taking a garlic shot. We bought 4 lbs. of Turkish Red garlic and will use the biggest cloves for seed garlic. (Rick grew 80 bulbs of garlic in the garden also, so I think we're set there.) We bought 25 lbs. of onions, 30 lbs. of tomatoes, 5 pounds of hot peppers (jalapenos and Ghost peppers), and Annalee bought tubs of homemade pesto, aged balsamic vinegar, new pickles, and horseradish cheddar cheese. Besides garlic and hot peppers, Erica bought hot sauce appropriately named "Apocalyptic." She actually gave Rick money and asked him to pick something her boyfriend might like. I think the vendor was shocked when Rick licked the sample and said he loved it. He was waiting for Rick to break out in a sweat and faint or something. Which is about how Chris reacted when he took his first taste. I'm sure he'll get used to it, though.

So we've been cooking away here at home the past few days. I think Rick has outdone me. He's made jars of hot pepper relish, dried apples, dried mushrooms, and is busily dehydrating the tomatoes in our Excalibur food dehydrator. His dried tomatoes in olive oil are to die for. (Next year we'd like to try sun drying the tomatoes, but I think I'd rather build a simple solar dehydrator than use the sun oven, so I can keep that free for meals.) After all the drying he's planning on making hot pepper jelly.

While he's busy stocking up, instead of using my solar oven, I've been using my new Pomaireware ceramic bean pot, which was a present from Rick back in June. I had only used it twice before, but now I'm using it all the time and really liking it. The whole idea of making one pot (or close to it) meals was foreign to me, but I had to rethink my approach to what constituted a complete meal when I began solar cooking. Otherwise the whole idea of it was pointless. Why cook the chicken outside if I was going to cook 10 other things in 10 different pots inside. Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my drift. So, now I'm making meals inside in the clay pot with very similar results to solar cooking and trying to still keep it simple. I think I know what will be on my Christmas list (more clay pots!).

I made a yummy chicken dish tonight that I've renamed Sunshine Daydream Chicken since I've been humming the Grateful Dead lyrics all day. I didn't take any photos because it's so dark and dismal. Cut 1 1/2 pounds of boneless chicken thighs into huge pieces (I cut each thigh in thirds). Melt 2 tablespoons butter in the bottom of the clay pot (or the black enamel pot for the solar oven) and lightly brown the chicken. Add one large onion sliced really thin, several cloves of garlic chopped, a handful of parsley, salt, pepper, 1/4 cup tomato sauce, 1/3 cup good red wine vinegar, and 1/2 cup of chicken broth. Cover the clay pot and pop into the oven at 275º for 4 hours. Or cover the black pot and pop into the solar oven for a few hours. I admit I used another pot to make rice and poured the chicken over the rice to serve. On the side I made a cucumber salad, fresh homemade semolina bread, and some of the fresh pesto Annalee had bought at the festival.

Okay, tomorrow's forecast is for partly cloudy skies with a stray shower or thunderstorm possible, and rain highly probably on both Saturday and Sunday. But, but, but . . . as of now, incredibly, the forecast says sunny all next week. Cross your fingers 'cause it'll sure be good to see some sunny and dry weather!!!

Sunshine daydream, walkin' in the tall trees, going where the wind goes, blooming like a red rose... – Grateful Dead, Sugar Magnolia