Mumbletypeg's Open Salon Blog

Seventeen Pounds of Fruitcake - Part 2

Wed, 7 Dec 2011 08:12:58 -0500

In case you didn't believe me about the seventeen pounds - ecco!

Okay maybe not exactly seventeen pounds, because you have to subtract the weight of the aluminum canning pot, but close enough.

Here is the glorious batter. That pan is 12 inches in diameter and 7 inches high.

The next challenge was collecting enough pans, greasing them, and forcing in wax paper that really did not want to conform to the shape of the pans. I gave up on the ring mold (which now means the ring mold fruitcake doesn't want to come out of the pan, damn it). Then I spooned out seventeen pounds of fruitcake batter among the badly papered pans, and spent the next two hours babysitting the cakes as they baked, because each one had a different baking time, due to size. At least I wasn't doing it in Dogpatch's ancient brick baking oven.

I'm also grateful I didn't have to seed my raisins and chop everything by hand. (I did, however, grate a nutmeg manually). Fruitcake-making is a lot of work, but nothing like it must have once been.

Hand-grated nutmeg, nutmeg contributed by my neighbor Becky, who is a purist about grating nutmeg and cardamom fresh, and she has completely converted me.

And here are my seventeen pounds of fruitcake, which I must now cheesecloth, brandy, and hide away in air-tight containers.

This was an adventure, and I may never do it again, but it was worth it. Cake that lasts forever and actually improves with age is one of the more brilliant foodstuffs human beings have invented, you fruitcake loathers notwithstanding.

Of course, now I have to wash almost every bowl and pan and pot lid I own, along with the very sticky food processor, but I have running hot water, so I am not complaining.

Seventeen Pounds of Fruitcake - Part 1

Tue, 6 Dec 2011 11:12:04 -0500

I am making fruitcake today, for the first time in my life, after much initial preparation. I made my own candied lemon and orange rind, I searched out organic figs, and begged a real nutmeg from my neighbor. I even found a bottle of Lyle's Golden Syrup at my village store. Yesterday I bought fresh Vermont butter, eggs, and flour, and today is D-Day.

The candied fruit peel, lemon, citron (direct from California, made by laurelnotlauren, whose recipe this is) and orange.

Unfortunately, I think I need a bigger boat.

My grandmother's giant bread bowl filled with figs, dates, almonds, pecans, and pineapple.

And now with added candied cherries, and candied citrus rinds.

Remember all the rummed raisins and currants?

Those are in my mother's biggest bread bowl.

The question now is how do I take all this stuff and mix it with two cups of butter, four cups of flour, a cup of golden syrup, twelve eggs, and two cups of of brown sugar? Also a jar of apricot jam and half a cup of brandy. I refuse to use the bathtub.

I probably should have cut the recipe in half, but I thought with the Apocalypse coming up next December, it might be my last chance. If I can figure out how to mix all this stuff together, I will have fruitcake to last well into the zombie global winter end of days.

Meanwhile, I have a problem.

Funeral Pie for Bellwether Vance

Mon, 5 Dec 2011 13:12:15 -0500

No, no, no - she hasn't died, thank god. But she expressed interest in this northeastern U.S. specialty, and I feel I must post the recipe as tiny iota of gratitude for all the entertainment and wonderful recipes she provides.

Funeral pie is a raisin pie. I expect it came to be known as funeral pie because you never knew when you'd have to provide one to a bereaved relative or friend, and raisins were always in season, unlike peaches or blueberries. Sure you could make pies of dried apples or other things, but the shock of the death may have left you unable to deal with mixing mincemeat or roasting pumpkins. Raisins make practically fast-food pie.

This recipe comes directly from The Bentley Farm Cookbook, by Virginia Williams Bentley, 1974. Mrs. Bentley grew up in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, where she ran away from home once because her stepmother tried to make her eat a ghastly gristly beef stew. It led to a lifetime of wanting to cook well. She requires custards to be strained to avoid those tiny strings of twisted albumen, which I think is excessive. I don't make a lot of things from her cookbook, because she's very 30s-50s/casserole/middle-American in her cooking, but some of her recipes are too mortifyingly good to pass up - like Frannie's Cheese Pudding (buttered bread cooked in milk with a huge amount of cheddar cheese, and some onion), and Company Casserole - a medley of some sort of ground meat (originally beef, but fake vegetarian or turkey work for me), tomato sauce, noodles, cottage cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, and scallions. It is grotesquely wonderful.

I can't vouch for this recipe because I've never made it. I like raisins a lot, but not in such quantity. I want them in fruitcake, and cinnamon rolls, and oatmeal cookies.

My raisins and currants currently waiting in a rum bath to be made into seventeen pounds of fruitcake.

But I have a feeling this is a good pie. I had a piece of raisin pie at some church supper once, and it was surprisingly pleasing. Mrs. Bentley wrote her cookbook in Danville, Vermont, and in spite of her mention of New Jersey, I figure this is the classic New England recipe.

Virginia Bentley's notes and recipe:

"So called in New Jersey, in the old days, because it appeared often at the imposing collations provided by neighbors at the time of a funeral, and the ingredients were at hand throughout the year. Don't let the name turn you off. Some of the best food in the world has been served after funerals, causing the mourners to cheer up and want to go on living."

Ingredients:

a baked pie shell

Bring to a boil these ingredients: 1 cup raisins (seeded);1 cup water; 1/2 cup sugar.

Heat 2 tablespoons of butter in a pan large enough to hold all ingredients, and stir in well 3 tablespoons of flour.

Pour hot raisin mixture into this slowly, stirring constantly. Stir until thick.

Beat two egg yolks with 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind and three tablespoons of lemon juice. Mix and stir into above raisin mixture after it is removed from stove.

Cool thoroughly and pour into baked pie shell. Cover with meringue, and bake at 325 degrees for 10-15 minutes. (Or you could skip the meringue part and have it open face)

God Takes Up Beekeeping

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 09:10:20 -0400

Well, I'm sure some of you reading this are thinking mumbletypeg has gone over the edge. I've never engaged in a protracted OS skirmish with anyone. It's pointless, I know. But there's something about this one that irks me more than usual, and I'm quite sure that it's because it issues from my beloved Vermont, and offends me beyond rational thinking. A similar writer in Wyoming wouldn't bother me nearly as much (my apologies to Wyoming).

I love bees. I have gigantic flowering locust trees that hum with bumblebees to a near roar in June. I have four acres of goldenrod that keep the honeybees from the hives in the next field over occupied for many weeks in August. I feel privileged to have the resources to feed them. Albert Einstein supposedly said something along the lines that the extinction of bees would mean the extinction of mankind within a matter of a few years. Whether he said it or not, it's probably true. Bees are very precious.

LK Walker, she of the

“With my grief, I was transforming death. I somehow knew instinctively that I had to praise too. That praise was the resurrection of grief. So as I massaged, I praised the rabbit for what a perfect life he had led. I praised him for his beauty, for his simplicity and elegance. I praised him for running through the fields, and through the snow. I apologized for killing him, for taking him from his beautiful world. I told him I hoped his death had been quick and painless. I sank to my knees in the living room, and prayed over this one dead creature so fervently and for so long, it was impossible not to work. With my praise, I was creating life. Not his life, mine.
When the torrent of tears was done. When the hide was soft, and warm, and dry, I sat very still and held it to my heart. I could feel my heart beat, and in the stillness I could feel a very tiny and soft whisper of joy.
That whisper said to me that I had found my path through the mourning. I had found my understanding of what it means to die, what it means to grieve, what it means to praise. And at last, what it means to live. This was what I had to do to find my own thread of life again. In order to live fully, I had to die fully. And in order to die fully, I had to kill something. That something was not a marten or a muskrat or a squirrel. That something was the fear in myself that life held no meaning. And through the ritual honoring of the dead bodies that I found myself in possession of, I was able to face that fear and transform it. I was the chevra kaddisha for the animals that I killed. It was a strange role, I admit, because I was the person who killed these animals. On some level, it made no sense at all. I couldn’t explain it if I tried. But on the deepest level, it made perfect sense. The work of a chevra kaddisha is referred to as - chesed shel emet – a good deed of truth.
This is what I learned.
These animals would die, whether by my hand, or by another. Every person I loved would die, whether by my hand, or by another. All I could do, to make sense of my world, was a good deed of truth. I would grieve, and I would praise. I would spend my time with death, so that I could spend my time with life, truly alive.” [quote from the deleted EP cover post of September 22, 2011]

has taken up beekeeping. She's a busy girl, what with yoga and play-writing and daily trapping and, apparently, livestock keeping. But her world of influence is too small. She must keep conquering new territory. So now she's going after the bees.

“I didn’t research the bees at all before I got them. Not like I researched the chickens. Or the sheep, the cow and the horse, which I’m still researching. The bees I just bought. Two hives of Russians from an apiary near Lake Champlain, about halfway down the Vermont coast. Too late in the season, according to some beekeepers in the know.

But I was not in the know. I wanted bees. I wanted honey. And I didn’t want to wait.”

Of course not! Because when you're god, every living thing “beneath” you is at your beck and call. God knows best. And if she doesn't, what the hell. It's only bees. So she's experimenting, disregarding the advice of experienced beekeepers, because – she's god! She deals in life and death as she sees fit.

[I suppose Emily thought this was a really cute account of picturesque rural life. It certainly has gotten a lot of views, but I expect that's because of the original psychopathic trapping post, which was riveting in that trainwreck kind of way]

“I hate to write this here, as my organic mentor and staunch non-interventionist is likely to read this and be disappointed in me. But I took my three different answers to my one question, and decided to feed my bees.

I reasoned that I’d rather add a little non-traditional food supply, than come to my hive in February to a starvation death annihilation of my hives.

So I mixed up a batch of organic sugar water and put it out. Within a week I noticed a marked increase in bee activity. I finally put on my first ‘super.’ And then I found that mite.

Now it’s October. I’ve found a handful of dead bees. Lots of earwigs and ants. I’m told that the bees will kill them and remove them from the hive and that takes more energy.

In the old days, beekeepers would wrap their hives in tarpaper, or put them in the basement for the winter. But I’m simply going to insulate the cover and let them stay outside.”

Yeah, really, why pay attention to advice from people more knowledgeable than you? Because you're god! And what's the loss of a few hives nowadays, anyway? I wish your bees luck, not for your sake, but for theirs.

My favorite quote from LKWalker's post:

“Bees are the only creature that actually improves their environment.”

Okay, aside from the execrable grammar, she's partially right (she's forgotten earthworms, and I don't know what else, but she's god, so accept her badly written statement). Now, LKWalker, if only you'd meditate on the meaning of that. And move to New Hampshire, if Alaska is too far.

(And as I pointed out in my comment you deleted, you can delete all you like. The OS population has a long memory)

Qwikster Dies a Qwik Death - Thank You, Netflix

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:10:45 -0400

Remember how long it took for Coca-Cola to figure out New Coke was kind of stupid?

Human beings really are capable of learning. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, sent me an e-mail explaining their new "improved" system of dividing streaming from dvds into separate accounts on September 19, and here it is, only October 10, and they've taken it all back.

Mr. Hastings, netflix is my only reliable source of entertainment, and I could susbsist on streaming documentaries, but there was no way I was going to order my beloved inane sci-fi blockbusters from Qwikster. The name alone was repellant.

But all is forgiven, until your next bright idea. If it's not broken...