October 2011 - Morning Song Farm

Lime Meringue Pie

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I’m not going to include a pie shell recipe here. You’ll need to have your baked shell ready. This recipe is not a typical restaurant lime pie. It’s got a good bit more zap to it..meaning if you like sweet lime pie, certainly add more sugar. Or go to Denny’s. I like my lime pie to roll just this side of too sour. With the fruit of 200 lime trees to experiment with, I’ve fiddled with this recipe for years. It’s not for sweet tooths. I think it’s the best lime pie on earth.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar

5 Tablespoons cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix together and set aside for a minute.

Combine 1 cup fresh lime juice, 3 beaten egg yolks, 2 tablespoons butter, and 3/4 cup boiling water. Add dry ingredients slowly, blending thoroughly. Bring entire mixutre to a full boil. cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is thick. This happens fast! Dump pudding-like mixture into pie shell and cool.

For the meringue:

Ingredients:

3 egg whites

1/4 teaspoon of cream of tartar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3 tablespoons confectioners sugar. If you don’t have the finer confectioner’s sugar on hand, you can powder your granulated sugar in a Vitamix if you have one. It only takes a second.

Whip egg whites to a consistency that will hold peaks. Add the cream of tartar, vanilla and sugar.

Using a spatula, ice your pie, and then broil the top to a golden brown for 3-4 minutes. Don’t make your peaks too pointy or your peaks will burn. Serve chilled.

A Crust-free Quiche To Remember

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This is my favorite use of cookable leafy greens. I alternate kale, Swiss Chard, Arugula, Bok Choi; and sometimes mix them all. This week’s mild flavored Swiss Chard is perfect for this recipe:

I have to admit it’s a little more complicated than the typical Farmer Donna recipe, but it’s worth the effort. By omitting the crust you are saving some time and really not reducing the wonder of this recipe.

Ingredients:

3 cups of cut up Swiss Chard; washed chopped and set aside.

single onion, diced

1 Tablespoon flour

3 pieces of cooked bacon

3 cloves of California garlic

Handful of mushrooms

5 eggs

2 cups goats’ or cows’ milk

1/2 cup walnuts

Salt, pepper, dash of Tabasco

Olive oil

One cup of grated cheese of your choice

Combine chard, half the onions, bacon, eggs, flour, milk, walnuts. Set aside.

Throw mushrooms, other half of onions, and garlic in saute pan with olive oil and saute. Dump everything together and spoon into individual, oven safe cups, and bake at 350 luntil done; about 35 minutes in my oven.

Goats

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This is Rosie at left, one of our wonderful Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats. She isn’t interested in having her photo taken unless the camera is edible, so this is the best I could do today. Goats figured out how to get into their treat bag last night and then, having gorged, couldn’t be coaxed to the milking stand this morning. In my pajamas and flip flops with a flashlight at 6:00 a.m., I discovered I had been outsmarted. Although those pajamas look like I lost in a mud tug of war, I did indeed win the battle. However, hairy foot ended up in the milking bucket, so maybe we’ll call it a “draw.” I’ll be making soap (critical not to misspell as “soup,” here) of today’s milk. Basically, the goats and I have an understanding. They get treated like princesses and are bribed with treats, that no doubt preclude any hope of ever being a profitable dairy. I get to milk in peace. There’s also a subsidiary rule that although they know how to open my front door, enter at will and say, eat my September billing; they agree not to. That’s my understanding, anyway.

A few people have asked if I sell goat milk, cheese or soap. I don’t sell anything goat-related. They were acquired for the pleasure of their company; although that end game has not always been achieved on a regular basis. In the beginning, they expressed complete disdain at my fumbling attempts to get goat milk in the goat milk bucket, which in all fairness was my stated official purpose for having goats. There was a low point where family members would peer out a nearby window, popcorn at hand, to view the daily match because watching me get my ass handed to me by a miniature goat was better than Southpark. The goats ARE fun to watch; although the foolishness of thinking that I could provide delicious goat food in exchange for them not chomping my landscaping into stumps was stellar in its complete absence of goat-ownership common sense.

They ate the delicious goat food treats AND the landscape. Immediately. And any thought that a goat can be bribed and then stay “bought,” even through a milking session, is nonsense. Payment in the form of goat treats in exchange for the opportunity to milk in peace is a notion that is renegotiated daily; occasionally minute by minute. Sometimes I walk away satisfied with the exchange. Sometimes I don’t. So if you want to add the cost of landscape replacement, let’s see. Goat soap: $127 a bar. Yet another nutty hobby I’ve understaken that my friends are left incredulous over.

Harvest Ticket, October 4-5; page one

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I’m heading out of town mid-harvest this morning, so will have to circle back later and revise this entry for errors; but this is what we’ve planned for today and tomorrow’s harvest. Light on fruit 🙁 …we ended our orange harvest last week; and don’t start apples until next week. We still have some oranges hanging on the trees; but they’re really over ripe and have a nanosecond of shelf life once picked. Click on the harvest ticket below to enlarge the image for easier viewing.
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