Happy Halloween from 10 Signs Farm

And remember: If the kids don't come, you get to eat all the candy yourself. No fair turning off the porch light and hiding in the back room.

Perfect cup of hot cocoa

1 heaping Tbs. unsweetened dutch-process cocoa powder
1 Tbs. sugar
a teeny pinch of salt
2 Tbs. water
1 c. milk (anything from 1% to whole will do)
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
a little shake of Ceylon cinnamon

Whisk together the cocoa, sugar, salt, and water. Bring to a gentle boil and boil for a minute, then add milk, vanilla, and cinnamon. Stir. Bring almost, but not quite, to the boiling point. Pour into a mug and enjoy.

Serves one; can be multiplied to serve many.

A few things I have learned about turkeys

Yes, already. The turkey learning curve is kind of steep if you've never had one before.

First of all, never assume a turkey can find water on its own. Our turkey paced anxiously back and forth and pecked in frustration at the plastic reservoir of its gravity waterer, ignoring the shiny wet stuff in the tray below. It was well on its way to dehydration by the time I figured out the problem and showed it what to do by splooshing my finger in the water. Man. I mean, I knew you had to show baby chicks how to drink, but a grown-up turkey?

Once we had the water thing sorted out, the turkey was suddenly a lot hungrier (no more "dry beak"). Its favorite foods so far appear to be:

• Cabbage
• Honeydew melon rinds
• Cracked corn
• Rolled oats
• Green bean ends

Turkeys, like certain cats I know, appear to like it when you stand there and watch them eat.

Turkeys gobble the way that dogs sometimes bark, in response to noises. The most gobbling we have heard from our turkey came when an ambulance sped by with sirens blaring. The turkey has also gobbled at these sounds:

• Screen door shutting
• Table saw
• Hammer
• Clothes dryer
• Car pulling into driveway
• Car horn

The "turkey alarm" goes off a little while after the sun rises. Sometimes it is extremely long and loud, and sometimes (like today--did it know there was a time change?!) there's hardly anything to it at all.

I'm sure there will be a lot more fun turkey facts as the month goes on.

By popular demand

Brutus

This is Brutus, the half-Basset Hound, half-Great Dane in our obedience class. This picture doesn't really capture the rivers of drool he produces, but it does show off his beautiful smile. He's a good boy, if a little stubborn.

This class--or rather, the instructor--has completely turned Gracie around. And I have bonded with her. I'm so glad we kept her.

Next week is graduation! No test, just showing off what we can do.

One-month special: All-U-Can-Eat cracked corn, greens, and wormy pears

Gobble gobble!

No more factory-farmed turkey for us! I finally owned up to the plain fact that if you buy it, you condone it. So this turkey will be happy to the end.

The dogs are HYSTERICAL. They cannot believe this is happening.

Disconcerting dinner?

Soon-to-be-roasted cod's head, gigot style

Apologies to those who would rather not have seen this, but I couldn't let it go undocumented. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recommendation is to roast a cod's head as you would a leg of lamb: slathered in olive oil, coarse salt, and pepper, with little bits of rosemary, thyme, and garlic stuck into the fleshy parts. Oh, and (not that this applies to a leg of lamb) a bay leaf in its mouth.

It looks and smells wonderful, despite its, er, unusual appearance. We will be serving it with mashed potatoes and fresh green beans.

NEWS FLASH: As of tomorrow morning, our homestead will welcome its first livestock animal. The newcomer will reside here on a temporary basis--for approximately one month. Any guesses?

Two women, the open road, and a metric ton of groceries

I smell pie!

I promised a field trip report, and here it is! This morning Julie and I hit the road for Ellijay, the apple capital of Georgia. The famed apple festival was over, and that was the way we planned it--neither of us is keen on fighting crowds of tourists.

The weather was unseasonably cold and, in the mountains at least, misty. There was a lot of Thinsulate being worn today, especially among the proprietors of the open-air apple markets! But the weather did little to detract from the striking beauty of the area. The Georgia mountains are rustic in an almost New Englandy way, only more rough around the edges.

There are several apple markets along GA 52 east of Ellijay, and we visited almost all of them. Our favorite was Mack Aaron's Apple House. Not only were their prices the best--$14 per bushel instead of the usual $18--but they offered free samples so you could educate yourself and figure out what you really wanted. Also, the fried pies advertised on the sign were pure flaky bliss.

I bought a lot of apples. I mean a LOT of apples. First I bought an entire bushel of Granny Smiths for a friend. Then, for myself I purchased half a bushel of Yates (my hands-down favorite--a tiny rosy-cheeked apple with a tart-sweet tang and a crisp texture), a peck of Stayman Winesap, and a half-peck of Grannies. I also got a big freezer bag full of dried apples and a jar of sourwood honey.

Once we were "appled out," we continued along 52 toward Ellijay and happened upon a roadside farm market, where I purchased some of the last scuppernong grapes of the season, as well as five small pie pumpkins, a bag of okra, and some large North Carolina tomatoes ("The soil is better for them there," said the proprietress).

We ate lunch in a Mexican restaurant in Ellijay, then went through some kind of strange time warp in which several hours disappeared and we suddenly found ourselves exhausted, standing on the sidewalk and holding receipts from a bunch of antique malls.

Atlanta was not on the way home, but we decided to pretend it was because we wanted to go to the DeKalb Farmer's Market. Julie hadn't been there before. I overheard her talking on her cell phone to her husband as she stood in the spice department: "It's like Christmas here. It's a little overwhelming. Are you sure there's nothing else you want?"

My favorite purchases:

• Three pounds of shiny Italian chestnuts, for which I later discovered I was undercharged by two-thirds because the cashier rang them up as water chestnuts

• Five pineapple quinces that are currently exuding their sultry scent in our kitchen

• A one-pound top butt bison steak

• A cod head (yes, there's a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe for that, and it looks delicious)

• Two Florida Ambersweet oranges, which are the best tasting oranges I've come across in quite some time.

We left at 9 AM and didn't get back until 9 PM. It's not most people's idea of grocery shopping, but it works for us.

What a weekend

Morning dew on the collard greens

The photo of collard greens is apropos of nothing, but I didn't want to post yet another photo of canned goods!

I was busy this weekend. I canned two jars of pickled jalapeños, putting two red peppers in each jar for aesthetic effect. I also found enough nearly-ripe pears on the ground to make the year's first batch of pear-citrus marmalade. Nature has her schedule; I looked back on my Manor Menu blog and found that each year I tend to start putting up batches of it around October 24.

Here's how it's done:

PEAR-CITRUS MARMALADE
5 lbs. pears
1 1/4 lemons
1 1/4 oranges
3 3/4 lbs. sugar
Wash the pears, peel them, then cut them in half and remove the cores. Cut the ends off the lemons and oranges and quarter them.
Put the pears, lemons, and oranges through a food grinder (use the coarse blade).
Put ground fruit in a pot and stir in the sugar thoroughly while bringing to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring frequently. Continue cooking until shiny and almost transparent.
Ladle into sterilized jars and process. Makes about eight 8-oz. jelly jars.

This time, for reasons unknown to me, the recipe made 10 jelly jars. That wouldn't be so strange except that the marmalade also set better than it has in the past, which I assume means there was less water in it. How on earth? Oh well. Maybe I just measured badly in the past. All I know is that this batch is delicious and damn near perfect.

Other accomplishments over the weekend:

• I started knitting myself a new scarf (I am a terrible knitter; all I can do is stockinette stitch back and forth, and I'm not even 100 percent sure I'm doing that right, so I make lovely fluffy scarves and that's it)

• The s.o. and I built a raised bed for the perennial garlic and onions

• I organized my office files

• I baked two baguettes from a recipe I hadn't tried before (pretty basic except it includes a little bit of oat bran), and they turned out great

• I finished the first coat of drywall mud on the new closet extension, and barely escaped with my skull intact after knocking a heavy mud trough off the ladder and onto my head

I have big plans for tomorrow, but I don't want to say what they are until after it's all done. Two words: FIELD TRIP!

Time to make more pickled peppers

Gosh, there sure are a lot of us

Jalapeño peppers are the Energizer Bunny of garden vegetables. I've been neglecting the plants for at least a month now, but they just keep producing!

Ssshhhhhh...nobody tell them it's mid-October.

My devotion to the sale table

Up in front of our local Ingles supermarket, next to the last register, there's a sale table where they clear out merchandise they're no longer going to carry (or that has been discontinued). As such, it's bittersweet. If something's on the sale table, the party's over; I'll have to buy it in Athens or Atlanta--or at least down at the lake where the rich people live--forevermore. But still, I'm a big fan of it. My tastes are different enough from most people's that I tend to like the selection very well indeed.

Examples of things I love that I've found there:

• La Croix sparkling water
• Sun & Earth environmentally friendly dish and laundry detergents
• Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips (this is how I first started buying them)
• Lyle's Golden Syrup (which I am astounded that they carried in the first place, but boy did they ever...I've already bought one can of it and may buy another, because about 20 of them are still sitting there)
• Kashi brand organic Strawberry Fields cereal
• Gold Medal all-purpose flour packaged in the plastic resealable pack (I assume this aggravated them because it didn't fit on the shelf with the normal-shaped flour bags)
• the 96-oz. size of Pompeiian extra-virgin olive oil
• tins of smoked mussels, smoked oysters, and sardines

All very good things indeed, n'est-ce pas?

Sometimes it's not the end. This week I got a large carton of vanilla soymilk for 99 cents because it was approaching its expiration date. The same happened with three-packs of single-serving aseptically packaged "Li'l Milks" not too long ago.

The sale table is good to me. If it weren't for the caprices of the Ingles store manager, I wouldn't be sitting here drinking my coffee with vanilla soy milk this morning. That's something I never thought I'd do, being a dairy devotee, but you know what? It's actually really good.

Note for those who are following along at home

The pecans from our trees have just been incorporated into a batch of chocolate-chip cookies. That's really the ultimate thing to do with a small amount of pecans, isn't it?

Fresh pink-eye cowpeas

We're not beans, really

Last week Rozanne mentioned that she'd never encountered cowpeas, let alone pink-eye cowpeas, so I thought I'd share. This is what mine looked like after I shelled them. I think they're especially pretty legumes, not to mention especially tasty ones. Cooking darkened the pale white-green color of the peas, but only barely dimmed the delicate pink-brown color of the markings.

I had about two cups of shelled peas. I simmered them, covered, with water to cover by a half-inch, along with:
• a few shreds of leftover ham
• the end of a tomato, chopped
• a smashed clove of garlic
• salt and pepper
• a handful of green and wax beans from the garden, cut into one-inch pieces (which technically makes this dish into a Southern classic called "Field Peas with Snaps")

When the peas were completely tender, I took the lid off and kept simmering for a few minutes to let the sauce thicken a bit. Easy and delicious.

Industrious

New blueberry bushes

Because we've had so much success already with our existing six Sunshine Blue dwarf blueberries, we ordered nine more. Last night we finished planting them all. You can see the older, more established plants in the background and the newbies in the front.

This is going to be really great.

'Tis the season

Ripening pears

Aren't they gorgeous? I already have two plastic grocery bags full of windfalls. This will mean several batches of pear-citrus marmalade (yes, more marmalade!) in the near future. And some preserves, too.

I'm very pleased with myself

Tangerine marmalade

This is a very crappy, dark photo of a really wonderful batch of tangerine marmalade. As I write this, I am eating buttered toast spread with a generous amount of it, and please forgive me if I pat myself on the back, but it is delicious--a really decadent way to begin the day.

I made this marmalade with those Florida Fallglo tangerines I blogged about last week. It signifies a turning point in my canning abilities. The recipe (an old Southern Living Cookbook one) called for 3 1/2 cups of sugar and only 20 minutes of boiling time, and I have finally gained enough experience making marmalades, chutneys, and jams that I knew neither would be sufficient with my particular batch of fruit. And what do you know--my amended version turned out perfect.

Those of you who are on the fence about learning how to can: I beg you to try it. If you are detail-oriented and able to follow directions, you can hardly help but succeed. And you will make yourself so happy!

Meow

There is a smallish calico cat living under our house!*

We put out a bowl of food for her, because what with Taxi leaving, it can't hurt to have some volunteer rodent control around here. An outdoor cat that is not really ours and more or less minds its own business would be just the ticket.

The animals just keep a-comin' around here, don't they?

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* Like many older Southern homes, our house sits on what is called an "open foundation": basically just a series of short brick pillars with (in some areas) decorative brick latticework in between. In our case, the crawl space underneath ranges from about two feet high to tall enough to park our riding lawnmower--which we do, under the bedroom.

Hmm

I think something is amiss with my Weather Pixie. It has read 86 degrees F for days on end. It is most definitely not 86 degrees.

It's happening

Last night I went to the Caledonia, a club in Athens, to see The Drams. It was a very enjoyable show--not as stunning as their set at Twangfest this June, but very worthwhile nonetheless.

On my way to my car (and yes, if you attempt to park in Athens on a weekend night, you will end up walking quite a way to your car), I was suddenly aware that I was freezing cold. I had a sweater waiting for me in the car, but still I felt chilly the whole way home and had to run the heat. The temperature was in the mid-50s. Until now it has not strayed so low.

So the weather has changed at last. It could be argued that October is the nicest month of the year in Georgia. Daytime temps in the 70s, nighttime in the 50s, ample sunshine mixed with misty moistness. Only March and April (tender, green, gorgeous beyond reason, scented with flowers) can compete.

Today: Bright sun and crisp air. Tonight's forecast: Low of 52.

Seafood heaven

Ten gorgeous, oceany-smelling fresh clams, large enough to properly be called quahogs, rode home from Atlanta with me on Wednesday evening. They were nestled in a double plastic bag in a soft-sided coolerful of ice, but the plastic was left open and hanging out of the top of the cooler so they could breathe.

When I got home, I made up a potful of cold brine--1/3 cup of kosher salt to 1 gallon of water--and placed the clams in it. Then I sprinkled 1/4 c. of fine cornmeal on top so the clams would eat it, thereby chasing the grit and impurities out of their systems. The clams remained like this overnight in the refrigerator.

Yesterday afternoon I flushed the clams well with fresh water, scrubbed them, dried them, and made this, which was truly excellent:

BACON STUFFED CLAMS
rock salt or coarse kosher salt
10 large hard-shelled clams, prepared as above
3 ping-pong-ball-sized mushrooms (I used puffballs, but button mushrooms would work), cleaned and chopped small
2 slices crispy cooked bacon, chopped small
1 tsp. fresh minced parsley
fresh bread crumbs as needed
freshly ground black pepper to taste
10 dots of butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Shake out a layer of salt in a jellyroll pan and nest the clams in it. This is to keep them stable so they don't spill their liquor. Bake them just until they open. Discard any clams that refuse to open (or that have been hanging half-open the whole time you've been preparing them).
Keep the oven turned on.
Open the clams all the way by cutting the muscles at the sides. Pour all the liquor into a small bowl and reserve. Cut out the meat of the clams, chop it, and put it into a large bowl. Reserve 10 half clamshells, nesting them once again in the salt-filled jellyroll pan.
To the large bowl containing the chopped clam meat, add the mushrooms, bacon, and parsley. Throw in a couple handfuls of bread crumbs, then add just enough clam liquor to make a mixture that will hold its shape. You can keep tweaking the amount of bread crumbs and clam liquor to get the consistency you like.
Taste for salt. The mixture should probably have retained some of its brininess. If not, adjust. Mound the mixture into the half clamshells, grind a little pepper on each, then top each filled clamshell with additional breadcrumbs and a dot of butter.
Bake until golden brown.

Note: We haven't tried this yet, but our experience in coastal seafood restaurants suggests that a layer of grated cheese between the clam mixture and the breadcrumb topping would not be a bad thing. It doesn't need it, but then again, why not go for the gusto?

For anyone who hasn't seen this demonstration 1,000 times already

On the right is a commercial egg--a pretty nice one by those standards, vegetarian-fed, higher than average in Omega-3 fatty acids.

On the left is an egg laid by one of my stepsister and stepbrother-in-law's happy, free-ranging backyard chickens.