roasting peppers, wood stove style

buying roasted peppers is easy, but doing it yourself is way funner! i've roasted peppers on a gas stove but this was my first time roasting one inside the firebox of a wood cook-stove. i took a whole pepper, gave it a good wash and then placed it on top of a chuck of wood inside the stove. i had recently put a piece of pine in the fire box, so there was a good sturdy piece of wood for the pepper to rest on while it roasted. 

you want the pepper to be in the flame, so it can become completely chared and black. you'll have to get a pair of tongs and keep turning it ever once in a while so that it char evenly.

once its all black, take it out and place it in a glass bowl and cover with plastic warp. you'll need to let it sit for about 10-15 minutes so that it can sweat. this will allow the the skin rub off very easily. once you have all the blackened skin off you're ready to go! 

i have a super awesome recipe for a roasted eggplant and roasted pepper soup that i'll have to post one of these days. the texture and the flavor is amazing! 

carrot pickles

                     

mum and i pulled carrots the other day. its a job that i've always liked. they are fun to pull ...and then you have piles of bright orange amd green! a quick twist of the top and they are ready for the root cellar. we set aside all of the little ones and i made a whole bunch of pickles. seven quarts yesterday and seven today.

12 cups water
4 cups vinegar
1 cup pickling salt
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
12ish pounds of carrots (3/4 of a 5 gallon bucket)
7 cloves garlic
dills sprigs
dill heads

mix the water, vinegar salt and cream of tartar in a large pot. heat just until the salt has dissolved, set aside. in clean quart jars, place one clove garlic, a few sprigs and one head of dill. fill the jars with carrots and pour in brine. process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. 

turkey soup & angel slices

...the angel slices are in the oven and the batter was so good that there is nothing left in the bowl. so at the moment there is no proof. but soon there will be. i'm dealing with a new oven these days. it is a wood stove, an old pioneer maid. its a fabulous heater and it has a large oven in which i've made two three things in it so far: date squares, our thanksgiving turkey and gingerbread to go with dessert. what i've noticed is that it's confusing. i've put two different thermometers inside as well as used the one that on the outside of the oven to try to figure out a current temperature and i'm still not sure what exactly is going on in there! the ones on the inside always say a different and colder temp then the one on the outside, which has to be converted because its in celsius. i had thought, right off the bat that the outside thermometer was hooped. its an old stove, it must have gone by now. but i'm thinking now that it might be alright still. i know one thing, there is definittly more heat coming from the top of the oven then the bottom. i use a baking stone for bread, so i leave that in the oven all the time which i would think would help to regulate the heat, but who knows? maybe it doesn't. its a learning process. i'm used to wood stoves and ovens, but every one is different.

i don't know if i've mentioned angel slices before but the original recipe comes from the joy of cooking and in the blurb before the recipe it mentions how st. peter gives these to little kids on their way into heaven, so they don't miss their parents so much. i can't vouch for that one, but they are pretty tasty.

angel slices

they worked!!!

for the shortbread bottom:
cream until well blended:
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
beat in well:
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
combine:
1 1/4 cups flour
1/8 teaspoon salt

pat into a greased 9x13 and bake at 350 for about 15

for the topping:
mix and spread over bottom:
2 beaten eggs
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cups chopped pecans
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

bake at 350 for 25 more minutes.




while i have the stove smokin' hot to bake, i've put our leftover thanksgiving turkey bones on to simmer for soup tonight. i've going to make carrot pickles after lunch...and if i'm still feeling ambitious i'm going to make pasta for soup. but we'll see if i get to that. i have a 5 gallon bucket full of little carrots that need to be washed and trimmed, brine to make, dill to pick, garlic to peal and jars to sterilize...we'll see how it goes.

The Drive North

We drove back home from Smithers last week and I thought that it would be interesting to take road pictures from my view in the passenger seat. These are nothing of great quality, but are interesting nonetheless. The pictures start around Cranberry and end in Telegraph creek. It was a rainy, cloudy drive so the mountains aren't all there, but it gives you a good idea of the drive... 

    

home at last!

swans, on the edge of the river ice...

...so, yet another long lapse of time since my last post! but we've put on quite a few kilometers since then! we left north haven resort at the end of march, spent time with family in winnipeg and then made the long drive back home to bc. we've been home for a while now and are totally unpacked. we have yet to move our stuff up from storage in smithers, but we have to figure out where to store stuff here before we can bring it up anyway. eventually everything will all fall into place. (eventually = sooner then later. hopefully).

we've settled into the cabin again and work is picking up quite nicely. we're helping to run riversong this summer so were busy getting everything ready for the summer season. i've designed some new t-shirts (sample of one design), and we're we looking forward to opening day!

we spent this last sunday skiing along the river self ice - it was amazingly hot and the sunshine felt so good! we skiied down river from buks bar, lay on the rocks soaking up the rays, then headed back home. we've had some pretty interesting weather systems move through here lately, one of them deciding to pass though that afternoon! we had gotten back to the fourwheelers by then and had jackets close at hand, so it was lots of fun - great big balls of graupel!

our ski along the river yesterday

after the blistering sun, we were graupeled on

a week and counting?!

i think i can say that things are coming to an end up here. this morning it was -7 and we're supposed to have a high of 0 today! i think spring is officially on its way! i'm slightly excited about that, but i would like it to wait until we get onto pavement before it fully sets in! we have a few hours of driving over lakes and winter roads before we get onto the highway and when it warms up, when road traffic increses and when the frost starts coming out of the ground the roads can get extremely rough. like 15km/hour rough. i'll be sitting in the back seat, it fully loaded with gear and two dogs, so hopefully its not too rough!

this last week has been spent hauling gravel, one of the main reasons we have been up here. between equipment issues and waiting for the road to be completed its taken some time, but we finally dumped the first load last week. its about 20km to the gravel pit and a fully loaded the dump truck can only be driven 15km/hour over the lakes, making a one way trip about an hour long. because of this we're only able to do about three trips a day, starting first thing in the morning and the guys get back from the last load at about 9pm, making for a very long day. we had another dump truck brought up the other day so we were able to get a few more loads having two trucks on the road.

yay for gravel!!!

this last week we've also been receiving fuel trucks. we are stilling waiting on a couple more, but they should be leaving on monday, getting here either that night or tuesday morning, as its about a 13 hour drive in from thompson. we had quite a bit of wind last week, which totally wrecked havoc on the roads. i'm not used to the combination of wind and flat land and it just amazes me how fast it can destroy the road. we knew that the propane truck was on its way and the driver had called me from oxford house, so the guys went out to meet him and to make sure that the road was clear. there is a V plow on the front of the pick-up truck so they plowed all the way out to the junction and past where they met the propane truck and when they came back the wind had blown the road in again. where the road goes over the lakes the snow had completely filled it in, wall to wall snow, 5 feet high. i went for a skidoo ride just to check it out. the last time i'd been on the road was just after it had been completed so the difference was quite surprising.

the wind has died down now, which is quite a relief! the next batch of trucks should have no problem whatsoever. 

we are slowly getting down to the bottom of our food staples, we have: two roasts, one package of stew meat and one package of farmer sausage left, a few eggs and couple liters of milk.  there is lots of pasta and margarine and stuff thats leftover from the summer, but its time to start getting creative with what we have left. we might have a couple people come out to help haul gravel, so we can get the most out of the next couple days, so i am trying to ration what we have left so we'll have enough to feed a crowd if need be. yesterday i made a whole bunch of perogies, for some reason i always think they are so much work, but really they are quite easy - they just take a little time. one batch made about 50 which was plenty for us, even enough for another meal!

dough:

3 cups flour

1 1/2 t salt

1 egg

3/4 cup water

4 t oil

mix the flour and salt together in a medium sized bowl. in another bowl mix the egg, water and oil; stir into the flour mixture, add more water if necessary, 1 T at a time. kneed 10ish times or until smooth. cut in two and let sit, covered for 20 minutes.

potato filling:

1 T butter

1/3 cup finely diced onion

1 cup cold mashed potatoes

3/4 cup grated cheese

1/2 t salt

1/4 t pepper

saute the onion in the butter and transfer to a blow; add the rest of the filling ingredients, mix and set aside.

once the dough has rested, roll out on a lightly floured surface to about 1/16" thick. cut into 3" rounds and place 1t of filling on each round. brush half of the round edge with water, fold in half and seal.

place in boiling water for about two minutes or until they float. saute with onions and butter and serve with farmer sausage!

nothing beats homemade perogies!