Recipe: Homemade Marshmallows

Here's a fabulous recipe for soft, fluffy, homemade marshmallows.   Yes, it does have corn syrup and gelatin in it, but there aren't any preservatives AND it tastes infinitely better than store-bought 'mallows.

Plus, you can make them any flavor you want!  They're scrumptious as "plain" vanilla, but you can flavor them with peppermint, coconut, chocolate, cinnamon... anything you can think of!

Here we go:

Combine 3 packages unflavored gelatin with 1/2 cup cold water in a mixer bowl.

In a saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1 cup light corn syrup, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1/2 cup water.  Stir  over medium heat until sugar dissolves, then raise heat until the syrup reaches 240* F.

Turn the mixer on its lowest speed and slowly add the syrup to the gelatin.  Add 1 tbsp vanilla extract (or 1 tsp vanilla & 2 tsp peppermint extract... or whatever flavor you like!).  Set mixer speed to high and let it whip for 15 minutes.

Next, dust a glass 8" x 12" pan with confectioners' sugar, pour in the fluffy goodness, and let set overnight.  Turn out and slice into cubes.  At this point, you could also melt some chocolate chips in a double-boiler, dip the 'mallows in, and let cool - for chocolate-covered marshmallows.  Yum!

Share and enjoy!

Happy Friday!

The menu for this weekend includes:

• baking brownies
• dehydrating apples
• hosting groups at camp
• continuing work on seminary applications

What's on your plate for the Sabbath?

Here's a great, thoughtful essay to start off your weekend:

How Feminism Hurts Men

Something New

Something new; a project for Greg and I to share; creative writing; kitchen experimentation; work in the garden; tasting new libations; sharing with the world on-the-line...

...presenting:

The Gastronomes
http://gastronomes.blogspot.com

A new online journal of our adventures in gardening, cooking and eating.
Check it out - and bon apetit!

Farmin' food

There's a lovely, new gallery in Kutztown called The Independent Gallery and Co-op.  They host all sorts of different events, like Storytime for toddlers, Market Mondays (when local famers & bakers bring in their goods), open mic evenings, yoga classes, chess club for kids and of course, art shows.  It's right next door to where I work, so I see that there's a LOT going on, almost all the time.  After work today, I stopped in (Market Monday!) to pick up some produce, and of course I was enticed into purchasing a loaf of French bread.  Ready to leave, food in hand, the ladies there and I realized I looked like I was walking in from a movie set, since I was holding a baguette and a bunch of carrots with an enormous bunch of greens atop.  How amusing!!

Well, I was rather enthralled that they had beets available today.  I'm totally excited to make some Borscht; it's the best soup ever!  Perhaps I'll stop by the meat market next for some beef (or chicken!)  Who knows what I'll receive from my CSA tomorrow!

Yes, Greg and I decided to buy into a CSA share for the season.  Our farmer is a young man I worked with last summer, and he's been doing wonderfully this year.  So far, we've received from him shell peas, snow peas, spring onions, garlic scapes, chard, kohlrabi, mustard greens, radishes, varieties of lettuce and several herbs (thyme, Italian parsley, etc).  We've been eating PLENTY of delicious stir-fry dishes lately.  It's been amazing seeing the "seasonal" difference, merely week-to-week, in what types of vegetables have been harvested.  Some plants have a very long season, some (like strawberries) are ripe only for a few weeks.  Greg and I have been receiving all this fresh produce with much gratitude and appreciation for the farming life.

How refreshing it is to see so much local agriculture happening!  New this year in Kutztown is the Main Street Growers' Market, which happens on Thursday afternoons from 3:00 to 7:00 pm.  Local farmers simply set up with their goods on folding tables in the little alley by Trinity Lutheran Church.  I purchased some delicious blueberries there last week, from Weavers' Orchard.  Berks County is such an amazing place!  Despite the pork-enriched diet of many of the locals, organic vegetable farms seem to be thriving.  Next week, the Kutztown Folk Festival will occur:  a great carnival dedicated to quilting, Hex signs and sausage sandwiches.  Yes, we're living in a land of bacon & baloney here in Berks, but amidst the lard and tripe arise fresh, organic veggies.  I'm quite excited about it, and very glad to see so many new farms & CSAs popping up across the map.  Rock on, farmers!!

French Cooking!!

Some conquests for my upcoming personal adventurement:

aioli

Bouillabaisse

branade

cassoulet

confit Byaldi

Cozze gratinate

crudites

escargot

gratin Dauphinois
gratin Languedocien

gougere

hollandaisse

insalata Caprese

lobster Thermidor

piccalilli

pistou
quiche
ratatouille
remoulade

rouille

roux

salade Nicoise

Tapenade

Tourtiere

 
 
And now, to polish my skills in the kitchen, refine & awaken my palette to new flavours, discover wine pairings, and to learn how to properly accent the accents in these French words. Pronounciation as well?  A French language class, perhaps?  Julia Child, please!

springtime

It is spring in Pennsylvania and green and yellow bleed into my sight everywhere I look.  I drove the back roads betwixt farm & field yesterday on my way to Echo Hill country store and the fields of green were wrecked with dandelion debris.   The pollen floats on the breeze invisibly into every runny nose and itchy eye.  That, I have heard, is at the most ridiculously high levels we've seen in years.  Something like that.

At the present moment, I am searching for a[n additonal] job for the summer.  Parts of my heart long to work at a summer camp, reaching out to kids and spending every moment climbing mountains and searching streams, but I do also feel called to Kutztown and to continuing ministry [hopefully] to the great people I work with at the art stuff store.  They're a beautiful group of women whom I want to love on; I really do enjoy growing into deeper friendships with them and the conversations we have when there are few customers in the store.

Because of this, it seems a 'small' job in town would be the best way to go as far as a little increase in income goes.  I applied for an internship at an organic farm [with professional resume & kickass cover letter], and I'll ask for applications to the little cafes & ice cream shops & boutiques up & down Main Street.  Perhaps I'll market myself for an au pair job.  I'm really looking to work Thursday through Saturday to create a complete work week.  It's nice having more time to work on painting, but the skin on my hands craves clay, and acrylic or oil cannnot satisfy.

Or I'll bake and bake bread, fill a cart & go up & down the street trying to sell my delicious loaves.  Were that a well-paying job, I'd employ myself immediately.

Also, I'm currently accepting ideas for part-time jobs.  Anyone hiring??

Bread

Ever since I've realized home-made bread over the past year, I've sort of become disgusted with grocery store breads.  Even the ones labeled, "whole wheat!  multigrain!" are far from wholesome.  Just take a look at the ingredients list.

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP


means sugars are added to hyper-speed the yeast's rising.  which means flavours, textures, and B vitamins are lost.

The "12 Grain" store breads consist of (again, please read along) Enriched Flour (means iron, thiamine, and other vitamins & minerals must be added back into the flour mix as they have stripped the whole wheat kernels of nutrition) and "2% of less of..." the remaining "11 grains".

I say screw that.  Right now I'm rising a loaf of whole barley & brown rice (which i had to simmer for an hour - no instant here!), oats, corn meal, whole grain rye flour, wheat bran and a wheat flour.  It's SO grainy; no "2% or less" at all!

...i sure hope it tastes good...

hey sugar

i am so sick of reading "sugar/high fructose corn syrup/maltose/maltodextrin/cane juice/fruit concentrate" on every single pre-packaged food available.

it's even in bread.  bread you buy at the store.

this is why i do my own baking.

i fuind it scummy how food companies will claim "made with fruit" on the front label, when on the back you read "fruit concentrate" which is fruit boiled down & sifted until there are no vitamins, no fiber, not any good thing left except the fructose.

it's sick.  it's ugly.  it's because consumers are addicted to sugars, which makes more money for the food companies.

what an ugly, distasteful truth.

Bread Winner

Check out what I made:

Also did some tiny, roundy dinner rolls for Mother's Day supper. Caprese salad, steak marinated in flat trippel & basil, dirt pudding. Turned out to be a great meal!

I'm currently in love with this publication: The Book of Bread by Judith & Evan Jones. The authors are a homesteadin' Vermont couple who've travelled globally to bake locally. Their book is full of the very best recipes they've collected from around the world, and it includes pleasant little sketches of dough being kneaded and loaves after baking. I really like that the whole thing is printed on a creamy paper in brown ink - very pleasing to the eye and grain-oriented!

Well, I've been borrowing (and renewing) the library's copy for several weeks now, and tainting its pages with whole wheat flour. I would really love my own copy, but Greg tells me to wait on it as he comes from a lineage of baking women who have their own recipe books to share. I look forward to that - so for now I'll keep taking advantage of the library. ;-)