Not By Bread Alone

Now that the cooler weather is here, I've been putting my bread maker to use again. The encroaching darkness warns us of the coming winter and the soul cries out for comfort food. What can be more comforting than a piping hot soup or stew with bread fresh from the oven - or bread machine. I found myself pretty limited by the manual that came with the machine, and so I reached for a book that Joe's aunt had given me years ago. I had never attempted any of the recipes except one that I mixed by hand, and to tell you the truth, I wasn't impressed. But, I was feeling a little more than adventurous and decided to take another look.

As I thumbed through the pages I came across this sentence under the heading Pain au Levain ..."This simple bread is as basic as life and breath." Hmm, I thought this could be promising. More tantalizing words jumped off the page...divine, mouth-watering, chewy, crisp crust. But it was these words that made me stop and really take notice:

"Don't blame us if after you've made this bread 5 or 6 times the people who eat at your table burst into tears. Beauty does that to some of us. We can't help it."

I stopped. Here was a sentiment close to my heart. For food is love, is it not? I looked over the recipe, but found that it required at least 5 hours of time - too short for dinner, but tomorrow...

Instead I found a recipe for NO Pain Ordinaire that could be done that afternoon. The authors described it as "instant satisfaction from your bread machine." The result was a delicious crusty bread, aromatic, and chewy on the inside. All the guys said "Yum" and the loaf was gone. I am printing it below for your edification.

For one 1-1/2 pound loaf

1-1/8 c. water
1-1/2 tbs. soft butter
1 tsp. salt
1-1/2 tbs. sugar
3 c. bread flour
2 tsp. bread machine yeast

Combine ingredients in bread machine in order given.
Process on the basic bread setting.

-from

Rustic European Breads from Your Bread Machine

If you don't have bread flour, you can make your own using 1 tbs. vital wheat gluten to 1 c. all purpose flour. I use regular yeast with no problem. More on bread tomorrow. Enjoy.

Autumn

"There is no need to bewail the declining year.
Autumn is a glorious season in its own right,
and as pleasant as summer to spend in the garden."

- Christopher Lloyd

Today was indeed glorious. Despite the thickening clouds, the air was pleasantly warm. So I let the younger boys off for the afternoon, and headed out to the garden with baskets in hand to gather herbs and vegetables.

The string beans in the upper garden have all but finished producing and have become forage for the deer. In the kitchen garden, however, the bean plants are just beginning to fruit. The beans themselves are long and "sticky" with tiny little hairs, and sport an attractive purplish mosaic pattern on its skin.

I'm still gathering very small tomatoes from the blighted plants. These are more sun than vine ripened since most of the fruit has already fallen from the plants. The tomatoes I had found near the compost pile, however, have appeared to escaped the blight perhaps due to the fact that they were covered by weeds during the early growing season. Large green tomatoes still cling to the vines, and I can only hope that with a careful covering of floating row cover we may soon enjoy them.

I next cut parsley, basil, and applemint for drying. These herbs, I've discovered, dry very quickly if placed in a wire mesh colander and set in the oven for a day or two. Frequent stirring keeps the herbs crisp and helps maintain their color better.

One of my favorite activities of September is making wild grape jelly. This year I found several places on the homestead where the wild grapes formed thick canopies over small weed trees. I was able to fill my garden basket about 2/3 full, but will need to find more if I want to make jelly. Our St. Pepin grapes produced several nice bunches of sweet-tart grapes, and I added these to the basket "for complexity" of flavor. Yes, that is a picture of one "goodly bunche" at the top of this post.

The red onions faired poorly. Too little sun I think. Most of the bulbs I pulled were almost as small as when I first planted them. I will dry them and replant them next spring.

I also began seed gathering for next season. We had a very successful trial with saving a French lettuce seed from last year. It was my most vigorously growing lettuce, and just about every seed germinated. I gathered these seed heads again, and some of the buttercrunch. Both the Italian and curly parsley have finally entered the seed setting stage and I gathered several dry heads already. There are literally thousands of these seeds so I think I will be set for parsley for many years to come. I will continue to gather some dill seed for next year's pickling spice, but the remainder I will allow to self sow over the garden again this year. I found that those "wild" dill seeds that had overwintered resulted in stronger healthier plants. (These were wild only because I had dropped the bowl holding hundreds of seeds last Fall among the raspberries.)

The beets continue to be abundant, and I pulled a large basket full of the round and cylindrical veggies to can. But first, fresh beet greens for dinner. Yum.

"After Apple Picking"

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

- Robert Frost