Brazilian Sweets: Bolo de Banana

Many of you probably know that I lived in Brazil some years ago. I grew to love the place, it's people and food. Every now and then I get a hankering for Brazilian food and make up a batch of black beans with pork, rice, and a side of sautéed kale just to take the edge off. A few weeks ago I was in such a mood and noticed that we had 5 or 6 bananas that were past their prime. Normally it would have been banana bread for them, but his time I decided to go Brazilian.

Bolo de Banana (banana cake) is sort like the Brazilian version of pineapple upside-down cake. You slice bananas in half (or thirds) longwise and lay them in caramelized sugar prepared in the bottom of a 13 x 9 pan. Then you pour the cake batter on top of that and bake away. After its baked and cooled, you flip it over and let them caramelized sugar soak into the cake. It's a humble cake that lives in even the poorest homes of Brazil.

Like most traditional cuisine, there are about 3 million slightly different versions of this recipe. This is the one that I used:

The dough:

1 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup milk
3 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder

The topping:

1 cup sugar
5 - 6 bananas

Bake for 30 - 40 minutes at 350 degrees.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the sugar in the baking dish. Put it in the oven but watch it closely. Stir it as it starts to melt. It will turn into a beautiful liquid gold color. Don't let this liquid siren lull into complacency, and don't turn your back on it. This is delicious culinary napalm! CAREFULLY lay the sliced bananas in the sugar. I got carried away when I was putting the bananas in and got splattered real good. I had a blister the size of an almond on my thumb that I swear went to the bone.

After you get the bananas placed the batter goes on top. Its thicker than most cake batters. It's more like a sweet biscuit dough. Bake it until it turns a nice golden brown on top. You might want to put a cookie sheet under the pan to catch any sugar than boils over the edge.

If you try it, let me know how it goes. I'll be posting some more Brazilian recipes later.

The fall of Summer

It has already started. This summer, that arrived so late, is making it's exit. I've begun wearing sweaters and dreaming thanksgiving dinner. I hate to see summer go, but fall has it's charm and perks. The food for example. I love the food.

Last week it was pears. We ordered a box of pears from a farm in Medford. The climate there seems to be perfect for pears. Harry and David (who are famous for their pears) grow there. They arrived green, and we watched them with ripening anticipation. As pears do, they ripened all at once. We at them plain, make pear tarts, and about 20 pints of pear butter.

We did pear butter last year with success. I made it different from the recipe I had found (as I do with everything). The recipe called for a teaspoon of nutmeg. I searched our spice cupboard in vain for the spice, but discovered that pumpkin pie spice contains nutmeg. Since I was already in the middle of the process, I forwent the trip to the store and subbed the pumpkin pie spice. It turned out smashingly. In fact, the flavor seemed to work better as time passed. I opened our last jar a month ago, and was pleasantly surprise with how the flavors had blended in a years time. I decided to stick with the recipe this year.

This years pear butter took two batches. One more successful than the other. The first I put in a crock pot and let it simmer all night. The problems that the crock pot keeps all the juices in and it doesn't cook down enough to be called pear butter. It was more like pear sauce. I was hoping to skip the laborious step of stirring it for 2 hours as it reduces down over low heat. I guess there's no way around it. The crock method also caramelized the sugars more than usual. It wasn't bad, just not what I was looking for.

The second batch I did on the stove. It reduced better and didn't caramelize.

I tried something different this year. I did a small batch of spicy pear butter. I included a bit more sugar to emphasize the difference in sweet and spicy, and added a teaspoon of Cayenne pepper for an amount that cooked down to 2 pints. It turned out nice. It's smooth and sweet at first, the the warm spice sneaks in at the end. I'm not exactly sure what to do with it, but it does taste good. I would imagine it would be a nice sauce to go on chicken or pork.

I'm looking forward to much more delicious food this fall.

The summer of local food

Mary and I have been trying to make more conscious choices about the food we eat. This came in part as an incremental change as we move toward a more ideal lifestyle. It was accelerated a bit by a recent viewing of Food Inc. But change was in the air even before that.

Mary came across a local Community Sponsored Agriculture program (CSA) that we decided to get on board with. In this program you buy shares, which equal percentages of the crop. Every Friday you go to the farm and pick up your share. You get a health dose of whatever is in season, still wet with morning dew. It has been the most delicious food I have had in recent memory. Even foods that I don't typically care much for (I'm looking at you, asparagus) have been perfection. We've been getting kale, cabbage, blue berries, cherries, watermelon, carrots, onions, garlic, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and loads of other goods.

The food delicious, and pesticide free, and locally grown (avoiding shipping costs, which can be measured in both carbon and flavor). More than that it gives us a chance to support our local farmers directly. We began calling him "our Farmer" after Mary contacted him trying to find rhubarb for a batch of jam. He got us rhubarb all right. 30 pounds of it! We're set for a while on rhubarb.

The farm is the Dinihanian family farm.

http://www.yourcsa.com/

They also have a farm store that anyone can purchase food at. They have the best watermelon I have ever tasted, and for pennies more than you would pay at a supermarket.
We also decided to get some locally raised, grass feed beef. We ended up splitting a quarter of a beef three ways, between my parents and a friend.

Last night we had the perfect local meal. A roast from our beef, potatoes, onions, and carrots from the farm share, tomatoes from our garden, homemade wheat bread and freshly harvested honey. The only out of place was the butter. Were not quite ready to get our own cow, but when we do we'll be set!

Honey Harvest

This is our second year as beekeepers. My mother and I got a hive last spring. There is always some hope that the first season will yield honey, but it didn't happen for us. The poor bees suffered through a late spring that killed a lot of good nectar gathering time. We were afraid of the same thing happening again this year. It rained consistently all the way through the end of June. Most people here weren't even able to plan gardens until July. We were sure that the honey crop would be meager, if we were able to harvest at all.

To compound the issue, our queen died in early May. The bee population fluctuates greatly from season to season. In the winter the queen stops laying eggs, and the existing crew just hang out during the cold months. In the spring the queen machine guns out thousands of eggs a day in preparation for the nectar flow of spring and summer. To have a queen right at that exact moment is pretty much the worst case scenario. The hive is capable of replacing the queen (a worker bee will lay about a dozen queen eggs and let the ones that hatch fight to the death for the crown) but it takes at least a few weeks for them to hatch, mate and begin producing eggs. Then it takes a couple more weeks to begin producing worker bees. So were talking about a month of down time at the most important part of the year. Needless to say, we did not have high expectations for the year.

The queen that the hive produced has surprised us. She began producing vast amounts of eggs right off the bat. The eggs were laid in an almost O.C.D level of organization. She runs a tight ship! We let them do their thing for three months with out checking on them much. In late July we check to find, to our surprise, that 6 frames were ready to be harvest! We took them out and replaced them with empty frames.

Today was extraction day. We got a two frame extractor and all the equipment together and started working. We tried the more traditional method of cutting the caps off the frames, but we felt like too much honey was getting cut out that way. Instead we scrapped the seals off of the frames and put them into the extractor. I think we ended up straining out more wax bits that way, but I think we ended up with more honey. We extracted the 6 frames and started straining it. While we were waiting for it to strain we decided to take the old frames back to the hive. After they're extracted they're still coated with honey, but the honeycomb can be used the next year. In fact they're awesome to use, because they already have honeycomb built and saves the bees lots of time. The best way to clean them up is to put them next to the hive. The bees will find them and lick 'em clean. The next day they'll be totally free of honey.

So we decided to open up the hive to check on them while we were there dropping off the hives. To our surprise there were 6 more frames loaded with honey, just begging to be extracted! So we took them out, and replaced them with the extracted frames. We took them honey and extracted them as well. Interestingly enough, the honey from the two batches was quite different. The first back is a lighter color and has a strong floral taste. The second batch is more mild, and a darker amber.

After a year and a half of care, and a solid Saturday of extracting, we have 3.25 gallons of the sweet golden nectar! Not bad from a year that started to poorly.

I kept all the wax trimmings, and I'm planning on melting it down, cleaning it up and making something with it. I don't know what yet. Any suggestions?

50 mile hike

Last month our Scout troop embarked on an epic journey through the wilderness in the Three Sisters area. The plan was to hike from The Dee Wright Conservatory to Elk Lake by Wednesday, then continue down the Pacific Crest Trail to Charlton Lake. It totaled a little over 50 miles. We had been working on this plan for about 8 months. We had all of our over night camp spots planned out and were we were going to be get water, etc. We felt pretty well prepared.

Then we started hiking. The first day was 11 miles. It was pretty rough. There were a couple of pretty steep passes, and over a thousand feet of elevation gain over all. Toward the end of the day we started to get into snow. Lots of snow. It started out with us following the trail through patches of snow and ended with us trudging through snow looking for patches of trail.

Day two started poorly. We slept later than we should have, but felt justified, because the day before had really taken it out of us. We picked up the trail where we had left off, following footprints through the snow. Trouble was, the fools leaving the footprints didn't know where the trail was. So we followed them for about a mile and a half down an insanely steep, snow covered drop before we realized we were not where we thought we were. We got out the GPS and discovered that we were directly west of were we had camped, when we were supposed to be heading south west. So we headed back up the insanely steep drop, scrambling through branches and brush and snow. When we reached the last confirmed sign of trail it was 2 p.m. and we still had 14 miles ahead of us that day. We headed out, this time more cautiously. We stopped every 100 yards or so to get Longitude and Latitude readings and to orient ourselves with map and compass. There were several heated debates about whether we should continue on or head back to the trail head. We decided to push on, in spite of the fact that we were only covering about a half a mile per hour because of the snow. After the point that we felt we had our navigation system down we ran into another hapless group in the snow. They were an Outward Bound group trying to go our direction. We consulted maps together and discovered that they were under the impression that we were about 2 miles farther down the trail than we really were. We showed them the GPS coordinates, and showed them the spot we knew to be our correct location. They seemed doubious. So we wished them well, and headed off into the snow.



The next leg off the trip was exhausting, terrifying and incredibly beautiful. We crossed snow covered ridges and ravines for another few miles with only occasional sightings of trail. We knew that there was a parallel trail that dropped about 1000 feet and hopefully out of the snow, but we weren't sure we would be able to find the junction. With some tricky navigation we managed to find the trail and took it another 2 miles to a mostly snow free clearing where we camped. That day we had covered over 14 miles. Only about 3 of it went towards our original plan of 11. That left an extra long leg on the next day.

We had originally planned on having a nice easy 5 mile day on Wednesday. We would get to Elk Lake early and enjoy the resort. With the new plan we had to cover 17 miles. We were sure how much of it was under snow, but every mile that was took 3 times longer to cover. The first mile and a half was heavy snow, like the day before. I began imagining us dragging in to Elk Lake at 11:30 that night. Fortunately it cleared up and we began covering a lot of ground fast. It was mostly a nice wooded trail with an occasional clearing and some epic views of the South Sister. Beating my most optimistic expectations we arrived in camp at 6:30 P.M. just in time for dinner. We were all beyond exhausted.


The next day we did nothing. The boys played cards for 5 hours, and I sat in the shade trying not to move unnecessarily. I had been nursing some pretty intense blisters that started on day one, mile 2. It was simple by a miracle that they hadn't popped and worn down to the bone. My knees were still, and my hips were numb. We had covered 42 miles in the first three days. If we had continued on as planned the course would have totaled over 65 miles. We decided to do a day hike of Friday to round out the 50 miles instead.

That left some time for a little fishing and crawdaddying (if that's a word).

It's been almost a month since the trip and I've almost recovered from it. The blisters are only flaky craters and my knees have almost stopped clicking!

Can't wait until next year!

The Urban Homestead

Mary bought me this book for Christmas last year. I have really enjoyed it! I've always been a fan of books about self sufficiency. You know the kind. The ones that show you how to build your own log cabin, tan leather, raise goats and make furniture from raw timber. Stuff like that. But most of that stuff is out of reach at this point in my life. It ends up just being frustrating for me to read them.

This book is geared towards people living on small lots, or apartments. There are all kinds of good stuff, like tips of growing plants in buckets, making cheese, raising (small) livestock in urban areas, and more. I've done quite a few projects from this book, including making fresh cheese, and creating my own sourdough starter. Both were very tasty and fulfilling. And I didn't need to have more than 10 acres of land to do either!

Apartment gardening

This is the second year we have made an attempt at apartment gardening. We have a plot of earth about 7' x 3' in front of or patio. We have mint growing there year round and in the spring we plant other things. Last year it did go so well. We only had two tomato plants that I killed with a home remedy for aphids. This year we have three tomatoes, a zucchini in a bucket, basil, kale, Swiss chard, rosemary, thyme, sage, and a sunflower. It's creeped slowly onto our patio in buckets, and the halved wine barrel I bought Mary for mothers day.

In spite of the fact that it was too wet to plant until late June this year, things are going well! Were starting to get some delicious tomatoes and some sweet basil (always a good combo). The zucchini is doing well in it's bucket, and we should be getting some kale soon, too. Some day I'll have a place with a real garden plot, but for now the bucket method is working for us.






I've been making a delicious fried egg, fresh tomato and basil sandwich for breakfast this week. So tasty.

"Funny things my kids say."

I decided to make a book for Mary's birthday this year. The idea was to have a notebook to keep track of the funny things that Ethan says. I gave it to her, and found out three days later that she thought that I had bought it somewhere. She convinced me (not that it took much effort) to make another one to sell on Etsy. So here it is! You're welcome to purchase it, if you'd like...

http://www.etsy.com/listing/50272300/funny-things-my-kids-say-notebook

Eagle Creek

Yesterday our troop did a day hike at Eagle Creek as part of the preparations for the 50 mile hike we will be doing in a little over a month. All in all, we covered 13 miles yesterday, with full packs. That's fairly close to our hardest day on the trek.

Eagle Creek is only about an hour away from where we live, which is why we chose it. I had never been there before, but I have heard endless praise of the beauty found there. It started to get a little ridiculous, in fact. I thought, for sure, that I would be let down by the reality of the place after all the hype I have been exposed to. That was not the case. This has to be one of the most amazing places I have ever experienced. The trail winds along a cliff that, in several locations, had to be carved out of vertical basalt, leaving you only three options for travel: up the trail, down the trail, and straight down 400 feet into a raging river that ate boulders for breakfast and is picking it's teeth with a Douglas Fir. One of the most epic of these sections is Tunnel Falls. As the name implies, it is a tunnel that goes behind a waterfall. Awesome. The trail also includes the famous Punch Bowl Falls (which we didn't get to see from the ideal spot) and countless other waterfalls, bridges and points of interest. If you get a chance, I would recommend it. Unless you're afraid of heights.

Anthropomophins and more

Vigilante Carlstroem

This is a painting I did a few weeks ago that looks kind of (coincidentally) like the guitarist for The Hives, Vigilante Carlstroem.

new sketches

A new year, and a renewed creative drive.

Happy New Year!