Tomato chutney

Oh, what a dark and stormy morning with sideways rain beating on the windows. Unfortunately the worst weather isn't coming until tomorrow afternoon.  I hope the scary "epic windstorm" we're hearing about fizzles, but it should be an interesting weekend in Seattle. 

I was glad to stick close to home and kept busy yesterday with this box of leftover tomatoes from Amanda's garden.  I oven-dried and froze two big trays, and then decided to try a new chutney recipe. I thought I was done with chutney-making for the year, but dragged out all my canning stuff again.

I found a simple recipe on a BBC cooking website with tomatoes, fresh ginger, wine vinegar, sugar, garlic, peppers, etc.  Typical chutney.  But they know their chutney in England and are opinionated about it, so there were lots of comments on how to tinker with the basic recipe.  My kind of slap-dash cooking.

I've canned gallons of chutney, but I usually follow my recipes pretty closely.  The acid to vegetable ratio is important for safety, but I should know what I'm doing by now.  I "went rogue" on this recipe like a certain unmentionable person in the news.  Ha! The only downside is I can't make it the same way again.  Oh, well.  With some things in life, once is enough.

For starters, the BBC recipe was too sweet-- almost 2 pounds of sugar for 2 pounds of tomatoes.  I'd call that jam.  So I cut the sugar and added extra hot peppers and more spices. Tomatoes are bland. Once all the peeling and chopping is done and everything is in the pot, chutney makes itself as it cooks down and thickens.

By 11 am I was starving from smelling that delicious mixture, and made myself scrambled eggs with mushrooms. Very British. I spooned some of the hot chutney on top.  Chutney is not usually that tasty right out of the pot, but this was great.  And should get even better when it ages a bit in the jar.

So-- one stormy morning well-spent.

Batten down the hatches

We have a  ominous and unusual weather forecast.  Several inches of rain, and a couple serious wind storms, the remnants of a tropical typhoon.  If this goes as predicted, it will be a very interesting weekend in Seattle.  Who knows?

October 13th is International Skeptics Day.  The opposite of skepticism is trivialism, the notion that everything is true and possible.

Warts and all

Of course the warts cost extra, but I can't resist these crazy pumpkins. This guy came from the West Seattle nursery, an impulse purchase yesterday.  I wasn't going to decorate much, but the kids are coming this weekend so I got out the box of fall stuff for the mantle.

While the weather is still nice, I've been trying to clean up the garden and mulch with leaves from across the street.  They have a pretty good landscaping service over there now and keep taking "my" leaves away.  At this rate, I'll be working outside way into November. 

The trees still have their pretty leaves on our street, but not for long. The weathermen are excited this morning. A series of multiple strong storms is coming and it's going to be windy and wet.  Between now and Friday evening, we'll get almost 3 inches of rain in Seattle.  I might go out this morning and chop off the big dahlias. Not my favorite task, especially when they still have flowers, but by next week they'll be a soggy mess on the ground.  

I threw the rotting pink geraniums in the compost and bought fancy kale for the window box.  These are really pretty ones, and will last all winter or until I get tired of looking at them.     

Fall decorations like warty pumpkins and ornamental kale are beautiful little extravagances. When Mom saw my kale, she always asked how I was going to cook it?  To her, it was crazy that such a vegetable-looking plant was useless.  Pumpkins were for pie, and kale was for eating.  Oh, I miss all those funny things she would say.

Bye-bye Miss American pie

Renoir

The Apple Seller

The apple is one of nature's most glorious gifts.  Saturday was a cold, rainy morning, but I enjoyed seeing the local growers with their boxes of fine organic apples at the Twisp outdoor market.

Honeycrisp apples rule the roost.  When the craze started a few years ago, new Honeycrisp orchards were planted and they're all producing now.  Honeycrisp is a good eating apple, but they don't keep long in the refrigerator and you can't bake with them. Plus I can buy them here for the same price.

Anyway, on the edge of the market an older couple were selling (older) varieties from the back of their pickup for $1 a pound.  I bought some Winesap, Northern Spy and another called Spitz (I think.)  These are perfect cooking apples, and they told us in detail what each variety was best for.  It would be hard to find them anywhere in Seattle.

 

I made a pie yesterday, something I don't do much anymore, but hey-- it's that time of year.  When John got home from work, he asked me if Martha Stewart dropped by?

Being an expert on pie and everything else, she would have had many irritating and bossy tips. But I like to wing it when I make pie. Sometimes this works, sometimes not so good.

There's always an element of unknown with natural, new ingredients. This is what makes cooking fun.  I used plenty of butter and cinnamon, and for the first time, brown sugar instead of white. Why have I never done that before? So much tastier than icky white sugar.

These baking apples are quite hard and dense, so this small pie baked for almost two hours until the juice finally bubbled up and the apples got soft.  I'm sure this is the secret to the rich, flavorful filling you can only get with old-fashioned varieties. 

Here's something wholesome that's much less work and calories.  A plain, cored apple filled with nuts, dried cranberries, with a touch of brown sugar and maple syrup.  Bake until it is very soft, then serve with a dab a vanilla ice cream.  John swears a tablespoon of brandy on top makes it even better.

We have to keep our spirits up.  Twenty-eight days until election.

A Star Wars birthday

We had an easy drive home over the North Cascades highway yesterday, but winter is sure knocking on the door. The first snow fell this weekend in the mountains.

Here's a few snapshots from Maya's birthday celebration on Saturday.  It was chilly and rainy, but everyone had fun indoors. Star Wars has come around again to a brand new generation.

John hanging with Darth Vader

A princess warrior?

Maya and her friend Kate

And of course, cake and nice presents to open.

School days

We had a (mostly) dry and easy drive over the mountains and arrived right before Nova and her friend Adelina got off the school bus. 

Big 2nd graders now!

 After school chocolate-pumpkin doughnut treats.  (Maya already ate hers.)

 Piano practice.

 

Amanda made a nice roast chicken dinner.  And tomorrow we celebrate Maya's birthday. Unfortunately the forecast is for rain, but we hope to have a party outdoors in the park.