Baked Beans

Memorial Day had arrived,  and as we gather together to be with family and to remember those who have passed, food is a big part of this celebration. 

Baked Beans are my usual staple at family gatherings.  Not anything spectacular, but something that is always in demand.

Recipe:
2 large cans of organic baked beans
1 shot of whiskey
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 tbsp. Mustard
1 tbsp. Brown sugar
3 tbsp. Barbecue sauce
2 tbsp. Honey

Mix all ingredients together and place in crock pot on low and heat thoroughly.

Rhubarb!!

Last year, I noticed my rhubarb got very little size on it.  I have two plants (because my Grandma told me I needed a male and female plant for my rhubarb to grow), they were planted near my rabbit hutches and so, they should have been huge.  Alas, this was not so.  After many hours of researching on the net, I learned that for your rhubarb to be tasty, you must move it every few years.  Weird, but whatever, I moved it to my flowerbed.  This year, my rhubarb is huge and I've already got two cuttings off of it.

I love, love, love rhubarb.  My kids eat it raw, my husband begs for pies.  It is a must at our house.

Enter my Babycakes Cupcake Maker.  I would NEVER spend money on something like this (I say, while hiding my Cake Pops pan).  My Mom, however, will.  She bought me one in an after-Christmas sale, and until now it has sat in its box under my pantry shelf.  Out of curiousity last weekend, I dug out the recipe and instruction booklet.  Lo and behold, this thing makes mini-pies too!  And I just happened to have some rhubarb that I harvested that morning and 2 pints of organic strawberries.  Hmmmmm..... whatever shall I do?

I made pies!!  Excellent pies!! YUMMY pies!!

Here is how I did it:

Strawberry Rhubarb Pies

Ingredients:

1 pound rhubarb, chopped

2 pints strawberries, chopped

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup flour

1 package pre-made pie crust for 2 pies

Wash your rhubarb and berries and chop into small pieces.

Toss the fruit with the flour and sugar and let sit for 30 minutes.

The cupcake maker comes with a tool to cut the pie crust bottoms and tops.  If you don't have one, just preheat your oven to 400, spray the pie pan and lay your pie crust in the pan.

Place 8 of the larger circles in the pan.

Fill with mixture - an ice cream scoop works great for this.

Top off with a smidge of butter, add top crust, close the cupcake maker and wait!  If you are cooking in the oven, make sure to add "vents" for steam to escape, .ie, poke your crust with a fork a couple of times.  Baking in the oven takes about 40 minutes.

After about 8 minutes, your pies will look like this.  I cooked mine for about 4-5 more minutes.  After they cooled, they were sampled.

There were none left the next morning.  The recipe made 18 pies, I got 2.  Obviously, my boys liked them.

When I get my next rhubarb harvest I will discuss how to make rhubarb jam.  It is to die for!

Again, thank you for reading!

Reinvention

The best intentions are what I had, and as usual, the best intentions often fail.  I had every intention of making this blog about our journey to be GMO free.  While I am still very much anti-GMO, let us be realistic here for a moment.  I work full time, I am also a full time college student, with two sons and a husband and two demanding Boxers as well as rabbits to take care of.  My grocery shopping is limited to either Kroger, Wal*Mart or Meijer.  Our only locally owned grocery store is filthy and I refuse to shop there.  The non-GMO choices are minimal, at best.  So, I did not succeed.  I do not feel bad either.

I'm reinventing this blog to be about how my family lives a country life, being as self-sufficient as possible.  Hopefully this will encourage me to post more often!

Thanks for sticking it out...