Savory sausage oats

Healthy diet and exercise are the keys to reaching a healthy weight. As obvious as that is, years ago, I was convinced that I could achieve my health goals with diet alone. To do so, I cut sugars and other heavily processed carbs from my diet. I was getting tired of eggs and bacon for breakfast--I know, woe is me--and had put my favorite breakfast oatmeal back in the cupboard. 

I mentioned this while visiting my friend Lynn Stone, of Sorrento and San Francisco, and she suggested that I start my day with savory oats. Though at first, I couldn't imagine enjoying them without maple syrup or brown sugar, she reasoned that oats are a grain, just like rice or wheat, and that there was no reason not to eat them as a savory dish instead of sweet for breakfast or any meal. "Just add some butter and salt to the cooked oatmeal," she suggested. And she was right.

So in the fall, as I was cooking up sausages so I could use the pan drippings to make gravy for some yummy turkey and stuffing potstickers, inspiration struck to make savory sausage oats for breakfast. I used rolled oats, but as long as you follow the instructions, you could used steel-cut oats or groats, both of which will add considerably to the cooking time. 

Savory sausage oats with cheddar, garnished with pan-fried cabbage

Here's the recipe for breakfast for one:

1/2 cup rolled oats

1 cup water

a pinch of salt

2 cooked, chopped breakfast sausage links

1 egg

1/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese

Sriracha hot sauce and other seasonings to taste

Cook the oats as usual. (Add a pinch of salt and the water to a small saucepan, cover, then put over a high flame. When it boils, reduce the heat to medium, stir in the oats, then cook them, covered, for five or six minutes, stirring occasionally.)

As the oats are nearly finished cooking, stir in the chopped sausage and the egg. Keep the pot on the heat and stir occasionally till the egg is well mixed and cooked through. As the oats are already hot, this may take as little as a minute. Spoon the hot oat mixture into a bowl and top with the shredded cheese and hot sauce, or whatever seasonings you choose. Stir it all up to help the cheese melt, et voila! A delicious, quick new way to eat oats for breakfast ... or any meal.

Note: The egg is mixed into the oats to give them a smooth, creamy texture, but it would make a more attractive presentation to fry the egg sunny side up, then slide it atop the sausage oats. As you can see, I also added a bit of pan-fried shredded cabbage that I was preparing for another use. Some kimchee would add texture and flavor to this dish, too.

One-pot macaroni and cheese

Comfort foods are foods that bring back warm memories of home and childhood, foods that we eat when our spirits are low and we want to feel better. Though comfort foods can be sweet (chocolate pudding) or savory (mashed potatoes and gravy), they always hit the spot. 

One of the most popular comfort foods in the United States, macaroni and cheese comes in many varieties. There are shelves of it in the supermarket, boxes of many colors with different cheeses, different noodles, dried powders we add to pasta, milk, and butter. A "step up" includes cheese sauce in a silver pouch. It's available in the frozen food section, too, in single-serving containers and family style trays. Many delis carry it as ready-to-go meal option. Though all of these options sell well because Americans want to indulge in delicious comforting fare, our love of macaroni and cheese more than likely came from eating the homemade stuff when we were children.

My sisters and I loved our mother's macaroni and cheese, made from roux, with milk and mixed cheddar cheeses and a bit of dried mustard. I'll never forget one Christmas eve when I was a teen. A pot of macaroni and cheese with buttered bread crumbs on top was in the oven when the power went out. Fortunately, we had a gas oven at the time, so dinner kept cooking. My sister Jill collected candles, and Dad found the oil lamp we used to light the dining room in such "emergencies."

After my father fried up some red hot dogs, we all sat down at the dining table to eat. The house was quiet--no television, no hum of appliances--and the mood as we ate was calm, peaceful, thoughtful. There was no rush to finish so we could watch our programs or read a book, so we sat together and talked. After dinner, we sat around the same lamp and played Yahtzee. Eventually, the lights came back on, and we went back to our routines, but I decided that year that we would share the same meal every Christmas Eve we spent together from then on. 

One-pot macaroni and cheese

Making homemade macaroni and cheese as my mother did isn't complicated, but it's more than some want to attempt. Anyone unfamiliar with the process of making roux and then turning it into cheese sauce might be intimidated. And so, many turn to boxed macaroni and cheese, but there is another way to make a simple macaroni and cheese that's ready in 30 to 40 minutes. One-pot mac and cheese. 

Here's the recipe.
4 cups cold water (and more for rinsing)
1 pound macaroni
1 cup half and half
2 T butter
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp black pepper
8 ounces of Italian blend shredded cheeses

Put the macaroni in a medium saucepan (a taller one, rather than short and wide, is better) and rinse it with cold water. Drain the water as best you can, then add four cups of cold water to the pot. Cook the pasta over medium heat till it comes to a simmer, stirring every minute or two to keep the noodles from clumping. For those of you who don't know, "simmer" means right on the edge of a boil. When you see steam and you hear the occasional bubble, that's the simmer. 
Stir in the half and half, then cover again for a minute or two to let the mixture come back to the simmer. Turn the heat down to low and cook the pasta for 10 minutes, stirring every minute or so. You'll notice the pasta plumping up, and just before it's finished, the level of liquid in the pan will seem to drop to about half or two-thirds the height of the noodles. Two things are happening: the noodles are swelling and rising up, and the level of liquid is dropping. As you approach the 10-minute mark, you'll notice the liquid becoming creamy and coating the pasta.
Add the butter and spice, and stir them in well. Remove the pot from the heat. Add half of the cheese, stir well, then stir in the remaining half. Season to taste if needed, or stir in optional additions, like bacon bits, chopped chicken tenders, cooked spinach or whatever you think will taste good. 
Note: A blend of cheeses is best for this dish. I attempted this first with sharp, dry cheddar, and the result simply wasn't cheesy enough. Mix your own, or look for mixed, shredded cheeses in the supermarket.

Blueberry bars

The mind is an interesting thing. Say the right word, and all sorts of images, thoughts, feelings flood into it. Madison Avenue counts on this. They hope that a commercial with a sizzling burger will send us out to buy one at whatever restaurant they're promoting. When my friend Jeni Webber mentioned how she misses her mother's blueberry pie--and her mother--I started salivating and was determined to make two. One for me and one for friends. 

When I got up, however, I saw that there wasn't enough vegetable shortening in the cupboard to make two pies, and I definitely wanted to share whatever I baked.

"Muffins?" No. "Cake?" No. "Bars," I thought. Blueberry bars. 

A quick internet search turned up a recipe on Smitten Kitchen that looked promising, but I didn't have the lemon that the recipe called for. I decided to use spices to bring some high notes to the dish. Coriander came to mind first, but I decided instead to use ginger for those high notes and some cinnamon and nutmeg to complement it. 

Blueberry bars with a wheat, oat, almond crumble

As I was already changing things, I decided to replace some of the wheat flour with whole grain and whole nut: oats and almonds. While they don't rise as well as wheat flour in a muffin, they worked well here, both for the texture and the taste. 

Blueberry bars

1 cup roasted almonds

1 cup oat

1 1/4 cup white flour (approximately)

1  cup granulated sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup cold butter, cut into 1 T pats

1 egg

1/2 cup white sugar

4 tsp cornstarch

1/8 tsp grated nutmeg

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ginger

4 cups blueberries (frozen or fresh, but be gentle with fresh)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13-inch baking pan or line it with parchment paper and grease the paper. 

Process the oats and almonds in a food processor till they create a coarse, evenly blended flour. Put them in a large bowl with enough white flour to bring the total volume to 3 cups. I needed 1 1/4 cups of flour when I made it.

In a small bowl, mix the sugar, baking powder, and salt. Mixing them apart from the other ingredients will make it easier for you to break up clumps of baking powder. Add this to the flour mix and blend well. 

Cut in the butter, then cut in the egg, till you have an even crumb mixture. As an alternative to cutting the butter in by hand, you could pulse the butter into the flour in your food processor if its bowl is large enough. Watch the mixture carefully as you do this. You want to pulse it to the point that the butter has been well incorporated, but if you do this too long, the butter may start to melt. If the flour butter mixture starts to clump together again, go no further. Quickly pulse in the egg.

Put half of this mixture in the prepared pan and pat it down lightly to cover the bottom of the pan evenly. 

For the filling, mix the sugar, starch, and spices well in a medium bowl. Then gently fold the berries in to that bowl. Spread the berries onto the layer of crumble base, sprinkling any remaining sugar-spice mix over them evenly. Top with an even layer of the remaining crumb mix. 

Bake the bars till the crumble turns light brown. Check at 40 or 45 minutes, but it took about 10 minutes longer in my oven. Put the pan on a cooling rack. Cut into bars after it has cooled completely. 

Kapow! apple and rhubarb chutney crumble

After I finished making four kinds of apple butter last week, I found about eight little Paula Red apples left in my bag. At first, I thought I'd make a little apple pie, but I really didn't want to make a crust, and as it was already evening, I didn't want to run to the store to buy one. Ah, I thought, I'll make an apple crumble.

As I sliced and cored these apples, I decided that I wanted to make something with less sugar than a traditional crumble or crisp, but I wasn't sure what to do to boost the flavor. Sure, I could mix in some apple butter for sweetness, but was there something else in my fridge? That's when I came across some rhubarb chutney I had made a while back. Instead of adding sweetness, I would add spice! 

Apple and rhubarb chutney crumble

And, oh boy, is it good. Think about it. The spices are already in the chutney. The spicy sweet tangy smell coming from the oven was incredible! Don't have any rhubarb chutney? Here's my recipe. Not interested in making your own chutney? Pick up some Major Grey's chutney or mango chutney at the store.

Here's the recipe.

Filling:
8 or 10 good pie apples, cored and sliced (enough for a 9-by-12 inch pan with room for topping)
1 cup apple butter
2 cups rhubarb or other chutney

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Mix the apples, apple butter, and chutney well. Pour into a greased 9-by-12 inch baking pan. Sprinkle 2 or 3 cups of your favorite crumble/streusel topping on top, then bake for 40 minutes or till bubbly around the edges. Let cool before serving with or without whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

If you don't have a topping recipe, try this.
1/2 cup roasted almonds
1 cup oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup rice flour (I used this to keep it gluten-free, but wheat flour would work well.)
5 or 6 T of butter
perhaps a bit of water

Put the almonds, oats, brown sugar and flour into a food processor and process till the nuts are chopped and the mixture is homogenous. Add the butter and process again till the mixture clumps well. It it is still dry in places, add a tablespoon or two of water and process for a bit longer. 

Rhubarb chutney

It's no secret that I love rhubarb. I've been working for years on cranberry-rhubarb jam recipes that I hope to share soon, and earlier this summer, I made rhubarb butter that was out of this world. But I leaned so far into the sweet side of things that I decided to try something different: chutney. 

I read widely on the topic and soon realized that it was British-style chutney I was thinking of, like the Major Grey's chutney or mango chutney you can buy in most supermarkets. There are heaps more kinds of chutneys that actually originated with Indians, not just in India, but it was the sweet, spicy, tangy condiment I had in mind.

Rhubarb chutney ready to put up for winter

Thank goodness I did. It's marvelous sauce, and I've eaten it on toast, with pork, and even with cheese on an omelet. As I explored the different ways to use it, I realized that it would take it's place alongside yellow and dijon mustards, sriracha and other hot sauces, and katsu sauce in my refrigerator. 

Here's the recipe.

6 cups sliced onion
10 cups sliced rhubarb
1/2 cup minced crystalized ginger
1.5 cups raisins
4 cups light brown sugar
3 cups apple cider vinegar
2 T salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. cayenne or other chili pepper powder

Put all the ingredients into a large nonreactive pot. Bring to a boil, stirring, then reduce to a simmer. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, till the sauce thickens. This could take 45 minutes or more depending on the water content of your onions and rhubarb.

Ladle the sauce into sterilized jars and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. This batch made about 16 half pints of chutney. 

Consider experimenting with this recipe. It's quite flexible. For example, you might replace the crystalized ginger with just a tablespoon or two of dried ginger, or even some minced fresh ginger. Try golden raisins, dried cranberries, or another favorite dried fruit instead of raisins. Chopped dried apricot comes to mine. Add more heat, or different heat. The smokiness of chipotle would go nicely in a chutney. As it is, this recipe isn't particularly spicy hot.

Three apple butters

Fall brings with it warm days, cool nights, and a more silver light, but harvest time is what makes the season so special to me. What do I like to harvest most? Apples. With those apples, I make pie, of course, but I also make apple butter so I can enjoy the taste of fall all year-round. 

Usually, there are bushels and bushels of apples hanging from the branches of trees up and down the Shore Road. I pick what I want and leave plenty for the deer that grace the woods near my home. Last year was a bumper crop, some say because the winter before was so harsh. I'm not sure the cause, but I do know that last year's relative feast seems to have brought on this year's relative apple famine. There's even one tree that has not a single apple on it. Imagine. 

So, rather than pick for free, I instead went to Johnston's orchards off the Bangor Road. The season is still young, so there were only three varieties available for picking: MacIntosh, Paula Red, and Cortlands. I was familiar with the Macs and Cortlands, great baking apples, but had to try the Paula Reds to be sure they're suitable for making apple butter, and they are. They tasted sweeter than the other two, so I knew they'd work well. 

My goal this year was to make apple butter with as little added sugar as possible. A friend makes it with no added sugar, but by the time I add spices to mine, some sugar is needed to balance the tartness in the apple skins. In the past, I've enjoyed apple butter enriched with mulled red wine. The wine sweetens the butter a bit, and the spices add richness and depth of flavor.

Mulled wine-brandy, apple syrup, blackberry-lime.

This year, I decided to expand on that by making one batch with mulled red wine and brandy. It definitely needed some sugar, but I added only 1 cup to the entire batch, which yielded 9 pints of apple butter. For the other two batches, I decided to try sweetening them using things I already had in my cupboard from years past: apple syrup and blackberry lime syrup. 

Apple syrup is cider that has been cooked down till it's thick, almost like molasses. The blackberry lime syrup was made from cooked blackberries, lime juice, and sugar two years ago. It's fantastic in desserts, and so it seemed like a natural way to sweeten and enrich the flavor of apple butter. 

The basic recipe below started with enough apples to fill a 10-quart stockpot, which filled a six-quart slow cooker with apple sauce, which then cooked down slowly over the course of half a day or more to yield about 4.5 quarts of apple butter. If you'd like to make less, simply cut the recipe. 

Here's the recipe for the mulled-wine enriched apple butter. Basic instructions for the other recipes follow.

10 quarts of mixed apples

2 cups water

1 bottle of red wine

1 cup brandy

1 T cinnamon

1 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 cup sugar

I measure my apples by filling the stockpot nearly to the brim with whole apples, then I remove them and clean out the stockpot. Core the apples with a corer or by cutting the apples into sections and cutting off the parts of the core. Put the apples into the stockpot. Once you've put about half of the apples into the pot, add the water and turn the burner on medium. Core and chop the rest of the apples, adding them to those in the pot. Cover the pot. Stir occasionally to keep the apples on bottom from burning. As the water in the pot heats up, it will soften more of the apples, adding to the liquid in the pot. 

While the apples are cooking and softening, put the wine, brandy, and spices to into a medium saucepan. Set over medium heat, stirring occasionally, till the wine begins to give off steam, then reduce the heat to low. Continue simmering the wine mixture either till the apples are cooked or till the mixture has been reduced by half. 

Once the apples have softened, turn the heat off and remove the pot from the heat source. Add the sugar and mulled wine to the pot. Use an immersion blender to puree the contents of the stockpot. Be careful to keep the end of the blender immersed while using it. That sauce is very hot, and splatters will burn. Continue till there are no more apple chunks in the sauce. This can take several minutes.

Carefully pour the sauce into a six-quart slow cooker. It should just about fit. Put the lid mostly on so the sauce will stay hot, but moisture can escape. The sauce will thicken into apple butter over low heat over the course of several hours. This will happen faster if the spiced wine-brandy was reduced over the stove. Stir perhaps every 15 to 30 minutes. I have left this on low overnight before. Doing so produces a skin on the top that can be stirred into the sauce. But if you don't know your slow cooker very well, it's best not to leave it untended. 

As soon as the sauce is sufficiently thick--I like to cook off about 1/4 of the volume--use the immersion blender again to make the butter smoother. Again, be careful. The splatters are very hot. Put into sterile jars and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. If you don't want to do that, it should keep well in the refrigerator for several weeks. 

For the apple syrup apple butter, I cooked about seven quarts of apples as above and added half a pint of apple syrup and the spices before pureeing it and finishing it in the slow cooker. It will thicken faster because I didn't add a bottle of wine and cup of brandy. Process as before. 

For the blackberry apple butter, I cooked about 10 quarts of apples as above and added a pint of blackberry-lime syrup just before pureeing. I varied the spice mix, using 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of allspice, and 1 teaspoon of ginger, which I think goes better with blackberries than cloves. 

Roasted delicata squash pizza

Pizza. The Italian food that many identify with America. When I asked my international students their favorite American foods, many answered "pizza!" with enthusiasm. 

I can understand why they might say this, too. Think about how many places you can buy pizza now in Hancock County. It's available at several pizzerias, even more restaurants, frozen in every supermarket, and by the slice at most convenience stores. Counting all the different toppings and brands out there, there are hundreds of choices available to us.

But when I was a boy in Ellsworth, we were limited to just a few brands of frozen pizza and one pizzeria that I knew of, Roy's. Before either of my sisters, Jill and Karen, had a license to drive, if we wanted pizza when Mom and Dad weren't around, we usually made it from a boxed mix that came from the supermarket. At the time, it seemed like quite a treat, but now, with so many options, the thought of that boxed mix doesn't exactly make my mouth water. 

What does make my mouth water is making delicious meals using local ingredients, and one such ingredient available now at farmer's markets and supermarkets is delicata squash. This squash has skins so thin that you can eat them. Its full of flavor. "No, Grandma, there's no need to add that half stick of butter. Save it for winter squashes." In my opinion, the best way to cook delicata squash is to roast it. So, when I bought some recently, I knew that was what I'd do. 

What I didn't know when I bought it was that I'd later be inspired to make pizza with it. I didn't want to drive back to the store for more ingredients, so I opened the refrigerator to see what I could add to make this pizza sing. 

Delicata squash pizza with bacon and scallions.

The result: roasted delicata squash pizza with bacon and chopped scallions with creamy cottage cheese blend instead of sauce. The nuttiness of the squash goes very well with the smoky bacon, creamy cheese, and the sharp, bright taste of the scallions. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

Here's the recipe. 

1 pound of pizza dough

2 delicata squashes

oil for brushing

4 strips bacon

1 cup cottage cheese

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. finely ground black pepper

3 scallions, sliced thinly, both the white and green

Make or buy 1 pound of pizza dough and have it at room temperature when you're ready to start making the pizza. There are good options for prepared dough at the supermarket, but if you want to make your own and don't have a recipe already, I like this recipe from Forno Bravo, a pizza oven maker. Italian "00" flour, the finest grind, was available at Rooster Brother and John Edwards in Ellsworth the last time I checked. 

Carefully cut the delicata squashes into slices 1/4-inch thick. There's no need to peel them. The thin skins are edible. Brush the slices with oil--I used olive oil--then put them on two baking sheets. Roast them in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, turn them once with a spatula, then roast for 15 minutes more. Remove them from the oven and let them cool before removing the seeds from the middle of each slice, a step that is much easier to do after they've cooked than before. The seeds can taste quite bitter, and while they might make a good snack if roasted and seasoned separately, they do not belong on this pie.

While the squash is roasting, cook the bacon till it has just started to crisp up. If you cook it till it's completely crispy, it may burn on top of the pizza. After the bacon has cooled, chop it into small pieces. 

In a small bowl, mix the cottage cheese, Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. I used cottage cheese because that's what I had on hand, but ricotta would work well. Any hard, sharp cheese would substitute well for the Parm, too, which was added to this mix because the cottage cheese (and ricotta) can be quite wet. If you already have shredded cheese on hand, like mozzarella, go ahead and use it instead of the cheese mixture. Smoked gouda would work quite well, also.

Move the oven racks to the middle and top of the oven and preheat it to 475 degrees.

On a floured board, roll half of the dough into a roughly oval shape and lay it on one baking sheet. Do the same with the other half of the dough. I used the same sheets already used for roasting the squash. As they were already oiled, there was no need to put anything else on them, but if you use clean baking sheets, oil them or sprinkle on some cornmeal. You also could cook these on a pizza stone if you have one. Follow the directions for using that stone, which may require a longer preheat, higher temperature, and shorter cooking time. 

Spread half of the cheese mixture over each crust, then arrange the squash slices on top. There may be some leftover roasted squash. Yay! Sprinkle the chopped bacon on the pizzas. There should never be leftover bacon. Finish by sprinkling the chopped scallions on top all of that. Bake the pizzas for 8 to 10 minutes, one on the top rack, one in the middle, switching them after they've cooked about 5 minutes.

After they've finished baking, let them cool for a few minutes before slicing them. Buon appetito!

Vegan chocolate "pots de crème"

Chocolate. We go way back.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, my mother would give me a quarter. My sisters, Jill and Karen, and I would walk up to Dick's Cornor Store--Yes, that's how it was spelled--with the other neighborhood kids. I sometimes bought a soda from the vending machine by the door and still had a dime left over, but much of the time, I went straight to the candy rack to buy a chocolate bar.

Dick's burned in 1983, but my love of chocolate lives on, even as my tastes have changed. Milk chocolate bars no longer hold the appeal they once did. Now, I demand a deeper, richer chocolate experience. One such experience comes in small dishes, in pots de crème, simple chocolate custards.

The recipe I usually follow comes from the Food Network. It's simple, easy, and indulgent, and whenever I make it, there's plenty to share with friends, whom I love and want to be happy.

But what's a genial host to do when he wants his friends who don't eat eggs, milk, and cream to be happy? Create a vegan version! Sure, it's not a true custard, hence the quotation marks around "pots de crème," but it's just as indulgent.

Vegan chocolate "pots de crème."

Here's the recipe.

9 ounces of dark chocolate, chips or chopped

2 cups unsweetened almond milk (reserve 1/4 cup)

2 tea bags (spice tea)

2 tbls. cornstarch

1/2 ripe banana, mashed (optional)

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

Put the chocolate in the bottom of a blender.

Heat the almond milk with the tea bags in a small saucepan over low heat. Almond milk can scorch if it gets too hot.

As the almond milk heats, put the cornstarch and reserved almond milk in a small bowl and stir till dissolved.

As soon as the tea bags have steeped long enough to lend color to the almond milk, add the mashed banana, sugar, and salt. Stir till the sugar has dissolved.

Add the almond milk with the cornstarch and turn the heat up to low-medium or medium. Stir continuously to avoid scorching. After a few minutes, the mixture should thicken up noticeably, indicating that the liquid has warmed up enough for the starch to do its thing. When I made it last, this thickening occurred when the liquid got to about 170 degrees F.

Remove the pan from the heat. Quickly stir in the vanilla, then pour the mixture into the blender. Hold the lid on the blender with a kitchen towel. It's hot, and building pressure could force the lid off. Blend till the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth. This might take a minute or two. Pour into small dishes. It should make six to eight half-cup servings. Refrigerate for at least an hour. 

Choosing your chocolate: While the recipe calls for dark chocolate, how dark depends on your taste. To me, milk chocolate would be too sweet, but anything from semi-sweet to 90% cacao should work well. Flavored bars, like those with sea salt caramel or chili pepper, can add interesting flavor to the dish, but stay away from bars with chunks of nuts or dried fruits, which may settle in the blender and not mix well.

Choosing your tea: Pick tea with a flavor that goes well with chocolate. I have used both Celestial Seasonings Coconut Thai Chai and Gingerbread Spice tea in the past. Earl Grey tea is popular in chocolate now, and raspberry tea seems like a natural fit.

Melt-in-your mouth Blueberry Cake

No fruit says "Maine" like wild blueberries, and though you can buy them in the freezer section of the local supermarket year-round now, when I was growing up, if you wanted blueberries in the winter, you had to go get them yourself in late summer.

When I was a boy, my mother would take us to visit her friend, Donna Rae, and we'd pick quarts of blueberries by hand from the fields behind her house. Sure, it would have been easier and faster to use a rake, but harvesting by hand allowed us to pick only the fattest, ripest berries. We learned to tug on those leaf-hidden clusters of fruit with loose fingers so that only those blueberries ready to drop would land in the palms of our hands. Berries that weren't quite ready stayed on the bushes for another day.

When we got home, we cleaned the bounty, and most of the fruit went into the freezer. Every bite of pancake in December, muffin in January, or pie in February brought back memories of bent knees, warm summer breezes, the rustling of blueberry leaves, and the sound of berries being dropped into plastic bowls. Not all of them went into the freezer. Some were destined for my mother's delicious blueberry cake.

At the time, it was the only blueberry cake I knew. But after years of trying other people's blueberry cakes, this recipe stands out as lighter and more moist than the rest, probably because the egg whites are beaten separately and folded in. Of course, I could be biased.

Note: If you use frozen blueberries, don't be alarmed when some of the purple color of the berries bleeds into the cake. It will taste just as delicious.

Melt-in-your-mouth blueberry cake

Here's the recipe.

2 eggs, separated

1/4 cup confectioners sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup shortening

1 tsp vanilla

1-1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup milk

1-1/2 cups blueberries tossed in a bit of flour
(Optional additions: a tablespoon or two of finely minced crystallized ginger adds a delicious spicy note to the cake. Fold it in with the egg whites.)

Beat the egg whites with confectioners sugar in a small bowl till stiff.

Cream the granulated sugar, salt, and shortening in a large bowl. Beat in the yolks and vanilla.
Mix together the flour and baking powder, then add to creamed mix alternately with the milk.

Fold in the egg whites.

Fold in the blueberries.

Bake in a greased 8-by-8-by-2-inch pan in a 350 degree oven for 50 minutes to an hour. A toothpick inserted into the cake should come out clean. Set the pan on a cooling rack and let the cake cool at least 10 minutes before cutting.

Rhubarb butter

I love cooking things that grow in my yard or in my neighborhood. But even more, I love canning what I cook and enjoying it far out of season.

Every year, when the apple trees along the road on which I live grow heavy with fruit, I harvest bags of apples to make butter and molasses. For the last few years, I have experimented by adding wine and spices, thinking that whatever could be mulled would be delicious in apple butter. The experiments have paid off. Throughout the winter and spring, I spread thick apple butter on toast or mix it with butter and chopped walnuts to put on waffles or French toast.

Though it’s not apple season yet, it is, however, rhubarb season. Though most harvest rhubarb only in late spring, it can be harvested judiciously all summer if you don’t let the plants flower.

Years ago, a former colleague, Sue Jellison, graciously gave me rhubarb plants, and though I have used those red and green stalks to make cranberry-rhubarb jam for a few years, this summer, I decided to experiment. While the rhubarb molasses didn’t turn out well, the rhubarb syrup did, but the real joy was tasting my first batch of rhubarb butter.

Rhubarb buttter and warm double-cream cheese.

As one might expect, it takes a fair amount of sugar to sweeten it up, but the result of combining rhubarb, sugar, cinnamon, heat and time is a thick, sweet-tangy spread that is delicious on toast, with cheese, or even as a substitute for the traditional sweet-tangy accompaniment to egg rolls, duck sauce. Try mixing it with a little maple syrup and butter to put on pancakes.

Rhubarb Butter

Makes 4 cups

6 cups chopped rhubarb stalks

3 cups sugar

½ tbl. ground cinnamon

Stir the chopped rhubarb stalks – the leaves are toxic – and the sugar in a pot. Let it sit till the sugar is wet with moisture from the fruit. This might take 20 minutes. If the fruit doesn’t yield much moisture, add ½ cup of water. Bring the fruit and sugar to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Remove the pot from the heat and add the cinnamon. Other spices could be added to taste, ½ tsp. of dried ginger perhaps, or any other spice associated with rhubarb pie.

Pour the mixture into a slow cooker. Heat it on high for about an hour with the cover ajar to let moisture escape. High heat at first speeds up the reduction process when the mixture is wettest and least likely to burn, but it could be started on low.

Scrape the sides and stir the mixture with a rubber spatula. Using an immersion blender, process the mixture in the slow cooker till there are no more chunks. Reduce the heat to low and cook the sauce with the cover ajar till the volume of the mixture is reduced by one-third or one-half, scraping and stirring occasionally. I prefer it thicker, so reduced mine by one-half. Depending on your slow cooker, this could take from a few hours to several. Test the sauce for taste and thickness occasionally, keeping in mind that it will thicken as it cools.

Store the rhubarb butter in clean jars in the refrigerator or process it as you would jam in a hot water bath.