Henny Penny Farmette

Family and friends may love the hustle and bustle of holiday activities but often are too tired at the end of the day to cook. There’s a simple solution. Before leaving the house, someone needs to assemble a stew or meal that simmers all day in a slow cooker.

A hearty bean and beef stew is garnished with a dash of extra virgin olive oil, Italian parsley, and coarsely ground black pepper

The process is simple. Choose your meal, put the ingredients in a slow cooker, turn it on, and forget about it until you are ready to feed your gang at the end of the day.

Slow cookers are terrific tools for making tasty stews like apple chicken, Mexican pork and hominy, and red beans with Cajun  sausages. Or, make a corned beef and cabbage dish with carrots and potatoes. Beef stroganoff, pepper steak, and even clam chowder or a fish stew taste sublime when cooked slowly for several hours.

Serve your hot meal alongside a simple salad. Choose perhaps broccoli slaw with chopped apples and pears, segments of seedless tangerines, and a handful of sliced almonds. Drizzle or spritz with Asian Sesame Ginger dressing. Put out slices of French bread and possibly a platter of cheese.

Right before serving the meal, sprinkle the hot food with some fresh herbs, a dash of olive oil, some shaved cheese, or coarsely ground black pepper. What could be easier?

For more delicious farmhouse recipes, tips for keeping honeybees and chickens, growing heirloom vegetables, and tending fruit trees, check out my latest book, A BEELINE TO MURDER.

Released in hardcover, the book makes a great gift for holidays, birthdays, and other celebratory events. Available online and a brick-and-mortar bookstores everywhere. See, http://tinyurl.com/p8d6owd

The first cozy mystery in the Henny Penny Farmette mystery series by Meera Lester, from Kensington Books

Pumpkins are quintessentially associated with autumn

My husband hails from the Dominican Republic, located on the east side of Hispaniola. Haiti occupies the west side of the Caribbean island. In the DR (as it is commonly called), Halloween today is celebrated much like it is in the United States. But it hasn’t always been that way.

Some who were born in the Caribbean do not celebrate Halloween, primarily because of religious convictions and a belief that Halloween has no roots in the history, cultural traditions, or even relevance to African-Caribbean folklore. But others have accepted the holiday and enjoy its fun-loving activities such as cavorting in costumes, consuming candy, and carving pumpkins.

As for superstitions in the DR, there are many. Did you know, for example, that a pregnant woman should not go to the ocean? I know, it seems a little strange since DR women live on an island surrounded by ocean. Another superstition is that a toddler who looks into a mirror will never speak (also strange since many youngsters in the DR today are educated as bilingual). There are witches spells, too. And ghosts and goblins abound. All part of the fun.

When my husband Carlos was growing up in the DR, Halloween wasn’t celebrated, however, Dominicanos did celebrate the Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos) with sugar skulls, festively painted. The holiday honored one’s loved ones who’d passed away and their ancestors.

At Sagrada, in Oakland, sugar skull mold, icing colors, meringue powder, and more can be purchased with directions for making those treats. See, https://www.facebook.com/SAGRADA-Sacred-Arts-121760811179202/timeline/

If you’re not into whipping up a batch of sugar skulls, how about a pumpkin soup? Rich and complex with Dominican flavors, it’s a dish my husband fondly recalls from the days around Halloween/Day of the Death during his childhood. A bowl of tasty, nourishing soup can fortify the entire family before they don their costumes and head out for a little Halloween fun.

Dominican Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter

1 cup chopped onion

3 garlic cloves, minced

3 cups pumpkin puree (canned pumpkin may be used or West Indian pumpkin, calabaza)

2 cups chicken broth

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 1/2 cups unsweetened canned coconut milk

Directions:

Melt the butter in a large cooking pot over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic and sauté until onions are golden brown.

Add pumpkin puree, chicken broth, allspice, and crushed red pepper.

Bring to a boil and immediately reduce the heat.

Let simmer for 30 minutes.

Remove from heat and puree the soup in a blender (do this in batches).

Return to pureed soup to the cooking pot.

Add the brown sugar and the coconut milk in batches of 1/2 cup each time until the desired consistency has been achieved.

Season with salt and pepper, according to taste. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Desert Gold is an early ripening peach cultivar that grows well in the southwest and in western gardens

Summer remains weeks away but already the Northern California farmers’ markets are in full swing, selling apricots, cherries, strawberries, and early-ripening peaches. The early peaches I grow on the farmette are Desert Gold.

Peaches taste great eaten fresh, prepared in cobblers, and added to homemade ice cream. But you can also use fresh peaches to make a lovely, slow-sipping brandy-and-wine drink.

Eau de vie is French for “water of life.” Basically, it is a brandy made of fruit with no added sweetener and not aged. It is best consumed chilled and sipped after a meal as a dessert or digestive drink.

Making your own eau de vie is fairly straightforward and you’ll find many easy recipes. Don’t be afraid to experiment with fruit flavors. Basically, just add prepared fruit to pure grain alcohol and then distill it. Or, mash fresh fruit, ferment, and distill it. Here’s an easy recipe for a summer drink that combines purchased eau de vie with white wine and peaches.

PEACHY SUMMER SIPPER RECIPE

Ingredients:

6 ripe peaches

4 cups dry white wine

1 cup superfine sugar

1/4 cup Eau de Vie (brandy made of fruits)

Directions:

Skin the peaches and slice each peach in half.

Pour the wine into a stainless steel pan.

Gently simmer the fruit in the white wine until tender (about 15 minutes).

Cover the fruit and let stand overnight to impart its full flavor to the wine.

Remove the peaches from the wine.

Strain the wine through a fine sieve or paper filter.

Add the eau de vie to the peach-flavored wine.

Add the sugar and stir well to dissolve.

Pour the blended beverage into sterilized dry bottles and cap or cork.

Keep refrigerated. Use within two weeks.

Jars of freshly made blood-orange marmalade are a festive red currant color and perfect for holiday gift-giving

On Christmas Eve this year, I made marmalade from our blood oranges to tuck into our holiday gift baskets.

Our citrus trees are still young and the crop, though ripe, was not yet bountiful. I used almost our entire crop of 20 oranges to make 8 jars (4 ounces each) of the blood orange marmalade.

My recipe is straightforward and the steps are simple. The finished marmalade is a lovely currant color, has a sweet/tangy taste, and possesses an interesting texture made so by the inclusion of rind.

Lemons and blood oranges combined with sugar render a sweet yet tangy marmalade

Ingredients:

2 cups orange peel (washed and thinly sliced); roughly 10 medium oranges

1 quart of chopped orange pulp; about 10-15 medium oranges

1 cup lemon (cut into thin slices and seeded); roughly 2 medium lemons

7 cups granulated sugar (the amount of sugar depends on how many cups of citrus mixture you have)

5 Tablespoons of classic pectin

Water to cover the jars by 2 inches for hot water bath processing

A large pot and a wooden spoon work well for cooking the marmalade

Directions:

Place oranges and lemon into a large pot and simmer for 5 minutes.

Remove from heat, cover, and let rest for 12 to 18 hours (I place my citrus mixture in the refrigerator overnight).

Measure by cupfuls the amount of fruit mixture. Add one cup of sugar per cup of fruit mixture.

Over high heat, boil fruit and sugar for approximately 20 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent sticking.

Turn down heat and stir in 5 Tablespoons of classic pectin. Return to boil and stir until mixture thickens and gels when a small amount in placed on a frozen plate.

Remove freshly washed heated jars from the dishwasher.

Simmer lids and rings in shallow pan until ready to use.

Remove from heat and skim off any foam from the jam and then fill the jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space in each jar.

Attach the lids and rings to the jars with a finger tight seal before submerging in the hot water canner of boiling water.

Process jars for 15 minutes before removing them to a place where they can sit undisturbed to cool.

Have freshly washed, heated jars ready for filling with the sweetened fruit

Warm, heavy, dense, and moist characterize this traditional loaf of banana-walnut bread

When the bananas on the kitchen counter become soft and the peels develop brown freckles, don’t toss them. Make a loaf of banana-walnut bread. This bread makes a lovely complement to a cup of steaming, fragrant Earl Grey tea.

The ingredient list for this bread is simple and the directions are easy. To start, you’ll need a  9 by 5-inch loaf pan, greased and floured; and, you’ll need to affix the paddle to your mixer. Set the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. The recipe yields one loaf.

RECIPE: TRADITIONAL BANANA-WALNUT BREAD

Ingredients:

6 Tablespoons of softened, unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cup mashed ripe bananas

3 large organic eggs

1/2 cup buttermilk (or 2 Tablespoons buttermilk powder dissolved in 1/2 cup warm water)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

Directions:

Mix together in a large bowl the following–flour, baking powder, baking soda,  nutmeg, salt, and chopped nuts. Set aside.

In the mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugar.

Add the bananas.

Add one egg at a time.

Add the buttermilk.

Pour the flour into the banana mixture and mix a little at time until the ingredients are all combined.

Fill the floured and greased loaf pan with batter until the pan is roughly 2/3 full.

Bake for approximately 55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the batter comes out clean.

*Tip: ripe bananas can be peeled and stored in a zip-lock freezer bag and frozen.

I’ve caught it . . . that nasty little bug affecting the throat and gut. Despite my best hygienic efforts at not catching the malady that many of my friends have recently endured, I have come down with it.

It started as a scratchy sore throat. Then a queasy stomach. Hoarseness and discomfort when swallowing followed. And the queasiness intensified to the point where even the sight of food sickened me. Oh, joy! Just what I didn’t want for the upcoming Thanksgiving week!

It’s always a good idea when you’re coming down with a cold or flu to increase your intake of fluids–herbal teas, juice, water, and popsicles. My former Chinese Tai Chi teacher advocated ginger tea to treat this type of malady; it’s my favorite home treatment for colds and flu.

Honey soothes the inflamed throat passages. Ginger settles the stomach. In fact, ginger has been used medicinally for 2,000 years in China to treat stomach upset, nausea, flatulence, and diarrhea.

GINGER TEA WITH HONEY

Ingredients:

1.5 inches of peeled and sliced fresh ginger root (about 1/2 cup)

5 to 6 cups of water

optional: 1/2 lemon, washed and sliced

optional: 2 sticks of cinnamon

honey or brown sugar, to taste

Directions:

Pour the water into a sauce pan.

Drop in the slices of ginger. Optional: add slices of lemon and cinnamon.

Simmer for 10 minutes.

Pour tea into a cup.

Stir in honey or brown sugar to sweeten.

Enjoy.

We all love our local farmers’ markets where the freshest organic ingredients–direct from the farm to our tables–are easy to find and purchase. And they taste so good. But sometimes, we consumers desire something grown beyond America’s borders, such as tea, coffee, exotic spices, and chocolate. And this is where choice and purchasing power has consequences.

When you choose to buy products displaying a FAIR TRADE certification logo, your action directly and positively impacts the lives of farmers, growers, artisan craftspeople, commodities producers, and their workers  in communities in developing nations.

As consumers demand better products and better working conditions for workers, the Fair Trade movement has more clout to lobby on behalf of commodity farmers, impoverished workers, and child laborers.

If you love chocolate, consider this: seventy percent of the world’s cocoa beans is produced in Cote d’Ivoire and other Western African countries. Pay is nominal at $2 USD/per dieum and, according to UNICEF, more than a half million children labor under dire working conditions in the cocoa fields in these bean-producing countries even though child labor is illegal in the cocoa industry.

Coffee was one of the first Fair Trade certified products but today’s consumers can now also find Fair Trade certified cocoa, wine, cotton, fruit, tea, red palm oil, coconut oil and associated products, chocolate, honey, quinoa and other ancient grains, beans, sugar, and bananas, to name a few items.

The Fair Trade Movement has been around since mid last century. It began as a mainly North American/European social movement to aid poor farmers, commodity producers, and laborers in developing nations to achieve more favorable trading conditions. Fair Trade also promotes sustainability.

Choosing to buy a product carrying the Fair Trade certification label means your consumer decision will impact more than your taste buds–it will have positive ramifications for workers, commodity producers, and their communities beyond America’s borders.

On Sunday mornings on our farmette, we almost always have potatoes, assorted cheeses and fresh fruit, along with homemade bread, honey, and a jar of apricot or strawberry jam that I’ve put up during jam season. But organic eggs from my free-range heritage chickens takes center stage, scrambled or poached (my favorite, a la Jacques Pépin and Julia Child), or cooked in an omelet with fresh herbs.

Assortment of organic eggs from free-ranging,heritage laying hens

People who can’t eat poached, scrambled, or omelet eggs because of cholesterol concerns or egg allergies often make do without eggs or indulge their omelet craving with egg substitutes. But what about egg-free cookie dough or mayonnaise?

Enter Eco-food innovator, Hampton Creek Foods. The company’s biochemical scientists at work at the three-year-old, San Francisco-based company have come up with an egg substitute that is plant-based. It has already found a perfect plant-based recipe for egg-free mayonnaise and cookie dough.

With its egg substitute, Beyond Eggs, and other products, the company seeks to crack open an industry that produces 1.1 trillion eggs annually.

According to Katie Fehrenbacher, writing last year for Gigaom, Hampton Creek Foods CEO Josh Tetrik says “the food industry is broken.” See, http://gigaom.com/2013/09/11/hampton-creek-now-selling-plant-based-eggs-at-whole-foods-in-california/

Hampton Creek touts its plant-based, egg-free formulas as cheaper, healthier, and more humane. With its emphasis on food technology, Hampton Creek has attracted interest and funding from Silicon Valley venture capitalists and the world’s super-wealthy billionaire Bill Gates and Li Ka-shing, Asia’s richest man.

Earlier this year, Forbes writer Ryan Mac discussed Hampton Creek’s food technology venture that has attracted the interest of Yahoo co-founder Jerry Wang and Li Ka-shing. See, http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2014/02/17/egg-replacing-startup-hampton-creek-foods-raises-23-million-from-asias-richest-man-and-yahoo-cofounder-jerry-yang/

In California, foodies can find Hampton Creek’s Beyond Eggs at Whole Foods stores. Those who love the real thing can buy eggs labeled as organic, produced by pastured free-range flocks.

A Rhode Island Red forages with a Buff Orpington, two White Leghorns, a Black Sex Link, and two Silver-laced Wyandottes

According to tests conducted by Mother Earth News,the eggs from free-range pastured chickens have more beta carotine, vitamin A, vitamin E, and Omega-3 fatty acids with less cholesterol and less saturated fat than most store-bought eggs from chickens that weren’t pastured. See, http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/free-range-eggs-zmaz07onzgoe.aspx#axzz3CB01GPlj

Sunday mornings on the farmette wouldn’t be the same without fresh eggs from the hen house, but if Bill Gates likes Hampton Creek Foods’ products, I might just give them a try. Still, I’m having a hard time imagining how the taste of an egg substitute from a yellow-pea and canola concoction could rival an organic egg.

Farmette life keeps me close to home these days, but lately I’ve been thinking about some of the places I’ve been in the world and  it occurred to me that travel has inspired and, in many ways, transformed me. It also has broadened my horizons, shaped my worldview, and contributed immeasurably to my sense of well-being.

Ephesus, a few miles from Kusadasi,  on Turkey’s turquoise coast, has spectacular ruins like this Greco-Roman library

The nice thing about travel is that it also can nurture your spirit and inform your writing. Since I’ve traveled a bit–something like 29 countries–mostly for pleasure and always on my own dime, I’ve met some wonderful people, tasted some great cuisine and wines, saw fantastic architecture, and learned colorful, cultural tidbits along the way.

Today as I was working on my Henny Penny Farmette  mystery series, I thought about how I’d tasted the organic wines and fresh herbs of Greece, the chocolates of Belgium, honey in England, jams and tea in Ireland and Wales, spices of all kinds in India, wine and cheese in France, shortbread and butter cookies in Scotland, apple strudel all over Switzerland and Austria, and fine olive oil in Italy.

Travel for me is about food, people, and experiences during the journey. So often, in our world of bucket lists and destination travel, we miss the point of the journey. For me, it’s the life on the road that happens on the way to a destination that informs my writing and my worldview.

My first cozy mystery BEELINE TO MURDER draws upon farmette life and deals with beekeeping and honey and pastries, but also ties into the Caribbean. That book will be released October 2015.

My second book in the cozy mystery series focuses on herbs and has a tie-in to Haiti. That book comes out October 2016.

The third book involves the world of artisan chocolate. That book will be released October 2017. To write these books, I draw deeply from the well of experience and tap into my senses. Although the main focus of my novels is about solving a  murder mystery, the stories always involve food and drink–a universal experience involving the senses.

For millennia, people have lived close to the earth, growing their own food, pressing their olives into oil, harvesting honey from their hives, and making their own wine. It’s how many of us choose to live today. That sense of connectedness–resonating across cultures, through centuries–informs my writing most of all.

Last night the raccoons raided my fig trees, leaving a little deposit between honeybee apiary and the hen house.  I know because this morning, I almost stepped in it . . . and I was barefoot and in still in my pajamas.

The White Genoa fig tree is three years old but already produces a bountiful crop

It was expecting the raccoons to drop by. It’s that time of the year when they like to show up for a little late night dining. Who can blame them. Figs ripened to perfection are among my favorite fresh foods, too.

Right now, the limbs of my Genoa White Fig hold an abundance of fruit covered in a thin green skin with rose-colored flesh. Whether you prefer to dry figs, make them into jam, use them in a tart, or serve them fresh with a little goat cheese, almost any variety of ripe fig will be delicious. They are an ancient food, dating back thousands of years to Asia Minor. The trees are hardy and can reach 12 to 20 feet tall.

The Brown Turkey figs are larger than the White Genoa; these figs have a slightly tougher skin

The Brown Turkey, like the White Genoa, is self fertile and produces a multitude of delectable figs by its third year. The skin of Brown Turkey figs turns violet-brown with watermelon-colored flesh when fully ripe. Also, ripe figs turn downward from the limb–it’s how we  they’re ready for picking.

I like to serve figs wrapped in Prosciutto, stuffed with a lovely, locally made goat cheese,  and grilled. They make a great appetizer when friends drop by this time of year. The figs and goat cheese will pair nicely with a bottle of your favorite wine.

Since we live only about 25 to 30 minutes from the Napa wine country, we tend to buy local.

RECIPE: GRILLED FIGS, GOAT CHEESE, and PROSCIUTTO

Ingredients:

6 to 8 Brown Turkey or other ripe figs

1/3 cup goat cheese (or a bit more as needed; try herb goat cheese as a variation)

6-8 slices of Prosciutto

1/3 cup organic raw honey

Directions:

Fit a pastry bag with a tip to pipe the goat cheese.

Fill the bag with goat cheese.

Cut tiny openings into the bottom of each fig to permit insertion of the piping tip.

Pipe the filling into 8 to 10 figs (they’ll swell; don’t over fill or they’ll split).

Wrap slices of Prosciutto around each stuffed fig.

Brush the grill grate with olive oil.

Grill the figs 2 to 3 minutes.

Remove from heat, plate the figs, and drizzle honey across them.

Serves: 4 (2 figs per person)