Filed under: Uncategorized
I am graduating tomorrow and it seems like a good time to stop writing in this blog. I’m sure there will be more to come in my life, but for now I can no longer accurately represent rural college cooking. Hopefully you will get around to making some of these recipes at some point… I promise they’re tasty.
Filed under: breakfast, snack | Tags: blueberry, cornmeal, lemon, muffins
These were the best muffins I have ever made. Another recipe from Abby’s Celebrating the Midwestern Table. I would reccomend waiting until blueberry season (June and July I think?), but they are a really lovely treat this time of year if you are not cooking strictly seasonally.
You’ll need:
grated zest of 2 large lemons, about 2 tbl
1 cup + 1 1/2 tbl sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 cups flour (sneak in some whole wheat if you want)
1/3 cup cornmeal
1 tsp baking soda
scant 1/4 tsp salt
1 cup blueberries
3 tbl fresh lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a standard-size muffin pan with paper liners or grease them. Set aside. Use a wooden spoon to mix zest, 1 cup sugar, oil, and egg in a bowl. Sit in the buttermilk, then flour, cornmeal, baking soda, and salt. Fold in the blueberries. Let the batter rest for 15 minutes before baking for puffier muffins. Fill the muffin cups so that they are 7/8 full with batter. Bake about 22 minutes, until lightly brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. While they cool, stir the lemon juice and the rest of the sugar together in a small bowl. When you can easily remove them from the pan, quickly dip the muffin tops in the glaze. Let them dry 15 minutes before serving. Makes 12 muffins.
Filed under: Uncategorized
This year my parents and sister were coming to Grinnell for Thanksgiving and I wanted to get a locally raised turkey. I started to investigate and found that a music professor at my school raises turkeys along with goats, chickens, geese, and sheep. I could buy a turkey for $2/pound + $4… or I could join seven other students the Saturday before Thanksgiving and “process” the 26 turkeys (a euphemism for butchering).
Eric, the owner, doesn’t have any processing equipment so we hung the live turkeys by their feet on a homemade wooden frame where they would be killed, submerged them in near-boiling water over an open wood fire, plucked the feathers while hanging on the wooden frame, and gutted them on a nearby picnic table, all in below-freezing weather.
I picked out a 16 pounder and stuck it in my fridge. It was especially delicious, in large part because my dad did a great job at roasting it but also because the breast was especially meaty (we carved more meat from the breast than you would usually get from an entire 16 pound turkey) and there was no doubt that it had been a healthy bird.
I tried to choose a less gruesome picture:
Eric shows us how to pluck the feathers
I’ve been super busy with two papers due and an exam before the end of the week and haven’t had time to make much aside from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I have, however, started a few ferments that I’m really excited about: sauerkraut (German fermented cabbage), radish kimchi (Korean spicy fermented vegetables), and dosas (Indian fermented lentil, rice, and yogurt pancakes). I’ll post more about these when they’re ready to eat!
Filed under: Uncategorized
Just wanted to make a quick post about this week’s CSA share: tomatoes, potatoes, onions, corn, fennel, eggplant, squash, tarragon, basil, mustard greens, bell pepper, carrot, cabbage, garlic, and radishes. I’m going to try and find a good vegetarian recipe for mustard greens and maybe post about it later in the week!
