The Pig Roast:: Part Two

This entry should be subtitled FOOD! You'll see the journey from the hog box on the trailer to the end of the delicious afternoon and everything in between. A huge thank you to my brother and all those who stood around the pig, pretending to know what they were doing.



Corn, fresh from the Minneapolis Farmer's Market that morning. Shucked by family and friends gathered around, a multi-generational task.
Doesn't every pig need some sort of garnish? Ours had two. And no, my brother did not share his with the pig.

Covered up with the burlap corn bag, the pig takes a breather.

Here is the end of the day, dividing up the many, many leftovers. Our friend Matt who teaches anatomy was very helpful in knowing where and what to cut. He taught the bystanders a bit about pig anatomy. As a result, we have two lovely racks of ribs in the freezer, waiting to be slathered with BBQ sauce.

A birthday cake for Mom

My mom turned (shhhh!) 60 this week. She looks fabulous and no one would ever guess she has reached the big six-o. My siblings and I joined my parents at their house after surveying the storm damage and toasted to her birthday. She requested a fancy cake... here it is!

Notes on this recipe: Due to the volume of the baking powder and eggs, this cake rises like crazy! I used two 8-inch pans and one 9-inch pan and the batter began to flow out as they baked. I would recommend placing your cake pans on cookie sheets to prevent a big mess that theoretically could drip onto your oven coils and well, maybe catch on fire. :) Also, I couldn't find creme fraiche at my local grocer and didn't have time for the mock creme fraiche recipe I had seen previously, so I used whipping cream with 3 Tbsp. of powdered sugar and a cap full of bourbon. Yum. Yesterday morning this recipe for creme fraiche was in the Star Tribune's Taste section. What timing!

Ginger Pecan Cake(from Martha Stewart)

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 1/2 finely ground toasted cups (7 ounces) pecans, plus 9 toasted pecan halves
3 cups packed light-brown sugar, sifted
6 large whole eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk
3/4 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 pint creme fraiche
2 teaspoons bourbon, (optional)
3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar, or more to taste

1/4 ounce crystallized, ginger, cut into thin strips

Glossy Caramel Icing

1 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup heavy cream

Directions for Cake: Makes one 8-inch round cake

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees with two racks in center. Line bottoms of three 8-by-2-inch buttered cake pans with parchment. Dust bottoms and sides with flour; tap out excess. Sift flour, baking powder, salt, and ground ginger into a medium bowl. Add ground pecans, and whisk to combine; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter until light and fluffy. Gradually add brown sugar until fluffy, 4 to 5 minutes. Drizzle in eggs, a little at a time, beating each time until batter is no longer slick, about 5 minutes; scrape down sides twice.
With the mixer set on low, add flour mixture to sugar-butter mixture, alternating with milk, a little of each at a time, starting and ending with flour mixture; scrape down bowl twice. Beat in grated ginger and vanilla. Divide batter evenly among pans. Bake until a cake tester inserted into center of cakes comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes, rotating pans if necessary for even browning.

Transfer pans to wire racks to cool, about 15 minutes. Remove cakes from pans, and return to wire racks, tops up; let cool.

Meanwhile, place creme fraiche in a medium bowl, and whip with an electric hand mixer until soft peaks form. Add bourbon and confectioners' sugar; beat until soft peaks return. Cover, and refrigerate to firm, about 1 hour.

To assemble cake, remove parchment from bottoms of cakes. Set aside prettiest layer; it will be used for top of cake. Place one layer on serving platter, and spread with half the creme-fraiche filling; repeat with second layer. Top cake with reserved third. Chill cake while icing is being prepared. Pour the icing onto the center point on the top of the cake, and let it flow down the sides. When the icing has set slightly, 5 to 10 minutes, arrange the pecan halves and crystallized ginger on the top. Serve.

Directions for Glossy Caramel Icing: Makes 1 1/2 cups

Do not let the sugar get too hot while melting; the hotter caramel is, the more it will harden when it cools, making the cake difficult to slice.

Place sugar in a large skillet over medium heat. Let cook until it begins to melt and turns golden, 2 to 3 minutes. As sugar melts, stir with back of a wooden spoon if needed, until amber colored, and registers about 310 degrees on candy thermometer, 3 to 4 minutes.
Slowly pour cream into skillet; be careful as you pour, because it will splatter. Reduce heat to medium low, stirring with a wooden spoon. Continue stirring; hardened caramel will melt into cream and become soft and liquid. Change to a whisk; continue stirring slowly to minimize bubbles until completely smooth, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat, and let cool slightly, 3 to 4 minutes. Pour icing directly onto chilled prepared cake. If caramel becomes too stiff to pour, warm over a double boiler.

Storm in the City

A huge storm took us by surprise yesterday afternoon here in Minneapolis. One minute my sister and I were discussing who would be baking brownies for my mom's birthday party, and five minutes later she called me back in tears, "My trees are all gone!"

Straight-line winds hit South Minneapolis in addition to a tornado, affecting a relatively small area of Minneapolis and a few neighboring suburbs. Unfortunately, it hit hard. Really hard. It also smacked straight into my sister's neighborhood, just a mile or two from our house, affecting six out of the seven beautiful, old trees in her yard. One landed on her porch, causing roof damage as well as breaking a window. Another landed on the house, perhaps the cause of her chimney now resting in her front lawn?

Here's a shot of her metal gazebo that used to grace her back patio with lovely shade. It is now wrapped around a tree that was to be cut down shortly after I took this picture. Also, look at the size of this tree trunk they removed in one grab of the claws. My sister, her husband and son were all home at the time and were able to call the insurance agency right away after it happened. Within an hour, their representative had sent out a tree company, a contractor and a disaster representative, almost beating the city's trucks to the scene. My brother-in-law and their three-year old son were in the back yard when the storm hit and just barely made it into the house. The wind was so strong that they couldn't get the door closed and had to weather the worst lying down in the back entryway of their house, surrounded by windows. They are all ok, their trees are not. It appears that there are no casualties in the city, just a lot of people without electricity and a lot of work ahead of them.

Their favorite shade tree in the back yard. Just splinters.

This Morning in the Garden

This morning Louise and I went out the garden, after having been away all weekend, and found these lovely treasures. Quite a harvest for a Monday morning. The beans are a type of heirloom, but I can't remember the name. It was a huge surprise to see this many of them ready to pick as I figured the neighborhood bunnies had eaten their more-than-fair share. The cuke is an English style beauty, the long skinny type that costs triple the regular priced cukes at the grocery store. Can't wait to cut into it!

My from-seed zinnias are finally starting to bloom. There's a beautiful lime green zinnia next to this one, ready to pop tomorrow. Aren't zinnias amazing?

What's in your harvest basket? Any flowers inspiring you in your garden? Leave a comment here and I'll link to your garden beauties! A virtual garden tour.

The Pig Roast:: Part One

Last week we hosted our first BIG event out at the farm. I need to stop calling it "The Farm" because we have a name for it now. Martha's farm has a name, right? We needed a name. We call it GoodTree Farm, a rough translation of our last name in German as a friend once told us. We've since learned that the translation of Welbaum is indeed not Good Tree, though Baum is tree, just not good tree. Oh well, as a language teacher and language lover, I can really appreciate mixups in translations. The translation was not lost, it was saved and made our name. So there. From here on out, I'll refer to our farm as GoodTree. Now, if any of you talented artists out there would like to help us make our logo for GoodTree, perhaps a woodcut print of a large, branchy, funky tree? I'd love it!
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Our event at GoodTree was a pig roast. The idea stemmed from my brother suggesting that someday we should roast a pig out at GoodTree. A plan for "some day" turned into, "when are you available to tend the pig in the roaster?" From there I did a bit more research and discovered that renting a roaster is most definitely expensive and perhaps cost prohibitive. It takes 10-12 hours to cook the hog (my new word, previously my city self used PIG.) If we had done it ourselves, in order for it to be ready to serve at noon, we would have had to pull an all nighter by the roaster. As someone who doesn't get enough sleep to begin with, my answer was no. Instead, we contacted the local meat market in Dennison, MN and inquired about their roasting costs. Spendy, yes. Worth it? Definitely. Dori from Dennison Meat Locker informed me that they can cook the HOG at 180 degrees in their smoke house and it takes 20 hours, ready to be picked up in a hog box. Sold.
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I sent out an evite for the party and fell in love with this simple, fun logo that was available on their choice list. Shhh... we used the logo throughout the event as a central theme. If you don't own any of these kind of used-car lot banners, you really owe it to yourself and your neighbors to buy some. They make any entry way welcoming. I bought them last year for our block party and have found many reasons to use them. If you're local and promise to take good care of them, you can borrow them.

We set up the potluck buffet on the cement slab that was once going to be the former owner's new garage. It made for a perfect flat surface for the food. You can take a sneak peek of the hog at the end of the table. More photos of that in Part Two. Be patient.

I don't like to use plastic silverware, if I can help it. Instead of buying 100+ forks that would just be thrown away, I sent my Dad out on a hunt for inexpensive forks. He was able to procure forks from a few thrift stores but truly hit the jackpot with a catering supply house offering used (but clean) forks for $1.65 a dozen. He snatched up 13 dozen and called it a day. We'll be set for the rest of our lives for large events and never have to buy another silly plastic fork again. Next to the garbage cans we set up bins for dirty forks and then just did a big fork wash after the party was over. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Butterflies Everywhere

Another monarch caterpillar raising summer, indeed. We've enjoyed finding the eggs on milkweed, carefully bringing the host milkweed leaves home, watching carefully as they hatch, eat, eat and eat more. They crawl up to the top of our box, just as they did last year, hang themselves upside down in the "J" position, and suddenly, POOF... the yellow and black stripes are replaced with a surreal green and gold dotted chrysalis. It is so amazing, every time. This year the kids and I were lucky enough to be watching as it actually happened, to witness nature's miracle. Although we're not homeschoolers, I think we've learned more than a year's worth of science curriculum with these critters over the past weeks. They will go on and on to strangers about the food that monarchs eat, the fras they poop, the positions they take, the cycle of their lives and even where to find milk weed in Minneapolis. Strangers look at me and grin.

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While we wait for the next cycle of monarchs to begin again (they sometimes have four cycles in a MN summer), we're learning about Painted Ladies. Our neighbor brought us a kit with six teeny tiny caterpillars. The learning curve starts again.

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And you? Any creepy crawlies in your life lately?

Working at the Farm

We've been hanging out at the farm a lot lately. Lots of fun, but also lots of catching up on yardwork and maintenance issues that were not taken care of by the previous tenant. The front of the house was the WORST. I think the first few people potential renters who looked at the house were probably scared. Overgrown trees, burdock weeds and flower boxes that were filled with weeds or dumped on the ground.

On Friday my brother, sister and brother-in-law joined me for a kid-free work day. Armed with shovels, cutters and clippers of all sizes, we conquered this:
Here are the after shots:

4th of July

For Independence day this year we headed to the farm. A few years ago we went into Northfield to check out the in-town festivities, but this year we decided to stay put and just enjoy the sun and watermelon fun. We had friends join us, including Ron's sister and family and his parents. The mosquitoes joined too... thus the mosquito net on Carl's face. You can imagine the silly games they played with the nets on their faces! In the evening we had Minnesota (ahem... Wisconsin) fireworks over the pond.
Watermelon was the hit of the day!
It rained a bit on Saturday, but the adults stayed happy inside eating in the kitchen while the six kids played hide-and-seek in the bedrooms. It is amazing how a little change of scenery can produce so much creativity in kids and so much satisfaction for adults. Who knew that by only having 8 plates, 8 bowls, 8 glasses and so on... I could feel so satisfied in the kitchen? Living simply with less at the farm makes me question everything in my cupboard at home. Until I get home and grab the salad spinner and the .... Ah, the simplicity of life at the farm.

I'm BACK!

Sorry for the extended vacation from CityFarmGirl. I've been haunted by viruses and trojans and other creepy things that overtook our new computer. Let me please say this: make sure your security is updated on your computer. Now. Run a scan. Don't fall prey to the scams. It. Is. Important. I haven't been able to check my favorite blogs for weeks. When I went to friends' houses to check email a few times, I was so overwhelmed by where to start to catch up on my Internet stuff, I barely accomplished anything. I mean, check important emails? Delete the junky stuff? Check my favorite blogs? Read the news about Michael Jackson? Where to start? Also, we've been at the farm. Yesterday we drove down around 5 pm, made dinner, put the kids to bed, went to bed, then got up at 7:30 to get ready to come home again to get Ron to work and the kids and I off to MplsNatureKids. Was it worth it? Absolutely.I have tons of photos, tons of fun coming up. Make sure to check back regularly after the 4th of July weekend for updates. I've missed your comments and reading your blogs. So glad to be back.