Halloween Book is Once Again Free on Amazon!

Morgan Carey and The Curse of the Corpse Bride, my Halloween/Day of the Dead chapter book for young tweens, is back to free! Amazon corrected the problem right away--so if you want to take a look, here's the link to the free Kindle ebook.

Again, I'm sorry for any inconvenience. I hope you're enjoying sunny, crisp fall weather--and having a wonderful Halloween weekend!

  

Recipe for "Coming Home" Cornbread

 

When you’re away from your homestead, returning home after time away often means you’ve got a lot of catching up to do!

After being out of town for two weeks to look after family—a week longer than I’d planned—I discovered it wasn’t only the neglected garden that was in disarray. Tasks like cleaning the chicken coop and culling the mid-fall harvest needed serious attention.

Inside the house, unopened mail had piled up, and the kitchen needed a good once-over. But I’m pretty prompt about keeping our fridge food up to date. 

With the idea of good food = good health, John and I focus on buying organic, locally- or USA grown—which, let’s face it, really does cost more. And while we try to avoid wasting, once in a while some items will get away from us.

One of those high quality foods I indulge in is full-fat Greek yogurt. Since we don’t shop for groceries very often, we purchase the largest carton this particular brand comes in. In my rush to leave, I’d left an opened carton behind, and John didn’t think to eat it.

This brand has no additives, so it’s more perishable than most. The carton states: “After opening, consume within 5 days.”

I eat yogurt every day, so that first morning home I pulled out the carton.  It had been open at least two and a half weeks. I was sure it wasn’t really spoiled; after all, most food companies tend to provide very conservative “Best by” dates. So I tentatively ate a spoonful.

It wasn't soured, but still…off. With a definite vinegary taste. I briefly considered tossing it, but that would be wasting at least $2 or $2.50 worth of yogurt.

There are plenty of ways you can use up old-ish yogurt—especially with coffee cakes and quick breads. I could have made one of our favorites—maybe “Blueberry Buckle” (see the recipe in my August posts) or pumpkin bread.

But I had what felt like a million things to catch up on. Dinner was already running late, and I wasn’t up for a somewhat involved baking project that would mean a lot of clean-up too.

I also had one of our eggs I’d forgotten about and left out of the fridge for a day. It was totally fine—farm eggs will keep without refrigeration longer than you’d think, but I felt I should use it pronto.

Why not, I asked myself, make cornbread?

I’d recently bought some organic stone-ground cornmeal and cornbread is super fast to make—no fruit to process, or cans to open then rinse out. Plus with only one bowl to wash, clean-up is quick too.

Now in my experience, homemade cornbread can be pretty dry. It’s lacking additives like gums and dough conditioners that are in commercial cornbread mixes. Still, I figured cornbread would be a great way to used up that yogurt, and if it didn't work out too well, John is a really good sport about eating my less than yummy food experiments!

When you use a fermented product like yogurt in your quick breads/cakes, keep in mind that the yogurt will add acid to the recipe. So you counteract that extra acid with a little baking soda (an alkaline).

A lot of cornbread recipes call for 2 ½ teaspoons or 1 tablespoon of baking powder. I knew with using this much yogurt, I’d have to take a guess regarding reducing the baking powder and adding baking soda.

Here’s what a came up with:

Cornbread—With Yogurt

*1 cup cornmeal

*1 cup mixed organic unbleached white flour and whole wheat pastry flour

Combine the flours with:

*½ teaspoon salt

*1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

*½ teaspoon soda + another pinch

*1/3 cup organic cane sugar

In a separate bowl I mixed:   

*1 large egg (the one sitting out)

*1/3-ish cup olive oil

And here’s where I took a chance:

*I added 1 cup full-fat Greek yogurt—all the old yogurt from the carton + a splash of whole milk

I mixed all the liquids:the oil, egg and yogurt and milk, then put in the dry ingredients.

The batter wasn’t really batter at all, but dough! Meaning very dry and stiff. Clearly, the recipe needed more liquid.

So I splashed in more whole milk. Still stiff.

Then another generous splash.

Again, the dough was still pretty stiff. It seemed like the milk I’d added was the same amount I would have used even without the yogurt! I decided to just go with what I had.

I scraped the dough into an oiled 7” x 11” glass baking pan, smoothed it into the corners, and put it into the oven at 370 degrees—I usually bake cornbread at 350, but like I said, dinner was late.

After 25 minutes, it looked really done on top—but that was an unusually fast baking time. I was afraid the cornbread would be kind of wet in the middle.

I tested it, and happily, the cornbread was baked all the way through. I gave it a couple more minutes, then pulled the pan from the oven.

The cornbread was darker on top than I generally prefer—I think the cream in the yogurt makes baked goods brown more readily. But John, who likes well done baked goods, was enthusiastic.

After it cooled for 15 minutes or so, I cut us each a generous piece. Despite the well-browned top, this was the moistest, most delectable cornbread I’d ever made—crispy around the edges, but totally melt-in-your-mouth.

So...lesson learned: I’ll be using lots of yogurt in my quick breads!

While I was away, I missed doing my usual once-a-week posts. But now I’ll be back to my regular Thursday postings!

Free Halloween and Day of the Dead Book!

Are you gearing up for your Halloween or Day of the Dead festivities? Kids of all ages can celebrate with my free ebook for tweens, Morgan Carey and The Curse of the Corpse Bride! Here's more about the story:

Halloween and the Day of the Dead is just around the corner, and 5^th grader Morgan chooses the coolest costume ever—a dead bride. Prepared for a fun night of trick-or-treating with her best friend Claire, she definitely does not expect a trip to the costume store to set off a series of strange and spooky encounters… Like the snarky, mysterious clerk at the store, a very curious veil, and a weird fortune-telling machine that actually works...when it's not plugged in!

But Halloween quickly takes a scary turn: a Day of the Dead curse, an old book of magical spells, and a dark and deserted cemetery force Morgan, with Claire’s help, to call upon all her courage—and face the powerful magic of this extraordinary Dia de los Muertos!

This family-friendly Halloween adventure, Book 1 of the Morgan Carey Adventure series, is suitable for all ages…other Morgan Carey books include Book 2, Morgan Carey and The Mystery of the Christmas Fairies, and Book 3, The Secret Astoria Scavenger Hunt! 

The Curse of the Corpse Bride is free at Kobo, Apple and Nook...you can find more of my free books at www.susancolleenbrowne.com !

Quick update, Thursday October 28: I was on Amazon a little while ago and saw that something mysterious had occurred... the Kindle version of The Curse of the Corpse Bride was not listed as free, but at the regular price! So I deleted Amazon from the stores above. If you visited here this week and had clicked the Amazon link to get your free copy, I'm very sorry! I just contacted Amazon about the error, and hopefully they can will that price changed back to "free" within a day or so. Here's the Amazon link if you want to give them a try tomorrow or this weekend--and again, I apologize for the inconvenience.

Homestead Diary

So true!

When I was a young mom, I gardened a little. But my big guilty pleasure was reading novels while eating Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Nowadays, with running our little place and my writing, downtime is limited. Also, we don't have TV. Our satellite internet is way too slow for Netflix or any other kind of TV streaming, so reading is still my favorite way to relax.

Instead of a novel, I’ll often go for shorter reads, like magazines. My latest guilty pleasure is the Food Network magazine, which my sister lends me. Though I guess not much has changed, since I also read it while eating chocolate.

My favorite part of the magazine isn’t the lavish recipes, but the “Star Diary”—where a celebrity chef dishes about the yummy food they ate and cooked over the course of the day. They’ll also share details of their photo shoots or TV segments or when they hang out with other Food Network celebrities.

I’m often in awe of the work ethic of these talented folks, how easily they can throw together a complicated dish, and everything they get done in a day—why I find “Star Diary” not just entertaining but inspiring. It got me thinking about what running a little homestead might look like to someone else.

So here’s a glimpse of an early fall day at Berryridge Farm, starring yours truly.

It’s a gorgeous, sunny day, but the forecast calls for rain the next three days. There’s loads to do outside so I give up writing for today. (You will note that unlike “Star Diary” I don’t mention what time we get up, because you would think we are slackers for sure!)

Much of my life pretty physical—gardening, compost-digging, and chopping wood—so I devote a fair amount of my routine to staying strong and flexible. I start my morning with about 20 minutes of super-basic Tai Chi I learned from a YouTube video. I’ve been doing it for about 7 months, and it must be beneficial since I’ve never felt better.

Breakfast is simple: a cup of very strong, very sugary black tea and a big bowl of our own blueberries—our blueberries are almost done so I really savor these. Instead of my usual nut-butter sandwich, I roast a few handfuls of almonds and walnuts for quick energy—I’ve decided to get a bike ride in before starting my outdoor work.

I bike most days, if it’s not raining. I often tell myself my time would be better spent working on our place, but biking is how I keep my back limber. Besides, it’s kind of a meditative experience for me, and I get a lot of writing ideas while I ride. I chow down on the nuts and off I go.

It’s a lovely ride—not too warm—and our main road has very little traffic so it’s perfect for cycling. As usual, I admire the picturesque scenery, passing by imposing, wooded foothills, and a small lake. On this calm day, the green firs and the red and gold of the maples are reflected in the still water.

Back home, I do some leg and back stretches, then fuel up: a big bowl of yogurt sweetened with maple syrup, and a piece of seed bread spread with a thick layer of peanut butter. Then my real day begins.

As beautiful as the day is, the coming rain means lots of chores that need to be done today. Our blueberry shrubs are pretty much done bearing, and the bird netting is dry at the moment. Once the rain hits it’ll be wet for days or even weeks—and too wet to fold—so I do that first.

Undoing the berry nets

The smaller blueberry patch takes about an hour: the nets get pretty tangled up with the poultry fencing and hardware cloth surrounding the seven shrubs. In a lot of places I’ve jerry-rigged a way to close gaps with bread ties, and undoing them is really painstaking.

Sadly, I find a patch of tiny bones and feathers wound into the net—and take a moment to mourn the little bird that got stuck in there.

With the net down, it’s far easier to pick berries. One bush is still bearing, and I get about 1 ½ quarts. Then I pick up all the berries that have dropped, to keep ants and hornets from moving in.

The nets on the bigger blueberry patch need removing too. These larger nets can be really cumbersome to pull down without getting caught on the shrubs. Sometimes John helps with this chore but he’s working on wood splitting. Filling our woodsheds is the priority this time of year!

Finally I get the nets off—they’re kind of damp so I store them in the carport to dry off before folding—and pick up the fallen berries. And now the season is officially over.

Approaching the house to put the berries inside, I see we haven’t gotten our skylight cover off…

We have a skylight in the kitchen—we love it, it brightens our main room wonderfully. But in the summer, the sun comes in at a direct angle and makes the whole front of the house very hot. Plus the beam of light shines directly into the pantry, heating foodstuffs we would like to stay cool.

We’ve devised an easy solution: early in the summer, we’ll cover the skylight with a white fabric shower curtain, and weigh it down with dumbbell weights and lumber scraps.

The hot weather has been over for weeks. And again, the cover is dry at the moment so might as well get it down before it’s wet. John hauls the ladder out of the shop for me. I’m younger than he is, and somewhat more nimble, so I’ve taken over the skylight chore.

Our house is just one story, so it doesn’t feel terribly dangerous up there. Still, even with John holding the ladder securely, I’m very cautious as I climb. Luckily, the supports bolted to the roof for the satellite dish are very sturdy. I grasp the supports and clamber onto the roof without much trouble.

It’s an interesting feeling, being up here. I can see practically our whole acreage, and being level with the treetops of some of the smaller trees makes me feel closer to nature. But I have a job to do.

As John waits below, I remove the weights and drop them to the ground. I take note of the patches of moss that are growing between the shingles—in our rainy climate, moss accumulation can degrade the roof pretty quickly. When we finally replace our roof, we’re going to get steel roofing, but we need to save some serious money first!

I call down to John that some branches of the October Glory maple next to the house are hanging over the roof, and he passes the pruning loppers up to me. I do a little judicious pruning to keep leaves out of the gutters. Then it’s time to climb down, collect my prunings—then I see the sun has gotten low in the sky.

It must be nearly 6 pm—and it’s coop day. I designate Tuesdays and Fridays for coop cleaning…since if I just did it when I felt like it, this less-than-fun chore would not happen!

As the days shorten, the hens are turning in way earlier—so I need to hustle. The girls seem pleased to see me—not that they actually look happy or anything, but they seem to like having their humans hang out with them. I clean the coop, picking up droppings from the pen and the girls’ yard, then fill their feeder.

By now, dusk is falling. I harvest a couple of zucchinis, find three nice cukes, and pick a bowlful of any tomatoes with some color—they’ll ripen nicely inside. We haven’t had to buy any store vegetables since the asparagus came up at the end of April, which has saved lots on our grocery budget.

By now I’m getting kinda hungry. I mosey around to the woodsheds to say hi to John as he collects his tools, and admire the stacks of firewood he processed that day.

It’s getting dark fast, and I never got to all the weeding I meant to do. Still, I feel a sense of accomplishment as we troop inside, change out of our outdoor gear, and think about something easy for dinner since we’re both tired. Salmon patties, brown rice with a little butter, and sliced cucumbers with a splash of honey-mustard vinaigrette fit the bill.

The day certainly has none of the glamor and intriguing dishes found in “Star Diary,” but John and I are convinced fame and fortune has nothing on the life we love here!