simple supper-deep dish skillet pizza

Last night manthing wanted pizza or pancakes for dinner. After some  internet bantering it was decided that pizza  was going to be it. Since I was not going to fire up the oven for a single pizza and my regular cookie sheet was dirty, I had to figure out just how I was going to make said pizza. After a minute or two of thought, it hit me!  Why not make a deep dish  pizza pie in the cast iron skillet.  It came out quite splendid though it was more like a pizza pot pie than a pizza since I went a little bit crazy on the dough making. 

 I made it just as I would make any other pizza: dough, sauce, and toppings. The only difference was what it was cooked in and how it was cooked. After making the dough, I rolled it and put it in the skillet, just as one would make a pie with the edges hanging over the pan. Then I threw the sauce and toppings on ( a garlic sauce with oregano, onion, tomato, chicken, shrooms, broccoli n cheeses) and  rolled the edges of the crust down  around the edges.  

To cook, I simply set the pan on the stove top with a few chunks of broken brick under it. This is to keep the bottom from burning and to allow the  toppings to  heat  properly and cook. I then placed a lid over the top  of the pan to keep the heat in and do its job.  I do  flat pan pizzas in the same manner but  I cook  all the toppings(but the cheese) prior to adding them on the crust since it cooks much quicker. 

 It  took about 25-30 minutes of cooking time. The last 10 or so was ensuring the crust  was cooked through. Like I said, the crust was a bit too much turning it into a pot pie looking creation rather than a pizza but it was still quite good.  The bottom picture is what it turned into though it was not a greenish yellow. The lighting just made it look that way.

Total cost to make was approximately  3 dollars (though a rather expensive meal for us  it is way cheaper than going to a pizza place or buying all of the ingredients to make one) and would easily feed four people. Had I made it on cookie sheets it would have made two pizzas rather than a single. Most of the toppings were from our own produce and leftovers from other meals.  Total time to prepare and cook was under an hour and that was having to chop all the ingredients, make the dough and sauce, and cook.

easy coffee cake

After looking around for an easy, won't break the bank, coffee cake that I would be able to cook on the wood stove or on top of the wood cook top, I ended up just making my own recipe using bits and pieces of other recipes and then tweaking it to my liking. Although I was a bit weary of how it would taste, it came out quite lovely.

‎1 cup butter

1 ½ cups sugar

4 eggs

1 ½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

3 cups flour

1 quart peaches or other fruit

Cinnamon

½ cup brown sugar

Topping

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

4 tablespoons butter

Soften butter, mix with eggs n sugar. Then throw flour, sugar, salt and powder in and mix it up nice. Spread about half the mixture into a greased pan (9x13 or whatever). Drain peaches and chuck over the top of the mixture in pan, shake cinnamon around to your liking. Sprinkle the brown sugar around and spread the other half of the mixture on top. Bake at 350 until tooth pick comes out clean.

for the topping

Mix sugar, flour, cinnamon, and butter, until it makes coarse crumbs. Sprinkle the topping over the cake and bake

Since I cook over wood, I typically use a large cast iron skillet rather than a baking pan although a dutch oven would also work well. If I was actually baking in an oven I would make a crumble topping but, since I don't, I make a confectionery sugar drool for the top and shake a bit of cinnamon around. Nutmeg is good in place of or with cinnamon.

drool

½ cup confectionery or brown sugar

½ tsp vanilla

1-2 tbsp water

simple supper- Mexican cornbread casserole

After running out of ideas for easy dinners using fresh veggies from the gardens I decided that I was going to make a meal using many different ones with a Mexican flair to it. Though there are many different mexican casserole dishes out on the web, none sounded all that appealing to me so I made my own recipe up. The dish cost a total of about 2 dollars to make and will easily serve 6. Chopping up the veggies is the hardest part of making the meal. Just remember to use a large enough casserole dish or pan so that it doesn't boil over everywhere like mine did.

1 lb ground beef or turkey
one large onion
3-4 cloves garlic
4 large tomatoes
1 cup corn/hominy
1 cup zucchini/summer squash
1 can kidney or pinto beans
1 cup winter squash
2 jalapenos
1 tsp cumin
4 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup corn meal
1 cup flour
1 egg
1 cup water
cheese

Brown the ground beef with the diced onion and garlic, drain. Chop all other veggies and spices and mix in with the burger mixture in a 9x13 pan. Mix together. Mix the corn meal, egg, and water in a bowl then spread over the top of the veggie/burger mix. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. Garnish with shredded cheese of your choice and sour cream. Serve with a side salad and you have a meal.

Because I cook over wood I put the entire mess into a large deep cast iron pan and covered it while cooking. This would work well in a dutch oven in a fire pit too. The type and amount of veggies is entirely up to you and a boxed corn bread mix can be used instead of making your own. A polenta on the bottom in a regular oven would also taste yummy, but I would not recommend it if cooking over wood unless you are very good at controlling temperatures so that it doesn't burn.

half baked rolls

Over the last couple years I have all but mastered cooking on the top of our wood fired stove top. I can make almost everything on there and not have to fire up the oven. I make everything just as I normally would make it but instead of baking it I half bake it. A fire is built under the cook top and then I place two bricks on the top of the cook top. Then I place an old oven rack on top of the bricks and throw whatever it is I want to cook on top of the rack. For the rolls, I just turn them over about half way through cooking so that both sides can be browned nicely. It does make the rolls flat on both sides but does not affect the flavor in any way. Things typically cook in about the same amount of time that they would in an oven. For things that cannot be flipped half way through cooking, I top them with a lid that fits loosely over the pan I am cooking in. We even do pizza this way.

canning over wood

For those that do not know, we are for the most part fossil fuel free on the homestead. The only fuel we use is for the weed eater, chain saw and coffee in the mornings because I am simply too lazy to go and make a fire at 5 am. This also means that all of our canning is done over wood and on days that we have to use the pressure canner it makes for some very long days. Yesterday it made for 13 hours of feeding fire and transferring jars into and out of the canner. It also made for someone having to collect the wood to cook over for all of that time.
I did not start the day out with plans of canning until near 11 pm but when I checked the curing potatoes I came to the conclusion that there was no way that they could be stored until eating and if we wanted any taters at all through the winter, I had no other choice. We will have to buy some local grown potatoes for fresh usage this year as this truly was the worst potato harvest EVER! So, we began chopping, slicing, and dicing and got a grand total of 27 quarts ready to go in the canner and then had the long wait to get them all finished. We will be getting a larger canner one day, this 5 quarts at a time business is just too slow for my liking.

Since we had the fire under the stove top going and had breaks when the canner was depressurizing, I also made rolls, tortillas, chocolate zucchini cake, lentil taco filling, cinnamon rolls, and blackberry jam which I boiled all over the stove top, made a big giant smelly mess and lost half the jam. I must say I am glad that it was outside as I could just let it burn off and self clean rather than having to dismantle a stove in the shack. I should have also slow roasted a roast but since I had not planned on canning all day long it was still frozen solid. Some of the things I slow cooked in the oven part of the stove even though there was no fire under it. I would have made many more items and fired up the oven to a proper temperature had I not had to finish up a paper for school and do an assignment that I had put off all week.
Canning over wood is not difficult and is not any more time consuming than canning over a flame on a normal stove. Regulating the temperatures does take a little bit of getting used to and it does require that a good stash of wood be at the ready. If I had another functioning canner I could have easily double or tripled the amount being canned at once and made the day much shorter. Water bath canning is much easier as I use a big wash tub and can put over 20 quarts in at a time. Thankfully most of what will be left for canning can be done using the water bath method rather than the pressure canner.

half baked- peanut butter oatmeal cookies

Over the last couple of years playing with cooking on the wood stove, I have discovered I can "bake" (I like the term half bake) pretty much everything on there. This is not a cooking type wood stove, this is just the wood heating stove that I decided to learn to cook on a couple years ago. Something I had not tried up until the other day was making cookies on the top of the stove. While they are not the prettiest of creations due to having to be flipped half way through cooking, it most certainly can be done. The cookies on the stove in the picture are an oatmeal-peanut butter cookie that has no flour in it, thus they are gluten free, if you know where your oats have come from. They are a chewy gooey almost candy like confection, rather than a cookie, but they are very good for when you want a different kind of ordinary cookie. I think a stiffer, flour based dough would hold its shape much better than these did in the flipping process. I am hoping to make some sugar cookies this weekend and will compare how the dough held up for cooking.

chewy- gooey peanut butter oatmeal cookies
1/4 cup softened butter
1 1/4 cups smooth peanut butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
4 cups old fashioned or quick oats, uncooked

Mix all ingredients thoroughly and form dough into ping pong size balls. Place on cookie sheet and squish them down with a fork and bake. For wood stove cooking, i just keep an eye on them and flip when I see they are ready. For those cooking with a conventional oven, bake at 350 for 15 minutes or there about. Bake just until set and edges are golden. Let stand on cookie sheet 1 minute before removing.

around the homestead -fetchin cooking wood

Ahhh, yes, it's that time of year again when we  begin  combing our little piece of heaven on  earth for  dead fall or as some of us like to call it, squaw wood. Squaw wood  are the dead  limbs and branches that fall from the trees through out the year and litter up the forest floor.They are easy to come by and generally burn well since they are already dead before falling.  Usually by  autumn of each year  our dead fall  pickings are slim since this is what we use to cook with  from  mid March until November. By the time spring comes around again  we have a replenished supply of firewood within easy  walking and hauling distance to the stove.


We try and keep a good selection of sizes ranging from tiny twigs to   limbs about the size of  a wrist around to cook with.  This allows us to  be able to regulate the fire temps under the cook top  to better suit what we are cooking. Since wood is all we use to do all of our cooking on it is also important to keep a supply of ready to use wood on hand and out of the weather. Dry wood is much easier and less frustrating to cook with than wood that has been rained on for five consecutive days.  Although we do not use a lot of wood in a given week it is still a  time consuming task that takes about two hours from start to finish. We would use a lot more wood if we cooked large meals on it every day but I try and do a one day a week  large cooking day and then just need short quick fires  through out the week to make new dishes from those I have already cooked, to reheat things and make side dishes.We do try to only use the stove once a day  for cooking  and opt to use the  microwave while we still have power and a microwave that works. We also use a small  fuel stove to make morning coffee. While we willingly step back in some ways, I would prefer to have my morning coffee before  I take that step back each day.  This is not the wood that we use for the oven in these pictures. This is solely for the cook top side.

Gathering the wood for cooking is one of my favorite chores here. I enjoy  going for short walks and then on my way back  I gather wood as I go and  stack it at the end of the shack until wood breaking day. One nice thing is  that for the most part  we don't have to be picky about the type of wood we use for the cook top.  smoke chamber is  separate from where food is cooked so we can utilize much of the fallen pine that would otherwise go to waste.

Here's a "survival in the woods" trick...For fire starter we use pine cones and snaps or pencil-thick and thinner branches on the bottom trunk of a spruce tree or other conifer. They stay dry  in rainy weather, are easy to snap off and gather by hand and they make excellent tinder for starting a fire. The tiniest of the tiniest twigs snapped into 3 or 4 inch  snaps will  light with a match then  slowly add slightly larger twigs  until you work you way up to the pencil size, by then your fire is a guarantee. With a little bit of practice, you should never need any other jazzy fire starters again.

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Naan

Naan is a leavened, oven-baked flat bread. It is one of the most popular varieties of South Asian breads and is particularly popular in the India, Afghanistan, Iran, United Kingdom, and Pakistan. It is also one of my favorite breads.

Directions call for yeast but if I remember early enough that I am going to make it, sour dough starter works just as well. I simply  replace the yeast with 1/4 cup sd starter and then adjust liquids accordingly. Naan is a great over the camp fire or on top of the wood stove made bread as well. Note that the directions say to rise for a total of about 2 hours. I rarely ever let it rise more than 20 minutes or so for each rise and they still come out fine, part of the reason I like them so well for a quick and easy bread that doesn't bear resemblance to a tortilla.

 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
  1 cup warm water
  1/4 cup white sugar
  3 tablespoons milk
  1 egg, beaten
  2 teaspoons salt
  4 1/2 cups bread flour
  2 teaspoons minced garlic (optional)
  1/4 cup butter, melted

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand about 10 minutes, until frothy. Stir in sugar, milk, egg, salt, and enough flour to make a soft dough. Knead for 6 to 8 minutes on a lightly floured surface, or until smooth. Place dough in a well oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and set aside to rise. Let it rise 1 hour, until the dough has doubled in volume.

Punch down dough, and knead in garlic. Pinch off small handfuls of dough about the size of a golf ball. Roll into balls, and place on a tray. Cover with a towel, and allow to rise until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

During the second rising, preheat grill to high heat.

At grill side, roll one ball of dough out into a thin circle. Lightly oil grill. Place dough on grill, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until puffy and lightly browned. Brush uncooked side with butter, and turn over. Brush cooked side with butter, and cook until browned, another 2 to 4 minutes. Remove from grill, and continue the process until all the naan has been prepared. serves 6

If you like the really bubbly skinned naan add a 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda and put lid on the pan or over the tops of them while cooking..For a snack sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar while warm

gardens 2010 and more wood stove cookin

2010 gardens









wood stove cookin

monday's mountain musings

I kind of enjoy playing with the movie makers. They take a fair bit of time and can be quite frustrating but I like the end result Over the last few days I have made a couple more besides the cabin video

flour tortillas

One of the easiest , simplest money savers a family can do is to begin making their own tortillas. Once you make your own, you will never buy store bought ones again. I can make us 15-20 large tortillas for about 50 cents and my time and I know just what I am eating.

The biggest problem newbies find when making tortillas the first few times is they are too fat.This is not always the problem of the tortilla roller but the recipe itself. Any tortilla recipe that has baking powder in it is going to make a fat tortilla no matter how thin you roll it.

We eat a lot of tortillas here and not simply because we eat alot of hispanic foods. I will put anything in a tortilla and call it a wrap. Spaghetti in a tortilla with cheese is surprisingly good as is scalloped potatoes and ham. I always wonder what you call chinese stir fry in a tortilla other than really good?

Keep in mind that when you make your own tortillas there are no preservatives in it so they will not keep anywhere near as long as store bought tortillas. If I keep mine in an airtight bag in the fridge, they will last about a week, however, they dont seem to be as flexible as the store bought ones after a few days, so they tend to be hard to use.

my recipe

3 cups flour
2 tbsp oil or lard
dash of salt
1 1/4 cup water or there about

mix all ingredients until dough forms. Flour hands and knead about 10 times. Let dough rest with moist towel covering for 15 minutes. Heat pan, griddle or stove top til very hot. Break off ping pong ball size ball dip in flour and roll thin.It should roll out to about 7-8 inches. They will not be perfectly round like store bought either, so get over it. Place tortilla in pan or on surface and cook until it begins bubbling and turn.Cook until bubbling again and remove.

all total it should take 2 -3 minutes per tortilla, if it takes longer your surface is not hot enough

sourdough breads n such

A couple years back I decided I was done paying for crappy bread from the supermarket and done paying the ever rising prices. This meant I needed to start baking our own breads. I chose to go with the sour dough bread starters for a couple reasons. The first of which is not ever needing yeast. I like the thought of always having the base mix to anything on hand in a pinch and I like that the starter can also be froze for later use if needed, and it doesnt have to be refrigerated if used often enough. I also like that i can use the starter mix for more than simply bread, ( pancakes , rolls , bagels, crackers, pretzels etc).

Now I must say it took me a few months to get the basics of the dough down. The first few attempts were awful. Just remember if it's a flop and you wind up with a frisbee, hockey puck or a nice door stop they can be ground up and used as bread crumbs so it isnt a complete waste and it doesnt make the failures seem anywhere near as bad either.

To make the basic starter

Blend a cup of warm water and a cup of flour(not self rising), and pour it into a jar.

* Every 24 Hours, Feed the Starter. You should keep the starter in a warm place; 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit is perfect. This allows the yeast already present in the flour (and in the air) to grow rapidly. Temperatures hotter than 100 degrees or so will kill it. .

The way you feed the starter is to throw away half of it and then add a half-cup of flour and a half-cup of water. (Don't actually throw the starter away, save it and make pancakes with the throw away starter.) Do this every 24 hours. Within three or four days (it can take longer, a week or more, and it can happen more quickly) you should start getting lots of bubbles throughout, and a pleasant sour or beery smell. The starter may start to puff up, too. This is good. Here's the gist: When your starter develops a bubbly froth, it is done. You have succeeded. If this sounds brain-dead simple, that's because it is. People who didn't believe the Earth was round did this for millenia.

* Refrigerate the Starter. Keep the starter in your fridge, with a lid on it. Allow a little breathing space in the lid. If you're using a mayo or pickle jar, punch a hole in the lit with a nail, that kind of thing. Once the starter is chilled, it needs to be fed only once a week. Realistically, you can get away with lessevery 3-4 weeks; it's important to remember that your starter is a colony of life-forms that are almost impossible to kill (except with extreme heat). Even starving them is difficult.

Care and Feeding: Hooch

Aside from weekly feeding, the only other thing you need to worry about is hooch. Hooch is a layer of watery liquid (often dark) that contains alchohol. It smells a bit like beer, because it is a bit like beer - but don't drink it! Hooch builds up in your starter, especially in the fridge. Just pour it off or stir it back in. It doesn't hurt anything. If your starter is looking dry, stir it back in. If your starter is plenty wet, pour it off. Just remember that hooch is nothing to worry about

Sourdough Baking Step One: Proofing the Sponge

Several hours before you plan to make your dough (recipe below), you need to make a sponge. A "sponge" is just another word for a bowl of warm, fermented batter. This is how you make your sponge.

* Take your starter out of the fridge. Pour it into a large glass or plastic bowl. Meanwhile, wash the jar and dry it. You may also wish to pour boiling water over it, since you don't want other things growing in there with your pet!

* Add a cup of warm water and a cup of flour to the bowl. Stir well, and set it in a warm place for several hours. This is called "proofing," another word for fermenting. Sourdough bakers have their own language; use it to impress your friends

* Watch for Froth and and Sniff. When your sponge is bubbly and has a white froth, and it smells a little sour, it is ready. The longer you let the sponge sit, the more sour flavor you will get.

The proofing-time varies. Some starters can proof up to frothiness in an hour or two. Some take 6-8 hours, or even longer. Just experiment and see how long yours takes. If you're going to bake in the morning, set your sponge out to proof overnight.

Sourdough Baking Step Two: The Actual basic Recipe


* 2 Cups of sponge (proofed starter)
* 3 Cups of unbleached flour
* 2 tablespoons of olive oil or softened margarine
* 4 teaspoons of sugar
* 2 teaspoons of salt

First, let's talk about leftover sponge. You should have some. The leftover sponge is your starter for next time: Put it into the jar, and give it a fresh feed of a half-cup each of flour and warm water. Keep it in the fridge as above; you'll have starter again next time.

Now, for the recipe: To the sponge, add the sugar, salt, and oil (the oil is optional - you can use softened butter instead, or no oil at all). Mix well, then knead in the flour a half-cup at a time. Knead in enough flour to make a good, flexible bread dough. You can do this with an electric mixer, a bread machine on "dough cycle," or a food processor. You can also do it with a big bowl and your bare hands.

Keep in mind that flour amounts are approximate; flour varies in absorbency, and your sponge can vary in wetness. Use your judgement; treat it like ordinary white or french bread dough.

Let the dough rise in a warm place, in a bowl covered loosely with a towel (if you're using a bread machine's dough cycle, let it rise in the machine). Note that sourdough rises more slowly than yeast bread; my starter takes about an hour or so, but some starters take much longer. Let the dough double in bulk, just like yeast-bread dough. When a finger poked into the top of the dough creates a pit that doesn't "heal" (spring back), you've got a risen dough.

Punch the dough down and knead it a little more. Make a loaf and place it on a baking sheet (lightly greased or sprinkled with cornmeal). Slit the top if you like, and cover the loaf with a paper towel and place it in a warm place to rise again, until doubled in bulk.

Place the pan with the loaf in your oven, and then turn your oven to 350 Fahrenheit and bake the bread for 30-45 minutes. Do not preheat the oven. The loaf is done when the crust is brown and the bottom sounds hollow when thumped with a wooden spoon. Turn the loaf out onto a cooling rack or a towel and let it cool for an hour before slicing.

For those that learn better visually there is Follow the sour dough , a series of videos on you tube

Here is the link to the site that has a printable booklet on sd... I have made all the recipes in it and I come up with my own recipes using the basic mixes as my starters for whatever it is i am making. I have never been unhappy with a recipe from here.
http://packham.n4m.org/sourdrec.htm

Here are a couple recipes of sour dough pancakes I have used before http://www.cowboyshowcase.com/sourdo...rry%20pancakes . I could give you the one I follow normally but i dont measure anything so it would be very difficult. Just play with the basic recipes and you will come up with one you like.

monday's mountain musings

More drizzly drooly weather here in the mtns but still no real cold for any length of time. We had 2 nights in low 20s and everything has seemed to pull thru it with no trouble. Next week is when I normally pull the plug on any gardening outside for a month or so for our coldest part of the winter. It will be interesting to see how long the gh plants hold out with the row covers and mini hot houses in there. Day time temps are still generally going up in to the 50's so other than all the wet weather we really can't complain too much .

We have had two official nights of quiet, WOOT! No gnawing, no chewing, nothing walking on the roof in the night, it has been wonderful. No smell of rotting bodies either so that' s a bonus thus far. Will pick up another round of poison when we go to town in a couple days as we have a meeting. Town twice in one week, how unusual, how horrible.

I have started a photo journal of my wood stove cooking. Have a look through them and enjoy.

pierogi

Pierogi are one of my favorite frugal recipes that I make. Not only are they delicious but they are very versatile. They can be boiled , deep fried or sauteed and can be filled with everything from sauerkraut , to meat or potatoes.They can be served as a main dish or side dish and in a myriad of ways from plain to extravagant. I have served pierogi with butter and cheese, tomatoes sauces, salsas and gravies. The worst part about making them is it is a bit time consuming to roll, fill and close allof them up. It makes a good afternoon family project and they freeze very well

Tonight I made mashed potato pierogi's with garlic and cheese as a one dish meal. I took a few pieces of bacon browned them up and crumbled. I then sauteed 2 large onions and two cups of chopped cabbage.When onions and cabbage were near tender I sliced two apples up and added that to the cabbage mixture and crumbled the bacon in. Heat through and serve over the pierogis.

recipe

2½ cups of flour

1 tsp salt

1 egg

2 tbs. sour cream

½ cup lukewarm water

Mix all ingredients together, and knead a bit. The dough should not be very smooth, and it should be quite sticky. Let stand covered for 1/2 hour before using. Take either all, or a portion of the dough, and roll it out until it is 1/16" thick. You will have to use plenty of flour to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin and rolling surface . Cut in to circles or squares and fill . Seal pocket completely and cook as desired.

Here is the site I get my dough recipe from. They have several recipes on different fillers for the pierogi and goes into much more detailed instruction. http://home.comcast.net/~dyrgcmn/Pierogi/pierogi.html

"cathead" biscuits

I love me some good biscuits on cold wintry mornings, unfortunately most recipes I have ever come across are horrible for one reason or another. More often than not, they would have been better suited as hockey pucks than food and I am a pretty darn good cook. Because all of our winter cooking is on the wood stove it also presents another challenge of being able to cook proper.Not too done on the bottom while not being goo on the tops can be an issue with many recipes . When I find a recipe that suits what I need I tend to modify it, keep it and use it. So here is my modified recipe for cathead biscuits.

Recipe

• 2 1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
• 1 Cup milk or there about
  
• 5 Tablespoons salted Butter

Mix all dry ingredients ,chop in the butter, make a well in center of bowl and add milk. Mix just until most of the mixture is moist. Flour hands and kneed the dough a few times. Make into ball and break off 2-3 inch balls of dough. Squish them out a bit to make 4-5 inch circle. Place in lightly greased hot cast iron skillet or dutch oven and place a dome lid over the pan, one that fits tightly is best. Cook until done. Takes mine about 20 -25 minutes on the stove top. In an oven i would say 15 minutes at 425 would do. Serve hot with your favorite biscuit toppers. Recipe makes about 6 large biscuits

good grub

Here are some of our latest eats off the wood stove. veggie cheeseburgers with store bought gmo goodness rolls and cheese slices along side some sweet potato chips.We had this on shopping day and I knew I had forgotten to take rolls out of the freezer.Kitchen sink soup, was very good with the appalachian cat head biscuits I made. The left over biscuits from tonite will be used for bacon gravy and bicuits in the morning.The beef stew and dumplings from the other night and the almost fried apple pies.

simple sustainable thanksgiving

This was the first year that manthing and I have been on our own for turkey day. I gotta say it was the most laid back and relaxing thanksgiving I have ever had. We are not big holiday celebrators anyway so we have always stayed home and had either the kids or friends over for the day. The last couple years we have been getting back to basics with our menu and eating more of what the pilgrims and first settlers would have typically eaten rather than much of the fanfare we associate with it.

With it just being us this year I decided to take it one step further and only use what we have grown here on the land or foraged for. The only exception I allowed my self was for the wee bit of flour I used for thickener and pie crust, a couple tbsp of liquid smoke , salt and pepper. Ohh, i almost fibbed. I did purchase a can of cranberries a while back and I just had to have some. I also decided that everything was going to be cooked on or in the wood stove.

Since we didn't have a turkey to fix this was really much easier than it sounds with the exception of the pinto bean pie. I decided to save time on turkey day and I would cook it the night before on top of the stove. I have done this before , it works I swear. The problem this time was that the stove had not had a fire since the evening before and we had just started the evening fire when I had the bright time saving idea . I got it all set and put her on to cook. Bedtime came and went, manthing went to bed, I gave in at 1 am and since the stove wasn't all that hot to begin with (a small brief fire to keep the chill off is common in the fall months). I decided to check it when I had to get up in the night. 4:13 am it was done, WOOT. I do believe I have the longest pie cooking record EVA! I must add that it was very tasty though.

our menu of the day was

"hickory smoked" bunny
mashed potatoes n gravy
stuffing
twice baked sweet potato squash
cranberries
pinto bean pie

pinto bean pie

The lowly pinto bean is such a useful food. Very good for you yet it can be made into so many wonderful things ,some that wind up quite unhealthy even. The first time I had this pie I was certain it was going to be plum awful. There was no way that anyone could make a pinto bean into a dessert that was going to be worth my eating. Much to my surprise, I really enjoyed the pie. Not overly sweet, had a very nice texture and just had an over all really nice flavor to it. Some call the pinto pies a mock pecan pie. To be honest, I have only ever had pecan pie one time so I cant really compare it.

There are several variations of recipes out there from simple to ya may as well make a pecan pie. My preferred simple recipe is

• 1 heaping cup mashed pinto beans (Note: 1 1/2 cups cooked beans equals about 1 cup, mashed)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg or cinnamon or a lil of both or even punkin pie spice
  
• 1 9-inch unbaked pie shell

chuck it all in a food processor or blender and process til smooth

Pour into a 9-inch unbaked pie shell. (easy and not a bad tasting pie shell recipe ) Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F and bake for an additional 25 minutes or until a knife inserted into the pie comes out clean.

or if your brave

cover with loose foil or a domed lid and cook on wood stove top rotating on occasion to encourage even cooking. Cook time will vary depending on how hot stove is. If i am going to make this in the wood stove on coals I use a cast iron skillet rather than pie pan.

more recipes

building the brick stove top/ oven

A couple years ago when we got our propane delivery and subsequent bill we decided that it was going to be our last delivery and that all of our cooking was going to be done over wood from that point on. Most of our summer cooking was already done over wood at this point in time but we still used the four eyed propane monster in the kitchen for the bulk of our cooking needs. Wondering just how we were going to go about this we looked around at what we had laying around and came up with our wood cook top and brick oven project.

We had an old wood cook stove that was in bad shape and we had some bricks laying around and this is what the manthing built for us. In the warmer months of the year this is what we cook and do all of our canning on. Overall i love it! Its much better than an open flame and cheaper than the propane. It smells lovely outside when we cook and I often wonder how far I would have to go from the house to smell things cooking. Canning is much cooler than if we did it in the house and it's nice having one huge burn area under a canner rather than a small burner on a normal stove.

The stove is under what most would consider a car port. During the cold months we run a couple few tarps to stop the winds from whipping through so much. It does stay dry under there except for when we have our torrential down pours with big winds. Since we have built the oven I have learned to cook on the wood stove in the shack for most of our needs in the winter months and just use the outdoor one for big bake days.

Please keep in mind that almost all materials were salvage and we worked with what we had to work with. Our total investment was 3 bags of mortar mix and 4, 4 foot pieces of 3/8 inch rebar, a grand total of 19 bucks.

The photo blog of the oven build


What we have learned since building
When cooking day in and day out over wood, IT REQUIRES A LOT OF WOOD!!!! We spend between two and three hours every week collecting dead fall for the stove part. Another hour or two is spent on the oven portions needs. The oven part takes about a 1/2wheel barrow full of wood when it is fired upfor the day.

The oven stays hot and warm for a very long while. Use it while its hot to make it worth the effort. I cook all our baked products each month on one firing of the oven. (breads, cakes, cookies, baked squashes and main meals etc). When it is cooling down nicely i use it to dry herbs n such, it does a nice job...

The oven works best keeping a small fire under the stove top portion and we do generally actually have a fire and coals under the oven bit as well. Utilize the stove top while you are heating the oven. I generally make a large pot of beans, cook my rice for the week(then as we go through the week turn it into various meals) and make a pot of pasta. I also make a large pot of taters and if i am going to need any tomato sauces i cook them down as well.

The oven takes about 3 hours to heat up to cooking temperatures (350-375). Things cook faster in this than a conventional oven. If i cook a cake at 350 it will be done in 15 minutes . If i put it in at 300-325 it takes about normal time. Glass pans work best for all things. Metal pans tend to get things burnt on the bottom. The side that is closest to the stove top is hotter than the opposite side and the back is hotter than the front. To fix this simply rotate dishes half way through...

Since the stove top is somewhat open to elements, keeping it seasoned can be difficult. Things cook just as fast or faster on the stove top as a conventional stove. It takes a bit longer to heat up since it is cast iron, but it also retains the heat for longer after you stop feeding the fire...

cooking on the wood stove

Since we are heading into the winter months where we will have a fire in the shack the majority of days, I shift the majority of my cooking inside and to the top of the wood stove. The inside stove is not a cook stove type model it is simply a run of the mill older style wood stove.Once the chill of winter sets in good,I would say about 85% of our cooking is done on the wood stove, 10% outside on the cook top and oven and 5% crock pot. We figure why burn wood outside and in the cold when we have a perfectly good cooking source in the warmth of the house. I have found over the last few years that one can dang near cook anything either on it or in it. most things cook in about the same amount of time as what they would cooked on anything else so long as the stove is hot. If it is just heating up as you cook then things will take longer. Its fun cooking on the wood stove, it just takes some practice to get accustomed to. I can say, that it sure is nice to not have to depend on that four eyed monster in the kitchen.

The simplest things to cook on the stove top are beans, soups and stews.Nothing easier than throwing a pot of something on all day and letting it slowly simmer. Chili is pretty easy as is rice, oatmeal and cream of wheat.Tortillas and other flat breads are quite simple as I simply use the top of the stove to cook them.

For breads, cakes and such I place another pan over the top of them. You will most likely have very brown bottoms on things , but if its all you have then you make do. Another method to take a large dutch oven with one of those round meat racks in the bottom. Sit your bread pan down in the dutch oven (on the rack) and put the lid on. It will stop that thick bottom that I mentioned because it leaves a gap for the heat to circulate around the pan and not directly react on it. I have found cast iron pans to be the best for baked goods. It keeps the bottoms from getting quite so brown. Heat the pans up well before you throw your mix of cornbread or cake etc in the pan..

For frying foods or cooking steaks, burgers etc, a cookie sheet works well. If you have only heavy pans to use, sit them on top of the stove to heat up good before you cook in them. A small spray of Pam or light brushing of oil on the pan helps keeps things from sticking and makes clean up easier.

Deep frying is not possible that I have found. The oil just wont get hot enough to do french fries and fried snickers (yes we on occasion subject ourselves to this type of GMO, HFCS, fat laden goodness), but the good news is, even that can be solved. You simply use a shallow thin bottomed pan and a smaller amount of oil and turn as needed.

For some things I just wrap them in foil and place on top of the stove and turn periodically. I do taters, squash and other assorted veggies quite often using this method . Speaking of foil,you can wrap whole potatoes in foil and toss them in one side of the fire box on top of coals you brush over to one side.You can do this with other veggies as well or you can simply throw your dutch oven on in there for a while.Experiment with it and see how much you can do. It is a great use of a cooling down, non raging wood stove. I generally use this method when we need to . to let the fire die down to take ashes out.