Cooking up a Storm...

When it gets cold outside I like to cook and bake. Living in a drafty old house it's the only way to survive the cold winter. While Hubby and kids go off to work or school  I must stay home in the cold cave. Once the fire in the wood stove dies I flee to the kitchen and turn on the burners plus stove. Shh. Don't tell them!
So I cooked up a storm yesterday.

1. I baked a butternut squash and transformed it into the most delightful soup for dinner
2. I made a "gedeckter Apfelkuchen". It's the closest thing Germans have compared to an apple pie.

Ingredients for Butternut Squash Soup:

1 big butternut squash
1/2 cup of dried black beans
1 liter of chicken broth
red bell pepper chopped
corn
garlic, minced
chorizo sausages or other hot sausage links
pepper and salt to taste


Cut your Butternut Squash in half. Scoop out the little pocket with the seeds. Put the two cut sides down in a baking pan with about 1/4 inch of water in it. Bake in the stove at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour or until soft when stabbed with a fork.

Take another pot and throw in some black beans with water. Boil for about two hours until soft. Ah, it' s already getting warmer in the house!

Next prepare the dough for the apfelkuchen.

Ingredients for Apfelkuchen: (adapted from Backen macht Freude)

350 g flour
100 g sugar
2 eggs
4 teaspoons of baking powder
milk (recipe called for 4 Tablespoons but I added quite a bit more because the air was very dry)
150 g butter
1 packet of vanilla sugar

2 cups of applesauce, mine was homemade, I added raisins to it.

Throw all the ingredients (except for ONE of the eggs and the apple sauce) in a bowl and kneed them together. Wrap your dough ball in Saran wrap and put in refrigerator. It can rest while squash is baking. Ah, perfect timing. Now you can go and do something else. Maybe chop some wood or shovel the driveway...

Once you get back in the house the squash is ready to go. Who said they were cold? A lovely wave of heat hits me as I enter the kitchen. Beans are getting soft and it's time to deal with the squash. Pull it from the oven and scoop the meat out and reserve.

Time to get back to the cake! Get your dough from the fridge and cut it in half. Take the first half and roll it out flat to fit in a baking pan/sheet that's about 30x40 cm. Hmm, since I don't have anything that size I just took whatever came close... See picture.
Spread your applesauce mix on top of the layer of dough in the pan. Take the second half of the dough and roll it out flat. Same size as the first piece. Now come the tricky part: Moving the second sheet of dough and putting it on top of the applesauce. No different from making an apple pie really. You have to fold it up and then unfold it. Right? It's just a bit bigger...

Hopefully your oven is still nice and hot from baking that squash. Temperature needs to be about 375 Fahrenheit. So great, you can turn it up a bit more. =)
Make an egg wash by mixing one egg yolk and a tablespoon of milk. The German cookbook calls for sliced almonds on top. I didn't have any so just the egg wash will do. Brush it on. Stab the cake a few times with a fork to create some holes for steam to escape. Put it in your oven and bake for 25-30 minutes - until top is golden brown.

Back to the soup. Add chicken broth to your squash chunks and puree. Add the clove of minced garlic. Add the cooked black beans. Throw in some yellow corn if you have it. Add some chopped bell pepper. Add little pieces of your cooked hot sausage links. I don't add them to the pot since my daughter doesn't like spicy food. So you can just have the sausage in a little bowl to the side. Vegetarians can leave it out too.

You'd think there would be easier ways to keep the house warm. But not as delicious. Dinner is ready to go. Time to make some dolls...

Blizzard 2011 Round Two

A wise old woman told my daughter the other day: If we get snow on October 26th that means there will be 26 snowfalls this season. Looks like she was right!
What the heck?

We got blizzard number 2 last night. I swear these pictures are new and not last week's - though they do look kind of the same the only difference being that I have a huge pile of snowcovered sticks in front of my house...

I think I'll stay put and keep making dolls. I have no desire to drive about and see more fallen treelimbs. We lost a couple more in the backyard. I thought there was nothing left. But I was wrong. We will be adding to our pile once the snow melts. Wish me luck!

Happy Halloween!

The family spent all weekend cleaning up the mess from last week's storm. I feel like Hercules after cleaning the Augean stables. My back hurts and I am soooo sore from all the lifting, chopping, and dragging of dead tree limbs. Supposedly the city will pick up the pile of brush we put out by the street. It's "only" a pile about 5 feet tall and 20 feet wide...

The kids had fun playing on the pile. I couldn't help but smile though my heart was heavy looking at my dead Italian plum tree. No more plum cakes. Sniffle.

Hope all those Trick-or-Treaters  are careful tonight. It's going to be difficult maneuvering around the brush piles on our street. I swear ours is the highest and longest in the neighborhood.

Can you find the second child in this picture?

Happy Halloween! And be safe out there!

NaturalKids Team Giveaway on SouleMama

Don't miss out on this great Giveaway by the NaturalkKids Team on Soule Mama's blog. You could win a number of cool Natural toys to give away as presents for Christmas!

Images from the Big Snow Storm

I don't think this post requires too many words. The images speak for themselves...
You can see what we woke up to on Wednesday morning. From a perfectly golden mild October we went to Winterwonderland in the blink of an eye.

I am just really sad to think about all the trees that got destroyed in this massive snowstorm. This is what happens when one foot of snow falls on trees that are still in their fall attire.

The destruction is epic. Our backyard looks like a bomb hit. Fruit trees that we nursed for years fell victim to large branches from the neighbor's old trees that fell on top of them.

On the positive side: My husband put the car in the garage. The truck only lost one of the side mirrors. Nobody in our neighborhood got hit by a falling branch. The power is working again and I can make coffee on the kitchen stove instead of the wood stove. I have the Internet and my computer back...
I am glad to be back to relatively normal!

From my phone

 we had a massive snowstorm in colorado. took out our phone and powerline yesterday. luckily I have this nifty phone that keeps me connected to the world as we huddle by a fire. pretty weird how we are reduced to living like cavemen while having modern touchphones. I'll share my pictures snd story once I get my computer back. The distruction in our yard is totally depressing!

Nightcap...

nightcap 4, originally uploaded by germandolls.

I think we should go back to using nightcaps. I mean the hats - not the drinks. LOL. I made this cute little set for a customer. It turned out so adorable I decided to make a couple more for my etsyshop. The shoes now - take a while to make. If you'd to order some for Christmas you better hurry quick!