Kid Baltimore | Family Activities with Children in Baltimore, Maryland

Crock Dill Pickles

I've always loved dill. Every year, my dad used to make a big crock of dill pickles and they were my favorite after-school snack. I ate them by the bowlful. My parents joked that someday I would walk down the aisle carrying a bouquet of dill, and one day (true story) I did.

Dad's recipe seemed to evolve over the years. One year I remember they were incredibly hot. One year I remember he decided the allspice had to come out of the pickle seasoning. But the core of the recipe remained the same.

When I decided to make my own pickles, I looked up a few recipes and gave it a go. After about three failures, I put my tail between my legs and asked Dad for his recipe. I still think it's fair game to tinker with the spices since he always did. So here is his recipe, with my current spice variation. I added garlic and decreased the pickling spice. I think I have it down now.

Thanks, Dad.

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For the brine:

2/3 cup non-iodized salt

1 1/2 cups cider vinegar

5 quarts water

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For the crock:

12 lbs. pickling cucumbers

A bunch of dill (Wegman's always has large bunches at just the right time)

1/2 bottle pickling spice

25 cloves of garlic

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1. Wash the cucumbers and cut off 1/4" from the blossom end.

2. In a large crock, layer cucumbers, dill, garlic and pickling spice.

3. In a large pot, mix the vinegar, water and salt to make the brine. Stir until the salt is dissolved.

4. Pour the brine over the cucumbers to cover them completely. If they are not completely covered, mix a little extra brine as needed.

5. Place a plate on top of the cucumbers, and a jar filled with water on top of the plate to keep the cucumbers completely submerged. Cover the entire crock and jar with a dish towel.

6. Keep the pickles in the crock for no more than 1 week. Taste-test to decide when they are ready. As they pickle, a white, bubbly scum will form on the top. Ewww.

7. Drain and rinse the pickles. Prepare a fresh brine of the same strength and can them, in quart jars, for 15 minutes in a boiling water bath. I add some fresh dill to the jars as well. Save a few quarts in the refrigerator un-canned. Those are always the best.

 

 

Recipe Writing: Lasagna

Note: I'm taking a bit of time off and handing the reigns over to my very capable daughter, a.k.a anonymous, this week. She's sharing (for the first time ever) one of her favorite recipes — lasagna. I hope "recipe writing" becomes a regular feature because, for one thing, the kid can cook. And for another, I could use a little help. Recently, she made a double batch of lasagna and put one in the freezer for me to cook later. Now that's helpful.

~Joyce

by anonymous

Okay, so I admit it. I’m not usually writing in Kid Baltimore. This anonymous writer that you have surely seen in photographs is writing for Kid Baltimore. I’m going to be posting every so often on Recipe Writing to just share some recipes that I like and enjoy making, but that’s beside the point for the moment. Anyway: lasagna.

The ingredients needed for this recipe are, as usual in lasagna,

• ricotta cheese
• parmesan cheese
• traditional lasagna noodles
• tomato sauce
• virtually anything but the kitchen sink; sausage, spinach, socks, whatever
• oregano
• mozarella cheese

Comb your grocery lists thoroughly for anything you’ve forgotten. And now, for the recipe.

Oil a pan that is twelve inches in length, nine inches in width, and 2.5 inches in height. You should already have your meat (if you use it) cooked and ready to go. Frozen vegetables do not have to be completely thawed. I don’t know how to tend the socks. Use twelve ounces of tomato sauce (you should use thirty-six ounces in all) to cover the bottom of the pan. Press as many noodles as you can in a row on top of it. They don’t have to be boiled. (I could fit three.) Next, spread ricotta cheese over the noodles. Sprinkle two medium sized eleven-year-old handfuls (usually half a bag) of mozzarella over the ricotta cheese. Use some of the filling (anything but the kitchen sink) over the ricotta cheese, and top with Parmesan. The amount of the filling and Parmesan cheese vary, depending on the chef. Repeat the directions from “Use twelve ounces of tomato sauce…” to “The amount of filling and Parmesan cheese…” two more times, or until the pan is filled up to nearly the brim. Make sure there’s a bunch of mozzarella on top for that melted cheese to cover the dish when you take it out of the oven. An hour before you would like to serve it, the oven should be preheated to 375 degrees. While you wait for it to heat, cover the lasagna with aluminum foil. Then, place it in the oven for forty-five minutes to one hour. Serve while hot.

So, if you liked the first Recipe Writing, stick around! There’s another one coming soon.

[Mom note: watch the liquid on this one. Since the pasta is not pre-cooked, you may need to add 1/4-1/2 cup of water. Seal tightly with aluminum foil until the last 10-15 minutes of cooking.]

Good Things From My Inbox

 

My inbox has been filling up lately with lots of good ideas of things to do/buy/make and I wanted to share just a few with you.

123 Baltimore: A Cool Counting Book by Puck is a counting board book for the toddler set. It takes little ones on a cool trip through Charm City. And while your little ones may not yet fully understand the significance of pink flamingos or blue crabs, or all things Baltimore, Hon, it's never too soon to start.

I really appreciate the simple san-serif type and clean design.

 

 

 

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Here's a great offer from the American Visionary Art Museum for free admission to the museum if you donate clean jars. This offer is good through September 2011. You can email to arrange for your free passes. If you haven't taken your kids to AVAM, it is positively one of my favorite art places to go, and worth every penny. But free is even better. Here is a letter from their Education Assistant, Beka:

I am writing to ask if you could possibly assist us in collecting jars for our Educational programs. In exchange for your readers donating 10 jars, we can give them 2 passes to the museum. We are looking for jars to use in a workshop we currently offer for students coming to the museum on field trips called "Wire Whimsies" ( I have attached a photo !) Any jars with a lid work for this project, including jam jars, baby food jars, salsa jars etc.

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Baltimore International College has some wonderful sounding Food Enthusiast Classes. These are non-credit (in other words, no pressure) continuing education cooking and baking classes that are taught by experienced chefs at the Culinary Arts Center in Little Italy.

You can get gift certificates too, which might make a pretty nice Christmas present, hint, hint.

In the meantime, they sent this delicious looking gingerbread house recipe. I'm slightly terrified that it calls for 13 cups of flour. Am I building a city? I'm tempted to cut it in half, but I might just go for it because I really don't think there is such a thing as too much gingerbread.

Gingerbread House or Cookies

Ingredients:
6 cups Sugar
4 cups Butter (soft)
3/4 cup Molasses
4 Eggs
1/2 cup Milk
13 cups Flour
3 tbsp Baking Soda
2 tsp Salt
3 tbsp Cinnamon
2 tbsp Ginger
2 tsp Allspice
2 tsp Cloves


Procedure:
1. Beat the sugar, butter, and molasses together.
2. Add the eggs and beat until incorporated.
3. Add the milk and continue beating.
4. Mix the dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and cloves). Add to the creamed mixture and mix well.
5. Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes.

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And finally, Faces iMake, an app developed in conjunction with Hancoch Piven. I've been familiar with Hanoch's illustration work for many years, and I think this app is a fantastic adaptation of his playful style.

The app comes with a collection of collage objects that include musical instruments, food, hardware, letters and tools. You can combine them to make just about any face you can imagine. There is a lite version available for free, but for the full collection of 2000+ objects, I would recommend the premium version.

Homemade Yogurt

Growing up, my parents frequently made yogurt from scratch...cultured in handmade porcelain cups... and served with homemade preserves.

Not going to happen for my kids. For one thing, my family can go through a full quart of yogurt in one breakfast. As for the lovely porcelain cups. Nope. Mason jars with screw on lids for my crew. Homemade preserves? Maybe someday.

But why make yogurt from scratch? Oh, so many reasons.

1. It's cheaper. I gallon of milk makes 1 gallon of yogurt (actually a little more).
2. You can control the sugar. I'm pro adding a nice helping of honey (but never for babies), but not so convinced that my kids need more high fructose corn syrup.
3. It's a really entertaining science project. Who knew bacteria could do so many good things?
4. It's alive. All those live yogurt cultures are, well, alive.
5. It tastes amazing. Maybe that one should be first on the list.

The thing I like about this recipe is that you probably have all the equipment you need:

mason jars with lids
instant read thermometer
large heavy bottomed pot
insulated cooler

And the ingredients are simple:

1 gallon whole milk
1 cup plain yogurt as starter

You can make yogurt with lower fat milk, but this is a nice place to splurge. If you do use lower fat milk, you will need to a some powdered milk to act as a thickener. As for sweeteners, I keep it plain and let the kids add it later, along with nuts, or granola, or fresh fruit. For babies, try it plain. They might like it just fine that way. Mine did.

Here is the recipe:

1. Wash jars and lids in dishwasher to sterilize.
2. Pour 1 gallon of milk in heavy-bottomed pot. Heat on low until temperature reaches 190 degrees. Check temperature frequently and stir gently. You want to make sure the milk does not scorch on the bottom.
   
   
   
   
3. Remove pot from heat and place it in a cold water bath in the sink. Monitor temperature until it goes down to 120 degrees.
   
   
   
   
4. Add the plain yogurt. The bacteria from the yogurt needs to be spread throughout the milk, so stir until blended.
5. Pour mixture into jars. Screw on lids. Place jars in cooler.
   
   
   
   
6. Heat 1 gallon of water to 120 degrees and pour the water into the cooler around the jars.
7. Close the cooler lid and leave undisturbed for 4-6 hours 6-8 hours. The temperature in the cooler needs to remain warm the entire time.
8. After 4 hours 6 hours, check the firmness of the yogurt. A little sloshy is okay, but I prefer mine to be fairly thick. It will continue to thicken as it cools. Place it in the refrigerator when you are satisfied with the thickness.
9. The next morning you can have a taste test. As the yogurt ages, the taste becomes more tangy and the texture more firm. Yogurt will keep up to 1 month. Remember to save a cup of yogurt as a starter for the next batch!
   
   
   
   For more yogurt info, check out one of my favorite blogs, Frugal Girl. She make yogurt weekly and has more detailed instuctions.
   

Homemade Bread in Five Minutes A Day

Will someone please tell me why there are 30 ingredients in my store-bought bread? I'm trying, really hard, to feed my family healthy food. I really am. But I am starting to realize that the bad stuff sneaks in, no matter what I buy.

I suppose I brought this on myself. I had just finished reading In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, by Michael Pollan, and then I foolishly followed it up with King Corn, starring Michael Pollan (again) and Ian Cheney. So let's just say I have been operating on Michael Pollan overload. Still, both the book and the movie make some really good points. One of which is:

The only real way to make food healthy is to make it myself.

So, back to my bread situation. Why so many ingredients? I will never know, but I'm pretty sure that half of them have to do with shelf life, and the other half are probably making it lighter, fluffier, sweeter or whatever.

I occasionally like to bake bread. Actually, I like the idea of baking bread, and the smell of baking bread, more than I like baking bread. A while back I noticed this article in Mother Earth News that talked about how to bake bread in 5 minutes a day, no kneading required. Obviously, cooking and rising time are not included in the 5 minutes. The keys to this method are a very wet dough and a tray of water.

 

Maybe a little good old-fashioned faith doesn't hurt either. Any day you want bread, you cut off a piece of dough, shape it, let it rest, and bake it. As the dough ages (up to two weeks) the sourdough flavor get stronger and the bread gets even better. I made the first batch (replacing some of the white flour with whole wheat...yes, I have to sneak that in) and it was amazing.

I used up the last of my first batch as pizza dough. I'm going to experiment some more, but I think having a bowl of dough in the fridge is going to be a regular habit. Once you master the basic recipe, there are lots of variations to try.

More recipes are available in Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois's book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking. Enjoy!

Apple Picking at Baugher's

 

When we pulled into the drive at Baugher's to pick apples, I was honestly shocked. Never underestimate the power of the apple. Cars were lined up all the way back to the road, and scouts were directing traffic. All this for apples? I mean, I love a good apple, but really?

Then I realized, it's not just about apples. It's apples, pumpkins, hayrides, apple butter, kettle corn and even a petting zoo, all wrapped up in one. Well, maybe for the rest of the crowd, but for me, it's about the apples, so outta my way.

We headed to stand in the tractor line for a ride to the apple orchard. It was a short wait, and we were quickly on our way. My gripe with apple picking is always the same. It just doesn't take long enough. But with little kids, that is not entirely a bad thing. We filled up 2 half bushel boxes in a short amount of time and caught a tractor ride back.

Of course, with apples in hand, there was no way we were leaving without checking out the other stuff. By the time we left, the kids had petted (or tried to pet) every animal around. The trunk was loaded with a big fat pumpkin, a bushel of apples, some tomatoes to can, and of course a huge bag of kettle corn.

Okay, I'm lying. The kettle corn rode up front with me.

Just one note: always call first to check availability.

410-876-5642

Baugher's
1236 Baugher Road
Westminster, MD 21158

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