last day....

You know if it is a pretty day at the end of September you have to have a little party...and we did....and Penny and Spike were given toys! Of course, Spike had to take Penny's ball....

of travel, quests, and OBSESSION

When I was a kid and drove with my family through the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, and all through the many many many times I drove through as an adult, it was always like "wow, I sure wish I could stop here!" and you hear about a mythic and remote mountaintop waterfall and you KNOW that the fall colors are peaking this week....and then, the wife has for YEARS wanted to visit the Crane Paper factory and museum in the same area, and it closes for the season next week, and you realize that Melville's famously obsessed quest for the white whale was written in that same area AND when the wife was a kid her grandparents lived in the same area and she had not been back in over 42 years....well.....we had to pack our dog and go on our own quest:  to see the mythic and remote falls IN FALL, Melville's house, Crane Paper and also what remains of her grandparent's place .....15 hours driving, 5 miles hiked in 1.5 hours, and 527 miles driven with a cooler full of peanut butter sandwiches, cookies and coffee, one beagle and a bag of dog food.....


This is the roadside of rte. 2 near Mohawk Trail State Forest....

We were SO relieved, after searching for quite awhile, to see a little sign on a tree leading to Tannery Falls....it felt like the middle of nowhere, and it is.  The wife asked "do you have the cell phone?" and I am like "well, its back in the car..." which was miles behind us, and parked in the middle of nowhere too....  the guy at the general store who had given us directions is like "I have lived here 80 years and never been up there...they say its very difficult to find and get to...."


It is pretty spooky to be on top of this mountain near nothing and nobody and come across a 200 year old cemetery.....somebody used to live up here....perhaps there was a tannery, therefore the name Tannery Falls?


These are the top sections of a long series of falls leading down the mountain....


Penny travels VERY well, esp. when she has the chance to climb a mountain and then eat and take a nap for the rest of the day....

Penny at Crane Paper Co...they have been making the paper for wedding invitations and US dollar bills here for more than 2 centuries!  There is no gift shop, but the original riverside workshop is a museum and they give out a LOT of beautiful free paper samples...



It was sooooooo awesome being at Herman Melville's house.  He wrote Moby Dick here and other great works....BUT was not a success as a writer in his lifetime. Famously, the publisher and printer of Moby Dick made some mistakes and everybody at the time hated the book because they had forgotten to add the final chapters!  Melville had to give up writing and get a job!


The house the wife's grandparents had is gone, victim of fire and neglect and improvement by parking lot...but the beautiful barn and grounds remain....

"we're on a mission from..."

Just wait till you see what we do Friday, oh BOY!
For now....pics of our yard and a rather tasty looking glaze load of pots....
have a great weekend yourself!

punkin'

Pumpkin pie and golden maple trees, oh YES!
Our back yard.  Sheesh its gorgeous, hmm??? I am surprising the wife this afternoon with my first ever pumpkin pie....made with no gluten in the crust and no dairy either.  ***Recipes follow, I made granola, then a granola pie crust then pumpkin pie....busy day, hmm?
The wife loves pumpkin pie and I thought I should try it...

you probably need some of my new pots, at my etsy gallery now!

***

gluten-free granola 

• 
  
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 tablespoons light butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups uncooked regular oats
• 1/2 cup oat flour
• 1/3 cup sliced almonds
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Preparation

1. 1. Stir together honey and next 2 ingredients in a small bowl. Stir together oats, flour, sliced almonds, and salt in a large bowl. Add honey mixture to oatmeal mixture, stirring until combined. Spread oat mixture onto a lightly greased baking sheet.
2. 2. Bake at 350° for 20 minutes, stirring often.

GRANOLA PIE CRUST
1/2 c. butter, melted 1 1/2 c. granola 1/3 c. chopped nuts 3 tbsp. brown sugar Mix together all ingredients. Press into 8 inch pie pan and chill until set. This is a never fail recipe.

Pumpkin pie with soy milk

Ingredients

•  3/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 can (15 oz.) pumpkin
• 1 1/4 cups soy milk (10 oz.)
• 2 large eggs
• Pastry for a single-crust 9-inch pie, purchased (thawed if frozen) or homemade

1. to prepare:
2. 1. In a large bowl, mix sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Add pumpkin, soy milk, and eggs; whisk until well blended. Pour mixture into unbaked pastry in pan.
3. 2. Set pie on bottom rack of a 425° regular or convection oven. Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce temperature to 350°; continue baking until center of pie is set and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 45 minutes longer.
4. 3. Set pie on a rack until cool, at least 2 hours. After serving, chill pie airtight.

up to our ears in apples...

You will recall, of course, this time last year:  the apple tree across the street went bananas and produced a gazillion apples that our neighbors let us pick and eat, MILLIONS of apples.  For pie, jam, apple sauce.
This year an April snow storm and cold snap killed off a lot of New York states apple blossoms :(
The crop is a lot smaller, but still pretty abundant at orchards (not at my neighbor's though!).
I have made a lot of apple sauce, because it is shockingly tasty, and turns your everyday oatmeal into something that tastes like apple pie.  And the house when you make it?  Smells like apple pie!

Anyway, somewhere this week I came across a slow cooker crock pot apple butter recipe.  Apple butter is simply extra EXTRA thick apple sauce used as jam on your toast.  I see this recipe and I am like "this is soooooo easy, I have to try it!" and I did....goshdarnit, tis perfect! **recipe as I did it below, and conveniently it goes well with beer bread....



Halfway cooked...I was amazed, just simmering all day was breaking it all down and turning it into a jam-like substance...

well, I had to get some glaze work done too, DUH!  I ask myself "why do you put yourself in all these pictures?" and I tell myself "well, its my blog, who wants to look at just pictures of APPLES?".


**apple butter, as Gary made it!  produced 4 cups (bigger recipe would produce MORE)

6-8 large apples, cored and diced---(I used cortlands...we live next to the town of Cortland)
2 cups sugar
lots of nutmeg, cinnamon, ground cloves
3/4 cup water

Fill crock pot 3/4 full with apples.  That was 6 for me, but as the stuff cooked it looked to me like I could have packed some more in there. Oh well!  Original recipe calls for peeling apples, but I never do that and it did not seem to matter at all.
Stir into apples the water, sugar and spice, set crock pot on low, cook all day (10-12 hours) and give it the occasional stir.
If late in the day it is still watery looking (mine was NOT, it really looked beautiful and thick) the original recipe says you can remove the cover and turn to high and stir often.  Which is basically what you would do with stovetop cooking of apple butter.
Sterilize jars and lids, as you would for jam, then can it!  Sooooooooooo easy! The easiest jam you have ever made!

the whole kit and caboodle

Kinda has double meaning for today.  I was thinking, finally I can show you a picture of our house, painted top to bottom, fence and all....the whole kit and caboodle!  Then its like, well, half this post post is also about our chubby but heroic cat (see the haiku from a couple days ago, about Spike cat catching the enormous mouse in the living room).
So, the before, 3 weeks ago...good golly it looked summery then!



he seems super to me, anyway.....