Apple Cake

Whew. The second IMBY MistyHollow Gaze and Graze is over, we had a great time. I'll post some photos shortly.

Below is a recipe for Apple Cake which I made for the baked goods table. Rose K. asked for the recipe.

I got this recipe from my neighbor. It's very, very, very good.

APPLE CAKE

3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 sticks of butter (melted)
4 eggs
3 heaping tsp. baking powder
2 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup orange juice
About 3 large apples peeled and thinly sliced
Cinnamon and sugar mixture (I use an abundance of the cinnamon and sugar mixture and sprinkle generously where called for)
9" tube pan (I butter pan and sprinkle it with a little cinnamon and sugar mixture, but you don't have to do this)

Combine flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, vanilla, orange juice, and melted butter in bowl and beat well until fully mixed. [Anna: I followed a more traditional mixing method of sugar +butter, then eggs, vanilla, and flour mixture alternating with orange juice.]

Place half of batter in pan and generously scatter sliced apples and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mixture. Place remaining batter on top and repeat procedure. When placing apples on top, form a circular overlap design.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours. Cool for about 15 minutes and remove from pan to cool completely. Enjoy!

* Tip: I am very generous with the cinnamon and sugar. This causes the cake to brown nicely and the apples on top caramelize.

Gingerbread garden

I thought you guys would get a kick out of the gingerbread house I made this weekend. Inspired by the garden that was included in the White House's gingerbread house, I added a garden in front of my house.

I used a gingerbread cookie recipe from Williams-Sonoma. It tastes delicious, has a great mix of spices, and doesn't "spread" at all, very important for cookie architecture!

My husband suggested using twizzlers for bricks. Lettuce and peppermint watermelons.

Spearmint shrubs, carrots, tomatoes, eggplants

At the far right are squash, parsnips, and chocolate M&Ms (potatoes?)

2009 End of Season pot luck

Live blogging from the end of season IMBY pot luck dinner!

Harvest Cake with Goat Cheese Frosting

I saw this recipe for a cake with zucchini, carrots, and beets and very little refined sugar, on the cooking blog The Kitchn and thought IMBY members might like it, and have a chance to use up some veggies! I haven't tried it myself but maybe I'll make it this weekend and report back.

Recipe: Harvest Cake with Goat Cheese Frosting

Zucchini and squash recipes

Just wanted to share this great collection of recipes for summer squash. I think the the sauceless garden lasagna sounds particularly good!

http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Zucchini-and-Summer-Squash/Detail.aspx

Molly is missing from IMBY (edited)

Updated: Molly was found! Thanks to the help of Sally, Jim, Rose, and many other CSA members Molly Dog was found safe on Sunday August 17th - an eight day "mid-life crisis" as Jeff Devlin put it.

Our Dog Molly is missing -she ran away from Sally and Jim's on Saturday August 8th. She is wonderful and sweet and we miss her. If you see her or if you could forward a link to this post to your friends in the area, please help us find her

Farm Bill

Sally asked me to post this to the blog. Please take a moment to read this note, which was written by a group called DC Downsizers. This could potentially affect Jim and Sally directly.

=======================================

THIS IS AN URGENT ACTION ITEM... We've been told a vote is likely to occur Wednesday.
When we first launched our Freedom to Farm campaign back in April, we mentioned that House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman said "he intends to pass a strong food safety bill soon."

This bill we warned you about, the 109-page H.R. 2749, is Waxman's promise.
The good news is that some of the most egregious trial balloons from earlier bills such as H.R. 875 have gone by the wayside . . .

• There will be no new Food Safety Administration bureaucracy
• The bill seems to define "farm" in such a way that backyard gardens won't be included in the regulations
• Direct farm-to-consumer, farm-to-restaurant, and farm-to-grocery store transactions will be exempt
• There is no implementation or incorporation of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS)

YOU are to be thanked for this. DC Downsizers were part of a large army of concerned citizens that killed earlier bills.

But the bad news is very bad. This bill . . .

• authorizes warrantless searches of farms
• imposes a $500 tax (or "registration fee") of all operators in all steps of the food production chain
• imposes civil penalties up to $20,000 per individual for each violation
• creates a food trace-back system, burdening farms and small businesses with reams of new paperwork
• empowers the Dept. of Health and Human Services to micro-manage the raising and harvesting of crops (you might have assumed that Congress would've handed the U.S. Dept of Agriculture this terrible power).

In essence, Congress wants to punish the innocent and protect the guilty. It is not small farms and businesses that were the source of contaminated food scares, but rather the processing facilities of large corporations. Yet this bill will only drive small farms out of business, which means reduced competition and higher prices in an already-bad economy.

Please use DownsizeDC.org's proprietary Educate the Powerful System to send a letter to Congress telling them to defeat H.R. 2749. Tell them the bill will only hurt competition and put undue burdens on small farmers. Let's send enough messages to frighten Congress and kill this bill.

And due to the urgency of this vote, if you have time, please call your local House Representative as well. His or her contact info is presented on the campaign page, once you're logged in.
Thank you for being a DC Downsizer,
Jim Babka, PresidentDownsizeDC.org