Morning Coffee & a Rustic Cherry Tart for Breakfast

When we moved out to the Catskill Mountains, we dreamt of quiet moments in nature feasting on delicious treats like this Rustic Cherry Tart served on one of our White Swirl Speckled Serving Platters. They are match made in heaven.

The spring and summer out here produce some of the most amazing fruits and this week we dove into cherries. Have you ever had a fresh cherry?!? For me, it’s like a dream that transports me back to childhood. There is nothing like a perfect cherry, so we set out to bake something that elevated the sweet and delicious fruit.

My mom recently came out to spend the weekend with us and boy, was it fun to show her around and get some time to cook together. My mom has always been a wonderful cook and baker. Normally, we’re baking Christmas cookies but it’s not quite the season for that so we opted for fresh Cherries that we picked up from local Farm, Barthel’s in Ellenville, NY.

Check out the delicious recipe created by Sheila at Life Love and Good Food

We sipped our morning coffee out of our handmade Flare Mugs and ate the tart for breakfast. It was such bliss!

Once you’re out of coffee, use our ceramic Coffeepot to display all of your happy flowers (I’ve been watching a lot of Boss Ross). This flower arrangement came from local Florist, Little Pebble Flower Farm.

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How to Preserve and Press Fall Leaves

I know that there are many ways to press leaves and flowers but as a little kid learned to used heavy books and wax paper. Using weight is the simplest method of saving all your goodies. Collect some heavy books, wax paper and pick out some leaves that are flat, thin and still malleable.

1. Clean off any dirt that might be on your leaf and then arrange them on your wax paper. Once arranged sandwich the leaves between sheets of wax paper and your book pages.

2. I like to do this with several books and then use them as decor that can be stacked upon with other heavy objects.

3. Please your books in a dry location. You’ll want to check on them in about a week to ensure that the leaves are indeed drying and not rotting. I tend to leave my leaves for a while and work on other projects but typically 2 - 3 weeks your leaves should be dried.

4. You can arrange your leaves in a scarp book or a float frame. Just make sure to keep them out of direct light, which will cause them to deteriorate faster.

It’s been a very long time since I pressed any flowers but with all this nature around us, I got pretty nostalgic. To commemorate our firstish year in our new home I decided to press whatever floral or greenery that was season. For the Fall we collected lots of color turning leaves from Birch, Maple, Oak and even Ferns.

Wild Mushrooms

Feels like everyone who forages upstate has a special and very secret mushroom gathering location. I had hoped to find some of our own to enjoy but I had no idea where to start so I didn’t make it a priority. A few weekends back my childhood best friend came out to visit with her family. Most of the weekend was spent fawning over my friends’ baby, playing boardgames, and slowly exploring Mountaindale’s downtown.

Though we planned to go out to eat, while out on an adventure into the back woods of our property we spotted some very elegant and very obvious oyster mushrooms. Mushrooms don’t last long so we harvested quite a number them for dinner and beyond - this round was fried and the rest were dried for later use.

To our surprise, we also discovered a very fresh batch of Chicken of the woods by merely looking up as we hiked. One of our friends had put into the universe that he’d like to try this weird fungus and a few minutes later, there it was. The pieces we brought home were breaded and fried. Now we totally get why these mushrooms have their name, they taste and have the same consistency as fried chicken nuggets.

A few weeks later I thought we had hit the jackpot again but this is just a reminder that there are a slew of wild mushrooms that grow in these parts. High up on a maple tree, we had discovered Northern Tooth, a bitter and unenjoyable tasting mushroom that is too tough to eat. Note the long teeth under the mushroom. So into the compost pile these go.

Our first batch of Fire Cider

As I set off to research how one makes this spicy concoction, I noticed that the nice part about fire cider is that, at least from my point of view, you can generally speaking add-lib it as your taste buds like. So, this recipe was created using different ingredients and amounts from multiple recipes.

Grate, chop all of your veggies and place in your container then cover with apple cider vinegar. We used two large mason jars. Once full we placed a piece of parchment paper between the lid and liquid and sealed it tight. Place your jars in a dark and cool space for 4 weeks. Once the 4 weeks is over strain your liquid, add honey and serve. I found Fire Cider is really nice in broth, mixed with seltzer or served as an immunity shot.

I’ve always been into DIY and learning how to do things on my own; both helpful and also time consuming. Honestly, I am quite happy living in a place where Seamless hasn’t infiltrated and food delivery is scarce. Not having these “luxuries” has reminded me how much I love to cook, bake & explore. I’d have to say that one of my love languages if for sure feeding and taking care of people, so fire cider was an easy choice for me to experiment with.

Our fire cider batch contains the following Ingredients (from the top, left to right):

• Fresh Grated Horseradish (about 6”) - funny, when we purchased this our checkout person was so freaked out.

• Grated Fresh Ginger root (about 4”)

• Braggs Raw & Unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar (you’ll need this to cover all of your veggies) I used one 32 oz bottle

• 4 - 6 Habanero peppers chopped and with the seeds in

• 1 lemon, sliced and with the rind still on (feel free to include more if you like more of a lemon flavor)

• 1 orange, sliced and with the ring still on (feel free to include more if like more of an orange flavor)

• 1 large onion diced

• 2 cloves of garlic unpeeled

• Turmeric (we used about 3 tbs) - ours came from Bija Bhar

• Honey (to be used after you steep your concoction for 4 weeks) - our honey came from local beekeepers: Damn Good Honey Farm.

A Quick Note

This morning I sit at our dining room table sipping on tea just thinking about our first Christmas day of cooking, cleaning, unwrapping, hugging and laughing in our new home. It was a whirlwind of a day full of movement and emotion. As I prepare to head back into the studio, I feel as if I am recovering from a carb hangover. Today is slow moving to say the least. All I can muster this morning is a thank you. Thank you to those who helped make this season memorable. Thank you to new stores that asked us to be part of their family and to those who reordered. Thank you to everyone who is part of this magical journey. I am as always so humbled that this is what I get to do as my career. 2020 is going to be a heck of a year as we prepare to launch new products, embark on farming, offer new opportunities to get involved and much more.

Pork Chops were purchased from Majestic Farm in Mountain Dale, NY

Foraged Shagbark Hickory Syrup

Moon over snow covered land

Once home I cleaned all the pieces of bark ; removing the dirt and lichen that settled in each cranny. After that you must toast the bark in the oven on low heat, which makes the entire house smell incredible - maybe I’ll reuse the bark for this during our holiday get together. Here is the recipe that I followed, which was found on Real Tree Though I didn’t have any corn syrup, I don’t particularly even like it so that was fine. We used sugar and the tea created when we boiled the hickory bark - reduced it to a thick syrup and then canned it. I’m so incredibly pleased with this beautiful syrup. It has a smoky sweet taste and was incredibly easy to make ( I don’t think I quite got all the sugar absorbed but it was my first try so yo u see a little crystallization starting). I’m even going to pat myself on the back since this was also the first time I ever sterilized and canned anything. Looking forward to foraging and canning more in the future. Next adventure is collecting white pine to make tea.

Last weekend, my partner and I took our Saturday date day to the woods and joined The Outside Institute on their Winter Foraging Expedition. Just a few weeks before our area got about 15” of snow so finding a safe place to forage was a bit hard but Laura managed to scout a good location at a state park. On our journey, we learned about identifying plants and ways to use them like rose hip, barberry, blackberry, birch, spruce, cedar, crab apples, and hickory. Hickory stuck in my head because Laura mentioned that besides it being great for smoking, hickory was also delicious as a syrup. Since our Christmas was going to be a savory brunch with our family, I was super interested in adding a special syrup to our day. So, we foraged some of the bark that was already pulled away from the tree.

Finished homemade Shagbark Hickory Syrup