It is September 16th. And it is snowing. Not significantly, mind you, but it's there. It started out as a cold rain that gradually acquired small bits of ice in it and then turned over into real, actual, snow. And a frost warning overnight. Good times!!

It's hubby's fault, you know. When he got home he said, rather in jest, that he hoped to see rain while he was home. And it POURED on our way home from the airport. Horribly, although thankfully it was short-lived. Well guess who also joked about how it would be just perfect if his last day here was sub-zero and had snow. Check, and check.

Well, thank you Mother Nature for entertaining the bizarre whims of my dearest. But can you please knock it off?

Rappie Pie Success!!

Depending how much rapure you want to make, you must decide for yourself how much chicken & potato to use. To make a large roasting pan full, you will need about 30 lbs of potatoes and two chickens. Scale it down accordingly - fyi 5 lbs of potatoes will make just enough to serve two adults for supper. You will also need about 1/4 to 1/2 lb of salt pork, onions, carrots, celery, summer savory, chicken bouillon, and pepper. In addition to, or instead of, chicken you can use cooked and shredded pork or beef roast, wild game, or even clams & scallops!


First you need to make a good chicken broth. You can do this two ways. Here are the directions from the Food Network:

In a roasting pan, roast chicken pieces until golden brown, approximately 1 hour. Remove chicken from the pan and set aside. Deglaze pan with approximately 1 cup of water by scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to lift up the brown bits. Transfer liquid to a large stockpot. Once chicken has cooled, separate the meat from the skin and bone and set aside in a bowl. Add bone and skin to stockpot. Pour 2 gallons water into the pot along with unpeeled onions, carrots, and celery. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and let simmer for 2 hours, covered. Drain fat, bones, and vegetables with cone strainer from the broth into a bowl and return strained broth to stockpot. Add peeled onion, salt, and pepper, to taste. Simmer for another 30 minutes or until onions are tender. Keep warm.

Admittedly this method is probably more flavorful, but if you want to skip the roasting step your other option is:

Put a whole lot of chicken pieces (fresh or frozen) in a large pot. Fill with water to cover. Add two carrots, two stalks of celery and one onion, all cut into chunks. Also add some summer savory to the water, and if you like, add a cube of chicken bouillon powder. Bring to a boil and keep on a simmer for 2-3 hours until the chicken is falling off the bones. Scoop the chicken out onto a plate, then pour the liquid & veggies through a colander into a large bowl or pot. Discard the vegetables. Set the broth aside and keep it warm, or if you are doing this a day ahead (not a bad idea), cool and refrigerate. When the chicken has cooled, separate the meat from the bones and skin, shred it coarsely and set aside.



Now, to move on to the potatoes. If you live in Nova Scotia, you can buy frozen bags of rappie pie mix. Way easy. If you don't, then you need to start with actual potatoes.

Grate potatoes with a hand grater. Scoop potato mush into cheesecloth and squeeze until all the liquid is removed. (Apparently it works to securely tie up the potato pulp in cheesecloth and put that inside a clean pillowcase, then run the whole thing through the spin cycle on a washing machine. I didn't dare.) Do not discard liquid until measured for its volume. Place potato pulp into a large mixing bowl. While slowly stirring with a wooden spoon, add hot chicken broth measured to the same volume as the discarded potato starch liquid. Potato mixture consistency is correct when the wooden spoon just slightly falls over when made to stand up in the mix. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

If you'd like to put some of your kitchen servants to use, you can modify the above just slightly... the texture won't be quite the same so try it both ways and see what you prefer.

Chop potatoes into chunks and run through a juicer. Collect the liquid and do not discard. When the juicer gets full, scoop potato mush into cheesecloth and squeeze until any remaining liquid is removed. Continue until you have "juiced" all the potatoes. Let the liquid set for about ten minutes until the starch has settled. Measure the liquid for its volume, excluding the starch and the foam on top. Discard liquid but keep the solid. Place potato pulp into the large bowl of your electric mixer. While running the mixer on slow speed, slowly add hot chicken broth measured to the same volume as the collected potato starch liquid. Also add back about 1/2 to 3/4 of the solid starch that settled out of the liquid you collected, and season with pepper to taste (there will already be plenty of salt from the pork & bouillon). Continue to mix until there are no lumps and, as above, a wooden spoon just slightly falls over when made to stand up in the mix.


Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Peel and chop one onion.

Slice salt pork. In a saute pan, fry the salt pork just to render the fat, remove salt pork, and set aside. Add the rendered fat and a few pieces of salt pork to the bottom of the roasting pan.

Add a 1-inch layer of potato mixture on top of the fat, then add a layer of meat and chopped onion. Repeat process until last layer of potato mixture is on top. Add a few salt pork strips to the top of your potato pie. Bake for 2 hours until a brown crust has formed. Dot the surface with chunks of butter and return to the oven for about one more hour.


Serve with butter, salt & pepper, molasses, and a big stack of freshly made molasses brown bread. Enjoy!

Blobs of grated, squeezed potato pulp... yum...

Ready to bake. This was round one, before I learned a little more about making rapure successfully. First - this was WAY too much salt pork. Second - hold off putting on the butter until a couple of hours into the baking time.

Browning up nicely :)

This was round two, incorporating the necessary steps of returning some starch to the mix and holding off on the butter. They turned out WAY better, although I still used too much salt pork. Go easy on that stuff, it's pretty intense.

This is a neat video from Compassion International... worth a watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7huKGnCojjU

"Aim Lower. Think Smaller. Give Up. Go Have a Cup of Coffee."

So, I ordered one of A's birthday presents today.

Her name is Mildred, she lives in Kenya, and she is two years old, almost three. Her birthday is just a few days away from A's. (Did the same for C a couple of years ago)

Would you consider joining us and choosing birthday pals for your own kids?

http://www.compassion.ca/

Beside Every Great Dad

This is what I'm reading right now. I cannot begin to recommend this book strongly enough. Seriously. If you are a wife or a mom or are planning to become either one, get your hands on a copy of this book and take its words to heart. On a rating scale of one to ten, this is in that really small list of books that I would give a fifteen to.  That's all I really have to say.

Click here to buy it.

Happy Birthday to Me

Pan-fried wild salmon fillet with lemon & dill, oven-roasted herbed potatoes, steamed green beans from the garden, and double-chocolate cake with cookies & cream ice cream. Who needs to go out to have a great birthday dinner?? :)

Not to mention some dee-lish blueberry pancakes for breakfast, made with wild blueberries we picked ourselves.

Yes, I like to spoil myself on my birthday. And I got the best birthday present of all, so what more could I ask for?

The eagle has landed...

We have DH back in our arms for an all-too-short but oh-so-needed vacation break.

I had originally hoped that we might do something special, some kind of little vacation, but reality has set in and we're going to chill out at home. Between jet lag, the kids going into "velcro mode" and not exactly an abundance of spare cash, it makes much more sense to just hang out at home and take it easy for a while. However, we did make it into a mini-vacation by opting to spend the night in Edmonton at a nice hotel that really spoiled us by giving us a phenomenal deal on a package AND a free upgrade to a suite. Add to that the presents that Daddy brought home, and they are just as happy (probably more so even) than if we had planned something "special". I know I am. :)