Posts Tagged ‘Sheila Velazquez’

Easier Than Pie Apple Fritters

Friday, November 5th, 2010

 
The first weekend in November in our corner of western Massachusetts is reserved for Cider Days, our annual celebration of the end of the apple harvest.
 
Events are scheduled all over Franklin County this year. They will include a special tribute to the late Terry Maloney of West County Cider, who started this festival in 1994 with his wife and business partner Judith.
 
Local food lovers should plan on attending some of the events on Saturday and Sunday, which include orchard tours, cider-based meals, and (my personal favorite) a cider salon.
 
I am lining up some cider and apple recipes for the West County Independent. They will doubtless find their way onto these pages eventually.
 
Meanwhile, here is a preview to get you in the mood.
 
These apple fritters are the brainchild of Sheila Velazquez of Pen and Plow Farm in Hawley, Massachusetts.
 
The recipe couldn’t be simpler. If you slice the apples quite thin and make sure the batter is spread throughout the apple pieces, you get a lovely combination of sweet and tart, crispy and slightly soft. The fritters can be used as an accompaniment for pork or stew—or as a simple dessert or breakfast treat.
 
Sheila says she omits the sugar and uses this same recipe for corn and zucchini fritters. I can’t wait until next summer to try those. The apple version is absolutely addictive.
 
Sheila’s Apple Fritters
 
Ingredients:
 
1 cup flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar (I actually couldn’t find confectioner’s sugar and used regular sugar, which worked just fine!)
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional–Tinky’s addition!)
1/3 cup milk
1 egg
2 cups thinly sliced apples (try for a relatively crispy apple; I used galas)
canola or vegetable oil as needed for frying
 
Instructions:
 
In a bowl whisk together the flour, the baking powder, the salt, the sugar, and the cinnamon (if you are using it; I loved it). In a smaller bowl whisk together the milk and egg.
 
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and stir just until they are blended. If your batter is a little too wet, add a tiny bit of flour; if it’s dry, add a small amount of milk.
 
Toss in the apples, trying to coat them lightly but thoroughly.
 
Cover the bottom of a nonstick frying pan with oil and heat it until the oil shimmers. Pop in a few apple pieces at a time and reduce the heat so that the fritters won’t cook too quickly. Fry the apple fritters on one side; then the other.
 
Keep the fritters in a warm oven until their relatives are ready to serve. Or just dole them out to those waiting eagerly at the table as they are ready. 

Serves 4 to 6.

Loving Local

Monday, July 26th, 2010
 
To my fellow bloggers (and would-be bloggers):
 
You are cordially invited to a pot-luck feast! Please participate in an upcoming farm-fresh blogathon.
 
Loving Local: Celebrating the Flavors of Massachusetts will take place from Sunday, August 22, through Saturday, August 28—in other words, during Massachusetts Farmers Market Week.
 
The blogathon will be hosted by In Our Grandmothers’ Kitchens, with a little help from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources and Mass Farmers Markets.
 
We hope non-bloggers will participate as well, of course! If you are interested in food (well, who isn’t?), please consider liking our Facebook page. We’ll keep you abreast of upcoming posts in the blogathon so you can read and comment.
 
And when it begins you’ll have lots of yummy posts to savor!
 
Funds raised during the blogathon (bloggers who participate will be encouraged to place a donation link in their posts) will go to Mass Farmers Markets, a non-profit charitable organization that helps farmers markets throughout the Commonwealth.
 
Please think about writing a post that week if you live or work in Massachusetts. Or if you used to live or work in Massachusetts. Or if you once spent a weekend on Cape Cod. Or if you have a particular fondness for New England clam chowder, Hadley asparagus, or Boston baked beans.
 
Posts should focus to some extent on locally grown food in Massachusetts. You don’t have to be a food writer to participate, however.
 
Gardeners can write about herb or vegetable growing. Architects can write about the design of barns or farm stands. Watchers of the statehouse or even the federal Capitol can discuss the politics of agriculture and/or local food. And so forth.
 
Posts can be recipes, critiques, short stories, reminiscences … whatever you feel like writing. Let the flavors of the Bay State inspire you.
 
Here’s how you can get involved: Sometime during the week of August 22-28, put your post on the internet.
 
Please make sure your post mentions the blogathon, includes a link to In Our Grandmothers’ Kitchens, and encourages readers to donate to Mass Farmers Markets. The organization’s donation link is http://www.massfarmersmarkets.org/FMFM_Main.aspx.
 
(If you have another local-food cause you’d like to encourage folks to support, that’s fine by us!) 

Of course, we’d love to have bloggers show off our gorgeous logo, designed by the talented Leon Peters. You may also display a PDF poster in 8-1/2-by-11-inch format.

 
Here's a more compact version in case you'd like that:
 
 
If you’d like to participate, please leave a comment here or on our Facebook page to tell us what you’d like to write about. When the big week arrives and you’ve put up your post, you may either leave another comment or email lovinglocalATearthlink.net to announce it.
 
All posts will be identified with a link on this blog as well as on a special site set up just for that purpose, the Loving Local Blog.
 
And please help spread the word about this event! We hope our table during Farmers Market Week will be bursting with flavorful, colorful surprises.
 
Yours in good food,
Tinky
 

P.S. In keeping with the Farmers Market Week theme, here are a couple of photos from this past Saturday's doings at the state’s newest and probably smallest farmers market, that in Charlemont, Massachusetts.

Below you can see Sheila Velazquez of Pen and Plow Farm in Hawley show off her veggies—and Barbara Goodchild of Barberic Farm in Shelburne display some fleece from her sheep.

There was only one other booth last weekend–a bake sale for the local school–but food was fresh and spirits were high.

Oat Cuisine

Thursday, January 8th, 2009
oatmealweb2          In my New Year e-mail to friends I mentioned that I was working on an article about oatmeal. The response was enthusiastic.

          “Oatmeal is our friend,” e-mailed Carol Cooke, a realtor from Alexandria, Virginia. Just as passionate was Sheila Velazquez. Along with her family, Sheila is working hard to resurrect the old Rice farm on Pudding Hollow Road here in Hawley, Massachusetts. They are basically camping out (brrr!) while nurturing their children and chickens, reconstructing the historic house’s interior, and reading seed catalogues as they dream of the garden they will plant in spring.

          Sheila wrote that on chilly winter mornings she enjoys oatmeal almost every day. She buys organic oats in bulk and cooks them with water, dried fruit, and cinnamon. She throws in a little salt at the very end. “So good and also a good way to use up fruit that’s getting past its time,” she added.

          Sheila offered me a recipe for oatmeal pie, which she termed a sort of “faux pecan” concoction. She said of oatmeal in general, “It seems that some of the most delicious foods are also the least expensive and best for us.”

          I don’t eat oatmeal every morning. Unlike the noble Sheila I always add at least a little brown sugar or maple syrup to my morning porridge. I do yearn for the warmth and comfort of oatmeal at this time of year, however. I’m apparently not alone. More Americans eat oatmeal in January than in any other month, a statistic that prompted Quaker Oats to name January National Oatmeal Month.

Of course, Quaker had a vested interest in creating a month devoted to its signature product. I forgive the company because oatmeal is indeed the perfect food in this dark and cold season. The old cliché that it sticks to one’s ribs turns out to be true. Whole grains like oats take longer for the body to process than many other foods.

The best oatmeal for health purposes is a long-cooking type such as steel-cut oats. If you’re in a hurry, old-fashioned oats take only five minutes to prepare and are still very good for you. Avoid the small packages of instant oatmeal, however. They tend to go overboard in adding salt and sugar.

Oatmeal always appears on lists of super foods. It is good for cholesterol and blood pressure. It also delivers several nutrients, as well as some protein.

Best of all, it is versatile. Broccoli is also a super food, but there are only so many ways a person can disguise broccoli. Believe me, I’ve tried! As well as making a tasty breakfast cereal, oatmeal can be tucked into fruit crisps, cookies, breads, muffins, and meatloaf. It can even be used to construct a facial mask. (Take that, broccoli!)

In this post and the next few I’ll share recipes to boost oatmeal intake this month. If you’re looking for a basic oatmeal cookie, you can’t do better than the formula for Vanishing Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies on the inside of the Quaker Oats box top. Dan Turner of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, told me how to get the best consistency with these cookies: use a Crisco stick instead of the butter or margarine called for in the recipe. You’ll find that the cookies really do vanish quickly.

The Rice Farm in Hawley, Massachusetts

The Rice Farmhouse in Hawley, Massachusetts

Rice Farm Oatmeal Pie

          Sheila Velazquez says that she originally found this recipe in Farm Journal’s Country Cookbook, published in 1972. At one time she managed a farmer’s market, where the pie was a best seller. Sheila explains that the oatmeal forms a chewy crust on the top of the pie.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) soft butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup dark corn syrup
3 eggs
1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell
Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the spices and salt. Stir in the corn syrup. Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring after each addition until all is blended. Stir in the oats.

Pour the mixture into the pie shell, and bake for about an hour, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Serves 6 to 8.