Poisonous Fall

I've noted previously that I really like fall colors.  A few years ago, I noticed that even poison ivy puts on a show some autumns.

It's still noxious and not to be touched--I do react to it, though not strongly--but it's colorful enough, especially since it's usually close to the ground and thus contrasting with green plants growing at ground level.

More on Low-Carb Black Walnut Pie

Last year I posted a recipe for relatively low-carb black walnut pie. I decided to eliminate the grains from the crust to try to lower the carbs further.  I found this recipe for an almond flour crust and made a couple of subtle adaptations:

1 1/2 c almond flour
2 tbsp Whey Low D
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 c butter

I melted the butter and mixed it with the other ingredients:

Then tried pre-baking for 10 minutes at 325 per the recipe.  This is what it looked like when it came out of the oven.  I thought I might run into trouble given that it was already browning at the top.

I mixed the filling up using the recipe posted last time and put it in the oven.

One change that I didn't appreciate the significance of until later: normally I put a thin metal pizza pan under the pie dish to catch any overflow, but that's seldom a problem with fruit pies and has never happened with nut pies.  So I skipped it.

When I checked it mid-bake, I saw the crust above the level of the filling was getting very brown, so for the second time in my life tried putting foil strips over the exposed areas, and for the second time in my life the oven updraft blew most of them off when I opened the door to return the pie.  So I just decided to roll with it.

The final result is shown.  Both the filling and crust are somewhat overdone, but the taste is actually not at all bad.

I think the next time I do this I'll skip the pre-baking of the crust--it really isn't necessary--and see how things turn out.  I may also try foil-wrapping at the outset, because even without pre-baking the crust will probably get overdone.

Note that the crust is very friable and crumbles above the level of the filling when leveraging pieces out of the plate.  However, it eliminates most of the carbs in the crust, which can only help for people who are insulin-resistant or diabetic. I'm neither but a large and increasing proportion of the population is.

Other almond flour crust recipes on the web suggest using up to 2 1/2 cups of almond flour, but that much is unnecessary. This amount worked out fine.

Great Pyrenees Shedding

Great Pyrenees dogs are big, white, fluffy, and shed a lot.  Various websites recommend Dyson or other high-end vacuums to deal with the fur load and a lot of people have tales to tell of other vacuums that have been done in by the beasts.

Shedding is indeed an issue--shown below is before vacuuming:

and after:

I don't have a particularly high-end or capable vacuum.  I have a Hoover self-propelled Wind Tunnel with a bag.  After a few months of cleaning up after the dog--the picture at the top is after just two or three days, but can easily happen after just a few hours--I noticed the vacuum's performance was declining, though the bag wasn't full.  Then the drive belt broke.  I flipped it over and saw the problem.

She has a lot of long fur in her top coat.  Some of that wrapped around the spinning brush, and over the course of a few months, completely jammed it up.  Removal was accomplished with a box cutter and about 20 minutes' work (using the cutter carefully to avoid cutting both myself and the roller).

I have gone through both bags and belts more quickly than in the past--Amazon sells 12-packs of replacement belts relatively cheaply--but for now the vacuum is holding up and works relatively well.  I clean the roller after every four or five vacuuming sessions.  I'll step up if I have to, but otherwise, the nearly 20-year-old vacuum is continuing to work.

Low-Carb Pumpkin Buns

This started off as an adaptation of Paratus Familia's pumpkin scones recipe.  I made this a few years ago and it worked well with flour.  I wanted to try substituting almond flour for most of the wheat flour to see if I could produce a lower-carb version that would meet the needs of people with diabetes or insulin resistance.

I ditched the glaze and just swapped out two cups of flour for two cups of almond flour:

2  c almond flour

1/2 c flour

6 Tb sugar

1 Tb baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp ginger

1/2 c butter

1/2 c pumpkin puree

3 Tb heavy cream (or milk; see below)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

First I dumped all of the dry ingredients into the bowl--making a very pretty display--then added the butter.

I let the butter soften, then cut it in with two forks.  I don't have a pastry cutter, but the two fork method works pretty well.  If the butter is soft, an entire stick can be cut into the flour in about five minutes. 

I mixed all of the wet ingredients, then added them.  I have now made three batches of these.  Twice I have used condensed milk, three tablespoons, undiluted.  Once I used heavy whipping cream.  I don't really notice a difference.

Until this point, I was expecting to make almond flour scones.  I formed a circle of dough and tried to cut a wedge, but the dough didn't have enough cohesiveness to hold together as I lifted it and tried to put it on the cookie sheet.  At this point I realized I was going to be making pumpkin biscuits, soft cookies, or buns, but not scones. I baked them at about 17 minutes at 400 (I have learned, by the way, that my oven runs about 20 degrees cool--meaning I actually baked them at 380; 17 at a true 400 degrees might toast them a little too much).  They turned out reasonably well.

It may be that I need a greater percentage of wheat flour to get them to hold together, or it could be that making a drier dough would help.  One way to do that would be to substitute powdered whole milk in place of regular (or condensed) milk.  I may try that. Or I can just live with buns instead of scones. The flavor is fine.

Another Ant-Baiting Episode

It looks like ants have taken up residency in one of my Jerusalem artichoke pots.  I noticed the ant trail, and also saw that when I watered the pot they'd come surging out of the soil.  I tried placing bait along their trail into the pot, but it was an old tube of Optigard and it had a fair amount of leakiness to it--there was some gel but also some liquid.  The ants didn't mind and rapidly formed up to get whatever they could.

There's still some activity in the pot, so whatever I did didn't take them all out.  I may try again later.

Cole Slaw

It's basic, but cole slaw is a decent dish to take to a potluck.  The starting point for anything involving cabbage is, for me, red cabbage.

I don't have a mandolin, so I chop it up by hand.  One head takes about 20 minutes to do (or so); this is similar to what I do for sauerkraut but I try to make sure the pieces are small.

I also add shredded carrots (about two), which I prepare by using a peeler and just shaving off little slices.   My recipe isn't original; it's adapted from Allrecipes and reproduced here.  In addition to the cabbage and carrots, the fluid mix is:

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 teaspon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper (I used a little more)
2 tablespoons onion (I used dried minced onion and it worked well; I figured it'd have less of a breath-fouling kick)

I also used a little more pepper--probably somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 teaspoon.


This all gets mixed together then poured over the shredded cabbage and carrots.  The mix will tend to settle at the bottom, so mixing it up with a spoon before serving is a good idea.
 

People liked it.  The texture is somewhat different; it's definitely crunchy.  But the flavor is very good.

East Asian Joro Spiders--and Spiny Orb Weavers

Keeping with the spider theme, I noticed a new one a couple of weeks ago near the garage.  The largest spiders I typically see are the argiopes.  This is the time of year when they're big.  Down in south Georgia there are banana spiders, which are about the same size or larger.

Another species that has only been in Georgia a few years is the East Asian Joro.  I noticed my specimen by chance; give its size, it has been around a while but has gone unnoticed.  it has a web running between a crepe myrtle and the garage.  This web has both a male and female in it, or at least it did at the time I took the pictures.  There's no indication they have an adverse impact on native spiders, so I'm going to leave this one alone.

Subsequent to this discovery, I mowed for the first time in about three weeks--it has been dry here--and I saw that I don't have one pair; I have about a dozen.  None of them had webs up the last time I mowed, but they are out now in force.

Their web is very large, and despite the appearance above, it does have some symmetric properties.  The silk also has a distinctly golden color that doesn't really come out in any of these pictures.

Another species I have a lot of this year is spiny orb weavers.  I always see a few, but this year they're everywhere.  Less ubiquitous this year are the barn spiders; they're another species that hangs huge webs this time of the year (that I usually blunder into in the dark).  But I don't see a lot of them.  I hope the Joros haven't eaten them.

Lynx Spiders on the Jerusalem Artichokes

I've mentioned before that I have some Jerusalem artichokes I'm trying out.  Because of dire posts from other bloggers like this one, I have been growing them in pots.  I actually haven't actually gotten around to eating any yet.

This year I had a few come up in one pot--another variety whose name I forget didn't thrive and never came back--and I planted another one.  I got everything from Oikos, which seems to have the best selection I've found anywhere.

I think what I have growing are Blue Eye and Gute Gelbe, but I'm not sure.  I went for tubers that were relatively smooth and without branches, figuring these would be easy to clean.  The blogger above indicated that some say you should leave some of the dirt attached to reduce flatulence, but ... no.

I've got a decent--maybe too decent--crop this year.  The survivors did well, and so did the new ones.  I didn't get them into the pot quickly enough, so there was some mold in the bag when I opened them.  I didn't know if they'd survive at all, but they did.  I'm definitely wary of putting them in the ground with no boundaries; I can believe that they'd rapidly expand their territory.

A few things I've noticed this year:  aphids adore them.  Both varieties have been heavily-hit by aphids.  The new type is showing no signs of blooming, but the survivor variety did form bulbs--most of which were eaten by something before opening.  One bloom is open now.  Both types have resident green lynx spiders.  They seem to be doing a decent job on the aphids, or maybe the aphids are just disappearing due to other factors.

The spiders fattened themselves on bugs for a while, then one of them made an egg sac.  It was amazing to me how much her abdomen shrank.  She currently seems to be just guarding the eggs.  The one on the blooming plant probably went somewhere else to lay eggs, and vanished about the same time.

This fall I plan to harvest the tubers, then decide where to take things next.